Letter of Advice sent by a Distinguished American to DavidChristie Murray prior to a visit to America on a LecturingTour.Friday, 7th September.My Dear Old Friend,—I am sending.... some letters for youby this same post. They are to three splendid fellows, fullof power to help you, and certain to be eager to use itIf I could have seen you personally, I had it in mind to saymany things which don't lend themselves to pen and ink. Someof them perhaps can be put down with a minimum ofawkwardness.You are primarily, in the American mind, an eminentnovelist. They have read you (in printed cheap editions) bythe score of thousands. They think of you as a cousin ofDickens, Thackeray, Reade and the rest. Now that is yourrôle marked out for you by God. Stick to it, wear reasonablyconventional clothes, cultivate an intelligently conventionalaspect, and do not for your life say anything about thestage or the latter-day hard luck you have had, or anythingelse which will not commend itself to a popular sense which,although artistic on one side is implacably Philistine onthe other. They have a tremendous regard for Reade. Carryyourself as if you were the undoubted inheritor of the Readetraditions. Think how Reade himself would have bornehimself—then strike out from it all the bumptious andaggressive parts—and be the rest.Two things destroy a man in America. One is thesuggestion of personal eccentricity, Bohemianism, etc. Theother is a disposition for criticism and controversy ontheir own subjects. The latter is the more dangerous of thetwo. It is a people devoured by the newspaper habit, likethe Irish or the old Greeks of the Areopagus. They ask everyfew minutes “What is the news?” Thousands of smart young menare hustling about fifteen hours a day to answer thatceaseless question. If it occurs to any one of them anywhereto say: “Well, here is a cocky Englishman who is over hereto make some money, but who is unable to resist thetemptation to harangue us on our shortcomings”—just thatminute you are damned—irrevocably damned. That one sniff ofblood will suffice. The whole pack will be on your shoulderswithin twenty-four hours.Yet, don't mistake me. These same newspaper men are nicefellows, kindly to a fault, if you avoid rubbing them thewrong way. Swear to yourself that you will be genial andaffable with every human soul you meet, and that you willnever be betrayed into an argument—onany Americansubject, mind—with any living being, from the bartenderup. It is not so hard a rule, old man, and observing itvehemently day and night will make all the wide differenceto you between miserable failure and a fine and substantialsuccess.You will meet two classes of men—scholarly men like myfriends, who will take you to clubs where writers, thinkers,students, etc., congregate, and less scholarly but notless likeable ordinary newspaper men. Live your life asmuch as possible among these two classes. You will catchswiftly enough the shades of difference between the two. Itis the difference between, say, the Athenaeum and theSavage. Only there is next to no caste spirit, and points ofsimilarity or even community crop up there between the twowhich couldn't be here. The golden key to both is unvaryingamiability.You are better calculated than most men I know to charm andcaptivate them all. They will delight in your conversationand in you, and they will see to it that you have a perfecttime and coin money—if only you lay yourself out to beuniformly nice to them, and watch carefully to see that youseem to be doing about as they do.A good many minor people—hotel baggagemen, clerks, etc.,tram conductors, policemen and the like—will seem to youto be monstrously rude and unobliging. You will be right;they are undoubtedly God-damned uncivil brutes. That is oneof the unhappy conditions of our life there.Don'tbetempted even to wrangle with them or talk back to them. Passon, and keep still. If you try to do anything else, theupshot will be your appearing somewhere in print as a damnedBritisher for whom American ways are not good enough. Thewhole country is one vast sounding board, and it vibrateswith perilous susceptibility in response to an Englishaccent.Don't mention the word Ireland. Perhaps that is mostimportant of all. You will hear lots of Americans—good men,too—damning the Irish. Listen to this, and say nothing,unless something amiable about the Irish occurs to you.Because here is a mysterious paradox. The America alwaysdamns the Irishman. It is his foible. But if an Englishmanjoins in, instantly every American within earshot hates himfor it. I plead with you to avoid that pitfall. The bottomof it is paved with the bones of your compatriots.So I could go on indefinitely, but I have already taxed yourpatience. Briefly then—1. Express no opinions on American subjects, political,social or racial-save in praise.2. Be polite and ready to talk affably wit everybody;men who speak