Personal Memories of Sherlock Holmes - 1934

I've had this short newspaper article circled for a while on my desk. It appeared in quite a number of newspapers, and is a lovely piece of lore related to the publication of 'A Study in Scarlet'.... the editor who selecte 'Study in Scarlet' for publishing by Ward, Lock & Co. This is the first appearance of that tid-bit:

London Daily Chronicle

Friday, 20 May 1892

Mr. Conan Doyle has certainly no reason to complain of the reception of his “Study in Scarlet,” which was originally discovered by the late Mr. G. T. Bettany, M.A., B.Sc., formerly literary adviser to Messrs. Ward, Lock, Bowden and Co. The MS. of the story (Mr. Conan Doyle's first, by the way) came under Mr. Bettany's notice in the ordinary course of events, but interested him so keenly that he sat up all night to finish it. Probably other people have followed his example since then, for, brought out as Beeton's Christmas Annual, it achieved an immediate success, and now, illustrated by Mr. George Hutchinson and published in Messrs. Ward, Lock and Co.'s Library Series, it has already gone into a large second edition. A Tauchnitz issue has been arranged for, a German translation is just completed, while a French version is pending. Happy indeed is he who succeeds with his initial effort!

Wonderful. Bettony himself died in 1891, just after the publication of Study in Scarlet. Wonderfully, a long (and not particularly focused) article by Coulson Kernahan (1858-1943) in 1934 completes that story. It was published in The London. Quarterly and Holborn Review. How did Kernahan know about Bettany's role? Kernahan married Bettany's widow! It turns out Mrs Bettany was the one who read the submitted novel, and recommended it to her husband! The article certainly meanders into personal reflections on Kernahan's relationship with Doyle, and their opposite views in Spiritualism. From my point of view, the narrative adds to the story of the first publication of 'Study in Scarlet' , and to some degree the second novel that apperaed in Lippincott's. 

I will likely create an annotated version of this article.

THE LONDON QUARTERLY AND HOLBORN REVIEW

OCTOBER, 1934

PERSONAL MEMORIES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

WHO 'discovered' - I do not like the word in such connexion, but it is in common use to-day - Sherlock Holmes? The reply is, as shall here, for the first time be narrated, that my wife did. She was then the wife of the late Professor G. T. Bettany, M.A., B. Sc., at one time a Cambridge 'Don,' but, later, chief Editor to Messrs. Ward,
Lock, & Co. One day a MS. entitled 'A Study in Scarlet,' penned in a beautifully clear and small round hand, arrived at Ward Lock's, and came before Bettany. As he was a science man (bracketed Third in the Natural Science Tripos) he took it home with him to say to his wife: 'You have published a novel, and have contributed stories to Temple Bar, The Argosy, and Belgravia, and are likely to be a better judge of fiction than I. So I should be glad if you would look through this, and tell me whether I ought to read it.'

Mrs. Bettany's first intention was to be a doctor, so she had, at one time, attended lectures, and closely studied medical science. That is, no doubt why she said to her husband : 'This is, I feel sure, by a doctor-there is internal evidence to that effect. But in any case, the writer is a born novelist. I am enthusiastic about the book, and believe it will be a great success.' So on the strength of her opinion, Bettany recommended 'A Study in Scarlet' to Ward, Lock, & Co., who issued it as the chief item in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887.

In 1889 I became junior Editor to Ward, Lock, & Co., and Assistant Editor of Lippincott's Magazine, which they published on this side of the Atlantic. Looking through the firm's file copies, I came across the 1887 issue of Beeton's Christmas Annual, and took it to the Managing Director. Is anything being done with this?' I asked. He shook his head to reply: 'It served its purpose, and did respectably as the Annual, but the sales were not great, and few reviewers had anything to say of it.' 'No,' I answered, 'so many books appear at Christmas that reviewers are not likely to write at length, or even to notice the contents of one of the many Christmas Annuals. But since then, Doyle has published Micah Clarke, and The Captain of the Polestar. The complete novel in the next issue of Lippincott's Magazine is "The Sign of Four," in which Sherlock Holmes is the leading character. I am as sure, as one can humanly be, that there is a great future for stories in which Sherlock Holmes figures.  As you have "A Study in Scarlet," the very first story about Sherlock Holmes, I suggest that you reissue it as a book, by itself, attractively produced, and attractively illustrated. I believe it will have a huge sale, and go on selling for years.'

