Conan Doyle’s Exciting Christmas Eve.

Conan Doyle’s Exciting Christmas Eve.

All successful authors are unsuccessful at first. They have to learn their trade. To serve their apprenticeship. Arthur Conan Doyle was no exception to this rule. Years later he wrote that, “Fifty little cylinders of manuscript did I send out during eight years…usually they came back like paper boomerangs.“

Toiling away at Bush Villas in Southsea, Conan Doyle tried a variety of genres. His ambition was to write for the bigger, quality magazines and papers. But in the meantime he had to settle for something more modest.

One of Conan Doyle’s early successes was his story, An Exciting Christmas Eve, or, My Lecture on Dynamite. This was published in the Christmas edition of The Boy’s Own Paper in 1883.

The Boy’s Own Paper was a British weekly periodical. Originally published by The Religious Tract Society, it ran from 1879 to 1967 - though by then it was under a different publisher. The aim of The Boy’s Own Paper was to instil Christian values in young and teenage boys. Among its contributors was the founder of the Scout Movement, Robert Baden-Powell. 

The paper published several of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories between 1883 and 1887. However, it was something of a last roll of the dice. Conan Doyle would only submit a story to The Boy’s Own Paper after it had been returned by other publications. 

An Exciting Christmas Eve tells of the adventure of Doctor Otto Von Spee. He is a scientist living in Berlin, whose speciality is explosives. While carrying out some research one Christmas Eve, he is interrupted by a visit from a mysterious veiled woman. 

She asks Von Spee to help her husband, who is allegedly suffering from a tumour. The doctor explains that his medical knowledge is very limited, but the woman persuades him nonetheless. 

Once outside his house, Otto Von Spee is bundled into a carriage by two men. Realising that he has been kidnapped, Otto Von Spee demands an explanation; “…but a threatening growl, and a rough hand placed over my mouth, warned me to be silent.“

The carriage eventually stops and the doctor is taken into a house. There he finds himself in a large room in which a considerable number of people are assembled. The doctor is then forced to talk on the subject of explosives; “I, Doctor Otto Von Spee, the modest man of science - was lecturing to a murderous secret organisation - for my audience could be nothing else - and teaching them to forge the weapons with which they were to attack society.“

I will not reveal further details of the plot, as you may want to read the story for yourself. Suffice to say that An Exciting Christmas Eve was written when Arthur Conan Doyle was still trying to find his style and his voice as an author. 

The story was reprinted in Every Boy’s Monthly in 1905. Arthur Conan Doyle had by then been knighted. He was also famous as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and other literary works. Of his early efforts he commented that, “Most of it was pretty poor stuff. But it was apprentice work, and I always hoped that with practice I might learn to use my tools.“ 

An Exciting Christmas Eve can be found online, courtesy of The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia, (www.arthur-conan-doyle.com) It was also published in the Uncollected Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, (Edited & Introduced by John Michael Gibson and Richard Lancelyn Green. Published by Doubleday. 1984.) 

I hope you all have a more peaceful Christmas Eve than Doctor Von Spee did in the story! And I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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