Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is rightly famous, of course, for his series of novels and stories featuring the inimitable detective, Sherlock Holmes. Less widely known is Doyle's devoted interest in Spiritualism, and its belief that the spirits of the dead can contact and be contacted by the living. Even more obscure is his involvement in the appeal of the bizarre prosecution of George Edalji, a solicitor of Indian descent who was accused of mutilating horses in the farms near his home. It is this latter episode which is given a fictionalized account in Julian Barnes' 2005 novel, Arthur & George.

Barnes structures most of the book in short chapters alternating between the lives of Doyle and Edalji, portraying the parallel if disparate biographies of the two men. As Doyle's father declines into alcoholism, the young boy designates himself as protector of his beloved "Mam." Sent off to boarding school through the benevolence of his paternal uncles, Doyle develops the skills, inherited from his mother, that will lead to literary fame and fortune later in life:

Early on, he began telling his fellow pupils the stories of chivalry and romance he had first heard from beneath a raised prridge stick. On wet half-holidays, he would stand on a desk while his audience squatted around him. Remembering the Mam's skills, he knew how to drop his voice, how to drag out a story, how to leave off at a perilous excruciating moment with the promise of more the next day. Being large and hungry, he would accept a pastry as the basic price of a tale. But sometimes, he might stop dead at the thrill of a crisis, and could only be got going again at the cost of an apple.

Thus he discovered the essential connection between narrative and reward.

George, meanwhile, endures a lonely, insular childhood in the Vicarage that his clergyman father inhabits. A product of the unusual19th-century union between his Indian immigrant father and Scottish mother, George's life revolves entirely around the family home. He develops a keen mind, but is unable to develop a social life to match his intellectual one:

He rarely feels the lack of what he does not have. The family takes no part in local society, but George cannot imagine what this might involve, let alone what the reason for their unwillingness, or failure, might be. He himself never goes to other boys' houses, so cannot judge how things are conducted elsewhere. His life is sufficient unto itself. He has no money, but also no need of it, and even less when he learns that its love is the root of all evil. He has no toys, but does not miss them. He lacks the skill and eyesight for games; he has never even jumped a hopscotch grid, while a thrown ball makes him flinch. He is happy to play fraternally with Horace, more gently with Maud, and more gently still with the hens.

This seemingly tranquil, if isolated, family life is interrupted in George's teenage years by the dismissal of a maid suspected of writing nasty letters to the family. This episode is followed by an even more curious one, in which an unrecognized key is found on the vicarage doorstep. George's attempt to return it to police is met with suspicion by the desk sergeant, and several days later George is physically accosted by the sergeant, who proceeds to accuse George of stealing the key from a school. When George's father complains to the constable, Captain Anson, he receives a reply virtually threatening prosecution of the teenager. Though merely disturbing at the time, these interactions would prove to be portents of even darker events to come for George and his family. The strange, anonymous, threatening letters continue to be sent to the Vicarage, and further objects as well, which George and his father attempt to intercept before discovered by his mother or siblings:

After the key and the milk churn, other items appear at the Vicarage. A pewter ladle on a window sill; a garden fork pinning a dead rabbit to the lawn; three eggs broken on the front step. Each morning George and his father search the grounds before Mother and the two younger ones are allowed outside. One day they find twenty pennies and halfpennies laid at intervals across the lawn; the Vicar decides to regard them as a donation to the church. There are also dead birds, mostly strangled; and once excrement has been laid where it will be most visible. Occasionally, in the dawn light, George is aware of something that is less than a presence, a possible observer; it is more like a close absence, the feeling of someone having just left. But nobody is ever caught, or even spotted.

And now the hoaxes begin.

Indeed, a series of fake newspaper advertisements, uninvited guests, unsolicited deliveries, and other pranks signal the commencement of a new phase of the harassment of the Edalji family. And then, suddenly, they stop. The letters, the items, the hoaxes, all of it.

Both Arthur Doyle and George Edalji emerge from the challenges of youth to seek professional degrees; Doyle pursues medicine while George studies law. Doyle meets and marries a young woman named Louisa and they begin a family. George begins clerking with a law office and even manages to make friendly acquaintance with a couple of the other young solicitors. There is no sense that these two lives will ever intersect; indeed, it will be more than halfway through the book before they do. But much earlier than this, there is a single short chapter which bears both their names, the first to do so. And this chapter describes the terrible act which will, several years in the future, link these two men together:

Still stroking and murmuring, the man slipped the feed-bag from the horse's neck and slung it over his shoulder. Still storking and murmuring, the man then felt inside his coat. Still stroking and murmuring, one arm across the horse's back, he reached underneath to its belly.

The horse barely gave a start; the man at last ceased his gabble of nonsense, and in the new silence he made his way, at a deliberate pace, back toward the gap in the hedge.