That is as far as I need to go. The rest of the story is public knowledge, so I pass on to tell of my first meeting with Doyle. The editor of the magazine in which the very first book I ever penned-I do not propose to mention the title here-was running, anonymously, as a serial, gave a dinner to his contributors, and among those present were Doyle and myself. In a lull of the conversation, Doyle said to the editor, 'Who is the anonymous author of that--' I must not repeat his words which were more than appreciative. The editor pointed to me, and Doyle was so good as to express his pleasure in meeting the author of the serial. Here may I interpolate that those persons who think that Doyle's interest in Spiritualism was a late development, are mistaken. I attribute his interest in, and his appreciation of my anonymously published serial to the-fact that it might have been, but was not entitled, 'What happens after Death.'

I did not see Doyle again till after 'The Sign of Four' had appeared in Lippincott's. He was then living in Tennison Road, Norwood, where he was practising as a doctor, and I remember saying to him, 'Now that you have "begun author," as an American friend of mine calls it, mark my words if the time does not come when you will chuck medicine for literature.'

'My heart is in my work as an aurist,' he replied, 'and I shall never, as you say, chuck my medical work for literary work or for anything else.' Though he changed his mind or, perhaps under the compelling force of circumstances, yielded to the demand for more books by his pen from a public to which he felt he had cause to be grateful, and so had no small claim on him' chuck' his medical work, he never entirely did. When the call of his country came, Doyle, a true patriot, if ever there were one, went out as a physician with a Field Hospital to tend and to minister to the wounded in the Boer War. In a sense, he was following the noble Science of Healing when he died. His enthusiasm for the cause of Spiritualism was, I sincerely believe, in no small part due to his conviction that Spiritualism is Soul-Therapeuthy. It brought, he would have contended, healing to the hearts of those broken by the loss of loved ones in the war. It was the promise of life after death for those loved ones, and the pledge that they and those who mourned them here should on day be re-united. It restored faith in personal immortality, and all that faith in personal immortality means, to a world which was fast coming to ask itself, 'Does death end all?' In a word, spiritualism was to Doyle the only true Cure of Souls, and in not only practising but preaching and proclaiming Spiritualism, he believed that he was best serving not only his fellows, but humanity.

So far from sharing these views, I believe him to have been grievously mistaken, and in the press and elsewhere he and I had more than one controversy, concerning which the late Mr. St. John Adcock wrote in The Bookman: 'Mr. Kernahan takes off the gloves in dead earnest to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, on the subject of Spiritualism.' If Doyle took off the gloves, in hitting back in defence of the Cause to which he gave his life, for he might have been alive to-day had he spent himself less strenuously and self-sacrificingly in championing Spiritualism, he never allowed temper to get the upper hand, but replied always with perfect courtesy.

The wit who burlesqued the title of James Thomson's book of poems by dubbing London 'The City of Dreadful Knights,' had perhaps in mind a certain wealthy magnate who was said to have remarked: 'I don't feel any different' (scandalous
tongues averred that 'no different' was his actual wording) 'now I'm a knight'; but Doyle was a knight of Nature's, as well as of his King's making. The Order of Knighthood, as well as he was honoured when he was bidden, 'Rise, Sir Arthur.' To a foe, in this case to an opponent, he manifested something of the chivalry of the Saxon and stainless King whose name he bore. I had said, of Doyle, that which some men would have held to be unforgivable, as when I wrote: 'By such an exhortation as "Nearly every woman is an undeveloped medium-let her try her powers!" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle threatens, in my opinion, and if his advice be followed, to become a public danger.' Yet he not only bore no resentment, but when next we met, greeted me with all the old cordiality, and laying a hand on my shoulder, said: 'There can never be any odium theologicum between you and me, Kemahan-isn't that so, old chap!'

Before leaving the subject of Spiritualism, may I quote a letter which, coming as it did from so militant an agnostic as the late Edward Clodd, not a little surprised me:

'MY DEAR KERNAHAN,
'Though you and I are old, and the best of friends, no two men could differ more widely about so-called religion. But I am moved to tell you that I picked up on a bookstall and read your little work on Spiritualism, and I must congratulate you on the way you marshal your evidence against Doyle. You get home every time.
'Always yours,
'EDWARD CLODD.'

