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Name: Arthur Conan Doyle

Age: 71 years

Place of Birth: Edinburgh, Scotland

A place of death: Crowborough, Sussex, UK

Activity: english writer

Family status: was married

Arthur Conan Doyle - biography

Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes - the greatest detective ever to exist in literature. And then all his life he tried unsuccessfully to get out of the shadow of his hero.

Who is Arthur Conan Doyle to us? The author of The Tales of Sherlock Holmes, of course. Who else. Conan Doyle's contemporary and colleague Gilbert Keith Chesterton demanded that a monument to Sherlock Holmes be erected in London: “Mr. ". A monument to Sherlock Holmes was opened in London, and in the Swiss Meiringen, not far from the Reichenbach Falls, and even in Moscow.

Arthur Conan Doyle himself was hardly enthusiastic about this. The writer did not consider the stories and stories about the detective to be either the best, much less his main works in his literary biography. He was burdened by the fame of his hero largely because from a human point of view, Holmes was not very sympathetic to him. Conan Doyle valued nobility above all else in people. So he was raised by his mother, Irish Mary Foyle, who came from a very ancient aristocratic family. True, by the 19th century, the Foil family was completely ruined, so all that remained for Mary was to tell her son about her former glory and teach him to distinguish the coats of arms of families related to their family.

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, born May 22, 1859, into a family of doctors in Edinburgh, in the ancient capital of Scotland, had the right to be proud of his aristocratic lineage through his father, Charles Altamont Doyle. True, Arthur always treated his father with compassion rather than pride. In his biography, he mentioned the cruelty of fate, which placed this "man with a sensitive soul in conditions that neither his age, nor his nature were ready to withstand."

Lyrically speaking, Charles Doyle was an unlucky, albeit - possibly - talented artist. In any case, as an illustrator, he was in demand, but not enough to feed a rapidly growing family and provide his aristocratic wife and children with a decent standard of living. He suffered from unsatisfied ambitions and drank more and more every year. Big brothers who were successful in business despised him. Arthur's grandfather, graphic artist John Doyle, helped his son, but this help was not enough, moreover, Charles Doyle considered the very fact that he was in need was humiliating.

With age, Charles turned into an embittered, aggressive, suffering from bouts of uncontrollable rage, and Mary Doyle at times feared for her children so much that she gave Arthur to be raised in the prosperous and wealthy house of her friend Mary Barton. She often visited her son, and the two Mary joined forces to transform the boy into an exemplary gentleman. And both of them encouraged Arthur in his passion for reading.

True, the novels of Mine Reed about the adventures of American settlers and Indians, young Arthur Doyle clearly preferred Walter Scott's knightly novels, but since he read quickly and a lot, he simply devoured books, he found time for all the authors of the adventure genre. “I don’t know a joy so complete and selfless,” he recalled, “like the one experienced by a child who snatched up time from lessons and huddled in a corner with a book, knowing that no one would disturb him in the next hour.”

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first book in his biography at the age of six and illustrated it himself. It was called The Traveler and the Tiger. Alas, the book turned out to be short, because the tiger ate the traveler right after the meeting. And Arthur found no way to bring the hero back to life. "It is very easy to put people in difficult situations, but it is much more difficult to get them out of these situations" - he remembered this rule for his entire long creative life.

Alas, the happy childhood did not last long. At the age of eight, Arthur was returned to his family and sent to school. “At home we led a Spartan way of life,” he later wrote, “and in the Edinburgh school, where our youthful existence was poisoned by a belt-swinging teacher of the old school, it was even worse. My comrades were rude boys, and I myself have become the same. "

Most of all, Arthur hated mathematics. And most often it was the mathematics teachers who flogged him - in all the schools where he studied. When the greatest enemy of the great detective - the criminal genius James Moriarty - appeared in the stories about Sherlock Holmes, Arthur made the villain not just anyone, but a professor of mathematics.

