The curious thing is that although every one knows how much he respects Doyle as a great man, and every one is aware that he is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, of the authors of the day, not every one has analysed the soundness of his literary fame. In my opinion, of all very popular authors, Doyle deserves his popularity as an author most. No man living has written better historical novels, judged from the standpoint of eloquence, accuracy or thrill. Doyle has carried the accuracy of the man of science into all his studies, and his power to thrill with eloquence and incident is beyond question. His detective stories are equal to the best that have ever been written. His history of the South African War is not only the best history of the war, but it is a model of contemporary history, always the most difficult kind to write, because only the eye of intuition can distinguish respective values amid contemporary incidents. He has been highly successful as a playwright too. His House of Temperley is the best Prize-Ring play in the language, as his novel, Rodney Stone, which had no lady-love heroine, was the best Prize-Ring novel, and his play on Waterloo, produced by Sir Henry Irving, has become a classic. I have alluded elsewhere to the dramatisation of his Sherlock Holmes which has been played thousands of times. Doyle not only was present at our at-homes at 32 Addison Mansions, but, living out of town, once stayed with us there, as we stayed with him at Hindhead on another occasion. But owing to his living out of town, he was a great deal less familiar figure at receptions than most of the other younger authors of the first rank, except Rudyard Kipling and J. M. Barrie, both of whom cordially hate “functions” of any kind. Doyle, placed in the same circumstances as they are, forces himself to go to many functions for which he has less time than they have, for his literary output is infinitely greater, and he has so many other duties to perform, and always performs them.
When I asked Doyle what first turned him to writing, he said—
“All the art that is in our family—my grandfather, three uncles, and father were all artists—ran in my blood, and took a turn towards letters. At six I was writing stories; I fancy my mother has them yet. At school I was, though I say it, a famous story-teller; at both schools I was at I edited a magazine, and practically wrote the whole of it also.
“When I started studying medicine, the family affairs were very straitened. My father’s health was bad, and he earned little. I tried to earn something, which I did by going out as medical assistant half the year. Then I tried stories. In 1878, when I was nineteen years old, I sent The Mystery of the Sassasa Valley to Chambers. I got three guineas. It was 1880 before I got another accepted. It was by London Society. From then until 1888 I averaged about fifty pounds a year, getting about three pounds a story. My first decent price was twenty-eight pounds from the Cornhill for Habakuk Jephson’s Statement in 1886. Then at New Year, 1888, Ward, Lock & Co. brought out A Study in Scarlet, paying twenty-five pounds for all rights. I have never had another penny from that book; I wonder how much they have had? Then came Micah Clarke at the end of 1888, which got me a more solid public. It was not until 1902 that I was strong enough to be able to entirely abandon medical practice. Of course, it was the Holmes stories in the Strand which gave me my popular vogue, but The White Company, which has been through fifty editions, has sold far more as a book than any of the Holmes books.”
Kipling I regard as the genius of the junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and England owes an incalculable debt to his patriotism and eloquence. If Doyle is the voice of the literary profession, Kipling is the voice of the country. He speaks for the manhood of England in a crisis. All through the African War a letter or a poem from Kipling was the trumpet voice of national feeling. No poet who has written in English has ever inspired his countrymen like Kipling. His poems, though they have not the poetical quality of those of our great standard poets, have the prophetical quality, which is just as important in poetry, in a higher degree than any of them. They are Rembrandt poems, not Raphael poems, and they will remain without loss of prestige, an armoury for every patriotic or manful writer and speaker to quote from. I reviewed Kipling’s poems when they were first published in America for the leading Canadian paper. I am thankful that I hailed them as the work of genius, and it was a proud moment when I first shook hands with him in the early ’nineties. Though his short stories are the best in the language, I always think of him as a poet, because he is our vates.
It is best to mention Barrie, our other genius, here, though I have little to say about him. On the rare occasions when he speaks in public, he speaks admirably, and he enjoys universal respect. As far as literature is concerned, no man’s lines have been laid in pleasanter places. Unlike Doyle, Anthony Hope, Stanley Weyman and others, Barrie did not have to wait for recognition. It is notorious that from the very beginning he never had the proverbial manuscript in the drawer; in other words, that he always found an immediate sale for whatever he wrote. He began as a journalist.
Anthony Hope I first met at an Idler tea. He was one of the brilliant band of younger authors whom Jerome was among the first to recognise. In those days he kept the distinction between “Anthony Hope” the writer, and Anthony Hope Hawkins the barrister, most rigidly. Being the son of a famous London clergyman, Mr. Hawkins, of St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, a cousin of Mr. Justice Hawkins, a scholar of Balliol, and an eloquent speaker, his prospects at the Bar were very good. There was an idea that they would suffer if it were known that he indulged in anything so frivolous as writing love-stories. These were the days when he was composing his immortal “Dolly Dialogues” for the Westminster Gazette, and when he was just beginning the succession of witty and delicate novels which made his fame. He had, I have always understood, been writing for some years, before he could make any impression on the public, and even then he had no hope of making a living by literature. I made one of his early novels my book of the week in The Queen, in a most enthusiastic review, and incidentally mentioned his real name. His friends, perhaps they were officious, entreated me not to do it again, lest it should injure his prospects. A year or two afterwards there was no question off which profession he was to make a living, though as he coquetted with politics, and contested a constituency or two, he probably kept up the legal fiction of his being at the Bar for some time longer.
As he had enjoyed the distinction of being President of the Oxford Union, he was a practised speaker before he came to London. He had plenty of opportunities of exercising his skill without waiting for briefs, for he became a frequent speaker at Club dinners. The charm of his voice and his delivery, the polish and wit of his speeches were recognised at once, and his popularity as a speaker has been undisputed from that day to this.
It was noticed that, though he was so brilliant and fluent, when making a speech, he was rather a silent man at receptions, except where politeness demanded that he should exert himself. But this is a common trait in the more considerable authors. They are frequently not only rather silent, but ill at ease. In those days one could count the authors who were both brilliant socially and brilliant writers, on one’s fingers.
One legal habit Anthony Hope retained; he went to chambers to do his writing as he had been accustomed, and lived in other chambers, and was regarded as a confirmed bachelor till he married. He came to Addison Mansions very frequently in the ’nineties. The incident I remember best was his loss of presence of mind when I tried to save him from a terrific American bore, a middle-aged lady. Somebody had brought her; I had not met her before, and she was having a systematic lion-hunt. She thought that A. H. H. was Anthony Hope, but she was not certain, and said to me, “Is that Anthony Hope? I must know Anthony Hope.”