His writings were almost solely centered on the movement and its amazing wonders. Conan Doyle pursued Spiritualism with all of the vigor that he plunged into everything else -- full steam ahead. Despite a number of set-backs, the collapse of friendships, ridiculous frauds and even the exposure of mediums he believed in, Conan Doyle would not be shaken in his beliefs. He was insulted, disparaged and forced to give up most of his paid work but he never faltered.

What could have so convinced this proper and courageous English gentleman to so heartily embrace a movement that was despised by so many? What did Conan Doyle know that so much of the rest of the world did not? And what mysteries was he privy to.....?

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had many striking characteristics. He was gigantically tall and strong. He was a gifted story-teller. He was a man of strong opinions and considerable political influence... But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about him was the combination of all the attributes of worldly success with an almost child-like literalness and credulity of mind, manifested particularly in relation to Spiritualism and its surrounding phenomena."
Author Ruth Brandon in The Spiritualists (1983)

THE DOCTOR & WRITER
 Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22, 1859. He was the second child and oldest son of Charles Doyle, an assistant surveyor in the Scottish Office of Works. Charles Doyle was an artistic man but never fared well in his work. Early biographies of his son painted a picture of his father as a "dreamy aesthetic figure" but it was later revealed that he was both an alcoholic and an epileptic. He left his job while in his 40's and spent most of the rest of his life in nursing homes for alcoholics and mental asylums. Doyle's mother, Mary, on the other hand was the backbone of the family. She was a well-read woman and a great storyteller and years later, Arthur would credit her for her love of literature. She bore her husband ten children in all, five girls and two boys of whom survived.

Growing up, Doyle spent two years at a preparatory school of Hodder and then among the Jesuits at Stonyhurst. He had been allowed to attend this Catholic institution at no charge for it was hoped that he might dedicate his life to the church. He would eventually become disenchanted with Catholicism though and decide on pursuing a medical career instead. Over the next few years, Doyle endured the spartan conditions of boarding school, the corporal punishment and the poor food. He excelled at sports, especially cricket, and at 16 passed his graduate exam with honors. Doyle began working hard to obtain a scholarship for his medical studies and while awarded one, a series of official mistakes prevented him from receiving it. His family could not afford to send him to school, so he worked a series of jobs and attended medical college at the same time. It took him five years to earn his degrees as a Bachelor of Medicine but his completed his schooling in Edinburgh in 1881.

Doyle was eager to start a medical practice after graduation and had also developed a love for writing. He hoped to supplement his practice by selling short stories to the magazines of the day but while in school, he recognized the importance of working first and writing later. He wrote and sold a short story or two and then, as a third-year student, he signed on as a ship's surgeon for a whaler that was making a seven month voyage to the Arctic. Doyle got along well with the ships' crew. He was by now a massive and strong young man, an all around sportsman and a man of incredible strength. His boxing skills also served him well and he won a bout with the ship's steward on the first night out of port.

He made little money during this period of his life but he managed to supplement his meager income with sales of short stories. As he settled into his practice, he wrote as often as time allowed and since he had few patients, he would often spend hours scratching out adventure stories as his desk. In 1886, he penned his first Sherlock Holmes story but had difficulty finding anyone to publish it.  He eventually sold it outright for a small sum. The publishers told him that at the time, they didn't plan to publish it for at least a year "as the market is flooded at present by cheap fiction."

The story called "A Study in Scarlet" appeared in the Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and met with success but Doyle had no interest in being merely a writer of short, detective stories. Instead, he began research and wrote a lengthy historical novel called Micah Clarke.  The book appeared in 1889 and was an immediate success. Six more stories about Sherlock Homes followed in the recently founded Strand Magazine and an American publisher requested a Holmes novel, spurring Doyle to write The Sign of the Four. Doyle meant to write only those stories about Sherlock Holmes and no more. He thought of himself as a serious novelist and the Holmes stories were merely a distraction to him. However, when the publishers offered more and more money for additional tales, Doyle surrendered -- and the Sherlock Holmes saga began.

Before Sherlock Homes was a sensation in England though, Doyle was already busy writing another historical novel, The White Company, which he considered his best work, and attending to his practice. His younger brother, Innes, had also come to live with him in Southsea and he assisted Doyle in his work. He still saw his writing as simply an added income to his position as a doctor.

