The Cerebral Tentacle No. 1862
The Cerebral Tentacle No. 1862 is the fourth issue of the magazine of The Arthur Conan Doyle Study Group, published in september 1997 by Mark Chadderton.
The cover is illustrated with a photo from The Strand Magazine (january 1913) with a Professor Challenger statuette to advertise Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Poison Belt.
The Cerebral Tentacle No. 1862
Introduction
Thank you to all the members of this Branch Office who have taken the time to get involved over the last 43 months. We are counting on all the membership continuing to do this, as it is your participation in our Doylean studies that is crucial to our further progress. Interest in ACD is what we are trying to encourage, especially amongst the membership of the FMHC, and as previously stated in this newsletter — 'being a Holmesian is the soundest basic requirement to being a Doylean, as you already know a good deal of ACD through reading about Holmes & Watson' — therefore ; at your next FMHC related gathering, spread the ACDSG word and encourage others to join us, the more people we get, the better, in order that we will be more able to reflect the great diversity of ACD and his life through the interests and studies of our membership sharing their own Doylean knowledge.
Two areas which we would like to see flourish within the pages of this newsletter are reprints of rare Doylean items and more importantly — further discussion of any points raised or statements made, it is encouraging to report that some members have started to get involved in this way, and we can only hope that you all continue this.
Newsletter Covers
Please remember, we are always on the look-out for items of interest to use on the covers of this publication. Any ideas or submissions should be sent to the usual address given at the end of this newsletter. This quarter, we feature an interesting little piece from the January 1913 edition of the "Strand Magazine" (Issue #265). Green & Gibson ("A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle" OUP 1983) note that "The publisher mounted a special publicity campaign which included a plaster model of Professor Challenger, posters, display material, and the large paper edition, the latter proving an unexpected failure." (Page 170.)
Considering ACD's occasional use of disguise throughout his life (ACD dressed as Challenger, complete with bushy beard, within the photographic illustrations in the 1st Edition of "The Lost World"), it is tempting to suggest that the statuette of Challenger could also be an anachronistic portrayal of ACD playing football for Portsmouth F.C. where, during the 1880's ACD played either in goal, or as a full-back under the disguised name of "A.C. Smith". However, idle Doylean thoughts aside, it would certainly be of interest to know exactly how many of these 12" high statuettes were made, and if any are still known to exist ? Maybe one of our membership can supply the answer or location of any that remain ?
That Little Square Box
Contrary to what was stated in the last issue, the ACDSG will be issuing a separate publication of articles covering various aspects of this first chronological story from our basic study book, "The Conan Doyle Stories". Members are reminded that there is still time to submit an article on SQUAR (or perhaps just a couple of lines of your views), as we are honing to produce this at or around the same time of our next newsletter. There will, however, have to be a small cover price for this, of which finalised details will be sent out to members in due course.
Cross Indexing
Due to some inevitable duplication of subject matter between this publication and that of our parent company/study group ; subjects or items recently featured in the FMHC Journals will henceforth be noted for your convenience thus : e.g. (*NBSP8#30/p.53*) or (*FMHCMEMO#1/p.9*).
Conan Doyle Writes Grant Allen
A Discussion of the Authorship of "Hilda Wade"
In The Cerebral Tentacle No. 1861, within the examination of the textual background to the article entitled 'The Pigs of Celebrities' from The Strand Magazine of March 1899, there is an incidental reference to that issue of the magazine containing the first episode of Grant Allen's serialised novel Hilda Wade. The reference continues by suggesting that this was: "--- a novel that ACD wrote the final 2 chapters for, due to Allen's untimely death through ill health." (1) Whilst admirably setting the cover item within the context of one of ACD's literary acquaintances, this statement is slightly misleading, in that ACD did not actually write the two final chapters of Hilda Wade. As the accounts of the matter given by ACD and by The Strand Magazine are slightly contradictory, it is hoped that the following account will provide some clarification on the situation.
