Tales of Terror and Mystery

- By Arthur Conan Doyle
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British writer and physician (1859–1930) "Conan Doyle" redirects here. For the rugby player, see Conan Doyle (rugby union). For the South African cricketer, see Conan Doyle (cricketer). SirArthur Conan DoyleKStJ, DLDoyle in 1914BornArthur Ignatius Conan Doyle(1859-05-22)22 May 1859Edinburgh, ScotlandDied7 July 1930(1930-07-07) (aged 71)Crowborough, Sussex, EnglandOccupation Writer physician EducationUniversity of EdinburghGenre Detective fiction fantasy science fiction historical novels non-fiction Notable works Stories of Sherlock Holmes The Lost World Spouse Louisa Hawkins ​ ​(m. 1885; died 1906)​ Jean Leckie ​(m. 1907)​ Children5, including Adrian and JeanParentsCharles Altamont DoyleMary FoleySignatureWebsitewww.conandoyleestate.com Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste. Name[edit] Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. His baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given names and "Doyle" as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.[1] The catalogues of the British Library and the Library of Congress treat "Doyle" alone as his surname.[2] Steven Doyle, publisher of The Baker Street Journal, wrote: "Conan was Arthur's middle name. Shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort of surname. But technically his last name is simply 'Doyle'."[3] When knighted, he was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle.[4] Early life[edit] Portrait of Doyle by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1893 Title page from Arthur Conan Doyle's thesis Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.[5][6] His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was born in England, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary (née Foley), was Irish Catholic. His parents married in 1855.[7] In 1864 the family scattered because of Charles's growing alcoholism, and the children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh. Arthur lodged with Mary Burton, the aunt of a friend, at Liberton Bank House on Gilmerton Road, while studying at Newington Academy.[8] In 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place.[9] Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatric illness.[10][11] Beginning at an early age, throughout his life Doyle wrote letters to his mother, and many of them were preserved.[12] Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, to the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire, at the age of nine (1868–70). He then went on to Stonyhurst College, which he attended until 1875. While Doyle was not unhappy at Stonyhurst, he said he did not have any fond memories of it because the school was run on medieval principles: the only subjects covered were rudiments, rhetoric, Euclidean geometry, algebra, and the classics.[13] Doyle commented later in his life that this academic system could only be excused "on the plea that any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort of mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind".[13] He also found the school harsh, noting that, instead of compassion and warmth, it favoured the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation.[14] From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.[9] His family decided that he would spend a year there in order to perfect his German and broaden his academic horizons.[15] He later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic.[16] One source attributed his drift away from religion to the time he spent in the less strict Austrian school.[14] He also later became a spiritualist mystic.[17] Medical career[edit] From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School; during this period he spent time working in Aston (then a town in Warwickshire, now part of Birmingham), Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire.[18] Also during this period, he studied practical botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.[19] While studying, Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.[9] His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879.[9][20] On 20 September 1879, he published his first academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal,[9][21][22] a study which The Daily Telegraph regarded as potentially useful in a 21st-century murder investigation.[23] Professor Challenger by Harry Rountree in the novella The Poison Belt published in The Strand Magazine Doyle was the doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880.[24] On 11 July 1880, John Gray's Hope and David Gray's Eclipse met up with the Eira and Leigh Smith. The photographer W. J. A. Grant took a photograph aboard the Eira of Doyle along with Smith, the Gray brothers, and ship's surgeon William Neale, who were members of the Smith expedition. That expedition explored Franz Josef Land, and led to the naming, on 18 August, of Cape Flora, Bell Island, Nightingale Sound, Gratton ("Uncle Joe") Island, and Mabel Island.[25] After graduating with Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery (M.B. C.M.) degrees from the University of Edinburgh in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast.[9] He completed his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree (an advanced degree beyond the basic medical qualification in the UK) with a dissertation on tabes dorsalis in 1885.[26][27] In 1882, Doyle partnered with his former classmate George Turnavine Budd in a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.[9][28] Arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882, with less than £10 (£1100 in 2019[29]) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.[30] The practice was not successful. While waiting for patients, Doyle returned to writing fiction. Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination and wrote several articles advocating the practice and denouncing the views of anti-vaccinators.[31][32] In early 1891, Doyle embarked on the study of ophthalmology in Vienna. He had previously studied at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital in order to qualify to perform eye tests and prescribe glasses. Vienna had been suggested by his friend Vernon Morris as a place to spend six months and train to be an eye surgeon. But Doyle found it too difficult to understand the German medical terms being used in his classes in Vienna, and soon quit his studies there. For the rest of his two-month stay in Vienna, he pursued other activities, such as ice skating with his wife Louisa and drinking with Brinsley Richards of the London Times. He also wrote The Doings of Raffles Haw. After visiting Venice and Milan, he spent a few days in Paris observing Edmund Landolt, an expert on diseases of the eye. Within three months of his departure for Vienna, Doyle returned to London. He opened a small office and consulting room at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, or 2 Devonshire Place as it was then. (There is today a Westminster City Council commemorative plaque over the front door.) He had no patients, according to his autobiography, and his efforts as an ophthalmologist were a failure.[33][34][35] Literary career[edit] Main article: Arthur Conan Doyle bibliography Sherlock Holmes[edit] Portrait of Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget, 1904 Doyle struggled to find a publisher. His first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written in three weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent to £2,900 in 2019) in exchange for all rights to the story. The piece appeared a year later in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.[9] Holmes was partially modelled on Doyle's former university teacher Joseph Bell. In 1892, in a letter to Bell, Doyle wrote, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes ... round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man",[36] and in his 1924 autobiography, he remarked, "It is no wonder that after the study of such a character [viz., Bell] I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal."[37] Robert Louis Stevenson was able to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "My compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ... can this be my old friend Joe Bell?"[38] Other authors sometimes suggest additional influences—for instance, Edgar Allan Poe's character C. Auguste Dupin, who is mentioned, disparagingly, by Holmes in A Study in Scarlet.[39] Dr. (John) Watson owes his surname, but not any other obvious characteristic, to a Portsmouth medical colleague of Doyle's, Dr. James Watson.[40] Sherlock Holmes statue in Edinburgh, erected opposite the birthplace of Doyle, which was demolished c. 1970 A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an author new to the publishing world, and so, after this, he left them.[9] Short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the Strand Magazine. Doyle wrote the first five Holmes short stories from his office at 2 Upper Wimpole Street (then known as Devonshire Place), which is now marked by a memorial plaque.[41] Doyle's attitude towards his most famous creation was ambivalent.[40] In November 1891, he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes, ... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!"[42] In an attempt to deflect publishers' demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing to pay even the large sums he asked.[40] As a result, he became one of the best-paid authors of his time. Statue of Holmes and the English Church in Meiringen In December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Holmes's fictional connection with the Reichenbach Falls is celebrated in the nearby town of Meiringen. In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to make it look as if he too were dead. Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels by Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors. Other works[edit] Doyle's house in South Norwood, Croydon, south-east London, with a close up of the commemorative blue plaque at the address Doyle's first novels were The Mystery of Cloomber, not published until 1888, and the unfinished Narrative of John Smith, published only posthumously, in 2011.[43] He amassed a portfolio of short stories, including "The Captain of the Pole-Star" and "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", both inspired by Doyle's time at sea. The latter popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste[44] and added fictional details such as that the ship was found in perfect condition (it had actually taken on water by the time it was discovered), and that its boats remained on board (the single boat was in fact missing). These fictional details have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident,[9][44] and Doyle's alternative spelling of the ship's name as the Marie Celeste has become more commonly used than the original spelling.