Dr. A. Conan Doyle's Delightful Lecture at Northampton Last Evening
Dr. A. Conan Doyle's Delightful Lecture at Northampton Last Evening is an article published in the Holyoke Daily Transcript on 31 october 1894.
Report of the lecture "Readings and Reminiscences" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 30 october 1894 at the City Hall (Northampton, USA).
Report
Dr. A. Conan Doyle's Delightful Lecture at Northampton Last Evening.
Dr. A. Conan Doyle is in England the most popular novelist of the day. He has great popularity in America too and his lecture trip here is making him even more popular. Night before last Dr. Doyle lectured in Brooklyn before 2000 people. Last night at Northampton his audience was much less, but it was very enthusiastic, a very large number of Smith college girls attending. There is a fascination in seeing and hearing a man like Dr. Doyle, for this flying trip through the country is very likely to be his only one. Just a sight of the novelist is worth going for. But Dr. Doyle's lecture was a most charming one. While he is not an elocutionist or beautiful reader, his lectures are very interesting, pointed with delicious bits of wit. George W. Cable introduced the novelist, Dr. Doyle said among other things: "An author finds natural repugnance to talking about himself and his work, and finds it easier to talk of his friends and contemporaries. But a word of sympathy is always found with the readers of what he has done. My recollections of my first contact with literature are dim. My father was an artist, lived in Edinburgh, and there I remember seeing when a mere infant a great man, whose voice was as big as his body, and his heart in proportion. His nose fascinated me with its distortion. As Thackeray died when I was four years old, I deem it a great privilege that I sat upon his knee. Eearly in life I made trial trips to the land of letters. To my mother I owe my delight to a well-told story. Her influence led me to write a book at the immature age of six years. It was illustrated by the author. A man and a tiger figured in it, and at an early stage in the story they became blended. I was an omnivorous reader, and the lending library passed a rule for my benefit that a subscriber could not change his book more than three times a day. There is wonderful magic in the stirring of a boy's mind, and, although I have since harpooned whales and shot elephants, it was tame compared with my experience in reading Cooper and Mayne Reid.
"At 16 I left school to study medicine, but I kept up my hero worship of favorite authors, and when I first went to London I left my luggage at the station to visit the grave of Macaulay, who had stimulated the interest in history stirred by Scott. In 1878 I sent a manuscript to a publisher who returned a check, which was the bounty money that enrolled me in the army of letters. For ten years I wrote short stories, and spent seven months in Arctic travel, and visited the coast of Africa, besides taking my degree and practicing my profession. But in no year did I make more than $250 by my pen."
Dr. Doyle spoke of his "Sherlock Holmes" stories and told how people had confused him with his hero, sending him original mysteries to unravel and asking for "Sherlock Holmes" photograph. But he showed more pride in his novels which he considered beginning with "Micah Clarke" and going on with "The White Company" and "The Refugees." These he held admitted him to the realm of true literature. The lecturer read extracts from two of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories, and from other works of his pen.
Dr. Doyle's personality is very interesting. He is in his best years, say 40 or a little more. He is Celtic in feature and in manner, and is charmingly easy. It is rather hard to tell about one's self and not make the ego too pronounced. But Dr. Doyle by his simplicity was able to do so.
