Memories and Adventures

by Arthur Conan Doyle

I have not often occupied a chair among the seats of the mighty. My life has been too busy and too pre-occupied to allow me to stray far from my beaten path. The mention of the Prince, however, reminds me of the one occasion when I was privileged to entertain—or to attempt to entertain—the present Queen. It was at a small dinner to which I was invited by the courtesy of Lord Midleton whose charming wife, once Madeleine Stanley, daughter of Lady Helier, I could remember since her girlhood. Upon this occasion the Prince and Princess came in after dinner, the latter sitting alone at one end of the room with a second chair beside her own, which was occupied successively by the various gentlemen who were to be introduced to her. I was led up in due course, made my bow, and sat down at her request. I confess that I found it heavy going at first, for I had heard somewhere that Royalty has to make the first remark, and had it been the other way there was such a gulf between us that I should not have known where to begin. However she was very pleasant and gracious and began asking me some questions about my works which brought me on to very easy ground. Indeed, I became so interested in our talk that I was quite disappointed when Mr. John Morley was led up, and I realized that it was time for me to vacate the chair.

There was another amusing incident on that eventful evening. I had been asked to take in Lady Curzon, whose husband, then Viceroy of India, had been unable to attend. The first couple had passed in and there was a moment’s hesitation as to who should go next, but Lady Curzon and I were nearest the door, so possibly with some little encouragement from the lady we filed through. I thought nothing of the incident but some great authority upon these matters came to me afterwards in great excitement. “Do you know,” he said, “that you have established a precedent and solved one of the most difficult and debatable matters of etiquette that has ever caused ill-feeling in British Society.” “The Lord Chancellor and the College of Heralds should be much obliged to you, for you have given them a definite lead. There has never been so vexed a question as to whether a Vice-reine when she is away from the country where she represents royalty shall take precedence over a Duchess. There was a Duchess in the room, but you by your decided action have settled the matter for ever.” So who shall say that I have done nothing in my life?

Of the distinguished lights of the law whom I have met from time to time I think that Sir Henry Hawkins—then become Lord Bampton—made the most definite impression. I met him at a week-end gathering at Cliveden, when Mr. Astor was our host. On the first night at dinner, before the party had shaken down into mutual acquaintance, the ex-judge, very old and as bald as an ostrich egg, was seated opposite, and was wreathed with smiles as he made himself agreeable to his neighbour. His appearance was so jovial that I remarked to the lady upon my left: “It is curious to notice the appearance of our vis-à-vis and to contrast it with his reputation,” alluding to his sinister record as an inexorable judge. She seemed rather puzzled by my remark, so I added: “Of course you know who he is.” “Yes,” said she, “his name is Conan Doyle and he writes novels.” I was hardly middle-aged at the time and at my best physically, so that I was amused at her mistake, which arose from some confusion in the list of guests. I put my dinner card up against her wine-glass, so after that we got to know each other.

Hawkins was a most extraordinary man, and so capricious that one never knew whether one was dealing with Jekyll or with Hyde. It was certainly Hyde when he took eleven hours summing up in the Penge case, and did all a man could do to have all four of the prisoners condemned to death. Sir Edward Clarke was so incensed at his behaviour on this occasion that he gave notice when Hawkins retired from the bench that if there were the usual complimentary ceremonies he would protest. So they were dropped.

I might, on the other hand, illustrate the Jekyll side of him by a story which he told me with his own lips. A prisoner had a pet mouse. One day the brute of a warder deliberately trod upon it. The prisoner caught up his dinner knife and dashed at the warder, who only just escaped, the knife stabbing the door as it closed behind him. Hawkins as judge wanted to get the man off, but the attempt at murder was obvious and the law equally clear. What was he to do? In his charge to the jury he said: “If a man tries to kill another in a way which is on the face of it absurd, it becomes a foolish rather than a criminal act. If, for example, a man in London discharged a pistol to hurt a man in Edinburgh, we could only laugh at such an offence. So also when a man stabs an iron-plated door while another man is at the other side of it we cannot take it seriously.” The jury, who were probably only too glad to follow such a lead, brought in a verdict of “Not guilty.”

Another distinguished man of the law who left a very clear impression upon my mind was Sir Francis Jeune, afterwards Lord St. Helier. I attended several of Lady Jeune’s famous luncheon parties, which were quite one of the outstanding institutions of London, like Gladstone’s breakfasts in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. I am indebted to this lady for very many kind actions. Her husband always impressed me with his gentle wisdom and with his cultivated taste. He told me that if every copy of Horace were destroyed he thought that he could reconstruct most of it from memory. He presided over the Divorce Courts, and I remember upon one occasion I said to him: “You must have a very low opinion of human nature, Sir Francis, since the worst side of it is for ever presented towards you.” “On the contrary,” said he very earnestly, “my experience in the Divorce Courts has greatly raised my opinion of humanity. There is so much chivalrous self-sacrifice, and so much disposition upon the part of every one to make the best of a bad business that it is extremely edifying.” This view seemed to me to be worth recording.

CHAPTER XXIV

SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF SPORT

Racing—Shooting—A Fish Story—Boxing—Past and Present—Carpentier and France—The Reno Fight—Football—Golf with the Sirdar—Billiards—Cricket—W. G. Grace—Queer Experiences—Tragic Matches—Humiliation—Success in Holland—Barrie’s Team—A Precedent—Motor Accidents—Prince Henry Tour—Aviation—The Balloon and the Aeroplane—Ski—Over a Precipice—Rifle Shooting.

It is here—before we approach what Maxwell has called “The Great Interruption”—that I may perhaps break my narrative in order to interpolate a chapter upon the general subject of my experiences of sport, which have taken up an appreciable part of my life, added greatly to its pleasure, and which can be better treated as a whole than recounted seriatim. It may best be fitted in at this spot as my sporting life one way and another may be said to have reached its modest zenith about that time.