Arthur Conan Doyle left behind many mysteries that he loved no less than his famous character Sherlock Holmes. The Piltdown Man, the fairies of Cottingley - famous 20th century falsifications are associated with his name.
Concealing nobility
Perhaps one of the most important mysteries of Conan Doyle of our time is what was the man who created the classic image of a detective, who gave the whole world to believe in surviving dinosaurs and existing fairies. The man who received a classical medical education, so passionately sought evidence of the "curse of the pharaohs" and defended spiritualism no less fiercely.
And he was, according to the recollections of his son, a knight late in time. According to Adrian, the childhood of "Sir Nigel Loring" - the hero of Doyle's historical novel, a knight in the service of the King of England at the very beginning of the Hundred Years War (that is, in the golden era of chivalry), was largely autobiographical. The only difference is the time and place of action, which from the ancient abode of ancestors turned into a modest dwelling on Liberton Bank.
The very atmosphere of the house "breathed a chivalrous spirit." His mother was an architect, a talented storyteller and a passionate admirer of antiquities. As Adrian writes, Arthur Conan Doyle began to understand heraldry "before he mastered the Latin conjugation." He was familiar with his entire lineage, including the most insignificant offshoots of the family in the previous six centuries. And what is most important, as the main measure of all earthly values, he was instilled in the code of chivalry, characteristic of the distant 15th century. So, he could close his eyes to the spoiled property or the disruption of his experiments, but even his son would not get away with a disrespectful relationship with a servant.
He applied the same chivalric code to his attitude to spiritualism. Like the "true" knights who once defended the Catholic faith, he completely devoted himself to his mystical hobby and his preaching.
Titles followed the code of chivalry. As a true aristocrat, Conan Doyle treated them with disdain, for a long time renouncing the title of peerage in the name of spiritualism, and never calling himself "sir". Only after his death did his family find out that he was a knight of the Crown of Italy. Arthur Conan Doyle did not like to reveal his mysteries.
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Who was Sherlock Holmes?
The question of who became the prototype for the legendary Sherlock Holmes still causes a lot of discussion. It is generally believed that he was Joseph Bell, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, where Conan Doyle received his medical education. This man was known for his ability to guess the character and past of a person in the smallest detail. Everything seems to fit. However, is it worth ignoring the opinion of the writer himself on this issue: "If Holmes exists, then, I must admit, I am myself."
This phrase is allegedly isolated from Arthur's personal conversation with the American journalist Haydon Coffin. And even if she herself, perhaps, is nothing more than a "journalistic duck", it is enough to get acquainted with the writer's lifestyle to understand that if this is a fiction, then it is not far from the truth.
According to the memoirs of his son, the writer had no equal in deduction. And he often applied his abilities in practice: “Traveling with my father to European capitals, most of all I liked to go with him to famous restaurants and listen to his dispassionate remarks about the characters, occupations, hobbies and other details of the life of visitors, details completely hidden from my gaze.
No less than his character, Conan Doyle loved riddles, bright detective cases, and most importantly, their disclosure. Moreover, like Sherlock, in his quest to find the truth, he completely forgot about everything in the world, including his own appearance: “sometimes you could see the majestic figure of Conan Doyle from head to toe on the steps of the Athenaeum club, if you don't count too small for his massive the skull of his son's hat, which he casually pushed onto the crown of his head. Such negligence usually indicated that he was faced with some kind of secret, legend or intrigue that immediately requires clarification. His son Adrian describes an amusing case when, while working on one "murder" (the case concerned a young man who disappeared under circumstances that left the police in no doubt that even the body was destroyed),he met his father wearing a black and brown shoe. He was so focused on his versions that his "serious" appearance did not inspire anything good to the attacker. Indeed, it was soon discovered that the missing young man was safe and sound and was hiding in Liverpool.
Conan Doyle spoke
Arthur Conan Doyle is credited with the phrase said in his last days: "There have been many adventures in my life, but the greatest and most glorious is ahead of me." The famous writer, despite his medical education, was completely absorbed in spiritualism. It is believed that he became interested in him after the death of his father, who drank a lot and ended his days in a psychiatric clinic, claiming to hear "voices from the other world." According to another version, the death of his son during the First World War pushed the writer on the path of a medium. But, perhaps, the more fundamental reason was the fashion of English society in the 19th and early 20th centuries to while away the evenings at "spinning tables." Although, Arthur's hobby was clearly more than a simple tribute to fashion. With his characteristic enthusiasm, he plunged into the history of spiritualism, having published more than one fundamental work on this topic,the most famous of which is The History of Spiritualism.
Evidence of "life after death" and the possibility of communication with spirits, Conan Doyle looked for in science, in the latest archaeological discoveries, so persistently advocating the existence of "curses of the pharaohs." Spiritualism indirectly brought his death closer. Arthur Conan Doyle traveled the world lecturing and defending Allan Kardek's religion. This finally undermined the already weak health. He died on July 7, 1930 of a heart attack.
