Playing with Fire: The Weird Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle
288
Playing with Fire: The Weird Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle
288Hardcover
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780712354257 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | British Library Publishing |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2022 |
| Series: | British Library Hardback Classics |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 1,125,157 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.75(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
May 22, 1859Date of Death:
July 7, 1930Place of Birth:
Edinburgh, ScotlandPlace of Death:
Crowborough, Sussex, EnglandEducation:
Edinburgh University, B.M., 1881; M.D., 1885Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION The Scientist and the Psychic Arthur Conan Doyle’s name is so inextricably linked to his creation, Sherlock Holmes, that it overshadows much of his other work. Doyle was only too aware of that, becoming tired of Holmes when the time spent on new stories stopped him writing what he preferred; mostly historical fiction but, following his interest in spiritualism, tales of the strange and supernatural. Doyle wrote almost as many of these strange stories as he did those featuring Sherlock Holmes. Once we include further stories classifiable these days as science fiction, we find that he wrote as many if not more strange stories as he did tales of the Great Detective. Th is volume brings together some of his best, most unusual and diverse weird tales, many of which reflect upon aspects of his life. He wrote about some of his own spiritual experiences in a little-known essay ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ which is reprinted here for the first time. Doyle was a natural storyteller. He was born in 1859 into an artistic family—his father, uncle and grandfather were all published artists and illustrators. Both his uncle, Richard Doyle, and his father, Charles Altamont Doyle, produced bizarre and often grotesque images. Richard became renowned for his pictures of fairies and elves and his reputation overshadowed that of his younger brother, Charles, whose comparative lack of success as an artist turned him to drink, and the production of even more bizarre drawings. It is hard to imagine that his father’s illustrations did not have an influence on the young Arthur. Scottish by birth, but Irish by descent, Arthur was gifted with that natural Celtic ability to spin yarns. He was further encouraged by his great uncle, Michael Conan, from whom he gained his middle name. Conan, a barrister and art journalist, lived for many years in Paris and his relationship with young Arthur was mostly by mail. He would send the boy a variety of adventure novels which sparked Doyle’s imagination. His early favourite writers were Mayne Reid, R.M. Ballantyne and Sir Walter Scott. At the age of six, young Arthur had penned his first story about a hunter who meets his fate with a tiger. Even at that age, Doyle realised it was easy to get your character into a problem but less easy to help him out. In 1868 Doyle was sent to Hodder, near Preston, Lancashire, a preparatory school for the Jesuit College at Stonyhurst which he attended from 1870 to 1875. While at Hodder, Doyle would regale his fellow pupils with heroic adventure stories and was bribed to finish the yarns with cakes and cream tarts. While at Stonyhurst, Doyle began a small magazine called Wasp to which he contributed poems and cartoons— he also claimed he contributed to the college magazine, though that was not until later years. From Stonyhurst, Doyle continued his education at the Jesuit College of Feldkirch in Austria to improve his German. He was already fluent in French and was reading the novels of Jules Verne in their original language. He had also been an avid reader of the leading Scottish magazine Blackwood’s to which a close friend of the family, John Hill Burton—a noted lawyer and historian—regularly contributed. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that when Doyle considered submitting material for possible publication that his first choice of market was Blackwood’s. This first story, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’, written perhaps in 1877 or 1878, is a highly gothic ghost story, rather too melodramatic and formulaic. It tells of two lads, one a medical student, who spend a night in a reputedly haunted house and witness the ghost of a murderer being pursued by his victim. It reads just as if it was one of the stories he must have told to his friends, full of exuberance and atmosphere. Blackwood’s set it aside, either to reconsider it, or return it at some stage (it is not clear that they had a return address) and forgot about it. It remained in their archives for over a century before being discovered and eventually published by the Arthur Conan Doyle Society in 2000. I have not reprinted it here because it lacks the polish of his later work, but it is of significance because it shows that his first attempt at formal publication was with a ghost story. Doyle was himself a medical student at this time, struggling to acquire the money to pay for his scholarship, despite being helped by another family friend, Dr Waller. Doyle’s father had been retired by his employers in June 1876 and the family were in need of income. As the eldest son, though only seventeen at the time, Doyle must have felt a responsibility to contribute. His elder sister, Annette, worked as a governess in Portugal and sent much of her salary home. So, despite his medical studies, until he qualified in August 1881, Doyle looked for other means of income. Unfazed by hearing nothing from Blackwood’s, Doyle submitted a new story, ‘The Mystery of Sasassa Valley’, to the rival Edinburgh magazine, Chambers’s Journal. It is in much the same vein as his first attempt. Two young men try to seek their fortune in South Africa and learn of the legend of the haunted valley. This time the mystery is rationalised, so it is not a genuine supernatural story, but it is full of the same bravura melodrama. And this time it was accepted, appearing in the issue for 6 September 1879. Arthur Conan Doyle was a published author. His medical studies limited his time to write, and he later admitted that most of the stories he submitted were rejected, but now and then one made it through. He was learning the writing trade at the same time he was discovering life as a doctor. He placed articles with the British Medical Journal and The Lancet as well as pursuing an interest in photography with articles in the British Journal of Photography. He was also having adventures. During the spring of 1880 he served as a surgeon on the whaler Hope in the Arctic and after he graduated he served as a doctor on the Mayumba on the coast of West Africa in January 1882, both before he opened his practice in Southsea in May 1882. He continued to write. His experiences