I quote the letter here because I wish, in fairness, to say that if I got the better of Doyle in the controversy, that fact was due, not to any skill of mine, but to Doyle's transparent honesty. In a sense, he was a greater enemy to Spiritualism than I was. His expressed belief in the actual existence of Fairies, and the publication by him of alleged photographs of Fairies, clothes and all-the photographs might have been those of children arrayed for a fancy dress ball-and his frank admissions concerning the drunkenness of, and the frauds practised by certain paid mediums, and of the danger attending any dabbling in the Occult by the uninformed, were more damaging to his case, than was any word of mine, and were the chief weapons in my small armoury.

Not very long before Doyle's death, one of the younger school of writers said to me : 'I had the great luck to be introduced to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the other day. When my name, of which I did not suppose he had ever heard, was mentioned, he was so good as to say that he had read a work of mine and thought highly of it. I was immensely bucked, for I do not take him to be the sort of man to hand out bouquets all round.'

'Doyle,' I replied, 'is characteristically generous, and glad to say an appreciative word about the work of a fellow craftsman, young or old, known or unknown, but only when the appreciation is genuine. He is the soul of sincerity, and so far from being one of those cheap]y effusive and cheaply expansive persons who, as you say "hand out bouquets all round," he can, when his anger is aroused by cruelty or treachery, "hand out" not "bouquets," but blow as smashing as any prizefighter's. I would rather face a pistol at five paces, than face the blaze of anger, or the cold contempt in Doyle's eyes, had I done that which gave him just cause to think me a liar, a cad, or a traitor to his or my country.'

When Jerome K. Jerome sent me a book of his dedicated 'To my big-bodied, big-brained, and big-hearted friend, Conan Doyle,' I remember writing to Jerome: 'Thank you for the book, and I say "Bravo!" to the dedication. Your camera was truly focused when you took that happy snapshot of our friend. "Big" -big in everything-is the very
word for Conan Doyle.'

That was long ago, but I have never had cause to change my opinion. Had someone said to me: 'You are mistaken about Doyle. I have reason to know, and can produce evidence to prove that he has behaved shabbily in a certain matter,' I should have replied: 'It is you who are mistaken, and I will not insult a friend of mine by so much as looking at your so-called evidence. I do not say that Doyle may not have acted mistakenly in some matter, for he is not a little of a Don Quixote, in his knightly championship of forlorn hopes and bottom dogs. But, I do emphatically say that,
if all the facts were known, so far from showing Doyle in a discreditable light, they would be yet another proof of his chivalry, courage, disinterestedness and purity of motive, and perhaps of the way in which he spends himself unsparingly for some cause or some person in which or in whom his own great-heartedness has led him, perhaps mistakenly, to believe. Thank God! I have known men who keep high one's hope for the future of the race, who keep one's faith in one's fellow creatures sweet and unshaken and such a man is Arthur Conan Doyle.'

As I have told of the 'discovery' of Sherlock Holmes, the reader may be interested to hear of one instance when the creator of that great detective was at fault. Hearing from the Grant Allens that I was coming to spend a few days with them at their home, 'The Croft,' Hindhead, Doyle, whose own home, 'Undershaw,' was not far away, walked over on the evening of my arrival, that we might forgather, and a walk, during which he was to be of the company, was arranged for the following morning. Snow had fallen overnight, and, seeing bird footprints on the snow, he said jovially : 'You are a naturalist, Allen, so it is up to you to tell us by what bird those prints were made.' In the same leg-pulling spirit, Grant Allen replied, 'You are a detective, and a trail-tracer, Doyle, so it is up to you to draw your deductions, and tell us, among other things-the bird, by the by, was a pheasant-whether the footprints are those of a cock or a hen.'

Doyle stooped to examine the footprints closely and minutely. 'My first deduction,' he said, 'is that the bird must have been flying before it settled here, for this is where the prints begin, besides which, they are rather more sprawly caused by the drop, I suppose-than those which follow after when the bird was walking, and left a clear-cut impression on the snow. Am I right, thus far?'

'Right, thus far,' was the reply, 'but that's not answering my question about the bird's sex.' 'The hen,' mused Doyle aloud, 'is, I think, the smaller, and may, or may not leave a smaller footprint, but I couldn't say, offhand, whether these are on the large or on the small side. They seem to me about the same size that I have noticed on other occasions. If there were such a thing as a dropped feather somewhere, that would help me, for the hen's plumage is homely and the cock's gay. You are not trying to get a rise out of me, Allen, are you, on the strength of having spotted a dropped feather as we came along?' 

