THE YEARS BETWEEN THE WARS
Constantinople--The Night of Power--A Strange
Creature--Dorando--Dramatic Adventures--The Congo Agitation--Olympic
Games--Divorce Reform--Psychic Experience--Speculation.
Years of peaceful work followed my marriage, broken only by two
journeys to the Mediterranean, in the course of which we explored some
out-of-the-way portions of Greece, and visited Egypt, where I found
hardly one single man left of all the good fellows whom I had once
known. In the course of our travels we visited Constantinople, looking
at the great guns in the forts on the Dardanelles, with little thought
of all the British lives which were to be sacrificed upon those low,
dark, heather-clad hills which slope down to the Northern shore. In
Constantinople we attended the weekly selamlik of Abdul Hamid, and saw
him with his dyed beard and the ladies of his harem as they passed
down to their devotions. It was an incredible sight to Western eyes to
see the crowd of officers and officials, many of them fat and short
of wind, who ran like dogs behind his carriage in the hope that they
might catch the Imperial eye. It was Ramadan, and the old Sultan sent
me a message that he had read my books and that he would gladly have
seen me had it not been the Holy month. He interviewed me through his
Chamberlain and presented me with the Order of the Medjedie, and,
what was more pleasing to me, he gave the Order of the Chevekat to my
wife. As this is the Order of Compassion, and as my wife ever since
she set foot in Constantinople had been endeavouring to feed the horde
of starving dogs who roamed the streets, no gift could have been more
appropriate.
[Illustration: LADY CONAN DOYLE, 1920.
_Sterling, Melbourne._]
We were admitted secretly and by very special favour into the great
Mosque of Sophia during the sacred festival which is known as the Night
of Power. It was a most marvellous spectacle as from the upper circle
of pillared arches we looked down upon 60,000 lighted lamps and
12,000 worshippers, who made, as they rose and fell in their devotions,
a sound like the wash of the sea. The priests in their high pulpits
were screaming like seagulls, and fanaticism was in the air. It was at
this moment that I saw a woman--I will not call her a lady--young and
flighty, seat herself jauntily on the edge of the stone parapet, and
look down at the 12,000 men who were facing us. No unbeliever should
be tolerated there, and a woman was the abomination of abominations.
I heard a low deep growl and saw fierce bearded faces looking up. It
only needed one fiery spirit to head the rush and we should have been
massacred--with the poor consolation that some of us at least had
really asked for it. However, she was pulled down, and we made our way
as quickly and as quietly as possible out of a side door. It was time,
I think.
One curious incident of our journey stands out in my memory. We were
steaming past Ægina on a lovely day with calm water around us. The
captain, a courteous Italian, had allowed us to go upon the bridge, and
we--my wife and I--were looking down into the transparent depths when
we both clearly saw a creature which has never, so far as I know, been
described by Science. It was exactly like a young ichthyosaurus, about
4 feet long, with thin neck and tail, and four marked side-flippers.
The ship had passed it before we could call any other observer. I was
interested to notice that Admiral Anstruther in the “Evening News” some
years later described, and drew, an exactly similar creature which he
had seen under water off the Irish coast. This old world has got some
surprises for us yet.
Here and there, as I look back at those long and happy years, some
particular episode flashes vividly into my memory. I do not often
do journalistic work--why should one poach upon the preserves of
others?--but on the occasion of the Olympic Games of 1908 I was
tempted, chiefly by the offer of an excellent seat, to do the Marathon
Race for the “Daily Mail.” It was certainly a wonderful experience, for
it will be known to history as the Dorando Race. Perhaps a few short
paragraphs from my description may even now recapture the thrill of it.
The huge crowd--some 50,000 people--were all watching the entrance to
the stadium, the dark gap through which the leader must appear. Then--
“At last he came. But how different from the exultant victor whom we
expected! Out of the dark archway there staggered a little man, with
red running-drawers, a tiny boy-like creature. He reeled as he entered
and faced the roar of the applause. Then he feebly turned to the left
and wearily trotted round the track. Friends and encouragers were
pressing round him.
