Very Pleasant Introduction
Very Pleasant Introduction is an article published in The Detroit Free Press on 23 october 1894.
Report of the lecture "Readings and Reminiscences" given by Arthur Conan Doyle on 22 october 1894 at the Church of our Father (Detroit, USA).
Report
VERY PLEASANT INTRODUCTION
DETROITERS MADE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF DR. CONAN DOYLE.
The Great English Novelist Spoke of Himself and His Works.
A. Conan Doyle appeared at the Church of Our Father last night. The famous author of "Sherlock Holmes" is tall and of stalwart frame. He looks like a man who is fond of the open air; he might be mistaken for a comfortable country squire, but no stranger would ever suspect that he had any connection with literature, and still less that he was the creator of the weird character on which his reputation rests, or of his other notable work, "The Refugees."
The audience which greeted him was composed of the best element of the city, and when Dr. Doyle stepped on the platform the floor and gallery were nearly filled. Although his works are read with greater interest by the American reader than those of any contemporary English novelist. Dr. Doyle is a very indifferent speaker. But he is very simple and unassuming, and has no disagreeable mannerisms.
The reminiscences which he gave of himself and the extracts which he read from his works sustained the interest from beginning to end. His first connection with literature was a very vivid one. He was only 4 years of age. He was living in a flat in Edinburgh, where he was born, his father being an artist. He remembered one evening of a great man coming to the house. He was a man of gigantic frame. His voice was as big as his body, and his heart was in the same proportion. He had an old man's eyes, but a child's heart. When he had gone to his crib to sleep he could still hear the great voice that resounded through the house. He was proud to learn that the great man was William Makepence Thackeray, and that he had sat upon his knee. His first actual knowledge of literature was received from his mother, who used to read to him an installment of a story every night. She had quite a remarkable power in that direction which impressed itself upon his young mind. Her influence gave him a start, and when he was 6 years of age he made his first attempt at a story. He had three or four words on a page, and the work was illustrated by the author. There was a man and a tiger in the story, but they got hopelessly blended and he could never get them apart again. Even to this day the man remains irretrievably engulfed in the tiger.
He referred to his early school days and said that he was an omnivorous render. He was a member of a library which made it a rule that books could not be changed more than three times a day. The reading of the Waverley novels changed the whole course of his life and turned his attention to the things of the past. When he attended the public school he studied more of Macaulay and Washington Irving than he did of his Euclid and received frequent punishment. It was at that time when he acquired the faculty of squinting, of seeming to look in one direction while he was in another. His true education was gained under the desk.
He experienced the usual struggle of all literary aspirants and again and again his manuscripts were returned to him. It was in 1878 that he had his first story accepted by a provincial paper. He received a small check and felt that he was now enrolled in the army of literature. He continued writing short stories and he might have continued so still without making much impression. After seven years apprenticeship he had not earned $200 by his pen. He had received no notices from the critics and he thought that the abuse of the critics would be better than to be ignored, for it might set some to reading his work. He got a story published in the Cornhill Magazine, and he was very proud of the fact. He met a friend about that time who approached him with a paper in his hand. "Oh, have you seen the criticism of your story in Cornhill?" he asked him. "No,"
said the aspiring writer, "what does it say?"
And his friend read: "A story appears in Cornhill this month that would make Thackeray turn in his grave."
He discussed "Sherlock Holmes," said that the detective was primitive, but furnished a good setting for the dramatic idea. The detective's success was based on lucky chances and coincidences, and he proposed to construct it on semi-scientific results which would not be noticed by the outsider. He then spoke of the Edinburgh professor, whose great faculties of observation and deduction had taught him his art. He had often been mistaken for "Sherlock Holmes," and people had expected him to read them from their waistcoat buttons. He had been deluged with letters from people asking him to solve mysteries for them, and when at last he killed "Sherlock Holmes" he received innumerable bitter and vindictive letters from his admirers. Others had asked for a lock of his hair and photographs of him at different ages.
The historical romance was the field that attracted him, and "Micah Clark" was his first effort in that direction. He had difficulty in finding a publisher for it. One person told him that it lacked only one thing and that was interest. After it had been returned to him several times. Andrew Lang got it accepted by a London house. This was in 1888. After that the door was open to the temple of the muses.
He drew no glowing picture of the profession of letters. In England, at least, one could not earn as much as the physician or lawyer, or even as much as that symbol of poverty, the clergyman.
