Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh to a Roman Catholic family. Even though Doyle’s relatives were rich, his immediate family was not a very rich one.
Doyle’s father worked in the Edinburgh Office of Works as a civil servant and sold extra paintings to get extra money. When Doyle turned seven, his parents sent him to school. He often got into quarrels and also fought bullies when they would tease smaller children. Even though Doyle had a rough character when he was small, he had a passion for reading novels. He especially loved books that were on the subject of Action and Adventure. One of the books that he read many times was the Scalp Hunters by Mayne Reid. Doyle also read famous books written by Sir Walter Scott and Edgar Allen Poe.
Doyle also had a love for reading poems. He even memorized Macaulay’s Lay of Horatius line by line just because he loved that it so much. Since Doyle’s father was a serious alcoholic and had depression, he could not take care of Doyle that much. Instead, Doyle’s mother took care of all the kids.
One of the things Doyle loved about his mother was her talent in expressing and telling stories very well. Doyle described in his biography, “In my early childhood, as far as I can remember anything at all, the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life. His mother’s talent in story telling, inspired Doyle in his later years to create interesting and suspending stories such as the likes of Sherlock Holmes.
At the age of nine years old, Doyle’s mother could not afford a good education for her son, but Doyle’s rich relatives, not his immediate family offered to pay for a tuition fee for Doyle’s schooling in StonyHurst College, a Jesuit boarding school where he would spend seven years in there. Before Doyle could enter the school, he had to enter Hodder, a prep school to StonyHurst College for two years.
At his time in Hodder, the Franco-German War broke out. This event gave Doyle the chance to frequently daydream about the War during his studies, which bored him very much. When it was time to enter into the boarding school in StonyHurst College, Doyle did not do well in his Latin, Greek, and Algebra. One of the quotes Doyle later said about math and Latin, was “I can say with truth that my Latin and Greek… have been little use to me in life, and that my mathematics have been no use at all.
Even though, Doyle disliked these subjects, he was really good at reading and writing. Arthur said that his only times of happiness was when he wrote to his mother and when he played cricket. Because of his great skill in reading and writing, he would often be seen telling mysteries and action stories to boys his age that would surround him in a circle to listen. Discipline was one thing that was very strict in the Stony Hurst College.
Because this college was also a Jesuit boarding school, if the religion was disrespected or if the boys did mischievous things, the boys would receive fierce punishment with what Doyle explains, “the instrument of correction, it was a piece of India-rubber of the shape and size of a thick boot sole…One blow of this instrument, delivered with intent, would cause the palm of the hand to swell up and change color. ” Even though of this punishment, Doyle did even more mischievous things just to show that his spirit was “unbroken”.
Since the Jesuits also believed that “dry knowledge could only be absorbed with dry food,” they would give the boys food that was what Doyle explained, “quite unappetizing. ” At the last year of his seven-year stay in the boarding school at the age of 16, Doyle edited the College magazine and took honors in the London Matric. After graduation from high school, if he were to follow in his family’s footsteps, he would study art. But, Doyle instead went to study medicine in the University of Edinburgh.
This University is the place where Doyle would meet his lecturer, Joseph Bell. Joseph Bell, a surgeon and criminal psychologist, would be the main platform for Sherlock Holmes’s deductive skills. One time, when Joseph Bell was studying a corpse of a dead man, he identified that the man was a left-handed shoemaker because of how his hands were shaped. This kind of studying would be used greatly by Sherlock Holmes to find criminals and arrest them. While studying in the University, Doyle met some future authors also studying there such as Robert Louis Stevenson.
During his stay in the University, Doyle began to write a few short stories like the “Mystery of Sasassa Valley” which would be published into the Chamber’s Journal. This Chamber’s Journal was also the place where Thomas Hardy’s first works were published. On the same year, Doyle noticed that instead of filling phials to earn money, he could also write stories to get some money. Because of this, he wrote and published “The American Tale” in the London Society. While on the third year of his studies, Doyle went on a whaling boat called “Hope” to sail for the Arctic Circle as a surgeon.
He enjoyed his trip and later wrote a book about his adventures in the “Captain of the Pole-Star. ” The following year, Doyle was offered a job again as a medical officer on the boat called “Mayumba” to the West Coast of Africa. In this particular job, Doyle, a doctor himself got infected with typhoid and almost died. He disliked this job so much that as soon as the boat arrived back on England to prepare for the next trip back, Doyle jumped off the boat and went back to the university. Doyle would continue to study and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with his Bachelor in Medicine on the year of 1885.
After receiving his degree, Doyle began his work by helping a doctor as a assistant but was soon searching for a job again because the doctor became bankrupt. After this happened, Doyle started his own practice in Southsea, England. He struggled a bit at the start of the practice but after three years, his income became moderately high. Other than earning money from this job, he also got a wife out of this job, named Louisa Hawkins. Doyle later applied and earned his PhD on July 1885. On August 6, 1885, he married Louisa Hawkins, continued his practice in medicine, and started writing short stories for extra money.
Doyle’s first novel was “The Narrative of John Smith” but it was lost on the way to the publishing address. Because of this, Doyle wrote “The Firm of Girdlestone. ” His first Sherlock Holmes book “A Study of Scarlet” was written in three weeks where it featured Sherlock Holmes with the skills of the Edinburgh University’s professor, Joseph Bell, and the setting was on the famous 221B Baker Street. While waiting for the “A Study of Scarlet” to be published, Doyle wrote another novel “Micah Clarke. ” When “A Study of Scarlet” was published it gained a lot of popularity in the United States.
After this, Doyle wrote another Sherlock Holmes book, “The Sign of Four” published both in the United States and the England. Two years after the creation of the “The Sign of Four”, Arthur began being tired of Sherlock Holmes and killed the famous character. When the Sherlock Holmes died, The Strand Magazine became devastated due to the fact that 20,000 immediately unsubscribed from it. When the Boer War erupted, Doyle wanted to enlist to feel the experience of being a soldier. For obvious reasons he could not be an infantryman because he was overweight, so he instead entered as a medical doctor.
After the war, Doyle published two books about the British policy, “The Cause and Conduct of the War in South Africa” and “The Great Boer War. ” In 1902, King Edward VII knighted Doyle. Doyle later revived Sherlock Holmes again in “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” in the Strand magazine. In 1906, Louisa Hawkins, Doyle’s first wife dies of tuberculosis. Doyle then marries again to his second wife, Jean Leckie in Sussex. He would spend so much time with his second wife that his literary work slowed down. When the World War I broke out, Doyle’s brother, son, two brother-in-laws, and two nephews died while in the war.
This made him become different. Instead of writing novels and Sherlock Holmes, he began to dedicate his time writing about Spiritualism. Usually Doyle was never a religion type of person, but after some of his family members died he became very interested into Spiritualism, a belief that was thought to enable contact the dead. Doyle’s health began to fail; he sometimes just fainted on the spot. On July 7, 1930 at his home in Sussex, he dies. It was said that he woke up early in the morning unseen, went to his backyard garden, laid down on the grass one hand clutching his heart, the other holding a single snowdrop, and died.
