Arthur Conan Doyle and the big brass bombardon

While the material in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's autobiographical work Memories and Adventures is not inspiring the extensive commentary that his essays in Through the Magic Door did, I have found a few interesting and/or amusing anecdotes that speak for themselves to highlight. This article contains the latest discovery.

As an older schoolboy, Conan Doyle was sent to a Jesuit school in Austria so that he could learn German. 

This extract from his Memories shows that he also mastered a very different skill during the year that he spent at the school:

“One unlooked for accomplishment I acquired, for the boy who played the big brass bass instrument in the fine school band had not returned, and, as a well-grown lad was needed, I was at once enlisted in the service. I played in public — good music, too, “ Lohengrin,” and “ Tannhauser,”— within a week or two of my first lesson, but they pressed me on for the occasion and the Bombardon, as it was called, only comes in on a measured rhythm with an occasional run, which sounds like a hippopotamus doing a step-dance. So big was the instrument that I remember the other bandsmen putting my sheets and blankets inside it and my surprise when I could not get out a note.”

When I first saw this, I was immediately reminded of the giant musical instruments in J. B. Priestley's Low Notes on a High Level, including “the Great-German-Double-Bombardon - six feet of shining brass with a horn a yard in diameter -”

This is what a bombardon looks like:

This picture of the boys in the band at the Stella Matutina Jesuit School at Feldkirch, Austria in 1876 - Conan Doyle is at the back with his bombardon - came from The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia site:

A few more words about books versus real life

Several reasons for extensive reading have been given on here. For example, what some people get from books seems much better to them than what they can get in real life!

I quoted some wise words on the subject from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in an article about books versus real life: 

“The dead are such good company that one may come to think too little of the living. It is a real and a pressing danger with many of us, that we should never find our own thoughts and our own souls, but be ever obsessed by the dead. Yet second-hand romance and second-hand emotion are surely better than the dull, soul-killing monotony which life brings to most of the human race.”

I recently came across something that reminded me of these words, but in connection with writing rather than reading. This is an extract from Susan Cheever's biography of Louisa May Alcott:

“For a novelist, the real world falls away and the world of the novel takes on a vividness and fascination that can’t be matched by people or happenings in the pale, ordinary, slow-moving actual world. The characters of the imagination seem to have a mysterious claim on the writer’s time and attention.”

The real world does indeed disappear when we are immersed in a book, whether as reader or writer, and the novelist Elizabeth Goudge said something to the effect that she much preferred her own characters to people in real life. 

For some people, creations of the imagination are more real than the real world.

The mystery of Conan Doyle and the penny difference

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's little book of essays about books and reading Through the Magic Door (1907) is a treasure trove of material that has inspired a whole string of articles. 

After taking a last look at these essays, I started working my way through Conan Doyle's autobiographical work Memories and Adventures (1924) in the hope of finding similar material.

I soon found something interesting from the days when he was a third-year student; it reminded me of an amusing, article-inspiring anecdote in the earlier work. 

From Memories and Adventures:

“I used to be allowed twopence for my lunch, that being the price of a mutton pie, but near the pie shop was a second-hand book shop with a barrel full of old books and the legend “Your choice for 2d.” stuck above it. Often the price of my luncheon used to be spent on some sample out of this barrel, and I have within reach of my arm as I write these lines, copies of Gordon’s Tacitus, Temple’s works, Pope’s Homer, Addison’s Spectator and Swift’s works, which all came out of the twopenny box.”

In this previously-quoted extract from Through the Magic Door, Conan Doyle describes how he had to chose between spending his modest daily allowance on his lunch or on a book:

“...my student days, when times were not too affluent. Threepence was my modest allowance for my midday sandwich and glass of beer; but, as luck would have it, my way to the classes led past the most fascinating bookshop in the world. Outside the door of it stood a large tub filled with an ever-changing litter of tattered books, with a card above which announced that any volume therein could be purchased for the identical sum which I carried in my pocket.”

So what happened here?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed that it was possible to communicate with the dead. If I could do that, I would ask him for an explanation!

As I have no way of contacting the great man, I will just have to guess why these two accounts differ in the detail.

Could Conan Doyle have misremembered details of his student days when creating the later work? Perhaps over the years threepence had changed in his mind to tuppence and the sandwich to a pie!

Perhaps he was remembering two different years and two different bookshops, with the threepenny version coming from his earlier years as a student. In connection with the later years, he mentioned that every shilling of his money was needed at home; perhaps he cut down and stopped buying beer.

Where is Sherlock Holmes when you need him!

A very relevant quotation from The Cult of Trump

The final article inspired by Steve Hassan's Freedom of Mind  contains an image of his most recent publication The Cult of Trump (2019).

I had a quick look at this book, but it seems to be more about American politics than it is about cults. At first sight, unlike Steve Hassan's other books it doesn't have much new relevant and quotable material. 

