I have a new article out, published in 'The Magic Door', the newsletter of the Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at Toronto Public Library, and edited by Tom Ue BSI (a newly minted BSI this year).
This article arose from my interest in an Australian connection to Conan Doyle - the artist Mortimer Menpes who had created a portrait of ACD. What surprised me as I started looking into Menpes was that I could not identify where his original portrait (or two) of Doyle now resides.
As always, I'm posting here the original submitted article. The published article appears on this front page - shown below. Thanks to Tom Ue for his help editorial guidance. And well.... if you have the Menpes portrait/sketch let me know!
Finally - it's easy to subscribe to 'The Magic Door' using the link above to the 'Friends' page. There are some wonderful articles in each issue.
Mortimer Menpes and the case of the missing portrait
Matthew D. Hall
Among the known portraits of Arthur Conan Doyle is an intimate profile of the author rendered in watercolour. The author sits at a desk, pen in hand, as he might in his study. Yet his khaki-coloured shirt belies the environment in which the scene is set - Conan Doyle's time in South Africa during the Second South African War.
Doyle in South Africa
In October 1899 the tensions between Britain and Boer republicans in South Africa spilled into a war commonly referred to as 'The Boer War'. While the war was ultimately considered a British victory when it concluded in May 1902, it came with great difficulty and a considerably higher commitment of troops and casualties than British pride anticipated. At the end of 1899 after the British had suffered a number of setbacks during early phases of the war, Doyle was 'standing in a long queue of men who were waiting to enlist in the Middlesex Yeomanry'. Unrecognized and over the hill, Doyle was added to the waiting list and he 'departed somewhat crestfallen and unsettled’.
Soon afterwards, Doyle had an offer to serve the British cause on a non-military capacity. Doyle's friend John Langman (a successful merchant and philanthropist) was personally funding the creation and staffing of a ~100-bed hospital to be shipped to South Africa. Doyle assisted in recruitment, and once ready and trained the hospital staff embarked on Feb 28, 1900, and ultimately arrived at a cricket field that was part of the Ramblers Club in Bloemfontein to establish their hospital. Almost simultaneously, the Boers cut off the water supply to the town, and the use of wells as an alternative water source led to a severe outbreak of 'enteric' (typhoid fever) caused by bacterial contamination in the water. The hospital was overwhelmed with patients, not from war fighting but from contaminated water.
We have first-hand insight into Doyle's life at the hospital. Charles Blasson (1877-1900) was part of the hospital staff and assigned as Doyle's dresser for two weeks. A dresser was tasked with cleaning and applying bandages and other dressings to wounds and injuries, and was often a medical student (which was the case with Blasson). Blasson kept a diary of his voyage to South Africa that includes numerous references to his work with Doyle, and it reveals that along with the work around the wards alongside Doyle in the hospital, Blasson also took on the role of Doyle's personal secretary. Doyle was writing an account of the Boer War in virtual real time, and Blasson assisted this work. For example on Monday 4th June 1900 Blasson wrote 'I have got a lot more of Doyle's work to write out (Paardeberg, and 'Advance of Bloemfontein'), so I shall have my work cut out to get it off by mail'. The Battle of Paardeberg took place in February 1900, and Doyle used the patients and soldiers he encountered (including in the hospital) to create an account. Precisely what shape Doyle's notes took, and how Blasson wrote them up is not clear - the manuscript of Doyle's book was completed in October 1900 and is held in Lausanne. Blasson was rewarded for his extracurricular activities, noting on 14th June just before Doyle departed the hospital that 'Dr Conan Doyle gave me a cheque for ￡5-5/ today for doing the work for him'.
Along with all the work around the wards, Blasson noted on Monday 4th June 1901 that 'Conan Doyle, Scharlieb, and Gibbs were arrested today for shooting at springbok. They were released when their names and addresses had been taken', and Doyle spent time 'up country' to observe the fighting. After Doyle's departure, Blasson died suddenly, and when the first edition of 'The Great Boer War' was published the Preface noted 'I especially acknowledge the co-operation of Mr. Blasson, of the Langman Hospital, now dead in the service of his country... who collected and arranged my material.'
Another observer of life at Langman Hospital who paid special attention to Doyle was an artist who visited the hospital. The Bendigo Advertiser carried the headline:
CONAN DOYLE AT THE FRONT.
(By a Painter's Youngest Daughter, in "M.A.P.")
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN HOSPITAL.