to you in a railway train, or the bartender or the bootblack, quite as much as the rest.3. Avoid like poison eccentricities of dress and allcontact with actors an theatrical people.4. Rebuff no interviewer. Be invariably affableand reserved with him talk literature to him, andreminicences of Reade, Matthew Arnold, Dean Stanley,anybody you like especially mention things in Americawhich you like, and shut-up about what you don't like.5. Keep appointments to a minute. No one elsewill, but they respect immensely in others.6. Bear in mind always that people think of you as abig novelist, and will be only too glad to treat you atyour own valuation, gently exhibited or rathersuggested by courteous reserve. There is nothing theywon't do for you, if only you impress them as likingthem, and appreciating their kindliness, and beingstudious of their sensibilities.Take this all, my dear Christie, as from one who sincerelywishes you well, and believes that you can and should dowell. It lies absolutely in your own hands to make a finepersonal and professional reputation in America, and to comeback with a solid bank account and a good, clear, freshstart. You have lots of years before you; lots of importantwork; lots of honest happiness. You were started once fairon the road to the top of the tree. Here is the chance toget back again on to that road. I am so fearfully anxiousthat you should not miss it, that I take large liberties intalking to you as I find I have done. Write to me atAttridge's Hotel, Schull, County Cork, where I shall be from14th to 20th September, to tell me that you are notoffended. Or if you are offended, still write to me. And Ishould prize highly the chance of hearing from you from theother side, after you have started in.And so God be with you.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 8th May 1896.My Dear Christie Murray,—I have been in Egypt and have onlyjust got back and received your note. Poor Holmes is deadand damned. I couldn't revive him if I would (at least notfor years), for I have had such an overdose of him that Ifeel towards him as I do towardspâté de foie gras, ofwhich I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me asickly feeling to this day. Any old Holmes story you are, ofcourse, most welcome to use.I am house-hunting in the country, which means continualsallies and alarms, but I should much like to meet youbefore I go away, to talk over our American experiences. Ido hope you are not going to allow lecturing to get in theway of your writing. We have too few born story-tellers.—With all kind regards. Yours very truly,(Sgd.) A. Conan Doyle.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray (undated).My Dear Sir,—I think that your idea of a statue toWashington to be erected by public subscription in London isan admirable one. The future of the world belongs to theAnglo-Celtic races if they can but work in unison, andeverything which works for that end makes for the highest. Ibelieve that the great stream which bifurcated a century agomay have re-united before many more centuries have passed,and that we shall all have learned by then that patriotismis not to be limited by flags or systems, but that it shouldembrace all of the same race and blood and speech. It wouldbe a great thing—one of the most noble and magnanimousthings in the history of the world—if a proud people shouldconsent to adorn their capital with the statue of one whobore arms against them. I wish you every success in youridea, and shall be happy to contribute ten guineas towardsits realisation.—Yours very truly,(Sgd.) A. Conan Doyle.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 6th May 1897.Dear Sir,—I have to acknowledge with thanks the receipt ofyour letter of May 1st I thoroughly appreciate the spirit ofyour suggestion, but am inclined to doubt its wisdom at thepresent time. I do not see how any human being on eitherside of the Atlantic can dispute the good-feeling alreadyentertained towards the United States by every class of thepopulation here. I am afraid, however, that it is notgenerally reciprocated, and the Americans are apt tomisunderstand some of our efforts to conciliate them, and toattribute them to less worthy motives. I have heard severaldistinguished Americans protest against the “gush,” as theycall it, in which we indulge. Under these circumstances, Ithink the project of a statue to George Washington shouldbe, for the present, postponed,—I am, yours truly,(Sgd.) Joseph Chamberlain.