[45] Between 1888 and 1906, Doyle wrote seven historical novels, which he and many critics regarded as his best work.[40] He also wrote nine other novels, and—later in his career (1912–29)—five narratives (two of novel length) featuring the irascible scientist Professor Challenger. The Challenger stories include his best-known work after the Holmes oeuvre, The Lost World. His historical novels include The White Company and its prequel Sir Nigel, set in the Middle Ages. He was a prolific author of short stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic times and featuring the French character Brigadier Gerard. Doyle's works for the stage include Waterloo, which centres on the reminiscences of an English veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and features a character Gregory Brewster, written for Henry Irving; The House of Temperley, the plot of which reflects his abiding interest in boxing; The Speckled Band, adapted from his earlier short story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"; and an 1893 collaboration with J. M. Barrie on the libretto of Jane Annie.[46] Sporting career[edit] While living in Southsea, the seaside resort near Portsmouth, Doyle played football as a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, an amateur side, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith.[47] Doyle was a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).[48] He also played for the amateur cricket teams the Allahakbarries and the Authors XI alongside fellow writers J. M. Barrie, P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne.[49][50] His highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took one first-class wicket, W. G. Grace, and wrote a poem about the achievement.[51] In 1900, Doyle founded the Undershaw Rifle Club at his home, constructing a 100-yard range and providing shooting for local men, as the poor showing of British troops in the Boer War had led him to believe that the general population needed training in marksmanship.[52][53] He was a champion of "miniature" rifle clubs, whose members shot small-calibre firearms on local ranges.[54][55] These ranges were much cheaper and more accessible to working-class participants than large "fullbore" ranges, such as Bisley Camp, which were necessarily remote from population centres. Doyle went on to sit on the Rifle Clubs Committee of the National Rifle Association.[56] In 1901, Doyle was one of three judges for the world's first major bodybuilding competition, which was organised by the "Father of Bodybuilding", Eugen Sandow. The event was held in London's Royal Albert Hall. The other two judges were the sculptor Sir Charles Lawes-Wittewronge and Eugen Sandow himself.[57] Doyle was an amateur boxer.[58] In 1909, he was invited to referee the James Jeffries–Jack Johnson heavyweight championship fight in Reno, Nevada. Doyle wrote: "I was much inclined to accept ... though my friends pictured me as winding up with a revolver at one ear and a razor at the other. However, the distance and my engagements presented a final bar."[58] Also a keen golfer, Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex for 1910. He had moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with Jean Leckie, his second wife, and resided there with his family from 1907 until his death in July 1930.[59] He entered the English Amateur billiards championship in 1913.[60] While living in Switzerland, Doyle became interested in skiing, which was relatively unknown in Switzerland at the time. He wrote an article, "An Alpine Pass on 'Ski'" for the December 1894 issue of The Strand Magazine,[61] in which he described his experiences with skiing and the beautiful alpine scenery that could be seen in the process. The article popularised the activity and began the long association between Switzerland and skiing.[62] Family life[edit] Doyle with his family c. 1923–1925 In 1885 Doyle married Louisa (sometimes called "Touie") Hawkins (1857–1906). She was the youngest daughter of J. Hawkins, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, and the sister of one of Doyle's patients. Louisa had tuberculosis.[63] In 1907, the year after Louisa's death, he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie (1874–1940). He had met and fallen in love with Jean in 1897, but had maintained a platonic relationship with her while his first wife was still alive, out of loyalty to her.[64] Jean outlived her husband and died during wartime on 27 June 1940.[65] Doyle fathered five children. He had two with his first wife: Mary Louise (1889–1976) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (1892–1918). He had an additional three with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart (1909–1955), who became the second husband of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani; Adrian Malcolm (1910–1970); and Jean Lena Annette (1912–1997).[66] None of Doyle's five children had children of their own, so he has no living direct descendants.[67][68] Political campaigning[edit] Arthur Conan Doyle by George Wylie Hutchinson, 1894 Doyle served as a volunteer physician in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900,[69] during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902). Later that year, he wrote a book on the war, The Great Boer War, as well as a short work titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, in which he responded to critics of the United Kingdom's role in that war, and argued that its role was justified. The latter work was widely translated, and Doyle believed it was the reason he was knighted (given the rank of Knight Bachelor) by King Edward VII in the 1902 Coronation Honours.[70] He received the accolade from the King in person at Buckingham Palace on 24 October of that year.[71] He stood for Parliament twice as a Liberal Unionist: in 1900 in Edinburgh Central, and in 1906 in the Hawick Burghs, but was not elected.[72] He served as a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey beginning in 1902,[73] and was appointed a Knight of Grace of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1903.[74] Doyle was a supporter of the campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State that was led by the journalist E. D. Morel and diplomat Roger Casement. In 1909 he wrote The Crime of the Congo, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors of that colony. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, they inspired several characters that appear in his 1912 novel The Lost World.[75] Later, after the Irish Easter Rising, Casement was found guilty of treason against the Crown, and was sentenced to death. Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save him, arguing that Casement had been driven mad, and therefore should not be held responsible for his actions.[76] As the First World War loomed, and having been caught up in a growing public swell of Germanophobia, Doyle gave a public donation of 10 shillings to the anti-immigration British Brothers' League.[77] In 1914, Doyle was one of fifty-three leading British authors—including H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy—who signed their names to the "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the First World War. This manifesto declared that the German invasion of Belgium had been a brutal crime, and that Britain "could not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war".[78] Legal advocate[edit] Doyle statue in Crowborough, East Sussex Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji, who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals in Great Wyrley. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.[79] Apart from helping George Edalji, Doyle's work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice, as it was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907.[80] The story of Doyle and Edalji was dramatised in an episode of the 1972 BBC television series, The Edwardians. In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche The West End Horror (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsi Indian character wronged by the English justice system. Edalji was of Parsi heritage on his father's side. The story was fictionalised in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur and George, which was adapted into a three-part drama by ITV in 2015.[citation needed] The second case, that of Oscar Slater—a Jew of German origin who operated a gambling den and was convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908—excited Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution's case and a general sense that Slater was not guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs for Slater's successful 1928 appeal.[81] Freemasonry and spiritualism[edit] Doyle had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects and remained fascinated by the idea of paranormal phenomena, even though the strength of his belief in their reality waxed and waned periodically over the years. In 1887, in Southsea, influenced by Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, a member of the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Society, Doyle began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums. Writing to spiritualist journal Light that year, he declared himself to be a spiritualist, describing one particular event that had convinced him psychic phenomena were real.[82] Also in 1887 (on 26 January), he was initiated as a Freemason at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. (He resigned from the Lodge in 1889, returned to it in 1902, and resigned again in 1911.)[83] In 1889, he became a founding member of the Hampshire Society for Psychical Research; in 1893, he joined the London-based Society for Psychical Research; and in 1894, he collaborated with Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore in a search for poltergeists in Devon.[84] Doyle was also a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.[85] Doyle and the spiritualist William Thomas Stead (who would die on the Titanic) were led to believe that Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers, and they claimed publicly that the Zancigs used telepathy. However, in 1924, the Zancigs confessed that their mind reading act had been a trick; they published the secret code and all other details of the trick method they had used under the title "Our Secrets!!" in a London newspaper.