The Painter had his first sitting of Conan Doyle at Langman's Hospital, at Bloemfontein, where he had to sketch him the best way he could for the whole time the doctor was working, working like a horse, so much so that now and again he had to drag himself up to the top of a kopje just outside the hospital grounds to get a little fresh air and to store up a little more energy to go on with his work. His first exclamation to the Painter was: "Just look at this inferno!" and he pointed to the principal ward of his hospital. The sight was beyond description ; patients bundled in one after the other at such a rate that it was impossible to attend to them all in the midst of all these horrors, you would see two or three black-robed sisters of mercy going about silently but swiftly, doing work that no man living could have done, and every one of them refined and educated ladies. Dr. Doyle pointed them out and said : "They are all angels."
A DETECTIVE AT FAULT.
Dr. Doyle seemed to carry sunshine round with him where-ever he went. He was always cheery and bright; his patients simply worshipped him. The soldiers used to say they liked the doctor because he was "so manly." And yet, the Painter told me, he has never met such a modest man in all his life. When the Painter talked of his Sherlock Holmes series, Conan Doyle smiled and said that that work was not good, Sherlock Holmes being merely a mechanical creature, easy to create because he was soulless. "Why," he said, "one story by Edgar Allen Poe would-be worth any number of stories on the plane of Sherlock Holmes." The Painter asked him "which story of the series he liked best," and he said: "Perhaps the one about the serpent, but I can't for the life of me remember the name of it!" “But - doctor," exclaimed the Painter, "You are not a fair judge of your own work." "Oh, yes," he said, "I am though. It's a curious thing," he added, "in real life I have no capacity for detecting anything. I never had that power; I never could discover anything." He was simply amazed at the Painter's cuteness in discovering that there was a missing dot on the Orange Free State stamp surcharged V.R.I.
MAINLY LITERARY.
Conan Doyle talked of the professional critic, and said that he had no faith in him whatever; he wanted the opinion of a child, fresh and sincere. "I want the boy critic," he said, "the boy who will start a story and then chuck it down and say 'Rot,' or who will read a book straight through and say 'Ripping.' That's the person I want to criticise my work." "It's strange, too," he said one day, while snatching a few minutes' rest, "the older I get the less I read and the more I think. As a child the book that appealed to me most was one of Charles Reade's, and, curiously enough, it is the book I enjoy the most now." He talked of the way he wrote his stories. He said : "Of course I know the end of my story before I begin it; I don't create characters, and then allow them to work out their careers in their own way. I always fix the end clearly before I begin to write."
PURELY PERSONAL.
Conan Doyle looks a typical squire; he is tall, rather fair, with a heavy figure. He talks very slowly and deliberately, but is far cleverer as a listener than a talker. He is one of the few men who have learnt the art of sympathetic listening. In a way, he is extremely vague. More than once the Painter noticed him putting a letter in one of his pockets and then searching carefully in the other for it. He is a man who would be always misplacing things for want of method. But perhaps the thing that strikes you more than anything in Conan Doyle is the great big heart in the man.
The painter described in this article was Mortimer Menpes (1855-1938), an Australian artist, and his 'youngest daughter' was Dorothy Whistler Menpes (1883-1973, her Godfather was the American artist James McNeill Whistler). Menpes had travelled to South Africa as a war artist for 'Black & White' magazine, a weekly that published both fiction and current events, and was rich in illustrations. The magazine provided extensive coverage of the Boer War, and Menpes was already a public figure in London when he accepted the job. While he had been in England for over two decades in 1900, he was not forgotten in Australia and his observations were reported in local papers.
While in South Africa, Menpes met and sketched public figures such as Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill, along with senior military leaders. The UK 'Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News' provides the first evidence of Menpes' visit to Langman Hospital - a photograph by 'Scott' with the legend 'At Bloemfontein. Dr. Conan Doyle and Mr. Mortimer Menpes having a discussion on stamps, and probably working out a Sherlock Holmes theory of detecting frauds on part of local dealers in creating "freaks and faults"'. The photograph shows Doyle at his writing desk on the verandah of the cricket pavilion (today still known as the Ramblers Club), possibly working on a chapter of his book on the Boer War. Menpes sits astride his recliner gazing into the distance, his hand obscuring his fine moustache. One oddity: Doyle poses holding his pen in his left hand, perhaps to suit the arrangement the photographer required.
We have other views of Conan Doyle at this time. The September 1900 issue of the Strand Magazine carried an article by Doyle on the war titled 'A Glimpse of the Army’. Among the photographs is a photograph of Doyle at his desk (sans Menpes) which was likely taken at the same time as that above: the club doors are open, the seats are arranged in the same way, and so on. Doyle's pose is strikingly similar to Menpes' artwork.