A chance meeting with a physician in London convinced Doyle to move his practice to the city. He decided however to specialize in eye care but to do so, he needed to attend a six month training session in Vienna. The Southsea practice was abandoned (it was too small to be sold), Mary was sent to her grandmother and Doyle and Louise set off for Austria. The entire trip turned out to be a disaster. The lectures were given in German and while Doyle had a conversational knowledge of the language, he was unable to follow the technical terms. He wrote a short book The Doings at Raffles Haw instead and he and Louise left Vienna in two months instead of six. When the couple returned to England, he set up practice in London in Devonshire Place, at the top of Wimpole Street. It was a quiet and ideal location -- for writing anyway -- and not a single patient darkened Doyle's doorstep. He spent all of his time writing and it was here that he created the next set of Sherlock Holmes tales. The immediate success of the stories, the lack of patients and a severe bout with influenza that nearly killed him made his  next decision an easy one. He would give up his medical work and turn all his attentions to writing.

MEMORIES & ADVENTURES
Conan Doyle was in his early thirties when he decided to break with medicine and over the next ten years, he became increasingly more successful and and increasingly more of a public figure. He emerged into the last decade of the Nineteenth Century as one of the most influential characters of his generation. To one aspect of the public he was the creator of Sherlock Homes, to another he was the author of historical novels and adventure stories and even those who were not interested in his gripping tales, he was a man of total faith in the Imperial idea of Britain and a personage who was ready and eager to play a role in public affairs.

Doyle was a figure that most men aspired to imitate. He looked more like a sportsman than a man of letter, was a robust outdoorsman and a avid boxer, adept at soccer and loved cricket. He was also, like many men and women of his generation, concerned about religion. He lost his Catholic faith while still a young man and for a time was mildly agnostic. While living in Southsea, he became interested in psychical research and began reading heavily on the subject. He also had the opportunity to visit séances and experiments in telepathy and thought transference. His search for answers led to a meeting with Sir Oliver Lodge, one of the leading paranormal investigators of the time, and in 1893, he joined the Psychical Research Society. He watched with interest the public's fascination with Spiritualism but did not understand how ghostly phenomena warranted a faith and religion based around it -- at least not yet. He did become more and more interested in the Spiritualist movement though, although at first his interested was tinged heavily with skepticism. This did not keep him from writing horror tales in which Spiritualism played a part though. Click here to take a look at the part Spiritualism played in Doyle's early writings.

Sadly, Doyle's personal life was not to successful. He refused to accept the diagnosis that doctor's had given to his beloved Louise was became determined to find a cure for her tuberculosis. According to the doctors, she only had a few months love but Doyle was sure that he could prolong her life. He set aside his a career and began taking Louis to various places that had been recommended as being helpful to patients suffering from consumption. He traveled first to Switzerland and then was told by a friend and fellow writer, Grant Allen, who also suffered from tuberculosis, that he had found the climate in the English county of Surrey to be of great benefit. So, Doyle purchased a large home there called Undershaw,  which incidentally, was one of the first in the region to have electric lighting. This was Louise's home until her death in 1906.

Doyle's grief over the sad state of affairs at home, as well as his mixed emotions about Jean, led him to escape into his writing and into the bright lights of public life. He attended dinners, joined literary societies, went on trips and even wrote a stage play called Waterloo, which was performed by the eminent actor Henry Irving. He took his brother Innes, who was about to enter the military, to the United States, where he went on a book tour, giving talks and readings. He became very popular with Americans and they loved his bluff manner, his cheerfulness, his Scottish accent and his simple and unpretentious ways. Doyle found the wide open spaces and outdoor life of America to be invigorating and felt very much at home. Since Americans loved the Sherlock Holmes stories as much as the British did, Conan Doyle was probably the best-known Englishman in America for many years.

