THE MOORISH ROOM AT 32 ADDISON MANSIONS.
(From the Painting by Yoshio Markino.)

Besides Japanese, we had many Indian visitors.

CHAPTER VIII
OUR AT-HOMES: THE YOUNG AUTHORS WHO ARE NOW GREAT AUTHORS

Of all the men who used to come to 32, Addison Mansions from our having met them at the Idler teas, none were more identified with the success of Jerome’s two periodicals The Idler and To-day than Arthur Conan Doyle and Israel Zangwill. Doyle had been writing for ten years before he achieved commanding success. Be that as it may, he was undoubtedly the most successful of the younger authors who were familiar figures in that Vagabond and Idler set. Doyle, who was the son of that exquisite artist, Charles Doyle, and grandson of the famous caricaturist H. B., and nephew of Dicky Doyle of Punch, ought to have been granted a royaller road to success, for he had enjoyed a very early connection with literature, having sat as a little child on the knee of the immortal Thackeray. Thackeray’s old publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., have been his, but he had travelled to the Arctic regions and to the tropics and practised for eight years as a doctor at Southsea before he charmed the world with his famous novels The White Company in 1890, and The Refugees in 1891, and astonished it with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the latter year. He was a doctor at Norwood when I first made his acquaintance. He was a little over thirty then, and a keen cricketer, being nearly county form (indeed, he did actually play once for Hampshire, and might at one time have played regularly for Hampshire as an Association back). It was not until late in life, however, that he found time enough to get much practise at games. Then for some years he played occasional first-class cricket, having an average of thirty-two against Kent, Derbyshire and other good teams; in the last year he played for the M.C.C. That was after the war, when he was over forty. He played a hard Association match in his forty-fourth year.

From an early stage in his literary career he enjoyed the admiration and the deepest respect of all his fellows in the craft, and for years past has undoubtedly been morally the head of the profession. Upon him has fallen the mantle of Sir Walter Besant. In saying this, I am not instituting any comparison between the merits of his various lines of work, which in their own line are quite unexcelled, and those of the other leading authors, but he is not only among the handful who may be called the very best authors of the day, he is the man to whom the profession would undoubtedly look for a lead in any crisis.

Say, for instance, that the idea, so often debated recently, of authors combining with publishers to fix the price of a novel at ten and sixpence, and refusing to work for or sell their goods to any one who would not abide by this decision, were put to a vote in the literary profession, what Doyle thought would count most. The profession as an army would range themselves under his banner. Suppose a question, like the insurance question which has been threatening the livelihood of thousands of doctors, were to arise for authors, they would look to Doyle for a lead. If the decision which he made benefited authors as a whole, but cost him half or three-quarters of his income, and a syndicate approached him with a huge offer to abandon the camp, nobody could suppose for one moment that Doyle would listen to them. His moral courage, his loyalty, his generosity, his patriotism, added to his wonderful literary gifts, have confered upon him a commanding position. Of his gifts I shall speak lower down. It is as the patriot that one must always consider him first. He is not naturally a party man, though he happens to have contested Edinburgh as a Liberal Unionist, and the Hawick boroughs as a Tariff Reformer. There have been moments when he has been openly opposed to some measure of the Unionist Party. He really belongs to the Public Service party. He made notable sacrifices for his country at the time of the Boer War. First he gave up his literary work to serve unpaid on the staff of the Langman Field Hospital and afterwards to write the pamphlet on The Cause and Conduct of the War, an attempt to place the true facts before the people of Europe, which brought him nothing but great expense and the undying gratitude and respect of his fellow-countrymen. That he cares nothing for popularity where principles are concerned is shown by the attitude he took over the famous horse-maiming case, or his acceptance of the Presidency of the Divorce Law Reform Union.

SIR A. CONAN DOYLE
Drawn by Yoshio Markino

His sturdy character is reflected in his physique, and there are few people in London who do not know that unusually big and strong frame, that round head, with prominent cheek-bones, and dauntless blue eyes, the bluff, good-humoured face: for his sonorous voice is frequently heard from the chair of public meetings where some protest for the public good has to be raised, or at a dinner-table on the guest nights of clubs. Sir Arthur, for he was knighted in 1902, is a most popular speaker; hearty, engaging, amusing, in his lighter moods, most trenchant and convincing in a crisis, of all the authors of the day he merits most the title of a great man.