[86] Doyle also praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations that he believed had been produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina Crandon, both of whom were also later exposed as frauds.[87] In 1916, at the height of the First World War, Doyle's belief in psychic phenomena was strengthened by what he took to be the psychic abilities of his children's nanny, Lily Loder Symonds.[88] This and the constant drumbeat of wartime deaths inspired him with the idea that spiritualism was what he called a "New Revelation"[89] sent by God to bring solace to the bereaved. He wrote a piece in Light magazine about his faith and began lecturing frequently on spiritualism. In 1918, he published his first spiritualist work, The New Revelation. Some have mistakenly assumed that Doyle's turn to spiritualism was prompted by the death of his son Kingsley, but Doyle began presenting himself publicly as a spiritualist in 1916, and Kingsley died on 28 October 1918 (from pneumonia contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded in the 1916 Battle of the Somme).[89] Nevertheless, the war-related deaths of many people who were close to him appears to have even further strengthened his long-held belief in life after death and spirit communication. Doyle's brother Brigadier-general Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. His two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles), as well as his two nephews, also died shortly after the war. His second book on spiritualism, The Vital Message, appeared in 1919. Doyle found solace in supporting spiritualism's ideas and the attempts of spiritualists to find proof of an existence beyond the grave. In particular, according to some,[90] he favoured Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an eighth precept – that of following the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a member of the renowned supernaturalist organisation The Ghost Club.[91] Doyle with his family in New York City, 1922 In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his flat in Bloomsbury, which Doyle attended. Although some later claimed that Doyle had endorsed the apparent instances of clairvoyance at that séance as genuine,[92][93] a contemporaneous report by the Sunday Express quoted Doyle as saying "I should have to see it again before passing a definite opinion on it" and "I have my doubts about the whole thing".[94] In 1920, Doyle and the noted sceptic Joseph McCabe held a public debate at Queen's Hall in London, with Doyle taking the position that the claims of spiritualism were true. After the debate, McCabe published a booklet Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?, in which he laid out evidence refuting Doyle's arguments and claimed that Doyle had been duped into believing in spiritualism through deliberate mediumship trickery.[95] Doyle also debated the psychiatrist Harold Dearden, who vehemently disagreed with Doyle's belief that many cases of diagnosed mental illness were the result of spirit possession.[96] In 1920, Doyle travelled to Australia and New Zealand on spiritualist missionary work, and over the next several years, until his death, he continued his mission, giving talks about his spiritualist conviction in Britain, Europe, and the United States.[84] One of the five photographs of Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies, taken by Elsie Wright in Cottingley, England in July 1917 Doyle wrote a novel The Land of Mist centred on spiritualist themes and featuring the character Professor Challenger. He also wrote many non-fiction spiritualist works. Perhaps his most famous of these was The Coming of the Fairies (1922),[97] in which Doyle described his beliefs about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits, reproduced the five Cottingley Fairies photographs, asserted that those who suspected them being faked were wrong, and expressed his conviction that they were authentic. Decades later, the photos—taken by cousins Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright—were definitively shown to have been faked, and their creators admitted to the fakery, although both maintained that they really had seen fairies.[98] Doyle was friends for a time with the American magician Harry Houdini. Even though Houdini explained that his feats were based on illusion and trickery, Doyle was convinced that Houdini had supernatural powers and said as much in his work The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini's friend Bernard M. L. Ernst recounted a time when Houdini had performed an impressive trick at his home in Doyle's presence. Houdini had assured Doyle that the trick was pure illusion and had expressed the hope that this demonstration would persuade Doyle not to go around "endorsing phenomena" simply because he could think of no explanation for what he had seen other than supernatural power. However, according to Ernst, Doyle simply refused to believe that it had been a trick.[99] Houdini became a prominent opponent of the spiritualist movement in the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother. He insisted that spiritualist mediums employed trickery, and consistently exposed them as frauds. These differences between Houdini and Doyle eventually led to a bitter, public falling-out between them.[100] 1922 photograph of Doyle by spirit photographer Ada Deane In 1922, the psychical researcher Harry Price accused the "spirit photographer" William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope, but further evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers.[101] Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and predicted that, if he persisted in writing what he called "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Harry Houdini.[102] Price wrote: "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope."[103] In response to the exposure of frauds that had been perpetrated by Hope and other spiritualists, Doyle led 84 members of the Society for Psychical Research to resign in protest from the society on the ground that they believed it was opposed to spiritualism.[104] Doyle's two-volume book The History of Spiritualism was published in 1926. W. Leslie Curnow a spiritualist, contributed much research to the book.[105][106] Later that year, Robert John Tillyard wrote a predominantly supportive review of it in the journal Nature.[107] This review provoked controversy: Several other critics, notably A. A. Campbell Swinton, pointed out the evidence of fraud in mediumship, as well as Doyle's non-scientific approach to the subject.[108][109][110] In 1927, Doyle gave a filmed interview, in which he spoke about Sherlock Holmes and spiritualism.[111] Doyle and the Piltdown hoax[edit] Richard Milner, an American historian of science, argued that Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner noted that Doyle had a plausible motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and said that The Lost World appeared to contain several clues referring cryptically to his having been involved in the hoax.[112][113] Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked Is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Doyle had provided overt clues to otherwise hidden or suppressed aspects of his way of thinking that seemed to support the idea that Doyle would be involved in such a hoax.[114] However, more recent research suggests that Doyle was not involved. In 2016, researchers at the Natural History Museum and Liverpool John Moores University analyzed DNA evidence showing that responsibility for the hoax lay with the amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, who had originally "found" the remains. He had initially not been considered the likely perpetrator, because the hoax was seen as being too elaborate for him to have devised. However, the DNA evidence showed that a supposedly ancient tooth he had "discovered" in 1915 (at a different site) came from the same jaw as that of the Piltdown Man, suggesting that he had planted them both. That tooth, too, was later proven to have been planted as part of a hoax.[115] Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Natural History Museum, was quoted as saying: "Conan Doyle was known to play golf at the Piltdown site and had even given Dawson a lift in his car to the area, but he was a public man and very busy[,] and it is very unlikely that he would have had the time [to create the hoax]. So there are some coincidences, but I think they are just coincidences. When you look at the fossil evidence[,] you can only associate Dawson with all the finds, and Dawson was known to be personally ambitious. He wanted professional recognition. He wanted to be a member of the Royal Society and he was after an MBE [sic[116]]. He wanted people to stop seeing him as an amateur".[117] Architecture[edit] Façade of Undershaw with Doyle's children, Mary and Kingsley, on the drive Another of Doyle's longstanding interests was architectural design. In 1895, when he commissioned an architect friend of his, Joseph Henry Ball, to build him a home, he played an active part in the design process.[118][119] The home in which he lived from October 1897 to September 1907, known as Undershaw (near Hindhead, in Surrey),[120] was used as a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004, when it was bought by a developer and then stood empty while conservationists and Doyle fans fought to preserve it.[63] In 2012, the High Court in London ruled in favor of those seeking to preserve the historic building, ordering that the redevelopment permission be quashed on the ground that it had not been obtained through proper procedures.[121] The building was later approved to become part of Stepping Stones, a school for children with disabilities and special needs. Doyle made his most ambitious foray into architecture in March 1912, while he was staying at the Lyndhurst Grand Hotel: He sketched the original designs for a third-storey extension and for an alteration of the front facade of the building.[122] Work began later that year, and when it was finished, the building was a nearly exact manifestation of the plans Doyle had sketched. Superficial alterations have been subsequently made, but the essential structure is still clearly Doyle's.[123] In 1914, on a family trip to the Jasper National Park in Canada, he designed a golf course and ancillary buildings for a hotel. The plans were realised in full, but neither the golf course nor the buildings have survived.[124] In 1926, Doyle laid the foundation stone for a Spiritualist Temple in Camden, London. Of the building's total £600 construction costs, he provided £500.