The question of how a person with a medical education believed so strongly in the existence of fairies and ghosts, perhaps, will remain a mystery, or one of the generations of his biographers will still be able to find an answer to it. But even this is not important. Arthur Conan Doyle became interested in mysticism, being already an accomplished and well-known person. As a result, his name and hobby have provided numerous opportunities for speculation. Or myths. So, for a long time there were rumors that the writer after his death appeared to his family in the form of a ghost. It is allegedly based on the diaries of his widow with the intriguing title "Conan Doyle spoke", who, however, shared her husband's hobbies.
Fairies from Cottingley
In addition to the history of spiritualism, Conan Doyle was also fond of "paranormal photography", collecting works of this genre, starting from the middle of the 19th century, and in his own manner verifying their authenticity. Among all the copies that he managed to come across were the famous photographs of fairies from Cottingley, which were allegedly able to photograph two teenage girls: Elsie Wright and Frances Griffith.
The story began in the spring of 1917, when two cousins explained to their mothers the reasons for their long absence by playing with fairies by a local stream. After the adults did not believe them, the girls asked their father for a camera as proof and took a couple of pictures showing the fairies and the representatives of the "little people" singly.
In England at the beginning of the 20th century, the folklore tradition was still strong, therefore, the photographs that appeared on the pages of Strand Magazine received a great response. One of their most ardent admirers was Conan Doyle, who, impressed by the girls' connection with the "otherworldly", wrote the book "The Phenomenon of Fairies." In it, he was very categorical, arguing: "There is a whole people that can be as numerous as the human race, which leads its own life and is separated from us by some difference in vibrations." And this despite the fact that the famous physicist Oliver Lodge said a categorical no to his request for the authenticity of the photographs.
The hoax was exposed only in the 80s of the XX century, when Elsie and Francis admitted that the fairies in the photographs were drawn and secured with hat pins. True, their testimony was constantly changing: they claimed that the photographs were fake, and the fairies were real; that fairies were just a way to justify themselves to their parents for their lateness, and then the girls were simply afraid of parental anger for deception, and the disappointment of their "favorite writer Arthur Conan Doyle." In her interview, Frances stated: “I never considered my trick with Elsie a fraud - we were just playing the fool. I still don’t understand how it was possible to believe us seriously - it was done by those who wanted to seriously believe”.
And yet, in the end, amateur photographers left their fans hope for a fairy tale. So, several years after the revelatory interview and after the death of Francis, Elsie Hill firmly declared: "There really were fairies from Cottingley."
Piltdown Man
The name of Arthur Conan Doyle was mixed not only in "psychic" hoaxes, but also in scientific ones. This is the famous Piltdown Man case, the missing link in the Darwinian chain of evolution.
The discovery belonged to amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, who reported to the British Museum on 15 February 1912 that he had discovered the skull of a massive humanoid creature in a gravel pit at Piltdauten. Its discovery was carried out by the scientist Smith Woodward, who confirmed that the remains belong to a previously unknown humanoid creature. The new species was named "Eoanthropus dawsoni" ("Dawson's Dawn Man"). Together with Dawson, they continued the excavation, and found other evidence of the "prehuman": even more fragments of a skull, a jaw with two teeth, various animal fossils and primitive stone tools.
According to a preliminary result, it was established that this person lived on British soil about a million years ago. This was the oldest representative of "homo" in England. The find was so sensational that they decided to neglect the tests necessary in this case. As Miles Russell later wrote in his book Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson and the World's Greatest Archaeological Hoax: “No one has done any scientific tests. If they were done, then they would immediately notice the chemical aging of the teeth and the fact that they are sharpened. It was obvious that this was not a real artifact."
The truth was revealed after Dawson's death in 1916. Not only did the evidence for the existence of the Piltduan man end with a couple of finds, but upon closer examination it turned out that the found "ape-like teeth" of the lower jaw did not correspond to the upper, which suspiciously resembled the structure of the skull of modern humans. It was soon discovered that the notorious Piltdown man was a construction of the remains of a monkey and a man.
It is still unknown who created the famous hoax that put the entire scientific world on the ears. According to one of the versions, its author was Arthur Conan Doyle, who, like Dawson, was a passionate lover of antiquities, but had a strained relationship with the latter. Moreover, he lived near Piltdown for a long time. Researchers have also found many common ground with his novel The Lost World and the Piltdown case.
From The Lost World:
“- Well, what about the bones?
- He took the first from the stew, the second he made with his own hands. All you need is a certain ingenuity and knowledge of the matter, and then you will falsify anything - both a bone and a photograph."
One of the possible motives is considered his passion for spiritualism and the desire to show the imperfection of science. But defenders of the writer argue that in this case, he would not hide his triumph.