On Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

With the help and support (and censoring power?) of the family of the deceased, the mystery writer John Dickson Carr wrote an effusive biography of the late (straight) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. "The Life of Sir Arthur etc." was published in 1949, 19 years after the beloved geezer's death. It's well paced and touches on the basics. Doyle opposed women's suffrage his whole life, but did eventually change his mind in favour of home rule for Ireland. He was a best selling author of historical novels and essays in his time, and warned of the British army's lapses in preparing for World War I -- and was proven right when German submarines blew up the U.K.'s ships on the sly (huh? where'd that torpedo come from?), and tens of thousands of soldiers died because generals ordered them to run right up to the enemy, who were safely ensconced in deep trenches and aiming machine guns at the approaching targets. It's astonishing that the Brits won the war at all.

Doyle's Holmes was logical and grouchy, and seemed to reflect Doyle's agnostic side (he renounced Catholicism as a young man). In his last decade of life, Doyle embraced spriritualism, proclaiming a belief in the eternal as proven by many experiences with mediums who communicated with the dead. (Left unmentioned in this biography is Doyle's 1922 authorship of "The Coming of the Fairies," a recitation of the "facts" around two young children who took "the Cottingley photographs," of the fairies living near their home. The two brats eventually confessed their prank: I hope Doyle never knew of their perfidy. I own a 1997 reprint of this lovely fairy tome, where Doyle pretends not to take sides in the story's veracity, but his need for belief is clear.)

Sherlock Holmes was also the chivalrous side of Doyle, and the real deal would take up the occasional injustice (his "clients" were generally too poor to pay for first class legal help). Doyle's first case involved a non-white man railroaded by a bigoted white police force into years of jail time for a crime not committed. Shockingly, England had no court of appeal, and so the imprisoned George Edalji had no recourse.

But Doyle was white, and so was listened to. Years of angry publicity and public shock forced the government of the day to create a Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907, though it was too late for Edalji, released early from jail out of shame, but still screwed around by a hierarchy that could not bring itself to do the right thing and absolve him.