in the Arctic led to what many regard as his first important short story, and a ghost story of considerable merit, ‘The Captain of the “Polestar”’, published in Temple Bar in January 1883 and reprinted here. At the same time Doyle took interest in the growing fascination for spiritualism, though at this stage it was purely from a scientific perspective. In January 1881 he attended a lecture, ‘Does Death End All?’ given by an American preacher Joseph Cook. At the same time interested parties were discussing the need for a disciplined approach to studying spiritual and psychic matters resulting in the formation of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in February 1882. Though Doyle did not join the Society until January 1893 he had many dealings with leading members during the late 1880s and his early interest in psychic phenomena is evident in ‘The Winning Shot’, reprinted here. In the story, which had been rejected by Doyle’s regular markets and eventually appeared in Bow Bells for 11 July 1883, Doyle discusses several examples of strange phenomena, such as those recorded by the medium Daniel Dunglas Home, and found in the writings of Catherine Crowe. Doyle was particularly interested in the powers of the mind, such as telepathy, and the extent to which one individual can exercise power over another. He explored this idea first in ‘John Barrington Cowles’, which ran in two weekly editions of Cassell’s Saturday Journal during April 1884. Set during Doyle’s own days at Edinburgh University, he depicts the power that a femme fatale can exercise over a student. Doyle reused the idea in his novella ‘The Parasite’, also included here. By now, Doyle had become a confirmed spiritualist and had also joined the Society for Psychical Research, sharing his interest in the study of mesmerism with scientist Oliver Lodge. Doyle was fascinated by whatever constituted the human soul and wondered whether mesmerism could take over not only physical control but spiritual. As Doyle wrote in ‘Stranger Than Fiction’, included here: I am always conscious of the latent powers of the human spirit, and of the direct intervention into human life of outside forces which mould and modify our actions. At the time Doyle was writing ‘The Parasite’, Harper’s Monthly was serialising George Du Maurier’s Trilby, probably the best-known novel on the idea of mesmeric control. It has been suggested that Doyle was anxious to finish his novella by way of comparison with Trilby, with Doyle emphasising the study of mind-control as a possible future science. ‘The Parasite’ was serialised in Harper’s companion magazine, Harper’s Weekly during November 1894 yet the novella has never received the recognition garnered by Trilby. Doyle had turned to writing full-time in June 1891 and by now he was also actively involved in spiritualism and psychic research. This may seem strange to those who know Doyle only through reading the stories featuring the highly logical and scientific Sherlock Holmes. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, serialised in The Strand Magazine in 1901, his client, a doctor, suggests that the events on Dartmoor might be caused by something not of this Earth, to which Holmes retorts: ‘And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?’ Holmes allowed Doyle to retain a rational mind, while also being every bit as interested in the inexplicable. In June 1894, along with two officials from the SPR, Doyle investigated a house in Dorset where there were reports of unexplained noises. They concluded it was a hoax, but it demonstrates Doyle’s sincere interest in psychic phenomena. When he contributed a series called ‘Round the Fire Stories’ to The Strand at the end of the decade he included one, ‘The Story of the Brown Hand’ (1899), where one of the characters refers to his experiences with the SPR. Likewise, ‘Playing With Fire’ (1900) is set during a séance which gets out of hand. ‘The Leather Funnel’ (1902), later added to the collection Round the Fire Stories, shows Doyle’s interest in psychometry where physical contact with an object allows its past to be investigated. Over the next few decades Doyle found himself once again busy writing Holmes stories and struggling to return to his historical novels, but he also created a popular new character in the form of Professor Challenger. He first appeared in The Lost World, serialised in 1912 followed by The Poison Belt in 1913. These are both science fiction stories, but at times his dual interests in science and the supernatural overlapped. ‘The Terror of Blue John Gap’ (1910), for example, suggests a monster deep in the caves of the Peak District, whilst ‘The Horror of the Heights’ (1913) suggests monsters in the upper atmosphere. The supernatural, or perhaps I should call it a psychic science, would also start to intrude upon the adventures of Professor Challenger and the investigations of Sherlock Holmes. In ‘The Adventure of the Creeping Man’ (1923) Holmes discovers that a professor’s odd behaviour is due to experimenting with monkey glands. The short novel ‘The Land of Mist’ (1926) has Challenger investigating spiritualism and becoming converted. ‘When the World Screamed’ (1928) depicts the Earth as a living organism. Against these explorations of psychic or scientific possibilities, Doyle continued to produce the occasional more restrained ghost story including ‘How it Happened’ (1913) and ‘The Bully of Brocas Court’ (1921), both reprinted here. The latter employs Doyle’s lifelong interest in boxing and allows us to bring this collection to a close with a rather unusual ghost. Doyle’s reputation was dented quite considerably because of his belief in the case of the Cottingley Fairies. In 1920 two young children took photographs of what were supposed to be fairies at the bottom of their garden. Doyle became interested in the case and used it to demonstrate what exists beyond our normal perception. Anyone today looking at those photographs can tell that they are fake—they were cut-out pictures of fairies. But Doyle was convinced, just as he had been convinced by many mediums at séances and by spirit photographs. In the eyes of many Doyle was seen as gullible, but he never swayed from his conviction and this is what is important when it came to his fiction. Doyle could produce a story that feels real because he put his heart and soul into it. You have only to read the stories included here to know that Doyle was a great storyteller, creating characters and images with which you could associate and in which you would believe. Why otherwise would so many believe that Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were real? Doyle’s ability to convince himself of what others saw as fakery was the same ability with which he could create living and breathing characters in his fiction, and powerful and memorable imagery. The stories collected here show the gifted imagination of a master storyteller, and you will remember them for a long, long time. Mike Ashley