[125] Crimes Club[edit] The Crimes Club was a private social club founded by Doyle in 1903, whose purpose was discussion of crime and detection, criminals and criminology, and continues to this day as "Our Society", with membership numbers limited to 100. The club meets four times a year at the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London, where all proceedings are strictly confidential ("Chatham House rules"). Its logo is a silhouette of Doyle.[126] The club's earliest members included John Churton Collins, Japanologist Arthur Diósy, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, Sir Travers Humphreys, H. B. Irving, author (Thou Shalt Do No Murder) Arthur Lambton, William Le Queux, A. E. W. Mason, coroner Ingleby Oddie, Sir Max Pemberton, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, George R. Sims, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Sir P. G. Wodehouse, and Filson Young.[127] Death[edit] Doyle's grave at Minstead in Hampshire Doyle in 1930, the year of his death, with his son Adrian Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful."[128] At the time of his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial place, as he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 in Windlesham rose garden. In his will, he bequeathed £250 per year to Alfred Wood, who had served as his private secretary since 1897.[129] He was later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.[9] Carved wooden tablets to his memory and to the memory of his wife, originally from the church at Minstead, are on display as part of a Sherlock Holmes exhibition at Portsmouth Museum.[130][131] The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard reads, in part: "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters".[132] A statue honours Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years.[133] There is a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, close to the house where Doyle was born.[134] Honours and awards[edit] Knight Bachelor (1902)[4] Knight of Grace of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem (1903) Queen's South Africa Medal (1901) Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy (1895) Order of the Medjidie – 2nd Class (Ottoman Empire) (1907) Commemoration[edit] Doyle has been commemorated with statues and plaques since his death. In 2009, he was among the ten people selected by the Royal Mail for their "Eminent Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.[135] Portrayals[edit] Arthur Conan Doyle has been portrayed by many actors, including: Television series[edit] Nigel Davenport in the BBC Two series The Edwardians, in the episode "Conan Doyle" (1972)[136] Michael Ensign in the Voyagers! episode "Jack's Back" (1983) Robin Laing and Charles Edwards in Murder Rooms: Mysteries of the Real Sherlock Holmes (2000–2001) Geraint Wyn Davies in Murdoch Mysteries, 3 episodes (2008–2013) Alfred Molina in the Drunk History (American series) episode "Detroit" (2013) David Calder in the miniseries Houdini (2014) Martin Clunes in the miniseries Arthur & George (2015) Bruce Mackinnon and Bradley Walsh in Drunk History (British series), in series 2, episodes 5 and 8 respectively (2016)[137][138] Stephen Mangan in Houdini & Doyle (2016) Michael Pitthan in the German TV series Charité episode "Götterdämmerung" (2017) Bill Paterson in the Urban Myths episode "Agatha Christie" (2018) Television films[edit] Peter Cushing in The Great Houdini (1976) David Warner in Houdini (1998) Richard Wilson in Reichenbach Falls (2007) Michael McElhatton in Agatha and the Truth of Murder (2018) Theatrical films[edit] Paul Bildt in The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes (1937) Peter O'Toole in FairyTale: A True Story (1997) Edward Hardwicke in Photographing Fairies (1997) Tom Fisher in Shanghai Knights (2003) Ian Hart in Finding Neverland (2004) Other media[edit] Carleton Hobbs in the BBC radio drama Conan Doyle Investigates (1972)[139] Iain Cuthbertson in the BBC radio drama Conan Doyle and The Edalji Case (1987)[140] Peter Jeffrey in the BBC radio drama Conan Doyle's Strangest Case (1995)[141] Adrian Lukis in the stage adaptation of the novel Arthur & George (2010)[142] Chris Tallman in Chapter 10 of The Dead Authors Podcast (2012)[143] Steven Miller in the Jago & Litefoot audio drama "The Monstrous Menagerie" (2014)[144] Eamon Stocks in the video game Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015)[145] Ryohei Kimura in the mobile game Ikémen Vampire: Temptation in the Dark (2019)[146] In fiction[edit] Arthur Conan Doyle is the ostensible narrator of Ian Madden's short story "Cracks in an Edifice of Sheer Reason".[147] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle features as a recurring character in Pip Murphy's Christie and Agatha's Detective Agency series, including A Discovery Disappears[148] and Of Mountains and Motors.[149] See also[edit] Biography portalChildren's literature portalPoetry portal William Gillette, a personal friend who performed the most famous stage version of Sherlock Holmes List of notable Freemasons Physician writer References[edit] ^ Stashower says that the compound version of his surname originated from his great-uncle Michael Conan, a distinguished journalist, from whom Arthur and his elder sister, Annette, received the compound surname of "Conan Doyle" (Stashower 20–21). The same source points out that in 1885 he was describing himself on the brass nameplate outside his house, and on his doctoral thesis, as "A. Conan Doyle" (Stashower 70). ^ Redmond, Christopher (2009). Sherlock Holmes Handbook 2nd ed. Dundurn. p. 97. Google Books. Retrieved 11 February 2017. ^ Doyle, Steven; Crowder, David A. (2010). Sherlock Holmes for Dummies. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 51. ^ a b "No. 27494". The London Gazette. 11 November 1902. p. 7165. The entry, 'Arthur Conan Doyle, Esq., M.D., D.L.', is alphabetised based on 'Doyle'. ^ "Scottish Writer Best Known for His Creation of the Detective Sherlock Holmes". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 27 May 2009. Retrieved 30 December 2009. ^ "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Biography". sherlockholmesonline.org. Archived from the original on 2 February 2011. Retrieved 13 January 2011. ^ The details of the births of Arthur and his siblings are unclear. Some sources say there were nine children, some say ten. It seems three died in childhood. See Owen Dudley Edwards, "Doyle, Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan (1859–1930)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; Encyclopædia Britannica Archived 27 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine; Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, Wordsworth Editions, 2007 p. viii; ISBN 978-1-84022-570-9. ^ "Liberton Bank House, 1, Gilmerton Road, Edinburgh". Register for Scotland: Buildings at Risk. Retrieved 28 April 2020. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Owen Dudley Edwards, "Doyle, Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan (1859–1930)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. ^ Lellenberg, Jon; Stashower, Daniel; Foley, Charles (2007). Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. HarperPress. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-0-00-724759-2. ^ Stashower, pp. 20–21. ^ Jon Lellenberg; Daniel Stashower; Charles Foley, eds. (2008). Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-724760-8. ^ a b Pascal, Janet (2000). Arthur Conan Doyle: Beyond Baker Street. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 14. ISBN 0-19-512262-3. ^ a b O'Brien, James (2013). The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-19-979496-6. ^ Miller, Russell (2010). The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4070-9308-6. ^ Golgotha Press (2011). The Life and Times of Arthur Conan Doyle. BookCaps Study Guides. ISBN 978-1-62107-027-6. In time, he would reject the Catholic religion and become an agnostic. ^ Pascal, Janet B. (2000). Arthur Conan Doyle: Beyond Baker Street. Oxford University Press. p. 139. ^ Brown, Yoland (1988). Ruyton XI Towns, Unusual Name, Unusual History. Brewin Books. pp. 92–93. ISBN 0-947731-41-5. ^ McNeill, Colin (6 January 2016). "Mystery solved of how Sherlock Holmes knew so much about poisonous plants". Herald Scotland. 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Retrieved 10 November 2020. ^ "アーサー・コナン・ドイル(CV:木村良平)のキャラクター紹介". ikemen.cybird.ne.jp (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 November 2022. ^ Madden, Ian, "Cracks in an Edifice of Sheer Reason", in Maguire, Susie, & Tongue, Samuel (eds.) (2018), With Their Best Clothes On, New Writing Scotland 36, Association for Scottish Literary Studies, pp. 77–85. ISBN 978-1-906841-33-1 ^ Murphy, Pip (2021). A Discovery Disappears. Roberta Tedeschi, ill. Leicester: Sweet Cherry Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78226-796-6. OCLC 1263776847. ^ Murphy, Pip (2022). Of Mountains and Motors. Roberta Tedeschi, ill. Leicester: Sweet Cherry Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78226-815-4. OCLC 1295111029. Further reading[edit] Martin Booth (2000). The Doctor and the Detective: A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Minotaur Books. ISBN 0-312-24251-4. John Dickson Carr (2003 edition, originally published in 1949). The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Carroll and Graf Publishers. Michael Dirda (2014). On Conan Doyle: or, The Whole Art of Storytelling. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16412-0. Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph McCabe (1920). Debate on Spiritualism: Between Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph McCabe. The Appeal's Pocket Series. Bernard M. L. Ernst, Hereward Carrington (1932). Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship. Albert and Charles Boni, Inc. Margalit Fox (2018). Conan Doyle for the Defense. Random House. Kelvin Jones (1989). Conan Doyle and the Spirits: The Spiritualist Career of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Aquarian Press. Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, Charles Foley (2007). Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. HarperPress. ISBN 978-0-00-724759-2 Andrew Lycett (2008). The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-7523-3. Russell Miller (2008). The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography. Thomas Dunne Books. Pierre Nordon (1967). Conan Doyle: A Biography. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Ronald Pearsall (1977). Conan Doyle: A Biographical Solution. Littlehampton Book Services Ltd. Massimo Polidoro (2001). Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-57392-896-0. Daniel Stashower (2000). Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-8050-5074-4. External links[edit] Arthur Conan Doyle at Wikipedia's sister projects Media from CommonsQuotations from WikiquoteTexts from WikisourceData from Wikidata Library resources about Arthur Conan Doyle Resources in your library Resources in other libraries Digital collections Works by Arthur Conan Doyle in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Arthur Conan Doyle at Project Gutenberg Works by Arthur Conan Doyle at Faded Page (Canada) Works by Arthur Conan Doyle at Project Gutenberg Australia Works by or about Arthur Conan Doyle at Internet Archive Works by Arthur Conan Doyle at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Poems by Arthur Conan Doyle Physical collections Arthur Conan Doyle Papers, Photographs, and Personal Effects at the Harry Ransom Center Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at Toronto Public Library Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at Dartmouth College Library Arthur Conan Doyle Online Exhibition "Archival material relating to Arthur Conan Doyle". UK National Archives. C. Frederick Kittle's Collection of Doyleana Archived 6 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine at the Newberry Library Newspaper clippings about Arthur Conan Doyle in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Biographical information Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, Knt. – Cr. 1902 Archived 21 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine, The county families of the United Kingdom or Royal manual of the titled and untitled aristocracy of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, (Volume ed. 59, yr. 1919) (page 109 of 415) by Edward Walford The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia Conan Doyle in Birmingham Other references 1930 audio recording of Conan Doyle speaking Arthur Conan Doyle at Curlie The short film Arthur Conan Doyle (1927) (Fox newsreel interview) is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive. The Arthur Conan Doyle Society Arthur Conan Doyle quotes Arthur Conan Doyle at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Arthur Conan Doyle at IMDb vteArthur Conan DoyleBibliographySherlock Holmes(canon) A Study in Scarlet (1887) The Sign of the Four (1890) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904) The Valley of Fear (1914) His Last Bow (1917) The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) Professor Challenger The Lost World (1912) The Poison Belt (1913) The Land of Mist (1926) "When the World Screamed" (1928) "The Disintegration Machine" (1929) Other novels The Narrative of John Smith (1883) [2011] The Mystery of Cloomber (1889) Micah Clarke (1889) The Firm of Girdlestone (1890) The White Company (1891) The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892) Beyond the City (1892) The Great Shadow (1892) The Refugees (1893) The Parasite (1894) The Stark Munro Letters (1895) The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896) Rodney Stone (1896) The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898) A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus (1899) Adventures of Gerard (1903) Sir Nigel (1906) The Maracot Deep (1929) Short stories "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884) "Lot No. 249" (1892) "The Case of Lady Sannox" (1893) "The Club-Footed Grocer" (1898) "The Brown Hand" (1899) "The Terror of Blue John Gap" (1910) "The Horror of the Heights" (1913) Danger! and Other Stories (1918) Other "The Inner Room" (1898) "The Crime of the Congo" (1909) The Vital Message (1919) Depictions FairyTale: A True Story (1997 film) Photographing Fairies (1997 film) Arthur & George (2015 miniseries) Houdini & Doyle (2016 miniseries) Related Adrian Conan Doyle (son) Jean Conan Doyle (daughter) Charles Altamont Doyle (father) John Doyle (grandfather) The Great Wyrley Outrages Undershaw (home) vteArthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Canon Adaptations Pastiches Popular culture Novels A Study in Scarlet (1887) The Sign of the Four (1890) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) The Valley of Fear (1915) Story collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) His Last Bow (1917) The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) Characters Sherlock Holmes Dr. Watson Professor Moriarty Inspector Lestrade Mycroft Holmes Mrs. Hudson Irene Adler Colonel Moran Baker Street Irregulars Minor characters Uncollected stories "The Field Bazaar" (1896) "The Story of the Lost Special" (1898) "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924) Universe 221B Baker Street Baritsu Diogenes Club The Dynamics of an Asteroid Reichenbach Falls A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem Studies Sherlockian game Holmesian studies The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes From Holmes to Sherlock The Great Detective Naked Is the Best Disguise Related Sherlock Holmes fandom Sherlockiana Sherlock Holmes Museum The Sherlock Holmes The Baker Street Irregulars The Baker Street Journal  The Bootmakers of Toronto Sidney Paget The Strand Magazine Undershaw Category vteArthur Conan Doyle's The Lost WorldNovels The Lost World (1912) The Poison Belt (1913) The Land of Mist (1926)  Short stories "When the World Screamed" (1928) "The Disintegration Machine" (1929) Characters Professor Challenger Lord John Roxton AdaptationsFilm The Lost World (1925) The Lost World (1960) The Lost World (1992) Return to the Lost World (1992) The Lost World (1998) Dinosaur Island (2002) King of the Lost World (2005) Television The Lost World (1999-2002) episodes "Heart of the Storm" The Lost World (2001) Related The Valley of Gwangi Dinosaur Summer Lost Continent Buddy's Lost World vteSpiritualism and spiritismHistory and beliefs Apport Automatic writing Cross-Correspondences Ectoplasm Faith healing Materialization Mediumship Séance Spirit guides Spiritual healing Spirit obsession Spirit photography Spirit possession Spirit world Table-turning Theism Spiritualists Derek Acorah Rosemary Altea Dan Aykroyd Charles Bailey Bangs Sisters Ada Besinnet Stephen E. 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The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by some unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of humour, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his morbid fancies with the unquestioned and tragic facts which reinforce the statement. Though the assertions contained in it are amazing and even monstrous, it is none the less forcing itself upon the general intelligence that they are true, and that we must readjust our ideas to the new situation. This world of ours appears to be separated by a slight and precarious margin of safety from a most singular and unexpected danger. I will endeavour in this narrative, which reproduces the original document in its necessarily somewhat fragmentary form, to lay before the reader the whole of the facts up to date, prefacing my statement by saying that, if there be any who doubt the narrative of Joyce-Armstrong, there can be no question at all as to the facts concerning Lieutenant Myrtle, R. N., and Mr. Hay Connor, who undoubtedly met their end in the manner described.
The Joyce-Armstrong Fragment was found in the field which is called Lower Haycock, lying one mile to the westward of the village of Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the 15th September last that an agricultural labourer, James Flynn, in the employment of Mathew Dodd, farmer, of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham, perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the hedge in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair of broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the ditch, he caught sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, which proved to be a note-book with detachable leaves, some of which had come loose and were fluttering along the base of the hedge. These he collected, but some, including the first, were never recovered, and leave a deplorable hiatus in this all-important statement. The note-book was taken by the labourer to his master, who in turn showed it to Dr. J. H. Atherton, of Hartfield. This gentleman at once recognized the need for an expert examination, and the manuscript was forwarded to the Aero Club in London, where it now lies.
The first two pages of the manuscript are missing. There is also one torn away at the end of the narrative, though none of these affect the general coherence of the story. It is conjectured that the missing opening is concerned with the record of Mr. Joyce-Armstrong's qualifications as an aeronaut, which can be gathered from other sources and are admitted to be unsurpassed among the air-pilots of England. For many years he has been looked upon as among the most daring and the most intellectual of flying men, a combination which has enabled him to both invent and test several new devices, including the common gyroscopic attachment which is known by his name. The main body of the manuscript is written neatly in ink, but the last few lines are in pencil and are so ragged as to be hardly legible-exactly, in fact, as they might be expected to appear if they were scribbled off hurriedly from the seat of a moving aeroplane. There are, it may be added, several stains, both on the last page and on the outside cover which have been pronounced by the Home Office experts to be blood-probably human and certainly mammalian. The fact that something closely resembling the organism of malaria was discovered in this blood, and that Joyce-Armstrong is known to have suffered from intermittent fever, is a remarkable example of the new weapons which modern science has placed in the hands of our detectives.
And now a word as to the personality of the author of this epoch-making statement. Joyce-Armstrong, according to the few friends who really knew something of the man, was a poet and a dreamer, as well as a mechanic and an inventor. He was a man of considerable wealth, much of which he had spent in the pursuit of his aeronautical hobby. He had four private aeroplanes in his hangars near Devizes, and is said to have made no fewer than one hundred and seventy ascents in the course of last year. He was a retiring man with dark moods, in which he would avoid the society of his fellows. Captain Dangerfield, who knew him better than anyone, says that there were times when his eccentricity threatened to develop into something more serious. His habit of carrying a shot-gun with him in his aeroplane was one manifestation of it.