Another stereoview photograph of Doyle 'in his tent at Bloemfontein' also demonstrates a similar pose of Doyle's right side. Blasson refers to Doyle's writing desk in his tent.
Menpes' portrait of Doyle was first published in black & white in (appropriately enough) 'Black & White' in the June 16 1900 issue.
Following his' return from South Africa, Menpes set about organizing his sketches and watercolors. In February 1901 Menpes opened an exhibition of 120 paintings and sketches of the Boer War theatre at the Fine Art Society in London, a commercial gallery that displayed and sold artworks, and it. The exhibition was advertised widely (example shown from the Army and Navy Gazette, Saturday 02 March 1901). Doyle's portrait was among those exhibited, and Menpes' art was well-received - a review in 'Gentlewoman' typical of coverage stating 'It is not an exaggeration to say that there is no "one-man show" open in London at the present moment which can hope to claim the same amount of general interest as the collection of paintings and etchings of the War in South Africa.... in the matter of portraiture one feels that Mr. Menpes's brush is quite photographic in its accuracy....'. It is possible that the Doyle portrait was sold at the exhibition.
Dorothy Menpes recorded the details that her related for each of the 120 artworks, and arranged a narrative around the collection, co-published with her father. All artworks were reproduced as full color plates, with some subtle horizontal and vertical striping defects in many of the plates including that of Doyle that may be a consequence of the medium used. The portrait was also published in the 'Literature' Supplement the The Times newspaper in June 1901, showing identical striping to the book plate. The 1900 B&W print differs from the later published watercolor - whether Menpes created the subsequent watercolor from an earlier original is not clear. It may be that two separately rendered portraits of Doyle by Menpes exist.
Some text desribing Doyle in the book was re-worked from the earlier newspaper article (see above), but details were added. According to Menpes, he made a 'careful study' of Langman's, specifically because he wanted to make a study of Doyle, but otherwise felt that hospitals were 'unartistic and unneccesary for my work'. To Menpes, the principal ward looked like a 'slaughter-house.... the place was saturated with enteric fever.... swarming in at such a rate that it was impossible to attend to them all', which is a surprising admission given wartime sensitivity about British casualties and the performance of hospitals - the war was still underway when his book was published. Menpes had defended criticism in the British press, and this carried into the narrative: 'I visited Langman's hospital nearly every day during my stay in Bloemfontein, and I always found it the same, always in perfect order, doctors and nurses working untiringly from morning until night ; and every day I went away marvelling'.
Menpes
Mortimer Luddington Menpes (22 February 1855 ‒ 1 April 1938) was an Australian-born painter, etcher, printmaker, illustrator and author who made his career in England. He was born in Port Adelaide, South Australia, the second son of English parents James Menpes and Ann (née Smith). His family moved to England in 1875 when he was about 20. He had studied art in Adelaide, and later at the School of Art in London. In 1880, while sketching in Brittany, he met American artist James McNeill Whistler, and under Whistler’s influence began to develop a style that combined elements of Japonisme, fine etching, drypoint techniques, and a refined sense of light and tone, and they maintained a close relationship.
Menpes exhibited regularly at prestigious British institutions — his paintings, watercolours, etchings and drypoints were shown at the Royal Academy, as well as societies devoted to watercolour and oil painting. His travels had a large impact on his work, visiting Japan (first in 1887), India, China, Kashmir, Burma, Egypt, Mexico, Morocco and throughout Europe. The Japanese influence was especially significant—both aesthetically, in motifs and design, and also in his choice to decorate his magnificent London home. Menpes illustrated and published books of art based on numerous locations, and produced colour reproductions of Old Masters via his own press.
Menpes 'retired' to Iris Court in Pangbourne outside Reading, where he established a fruit and carnation farm. He died there in 1938. Menpes is often remembered as a raconteur, both for his storytelling in books, and by reputation among his circle.
The portrait today
Following the 1901 exhibition and publication, the portrait of Conan Doyle does not appear to have received further attention in the press. Nor does it appear in the collection of any UK gallery. Nor, after enquiries, does it appear to be in the hands of a known Sherlockian/Doylean art collector. It is said that when Menpes died, Dorothy (with the married name Dorothy Flowers) was left around 4,000 works and books, which were ultimately sold. Where is the Menpes portrait now?
Further reading on Doyle in South Africa
Endnotes
1. Doyle, ’Memories & Adventures’, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1924
2. The Blasson diary is published in: Ken Cooper, ‘Aide-de-camp to Conan Doyle, the Bar War Diary of Charles Blasson’, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013
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