Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. His father and mother were of Irish descent, but living in Scotland.   His father was an artist and also a civil servant, but he had psychiatric problems and became depend on alcohol, so he sank into poverty. Arthur and his family suffered from this, but he had richer uncles who helped out, and sent him to Stonyhurst, a famous Jesuit school, to get a good education.

He didn’t enjoy the school as the discipline was harsh and the teaching old fashioned.  He began to drift away from the Catholic faith he had been reared in, and became an agnostic…   But in later years, he turned to various mystical beliefs, including spiritualism... which suggested that he needed some kind of religious or spiritual dimension.

As a boy he went to a school in Austria to learn German and in 1878, went to Edinburgh University to study medicine.  While studying, he took an interest in botany and also began to try writing short stories.   When he graduated, he continued to study for further qualifications but took jobs as ships doctors.  After a couple of years, he set up his own medical practice but it was not a success and he had a lot of spare time, waiting for patients.   He began to study ophthalmology, but his efforts to make a career in this were also unsuccessful.

He had begun to write the Sherlock Holmes stories, about a cool minded, scientific genius detective who was partly based on Doyle’s teacher at University, Joseph Bell.   In the early 1890s, he began to get them published in the Strand Magazine and they took off, becoming very popular.

However while he was making good money, he wanted to write other sorts of work – and was to write science fiction and historical fiction as well as Holmes.   He got annoyed that Holmes was so much more popular than his other work, and he tried to kill the character off, hoping to find time to work on his other interests.   But the public demand was so great, that after having Holmes fall over the Reichenbach Falls and die, he had to bring him back from the dead.

In 1903 he published his new Sherlock story, and he had to “retcon” the fall which had killed him, explaining that only Moriarty, his great enemy had fallen and that Holmes had survived and lived secretly for a few years.

He wrote novels and plays based on the Napoleonic wars, which he regarded as more substantial than his detective fiction.

He was keen on games, including football, cricket and golf... And he worked as a doctor during the Boer war.   

More follows-

Richmal Crompton and Just William

Richmal Crompton was a novelist, who wrote many novels for adults, but she became most famous for the creation of William Brown, a scruffy anarchistic schoolboy, who won the hearts of the reading public.   She was born in 1890 to a clergyman and teacher, Edward John Sewell Lamburn.  The family lived in Lancashire.  She used her middle names as her pen name.

She had a good education, like many clergymen’s daughters.  Boarding schools for middle class girls were becoming more popular and Richmal had decided to become a teacher.   She was sympathetic to women’s rights and eager to have a career of her own. So she went to University in London.
 In 1914, she left University and took a job as classics mistress at her own old school. 

 Some years later she moved to Bromley, near London, to work at another school and began to write seriously.   In 1923, she contracted polio, which left her with a damaged leg... but she was now writing full time.  She never married, but had siblings and nieces and nephews of whom she was very fond.   She spent some time in a wheelchair because of her limited mobility… but during World War 2 she still found time to do war work.

She wrote over 40 novels, about adult life, mostly set in villages in the Home Counties.  Such fiction was popular in the 20s and 30s but became dated as time passed.  But her William stories seem to have a timeless appeal.

William is the son of an exasperated Conservative Father, and a patient mother... who puts up with his antics while his father gets cross about them.   Although the family are middle class, with servants, this doesn't seem to  put off the readers.

William has no respect for authority.  He has a dog, Jumble and several friends – the “Outlaws” who help him in his schemes.  He is frank and honest, not understanding grown up hypocrisy and manners...

His social rival in the village Is Hubert Lane, who is more of a hypocrite and has a rival gang, whom he bribes with his liberal pocket money.

William is at the age when he “hates girls”.  He is irritated by his older sister Ethel, and her many suitors… and she’s embarrassed by her awful little brother.    In spite of disliking girls, he rather likes his next door neighbour Joan... and he is often bested by the enfant terrible Violet Elizabeth Bott.  Violet is the daughter of a nouveau riche businessman in the town...   She has a lisp, is spoiled and self-willed and is able to cow the Outlaws into letting her join their adventures by claiming that she will “scream and scream until she’s sick” The boys dread feminine hysterics and are unable to outwit her... so tehy often given in.