Another was the morbid effect which the fall of Lieutenant Myrtle had upon his mind. Myrtle, who was attempting the height record, fell from an altitude of something over thirty thousand feet. Horrible to narrate, his head was entirely obliterated, though his body and limbs preserved their configuration. At every gathering of airmen, Joyce-Armstrong, according to Dangerfield, would ask, with an enigmatic smile: "And where, pray, is Myrtle's head?"
On another occasion after dinner, at the mess of the Flying School on Salisbury Plain, he started a debate as to what will be the most permanent danger which airmen will have to encounter. Having listened to successive opinions as to air-pockets, faulty construction, and over-banking, he ended by shrugging his shoulders and refusing to put forward his own views, though he gave the impression that they differed from any advanced by his companions.
It is worth remarking that after his own complete disappearance it was found that his private affairs were arranged with a precision which may show that he had a strong premonition of disaster. With these essential explanations I will now give the narrative exactly as it stands, beginning at page three of the blood-soaked note-book:
"Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and Gustav Raymond I found that neither of them was aware of any particular danger in the higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actually say what was in my thoughts, but I got so near to it that if they had any corresponding idea they could not have failed to express it. But then they are two empty, vainglorious fellows with no thought beyond seeing their silly names in the newspaper. It is interesting to note that neither of them had ever been much beyond the twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course, men have been higher than this both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. It must be well above that point that the aeroplane enters the danger zone-always presuming that my premonitions are correct.
"Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years, and one might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealing itself in our day? The answer is obvious. In the old days of weak engines, when a hundred horse-power Gnome or Green was considered ample for every need, the flights were very restricted. Now that three hundred horse-power is the rule rather than the exception, visits to the upper layers have become easier and more common. Some of us can remember how, in our youth, Garros made a world-wide reputation by attaining nineteen thousand feet, and it was considered a remarkable achievement to fly over the Alps. Our standard now has been immeasurably raised, and there are twenty high flights for one in former years. Many of them have been undertaken with impunity. The thirty-thousand-foot level has been reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold and asthma. What does this prove? A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them. I believe in time they will map these jungles accurately out. Even at the present moment I could name two of them. One of them lies over the Pau-Biarritz district of France. Another is just over my head as I write here in my house in Wiltshire. I rather think there is a third in the Homburg-Wiesbaden district.
"It was the disappearance of the airmen that first set me thinking. Of course, everyone said that they had fallen into the sea, but that did not satisfy me at all. First, there was Verrier in France; his machine was found near Bayonne, but they never got his body. There was the case of Baxter also, who vanished, though his engine and some of the iron fixings were found in a wood in Leicestershire. In that case, Dr. Middleton, of Amesbury, who was watching the flight with a telescope, declares that just before the clouds obscured the view he saw the machine, which was at an enormous height, suddenly rise perpendicularly upwards in a succession of jerks in a manner that he would have thought to be impossible. That was the last seen of Baxter. There was a correspondence in the papers, but it never led to anything. There were several other similar cases, and then there was the death of Hay Connor. What a cackle there was about an unsolved mystery of the air, and what columns in the halfpenny papers, and yet how little was ever done to get to the bottom of the business! He came down in a tremendous vol-plane from an unknown height. He never got off his machine and died in his pilot's seat. Died of what? 'Heart disease,' said the doctors. Rubbish! Hay Connor's heart was as sound as mine is. What did Venables say? Venables was the only man who was at his side when he died. He said that he was shivering and looked like a man who had been badly scared. 'Died of fright,' said Venables, but could not imagine what he was frightened about. Only said one word to Venables, which sounded like 'Monstrous.' They could make nothing of that at the inquest. But I could make something of it. Monsters! That was the last word of poor Harry Hay Connor. And he DID die of fright, just as Venables thought.
"And then there was Myrtle's head. Do you really believe-does anybody really believe-that a man's head could be driven clean into his body by the force of a fall? Well, perhaps it may be possible, but I, for one, have never believed that it was so with Myrtle. And the grease upon his clothes-'all slimy with grease,' said somebody at the inquest. Queer that nobody got thinking after that! I did-but, then, I had been thinking for a good long time. I've made three ascents-how Dangerfield used to chaff me about my shot-gun-but I've never been high enough. Now, with this new, light Paul Veroner machine and its one hundred and seventy-five Robur, I should easily touch the thirty thousand tomorrow. I'll have a shot at the record. Maybe I shall have a shot at something else as well. Of course, it's dangerous. If a fellow wants to avoid danger he had best keep out of flying altogether and subside finally into flannel slippers and a dressing-gown. But I'll visit the air-jungle tomorrow-and if there's anything there I shall know it. If I return, I'll find myself a bit of a celebrity. If I don't this note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries, if YOU please.
"I chose my Paul Veroner monoplane for the job. There's nothing like a monoplane when real work is to be done. Beaumont found that out in very early days. For one thing it doesn't mind damp, and the weather looks as if we should be in the clouds all the time. It's a bonny little model and answers my hand like a tender-mouthed horse. The engine is a ten-cylinder rotary Robur working up to one hundred and seventy-five. It has all the modern improvements-enclosed fuselage, high-curved landing skids, brakes, gyroscopic steadiers, and three speeds, worked by an alteration of the angle of the planes upon the Venetian-blind principle. I took a shot-gun with me and a dozen cartridges filled with buck-shot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, my old mechanic, when I directed him to put them in. I was dressed like an Arctic explorer, with two jerseys under my overalls, thick socks inside my padded boots, a storm-cap with flaps, and my talc goggles. It was stifling outside the hangars, but I was going for the summit of the Himalayas, and had to dress for the part. Perkins knew there was something on and implored me to take him with me. Perhaps I should if I were using the biplane, but a monoplane is a one-man show-if you want to get the last foot of life out of it. Of course, I took an oxygen bag; the man who goes for the altitude record without one will either be frozen or smothered-or both.
"I had a good look at the planes, the rudder-bar, and the elevating lever before I got in. Everything was in order so far as I could see. Then I switched on my engine and found that she was running sweetly. When they let her go she rose almost at once upon the lowest speed. I circled my home field once or twice just to warm her up, and then with a wave to Perkins and the others, I flattened out my planes and put her on her highest. She skimmed like a swallow down wind for eight or ten miles until I turned her nose up a little and she began to climb in a great spiral for the cloud-bank above me. It's all-important to rise slowly and adapt yourself to the pressure as you go.
"It was a close, warm day for an English September, and there was the hush and heaviness of impending rain. Now and then there came sudden puffs of wind from the south-west-one of them so gusty and unexpected that it caught me napping and turned me half-round for an instant. I remember the time when gusts and whirls and air-pockets used to be things of danger-before we learned to put an overmastering power into our engines. Just as I reached the cloud-banks, with the altimeter marking three thousand, down came the rain. My word, how it poured! It drummed upon my wings and lashed against my face, blurring my glasses so that I could hardly see. I got down on to a low speed, for it was painful to travel against it. As I got higher it became hail, and I had to turn tail to it. One of my cylinders was out of action-a dirty plug, I should imagine, but still I was rising steadily with plenty of power. After a bit the trouble passed, whatever it was, and I heard the full, deep-throated purr-the ten singing as one. That's where the beauty of our modern silencers comes in. We can at last control our engines by ear. How they squeal and squeak and sob when they are in trouble! All those cries for help were wasted in the old days, when every sound was swallowed up by the monstrous racket of the machine. If only the early aviators could come back to see the beauty and perfection of the mechanism which have been bought at the cost of their lives!
"About nine-thirty I was nearing the clouds. Down below me, all blurred and shadowed with rain, lay the vast expanse of Salisbury Plain. Half a dozen flying machines were doing hackwork at the thousand-foot level, looking like little black swallows against the green background. I dare say they were wondering what I was doing up in cloud-land. Suddenly a grey curtain drew across beneath me and the wet folds of vapours were swirling round my face. It was clammily cold and miserable. But I was above the hail-storm, and that was something gained. The cloud was as dark and thick as a London fog. In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her nose up until the automatic alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to slide backwards. My sopped and dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, but presently I was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There was a second-opal-coloured and fleecy-at a great height above my head, a white, unbroken ceiling above, and a dark, unbroken floor below, with the monoplane labouring upwards upon a vast spiral between them. It is deadly lonely in these cloud-spaces. Once a great flight of some small water-birds went past me, flying very fast to the westwards. The quick whir of their wings and their musical cry were cheery to my ear. I fancy that they were teal, but I am a wretched zoologist. Now that we humans have become birds we must really learn to know our brethren by sight.
