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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
great frankness. I remember that his chief-of-staff – Drage,
I think, was the name – sat beside me and was so completely
played out that he fell asleep between every course. I remember also the amused smile with which Kitchener regarded him.
You had to go all out when you served such a master.
One new acquaintance whom I made in those days was
Herbert Gwynne, a newly-fl edged war correspondent, acting, if I remember right, for the “Chronicle.” I saw that he had
much in him. When I heard of him next he was Reuter’s man
in the Boer War, and not very long afterwards he had become
editor of the “Morning Post,” where he now is. Those days in
Haifa were the beginning of a friendship of thirty years, none
the less real because we are both too busy to meet. One of the
joys of the hereafter is, I think, that we have time to cultivate
our friends.
I was friendly also with a very small but gallant offi cer one
Anley, who had just joined the Egyptian Army. His career was
beginning and I foresaw that he would rise, but should have
been very surprised had I known how we should meet again.
I was standing in the ranks by the roadside as a private of Volunteers in the Great War when a red-tabbed, brass-hatted
general passed. He looked along our ranks, his gaze fastened
on me, and lo, it was Anley. Surprised out of all military etiquette, he smiled and nodded. What is a private in the ranks to
do when a general smiles and nods? He can’t formally stand to
attention or salute. I fear that what I did was to close and then
open my left eye. That was how I learned that my Egyptian
captain was now a war brigadier.
181
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
We pushed on to Sarras and had a glimpse of the actual
outpost of civilization, all sandbags and barbed wire, for there
was a MandI post at no distance up the river. It was wonderful
to look south and to see distant peaks said to be in Dongola,
with nothing but savagery and murder lying between. There
was a whiff of real war in the little fortress but no sign of any
actual advance.
Indeed, I had the assurance of Kitchener himself that there
was no use my waiting and that nothing could possibly happen
until the camels were collected – many thousands of them.
I contributed my own beast to the army’s need since I had no
further use for it, and Corbett and I prepared to take our leave.
We were warned that our only course was to be on the look
out and take a fl ying jump on to any empty cargo boat which
was going down stream. This we did one morning, carrying
our scanty belongings. Once on board we learned that there
was no food and that the boat did not stop for several days. The
rope had not been cast off, so I rushed to the only shop available, a Greek store of a type which springs up like mushrooms
on the track of an army. They were sold out save for tinned
apricots, of which I bought several tins. I rushed back and
scrambled on board as the boat cast off. We managed to get
some Arab bread from the boatmen, and that with the apricots
served us all the way. I never wish to see a tinned apricot so
long as I live. I associate their cloying sweetness with Rousseau’s “Confessions,” a French edition of which came somehow into my hands and was my only reading till I saw Assouan
once more. Rousseau also I never wish to read again.
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
So that was the end of our frontier adventure. We had been
on the edge of war but not in it. It was disappointing, but it was
late in April before I reached Cairo, and the heat was already
becoming too much for an invalid. A week later we were in
London, and I remember that, as I sat as a guest at the Royal
Academy Banquet on May 1 of that year, I saw upon my wrists
the ragged little ulcers where the poisonous jiggers which had
burrowed into my skin while I lay upon the banks of the Nile
were hatching out their eggs under the august roof of Burlington House.
CHAPTER XV
AN INTERLUDE OF PEACE
Hindhead – “Rodney Stone” – “A Duet” – A Haunted
House – A Curious Society – Preternatural Powers – The Little
Doctor – The Shadow of Africa.
WHEN we returned to England I found that the house in
which we hoped that the cure would be completed was not
yet ready. It was a considerable mansion planned upon a large
scale, so that it was not surprising that it had taken some time
to build. We were compelled to take a furnished house at Haslemere until the early months of 1897, when we moved up to
Moorlands, a boarding house on Hind-head close to the site of
my building. There we spent some happy and busy months until the house was ready in the summer. I had taken up riding,
and though I was never a great horseman I was able from that
time onwards to get a good deal of health and pleasure out of
it, for in that woody, heathy country there are beautiful rides
in every direction, and the hunting, in which I joined, was at
least picturesque. About June we moved into the new house,
which I called Undershaw – a new word, I think, and yet one
which described it exactly in good Anglo-Saxon, since it stood
under a hanging grove of trees.
