Dr Conan Doyle on George Meredith
Dr Conan Doyle on George Meredith is an article published in the Glasgow Evening News on 24 november 1893.
Report of a lecture "George Meredith, Novelist and Poet" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 22 november 1893 at the Kinnaird Hall (Glasgow, UK).
Report
The Wrong Lecture — Meredith the Novelist's Novelist — "Richard Feveril" — A New Man and a New Style — Dr Doyle as a Speaker —Northern Intelligence.
It is the traditional thing for successful British authors to go lecturing, but the business has fallen off considerably of late years, and "the play's the thing" now. Dr Conan Doyle has not only gone in for the play in a mitigated way, but he has come showing into the provinces. The name of Dickens occurs as that of the Victorian author who was most successful in this line, but syndicate lecturers have cut the prices considerably, and though "Sherlock Holmes" gets a fairly fat fee for his lecture, it compares ill with the £600 which Dickens cleared out of three evening lectures in this city. Of course, Doyle is not Dickens, but yet there is a wonderful amount of public interest in the creator of the new Vidocq, and the Caledonia Road U.P. Church was crowded last night to hear his lecture on "Facts About Fiction." It was probably the first time Dr Doyle occupied a pulpit, or at least the equivalent of the pulpit in Caledonia Road Church, and it may have been this which induced him to announce that instead of talking "Facts About Fiction" he would lecture on the comparatively heavy and sober subject of George Meredith. He blamed his agent for blundering in intimating the wrong lecture, but this was, perhaps, only his diplomacy. The Meredith lecture has been delivered and reported so frequently this winter already that no portion of it last night could be absolutely fresh to newspaper readers. It is manifest all through it that Dr Doyle is the most enthusiastic of Meredithians ; he claims for him the premier position as novelist of the latter half of the nineteenth century ; he calls him
THE NOVELIST'S NOVELIST,
and finds his influence in the art of the best young writers of the day, not excluding R. L. Stevenson himself, whose "Prince Otto" is, he holds, an obvious evolution of the style Meredithian. Nearly all writers evolve their style from the style of a predecessor. Dickens was a development from Smollet, and Thackeray was a Fielding redivivus. But George Meredith came as a sort of freak of nature, a new man and a new style, absolutely untraceable to anything that has gone before. He was neglected for years ; his works lay unsold on the bookshelves, and the style now considered so subtle and so charming was looked upon as altogether affected and repellant. But, says Dr Doyle, good artistic work, while it may "hang fire" for a time, will never fail ultimately to secure public appreciation. What are
MEREDITH'S MASTERPIECES?
Dr Doyle finds the author's best qualities in "The Ordeal of Richard Feveril," and he read his audience many of the most charming passages from that novel. The writer's work sparkled with epigram and figure, his characters were flesh and blood, and he dissected mercilessly in such a character as "The Egoist," who was typical of the selfish in human nature. But if Meredith was dexterous with the lancet he could also wield the broad sword effectively. His type of woman was unconventional and anti-Byronic ; she was muscular robust, and full of rude health, the best mother for good children.
DR DOYLE IS A GOOD SPEAKER ;
not brilliantly eloquent perhaps, but yet clear and collected, with a voice which penetrates far back. He has the faintest suggestion of a "burr" and a peculiar "click" of the tongue which comes in at intervals as if he were smacking his lips over some extra-special passage. He has his lecture practically by rote, but he keeps his notes on the reading-desk before him. The notes and one or two Meredith volumes travel about with him in a yellow Gladstone bag. When the mover of a vote of thanks last night proceeded to grow eloquent over the detective exploits of Sherlock Holmes, the creator of that character humped himself in a corner of a couch, and hid as much of his blushes as he could behind his handkerchief. He found his Glasgow audience very intelligent and appreciative he said. When he was starting on this lecturing tour a friend had told him the further north he went the more intelligent he would find his audiences. He had discovered that that was so, so far, but he was now going further north — to Inverness. This may have been one of the "things one would rather have left unsaid," but it is probably a carefully prepared little joke of the Doctor's. It may be said, in conclusion, that it is ditticult to understand how Dr Conan Doyle can be a great author ; he is too robust and healthy looking.