And with this horrific mutilation of a peaceful animal, just one in a series of such crimes to sweep the district, George Edalji's life would be irrevocably altered. For upon Inspector Campbell's arrival to investigate the crimes, an anonymous letter is received, claiming the mutilations were conducted by a gang, the latest perpetrated by "Edalji the lawyer." Thus begins a bungling investigation, leading inevitably to George's arrest and prosecution. And despite the best efforts of George's solicitor, and the lack of anything beyond innuendo, circumstantial evidence, and outright perjury, George is convicted and sentenced to 7 years confinement. The 50-odd pages detailing the prosecution are a frightening account of the systemic flaws in criminal procedures which existed even into the 20th-century in the country that gave birth to the common law (indeed, the irregularities in Edalji's case were a major impetus for the creation of an appellate system for reviewing criminal convictions):

Afterwards, Mr. Meek assured George that the second day was often the worst for the defence; but that the third, when they presented their own evidence, would be the best. George hoped so; he was struggling with the sense that, slowly yet irrevocably, his story was being taken away from him. He feared that by the time the defence case was put, it would be too late. People--and in particular, the jury--would respond by thinking, But no, we've already been told what happened. Why should we change our minds now?

It is only after George is abruptly released after serving just--just?--three years of his sentence, and finds himself unable to resume his legal practice because the conviction still stands, that Doyle learns his name. Doyle's life has been listing, staying technically loyal to his long-suffering invalid wife while establishing a platonic friendship with Jean, a young woman who rekindled many of the desires his wife's illness deprived him of. Yet with his wife's death, he finds himself adrift, no longer fired by a passion for Jean that he could finally consummate after her many years of waiting. Fortunately, at just this time he receives a package of articles from George Edalji, who has been unsuccessfully pleading his case for a pardon in the public forum. Doyle finds himself outraged by the injustice of the prosecution, and decides to re-engage with the world, as he makes clear in his first meeting with George:

"I am going to do something different. I am going to make a great deal of noise. The English--the official English--do not like noise. They think it vulgar; it embarrasses them. But if calm reason has not worked, I shall give them noisy reason. I shall not use the back stairs but the front steps. I shall bang a big drum. I intend to shake more than a few trees, George, and we shall see what rotten fruit falls down."

Doyle is a man of convictions, but he is also a man who convinces himself first and then seeks to have everyone else fall in line. This is even how he describes his method of writing, "beginning with the ending." And as he as convinced of the reality of Spiritualism as he is of George's innocence, there are certainly moments when it seems questionable whether Doyle's zeal is appropriate, or even warranted. There were undoubtedly serious flaws in George's prosecution, and there is never a serious doubt that George is innocent of the charges, but Doyle becomes equally obsessed with determining the true perpetrator of the crimes as he is of demonstrating the injustice of the original prosecution:

He is as good as saying I botched it, thinks Arthur. No, don't be absurd--it's merely that he's far more interested in his own vindication, and in making absolutely sure of that, than in Sharp's prosecution. Which is perfectly understandable. Finish item one before proceeding to item two--what else would you expect of a cautious lawyer? Whereas I attack on all fronts simultaneously.

And though Doyle makes mincemeat out of the so-called professional investigators (much like his fictional counterpart), the alternate theory he proffers is plausible, persuasive even, but ultimately still resting on the same foundation of hearsay, inference, and circumstance that saw George Edalji spend 3 years in confinement. Nowhere is the disparity between George and Doyle's approaches to the case more apparent than their handling of the issue of race. George, who was raised by his family to think of himself as English through and through, refuses to consider that any of his misfortune is attributable to his mixed origins. Doyle sees that as the basic truth underlying all the hostility and injustice that George has suffered:

"So if you are proposing that my ordeal has been caused by race prejudice, then I must ask you for your evidence. I do not recall Mr. Disturnal ever alluding to the subject. Or Sir Reginald Hardy. Did the jury find me guilty because of my skin? That is too easy an answer. And I might add that during my years in prison I was fairly treated by the staff and the other inmates."

"If I may make a suggestion," replied Sir Arthur. "Perhaps you should tr occasionally not to think like a lawyer. The fact that no evidence of a phenomenon can be adduced does not mean that it does not exist."

Perhaps most astonishing is the revelation in Barnes' author's note that aside from one letter from Doyle's second wife, "all letters quoted, whether signed or anonymous, are authentic, as are quotations from newspapers, government reports, proceedings in Parliament, and the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." At first blush one might think this detracts from the splendor of Barnes' work; after all, has he not leaned rather heavily on the words of others? Unlike, say, the wholesale invention seen in a work like A.S. Byatt's Possession (reviewed here). But with due consideration, I think the historical origins of the letters and quotes actually adds to the glory of what Barnes has accomplished: first in recognizing that this was an inherently fascinating episode with words worth reproducing, and then for seamlessly integrating these letters and historical accounts into his narrative.