"The wind down beneath me whirled and swayed the broad cloud-plain. Once a great eddy formed in it, a whirlpool of vapour, and through it, as down a funnel, I caught sight of the distant world. A large white biplane was passing at a vast depth beneath me. I fancy it was the morning mail service betwixt Bristol and London. Then the drift swirled inwards again and the great solitude was unbroken.
"Just after ten I touched the lower edge of the upper cloud-stratum. It consisted of fine diaphanous vapour drifting swiftly from the westwards. The wind had been steadily rising all this time and it was now blowing a sharp breeze-twenty-eight an hour by my gauge. Already it was very cold, though my altimeter only marked nine thousand. The engines were working beautifully, and we went droning steadily upwards. The cloud-bank was thicker than I had expected, but at last it thinned out into a golden mist before me, and then in an instant I had shot out from it, and there was an unclouded sky and a brilliant sun above my head-all blue and gold above, all shining silver below, one vast, glimmering plain as far as my eyes could reach. It was a quarter past ten o'clock, and the barograph needle pointed to twelve thousand eight hundred. Up I went and up, my ears concentrated upon the deep purring of my motor, my eyes busy always with the watch, the revolution indicator, the petrol lever, and the oil pump. No wonder aviators are said to be a fearless race. With so many things to think of there is no time to trouble about oneself. About this time I noted how unreliable is the compass when above a certain height from earth. At fifteen thousand feet mine was pointing east and a point south. The sun and the wind gave me my true bearings.
"I had hoped to reach an eternal stillness in these high altitudes, but with every thousand feet of ascent the gale grew stronger. My machine groaned and trembled in every joint and rivet as she faced it, and swept away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming down wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I had always to turn again and tack up in the wind's eye, for it was not merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations it was above little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay, and all my labour might be lost if I struck the outer layers at some farther point.
"When I reached the nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was about midday, the wind was so severe that I looked with some anxiety to the stays of my wings, expecting momentarily to see them snap or slacken. I even cast loose the parachute behind me, and fastened its hook into the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst. Now was the time when a bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and strut was humming and vibrating like so many harp-strings, but it was glorious to see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still the conqueror of Nature and the mistress of the sky. There is surely something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to the limitations which Creation seemed to impose-rise, too, by such unselfish, heroic devotion as this air-conquest has shown. Talk of human degeneration! When has such a story as this been written in the annals of our race?
"These were the thoughts in my head as I climbed that monstrous, inclined plane with the wind sometimes beating in my face and sometimes whistling behind my ears, while the cloud-land beneath me fell away to such a distance that the folds and hummocks of silver had all smoothed out into one flat, shining plain. But suddenly I had a horrible and unprecedented experience. I have known before what it is to be in what our neighbours have called a tourbillon, but never on such a scale as this. That huge, sweeping river of wind of which I have spoken had, as it appears, whirlpools within it which were as monstrous as itself. Without a moment's warning I was dragged suddenly into the heart of one. I spun round for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down the vacuum funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone, and lost nearly a thousand feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and the shock and breathlessness left me hanging half-insensible over the side of the fuselage. But I am always capable of a supreme effort-it is my one great merit as an aviator. I was conscious that the descent was slower. The whirlpool was a cone rather than a funnel, and I had come to the apex. With a terrific wrench, throwing my weight all to one side, I levelled my planes and brought her head away from the wind. In an instant I had shot out of the eddies and was skimming down the sky. Then, shaken but victorious, I turned her nose up and began once more my steady grind on the upward spiral. I took a large sweep to avoid the danger-spot of the whirlpool, and soon I was safely above it. Just after one o'clock I was twenty-one thousand feet above the sea-level. To my great joy I had topped the gale, and with every hundred feet of ascent the air grew stiller. On the other hand, it was very cold, and I was conscious of that peculiar nausea which goes with rarefaction of the air. For the first time I unscrewed the mouth of my oxygen bag and took an occasional whiff of the glorious gas. I could feel it running like a cordial through my veins, and I was exhilarated almost to the point of drunkenness. I shouted and sang as I soared upwards into the cold, still outer world.
"It is very clear to me that the insensibility which came upon Glaisher, and in a lesser degree upon Coxwell, when, in 1862, they ascended in a balloon to the height of thirty thousand feet, was due to the extreme speed with which a perpendicular ascent is made. Doing it at an easy gradient and accustoming oneself to the lessened barometric pressure by slow degrees, there are no such dreadful symptoms. At the same great height I found that even without my oxygen inhaler I could breathe without undue distress. It was bitterly cold, however, and my thermometer was at zero, Fahrenheit. At one-thirty I was nearly seven miles above the surface of the earth, and still ascending steadily. I found, however, that the rarefied air was giving markedly less support to my planes, and that my angle of ascent had to be considerably lowered in consequence. It was already clear that even with my light weight and strong engine-power there was a point in front of me where I should be held. To make matters worse, one of my sparking-plugs was in trouble again and there was intermittent misfiring in the engine. My heart was heavy with the fear of failure.
"It was about that time that I had a most extraordinary experience. Something whizzed past me in a trail of smoke and exploded with a loud, hissing sound, sending forth a cloud of steam. For the instant I could not imagine what had happened. Then I remembered that the earth is for ever being bombarded by meteor stones, and would be hardly inhabitable were they not in nearly every case turned to vapour in the outer layers of the atmosphere. Here is a new danger for the high-altitude man, for two others passed me when I was nearing the forty-thousand-foot mark. I cannot doubt that at the edge of the earth's envelope the risk would be a very real one.
"My barograph needle marked forty-one thousand three hundred when I became aware that I could go no farther. Physically, the strain was not as yet greater than I could bear but my machine had reached its limit. The attenuated air gave no firm support to the wings, and the least tilt developed into side-slip, while she seemed sluggish on her controls. Possibly, had the engine been at its best, another thousand feet might have been within our capacity, but it was still misfiring, and two out of the ten cylinders appeared to be out of action. If I had not already reached the zone for which I was searching then I should never see it upon this journey. But was it not possible that I had attained it? Soaring in circles like a monstrous hawk upon the forty-thousand-foot level I let the monoplane guide herself, and with my Mannheim glass I made a careful observation of my surroundings. The heavens were perfectly clear; there was no indication of those dangers which I had imagined.
"I have said that I was soaring in circles. It struck me suddenly that I would do well to take a wider sweep and open up a new airtract. If the hunter entered an earth-jungle he would drive through it if he wished to find his game. My reasoning had led me to believe that the air-jungle which I had imagined lay somewhere over Wiltshire. This should be to the south and west of me. I took my bearings from the sun, for the compass was hopeless and no trace of earth was to be seen-nothing but the distant, silver cloud-plain. However, I got my direction as best I might and kept her head straight to the mark. I reckoned that my petrol supply would not last for more than another hour or so, but I could afford to use it to the last drop, since a single magnificent vol-plane could at any time take me to the earth.
"Suddenly I was aware of something new. The air in front of me had lost its crystal clearness. It was full of long, ragged wisps of something which I can only compare to very fine cigarette smoke. It hung about in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlight. As the monoplane shot through it, I was aware of a faint taste of oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere. There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life, even as the humble grease of the ocean is the food for the mighty whale? The thought was in my mind when my eyes looked upwards and I saw the most wonderful vision that ever man has seen. Can I hope to convey it to you even as I saw it myself last Thursday?
"Conceive a jelly-fish such as sails in our summer seas, bell-shaped and of enormous size-far larger, I should judge, than the dome of St. Paul's. It was of a light pink colour veined with a delicate green, but the whole huge fabric so tenuous that it was but a fairy outline against the dark blue sky. It pulsated with a delicate and regular rhythm. From it there depended two long, drooping, green tentacles, which swayed slowly backwards and forwards. This gorgeous vision passed gently with noiseless dignity over my head, as light and fragile as a soap-bubble, and drifted upon its stately way.
