Adventures of Gerard (review 20 january 1904)
Adventures of Gerard is an article published in The Bystander on 20 january 1904.
This is a review of Arthur Conan Doyle's collected volume: Adventures of Gerard (1903).
Review
"ADVENTURES OF GERARD." By A. Conan Doyle. (Newnes. 6s.)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle seems to have perceived the amiable readiness of the British public to believe anything it is told, and he begins his book with a preface in which he assures it that the Napoleonic age was rich in some of the most human and picturesque military material he has ever read, and suggests that it will find that he has given a true historical and military atmosphere to his imaginary figure. If he did give this excellent present to his Colonel Gerard, either that roystering soldier at once concealed it firmly but effectively somewhere about his person, or the atmosphere of the Napoleonic wars was purely melodramatic and farcical. When we consider the Peninsular campaigns, the invasion of Russia, and Waterloo — and Gerard tells stories about all of these — we are sure that their atmosphere was nothing of the kind. Yet this Gerard is, by turns, a creature of melodrama and farce, the stock Frenchman of generations of inferior story-tellers and dramatists, and never anything else. In stories III. and V., in which he kills a fox — Oh, humour! — and plays cricket, and boxes, he is merely farcical; in the rest, he moves between farce and melodrama wills uncommon agility. The fact is, it is for the artist to talk about atmosphere; and while we are willing to reckon our Sir Arthur a painstaking craftsman of a creditable invention, with a little help from Poe and the French, we will wait till he shows a trifle of imagination before we set about considering him as an artist.