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 22nd February1897.29 Delamere Terrace, Westbourne Sq., W.My Dear Sir,—May a delighted reader of your articles in theSunpresume on a very slight acquaintance with theirauthor to say how greatly he admires them? The paper onDickens seemed to me to dissolve that writer's peculiarcharm with a truer alchemy than any criticism I had everread. And now that with such splendid courage you tiltagainst the painted bladder-babies of the neo-Scottishschool,—with so much real moderation too, with such adignified statement of the reasons for such a judgment,—Icannot rest, I must say “Bravo.” The distinction between thefalse North Britons (mere phantoms) and the true Stevensonand Barrie (real creatures of the imagination, if sometimes,in their detail, a little whimsical, even a littlediminutive) is put so admirably as I had not yet seen itput.I am eager for next Sunday's article, and as long as thesepapers continue I shall read them with avidity. I detect inevery paragraph that genuine passion for literature which isso rare, and which is the only thing worth living the lifeof letters for.Pardon my intrusion, and accept my thanks once more.—Believe me to be, faithfully yours,(Sgd.) Edmund Gosse.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray (undated).Undershaw, Hindhead, HaslemereMy Dear Murray,—I shall be delighted and honoured to have afirst glance at the ms. I never read anything of yours whichI did not like, so I am sure I shall like it, but there aredegrees of liking, and I will tell you frankly which degreeI register.Now you will bear that visit in mind and write to me whenyou are ready and your work done.—With all kind regards,yours very truly,(Sgd.) A. Conan Doyle.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray (undated).Undershaw, Hindhead, Haslemere.My Dear Murray,—I have just finished your critical book andthink it most excellent and useful. I couldn't help writingto you to say so. It is really fine—so well-balanced andclear-sighted and judicial. For kind words about myself manythanks. I don't think we are suffering from criticalkindness so much asindiscriminatecritical kindness. Noone has said enough, as it seems to me, about Barrie orKipling. I think they are fit—young as they are—to rankwith the highest, and that some of Barrie's work,MargaretOgilvyandA Window in Thrums, will endear him as RobertBurns is endeared to the hearts of the future Scottish race.I have just settled down here and we are getting thefurniture in and all in order. In a week or so it will bequite right. If ever you should be at a loose end at a week-end, or any other time, I wish you would run down. I believewe could make you happy for a few days. Name your date andthe room will be ready. Only from the 16th to the 26th it ispre-empted.—With all kind remembrances, yours very truly,(Sgd.) A. Conan Doyle
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray. 9th Sept. 1897.148 Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lanes.My Dear Sir,—Will you kindly excuse the liberty I take inwriting? I have just bought and read your new bookMyContemporaries in Fiction. and feel that I must thank you.The task you assumed was, I think, necessary, and yourestimate of the various writers just, and on the wholegenerous. I know my opinion is of little value, but I havelong felt that several of our modern novelists wereappraised miles beyond their merits, and I have often wishedthat some man of position, one who could speak candidlywithout fear of being accused of being envious, would giveto the world a fair and fearless criticism of the works ofnovelists about whom some so-called critics rave. Thousandswill be glad that you have done this, and I hope your bookwill have the success it deserves.It will be a matter for thankfulness, too, that you havetried to do justice to George Macdonald, and to give him theplace he deserves. To read the fulsome stuff which is sooften written about Crockett, and then to think thatMacdonald is quietly shelved, is enough to make one sick atheart Certainly, I shall do all that lies in my power tomake your work known.I do wish, however that you had devoted a few pages to onewho, a few years ago, loomed large in the literary horizon.I mean Robert Buchanan. I know that during these last fewyears he has poured out a great deal of drivel, but I cannotforget books likeThe New Abelard, and especially,Godand the Man. It is a matter of surprise and regret that oneof Buchanan's undoubted powers should have thrown himselfaway as he has done. All the same, the man who wroteGodand the ManandThe Shadow of the Sword, hysterical asthe latter may be, deserves a place in such a book as yours,and an honest criticism, such as I am sure you could give,might lead him, even yet, to give us a work worthy of thepromise of years ago.I am afraid you will regard this letter as presumptuous,nevertheless, I am prompted by sincere admiration. Years agoI readJoseph's CoatandAunt Rachel, and still thinkthe latter to be one of the tenderest and most beautifulthings in fiction. I also remember the simple scene whichgave the title to the book calledA Bit of Human Nature,and shall never cease to admire what seems to me a flash ofreal genius. Consequently, when I stood close by you at a“Vagabond's” dinner, on the ladies' night some months ago, Iwas strongly impelled to ask for an introduction, but lackedthe necessary audacity to carry out my one timedetermination.Again thanking you for a book which has afforded me agenuine pleasure to read, besides giving me much mentalstimulus,—I am, dear sir, yours very truly,(Sgd.) Joseph Hocking.