Arthur Conan-Doyle born 1859-1930

About:

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland to an Irish Catholic family. He was sent away to school in England to the draconian Stonyhurst College. This was partly to give the boy a good Jesuit education, one which was to destroy his faith, and partly to get him out of the way of his increasingly demented father. His first job on leaving Stonyhurst was apparently to return to Edinburgh to sign his father’s committal papers.

He studied medicine at Edinburgh University and in spite of colleagues of the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and J M Barrie, was not entirely gripped by his studies there. An adventurer at heart, he spent a year in the middle of his studies as a ship’s surgeon on an Arctic whaler.

Following a disastrous stint in the practice of a crooked doctor in Plymouth, later to re-surface in The Stark Munro Letters, and on the verge of bankruptcy Doyle set up practice in Portsmouth. Not particularly successful as a medic, Doyle turned to writing stories and in 1887 A Study in Scarlet was published introducing the character that was to dominate his literary life, Mr Sherlock Holmes.

He wrote prolifically, essays, stories, novels and political pamphlets. It was one of these, in defence of Britain’s universally condemned conduct in the Boer War which gained him his knighthood in 1905, although there was a rumour at the time that Edward VII was such a Holmes fan that he put Conan Doyle on the Honours List in order to encourage him to write some more stories. He was made Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey and ran twice, unsuccessfully, for Parliamentary seats in Scotland.

Conan-Doyle’s wife Louisa became progressively ill throughout the early years of the 1900’s and looking after her, dealing with the eventual death of his father and trying to reconcile a deep but loyally unfulfilled love for the young Scot Jean Leckie, sent Doyle into a deep depression. He only resurfaced when, after the death of his wife, he allowed himself to marry Jean in 1907. His experiences in the previous few years had led his developing a strong belief in the occult and from then on he became a champion of Spiritualism which would live with him for the rest of his life.

He moved, with Leckie and his three children, to a house in Crowborough, East Sussex, where they lived very contentedly, with Conan-Doyle writing to fund the quarter of a million pounds he was to spend on his championing of occult causes.

Conan-Doyle was found in the summer of July 1930, clutching his heart and reputedly with a snowdrop in his hand. His last words were to Jean, to whom he turned his head, saying “You are wonderful”.