Two decades ago, I pondered writing a book detailing Arthur’s many, many lies. I once mentioned aloud an imprudent title that just sprang to mind: “Arthur Conan Doyle Was a Big Fat Liar.” Since then, powerful forces have pressed me to use the title at the first opportunity, but I have always resisted. Arthur was certainly a large person, and he certainly was a self-serving liar fabulist, but many of us, myself included, tend to lose our svelte profiles as we age.
Beyond the cheap shot, the issue highlighted by the somewhat less crude title I settled on for this article is significant with respect to the soon-to-be heated dispute surrounding the authorship of the Sherlock Holmes adventures. As I wrote in the first book of my new series, Louise & Sherlock: A Scandal in Bohemia -
The evidence of Arthur's authorship is the usual. His name is on the title pages and the bylines. The few surviving manuscripts are mostly in his handwriting. He personally claimed credit for all of the stories, both in public and in his personal correspondence. History has granted him that credit. In the end, though, all that evidence hinges on Arthur's credibility, and Arthur has some serious problems in that regard. […]
A review of the family papers makes clear that Arthur was a fabulist. His biographers made light of it. "Conan Doyle was not above a little judicious literary embroidery," wrote one of them. "The letter will help to show how Doyle composed his articles. He was obviously free to enhance them," wrote another. "He also appears to have re-shaped his own experiences to suit the occasion."
Here, in this early article of this brand new Substack newsletter, I provide just four samples of Arthur’s prevarications. There are so many that choosing just four will be daunting, but I’ll manage somehow. I’ll begin with the one in which he bragged about his lying. He not only bragged about it, he bragged to his employer, his mother, and his family patron.
The Pestilent Quack
In 1879, while still a medical student, Arthur served as an assistant to Dr. Reginald Ratcliff Hoare of Birmingham. In a letter to his mother, Arthur boasted of lying about a neighboring doctor:
There is a pestilent little quack here, or rather a firm, Smith and Hues. The latter is a qualified man but a sleeping partner. Smith is the perfect type of quack. I have written out a most preposterous case and sent it to the Lancet in Hues' name. It is told most gravely and scientifically. If the Doctor sees anything about an eel in the Lancet that is the letter. R R is in ecstasies about it.
The "R R" to whom Arthur refers is Reginald Ratcliff, Dr. Hoare himself, Arthur’s employer. “The Doctor" to whom Arthur refers is Dr. Bryan Charles Waller, a family friend and patron. The Lancet is a highly regarded medical journal published still today. Its editors apparently did not find Arthur’s letter to be written "most gravely and scientifically," despite Arthur's high praise for his own writing. The journal wisely declined to print it.
Arthur was a cocksure young man. Though he was only a medical student, an assistant in Birmingham for less than a month, he deemed the neighboring Dr. Smith to be a quack in need of comeuppance. Arthur decided to correct a perceived shortcoming by use of fraud and defamation. Without compunction, Arthur bragged of his deed to Dr. Hoare, who reportedly received the news in encouraging fashion. Arthur bragged also to his mother, and requested that she relay his act of dishonesty to their family patron. Given Arthur’s lack of concern for any disapproval, we can presume that such behavior on his part was neither unexpected nor unrewarded.
Arthur Saves a Ship and Everyone Onboard
One of Arthur's late-in-life braggadocio lies is found in his autobiography, Memories and Adventures. After his internship with Dr. Hoare, Arthur went on to earn his medical degree, then signed on as ship's surgeon aboard the S. S. Mayumba for its voyage along the west coast of Africa. Arthur claimed to have saved the ship from disaster.
The next day, in vile and thick weather, with a strong sea running, we made our way down the Irish Sea. I shall always believe that I may have saved the ship from disaster, for as I was standing near the officer of the watch I suddenly caught sight of a lighthouse standing out in a rift in the fog. It was on the port side and I could not imagine how any lighthouse could be on the port side of the ship which was, as I knew, well down the Irish coast. I hate to be an alarmist, so I simply touched the mate's sleeve, pointed to the dim outline of the lighthouse, and said: "Is that all right?" He fairly jumped as his eye lit upon it and he gave a yell to the men at the wheel and rang a violent signal to the engine-room. The lighthouse, if I remember right, was the Tuskar, and we were heading right into a rock promontory which was concealed by the rain and fog.
Arthur's anecdote is pure fiction, a bold-faced lie. His contemporaneous account of the passage, provided in an October 1881 letter to a family friend, offers a far less novelistic, far less heroic version.
