Arthur and George (Book review)

 

Arthur and George is a 2005 novel by English author Julian Barnes.

The novel is inspired of the true story of the author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) and the lawyer George Edalji (1876-1953). Edalji was the son of a Parsi Indian vicar in the Anglican church. The family lived in a small rural English village of Great Wyrley, and in the 1890s they became the target of a serious campaign of harassment via abusive anonymous letters. Their plight was not taken seriously by the village community or the police, and they were even accused of having written the letters themselves. The letters stopped arriving in the late 1890s, only for the harassment to resume in the early 1900s.

In 1903 George was convicted on dubious circumstantial evidence of having perpetrated a series of mutilations on farm animals in Great Wyrley, ultimately serving three years in prison. This miscarriage of justice raised great outrage, even after Edalji’s release. The conviction meant that Edalji lost his career as a solicitor. Eventually the case was brought to the attention of the famous author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle became the leading figure in the campaign against Edalji’s conviction, writing articles and letters criticizing the unjust conviction. Thanks to his efforts and others, Edalji was pardoned of the charge of mutilating the animals, but he was still accused of writing some of the letters. He was thus denied compensation for his years in prison, but was able to return to work as a solicitor. The Edalji case was a major reason for the creation of a British court of appeal for criminal cases.

This fascinating story is told in Barnes’s novel. It sticks fairly close to historical fact from what I can tell, but its depiction of the internal thoughts and feelings of its characters are clearly the fictional invention of the novelist. This is acceptable, as the book doesn’t purport to be a non-fiction account.

The first part of the novel is a parallel biography of Doyle and Edalji. Doyle rose from humble beginnings to become a celebrated author. The novel might have lionized Doyle, but it complicates the image of him. It takes its time to tell the complex story of his first wife Louise Hawkins, affectionally called Touie. In the early 1890s, she fell ill with tuberculosis, a disease that would ultimately claim her life in 1906. During Louise’s long illness, Doyle cared for her, but in 1897 he also met and fell in love with Jean Leckie. He carried on a platonic but emotional affair with Jean, trying to hide it from his wife, ultimately marrying Leckie in 1907 after his first wife’s death.

In the novel, the morality of Doyle’s actions fill him with doubt. He loves Jean behind his wife’s back, but out of a sense of honour for her, he keeps the affair platonic and does truly care for her well-being. The novel implies that the doubts about his own conduct is why he throws himself into the Edalji case, as a distraction and way to restore his own sense of honour and morality. Still, it treats his views on Edalji’s innocence as fully sincere.

Doyle's complex attitude to his creation Sherlock Holmes is another theme. He disliked being identified solely as the creator of Holmes, regarding his other work such as his historical novels and his spritualist and political activism as being more important. But being the inventor of the brilliant detective is what gives Doyle his fame and gives his actions in the Edalji case more weight to the general public. His opponents also use it to dismiss him.

Edalji, of course had a much more difficult life. A simpler book would make him just an innocent victim, but the novel gives him a full personality, even if the narrative correctly never leaves his complete innocence in doubt. Edalji is depicted as as a solitary and phlegmatic person, who neither smoked or drank or ever married.

He has a firm sense of identity in being english, and a strong believer in the country’s laws and rules, until his conviction is shaken by his false conviction. Despite obviously being the victim of racist persecution, Edalji, firmly convinced of his own englishness, personally discounted that as an explanation for why some people strongly disliked him.

This gives him a point of commonality with Doyle, who was the son of two Irish immigrants to Scotland, yet regarded himself as English. As Doyle points out when they first meet, both him and Edalji are “unofficial Englishmen”. And the complexities of English identity is a major theme in the book. Edalji is the strongest believer in English laws and rules, yet is betrayed by its legal system. And Doyle develops a strong moral code inspired by romanticized tales of English knights and the mythical English king Arthur with who he shares his name, a code that is shaken by his own emotions and actions in his love affairs.

Arthur & George is a fine novel. The true history of Doyle and Edalji is a fascinating story on its own, but its fictionalized telling in Barnes’s novel is remarkable for its power. The prose is beautiful, as is the depth and complexity of its characterization.