 William is not much good at school, but he is always active at some scheme... such as putting on a circus, or editing a newspaper.  He has little idea of what’s going on in the world and usually gets things wrong.  He sometimes tries to “help people” like PG Wodehouse’s  Boy Scouts, who insist on doing “kindly deeds” regardless of whether people want them done or not!

The books have been adapted for radio, film TV and theatre...

One of the most famous TV adaptations was in the 1970s, with a young Bonnie Langford as Violet Elizabeth Bott.  Dennis Waterman played William as a boy actor in the 1960s.

John Galsworthy Forsyte Saga

The second part of the Forsyte Saga centres on the way the split between Soames and Irene goes down the generations.    Soames manages to get a divorce, and marries a younger French woman, Annette… because he wants to have a son.  However, he only has 1 child...and it turns out to be a girl, Fleur.

  Irene has become involved with Soames’ more liberal minded cousin Jolyon... who is already the black sheep of the family because he fathered 2 children on Helene, the family governess and left the Forsyte clan to live with and marry her.   He also became a painter…

  Jolyon is older than Irene, and her real love was for Philip Bosinny but she grows fond of him and they marry when she is free.  She and Jolyon have one son, Jolyon (called Jon).  As an adult, he falls in love with Soames’ daughter Fleur. 

Fleur has something of her father’s possessive domineering nature and she is very keen to marry Jon, but his parents are unhappy about the idea, because of Soames’ rape of Irene...

Jon loves his parents and finally (after his father has died of a heart attack), feels that he has to give Fleur up.  She marries Michael Mont, who is from an upper class landed gentry family.  However her marriage is a difficult one as she does not love him the way she loved Jon.

She and Michael have a child; a son called Kit... and Fleur tries to find a role that satisfies her... It is the 1920s and she tries out various things such as “MP’s wife” (Michael goes into politics), charity work and patroness of the arts.  However she is never sure what she wants to do with her life.  She and Michael get along until 1926 when the General Strike comes about.  Jon Forsyte returns to England with his American wife and he and Fleur have a brief affair. However he again rejects her.  Soames, who has always loved her best, has her to stay and in her wretched mood, she fails to extinguish a cigarette.  The house burns down and Soames is badly burned.   Fleur is devastated when he dies, but resolves to return to her marriage and make the best of it. 

Galsworthy’s novels were extremely popular, albeit he was a conservative stylist, and not an elegant prose writer.

He used his work to promulgate issues and reforms, such as prison reform and reform of the justice system.   He was concerned about poverty – but did not have any radical solutions to offer.   However he was a generous man who tries to use his writing influence to help people.  His portrait of the middle class property obsessed emotionally constrained class of “Forsytes” was at times a harshly critical one. 

  He was seen as a recorder of that Victorian stuffiness and self-interest.  However, he was born into that class and found it hard to completely shake off their conservatism.  He didn’t want to upset his parents by having Ada get a divorce and marry him… but in 1905 they were finally able to wed.  Their marriage was happy but childless.

In the early part of the saga, Soames is seen as the villain, wanting to own Irene, refusing her a divorce, raping her when she refused him sex and did not love him.  The more free spirited Jolyon is the hero, although he has his faults, such as having broken up his marriage, and having to leave his elder daughter.

However as Galsworthy grew older, he softened towards Soames and saw him as pitiable.  He was lonely man... who was devoted to his daughter and willing to make sacrifices to make her happy.

Galsworthy continued with his writing and his reform work throughout his life.   He was criticised by more radical thinkers and by modernist writers… but his work was popular for a long time.  He died in 1933 of a stroke. 