"I had half-turned my monoplane, that I might look after this beautiful creature, when, in a moment, I found myself amidst a perfect fleet of them, of all sizes, but none so large as the first. Some were quite small, but the majority about as big as an average balloon, and with much the same curvature at the top. There was in them a delicacy of texture and colouring which reminded me of the finest Venetian glass. Pale shades of pink and green were the prevailing tints, but all had a lovely iridescence where the sun shimmered through their dainty forms. Some hundreds of them drifted past me, a wonderful fairy squadron of strange unknown argosies of the sky-creatures whose forms and substance were so attuned to these pure heights that one could not conceive anything so delicate within actual sight or sound of earth.
"But soon my attention was drawn to a new phenomenon-the serpents of the outer air. These were long, thin, fantastic coils of vapour-like material, which turned and twisted with great speed, flying round and round at such a pace that the eyes could hardly follow them. Some of these ghost-like creatures were twenty or thirty feet long, but it was difficult to tell their girth, for their outline was so hazy that it seemed to fade away into the air around them. These air-snakes were of a very light grey or smoke colour, with some darker lines within, which gave the impression of a definite organism. One of them whisked past my very face, and I was conscious of a cold, clammy contact, but their composition was so unsubstantial that I could not connect them with any thought of physical danger, any more than the beautiful bell-like creatures which had preceded them. There was no more solidity in their frames than in the floating spume from a broken wave.
"But a more terrible experience was in store for me. Floating downwards from a great height there came a purplish patch of vapour, small as I saw it first, but rapidly enlarging as it approached me, until it appeared to be hundreds of square feet in size. Though fashioned of some transparent, jelly-like substance, it was none the less of much more definite outline and solid consistence than anything which I had seen before. There were more traces, too, of a physical organization, especially two vast, shadowy, circular plates upon either side, which may have been eyes, and a perfectly solid white projection between them which was as curved and cruel as the beak of a vulture.
"The whole aspect of this monster was formidable and threatening, and it kept changing its colour from a very light mauve to a dark, angry purple so thick that it cast a shadow as it drifted between my monoplane and the sun. On the upper curve of its huge body there were three great projections which I can only describe as enormous bubbles, and I was convinced as I looked at them that they were charged with some extremely light gas which served to buoy up the misshapen and semi-solid mass in the rarefied air. The creature moved swiftly along, keeping pace easily with the monoplane, and for twenty miles or more it formed my horrible escort, hovering over me like a bird of prey which is waiting to pounce. Its method of progression-done so swiftly that it was not easy to follow-was to throw out a long, glutinous streamer in front of it, which in turn seemed to draw forward the rest of the writhing body. So elastic and gelatinous was it that never for two successive minutes was it the same shape, and yet each change made it more threatening and loathsome than the las
"I knew that it meant mischief. Every purple flush of its hideous body told me so. The vague, goggling eyes which were turned always upon me were cold and merciless in their viscid hatred. I dipped the nose of my monoplane downwards to escape it. As I did so, as quick as a flash there shot out a long tentacle from this mass of floating blubber, and it fell as light and sinuous as a whip-lash across the front of my machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again, while the huge, flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vol-pique, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane and was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut through a smoke wreath. A long, gliding, sticky, serpent-like coil came from behind and caught me round the waist, dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my fingers sinking into the smooth, glue-like surface, and for an instant I disengaged myself, but only to be caught round the boot by another coil, which gave me a jerk that tilted me almost on to my back.
"As I fell over I blazed off both barrels of my gun, though, indeed, it was like attacking an elephant with a pea-shooter to imagine that any human weapon could cripple that mighty bulk. And yet I aimed better than I knew, for, with a loud report, one of the great blisters upon the creature's back exploded with the puncture of the buck-shot. It was very clear that my conjecture was right, and that these vast, clear bladders were distended with some lifting gas, for in an instant the huge, cloud-like body turned sideways, writhing desperately to find its balance, while the white beak snapped and gaped in horrible fury. But already I had shot away on the steepest glide that I dared to attempt, my engine still full on, the flying propeller and the force of gravity shooting me downwards like an aerolite. Far behind me I saw a dull, purplish smudge growing swiftly smaller and merging into the blue sky behind it. I was safe out of the deadly jungle of the outer air.
"Once out of danger I throttled my engine, for nothing tears a machine to pieces quicker than running on full power from a height. It was a glorious, spiral vol-plane from nearly eight miles of altitude-first, to the level of the silver cloud-bank, then to that of the storm-cloud beneath it, and finally, in beating rain, to the surface of the earth. I saw the Bristol Channel beneath me as I broke from the clouds, but, having still some petrol in my tank, I got twenty miles inland before I found myself stranded in a field half a mile from the village of Ashcombe. There I got three tins of petrol from a passing motor-car, and at ten minutes past six that evening I alighted gently in my own home meadow at Devizes, after such a journey as no mortal upon earth has ever yet taken and lived to tell the tale. I have seen the beauty and I have seen the horror of the heights-and greater beauty or greater horror than that is not within the ken of man.
"And now it is my plan to go once again before I give my results to the world. My reason for this is that I must surely have something to show by way of proof before I lay such a tale before my fellow-men. It is true that others will soon follow and will confirm what I have said, and yet I should wish to carry conviction from the first. Those lovely iridescent bubbles of the air should not be hard to capture. They drift slowly upon their way, and the swift monoplane could intercept their leisurely course. It is likely enough that they would dissolve in the heavier layers of the atmosphere, and that some small heap of amorphous jelly might be all that I should bring to earth with me. And yet something there would surely be by which I could substantiate my story. Yes, I will go, even if I run a risk by doing so. These purple horrors would not seem to be numerous. It is probable that I shall not see one. If I do I shall dive at once. At the worst there is always the shot-gun and my knowledge of ..." Here a page of the manuscript is unfortunately missing. On the next page is written, in large, straggling writing: "Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!"
Such in its entirety is the Joyce-Armstrong Statement. Of the man nothing has since been seen. Pieces of his shattered monoplane have been picked up in the preserves of Mr. Budd-Lushington upon the borders of Kent and Sussex, within a few miles of the spot where the note-book was discovered. If the unfortunate aviator's theory is correct that this air-jungle, as he called it, existed only over the south-west of England, then it would seem that he had fled from it at the full speed of his monoplane, but had been overtaken and devoured by these horrible creatures at some spot in the outer atmosphere above the place where the grim relics were found. The picture of that monoplane skimming down the sky, with the nameless terrors flying as swiftly beneath it and cutting it off always from the earth while they gradually closed in upon their victim, is one upon which a man who valued his sanity would prefer not to dwell. There are many, as I am aware, who still jeer at the facts which I have here set down, but even they must admit that Joyce-Armstrong has disappeared, and I would commend to them his own words: "This note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries, if YOU please."

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Word Lists:

Text : a book or other written or printed work, regarded in terms of its content rather than its physical form

Altimeter : an instrument for determining altitude attained, especially a barometric or radar device used in an aircraft.

Fuselage : the main body of an aircraft.

Rarefaction : diminution in the density of something, especially air or a gas

Aeronaut : a traveler in a hot-air balloon, airship, or other flying craft.

Petrol : a light fuel oil that is obtained by distilling petroleum and used in internal combustion engines; gasoline

Drivel : nonsense

Rarefied : (of air, especially that at high altitudes) of lower pressure than usual; thin

Whirlpool : a rapidly rotating mass of water in a river or sea into which objects may be drawn, typically caused by the meeting of conflicting currents.

Aviator : a pilot.

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Additional Information:

Rating: C Words in the Passage: 6678 Unique Words: 1,781 Sentences: 322
Noun: 1433 Conjunction: 721 Adverb: 442 Interjection: 11
Adjective: 575 Pronoun: 678 Verb: 1114 Preposition: 817
Letter Count: 28,603 Sentiment: Positive / Positive / Positive Tone: Neutral Difficult Words: 1199
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