Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle was more than just an
author. He was a knight, a soldier, a
spiritualist, a whaler, a doctor, a
journalist, and most of all, he was
adventurous. He was not the quiet type of
person, so he enjoyed expressing
himself. Arthur Conan Doyle was born on the
22nd of May 1859 in Picardy Place,
Edinburgh. The second child of Charles
Altamont and Mary Foley, he was thought t
have been named after the legendary
medieval king, Arthur, of the Round Table.
Doyle was also named after his
granduncle, Michael Edward Conan. He was a
descendant of the Irish, and was
of the Roman Catholic religion. Doyle had a
grandfather, John Doyle. He was
political cartoonist, who, financially supported
the family.1 Doyle had a
pretty rough home life because his father was an
alcoholic. As he grew up,
Doyle had to take more of the responsibilities around
the house into his own
hands, because his father was either too sick or drunk to
fulfill his daily
work at home. Doyle’s mother, Mary Foley, was a homemaker
who took care of
her son Arthur and his brothers and sisters, and also worked
and cleaned the
house everyday.2 Doyle’s early education started when he was
about seven
years old. His mother spent lots of time reading with him and
tutoring him,
because this is what she thought he needed to become a cultured
gentleman.
When Doyle was ten years old he left home and went to the
Jesuit
Preparatory school named Hodder House. This was a boarding school
for young
boys. Arthur hated this school. Doyle once stated that Hodder House
"was a
little more pleasant than being confined in a prison." While attending
Hodder
House, he studied chemistry, poetry, geometry, arithmetic, and
grammar. After
his experiences at Jesuit Preparatory school, he left and
applied for Stonyhurst
Academy. Doyle was accepted for enrollment into
Stonyhurst and remained there
for about five more years. While at Stonyhurst,
Doyle, who excelled in cricket,
demonstrated some very early signs of
literary talent. At the academy, he became
quite good at telling stories and
reading aloud.3 Doyle started reading his old
favorite books from his
childhood. His favorite childhood writer was Mayne Reid,
who wrote The Scalp
Hunters. This was his favorite book while he was progressing
through life.4
During his last year before attending medical school, Doyle went
to
Feldkirch, a school in Austria. While attending Feldkirch, he began
to
question his faith in the Roman Catholic religion.5 Doyle decided finally
to
become a doctor and went to Edinburgh University. While attending the
university
Doyle met a Dr. Joseph Bell, upon whom the character Sherlock
Holmes was based.
Also, he met the anatomist Professor Rutherford, who
was eventually made into
the model for Professor Challenger in Arthur Conan
Doyle’s writings.6 While at
Edinburgh University, Doyle took a part-time
job helping out another doctor.
This was only one of the many jobs that
he had while he was a learning pupil
during his school time.7 For one of his
assignments as a paid student at
Edinburgh University, he became the
doctor on a whaling ship in the Arctic Ocean
during a seven-month voyage.
When he returned to the University after his long
trip, Doyle received his
Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1881. After his
graduation, Doyle decided to
go back and make a second voyage as a whaling
ship’s doctor in the Arctic
Ocean. While on the second voyage, he nearly died
of a high fever.8 When
Doyle left Edinburgh University, he told his family that
he had changed his
religion, and was no longer of the Catholic faith.9 Doyle
began his writing
career and the public loved his first professional work. The
editor of the
Cornhill Magazine approved of the story and the author, accepting
the story
Habakuk Jephson’s Statement for publication. Arthur Conan
Doyle’s
Sherlock Holmes novels were huge successes in North America.10
The people
enjoyed them so much that Doyle wrote even more novels for the
United States to
publish, such as The Sign of Four. Doyle’s first short story
to be published
was The Mystery of Sasassa Valley in 1879.11 While he paid
more attention to his
writing than his medical career, Doyle continued to
practice medicine for about
two years. It was during this time that he met
his soon-to-be wife, Louise
Hawkins,12 when her brother was diagnosed
with an incurable disease, cerebral
meningitis. Jack, Louise’s brother, died
a couple of days later. Louise and
Doyle were married several months
later. Louise’s nickname was "Touie,"
one of the names Doyle later used in
his famous novel The Hound of the
Baskervilles. The marriage lasted from
1885 until Louise’s death from
tuberculosis in August of 1906. While Doyle
was married to Louise, they had one
daughter, Mary Louise, born in 1889, and
one son Alleyne Kingsley, born in
1902.13 After Louise’s death, Doyle
never talked about his wife or their long
lasting marriage. A year or so
after her death, Doyle met a woman by the name of
Jean Leckie, who would
soon be his second wife. Jean and Doyle met when they ran
into each other on
the street. In 1907, they were married.14 His inspiration to
write even more
in his spare time was brought on by his marriage. Shortly after
their
marriage, Doyle’s father, Charles, was confined inside a nursing home