Here goes for an account of all we have done, said and suffered—more particularly the last, though really it all amounts to very little—I could write a large and interesting book about what we have not seen, and done. We have not seen shoals of porpoises or flying fish, which are the proper things to see on such voyages, neither have we seen sea serpents or water-spouts or drifting wood from wrecks—in fact we have been done out of all amusements. […] That evening we sighted the Tuskar light on the Waterford coast—ah, the dear old country, excuse a pensive tear.
Arthur Does Photography
More to the he-was-a-liar-so-we-should-question-his-authorship point, Arthur took credit for works he did not write. His technical essays for the British Journal of Photography were almost certainly ghostwritten by his life-long friend and skilled photographer, William Kinnimond Burton.
In The Unknown Conan Doyle: Essays on Photography (1982), Richard Lancelyn Green and John Gibson hint at their reservations about Arthur’s statements in the articles published under his name.
Doyle does not appear to have belonged to any photographic society, nor to have known many of the leading photographers of the day. There is, though, a proposed visit which is mentioned in a letter to Mrs. Drummond which is also of interest as it throws some light on his self‐designed tripod. That, it seems, existed more tangibly on paper than it did elsewhere. [...] The letter will help to show how Doyle composed his articles. He was obviously free to enhance them with reports of spectacular photographs and success in difficult shots. He also appears to have re‐shaped his own experiences to suit the occasion.
“Re‐shaping one’s own experiences” seems preferable to “falsifying articles for incremental fame and fortune.”
None of Arthur's photographs or negatives from the time are known to exist today. Even his articles for the British Journal of Photography were all narrative; they included not a single photograph. Green and Gibson fretted about their absence.
No photographs by Doyle are known to exist from this period, though there is one which shows Bush Villa, his house in Southsea, which may be by him (or possibly of him). Either the photographs did not exist, in which case he demonstrated an extremely fertile imagination, or they did exist as stated but were subsequently either lost or destroyed by chemical decomposition.
An “extremely fertile imagination” seems preferable to “propensity for journalistic fraud.” Adopting Green and Gibson's polite verbiage, Arthur’s imagination was not just fertile, but exceptionally fertile. His essays on photography included detailed discussions of equipment that he could not have owned and sophisticated techniques that he could not have employed. Consider the following excerpts from his various articles:
I selected for the journey a folding, bellows‐body, half‐plate camera, by Meagher, with half‐a‐dozen double backs. These I had made according to the American plan, with the slides drawing entirely out.
The plates were of my own manufacture. They were made by the boiling method of our worthy chief Editor, and, being exquisitely sensitive, they enabled me to get many instantaneous exposures. [...} They are lighter, less expensive, less liable to admit light owing to the fact of their not opening in the centre, and, finally, are far more easy to manage when there is any wind. The latter may seem rather a fanciful advantage at first sight, but I can recall instances in my own modest photographic career where great events hung on this single fact.
The lenses which I took were the following: – First, a wide‐angle "landscape" lens, which I used whenever I could, always bearing in mind that this form is comparatively slow and the angle limited. I find the so‐called "single" lens gives, cæteris paribus, a more brilliant picture than is given by any other. Secondly, I took a "symmetrical," to be used where a large angle was desirable. Thirdly, a "rapid rectilinear" of long focus, which would come useful where instantaneous effects were needed, as also in groups of portraits. I took no "portrait" lens, as with modern dry plates and tropical sunlight I consider such to be quite unnecessary.
I have found no method of emulsification so good as that recommended by Mr. W. K. Burton, but not, I believe, originated by him. This process consists in dropping the nitrate of silver in crystals into the bromide solution and shaking until the crystals are entirely dissolved. The emulsion thus formed will always be found to be ruby red by transmitted light.
The W. K. Burton mentioned throughout Arthur's photography articles was his close friend William Kinnimond Burton. Arthur, before being sent away to school, had lived in the home of Burton’s aunt, and Arthur dedicated one of his novels to his friend Burton. An engineer and a photographer, William Kinnimond Burton published several technical works on photography. He spent most of his career in Japan, helping solve their sanitation problems and introducing their culture to the West through his photojournalism. His stature was such that there can be little doubt of him being the principal source of Arthur’s knowledge of photography. He may have contributed directly by writing some or all of Arthur’s photographic articles. What is all but certain is that only Burton could convince The British Journal of Photography to pay for multiple photograph‐free articles from anyone so unaccomplished as Arthur.
The question is not whether Arthur could write of photography, it is whether his articles on the subject were truthful as represented. Financial considerations alone suggest otherwise; Arthur simply lacked the money necessary to purchase the sophisticated photographic equipment and supplies that he supposedly owned in abundance. Neither did Arthur have the time or money necessary to support the photographic lifestyle that he described as a "modest career." During the period in which he wrote his photography essays, Arthur still relied on his mother to supplement the meager income from his fledgling medical practice.