Arthur's success was followed by wealthy paternal relatives. Seeing that the Edinburgh school was not doing the boy any good, they sent him to study at Stonehurst, an expensive and prestigious institution under the auspices of the Jesuit Order. Alas, in this school, children were also subjected to corporal punishment. But the training there was really conducted at a good level, besides, Arthur could devote a lot of time to literature. The first admirers of his work also appeared. Classmates, eagerly awaiting new chapters of his adventure novels, often solved math problems for the young writer.

Arthur Conan Doyle dreamed of becoming a writer. But I didn't believe that writing could be a lucrative profession. Therefore, he had to choose from what was offered to him: the rich relatives of his father wanted him to study as a lawyer, his mother wanted him to become a doctor. Arthur preferred his mother's choice. He loved her very much. And he was sorry. After his father finally lost his mind and ended up in an asylum for the mentally ill, Mary Doyle had to rent rooms for gentlemen and take on dining rooms - the only way she could feed the children.

In October 1876, Arthur Doyle was admitted to the first year of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. During his studies, Arthur met and even made friends with many young men who are keen on writing. But the closest friend who had a huge influence on Arthur Doyle was one of the teachers, Dr. Joseph Bell. He was a brilliant person, fantastically observant, who, with the help of logic, could easily calculate both a lie and a mistake.

Sherlock Holmes's deductive method is actually Bell's method. Arthur adored the doctor and kept his portrait on the mantelpiece all his life. Many years after graduation, in May 1892, already a famous writer, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to a friend: “My dear Bell, it is to you that I owe my Sherlock Holmes, and although I have the opportunity to represent him in all sorts of dramatic circumstances, I I doubt that his analytical skills are superior to yours, which I have had the opportunity to observe. Based on your deduction, observation and logical conclusions, I tried to create a character that will bring them to the maximum, and I am very glad that you were satisfied with the result, because you have the right to be the most severe of critics. "

Unfortunately, while studying at the university, Arthur did not have any opportunities for writing. He constantly had to earn money to help his mother and sisters, either as a pharmacist or as a doctor's assistant. Need usually hardens people, but in the case of Arthur Doyle, chivalry has always won.

Relatives recalled how one day his neighbor, Herr Gleiwitz, a scientist of European renown who was forced to leave Germany for political reasons and now desperately poor, came to him. On that day, his wife fell ill, and in despair he asked his acquaintances to lend him money. Arthur also had no cash, but he immediately took a watch with a chain from his pocket and offered to pawn it. He simply could not leave a person in trouble. For him, this was the only act possible in that situation.

The first publication, which earned him a fee - as many as three guineas, took place in 1879, when he sold the story "The Mystery of the Sesass Valley" to the Chamber's Journal. Actually, this is how the creative biography of the writer Arthur Conan Doyle began, although at that time he saw his future as connected exclusively with medicine.

In the spring of 1880, Arthur received permission from the university to practice on the whaling ship "Nadezhda", which sailed to the shores of Greenland. They didn't pay much, but there was no other opportunity to get a job in the future in a specialty: in order to get a doctor's place in a hospital, patronage was needed, in order to open a private practice - money. After graduating from the university, Arthur was offered the position of ship doctor on the ship Mayumba, and he happily agreed.

But as much as the Arctic fascinated him, Africa seemed just as disgusting. What did he not have to endure while sailing! “I'm fine, but I got sick with African fever, I was almost swallowed by a shark, and to top it all off, there was a fire on the Mayumba on the way between Madeira and England,” he wrote to his mother from another port.

Returning home, Doyle, with the permission of his family, spent all his ship's salary to open a doctor's office. It cost £ 40 per annum. Patients were reluctant to go to a little-known doctor. Arthur reluctantly devoted a lot of time to literature. Oa wrote stories one after another, and it would seem that it was then that he should have come to his senses and forgot about medicine ... But his mother dreamed of seeing him as a doctor. And patients eventually fell in love with the delicate and attentive Dr. Doyle.

In the early spring of 1885, Arthur's friend and neighbor, Dr. Pike, invited Dr. Doyle to give advice on the illness of fifteen-year-old Jack Hawkins: the teenager suffered meningitis and now had horrific seizures several times a day. Jack lived with his widowed mother and 27-year-old sister in a rented apartment, the owner of which demanded that the apartment be vacated immediately because Jack was bothering the neighbors. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the patient was hopeless: he would hardly have lasted even a few weeks ... Dr. Pike simply did not dare to tell the grief-stricken women about this and wanted to shift the burden of the last explanation onto a young colleague.