“Suddenly the whole group stopped. There were wild gesticulations. Men
stooped and rose again. Good heavens! he has fainted; is it possible
that even at this last moment the prize may slip through his fingers?
Every eye slides round to that dark archway. No second man has yet
appeared. Then a great sigh of relief goes up. I do not think in all
that great assembly any man would have wished victory to be torn at the
last instant from this plucky little Italian. He has won it. He should
have it.
“Thank God, he is on his feet again--the little red legs going
incoherently, but drumming hard, driven by a supreme will within.
There is a groan as he falls once more and a cheer as he staggers to
his feet. It is horrible, and yet fascinating, this struggle between
a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame. Again, for a hundred
yards, he ran in the same furious and yet uncertain gait. Then again he
collapsed, kind hands saving him from a heavy fall.
“He was within a few yards of my seat. Amid stooping figures and
grasping hands I caught a glimpse of the haggard, yellow face, the
glazed, expressionless eyes, the lank black hair streaked across the
brow. Surely he is done now. He cannot rise again.
“From under the archway has darted the second runner, Hayes, Stars and
Stripes on his breast, going gallantly, well within his strength. There
is only twenty yards to do if the Italian can do it. He staggered up,
no trace of intelligence upon his set face, and again the red legs
broke into their strange automatic amble.
“Will he fall again? No, he sways, he balances, and then he is through
the tape and into a score of friendly arms. He has gone to the extreme
of human endurance. No Roman of the prime ever bore himself better than
Dorando of the Olympic of 1908. The great breed is not yet extinct.”
Of course the prize went to the American, as his rival had been
helped, but the sympathy of the crowd, and I am sure of every sporting
American present, went out to the little Italian. I not only wrote
Dorando up, but I started a subscription for him in the “Daily Mail,”
which realized over £300--a fortune in his Italian village--so that he
was able to start a baker’s shop, which he could not have done on an
Olympic medal. My wife made the presentation in English, which he could
not understand; he answered in Italian, which we could not understand;
but I think we really did understand each other all the same.
There is no denying that the American team were very unpopular in
London, though the unpopularity was not national, for the stadium was
thick with American flags. Everyone admitted that they were a splendid
lot of athletes, but they were not wisely handled and I saw with my
own eyes that they did things which would not have been tolerated if
done by an English team in New York. However, there may well have
been some want of tact on both sides, and causes at work of which the
public knew nothing. When I consider the Dunraven Yacht race, and then
these Olympic Games, I am by no means assured that sport has that
international effect for good which some people have claimed for it. I
wonder whether any of the old Grecian wars had their real origin in the
awards at Olympia. I may add that we had a dozen or so of the American
boys down to “Windlesham,” where we had a very pleasant day together.
I found them all excellent fellows. I put up a billiard Olympic prize,
and one of them bore it off with him. The whole incident was very
pleasant.
My work for a few years after my marriage ran largely in the direction
of drama, and if it was not lucrative it at least provided us with a
good deal of amusement and excitement. In the case of one venture this
excitement became a little too poignant, though all ended well in the
end. I had dramatized “Rodney Stone” under the name of “The House of
Temperley,” with all the ring scenes and prize fights included, and
treated in the most realistic fashion. We had an excellent boxing
instructor who took one of the smaller parts and who not only fought
himself but trained the others to a remarkable degree of skill. So
realistic was it that when on the first night the bully, Berks, after
a long encounter, went down with a crash from a fine raking uppercut,
there was an involuntary groan from the whole house, which meant
as clearly as could be, “There now, you have killed a man for our
amusement.” It was really incredibly well done and I could never have
believed that such scenes could be so cleverly faked, though it was
not always done with impunity, for Rex Davies, who played Gloucester
Dick, assured me that he lost a tooth and broke both a finger and a rib
during his engagement. The play itself was unequal, but was so very
novel and sensational in its best scenes that it should have been a
considerable success. I found no manager who would take the risk, and
I had myself to take the Adelphi Theatre for a six months’ lease, at a
rent which with the Company worked out at about £600 a week. As on the
top of this the production cost about £2,000, it will be seen that I
was plunging rather deep.
