Arthur Conan Doyle's Memorys And Adventures Episodes

(SAMPLE)

CHAPTER I


EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

Extraction — “ H. B.” — Four Remarkable Brothers — My Mother’s Family
Tree — An Unrecognized Genius — My First Knockout — Thackeray
— The Fenians — Early Reading — My First Story.

T WAS born on May 22, 1859, at Picardy Place, Edinburgh,
so named because in old days a colony of French Huguenots
bad settled there. At the time of their coming it was a village
outside the City walls, hut now it is at the end of Queen Street,
abutting upon Leith Walk. When last I visited it, it seemed
to have degenerated, hut at that time the flats were of good
repute.

My father was the youngest son of John Doyle, who under
the nom de crayon of “ H. B.” made a great reputation in
London from about 1825 to 1850. He came from Dublin about
the year 1815 and may be said to be the father of polite
caricature, for in the old days satire took the brutal shape of
making the object grotesque in features and figure. Gilray and
Rowlandson had no other idea. My grandfather was a gen¬
tleman, drawing gentlemen for gentlemen, and the satire lay
in the wit of the picture and not in the misdrawing of faces.
This was a new idea, but it has been followed by most cari¬
caturists since and so has become familiar. There were no
comic papers in those days, and the weekly cartoon of “ H. B.”
was lithographed and distributed. He exerted, I am told,
quite an influence upon politics, and was on terms of intimacy
with many of the leading men of the day. I can remember
him in his old age, a very handsome and dignified man with
features of the strong Anglo-Irish, Duke of Wellington stamp.
He died in 1868.

My grandfather was left a widower with a numerous family,
of which four boys and one girl survived. Each of the boys
made a name for himself, for all inherited the artistic powers
of their father. The elder, James Doyle, wrote “ The Chron-


2 Memories and Adventures