Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Ha Ha Ha)

Give him a break. The man was convinced by pictures of cardboard fairies. And now he's dead.
 
Not Alex Chiu. He has immortality rings!


I'm dying to attend his funeral.
 
The article fails to point out that Doyles active interest stems from the time that his son was killed in WWI. Further, it neglects to point out that Holmes had opinions on the matter:

“Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their hearts? It’s pure lunacy.”

“But surely,” said I, “the vampire was not necessarily a dead man? A living person might have the habit. I have read, for example, of the old sucking the blood of the young in order to retain their youth.”

“You are right, Watson. It mentions the legend in one of these references. But are we to give serious attention to such things? This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
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I think that an interesting treatment was traded in for a sneering one. Sounds like a post here. Not that Doyle wasn't a woo, he was but the story is a bit more complicated than the article suggests. It might have served as a springboard for a discussion of why people believe.

I'd give it a c/c-.
 
Ed said:
The article fails to point out that Doyles active interest stems from the time that his son was killed in WWI.
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Hmm I seem to recall suggestions that the fairy stuff may have had something to do with his father's mental illness.
 
geni said:
Hmm I seem to recall suggestions that the fairy stuff may have had something to do with his father's mental illness.
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Could be. Consider his losses during the Great War:

"The toll of the war was cruel on Conan Doyle. He lost his son Kingsley, his brother, his two brothers-in-law and his two nephews."
http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/biography/biography13.htm

I humbly suggest that that might make a woo of better people. Untouched upon in either JREF Wikki or Wikki.
 
Ed said:
The article fails to point out that Doyles active interest stems from the time that his son was killed in WWI. Further, it neglects to point out that Holmes had opinions on the matter:

I think that an interesting treatment was traded in for a sneering one. Sounds like a post here. Not that Doyle wasn't a woo, he was but the story is a bit more complicated than the article suggests. It might have served as a springboard for a discussion of why people believe.

I'd give it a c/c-.
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Feel free to go on the wiki and amend it, but before you do, you might want to read Martin Gardner on the subject:
It has been said that Doyle's conversion to spiritualism, like the recent case of Bishop James Pike, was an emotional reaction to the death of his son. Not so. Even when he was a young Irish-Catholic, Doyle had a strong interest in psychic phenomena. His crusade for spiritualism began in 1916, two years before his son died.

Martin Gardner, The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle, in Science, Good, Bad and Bogus.
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For my part I think that the wiki should contain neither fiction nor amateur psychoanalysis.

Oh and Ed, dear, if you're going to be patronizing, try not to be wrong at the same time. It does rather spoil the effect.
 
Dr Adequate said:
Feel free to go on the wiki and amend it, but before you do, you might want to read Martin Gardner on the subject: For my part I think that the wiki should contain neither fiction nor amateur psychoanalysis.

Oh and Ed, dear, if you're going to be patronizing, try not to be wrong at the same time. It does rather spoil the effect.
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Not patronizing. I said his "active" interest. He had joined some sort of spritualist things early on, it is true. But this was an age of woo-ism and I suspect that it was de rigueur for folks in his set. I don't think that Gardner would be the guy to go to for biographical information about Doyle, unless he made some study of which I am unaware. All that said, from what I have read the events of WWI changed him for the worse and that his active involvement with things spritualistic ensued. Not amature anything, simply a reflection of reading on the subject. I don't work well with groups so I will pass on editing the article.
 
Ed said:
I don't think that Gardner would be the guy to go to for biographical information about Doyle, unless he made some study of which I am unaware.
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You mean like researching the essay on him that I quoted, rather than making it up as he went along? I'm guessing he did. Especially as he is noted as a Sherlockian scholar, and the article was first published in a collection of Holmsiana entitled Beyond Baker Street.

As to the psychoanalytic department, lots of people lost relatives in the Great War, and, indeed, people have lost loved ones at all epochs of history. Only a small percentage of them became active spiritualists, and a smaller percentage still believed (a) the Houdini had Real Proper Magic Powers (b) that there were fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Putt this together with an interest in spiritualism which preceded the loss of his son, and I think we should be wary of crying post hoc ergo propter hoc.
 
Just for fun, I'll point out: there is an excellent send-up of Spritualism in Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers, one of the Lord Peter books. She has a rather Christian character, Miss Climpson, who is sent to try to find a hidden will in the house of an old woman, and so she tries to get to know the woman's nurse. She manages to meet her and finds out she is a believer in Spiritualism, and Miss Climpson happens to know how to do all the fakery from meeting someone in a boardinghouse long ago. She proceeds to have séances with the woman and convinces her to help find the will. The book is great, and there was a BBC television version filmed with Edward Petherbridge as Lord Peter that was fabulous.

Funny thing; Dorothy Sayers herself was quite religious. But earlier in the same book, Miss Climpson is on a jury and refuses to convict despite the evidence, saying that she just doesn't believe the woman did the crime. When told of how this got the trial dismissed, the advocate for the defense remarks as follows: "Very useful," said Sir Impey. "A person who can believe all the articles of the Christian faith is not going to boggle over a trifle of adverse evidence. But we can never hope for a whole jury-box full of ecclesiastical diehards."
 