However, I did find something that reminded me some points I made in the article about obedience and the truth, which was written in 2013.

Steve Hassan says this (my bolding):

“...if a belief cannot withstand criticism or research, then it may not be worth holding.

Beliefs should never be held as if they are the truth. The more strongly someone claims to have the truth, the more evidence we need to accept it. Certitude is not evidence of truth. Nor does repetition make it true. If anything, repetition should make you suspicious. Truth always stands up to scrutiny on its merits.”

From my post:

“Believing something to be true does not make it true.”

“Loudly and/or repeatedly insisting that something is true does not make it true.”

Let the listener beware!

The back cover of the book:

A very clever way to build a personal library

After producing the string of articles inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's little book of essays Through The Magic Door, I started reading his autobiographical work Memories and Adventures in the hope of finding more material suitable for highlighting on here. 

I found an amusing little anecdote about someone who devised a clever way to build a book collection:

“...young lady...had a large amount of guile underlying her simplicity. Writing from Warsaw, she stated that she had been bedridden for two years, and that my novels had been her only, etc., etc. So touched was I by this flattering statement that I at once prepared an autographed parcel of them to complete the fair invalid’s collection. By good luck, however, I met a brother author on the same day to whom I recounted the touching incident. With a cynical smile, he drew an identical letter from his pocket. His novels had also been for two years her only, etc., etc. I do not know how many more the lady had written to; but if, as I imagine, her correspondence had extended to several countries, she must have amassed a rather interesting library.“

Although I can't help admiring her ingenuity, I also feel disgusted with the effrontery of this brazen scrounger when I remember that as a student Conan Doyle had often gone without food to buy books for his collection. 

I wonder if she ever got anything out of John Buchan and Rudyard Kipling!  

Conan Doyle with some of his legitimately-acquired books circa 1890:

Fear of the New Year!

Seasonal  sadness has been covered in a few articles; there is a post about depression at Christmas and one about depression at the Autumn Equinox for example.

Now it is time to say something about the malaise that comes upon some people at the time of the New Year. 

Ogden Nash's little poem about the New Year, Good Riddance, But Now What?, suggests that while it is good to see the back of the old year, what is coming may be even worse.

Another of his pessimistic New Year poems asserts that the night of December 31st is by far the worst night of the year.

Although Ogden Nash's poems make the impending New Year seem rather sinister, the humour takes the edge off his proposition that New Year's Eve is not a good time.

There is nothing remotely amusing about the following extract from Stella Gibbons's novel Starlight. It is Christmas Eve and someone isn't very happy:

“Peggy stood in silence, struggling with such a feeling of boredom and despair as seldom assailed even her. She could walk out of here to-morrow morning; nothing need stop her.

What was she doing in this hot room, with these fools, living their half-life?

Oh it was something to do – it passed the time – it made a break. The language of boredom and despair. “

Her employer's son notices her distress and asks her what's wrong:

“... just the feeling there’s another year nearly gone,’ she answered, paling.”

He replies:

“Here, here – you save that up for New Year’s Eve – that’s the time that really gets into its stride.”

People have such terrible feelings on New Year's Eve for many reasons. Some are afraid of what might happen; others are afraid that nothing will happen and the coming year will just be more of the – unsatisfactory – same. They may feel that time is running out.

I have learned recently that there is even a word for this fear of the New Year: neoannophobia! 

Starlight is not a good novel to read at this time of year:

Defence Against the Dark Arts XXXII: Anthony Horowitz’s Diamond Brothers at Christmas

A few books with a Christmas theme have inspired posts in the past. 

I wanted to produce something similar for this year; I remembered that the seventh book in Anthony Horowitz’s Diamond Brothers series is called The Greek Who Stole Christmas so I decided to renew my acquaintance with these very amusing little stories. 

I found enough suitable material for another seasonal article.

Christmas for the Diamond Brothers 
Christmas is not a good time of year for Nick the clever boy detective and his big – and dim - brother Herbert, who prefers to be known as Tim, as they are always very short of money and are often in danger from their enemies.

The action in The Falcon's Malteser, which is the first book in the series, takes place during the holiday season. These words from Nick Diamond set the tone:

“...the grey December sky. The Christmas decorations had gone up in Regent Street – it seemed that they’d been up since July – and the stores were wrapped in tinsel and holly. Somewhere, a Salvation Army band was playing “Away in a Manger.” I felt a funeral march would have been more appropriate.“

Things get worse: Tim and Nick are arrested by the police and held in a freezing cold interrogation room. They are released, only to be rearrested and held overnight in a cell in the police station. 

The police decide to let Nick go; he rises to the occasion with a typical witty remark:

“You can go, laddy,” Snape said. “It’s only big brother we want.”

“How long are you going to keep him for?” I asked. “It’s only five days to Christmas.”

“So?”

“He hasn’t had time to buy my present yet.”