And luck did not favour us. The furore for boxing had not yet set
in. Ladies were afraid to come, and imagined it would be a brutal
spectacle. Those who did come were exhilarated beyond measure, but
the prejudice still weighed heavily against us. Then there came one
of those theatrical slumps when everything goes wrong, and finally
King Edward died and that killed it outright. It was a very serious
situation. I still had the theatre upon my hands. I might sublet it, or
I might not. If I did not, the expense was simply ruinous.
It was under these circumstances that, as I have already said, I wrote
and rehearsed “The Speckled Band” in record time, and so saved the
situation. The real fault of this play was that in trying to give
Holmes a worthy antagonist I overdid it and produced a more interesting
personality in the villain. The terrible ending was also against it.
However, it was a considerable success and saved a difficult--almost a
desperate--situation.
Yet another theatrical venture was my “Fires of Fate,” some of which
is certainly the best dramatic work that I have ever done. It was
unlucky, as it was produced in a very hot summer. I carried it at my
own expense through the two impossible holiday months, but when Lewis
Waller, who played the hero, returned from a provincial tour to London,
he was keen on some new play and my “Fires” were never really burned
out. I fancy sometimes that they might even now flame up again if given
a chance. I stage managed most of this play myself, and with curious
results. There are certain dramatic conventionalities which can only be
broken through by one who is not himself an actor. There was a scene
where a number of helpless tourists, men and women, were brutally
ill-treated by Arabs. The brutality in rehearsal was conventional.
I made the Arabs get imitation whips and cudgels and really savage
the poor travellers. The effect was novel and appalling. There was a
young Welsh officer in the front of the stalls who was a friend of my
brother’s. He held both the V.C. and the D.S.O. So stirred was he by
the sight that he could hardly be restrained from clambering on to the
stage in order to help the unhappy tourists. The end of that act, when
the drove of bleeding captives are led away and you hear the monotonous
song of the Arabs as they march, and you see Lewis Waller, who has been
left for dead, struggle up on his elbow and signal across the Nile for
assistance, was one which brought the whole house to its feet. Such
moments to a dramatist give a thrill of personal satisfaction such as
the most successful novelist never can feel. There is no more subtle
pleasure if you are really satisfied with your work than to sit in the
shadow of a box and watch not the play but the audience.
I had one other dramatic venture, “Brigadier Gerard,” which also was
mildly successful. In fact, I have never known failure on the stage
save in the case of the unfortunate “Jane Annie.” Lewis Waller played
the Brigadier and a splendid dashing Hussar he made. It was a glorious
performance. I remember that in this play also I ran up against the
conventionalities of the stage. I had a group of Hussar officers,
the remnants of the regiment which had gone through Napoleon’s last
campaign. When it came to the dress rehearsal, I found them, to my
horror, dressed up in brand new uniforms of chestnut and silver. “Good
heavens!” I cried. “This is not a comic opera!” “What do you want
done?” asked Waller. “Why,” said I, “these men are warriors, not ballet
dancers. They have been out in all weathers day and night for months.
Every scrap of truth goes out of the play if they appear like that.”
The uniforms had cost over a hundred pounds, but I covered them with
mud and dust and tore holes in them. The result was that, with begrimed
faces, I got a band of real Napoleonic soldiers. Waller himself
insisted on retaining his grease paint and his nice new clothes, but I
am sure every man in the audience, if not every woman, would have liked
him better as I had made the others. Poor Lewis Waller! There was some
strange and wonderful blood in his veins. He was a glorious fellow, and
his premature death a great blow to our stage. What virility! What a
face and figure! They called him the “Flappers’ idol,” and it reflects
credit on the flapper, for where could she find a less sickly and more
manly type. He caught his fatal illness in serving the soldiers. One of
his greatest possessions was his voice. He came down to “Windlesham”
once, and as he was reciting in the music-room that wonderful resonant
voice chanced to catch the exact note which corresponded to the curve
of all the glass lampshades on the walls. They all started thrilling
as a wine-glass does when it is touched. I could quite believe after
that, that matter could be disintegrated by sound if the sound were
strong enough. I am not clear what blood ran in Waller’s veins, Hebrew
or Basque or both. I only know that it went to make a very wonderful
man. His intense feeling about everything that he did was one of his
characteristics and no doubt a cause of his success. It did not carry
him far in golf, however. I remember hearing him as he approached the
last tee mutter, “God, give me _one_ good drive.” I fear, however, that
the betting was against it.
