Memories and Adventures

by Arthur Conan Doyle

That the only place for swords, lances and all the frippery of the past was a museum. Bayonets also are very questionable.

That cavalry could not divide their allegiance between rifle and sword since entirely different ground and tactics are needed for each, the swordsman looking for level sward, the rifleman looking for cover. Therefore all cavalry should at once become Mounted Rifles.

That the very heaviest guns of our fortresses or battleships would be transported by road and used in the field in our next campaign.

That field guns must take cover exactly as riflemen do.

That the Yeomanry, a very expensive force, should be turned into a Cyclist organization.

In view of the fine work done by the Yeomanry, especially in the Eastern deserts, I should reconsider the last item, and the bayonet question is debatable, but all the rest will stand. I stressed the fact also that the period of military training is placed too high, and that an excellent army could be rapidly vamped up if you had the right men. This also was proved by the war.

I remember a debate which I attended as to the proper arms and use of cavalry. The cavalry were there in force, all manner of gallant fellows, moustached and debonnaire, inclined to glare at those who would disarm them. Sir Taubman-Goldie was in the chair. Three of us, all civilians, upheld the unpopular view that they should lose all their glory and become sombre but deadly riflemen. It is curious now to record that the three men were Erskine Childers, Lionel Amery and myself. Childers was shot at dawn as a traitor to Ireland as well as to Britain, Amery became First Lord of the Admiralty, and I write this memoir. I remember Amery’s amusing comparison when he twitted the cavalry with wishing to retain the arme blanche simply because their Continental antagonists would have it. “If you fight a rhinoceros,” he said, “you don’t want to tie a horn on your nose.” It is an interesting commentary upon this discussion that on one morning during the war there were duels between two separate squadrons of British and German cavalry. The first two squadrons, who were Lancers, rode through each other’s ranks twice with loss on either side and no conclusive result. In the second case German Lancers charged British Hussars, who dismounted, used their carbines, and simply annihilated the small force which attacked them.

When my immediate preoccupations after the war had been got rid of, I settled down to attempt some literary work upon a larger and more ambitious scale than the Sherlock Holmes or Brigadier Gerard stories which had occupied so much of my time. The result was “Sir Nigel,” in which I reverted to the spacious days of the “White Company,” and used some of the same characters. “Sir Nigel” represents in my opinion my high-water mark in literature, and though that mark may be on sand, still an author knows its comparative position to the others. It received no particular recognition from critics or public, which was, I admit, a disappointment to me. In England versatility is looked upon with distrust. You may write ballad tunes or you may write grand opera, but it cannot be admitted that the same man may be master of the whole musical range and do either with equal success.

In 1906 my wife passed away after the long illness which she had borne with such exemplary patience. Her end was painless and serene. The long fight had ended at last in defeat, but at least we had held the vital fort for thirteen years after every expert had said that it was untenable. For some time after these days of darkness I was unable to settle to work, until the Edalji case came suddenly to turn my energies into an entirely unexpected channel.

It was in the year 1907 that this notorious case took up much of my time, but it was not wasted, as it ended, after much labour, in partially rectifying a very serious miscarriage of justice. The facts of the case were a little complex and became more so as the matter proceeded. George Edalji was a young law student, son of the Reverend S. Edalji, the Parsee Vicar of the parish of Great Wyrley, who had married an English lady. How the Vicar came to be a Parsee, or how a Parsee came to be the Vicar, I have no idea. Perhaps some Catholic-minded patron wished to demonstrate the universality of the Anglican Church. The experiment will not, I hope, be repeated, for though the Vicar was an amiable and devoted man, the appearance of a coloured clergyman with a half-caste son in a rude, unrefined parish was bound to cause some regrettable situation.