Allen shook his head. 'I've seen nothing in the way of a feather, or in any other way, and didn't know a pheasant had been here, till noticing those footprints. And I don't mind telling you that the footprints made by either a cock or a hen are practically the same, so far as I have observed, though I may be wrong. Now which was it-a cock or a hen?' 'Game-no pun about pheasants intended-to you,' was the reply, 'for I give it up; but how on earth do you know?'

'I should not have known, but for the snow,' was the answer. 'A cock pheasant-which this bird was-every now and then, as he walks, just touches the ground with the tip of his long tail. When I first saw the footprints, I followed them with my eyes to where they ran on ahead, and could just detect where the bird's tail had very slightly brushed the surface of the snow.' He moved on a few paces to point us to just such a mark on the snow as he had described. 'There you are,' he said. Again he walked on a little way, again to stop, and again to say, 'There you are!' 'We have been talking quietly,' he went on, 'and the snow has muffled our footst.eps. H you look ahead, you will see that the bird's footprints lead to those bushes on the right. He may be there now.' Then Allen clapped his hands smartly, and out of the bushes flapped a startled cock pheasant.

Allen was one of the most modest, and most lovable of men, and all the more so for his keen sense of humour. Turning to Doyle, he shrugged his shoulders in the approved Sherlock Holmes manner, and with just such a nonchalant, semi-contemptuous gesture, as one pictures the great detective making, Allen remarked: 'The solution of these supposed mysteries, is, I assure you, my dear and long-suffering Watson, as commonplace as it is simple-so simple as to be within the comprehension of a child '-and no one more enjoyed the dig at himself than did Sir Arthur-Sherlock-Holmes-Conan Doyle.

'I have to take the chair at a dinner to Dr. Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London,' Doyle said to me one day, 'and have never handled a bishop before-bishops are a bit out of my line. Sitting by, and talking to a man as his host, for a whole evening is easier, and conversation is helped, if one knows something about him. You have met Creighton, I think. What sort of a man is he?' 'A great scholar and historian-he is editor of the English Historical Review-for one thing,' I said. 'Than Swinburne, no one knows Elizabethan literature better, and he once said to me that Mandell Creighton's Life of Queen Elizabeth is the finest book on the subject ever written. Then there is Creighton, the preacher. When he is in the pulpit at Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's, you will see statesmen, men of science, and eminent men in all walks of life among the congregation. About Creighton the courtier and diplomat, I speak only from hearsay, but I am told he was a brilliant success, when in.some official role, he represented the Court of St. James's at the wedding of the Czar. In fact he is a many-sided man.'

'Thank you very much,' said Doyle. Then wagging his burly shoulders, he said in his somewhat throaty voice, 'The more sides a man has, the better, so long as he puts no "side" on.' As the reader knows, Doyle was himself a many-sided man, doctor, novelist, historian, song-writer, politician, traveller, playwright, lecturer, and sportsman; but never have I known a man who was-I will not say more free from, but wholly incapable of 'side' or any sort of literary affectation, as he. When Mr. Richard le Gallienne sent me his Religion of a Literary Man, I wrote him, and with Doyle in mind, 'Why not," The Religion of a Man "-that counts for most, and should come first-" of letters"! And why should a literary man have his own particular brand of religion? Let us hope your book is not followed by others, "The Faith of a Farmer," "The Beliefs of a Bicyclist," and so on. Somebody remarked recently that, in these days, as in all days, his own and masculine sex might be divided into men,  male beings and skunks.' Be that as it may, it is as a MAN that Conan Doyle most stands out in my memory.

Now to tum to another matter. In an Introduction which I contributed to Jerome K. Jerome: His Life and Work, by Mr. Alfred Moss, I wrote: 'Two of the best Christians I have ever known would not be so designated in the sense in which the Christian faith and creed are held by the Churches. I refer to Jerome K. Jerome, and Arthur Conan Doyle.' No one demurred because I had thus written of Jerome, but I received several letters of regret that I had thus written of Doyle. I stand by my assertion that Doyle was, in practice, a better Christian than are some of us who profess the Christian faith. In proof thereof, I instance two happenings both within my personal and positive knowledge.