In 1910 a fresh task opened up before me. It arose from my being deeply
moved by reading some of the evidence concerning the evil rule, not of
Belgium, but of the King of the Belgians in the Congo. I examined this
evidence carefully before I accepted it, and I assured myself that it
was supported by five British Consuls and by Lord Cromer, as well as
by travellers of many races, Belgian, French, American, Swedish and
others. An attempt has been made since to minimize the facts and to
pretend that Roger Casement had been at the back of the agitation for
sinister purposes of his own. This contention is quite untenable and
the evidence for the atrocities is overwhelming and from very many
sources, the Belgians themselves being among the best witnesses. I put
in some two years working with Mr. Morel and occasionally lecturing in
the country upon this question, and it was certainly the efforts of
the Congo Association which we represented, that eventually brought
the question to the notice of that noble man King Albert which meant
setting it right so that the colony is now, so far as I know, very well
managed. Casement, whom I shall always regard as a fine man afflicted
with mania, has met his tragic end, and Morel’s views upon the war have
destroyed the feelings which I had for him, but I shall always maintain
that they both did noble work in championing the wrongs of those
unhappy and helpless negroes. My own book “The Crime of the Congo,”
which was translated into all European languages, had also, I hope,
some influence towards that end.
In the early summer of 1912 I had a telegram from Lord Northcliffe
which let me in for about as much trouble as any communication which I
have ever received. It was to the effect that Britain must regain her
place among the athletic nations which had been temporarily eclipsed
by the Olympic Games at Stockholm, and that I was the one man in Great
Britain who could rally round me the various discordant forces which
had to be united and used. This was very complimentary, but it was Lord
Northcliffe’s sole contribution to the matter for a very long time, and
I was left to my own devices entirely in carrying out a complex task.
So badly co-ordinated were Northcliffe’s papers that I had some of them
actually attacking me while I was working on their chief’s suggestion.
When I examined I found chaos. On the one hand was the British Olympic
Committee, a most sound and respectable body, under Lord Desborough. In
some way they had lost touch with press and public and were generally
in disfavour, though really they had done their best. On the other
hand was “The Times,” which had worked itself into a fury about the
misdeeds of the Committee, and had set a tone which poisoned the
whole press against them. Lord Northcliffe would have nothing to do
with anything which emanated from the Committee; the Committee defied
Lord Northcliffe. It was clear that this had to be cleared up as a
preliminary, and the matter took enough diplomacy to have settled the
Balkan question. I called upon the Committee and suggested that an
independent body be formed on which they could be represented. To this
they agreed. I then called on “The Times” and said: “You are no longer
dealing with the old Olympic Committee, but with a new body. Do you
agree to this?” Yes, that was all in order. I may have omitted the
trifling fact that the new body did not yet exist. I then asked Mr.
Studd, the famous cricketer of old and head of the Polytechnic to help
me to form the new body. We soon had a very effective one, including
several leading athletes and Lord Forster, now Governor-General of
Australia. I served, of course, on the Committee, and soon we were in
touch with every one and all promised to go smoothly.