But he was simply shocked by the incredible decision Arthur made. Having met the patient's mother and his sister, tender and vulnerable Louise, Arthur Conan Doyle was imbued with such compassion for their grief that he offered to move Jack to his apartment so that the boy was under constant medical supervision. It cost Arthur several sleepless nights, after which he had to work during the day. And what's really bad - when Jack passed away, everyone saw how the coffin was taken out of Doyle's house.

Bad rumors spread about the young doctor, but Doyle did not seem to notice anything: the boy's sister's ardent gratitude grew into ardent love. Arthur had already had several unsuccessful short novels, but not a single girl seemed to him so close to the ideal of a beautiful lady from a knightly romance as this quivering young lady who decided to become engaged to him in April 1885, without waiting for the end of the term of mourning for her brother ...

Let Tui, as Arthur called his wife, was not a bright personality, but she managed to provide her husband with home comfort and completely save him from everyday problems. Doyle suddenly freed up a tremendous amount of writing time. The more he wrote, the better it turned out. In 1887, his first story about Sherlock Holmes was published - "A Study in Crimson Tones", which immediately brought real success to the author. Then Arthur was happy ...

He explained his success by the fact that, thanks to a lucrative contract with the magazine, Doyle finally stopped needing money and could write only those stories that were interesting to him. But he had no intention of writing only about Sherlock Holmes. He wanted to write serious historical novels, and he created them - one after another, but they never had such reader success as stories about a genius detective ... Readers demanded Holmes from him and only Holmes.

The story "Scandal in Bohemia", in which Doyle told about Holmes' love at the request of the readers, turned out to be the last straw - the story turned out to be tortured. To his teacher Bella, Arthur wrote frankly: "Holmes is as cold as Babbage's analytical machine, and has the same chances of finding love." Arthur Conan Doyle decided to beat his hero until the hero destroyed him. The first time he mentioned this in a letter to his mother: "I am thinking of finally finishing off Holmes and getting rid of him, because he distracts me from more worthwhile things." To this mother replied: “You cannot! Don't you dare! In no case!"

And yet Arthur did it by writing the story "Holmes' Last Case." After Sherlock Holmes, grappling with the final battle with Professor Moriarty, fell into the Reichenbach Falls, all of England plunged into sorrow. "You scoundrel!" - this is how many letters to Doyle began. Nevertheless, Arthur felt relieved - he ceased to be, as his readers called him, "the literary agent of Sherlock Holmes."

Soon Tui gave birth to his daughter Mary, then - the son of Kingsley. Childbirth was hard for her, but, like a true Victorian lady, she hid her torment from her husband as much as she could. He, carried away by creativity and communication with fellow writers, did not immediately notice that something was wrong with his meek wife. And when he noticed, he almost burned out with shame: he, the doctor, did not see the obvious - progressive tuberculosis of the lungs and bones in his own wife. Arthur gave up everything to help Tui. He took her to the Alps for two years, where Tui became so strong that there was hope for her recovery. The couple returned to England, where Arthur Conan Doyle ... fell in love with the young Jean Leckie.

It would seem that his soul was already covered with a snowy veil of age, but from under the snow a primrose has broken through - this poetic image, along with a snowdrop, Arthur presented to the adorable young Jean Lecky a year after their first meeting, on March 15, 1898.

Jean was very beautiful: contemporaries claimed that not a single photograph conveyed the charm of her delicately traced face, large green eyes, both penetrating and sad ... She had luxurious wavy dark blond hair and a swan neck, smoothly turning into sloping shoulders: Conan Doyle was crazy about the beauty of her neck, but for many years he did not dare to kiss her.