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
I have said little, during these years spent in the quest of
health, concerning my literary production. The chief book
which I had written since “The Refugees” was a study of’ the
Regency with its bucks and prizefi ghters. I had always a weakness for the old fi ghting men and for the lore of the prize-ring,
and I indulged it in this novel. At the time boxing had not
gained the popular vogue which I have been told that this very
book fi rst initiated, and I can never forget the surprise of Sir
George Newnes when he found out what the new serial was
about. “Why that subject of all subjects upon earth?” he cried.
However, I think that the readers of “The Strand” found that
I had not chosen badly, and the book is one which has held
a permanent place as a picture of those wild old days. I wrote
a considerable number of short tales during those years, and
fi nally in 1898 a domestic study, “A Duet,” which was an attempt at quite a different form of literature – a picture in still
life, as it were. It was partly imaginative and partly founded
upon early experiences of my own and of friends. It led, I remember, to a public bickering with a man who has done good
work as a critic, Dr. Robertson Nicoll. He took exception to
some passage in the book, which he had every right to do. But
he wrote at that time for six or seven papers, under different
names, so that it appeared as if a number of critics were all
condemning me when it was really only one. I thought I had
a grievance, and said so with such vehemence that he stated
that he did not know whether to answer me in print or in
the law courts. However, it all blew over and we became very
good friends. Another book of those days was “Uncle Bernac,”
which I never felt to be satisfactory, though I venture to claim
185
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
that the two chapters which portray Napoleon give a clearer picture of him than many a long book has done, which is
natural enough, since they are themselves the quintessence of
a score of books.
So much for my work. I had everything in those few years
to make a man contented, save only the constant illness of my
partner. And yet my soul was often troubled within me. I felt
that I was born for something else, and yet I was not clear what
that something might be. My mind felt out continually into
the various religions of the world. I could no more get into the
old ones, as commonly received, than a man could get into his
boy’s suit. I still argued on materialist lines. I subscribed to the
Rationalist Association and read all their literature carefully,
but it was entirely destructive and one cannot permanently
live on that alone. Besides, I was sure enough of psychic phenomena to be aware that there was a range of experience there
which was entirely beyond any rational explanation, and that
therefore a system which ignored a great body of facts, and was
incompatible with them, was necessarily an imperfect system.
On the other hand, convinced as I was of these abnormal happenings, and that intelligence, high or low, lay behind them,
I by no means understood their bearing. I still confused the
knocking at the door with the friend outside, or the ringing
of the bell with the telephone message. Sometimes I had the
peace of despair, when one felt that one could never possibly
arrive at any conclusions save negative ones, and then again
some fresh impulse of the soul would start one upon a new
quest. In every direction I reached out, but never yet with any
absolute satisfaction. I should have been relieved from all my
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
troubles could I have given heartfelt adhesion to any form of
orthodoxy – but my reason always barred the way.
During all the Egyptian and other periods of our exile
I had never ceased to take the psychic subject very seriously,
to read eagerly all that I could get, and from time to time to
organize séances which gave indifferent but not entirely negative results, though we had no particular medium to help us.
The philosophy of the subject began slowly to unfold, and it
was gradually made more feasible, not only that life carried
on, enclosed in some more tenuous envelope, but that the conditions which it encountered in the beyond were not unlike
those which it had known here. So far I had got along the road,
but the overwhelming and vital importance of it all had not
yet been borne in upon me.
Now and then I had a psychic experience somewhat outside
the general run of such events. One of these occurred when
I was at Norwood in 1892 or 1893. I was asked by the Society
of Psychic Research whether I would join a small committee
to sit in and report upon a haunted house at Charmouth in
Dorchester. I went down accordingly together with a Dr. Scott
and Mr. Podmore, a man whose name was associated with
such investigations. I remember that it took us the whole railway journey from Paddington to read up the evidence as to
the senseless noises which had made life unendurable for the
occupants, who were tied by a lease and could not get away.