But presently a huge mistake was made. I don’t wish to represent
myself as the fount of all wisdom, and no doubt I make as many slips
as my fellows, but that particular one would never have been made had
I been present, but I was called away and was out of the country at
that crucial Committee meeting. It had been already determined that
an appeal to the public over all our names should be issued. The
amount had not been discussed, but in my own mind I had thought that
£10,000 would suffice. I was horrified, therefore, when I returned
from my holiday to find that they had appealed for £100,000. The sum
was absurd, and at once brought upon us from all sides the charge
of developing professionalism. My position was very difficult. If I
protested now it would go far to ruin the appeal. After all it might
succeed. I could only fall into line with the others and do my best
for the sake of the cause to defend a policy which I looked upon as
mistaken. We actually collected about £7,000, and finally, as we found
that the general feeling was either hostile or apathetic, we handed
over this sum to the Olympic Committee. Then came the war, and so in
any case our labour was in vain, for the Games were to be in Berlin
in 1916. We were all playing another game by then. This matter was
spread over a year of my life and was the most barren thing that I
ever touched, for nothing came of it, and I cannot trace that I ever
received one word of thanks from any human being. I was on my guard
against Northcliffe telegrams after that.
I remember one curious episode about that time. I was staying in a
Northumberland Avenue Hotel, and I walked out at night in pensive mood,
strolling down the Embankment and watching the great dark river with
the gleam of the lights upon it. Suddenly a man passed me, walking very
rapidly and muttering in an incoherent way. He gave me an impression of
desperation and I quickened my pace and followed him. With a rush he
sprang up on the parapet and seemed to be about to throw himself into
the river. I was just in time to catch his knees and to pull him down.
He struggled hard to get up, but I put my arm through his and led him
across the road. There I reasoned with him and examined into the cause
of his troubles. He had had some domestic quarrel, I believe, but his
main worry was his business, which was that of a baker. He seemed a
respectable man and the case seemed genuine, so I calmed him down, gave
him such immediate help as I could, and made him promise to return home
and to keep in touch with me afterwards.
When the excitement of the incident was over, I had grave doubts as
to whether I had not been the victim of a clever swindler. I was
considerably relieved, therefore, to get a letter a few days later,
giving name and address, and obviously genuine. I lost sight of the
case after that.
Another matter which preoccupied me much in the years before the war,
and preoccupies me still, is the Reform of our Divorce Laws. I was
president of the Reform Union for ten years and have only just vacated
the position in order to make room for a far more efficient successor
in Lord Birkenhead. I am quite alive to all the arguments of our
opponents, and quite understand that laxity in the marriage tie is an
evil, but I cannot understand why England should lag behind every other
Protestant country in the world, and even behind Scotland, so that
unions which are obviously disgusting and degrading are maintained in
this country while they can be dissolved in our Colonies or abroad.
As to morality I cannot, I fear, admit that our morality here is in
the least better than in Scandinavia, Holland or Germany, where they
have more rational laws. I think that in some States in America they
have pushed Divorce to an extreme, but even in America I should say
that married happiness and morality generally are quite as high as
with us. The House of Lords has shown itself to be more liberal in
this matter than the Commons, possibly because the latter have a fear
of organized Church influence in their constituencies. It is one of
several questions which makes me not sorry to see Labour, with its
larger outlook, in power for a time in this country. Our marriage laws,
our land laws, the cheapening of justice and many other things have
long called out for reform, and if the old parties will not do it then
we must seek some new one which will.
During these long and happy years, when the smooth current of our
national life was quietly sliding toward Niagara, I did not lose my
interest in psychic matters, but I cannot say that I increased my grasp
of the religious or spiritual side of the subject. I read, however,
and investigated whenever the chance arose. A gentleman had arranged
a series of psychical séances in a large studio in North London, and
I attended them, the mediums being Cecil Husk and Craddock. They left
a very mixed impression upon my mind, for in some cases, I was filled
with suspicion and in others I was quite sure that the result was
genuine. The possibility that a genuine medium may be unscrupulous and
that when these very elusive forces fail to act he may simulate them
is one which greatly complicates the whole subject, but one can only
concentrate upon what one is sure is true and try to draw conclusions
from that. I remember that many sheeted ghosts walked about in the
dim light of a red lamp on these occasions, and that some of them
came close to me, within a foot of my face, and illuminated their
features by the light of a phosphorescent slate held below them. One
splendid Arab, whom the medium called Abdullah, came in this fashion.