It was Grant Allen who encouraged ACD to move to Hindhead, for the sake of the health of ACD's wife, Louise. Allen, like Louise, had contracted tuberculosis, but he then discovered that the fresh, pine-scented air and dry, sandy soil of the Hindhead area provided a near-ideal environment for diminishing the rate of progress of the disease. It was, in fact, from a liver disease, and not tuberculosis that Allen was to die at the early age of 51 on 25 October 1899. ACD dramatically records visiting Allen, whose house lay within half a mile of ACD's own house, Undershaw, a few days before Allen died. (2) In his autobiography, ACD also gives an account of his involvement with Hilda Wade, after discussing the fact that he had turned down an offer from the executors of Robert Louis Stevenson for him to complete Stevenson's unfinished novel, St Ives. ACD, incidentally, then goes on to relate an amusing story in connection with him being mistaken for the author of Hilda Wade. (3)
On the main point of ACD completing the work of another writer, ACD says in his autobiography: 'I had one experience of it when my neighbour at Hindhead, Grant Allen, was on his death-bed. He was much worried because there were two numbers of his serial, "Hilda Wade", which was running in "The Strand Magazine", still uncompleted. It was a pleasure for me to do them for him, and so relieve his mind, but it was difficult collar work, and I expect they were pretty bad.' (4) 'ACD, thus, does not claim that he wrote the last two chapters of Hilda Wade, for he admits that they were merely '--- uncompleted ---'. The reading of the whole of Hilda Wade might be described as 'collar work', as might be expected with a work which was created by the leading member of the highly moral group of Hindhead writers known as 'The Hill-Top Writers', albeit one who wrote several books which were looked upon as being scandalous.
There is an easily-discernible improvement in the style of some of the writing in the final two chapters of Hilda Wade which indicates ACD's contribution. That influence certainly seems to be more-prevalent in the final chapter, and this may well indicate that Allen had written more of the penultimate chapter than of the final chapter. This may explain the way in which, while ACD mentioned completing the final two chapters, The Strand Magazine acknowledges him only as contributing to the final chapter. The book edition of Hilda Wade, (5) published in 1900 by Grant Richards, who was both Grant Allen's nephew and a close friend of ACD, does not acknowledge ACD in any way, although it does acknowledge Grant Allen's indebtedness to another writer, thus: "PUBLISHER'S NOTE / It had been Mr. Grant Allen's intention to acknowledge in a brief preface his indebtedness for one of the main conceptions of this book to Mr. Furneaux Jordan's Character in Body and Parentage." (6)
The Strand Magazine included the following note immediately prior to the publication of the final chapter of Hilda Wade:
'The following chapter had been roughly sketched before his final illness, and his anxiety, when debarred from work, to see it finished was relieved by the considerable kindness of his friend and neighbour, Dr. Conan Doyle, who, hearing of his trouble, talked it over with him, gathered his ideas, and finally wrote it out for him in the form in which it now appears.' (7)
There is, sadly, no biography of Grant Allen. His nephew, Grant Richards, did publish, in 1900, a 220-page hardbacked reminiscence and part assessment written by Grant Allen's friend, Edward Clodd, but this is far from being a comprehensive coverage of Allen's life. (8) There is no reference to ACD, or to Hilda Wade within the text, although Hilda Wade is included in the bibliography of Allen's work. Grant Richards himself makes no reference to the writing of Hilda Wade in his own literary reminiscences: Author Hunting - By An Old Literary Sportsman, which has an additional sub-title of Memories of Years Spent Mainly in Publishing / 1897-1925. (9) Rather interestingly, though, Grant Allen does mention that, on 4 July 1899, '--- my cousin, young Grant Allen, having suffered a minor operation and having been kept in bed for a long time, writes to me that "the Bernard Shaws often come up to see me". (He adds "and so does Conan Doyle. He brought me up a gramophone which he's lent me for a few days". Gramophones must have been rare at that time.)' The 'Grant Allen' mentioned here is Jerrard Grant Allen, the son of the Grant Allen who persuaded ACD to live in Hindhead. It may also be noted that ACD used a gramophone in MAZA, which was published in The Strand Magazine in October 1921 (although the story had already appeared as a play, entitled The Crown Diamond, in April of that year), but which is considered by almost all of the Holmesian chronologists as occurring in 1903. ACD had, however, used a gramophone in the first story which he had published in The Strand Magazine, in 'The Voice of Science', published in March 1891, before any of the short Sherlock Holmes cases.
