Sir A. Conan Doyle. Death of the Eminent Spiritualist and Author
Sir A. Conan Doyle. Death of the Eminent Spiritualist and Author is an article published in the Northern Daily Mail (Hartlepool) on 7 july 1930.
Obituary of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Sir A. Conan Doyle
Death of the Eminent Spiritualist and Author.
A STRIKING CAREER.
Last Tribute to His Wife: "You Are Wonderful!"
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and a keen spiritualist, died at Crowborough this morning, where he had lived for the past 22 years.
Lady Conan Doyle, their two sons, and one daughter were at the bedside.
He had been ill since November last, and his illness is attributed to his work in Scandinavia in October, when he gave a series of lectures on spiritualism.
His last words were a loving tribute to his wife. "You are Wonderful," he said simply.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would wish his fame to rest upon his beliefs in communication between the living and the dead. It is more likely, however, that "Sherlock Holmes" will be the medium of his immorality.
Sir Arthur was born in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859. He wrote his first book of adventure at the age of six, and illustrated it himself, but his literary career dated more correctly from 19 years of age, when his first short story was published in Chambers's Journal.
After Stonyhurst, Doyle studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and it was the deductive methods of his professor, Dr. Bell that led to the creation of the most famous detective in fiction.
He was an enthusiastic and useful cricketer in his younger days, and once took the wicket of the great "W. G." He was caught behind the stumps, and Sir Arthur well remembered that he got some runs, himself in that match.
- In those days there was a famous bowler named Sherlock. "I cannot really be certain," he said a little while ago, "but it is possible that the name of the bowler Sherlock stuck in my mind, and Holmes also may owe its origin to cricket."
In later years his hobbies were golf, motoring, and billiards.
After taking his degree as M.D. at Edinburgh, Doyle was in medical practice for eight years at Southsea, and later was senior physician of Langman Field Hospital, South Africa.
At 28, he introduced Sherlock Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet," and a few years later produced his masterpiece. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." In all, he wrote over 60 books and plays.
Sir Arthur vigorously espoused the cause of Oscar Slater, who was sentenced to imprisonment for life for the alleged murder of Marion Gilchrist. Believing that there had been a grave miscarriage of justice, he conducted a strenuous campaign for the re-opening of the case. In this he was ultimately successful, and Slater was acquitted.
A little later, however, Sir Arthur sued Slater for part of the costs of his defence, but the matter was eventually settled amicably.
In a remarkable open letter written in June last year, 1929, Sir Arthur said : "We are about to die you and I. My age is just 70 and I suppose an actuary would give me five more years. It may be ten, or it may be only one. Who can tell?
Perhaps this may have been prevision by one who was a firm believer in spiritualism and the power of the living to converse with the dead. He claimed to have had conversations with the spirits of Cecil Rhodes, at his grave in the Matoppo Hills, and also with Lord Haig and Joseph Conrad.
- "I pledge my honour that Spiritualism is true," said Sir Arthur a few months ago, "and I know that Spiritualism is infinitely more important than literature, art or politics, or, in fact, anything."
CAUSE OF SPIRITUALISM.
On the cause of Spiritualism, he travelled extensively and lectured in all parts of the world. In the Psychic Museum, which he established Victoria Street, are shown many photographs and records of the phenomena in which he was deeply interested.
In 1900, Sir Arthur contested Central Edinburgh as a Liberal Unionist, and Hawick Burghs as a tariff reformer in 1906, but he probably exerted greater political influence when he called upon all spiritualists to oppose the Tory Government in the general election of 1929.
He led a bitter tirade against organised Christianity, the principal attack being levelled against the Sacraments and the ritual of church services. In one of his books, he asked:
- "Has any heathen tribe anything more fantastic than this in its ritual, and can we ever expect the affairs of this world to be normal while we profess to hold views in religion which no sane man could justify.
"If such things have come from the priesthood, then it is time that all priesthood should be swept away, and that the community should take their religious affairs into their own hands."
SOME REMARKABLE TRIBUTE.
Sir Arthur was twice married, and his first wife died in 1906. He leaves a widow, two daughters, and two sons.
Mr. Adrian Conan Doyle, one of Sir Arthur's sons, paid one of the most remarkable tributes to his father ever made by a son, in an interview to-day with a Press Association reporter. "He was a great man and a splendid father," he said, "and he was loved, and was happy because he new it, by all of us.
"He had had heart trouble for six or eight months, but recently it had been easier and he had suffered less pain. Then two days ago came a sudden turn for the worse and he died peacefully at 9.30 to-day.