He had a face like an idealized W. G. Grace, swarthy, black-bearded
and dignified, rather larger than human. I was looking hard at this
strange being, its nose a few inches from my own, and was wondering
whether it could be some very clever bust of wax, when in an instant
the mouth opened and a terrific yell was emitted. I nearly jumped out
of my chair. I saw clearly the gleaming teeth and the red tongue. It
certainly seemed that he had read my thought and had taken this very
effective way of answering it.
Some of the excitements of my life during these and the subsequent
years were due to financial entanglements which arose from a certain
speculative element in my own nature, depending rather upon the love of
adventure than upon any hope of gain. If when I earned money I had dug
a hole in the garden and buried it there I should be a much richer man
to-day. I can hardly blame the punter on the racecourse when I remember
the outside chances which I have taken in the past in every possible
form of speculation. But I have the advantage over the mere gambler in
this, that every pound of my money went to develop something or other
and lined the pocket of the working man, who, by the way, when he
grumbles over the profits of the Capitalist never even alludes to his
losses. If a balance sheet were struck it would be interesting to see
what, if any, is the exact margin of profit.
It is true that sometimes I have indulged in a pure gamble but never
for any sum which would hurt me. I have painful memories of a guano
island off South Africa on which our treasure seekers were not even
allowed to land, though every bird’s nest was rumoured to contain a
diamond. The Spanish galleon in the bay of Tobermory also took treasure
rather than gave it, and the return for my shares was a lump of glass
and a rusted bar. That was more than ever I had from certain spots
in Kalgurli and Coolgardie and other alleged goldbearers, which have
nearly all been gold consumers so far as I am concerned. I fear some of
those mines were like that legendary one where the manager, getting a
cable which ordered him to start crushing, replied, “I have nothing to
crush until you return samples.”
I have played my involuntary part also in the development of the Rand
and Rhodesia, from those early and unsophisticated days when I misread
the quotation and meaning to invest £60 was faced next morning with a
bill for £900. Occasionally it is true that I backed a winner, but as
a rule I must confess that I was not judicious in my selections.
But it was at home that I expended myself most freely. I saw the
enormous possibilities of Kent coal, which even now are not fully
understood; but I did not sufficiently weigh the impossibilities, which
are that an enterprise can be successful which is wildly financed and
extravagantly handled. I and many others lost our money sinking the
shafts which may bring fortunes to our successors. I even descended
1,000 feet through the chalk to see with my own eyes that the coal was
_in situ_. It seems to have had the appearance and every other quality
of coal save that it was incombustible, and when a dinner was held by
the shareholders which was to be cooked by local coal, it was necessary
to send out and buy something which would burn. There were, however,
lower strata which were more sensitive to heat. Besides Kent Coal I
lost very heavily in running a manufacturing plant in Birmingham, into
which I was led by those successive stages in which you are continually
trying to save what you have already invested until the situation
becomes so serious that you drop it in terror. We turned from bicycles
to munitions during the war, and actually worked hard the whole four
years, with a hundred artisans making needful war material, without
ever declaring a penny of dividend. This, I should think, must be a
record, and at least no one could call us profiteers. The firm was
eventually killed dead by the successive strikes of the moulders and
the miners. It is amazing how one set of workmen will ruin another set
without apparently any remonstrance from the sufferers. Another bad egg
was a sculpture machine for architectural work, which really had great
possibilities, but we could not get the orders. I was chairman of this
company, and it cost me two years of hard work and anxiety, ending up
by my paying the balance out of my own pocket, so that we might wind
up in an honourable way. It was a dismal experience with many side
adventures attached to it, which would make a sensational novel.
Such are some of the vicissitudes which cannot be disregarded in a
retrospect of life, for they form a very integral and absorbing part
of it. I have had my ill luck and I have had my good. Amid the latter
I count the fact that I have been for twenty-one years a director of
Raphael Tuck & Co., without the least cloud to darken the long and
pleasant memory. I have also been for many years chairman of Besson’s
famous brass instrument firm. I think a man should know all sides of
life, and he has missed a very essential side if he has not played his
part in commerce. In investments, too, I would not imply that I have
always been unfortunate. My speculative adventures are over, and I can
at least say that unless the British Empire goes down I shall be able
to retain enough for our modest needs.