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray. 17th June 1897.Dear Murray,—I am getting so weary of controversy that Imust decline to take part, directly or indirectly, in anymore. Possibly, in the heat of annoyance, I may have saidharsh things about Mr Scott, but if so, I have forgottenthem, and I think all harsh things are better forgotten. Iam sorry, therefore, to hear that you are on the war-path,and wish I could persuade you to turn back to the paths ofpeace. You are too valuable to be wasted in this sort ofwarfare. I daresay you will smile at such advice fromme,of all men, but believe me, I speak from sad experience.I was sorry to hear about the fate of your play, but 'tisthe fortune of war, and I hope it will only stir you toanother effort which may possess, not more merit, possibly,but betterluck, which now-a-days counts more than merit.—With all good wishes, I am, yours truly,(Sgd.) Robert Buchanan.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, Sept. 1st.“Merliland,” 25 Maresfield Gardens, South Hampstead, N.W.Dear Christie Murray,—I thank you for your kind breath ofencouragement, and am very glad that myOutcastcontainsanything to awaken a response in so fine a nature as yourown. It was very good of you to think of writing to me onthe subject at all.I can't help thinking that men who still hold to the oldtraditions should stick together and form some kind of aphalanx. I was not sorry, therefore, to hear that you hadexpressed yourself freely about the craze of a noisyminority for formlessness and ugliness in realisticliterature. Ibsen's style, regarded merely as style, bearsthe same relation to good writing that theStarnewspaperdoes to a Greek statue. I don't myself much mind what moralsa man teaches, so long as he preserves the morality ofbeautifulform, but at the rate we are now going,literature seems likely to become a series ofcausescélèbreschronicled in the language of the penny-a-liner.And over and above this is the dirty habit, growing uponmany able men, of examining their secretions, always anevident sign of hypochondria.I am awaiting with much interest your further steps on theplane dramatic. Meantime, I hope I shall see more of you andyours. With kind regards.—Truly yours,(Sgd.) Robert Buchanan.
Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray. 17th January1905.75 Cambridge Terrace, W.Dear Sir,—I trust you will forgive my writing you, but Icannot make use of another man's brains without someacknowledgment. For years I have been a reader of theReferee, and of late years nothing has interested me morethan the articles above the name of Merlin on the frontpage. This week you have put the real issue so clearly andso freely, that I am going to avail myself of it tonight inmy speech at Blandford, and I hope I have your permission soto do. If only a few more men would grasp difficult subjectsas boldly and broadly as you do, we should be a better and ahappier people.—Yours very faithfully,(Sgd.) E. Marshall Hall.
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Sixtieth Birthday
Yesterday I attained my sixtieth birthday. It is not yet old age, but the posting-stations between old age and myself grow fewer with what looks like a bewildering rapidity. The years are shorter than they used to be. What a length lay between the anniversaries of childhood and even those of young manhood! How little tedious was the road! And now how brief and tiresome has the journey from one point to another grown to seem! One turns and glances back on the traversed road, “looking over Time's crupper and over his tail,” as the elder Hood put it, and it looks like a ribboned path through a cemetery. The little child-wife and the baby lie yonder far away. Nearer, and yet afar off, the grey old father is asleep. There, between them, is the lad with whom I shared all my early joy in books. Oh! the raptured miles we walked, seeing each other home by turns, till long after midnight, each exposing to the other's view the jewels gathered in the past few days. The memorial stones are everywhere, and they grow thicker as the road winds on. And saddest of all are the places where one sees the tokens, not of lost friends but of dead ideals. Here a faith laid itself down, tired out, and went to sleep for good and all. A cypress marks the place, to my fancy, Here a hope made up its mind that it was not worth while to hope any longer, and foundered in its tracks. There is an ambition, unburied, to be sure, but as dead as Cheops. “Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, and phantom hopes.”