- "My mother and father were lovers after 30 years as they were on the day they were married. Their devotion to each other at all times was one of the most wonderful things I have ever known.
"She nursed him right through his illness to the end, just as she, like all of us, had been about the world with him.
"His last words were to her, and they show just how much he thought of her. He simply smiled up at her and said, 'You are wonderful.'
"He was in much too much pain to say a lot. His breathing was very bad, and what he said was during brief flashes of consciousness.
"Never have I seen anyone take anything more gamely in all my life. Even when we all knew was suffering great pain he always managed during the time he was conscious to keep a smile on his face for us."
ON MODERN YOUTH.
It was in May last, on his 71st birthday, that Sir Arthur, in an interview with a Press Association reporter, said that he was tired of Sherlock Holmes, feared another European War in 26 or 30 years, and that he thought modern youth marvellous.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I am rather tired of hearing myself described as the author of Sherlock Holmes. Why not, for a change, the author of 'Rodney Stone' or of 'The White Company' or of 'Brigadier Gerard' or of 'The Lost World.' One would think I had written nothing but detective stories."
Lady Doyle interposed that the only time Sir Arthur was gloomy was when he visualized the world in 25 or 30 years.
"I forsee another European War as a certainty unless the Treaty of Versailles is modified," Sir Arthur replied.
- He added: "All this traddle about youth being decadent was talked before the war. Never was there a better generation of young men and women than that of to-day. They are freer in thought and speech, but that is to the good. Really they are marvellous."
Sir Arthur's interest in spiritualism was also well known. H told a meeting of the International Spiritualists' Congress, held in London in September, 1928, that he had been in conversation with the late Field-marshal Earl Haig and the late Joseph Conrad, and he showed on a screen a number of spirit photographs.
A SPIRIT MESSAGE.
"You know that Lord Haig was a spiritualist," he told his audience. "Within two days of his death, or it might have been three, he sent me a long message which had every sign of being evidential and truthful. It was a message that would only appeal to his relatives. I sent it to them."
At this same meeting Sir Arthur showed what he claimed to be a collection of physchic pictures. Eight years had passed, he said, since the public were first shown fairy photographs, and nothing had occurred since to shake the evidence.
Proceeding to show some delightful pictures of fairies and gnomes, some of them taken, pointed out, by girls in their teens. Sir Arthur explained the method investigating the authenticity of them.
In March this year something of a sensation was caused by the announcement that Sir Arthur had resigned from the Society for Psychical Research, of which he had been member for 36 years.
In a lengthy letter to the chairman of the Council. Sir Lawrence Jones, intimating his resignation Sir Arthur described the influence of "entirely for evil," and stated that for a generation it had done no constructive work of any importance."
SPEED RECORD WARNING.
Sir Arthur, January, 1928, had something to say in the nature of a speed record warning.
- Lecturing at the Kensington Town Hall, he declared that Major Segrave's life was saved, and his world's speed record assured by spiritualistic intervention.
Sir Oliver Lodge to-day paid an eloquent tribute to Sir Arthur's work for spiritualism. "I fear the South Africa trip was too much for him," he said to a Press Association reporter. "He never spared himself the cause was at stake. Much more than most of us he regarded himself as an apostle or missionary and threw himself and all his belongings into the movement. Even among those impressed with the magnitude of the issue, few are willing to sacrifice themselves to the same extent. His period of service is not ended."
One of Sir Arthur's laters letters appeared in London morning paper to-day. Writing from Crowborough on Friday with reference to Mr. Churchill's account of the efforts to force the Dardanelles, Sir Arthur said: "It may be that our failure was really more beneficial in the end the success would have been; and that this one more instance where the wisest plans of man have been set aside by hat which wiser still.
COMMUNICATION AFTER DEATH.
"HE WILL KEEP IN TOUCH WITH US."
Questioned whether Sir Arthur had spoken before his death of communication with his family after his death Mr. Adrian Conan Doyle said: "Why, of course. My father fully believed that when he passed over he would continue to keep in touch with us. All his family believe so, too. There is no question that my father will often speak to us, just as he did before he passed over.
"His death is a great loss, but only in a physical sense. I know perfectly well that I am going to have conversations with him. We shall miss his footsteps and his physical presence, but that is all. Otherwise, he might have only have gone to Australia.
"We will always know when he is speaking, but one has to be careful because there are practical jokers on the other side as there are here. It is quite possible that they may attempt to impersonate him.
"But there are tests which my mother knows, such as little mannerisms of speech, which cannot be impersonated and which will tell us that it is my father will not have physical pain now he is on the other side, and that he will be the first to greet us when we pass over."