A man whom Doyle had met only once, died unexpectedly, and before he had made provision for his wife and family. If I heard of the death, and in like sad circumstances, of an old friend, I hope I should do what was within my means to render assistance. I should not, I fear, have felt called upon to do so in the case of someone whom I had met only once. But Doyle wrote to the widow to say: 'Wills take a long time to prove'-he was aware that there was little enough to prove, and that any money advanced would in all probability never be repaid-'so please, in the meanwhile, let me be your banker for any money of which you may be in need,' or words to that effect.

In his public, that is to say, his professional life, Doyle was never once known to stoop to self-advertisement. He detested any and every form of self-advertisement by authors. Advertised, his books of course were, but only by the publishers whose legitimate business it was to make widely known the books, and the attractions of the books they were issuing. Doyle's share in the book's success as to do the best that was in him, but that done, he left the book, so far as he was concerned, to win the ear of the public wholly and solely on the merit of the work. So, too in his public life, he was the last man to advertise his own good deeds. I chanced to hear of the facts just related only because they were told to me by someone who had seen his letter. One wonders how many other instances of 'pure religion and undefiled,' how many other good deeds done the 'fatherless and widows' by Arthur Conan Doyle have gone all unrecorded.

Here is the second instance of his practical Christianity. He and I had a friend in common with whom we frequently forgathered, and invited to stay with 118 in our own homes. Doyle noticed, as he could hardly help noticing, that our friend never invited either of us to his own home, nor ever spoke of his own home life, Doyle never commented on the fact to me, nor I to him. In the reader's case, if a friend imparted a confidence-by the reader that confidence would be respected. On the other hand, if a friend withheld a confidence-from. the reader his friend's wish to withhold a confidence would meet with like respect, and with no comments or inquisitive inquiries made.

One day, when the three of us were together, our friend opened his heart. 'You, Doyle, and you, Kernahan,' he said, 'must have observed that, though I have stayed under the roof of both of you, I have never invited either of you, in return, to my own home. The reason is that for years I have had a drunken wife. God only knows how desperately -if only for my children's sake- I have striven to keep my ghastly secret. But a secret, I can keep it no more. From drink she has gone-how I hate to tell it!-to vice of another sort, and notwithstanding the fact that my children were in the house at the time. For their sake-I have no choice -I must divorce her.' As briefly as possible I have told all that need, thus far, be told. Even that much I should not have felt free to tell but for the fact that in those days, the evidence in Divorce cases was reported in the newspapers, and as everybody concerned is long since dead, no pain can be given to any one.

One other matter only there is to record. The next morning I sought out this friend of both of us at his office, and while I was there a letter from Doyle was delivered. I think I can give it, word for word, so vividly is it imprinted on my memory by the circumstances:
'MY DEAR OLD --,
'Kernahan and I were shocked by what you told us to-day, and feel deeply for you. In my doctoring days, I knew of more than one case like yours, and so know too how recklessly a drunken wife squanders her husband's money. You have enough to bear
as it is, for divorces are dirty businesses, and moreover, are not to be had for nothing, except, I believe, by paupers. You must at least be free from all money anxieties, so I am enclosing a cheque for £500. I should only have thrown it away on South Africans, so you need have no compunction about taking it. 

'Yours ever,
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE'

The recipient of that letter - I shall never forget his brokenhearted sobbing on reading it~ventually lost his reason. At no time a strong, and always a singularly sensitive man, his nerves were already shattered by shame and agony that his wife, the mother of his children, was a hopeless drunkard, and by his despairing efforts to keep so ghastly a secret from outside eyes. The publicity, to him a horror, of the Divorce proceedings did the rest, and not very long after he died in a madhouse.

I was thinking of the writer of those two letters, and of this chapter of rambling recollections, this morning, when during my before-breakfast run with my dog, I looked out towards Beachy Head. 'Just as that great headland juts out dominatingly, into the sea, dwarfing its immediate surroundings,' I said to myself, 'so Conan Doyle stands out in my memory as a very Headland of Honesty and of Helpfulness to others, among some of us, his contemporaries, with our small insincerities, our small meannesses, and our small self-seekings.'
COULSON KERNAHAN.

So we certainly can credit George Bettany for recommending 'A Study in Scarelet for publication', and we also need to thank his wife Jeanie Gwynne Bettany (1857-1941) for being the first to read it through, and comment it.

Another woman for us to toast!

Lots more to do on this topic.