in
London, England because of alcoholism and epilepsy. Jean Leckie and
Doyle had
three children, a son, Denis Percy Stewart born in 1909, another
son, Adrian
Malcolm born in 1910, and a daughter, Lena Jean Annette born
in 1912.15 In 1883,
The Captain of the Pole Star was published, as well
as some other minor pieces
he had written. Doyle was working on The Mystery
of Cloomber. In 1884, Doyle
published J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement, The
Heiress of Glenmahowley, and The
Cabman’s Story.16 After all of these
books and stories were published, Doyle
began to work on another piece called
The Firm of Girdlestone. In 1885, Doyle
published another story, The Man from
Archangel. He then traveled with Jean to
Ireland for their honeymoon.17
After writing all of these stories, he finally
became involved in writing all
of his Sherlock Holmes novels and other short
stories. The first Sherlock
Holmes novel was A Study in Scarlet in 1887, which
was a great accomplishment
in the United States. The second Sherlock Holmes
novel was The Sign of the
Four. In 1888, the first book edition of A Study in
Scarlet was published
by Ward Lock. In December, The Mystery of Cloomber was
published.18 The
Holmes stories became so popular that people actually pictured
Sherlock
Holmes as an imaginary fairy tale super hero.19 After twelve short
stories
and two series of Sherlock Holmes novels, Doyle made an important
decision to
kill off Sherlock Holmes in the novel The Final Problem, published
in 1883.
About ten years after Sherlock Holmes "died", Doyle wrote The
Return of
Sherlock Holmes. This was published in sections at a time in The
Strand
magazine in 1903.20 Some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s later writings
consisted of
two medical short story collections, Round the Red Lamp and Round
the Fire
Stories. In 1894, a fictional autobiography, The Stark Munro Letters,
was
published in 1894.21 The Parasite and The Medal Brigadier Gerard
were
published in The Strand magazine in 1894. The very famous Arthur Conan
Doyle
novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, was published different sections
at a time
in The Strand magazine in 1901. Conan Doyle wrote a true
autobiography, Memories
and Adventures in 1924. Arthur’s last published book;
Edge of the Unknown, was
published in 1930.22 World travel played a big role
in the backgrounds for
Doyle’s stories and novels. The Doyle family
visited Berlin, Germany in 1890
to investigate bacteriologist Robert Koch’s
claim to have possibly have found
the cure for tuberculosis. In 1892, the
Doyles traveled to Norway, where Conan
Doyle went skiing for the first
time. Shortly after this trip, Doyle helps
introduce the sport of snow skiing
in Switzerland.23 In 1895, Doyle and his wife
traveled to Egypt for the
winter season. A doctor told them that she would
benefit from the therapeutic
surrey air. Then they traveled up the Nile River to
Sudan, an East
African country. This trip later provided the background for The
Tragedy
of Korosko. They traveled to South Africa during the Boer War in
1900,
because Doyle was acting as a war correspondent. While in South Africa,
Doyle
published a novel called The Great Boer War in 1900. Then other short
stories
appeared in Cornhill Magazine, such as Some Military Lessons of War,
in 1900.24
Following the end of the war, they returned home to
Windlesham, Crowborough,
Sussex. About two years later, Doyle traveled to
Buckingham Palace in London to
be knighted.25 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took his
family to Australia to spread the
word about spiritualism.26 In 1926, The
Land of Mist was published. Doyle had
officially declared himself a
spiritualist. He then wrote his first spiritualism
book called The New
Revelation, and a two-volume history book about
spiritualism. In 1927, the
death of Mary Foley Doyle, Arthur’s mother, touched
the entire family.27 In
1929, The Maracot Deep and other stories were
published.28 This was Doyle’s
last collection of works and it was published in
July, exactly one year
before his death.29 On July 7, 1930 at 8:30 A.M. the
final tragedy struck.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died of a heart attack at his home
in Windlesham,
Crowborough, weighing 243 pounds.30 He was survived by Jean Doyle
and their
three children. His death greatly saddened the world and all of his
faithful
followers. Although Doyle was a very clumsy person, he was still a
lover of
sports, who played rugby and billiards like a paid professional. Doyle
was a
person everyone had doubted would ever turn out to be someone with a
great
deal of talent and use it to his ability. Doyle’s life was similar to
a
mixture of all of his characters, because of his high drama talent, energy
by
the truckload, and a very creative imagination. Conan Doyle’s own story
was
also one of personal adventure. He was the kind of man who never had too
much
fun and excitement. Julian Symons once said in one of her books that
Arthur
probably died right in the middle of writing another great collection
of works.
Doyle was one of the world’s most topclass writers in his time.
The story of
Doyle reminds us that we all have some adventure running
through our veins and a
distinctive imagination inside our brains.