“I have no money,” he added as a pleading postscript to one letter sent to a mother who was struggling with her own financial difficulties. Arthur’s father had been institutionalized for alcoholism, epilepsy and resultant behavioral issues. The mother was therefore left to subsidize or directly care for her seven surviving children.
Not until 1891, six years after his last photographic essay had been published, was Arthur able to raise sufficient funds to purchase the most rudimentary equipment. “I sold my eye instruments for £6.10.0,” he wrote his mother, “with which I shall buy photographic apparatus, so we may have been able to start a hobby without any outlay.”
That letter privately belied what Arthur publicly claimed. One does “start a hobby” involving an area in which one is already expert, already owns expensive equipment, already has access to sophisticated facilities, and already owns a large collection of self‐created photographs.
Arthur Invents the Character-Based Short Story Series
Arthur set up his first medical practice in Southsea, a nice suburb of Portsmouth. There he allegedly first met Louise Hawkins, and the two of them were soon married after an allegedly brief courtship. There, Arthur allegedly wrote the first two Holmes adventure, the novels A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. Arthur and Louise then moved to Vienna so that Arthur could “study the eye” in preparation for setting up as a London oculist. We pick up the story there, in Arthur’s Memories and Adventures.
We took rooms in Montague Place, and I went forth to search for some place where I could put up my plate as an oculist. […] I searched the doctors' quarters and at last found suitable accommodation at 2 Devonshire Place, which is at the top of Wimpole Street and close to the classical Harley Street. There for £120 a year I got the use of a front room with part use of a waiting-room. I was soon to find that they were both waiting-rooms, and now I know that it was better so.
Every morning I walked from the lodgings at Montague Place, reached my consulting-room at ten and sat there until three or four, with never a ring to disturb my serenity. Could better conditions for reflection and work be found? It was ideal, and so long as I was thoroughly unsuccessful in my professional venture there was every chance of improvement in my literary prospects Therefore when I returned to the lodgings at tea-time I bore my little sheaves with me, the first-fruits of a considerable harvest.
A number of monthly magazines were coming out at that time, notable among which was "The Strand," then as now under the editorship of Greenhough Smith. Considering these various journals with their disconnected stories it had struck me that a single character running through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine. On the other hand, it had long seemed to me that the ordinary serial might be an impediment rather than a help to a magazine, since, sooner or later, one missed one number and afterwards it had lost all interest. Clearly the ideal compromise was a character which carried through, and yet instalments which were each complete in themselves, so that the purchaser was always sure that he could relish the whole contents of the magazine. I believe that I was the first to realize this and "The Strand Magazine" the first to put it into practice.
Looking round for my central character I felt that Sherlock Holmes, whom I had already handled in two little books, would easily lend himself to a succession of short stories. These I began in the long hours of waiting in my consulting-room. Greenhough Smith liked them from the first, and encouraged me to go ahead with them. My literary affairs had been taken up by that king of agents, A. P. Watt, who relieved me of all the hateful bargaining, and handled things so well that any immediate anxiety for money soon disappeared. It was as well, for not one single patient had ever crossed the threshold of my room.
It’s a quaint story, but it’s a big fat lie. When writing his autobiography, circa 1924, Arthur apparently assumed that no one would remember or discover the interview he gave in 1892 to World: A Journal for Men and Women. In that interview, given the year following his move to new professional quarters, Arthur explained that he had to give up the medical practice because it left him too little time for writing.
[Arthur] very soon found out the evident incompatibility between the desk and the consulting‐room. He was compelled to attend his patients in the morning, and spend most of the afternoon at the [Royal Westminster Ophthalmic] hospital, so no time remained for his writing but a portion of the night. For months he struggled to combine the two wholly dissimilar avocations; but in the end his health began to give way, and, after mature consideration, he resolved "to throw physic [medicine] to the dogs," and to rely entirely on the profits of his books and articles."
Arthur’s autobiographical legend is falsified even more forcefully by a letter sent to him by his recently acquired literary agent, A. P. Watt. In that letter, Watt acknowledged receipt of A Scandal in Bohemia, the first Sherlock Holmes short story. Watt's letter is dated 31 March, the day before Arthur moved into his new office.
I am in receipt of yours of today's date and will take the story which has also arrived to the Strand Magazine, as none of the other periodicals can use more than 7,000 words at the outside. I note that you propose to write a series, and that you will entrust the sale of it to us.
The first Sherlock Holmes short story to be published, A Scandal in Bohemia, was completed before Arthur moved into his office. Why would he lie about that? What was he trying to hide?
For considerably more detail about that first Holmes short story, you might consider the first book in my shiny new series, Louis & Sherlock: A Scandal in Bohemia, available only on Amazon.