“It's a sair sicht,” as Carlyle said, looking up at the skies on a starry night; and one asks, in a mood of some despondency, what one has got to show for it all?—the loss, the pain, the disappointment, the disillusion. But, come now, let us look the thing fairly and squarely in the face. Is not Despondency disposed to state her case somewhat too emphatically? Am I, or am I not, flatly exaggerating in this summary of losses? Would I have the little child-wife back again if I could? Can her loss after this lapse of well nigh two score years have left anything, at most, but a humanising tenderness in my memory? She is a pretty and engaging recollection, and has been no more at any time for whole decades, and to pretend that she is a grief is frankly to import humbug into sentiment. And what had I but a sense of pious thanksgiving when my grey old father laid down the weary burden of many years and the crushing pains of hernia, and the breathless agonies of a dreadful asthma? If I pretend that I would willingly have stretched him out longer on the rack of this tough world, I am no better than a sentimental liar to myself. I know in my heart of hearts that I was glad to let him go. And the lost faith? I believe with all my soul that I have found a better. And the lost ambitions? What were they but a baby's crying for the moon? There was a time when I could say with Will Waterproof, in theLyrical Monologue made at the Cock:
“For I had hoped by something rareTo prove myself a poet:But while I plan and plan, my hairIs grey before I know it”
But to one's own plain commonsense it is the poorest kind of business at the present time of life to sit down and grizzle because one proved in the long runnotto be a poet. I will not deny a certain inevitable melancholy in the retrospect, taking it all round. Yet even whilst I feel this, there is an inward protest. The loss is not all loss. The game of life is one in which we gain by losing, and lose by gaining. InThe Ghost's Bargain with the Haunted Manit was a part of the agreement that the man should forget all the sorrows he had ever known. In that atrophy of the heart which followed in that frozen seal which bound down every rill of human sympathy and pity, I know that there is the presentment of a great and lasting truth. No man's nature is ripened until he has known many griefs and losses, nor will it ripen until they have bitten into him as frost bites into the fallow earth to fertilise it, and opens it to the uses of sun and air and rain.
There are, of course, things quite apart from loss and the destruction of old ideals which encumber the path of coming of age with troubles of one sort or another. The air is thick with the shadows of regret. It is seventeen years since I shot my first wild boar, and more than fifteen since the last deer; a stag of twelve tines, as I am a christened man, fell to my gun. It is thirteen years since I rode into the central pah of the King's Country in New Zealand, and I have never crossed a horse since then. It is a quarter of a century since I saw the heights of Tashkesen, and heard the Turkish and Russian guns roaring defiance at each other; and the sporting days, and the exploring days, and the fighting days are all over. I shall never again stand knee-deep in snow through the patient hours waiting for the forest quarry to break cover. Think of the ensuing lumbago! I shall hear the thrilling boom of the big guns no more. I shall never again penetrate into the freshness of a virgin land. I shall see no more the hammer of the midday sun beat its great splashes of light from the snow-clad summits of the Rockies and the Selkirks. The long and the short of it is that I am transformed from my old estate of globe-trotter and observer of events and nature into the land of suburban old fogeydom, and the point to touch, so far as I am personally engaged, is whether really and truly I do very much and deeply regret the change. Not very deeply, after all, I am disposed to think. His workshop bounds all to the old fogey who has lived out a great many of his friendships, but within its limits what sights may he not see? Calais, first seen of Continental towns, is still a possession of my own. The Paris of 1872 is mine, the Rhine and the Rhine fall, Vienna, Berlin, the Alps—the Austrian Alps, the Australian and New Zealand Alps—they are all mine. Kicking Horse River is mine, and the steely whirl of the lower rapids of Niagara before they reach the fall. And, in clear view of the ideals which would shake me from my seat, I have but one answer to offer them. My shabby study armchair is the seat from which I look compassion on a struggling world, as a man fairly drowned and accepting his fate might look on fellow mariners yet only in process of drowning. Fill the mind with memories of things whole-heartedly attempted! You have failed or half-failed. Everybody has failed or half-failed who ever tried to do anything worth doing. You are not more unblest than the average of your kind.