In 1967, the BBC made a 26 part serial of the Forsyte Saga, one of the last big works in black and white.  It had an excellent portrayal of Soames by Eric Porter and Susan Hampshire played the butterfly Fleur….  In the days of only 2 channels, it was immensely popular, and was a talking point with most people.   However, Galsworthy seems to be little read now…

John Galsworthy

Galsworthy was not just a writer but someone interested in political and social reform.  He was born to a well do to family in Surrey in 1867.  He had a good education and read Law at Oxford.   However he did not really want to practice law, he wanted to write.  For a time he manged the family’s shipping business but he befriended Joseph Conrad, whom he met in Australia.  Conrad would later become a novelist.  John began to write novels and plays.

In the 1890s, he fell in love with Ada, the wife of his cousin Major Arthur Galsworthy.  Her marriage was not a very happy one - but divorce was still a scandal and John didn’t want to hurt his parents, by marrying his cousin’s ex-wife.   Galsworthy pursued an affair with her for several years.

He supported many liberal causes and was sympathetic to the poor, to trades unions and the cause of prison reform.   In the Forsyte Saga, he created a bourgeois family, the Forsytes, who have risen into wealth and prosperity.  But they live by a narrow code.  Soames Forsyte, the protagonist, is a solicitor and a wealthy man.  He marries the beautiful Irene, because he admires her beauty, but she does not return his love.    Irene marries him for financial security, but he has promised to let her go if their marriage is a failure.   Soames however is far too possessive, and can’t tolerate the idea of losing his wife.  Irene falls in love with Philip Bosinney, a young Bohemian architect who is engaged to June, Soames’ younger cousin….He returns her love and neglects June. They have an affair but then Soames forces Irene to have sex with him.   His act drives Irene to leave him, and it takes Soames many years to get a divorce (as was the case with Ada)....

EF Benson socialite writer

Edward Frederick Benson (Fred) was the son of Edward Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and a prominent figure in the 19^th Century Church of England.  His parents had 6 children, all of whom seem to have been eccentric but talented.   None of them married, or had children, and some had mental health issues.

Fred was different to his very serious father, wanting to be a writer and a society figure.   He was highly intelligent and his first novel Dodo was an instant success.  It was a comic satirical novel, loosely based on the well-known socialite and eccentric, Margot Tennant, who married HH Asquith, the Prime Minister. 

He was a prolific writer, but enjoyed society life.  He also wrote ghost stories and children’s fiction and biographies including one of Charlotte Bronte.  But his most famous works were his light novels about "Lucia" Lucas, a middle aged widow, of genteel birth, who dabbles in the arts, and wants to be the social "Queen Bee" of her little town Tilling, which is based on Rye, where Benson was Mayor....

Fred was gay but not much is known about this. He fell in love with men during his life. In the “Lucia” books, there are some discreetly sly references to homosexuality… in Tilling.  “Quaint” Irene, one of the residents, dresses in men’s clothes.  George Pillson, who marries Lucia, is an effete effeminate man who dabbles in the arts, as does his wife... and is dominated by her. 

The plots revolve around social one upmanship in the town, with Lucia continually battling with Elizabeth Mapp, a spinster lady who was the “Queen Bee” of the town’s social circle before Lucia’s arrival.   Lucia pretends to be much more proficient at music than she really is, and pretends to be able to speak Italian fluently..  She also uses baby talk to appear "cute."
It is said that Lucia is based a bit on the rather bizarre novelist, Marie Correlli, who also pretended to be more learned than she really was, who showed off a good deal but was very naive and silly.
Elizabeth Mapp outflanks her, by getting married, in middle age to Major Benjy, and pretending to be pregnant.  Lucia is furious at this.  She then marries Georgie, restoring her ascendancy, but it is an unconsummated marriage.   She is not interested in sex, though she and Georgie enjoy each other’s company and love each other as friends.  Lucia’s main interest is in social power.

Benson spent many years in Rye, where there was an artistic community and he lived in Lamb House, which had belonged to Henry James.   He died aged 72 in the early part of World War II.