We sat up there two nights. On the fi rst nothing occurred.
On the second Dr. Scott left us and I sat up with Mr. Podmore.
We had, of course, taken every precaution to checkmate fraud,
putting worsted threads across the stairs, and so on.
187
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
In the middle of the night a fearsome uproar broke out. It
was like some one belabouring a resounding table with a heavy
cudgel. It was not an accidental creaking of wood, or anything
of that sort, but a deafening row. We had all doors open, so
we rushed at once into the kitchen, from which the sound had
surely come. There was nothing there – doors were all locked,
windows barred, and threads unbroken. Pod-more took away
the light and pretended that we had both returned to our sitting-room, going off with the young master of the house, while
I waited in the dark in the hope of a return of the disturbance.
None came – or ever did come. What occasioned it we never
knew. It was of the same character as all the other disturbances
we had read about, but shorter in time. But there was a sequel to
the story. Some years later the house was burned down, which
may or may not have a bearing upon the sprite which seemed
to haunt it, but a more suggestive thing is that the skeleton of
a child about ten years old was dug up in the garden. This I give
on the authority of a relation of the family who were so plagued.
The suggestion was that the child had been done to death there
long ago, and that the subsequent phenomena of which we had
one small sample were in some way a sequence to this tragedy.
There is a theory that a young life cut short in sudden and unnatural fashion may leave, as it were, a store of unused vitality which may be put to strange uses. The unknown and the
marvellous press upon us from all sides. They loom above us
and around us in undefi ned and fl uctuating shapes, some dark,
some shimmering, but all warning us of the limitations of what
we call matter, and of the need for spirituality if we are to keep
in touch with the true inner facts of life.
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MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES
I was never asked for a report of this case, but Podmore
sent one in, attributing the noises to the young man, though
as a fact he was actually sitting with us in the parlour when
the tumult broke out. A confederate was possible, though we
had taken every step to bar it, but the explanation given was
absolutely impossible. I learned from this, what I have often
confi rmed since, that while we should be most critical of all
psychic assertions, if we are to get at the truth, we should be
equally critical of all negatives and especially of so-called “exposures” in this subject. Again and again I have probed them
and found them to depend upon prejudice or upon an imperfect acquaintance with psychic law.
This brings me to another curious experience which occurred about this time, probably in 1898. There was a small
doctor dwelling near me, small in stature, and also, I fear, in
practice, whom I will call Brown. He was a student of the occult, and my curiosity was aroused by learning that he had
one room in his house which no one entered except himself,
as it was reserved for mystic and philosophic purposes. Finding that I was interested in such subjects, Dr. Brown suggested
one day that I should join a secret society of esoteric students.
The invitation had been led up to by a good deal of preparatory inquiry. The dialogue between us ran somewhat thus:
“What shall I get from it?”
“In time, you will get powers.”
“What sort of powers?”
“They are powers which people would call supernatural.
They are perfectly natural, but they are got by knowledge of
deeper forces of nature.”
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ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
“If they are good, why should not every one know them?”
“They would be capable of great abuse in the wrong hands.”
“How can you prevent their getting into wrong hands?”
“By carefully examining our initiates.”
“Should I be examined?”
“Certainly.”
“By whom?”
“The people would be in London.”
“Should I have to present myself?”
“No, no, they would do it without your knowledge.”
“And after that?”
“You would then have to study.”
“Study what?”
“You would have to learn by heart a considerable mass of
material. That would be the fi rst thing.”
“If this material is in print, why does it not become public
property?”
“It is not in print. It is in manuscript. Each manuscript is
carefully numbered and trusted to the honour of a passed initiate. We have never had a case of one going wrong.”
“Well,” said I, “it is very interesting and you can go ahead
with the next step, whatever it may be.”
Some little time later – it may have been a week – I awoke
in the very early morning with a most extraordinary sensation.
It was not a nightmare or any prank of a dream. It was quite
different from that, for it persisted after I was wide awake. I can
only describe it by saying that I was tingling all over. It was not
painful, but it was queer and disagreeable, as a mild electric
shock would be. I thought at once of the little doctor.
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