In Jean, Arthur also found those qualities that he lacked in Tui: a sharp mind, a love of reading, education, the ability to maintain a conversation. Jean was a passionate nature, but rather reserved. Most of all she was afraid of gossip ... And for her sake, as well as for Tui's sake, Arthur Conan Doyle preferred not to talk about his new love even with the closest ones, vaguely explaining: “There are feelings too personal, too deep to be expressed in words ".

In December 1899, when the Boer War began, Arthur Conan Doyle suddenly decided to volunteer for the front. Biographers believe that in this way he tried to force himself to forget Jean. The medical commission rejected his candidacy because of his age and health, but no one could prevent him from going to the front as a military doctor. However, it did not work to forget about Jean Leckie. Pierre Norton, French explorer of the life and work of Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote about his relationship with Jean:

“For almost ten years she was his mystical wife, and he was her faithful knight and her hero. Over the years, an emotional tension arose between them, painful, but at the same time it became a test of the chivalrous spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle. Like no other of his contemporaries, he was suitable for this role and, perhaps, even desired it ... A physical connection with Jin would become for him not only a betrayal of his wife, but also an irreparable humiliation. He would have fallen in his own eyes, and his life would have turned into a dirty affair. "

Arthur immediately told Jean that divorce was impossible in his circumstances, because the reason for the divorce could be his wife's betrayal, but certainly not the cooling of feelings. Although, perhaps, secretly thought about it. He wrote: “The family is not the foundation of social life. The basis of social life is a happy family. But with our outdated divorce rules, there are no happy families. " Conan Doyle subsequently became an active member of the Divorce Reform Alliance. True, he defended the interests not of husbands, but of wives, insisting that upon divorce, women receive equal rights with men.

Nevertheless, Arthur resigned himself to fate and remained faithful to the end of Tui's life. He fought with his passion for Jin and with the desire to change Tui and was proud of each successive victory: "I fight the forces of darkness with all my might and win."

However, he introduced Jean to his mother, whom he still trusted in everything, and Mrs. Doyle not only approved of his girlfriend, but even offered to keep them company on their joint trips to the countryside: in the company of an elderly matron, a lady and a gentleman could spend time. without breaking the rules of decency. Jeanne was so fond of Mrs. Doyle, who herself drank grief with her sick husband, that Mary gave Miss Leckie a family jewel - a bracelet that belonged to her beloved sister, and soon Arthur's sister Lottie became friends with Jean. Even Conan Doyle's mother-in-law was familiar with Jean and did not oppose her relationship with Arthur, since she was still grateful for the kindness shown to the dying Jack, and understood that any other man in his place would not behave so noble at all, and so certainly would not spare the feelings of his sick wife.

Only Tui remained in the introduction. “She is still dear to me, but now a part of my life, previously free, is busy,” wrote Arthur to his mother. - I feel nothing for Tui except respect and affection. Throughout our family life, we have never quarreled, and henceforth I also do not intend to hurt her. "

Unlike Tui Jean, she was interested in Arthur's work, discussed plots with him and even wrote several paragraphs in his story. In a letter to his mother, Conan Doyle admitted that Jean had suggested the plot of The Empty House. This story was included in the collection, in which Doyle "revived" Holmes after his "death" in the Reichenbach Falls.

Arthur Conan Doyle held out for a long time: for almost eight years, readers were waiting for a new meeting with their favorite hero. Holmes's return had the effect of a bomb. All over England they said nothing but a great detective. Rumors spread about a possible Holmes prototype. One of the first to guess about the prototype was Robert Louis Stevenson. "Is this my old friend Joe Bell?" - he asked in a letter to Arthur. Soon, journalists flocked to Edinburgh. Conan Doyle, just in case, warned Bell that now he "will be pestered with their crazy letters by fans who will need his help in rescuing unmarried aunts from boarded up attics where they were locked up by villainous neighbors."

