Memories and Adventures

by Arthur Conan Doyle

I well remember that death-bed of Grant Allen’s. He was an agnostic of a type which came very near atheism, though in his private life an amiable and benevolent man. Believing what he did, the approach of death must have offered rather a bleak prospect, and as he had paroxysms of extreme pain the poor fellow seemed very miserable. I had often argued the case with him, I from a Theistic and he from a negative point of view, but I did not intrude my opinions or disturb his mind at that solemn moment. Death-bed changes, though some clergy may rejoice in them, are really vain things. His brain, however, was as clear as ever, and his mind was occupied with all manner of strange knowledge, which he imparted in the intervals of his pain, in the curious high nasal voice which was characteristic. I can see him now, his knees drawn up to ease internal pain, and his long thin nose and reddish-grey goatee protruding over the sheet, while he croaked out: “Byzantine art, my dear Doyle, was of three periods, the middle one roughly coinciding with the actual fall of the Roman Empire. The characteristics of the first period——” and so on, until he would give a cry, clasp his hands across his stomach, and wait till the pain passed before resuming his lecture. His dear little wife nursed him devotedly, and mitigated the gloom of those moments which can be made the very happiest in life if one understands what lies before one. One thinks, as a contrast, of Dr. Hodgson’s impatient cry, “I can hardly wait for death!”

Grant Allen’s strong opinions in print, and a certain pleasure he took in defending outside positions, gave quite a false view of his character, which was gentle and benignant. I remember his coming to a fancy dress ball which we gave in the character of a Cardinal, and in that guise all the quiet dignity of the man seemed to come out and you realized how much our commonplace modern dress disguises the real man. He used to tell with great amusement how a couple, who afterwards became close friends, came first to call, and how as they waited on the doorstep the wife said to the husband: “Remember, John, if he openly blasphemes, I leave the room.” He had, I remember, very human relations with the maids who took a keen interest in their employer’s scientific experiments. On one occasion these were connected with spiders, and the maid rushed into the drawing-room and cried: “Oh, sir, Araminta has got a wasp.” Araminta was the name given to the big spider which he was observing at the time.

Grant Allen had no actual call to write fiction, but his brain was agile enough to make some sort of job of anything to which it turned. On the other hand, as a popular scientist he stood alone, or shared the honour with Samuel Laing. His only real success in fiction was the excellent short story “John Creedy,” where he combined science with fiction, with remarkable results.

At the time when I and so many others turned to letters there was certainly a wonderful vacancy for the new-comer. The giants of old had all departed. Thackeray, Dickens, Charles Reade and Trollope were memories. There was no great figure remaining save Hardy. The rising novelist was Mrs. Humphry Ward, who was just beginning her career with “Robert Elsmere,” the first of that series of novels which will illuminate the later Victorian era more clearly than any historian ever can do. I think it was Hodgkin who said, when he read “Count Robert of Paris”: “Here have I been studying Byzantium all my life, and I never understood it until this blessed Scotch lawyer came along.” That is the special prerogative of imagination. Trollope and Mrs. Ward have the whole Victorian civilization dissected and preserved.

Then there were Meredith, unintelligible to most, and Walter Besant. There was Wilkie Collins, too, with his fine stories of mystery, and finally there was James Payn.

Payn was much greater than his books. The latter were usually rather mechanical, but to get at the real man one has to read such articles as his “Literary Reminiscences,” and especially his “Backwater of Life.” He had all that humorous view which Nature seems to give as a compensation to those whose strength is weak. Had Payn written only essays he would have rivalled Charles Lamb. I knew him best in his latter days, when he was crippled with illness, and his poor fingers so twisted with rheumatic arthritis that they seemed hardly human. He was intensely pessimistic as to his own fate. “Don’t make any mistake, Doyle, death is a horrible thing—horrible! I suffer the agonies of the damned!” But five minutes later he would have his audience roaring with laughter, and his own high treble laugh would be the loudest of all.

His own ailments were frequently a source of mirth. I remember how he described the breaking of a blood-vessel in Bournemouth and how they carried him home on a litter. He was dimly conscious of the fir-woods through which he passed. “I thought it was my funeral, and that they had done me well in the matter of plumes.” When he told a story he was so carried away by his sense of humour that he could hardly get the end out, and he finished up in a kind of scream. An American had called upon him at some late hour and had discoursed upon Assyrian tablets. “I thought they were something to eat,” he screamed. He was an excellent whist player, and the Baldwin Club used to send three members to his house on certain days so that the old fellow should not go without his game. This game was very scientific. He would tell with delight how he asked some novice: “Do you play the penultimate?” To which the novice answered: “No—but my brother plays the American organ.”

Many of my generation of authors had reason to love him, for he was a human and kindly critic. His writing however, was really dreadful. It was of him that the story was told that an author handed one of his letters to a chemist for a test. The chemist retired for a time and then returned with a bottle and demanded half a crown. Better luck attended the man who received an illegible letter from a railway director. He used it as a free pass upon the line. Payn used to joke about his own writing, but it was a very real trouble when one could not make out whether he had accepted or rejected one’s story. There was one letter in which I could only read the words “infringement of copyright.” He was very funny when he described the work of the robust younger school. “I have received a story from ——” he said, “5,000 words, mostly damns.”

I knew Sir Henry Thompson, the famous surgeon, very well, and was frequently honoured by an invitation to his famous octave dinners, at which eight carefully chosen male guests were always the company. They always seemed to me to be the most wonderful exhibitions of unselfishness, for Thompson was not allowed any alcohol, or anything save the most simple viands. Possibly, however, like Meredith and the bottle of burgundy, he enjoyed some reflex pleasure from the enjoyment of others. He had been a wonderful viveur and judge of what was what, and I fear that I disappointed him, for I was much more interested in the conversation than the food, and it used to annoy me when some argument was interrupted in order to tell us that it was not ordinary ham but a Westphalian wild boar that we were eating and that it had been boiled in wine for precisely the right time prescribed by the best authorities. But it was part of his wonderful unselfish hospitality to make his guests realize exactly what it was that was set before them. I have never heard more interesting talk than at these male gatherings, for it is notorious that though ladies greatly improve the appearance of a feast they usually detract from the quality of the talk. Few men are ever absolutely natural when there are women in the room.

There was one special dinner, I fancy it was the hundredth of the series, which was particularly interesting as the Prince of Wales, now George V, was one of the eight, and gave us a most interesting account of the voyage round the world from which he had just returned. Of the rest of the company I can only recall Sir Henry Stanley, the traveller, and Sir Crichton Browne. Twenty years later I met the King when he visited a trade exhibition, and I attended as one of the directors of Tuck’s famous postcard firm. He at once said: “Why, I have not seen you since that pleasant dinner when you sat next to me at Sir Henry Thompson’s.” It seemed to me to be a remarkable example of the royal gift of memory.