Dear Sherlockians,



Good afternoon, and greeting to
you on this occasion of Bijoya Dashomi! Please allow me to add a few points more
to what I had posted last day.



According to Nathan Bengis
in “A Scandal in Baker Street” (The Baker Street Journal, Vol. II No. II, Old
Series, April 1947, pp. 145-157), Doctor John Hamish Watson and Mary Morstan
share a polemic relationship because the latter resents the mistress of the
former. I, however, wonder whether Bengis had in his mind the fact that Arthur
Conan Doyle himself was torn between two women – his first wife Louise Doyle nee
Hawkins and Jean Leckie who was his companion till he married her in 1907.



Louise Hawkins
(1857-1906) was an unexceptional woman who had deepest respect for her husband
and she and Doyle shared a cosy conjugal relationship between their marriage on
5 August 1885 and 1893 when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis which ultimately
caused her death thirteen years later. With Louise, Doyle had two children –
Mary (born in 1889) and Arthur Allyne (born in 1892). But it is Jean Leckie who
commands the most of attention. She was an accomplished horsewoman and a trained
vocalist with whom Doyle fell head-upon-hells in love during their first meeting
on 15 March 1897. He married her in September 1907, and between 1909 and 1912,
the couple had two sons and a daughter – Denis Percy Stewart, Adrian Malcolm and
Lena Jean Annette – in 1909, 1910 and 1912 respectively. Doyle suffered for ten
long years since he first met Leckie – he did not want to declare her existence
to the world and particularly to the ailing
Louise, and Leckie, like Morstan, always suffered from a sense of alienation
until Louise’s death.



Leckie might have been
prized by the Sherlockian biographers for her perfect understanding of Doyle’s
ways, her public conducts deserve a closer look and even censure! It was in 1921
that she suddenly ‘discovered’ that she had the ability to do automatic writing
and her marriage ensured that she got as much publicity as possible. It was
partly because of her that Doyle’s image, which had already been tarnished
because of his belief in the Cottingley Fairies’ photographs in 1920, hit a new
low two years later and his friendship with Harry Houdini suffered. When Leckie,
Doyle, Houdini and his wife Bess were having a holiday in Atlantic City, U.S.A,
Mrs. Doyle declared that she could help the world-famous magician contact his
lately-deceased mother through a séance! During that session, she, apparently
under a spell for she had become famous as a medium, produced fifteen pages of
writing ‘from Houdini’s mother’ but Houdini noticed
two aspects of the ‘writing’ – that it was in English which was unknown to his
mother, and that the ‘writing’ contained no mention that it was being written on
his mother’s birthday! He fell apart from the creator of Sherlock Holmes and
narrated his grudges to the press which turned the famous author into a laughing
stock!



I would request our esteemed society members to write more about Louise Hawkins
and Jean Leckie.



Thanking you,



Yours sincerely,



(Pinaki Roy)





13 October 2005 Thursday

05:00 p.m.





























































































































































From:



Pinaki Roy,

Lecturer,

Department of English,

Faculty of Post-graduate Studies,

Malda College,

Rabindra Avenue, Rathbari More,

Post Office: Malda – 732 101,

District: Malda (West Bengal)

Mobile: 94341 12856







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