Bell reacted to the first interviews with a calm humor, although later journalists began to annoy him. After Bell's death, his friend Jesse Saxby was indignant: "This dexterous, insensitive hunter of people, who hounds criminals with the stubbornness of a hound, was not much like a good doctor who always pitied sinners and was ready to help them." Bella's daughter was of the same opinion, stating: “My father was not at all like Sherlock Holmes. The detective was callous and stern, and my father was kind and gentle. "

Indeed, in his habits and behavior Bell did not in the least resemble Sherlock Holmes, he kept his things in order and did not take drugs ... But outwardly tall, with an aquiline nose and graceful features, Bell looked like a great detective. In addition, fans of Arthur Conan Doyle simply wanted Sherlock Holmes to actually exist. “Many readers consider Sherlock Holmes to be a real person, judging by the letters addressed to him that come to me with a request to convey them to Holmes.

Watson also receives many letters in which readers ask him for the address or autograph of his brilliant friend, - Arthur wrote to Joseph Bell with bitter irony. -When Holmes retired, several elderly people volunteered to help him with the housework, and one even assured me that she was well versed in beekeeping and could "separate the queen from the swarm." Many also suggest Holmes investigate some family secret. Even I myself received an invitation to Poland, where I will be assigned as much fee as I wish. On reflection, I wished to stay at home. "

However, Arthur Conan Doyle did solve several cases. The most famous of these was the case of the Indian George Edalji, who lived with his family in the village of Great Whirlie. The villagers did not like the overseas visitor, and the poor man was bombarded with anonymous threatening letters. And when a series of mysterious crimes took place in the district - someone inflicted deep cuts on cows - the suspicion first of all fell on a stranger. Edalji was accused not only of mockery of animals, but also of allegedly writing letters to himself. The verdict is seven years of hard labor. But the convict did not lose heart and achieved a review of the case, so he was released after three years.

To whitewash his reputation, Edalji turned to Arthur Conan Doyle. Still, because his Sherlock Holmes solved matters more difficult. Conan Doyle enthusiastically took up the investigation. Noticing how close Edalji brings the newspaper to his eyes while reading, Conan Doyle concluded that he was visually impaired. And how, then, could he run through the fields at night and cut the cows with a knife, especially since the fields were guarded by the watchmen? The brown stains on his razor were not blood, but rust. An expert graphologist hired by Conan Doyle proved that Edalji's anonymous letters were written in a different handwriting. Conan Doyle described his discoveries in a series of newspaper articles, and soon all suspicions were removed from Edalji.

However, participation in investigations, and attempts to run for local elections in Edinburgh, and a passion for bodybuilding, which ended with a heart attack, and car races, ballooning and even the first airplanes - all this was just a way to get away from reality: a slow dying wives, a secret affair with Jean - all this weighed him down. And then Arthur Conan Doyle discovered spiritualism.

Arthur was fond of the supernatural in his youth: he was a member of the British Society for Psychic Research, which studied the paranormal. Nevertheless, at first he was skeptical about communicating with spirits: “I will be happy to receive enlightenment from any source, I have little hope in spirits that speak through mediums. In my memory, they were just talking nonsense. " However, the familiar spirit Alfred Drayson explained that in the other world, as well as in the human world, there are many fools - they must go somewhere after death.

Surprisingly, his passion for spiritualism returned Doyle to the church, in which he became disillusioned during his years at the Jesuit institution. Conan Doyle recalled: “I have no respect for the Old Testament, and also no confidence that the churches are so necessary ... I want to die as I lived, without the intervention of priests and in a state of the very peace that stems from honest deeds in accordance with the principles of life ”.

The more Conan Doyle was shocked by the meeting with the spirit of a young girl who died in Melbourne. The spirit told him that he lives in a world consisting entirely of light and laughter, where there are neither rich nor poor. The inhabitants of this world do not experience physical pain, although they may experience anxiety and longing. However, they drive away sadness through spiritual and intellectual pursuits - for example, music. The picture was consoling.

Gradually, spiritualism became the center of the writer's universe: "I realized that the knowledge given to me is intended not only for my consolation, but that God gave me the opportunity to tell the world what he needs to hear."

Once established in his views, Arthur Conan Doyle, with his characteristic stubbornness, adhered to them to the very end: “Suddenly I saw that the topic with which I flirted for so long was not just the study of some force lying outside of science, but something great and capable of breaking down the walls between worlds, an undeniable message from outside, giving hope and guiding light to humanity. "

On July 4, 1906, Arthur Conan Doyle was widowed. Tui died in his arms. For several months after her death, he was in a state of extreme depression: he was tormented by shame that in recent years he seemed to be waiting for deliverance from his wife. But the very first meeting with Jean Leckie gave him back hope for happiness. After waiting for the prescribed period of mourning, they got married on September 18, 1907.

Gene and Arthur lived very happily indeed. Everyone who was familiar with them spoke about this. Jean gave birth to two sons - Denis and Adrian, and a daughter, who was named after her - Jean Jr. Arthur seemed to have found a second wind in literature. Jin Jr. said, “At lunch, my father often announced that he had an idea early in the morning and that he had been working on it all this time. Then he read us a draft and asked us to criticize the story. My brothers and I rarely acted as critics, but my mother quite often gave him advice, and he always followed them. "

Jean's love helped Arthur to endure the losses that the family suffered in the First World War: Doyle's son Kingsley, his younger brother, two cousins ​​and two nephews were killed at the front. He continued to draw consolation in spiritualism - he summoned the ghost of his son. He never evoked the spirit of his deceased wife ...

In 1930, Arthur fell seriously ill. But on March 15 - he never forgot that day when he first met Jean - Doyle got out of bed and went out into the garden to fetch a snowdrop for his beloved. There, in the garden, Doyle was found: immobilized by a stroke, but clutching Jean's favorite flower. Arthur Conan Doyle died on July 7, 1930, surrounded by his entire family. The last words he uttered were addressed to his wife: "You are the best ..."

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Arthur Conan Doyle was a lousy therapist, and his ophthalmologist was a terrible one. Historical novels, which, according to the calculations of the writer, were to become his main literary heritage, no one read, even during Doyle's lifetime. He could not manage to convince others that fairies really exist, and the magician Harry Houdini has supernatural powers. However, Arthur Conan Doyle did succeed in something, and it changed the publishing world forever: he made a lot of money, inventing a detective character who became one of the most popular trade stamps in the field of literature. If you lie down in grave with the prefix "sir" in front of the name, so at least something in this life you did right.

Scotsman by birth, Conan Doyle lived a life worthy of true english gentleman. He was named in honor of King Arthur, before whom he bowed mother, and raised on the novels of Charles Dickens and Walter Scott. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, served as a ship doctor for some time, and then settled in the English city of Portsmouth, near which his idol Dickens was once born. Conan Doyle always had problems due to a shortage of patients, but occasional road accident victims kept his practice afloat. In 1885, he married the sister of one of his patients, Louise Hawkins.

Soon after, Conan Doyle began writing detective stories, but fame did not come to him and his brainchild Sherlock Holmes immediately. The first tale of Holmes's adventures, A Study in Crimson, was published in Wheaton's Christmas Yearbook, 1887. Three years later, Conan Doyle left England and went to Vienna to study ophthalmology. However, his hopes of getting rich by working as an eye doctor were again dashed by a shortage of patients, and our now twice loser returned to writing to make ends meet.

He hoped to become famous as the author of historical prose, but his novel "The Adventures of Micah Clarke" (1889), as well as all subsequent epic canvases were received by critics and the public unkindly. And so in 1891 a new magazine called The Strand began publishing Holmes' adventures piece by piece. The brilliant, intelligent, and nervous private detective, whom Conan Doyle copied in part from his former university professor Joseph Bell, caused a storm of delight among readers of the Victorian era. Conan Doyle's career is finally getting off the ground. He wrote 24 stories about Holmes, and then, getting tired of this character, he killed him in the story "The Last Case of Sherlock Holmes" (1893).

Holmes by that time was already a real popular idol, and crowds of readers outraged by the "murder" began to flock to the author's house. Some even showed up with black bands on their arms as a sign of mourning for their favorite detective. In 1902, Conan Doyle was forced to revive Holmes, which only benefited the author's bank account. By that time, he had already abandoned medical practice and fell in love with another woman, Jean Lecky, but their relationship remained platonic out of respect for the writer's wife, who suffered from tuberculosis. Louise died in 1906 and Conan Doyle finally married Jean.

Becoming a world celebrity, Conan Doyle became interested in human rights work. He was involved in two high-profile trials in an attempt to raise public awareness of the fate of prisoners against whom, according to Conan Doyle, unfair charges were brought. He also enthusiastically defended British politics during the Boer War, a manifestation of jingoistic patriotism in 1902 that was rewarded with a knighthood. He ran twice for Parliament, both times without success. Then Conan Doyle focused on spiritualism, communicating with the dead, and trying to prove the existence of fairies. For a writer always associated with rational thinking and deduction, this was

a rather strange twist. In the eyes of the entire literary world, Conan Doyle turned into a laughing stock, but he found warm support in the person of his second wife. In 1930, shortly after the death of the writer, she hired a plane to conduct a spiritualistic session with the deceased right in flight. The closer to the sky, she believed, the better the quality of the connection.

A MAN FOR ALL TIMES

Conan Doyle was an avid athlete and particularly excelled in cricket, golf and skiing. He considered boxing to be the highest sport and often boxed at night without taking off his ceremonial dress. In 1914, while on a trip to New York, he attended a baseball game between the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Yankees. He once played cricket for the all-star squad alongside writers such as James Barry (Peter Pan's literary father) and Alfred Edward Woodley Mason, author of The Four Feathers. English football fans should still be grateful to Conan Doyle for it was he who founded the Portsmouth Football Club in 1884. Doyle also acted as the first goalkeeper for the Portsmouth team under the name A.S. Smith is evidence that in those days playing football was considered shameful for a gentleman.

"MY DEAR SHERRINGFORD!"

World, not to mention English, literary history could have developed completely differently if Conan Doyle, choosing a name for his famous detective hero, settled on the original version - Sherring-Ford Hope. ("Hope," meaning hope, is the name whale ship on which the writer swam in his youth and about whom kept the most tender memories.) Having named This name terrible, Conan Doyle's wife Louise persuaded him to come up with anything other. Then he connected name"Sherlock" - a tribute to his favorite violinist Alfred Sherlock - and surname Holmes- tribute to famed lawyer Oliver Wendell Holmes, which is just not long before that published book on criminal psychology. Costs mention and that Sherlock Holmes and the main character of the comedy television series "Green Acres" Oliver Wendell Douglas was named v honor one and the same the same person.

An ardent fan of spiritism and other occult teachings, ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE BELIEVED IN THE EXISTENCE OF TINY WINGED FAIRIES AND THOUGHT THAT YOU CAN FIND THEM, IT IS ONLY WORTH LOOKING FOR.

HOW HOLMES BECAME A BEAUTY

If all gone as originally intended, Holmes not just got would be stupid unpronounceable name, he at all would be absolutely not is similar to the image that is familiar to all of us with childhood. When v 1887 year went negotiation O the first publication of "Etude v crimson ", Conan Doyle demanded that To the illustration of the story was attracted by his alcoholic father, who was then v hospital for the mentally ill. Drawings, performed by Charles Doyle, turned out to be unprofessional and careless. On them Holmes was depicted as a stout bearded short man, reminiscent of the French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Many associate poor sales books from such unsuccessful design decision. When several years later history O Holmes took To publications magazine "Strand", v edition for to develop the image of the great detective, they guessed to invite the high-class illustrator Sidney Paget. He immediately rejected the concept of Doyle Sr., who saw Holmes as an unsympathetic veil. “Definitely not,” Paget said. “Women should like him, sort of a dandy of the 1890s. I am going to draw such a Holmes, so that all women would dry on him, and all men would dream of acquiring the same impeccable suit. " The resulting portrait of a tall, thin, attractive and impeccably dressed man contributed a lot to making Sherlock Holmes the idol of all times and peoples, which he is now.

TAPING ON THE TABLE

Conan Doyle was severely crippled by the death of his son and brother, who died during the First World War. So knocked down that he stopped believing in the forces of rational thinking and became carried away by spiritualism, a trend in the occult, which proclaimed the possibility of communication with the dead. Now spiritualistic sessions are held as part of television shows, where charlatans and psychos, who call themselves psychics, call the spirits of the departed with howls. And in the days of Conan Doyle, meetings with ghosts took place at wooden tables. When the participants managed to establish a connection with the spirit world, the table usually took off or a characteristic tapping on wood was heard. Margaret Fox, one of the most famous mediums of the time, a New York lady who, along with her two sisters, for years robbed rich and gullible clients, eventually admitted that it was all a scam. However, there were those who did not believe in her self-exposure. One of them was Conan Doyle, who for many years promoted spiritualism in writing and during oral speeches, often causing public ridicule. He once gave a lecture on this topic at New York's Carnegie Hall. Suddenly his reasoning was interrupted by a shrill whistle. Taking the sound for a message from the other world, Conan Doyle was overjoyed. And then some old man from the audience announced that it was just his flapping hearing aid. The audience roared with laughter, and the newspapermen took advantage of this anecdotal occasion to once again announce that the creator of Sherlock Holmes was completely out of the way.

AND YOU - NO HOLMS!

Conan Doyle's passion for the occult negatively affected his income from circulation sales - "Notes on Sherlock Holmes" was banned in the USSR for many years precisely because of the author's unhealthy hobbies.

FAIRY LAND

As if deliberately trying to ruin his reputation, Conan Doyle in 1921 published the book "The Phenomenon of Fairies", where he fiercely defended two cousins ​​from the English village of Cottingley, who claimed to be friends with a company of small winged creatures. The photographs of the girls playing with the alleged fairies were clearly faked (and later confirmed to be fake), but Conan Doyle willingly allowed himself to be fooled. In his articles and speeches, he continued to rant about fairies throughout the 1920s, when the topic had long been forgotten by the public.

SESSION WITH HARRY

The friendship between Conan Doyle and the illusionist Harry Houdini, who became famous for his ability to get out of any traps and who, according to Conan Doyle, possessed extrasensory abilities, was of a rather specific nature. They were both well known and both had a certain interest in the spirit world, but that was where the similarities ended. Houdini did not believe in mediums and used his acquaintance with Conan Doyle to get closer to the charlatans and bring them out into the open. Conan Doyle, on the other hand, was firmly convinced that Houdini was indeed a magician, and not just using the typical tricks of magicians. Their relationship began to deteriorate shortly after Conan Doyle's wife, during a seance, allegedly received a message from Houdini's deceased mother: the message was in English, and the deceased old woman did not speak this language. Houdini began to ridicule Conan Doyle's belief in spiritualism. Former friends quarreled, exchanged several angry letters, and then stopped talking to each other forever.

SKELETON IN CABINET

Is it possible that the creator of Sherlock Holmes also played a leading role in one of the most epic hoaxes in history?

This is the hypothesis that anthropologist John Winslow put forward in 1983 in an article published in Science magazine. Winslow said that it was Conan Doyle who was responsible for the Pilt Down Man scientific scandal - fossilized fragments of bones that were found at a gravel mine in 1912 and declared to be the remains of that legendary "missing link" in the chain between monkeys and people. In fact, some of the bones of this "first man" belonged to an orangutan, although it took anthropologists more than forty years to expose the forgery.

So why is Conan Doyle the prime suspect? But because he was a neighbor and friend of the amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, who just found the remains. Conan Doyle was also friends with a phrenologist who specialized in strangely shaped tortoises; through this helpful acquaintance, the writer might well have gotten the jaw of an orangutan - a key element of the prank. Some even foaming at the mouth claim that Conan Doyle left clues about the Piltdown man in his works. For example, his novel The Lost World, published in 1912, was believed to contain a riddle that could be solved to locate the bones. Self-proclaimed accusers cited Conan Doyle's obsession with spiritualism and his desire to discredit mainstream science by slipping a cleverly fabricated fake into scientists as a motive.

Chapter 15: Conan the Destroyer 1983 did not start well for Arnold. His mother, who was often ill, fell ill. At the end of January, he boarded a plane to be on duty with his mother at the Graz hospital. Although he lacked attention in childhood, although he was always the second

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