Memories and Adventures

by Arthur Conan Doyle

The pitcher is the man who commands the highest salary and has mastered the hardest part of the game. His pace is remarkable, far faster, I should say, than any bowling; but of course it is a throw, and as such would not be possible in the cricket field. I had one uneasy moment when I was asked in Canada to take the bat and open a baseball game. The pitcher, fortunately, was merciful, and the ball came swift but true. I steadied myself by trying to imagine that it was a bat which I held in my grasp and that this was a full toss, which asked to be hit over the ropes. Fortunately, I got it fairly in the middle and it went on its appointed way, whizzing past the ear of a photographer, who expected me to pat it. I should not care to have to duplicate the performance—nor would the photographer.

I took the opportunity when I was in New York to inspect the two famous prisons, The Tombs and Sing Sing. The Tombs is in the very heart of the city, and a gloomy, ill-boding place it is when seen from without. Within it is equally dismal. I walked round in a somewhat shamefaced way, for it makes you feel so when you encounter human suffering which you cannot relieve. Warders and prisoners seemed however to be cheerful enough, and there was an off-hand way of doing things which seemed strange after our rigid methods. A Chinese prisoner, for example, was standing at the bottom of the lift, and I heard the warder shout through the tube, “Have you got room for another Chink in number three?” I had a talk with one strange Englishman who was barred in like a wild beast. He spoke of the various prisons, of which he had a wide acquaintance, exactly as if they were hotels which he was recommending or condemning. “Toronto is a very poor show. The food is bad. I hope I may never see Toronto Gaol again. Detroit is better. I had quite a pleasant time in Detroit.” And so on. He spoke and looked like a gentleman, but I could quite imagine, in spite of his genial manner, that he was a dangerous crook. When I left him he said: “Well, bye-bye! Sorry you have to go! We can’t all be out and about, can we?”

In the same week I went to Sing Sing, the State Penitentiary, which is some twenty miles from the city on the banks of the Hudson. It is an ancient building, dating from the middle of last century, and it certainly should be condemned by a rich and prosperous community. By a strange coincidence the convicts were having one of their few treats in the year that day, and I was able to see them all assembled together in the great hall, listening to a music-hall troupe from New York. Poor devils, all the forced, vulgar gaiety of the songs and the antics of half-clad women must have provoked a terrible reaction in their minds! Many of them had, I observed, abnormalities of cranium or of features which made it clear that they were not wholly responsible for their actions. There was a good sprinkling of coloured men among them. Here and there I noticed an intelligent and even a good face. One wondered how they got there.

I was locked up afterwards in one of the cells—seven feet by four—and I was also placed in the electrocution chair, a very ordinary, stout, cane-bottomed seat, with a good many sinister wires dangling round it. I had a long talk with the Governor, who seemed in himself to be a humane man, but terribly hampered by the awful building which he had to administer.

One morning of early June “my Lady Sunshine” and I—(if I may be allowed to quote the charmingly appropriate name which the New York Press had given to my wife) left New York for Parkman Land, which I had long wished to explore. We were glad to get away as we had been considerably harassed by the ubiquitous and energetic American reporter.

This individual is really, in nine cases out of ten, a very good fellow, and if you will treat him with decent civility he will make the best of you with the public. It is absurd for travellers to be rude to him, as is too often the attitude of the wandering Briton. The man is under orders from his paper, and if he returns without results it is not a compliment upon his delicacy which will await him. He is out to see you and describe you, and if he finds you an ill-tempered, cantankerous curmudgeon, he very naturally says so and turns out some excellent spicy reading at your expense. The indignant Briton imagines that this is done in revenge. The reporter would not be human if it did not amuse him to do it, but it very often represents the exact impression which the vituperative traveller has made upon the pressman, himself as often as not an overworked and highly-strung man.

Reminiscences of interviews are occasionally amusing. I can remember that on my previous visit I was approached one night by an interviewer in a very marked state of intoxication. He was so drunk that I wondered what in the world he would make of his subject, and I bought his paper next day to see. To my amusement I found that I had made the worst possible impression upon him. He had found no good in me at all. He may even have attributed to me his own weakness, like the Scotch toper who said: “Sandy drank that hard that by the end of the evening I couldn’t see him.”

To return to Parkman Land. I am surprised to find how few Americans and fewer Canadians there are who appreciate that great historian at his true worth. I wonder whether any man of letters has ever devoted himself to a task with such whole-hearted devotion as Parkman. He knew the old bloody frontier as Scott knew the border marches. He was soaked in New England tradition. He prepared himself for writing about Indians by living for months in their wigwams. He was intimate with old French life, and he spent some time in a religious house that he might catch something of the spirit which played so great a part in the early history of Canada. On the top of all this he had the well-balanced, unprejudiced mind of the great chronicler, and he cultivated a style which was equally removed from insipidity and from affectation. As to his industry and resolution, they are shown by the fact that he completed his volumes after he had been stricken by blindness. It is hard to name any historian who has such an equipment as this. From his “Pioneers of the New World” to his “Conspiracy of Pontiac” I have read his twelve volumes twice over, and put some small reflection of them into my “Refugees.”

We explored not only the beautiful, tragic Lake George, but also its great neighbour Lake Champlain, almost as full of historical reminiscence. Upon this, level with the head of the smaller lake, stood Ticonderoga, the chief seat of the French Canadian power. Some five miles separate it from Lake George, up which the British came buzzing whenever they were strong enough to do so. Once in front of the palisades of Ticonderoga, they met with heavy defeat, and yet once again, by the valour of the newly-enrolled Black Watch, they swept the place off the map. I wonder if Stevenson had actually been there before he wrote his eerie haunting ballad—the second finest of the sort, in my opinion, in our literature. It is more than likely, since he spent some time in the neighbouring Adirondacks. Pious hands were restoring the old fort of Ticonderoga, much of which has been uncovered. All day we skirted Lake Champlain, into which the old French explorer first found his way, and where he made the dreadful mistake of mixing in Indian warfare, which brought the whole bloodthirsty vendetta of the five nations upon the young French settlements. Up at the head of the lake we saw Plattsburg, where the Americans gained a victory in the war of 1812. The sight of these battle-fields, whether they mark British or American successes, always fills me with horror. If the war of 1776 was, as I hold, a glorious mistake, that of 1812 was a senseless blunder. Had neither occurred, the whole of North America would now be one magnificent undivided country, pursuing its own independent destiny, and yet united in such unblemished ties of blood and memory to the old country that each could lean at all times upon the other. It is best for Britishers, no doubt, that we should never lean upon anything bigger than ourselves. But I see no glory in these struggles, and little wisdom in the statesmen who waged them. Among them they split the race from base to summit, and who has been the gainer? Not Britain, who was alienated from so many of her very best children. Not America, who lost Canada and had on her hands a civil war which a United Empire could have avoided. Ah well, there is a controlling force somewhere, and the highest wisdom is to believe that all things are ordered for the best.

About evening we crossed the Canadian frontier, the Richelieu River, down which the old Iroquois scalping parties used to creep, gleaming coldly in the twilight. There is nothing to show where you have crossed that border. There is the same sort of country, the same cultivation, the same plain wooden houses. Nothing was changed save that suddenly I saw a little old ensign flying on a gable, and it gives you a thrill when you have not seen it for a time.