Grant Richards had actually mentioned ACD in the first half of his own literary autobiography, Memories of a Misspent Youth — 1872-1896, published in 1932. He writes that: 'Later on it was in Cornhill that Conan Doyle's first short story appeared. It read very much like a Grant Allen story, and it was at once attributed to my uncle by fellow-craftsmen, who thought that they saw in it the usual Grant Allen characteristics.' (10) Richards goes on to compare the much larger fees that were available to writers like ACD in comparison to those which had been available to writers like Grant Allen, but he was wrong in suggesting that ACD's first story in the Cornhill Magazine was his first short story to be published, since he had already had 16 other short stories published in six different magazines before 'J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement' appeared in January 1884. (11) From his autobiography, it appears that ACD thought that this was his first literary success, as he dismisses his earlier efforts, but it may be noted that he does not mention any rumours about Grant Allen writing this anonymously-published story, although he does mention the suggestion that it had been written by Robert Louis Stevenson. (12) This returns us nicely to the author whose work ACD was first asked to complete.
It thus seems that Grant Allen had already written parts of both of the last two chapters of Hilda Wade before ACD took over the task of completing the story. Since ACD is credited by the original publisher with writing only the last chapter, whilst ACD credits himself with contributing to the two ; final chapters, it seems probable that ACD wrote some of each, but more of the last.
References:
- (1) Chadderton, M (ed). 'Newsletter Covers' in The Cerebral Tentacle, Issue No. 1861, June 1997, pp 2-3.
- (2) Conan Doyle, A. Memories and Adventures, OUP, 1989, p 262.
- (3) Conan Doyle, A. Op Cit (2), p 261.
- (4) Conan Doyle, A. Op Cit (2), p 261.
- (5) Allen, G. Hilda Wade, Grant Richards, May 1900.
- (6) Allen, G. Op Cit (5), title verso.
- (7) 'The Episode of the Man who Spoke' (Ch XII of Hilda Wade), in The Strand Magazine, Vol 19, Feb 1900, p 217.
- (8) Clodd, E. Grant Allen — A Memoir, Grant Richards, 1900.
- (9) Richards, G. Author Hunting, Hamish Hamilton, 1934, pp 146-147.
- (10) Richards, G. Memories of a Misspent Youth - 1872-1896, Heinemann, 1932, p 73.
- (11) Conan Doyle, A. 'J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement' in the Cornhill Magazine, Vol 49, January 1884, pp 1-32.
- (12) Conan Doyle, A. Op Cit (2), p 73.
The ACDSG 'Cumulative Collection'
Our loose-leaf format : "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Forewords', 'Introductions' and 'Prefaces' to other people's works" is now priced at £4, or 8 US dollar bills, inclusive of postage. (See last newsletter, page 9 for fuller details.)
"Photographing Fairies"
This intriguing new British film (*NBSPB#28/p.44), starring 'Toby Stephens, Emily Woof, Francis Barber, Phil Davis and Ben Kingsley' is due for release at selected U.K. cinemas from September 19, with a classification of "15". Based loosely on the Cottingley fairy incident, which led ACD to publish an initial article in the December 1920 edition of the 'Strand Magazine' ("Fairies Photographed :An Epoch-Making Event"), and further led him to bring out his controversial book upon the subject in 1922 ("The Coming of the Fairies"), the film also includes a Edward Hardwicke as ACD. Anyone wish to submit a review ?
Yours Conanically,
Mark Chadderton — Editor.
- Copyright remains to the individual authors.
