I came, I read, I copied

I have spent the last three days in the British Library Manuscripts Reading Room going through the letters which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to his mother over a period of half a century.

Looking into them was like looking into his heart. The first letter was written when he arrived in Preston as a little boy on his way to Stonyhurst School. The last was written from a ship on the high seas where he was with his second family, enjoying the perks of a highly successful writing career.

The letters were not in date order. At times they just seemed to be thrown in any old how. One minute he was living in Southsea, thanking his mother for sending him £5 and keeping some back for boots. The next he was writing to her from Sussex saying that he had bought some of his neighbour's property and was going to build a garage and a chauffeur's house on it . There were a lot of years in between.

There was no evidence whatsoever to persuade me that the name Sherlock Holmes had anything to do with Ingleton. But it did furnish me with enough information to write about Mrs. Doyle, his mother who lived in the hamlet of Masongill, just a couple of miles from here, and also about Bryan Charles Waller, her lodger, landlord and possible lover.

Look out for the fruits of my labours.