During the Boer War, Doyle came into his own as an adventurous public figure. The war began in October 1899 and just before Christmas of that year, in what was known as Black Week, the British military suffered three staggering defeats at the hands of an army of farmers in South Africa. There was much alarm in Britain, together with a patriotic upsurge, and on Christmas Eve, Doyle decided to volunteer for South Africa. His mother was angry and distressed, believing that his life was of more value to his country at home. There were thousands who could fight, she told him, but only one who could have created Sherlock Holmes (Doyle's mother never understood her son's disinterest in the great detective and was very angry when he killed him off by having him fall over a waterfall with his archenemy, Professor Moriarty). She also believed that Doyle's sympathies were better aimed at the Boers that at the wealthy companies who were using the military to protect their interests in the African nation.

Doyle remained in South Africa for a little more than three months. After the capture of the Boer capital of Pretoria, the war (he thought) came to an end. He found the time he spent in the country to be deeply satisfying and after obtaining a number of first-hand accounts of the fighting, he wrote a book called The Great Boer War on his return to England. The book became very popular, although was outdated by another history that came out later since what seemed to be the end of the war was not. It actually contained on as a guerilla war for nearly two years. Regardless, the book was successful and in the last chapter, Doyle suggested what he believed were some necessary military reforms. They caused a great stir and included the concealment of large guns (two batteries had almost been lost at one battle because a commander foolishly pushed them ahead of the infantry and provided no cover for them); the abandonment of cavalry swords and lances; and the development of a highly-trained infantry that could be supplemented by national volunteer militia units. These ideas seem quite sensible today but shocked the Army establishment of the time.

Doyle also found himself immersed in the controversy that surrounded the final months of the war as well. The guerilla war that continued brought a severe response from the British military. The Boers fed off the land and moved around constantly, striking at British forces and then vanishing. The military established s series of block houses to try and contain the guerillas, burned their farms and established concentration camps for the women and children who were burned out. The camps were dirty and badly run and various epidemics like measles and typhoid continually swept through them. A number of articles and pamphlets appeared that described the conditions of the camp but which also made false claims about the conduct of British soldiers. They articles inflamed man European countries and Britain became widely criticized. In response, Doyle penned a small booklet called The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct and it was put together from eyewitness accounts in less than a week. He made a good case against the claims that British soldiers were raping Boer women and using dum-dum bullets that expanded on impact. He also admitted that while the camps had their shortcomings, they were necessary alternative to allowing the women and children to starve to death. The booklet had its effect, especially in other European countries, and managed to counter the anti-British feelings. We would consider it to be propaganda today but it was done in support of a cause that the author truly believed in.

Before Doyle wrote the booklet, he had stood for Parliament in the 1900 general election. He was a Conservative candidate and while not in opposition to the Liberal policy of social reform at home, he joined the conservative Unionist party because they were the pro-military and Empire party. He ran for office in Edinburgh but had little chance of winning in the mostly Liberal area. His campaign was very effective however and he spoke to workmen, gave informal speeches in the street and rented out an opera house for formal speeches in the evening. He ended up making 14 appearances in less than three days, genially acknowledging the hecklers who called him "Sherlock Holmes" and focused on the importance of military reforms, national defense and the Empire. Things looked well for him until, on election day, a fanatical Protestant hung posters all over the district that proclaimed Conan Doyle to be a Jesuit-educated, Catholic agent -- a lie that must have galled a man who had long ago abandoned the Catholic faith. The posters likely swayed many voters but Doyle did improve the Unionist vote by 1500. Regardless, he lost the election. Years later, he admitted that he was glad that he had never ended up in politics. He would have never have been a good party man and he disliked electioneering. He was never that interested in politics anyway but he was a fighter by nature and fighters never like to lose.

By this time, Doyle was not only a famous author but a famous man and he was offered a knighthood, which he immediately refused, stating that a knighthood was a discredited title. His mother was furious and persisted with her demand that he reconsider until she eventually got her way. In 1902, he became Sir Arthur. Interestingly though, years later, in one of the last Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Three Garridebs", Dr. Watson mentions in passing that Holmes had refused a knighthood and named the year in which this occurred. Not surprisingly, it was 1902.  

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Still to Come -- A "Real Life Sherlock Holmes"
Conan Doyle becomes involved in rescuing two innocent men from prison
Conan Doyle Embraces Spiritualism
Conan Doyle and Houdini: The Story of a Remarkable Friendship
Doyle and the Cottingley Fairies
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(C) Copyright 2003 by Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved.