Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1599 page)
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Authors: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
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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 physical 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 idealised 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
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.