Letter to Harry Price (22 september 1924)

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

This letter was written by Arthur Conan Doyle on 22 september 1924 to Harry Price about Hope and Houdini.


Letter

Windlesham
22nd September, 1924

My dear Sir,

I have been resting in the New Forest but return home tomorrow. Hence the superscription.

I would like you to turn your mind upon that letter I wrote you some time ago. I should much like to heal that breach and to do so without putting you into an unduly awkward position. And yet something must come from you to assuage Hope's wounded feelings. He has recently, I gather, obtained extras on a shut film. If you could examine that case and declare yourself convinced it would perhaps meet the case, and then, I think he would give you another sitting. I saw Evan Powell yesterday. He also said that he would gladly give you a sitting if you had cleared things up with Hope.

The fact that your mark is on that dark slide, but so placed that you could not see it save by minute examination seems to me to help matters.

I hear from New York — but this is private — that Houdini is accused of dropping objects into a medium's cabinet in order to discredit her. The facts are very clear as stated and I understand that his own Committee are against him. He is a very conceited self-opinionated man but I should not have thought he would have descended to that. With best regards.

A. Conan Doyle