I confess that it has been over 30 years since I read a biography of Conan Doyle. I do not even remember that book going into his dallying with spiritualism. I do remember that his medical pracitice was less than spectacular, and that he did buy into the "celebrity author" bit of the early 20th century (the literary friends bit, in a circle with Bram Stoker)... plus he was really tired and annoyed with the Sherlock Holmes phenomena. He did try killing off Holmes, but that didn't work very well (his later Holmes stories are not up to par with the earlier ones).

I believe that his treatment of Holmes was a way to keep him in a certain character. Holmes as a character would NEVER look for a zebra if he heard horse hooves treading behind him. Also, the last Holmes story was written just before WWI.

What is really interesting is seeing the change in the Dr. Challenger Stories. While "Lost World" and "The Poison Belt" are interesting and have some objective "science" (well, they ARE science fiction)... the last two stories are un-readable. That is one reason I cannot remember the names (I do have copies, but I do not wish to run from the basement to the 2nd story bookcase to check them out, the paperback "Complete Sherlock Holmes" was down here)... it is dreadful stuff, not even for the spirtualism part, but for the blatant sentimentality.
 
ysabella said:
Funny thing; Dorothy Sayers herself was quite religious. But earlier in the same book, Miss Climpson is on a jury and refuses to convict despite the evidence, saying that she just doesn't believe the woman did the crime. When told of how this got the trial dismissed, the advocate for the defense remarks as follows: "Very useful," said Sir Impey. "A person who can believe all the articles of the Christian faith is not going to boggle over a trifle of adverse evidence. But we can never hope for a whole jury-box full of ecclesiastical diehards."
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Perhaps my reply needs a spoiler.

But it turns out that the accused is innocent: so Miss Climpson is staunchly believing, on insufficient evidence, something which is absolutely true, whereas the rational Sir Impey is confuted.
 
Hydrogen Cyanide said:
I believe that his treatment of Holmes was a way to keep him in a certain character.
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As the article points out, you can't have a proper detective story if you can allow strange unknown spiritual forces as part of the solution, because there's no satisfaction to the reader in getting to the end of the story and finding out that the reason that the elderly millionaire was stabbed to death in the sealed room surrounded by policemen was that the Invisible Pink Unicorn transcended our mundane three dimensional space and impaled him with her Holy Horn. That's not a solution, that's a cop-out.

In real life, alas, Conan Doyle had no such scruples.
 
Dr Adequate said:
...
In real life, alas, Conan Doyle had no such scruples.
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Well, that is true. The celebrity lifestyle where they start to believe their own publicity is not a new phenomena... and the group that Conan Doyle was a part of was no exception. If he were alive today he would be running around with a red string and vouching for Allicon Dubois.

I think I recall a story where he tried to set up a seance with Houdini as a guest member. When the "medium" claimed that Houdini's mother was talking to him and referred to him in his stage name and NOT his real name... Houdini was inscensed.
 
Holmes Chronology.

The last Sherlock Holmes story Doyle wrote was "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place", published in March 1927, with the writing done in 1926. It, and all but one of the other stories ("The Lions Mane") are set before WW-1, many were written after.
I think Doyle did an excellant job keeping Holmes in character as a strict skeptic, while his own beliefs differred considerably. On the other hand, after what seemed a fine start for Proffessor Challenger in "The Lost World" he incorporated a lot of "woo" in the later stories. Although, in fairness, "The Lost World" could be considered to have started the Cryptozooligy movement.

Robert Klaus
 
Pope130 said:
...snip... Although, in fairness, "The Lost World" could be considered to have started the Cryptozooligy movement.
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Hmmm.... Maybe the title should go to Verne, since there were a lot of what would nowdays be recognized as cryptos in "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". Plesiosaur and giant homind included.

But since surely someone else must have written and published monster stories after Guttemberg invented the press and Verne published "Journey", the title may be questioned. OK, maybe without the scientific background used by Verne.
 
In Memories and Adventures (pp 392-94), Doyle gives a dramatic summary of why he believes in spiritualism. He had seen his dead mother and nephew so plainly that he could have counted the wrinkles on one, the freckles on the other. He had conversed at length with spirit voices. He had smelled the "peculiar ozonelike smell of ectoplasm." Prophecies he heard were swiftly fulfilled. He had "seen the dead glimmer up upon a photographic plate" untouched by any hand but his own. His wife, a medium whose writing fingers would be seized by a spirit control, had produced "notebooks full of information...utterly beyond her ken." He had seen heavy objects "swimming in the air, untouched by human hand." He had seen "spirits walk around the room in fair light and join in the talk of the company." On his wall was a painting done by a woman with no artistic training, but who had been possessed by an artistic spirit.

He had read books written by unlettered mediums who transmitted the work of dead writers, and he had recognized the writer's style, "which no parodist could have copied, and which was written in his own handwriting." He had heard "singing beyond earthly power, and whistling done wiith no pause for the intake of breath." He had seen object "from a distance projected into a room with closed doors and windows."
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"The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle", Martin Gardner, p 116
 
That's a good point, Dr.Adequate. Still, Sayers seems to have a sense of humor about it all.

(Conan Doyle? Sorry, I got nothin'.)
 
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