It’s Hallowe’en, so settle down by the fire, pour yourself a stiff drink, and get ready for a Conan Doyle ghost story, ‘The Silver Mirror,’ from August 1908.
You can read the short story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Silver_Mirror
The episode can be heard here: http://doingsofdoyle.podbean.com/.
Synopsis
An accountant working on the case of White and Wotherspoons is on the trail of an outwardly respectable fraudster. He has twenty ledgers in which to follow and prove a case of false bookkeeping. His available time is limited, entailing long hours of concentrated work, and the attendant fatigue and brain-fog. By his side as he works sits a large antique silver mirror in which he expects to see only his own tired reflection. But, strangely, the harder he works, and the closer he gets to his quarry, the mirror begins to mist and cloud internally, and a picture of a past tragedy begins to emerge from within…
Writing and publication history
 |
| The Automated Sculpture Syndicate |
Conan Doyle had
recently completed ‘A Pot of Caviare’ (1908), an additional chapter for his
expanded 1899 work A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus, and the two plays The
Fires of Fate and The House of Temperley (first performed in 1909).
He had also
agreed to write the occasional reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes, to relieve some
temporary money worries. A company he had supported for five years, the Automated
Sculpture Syndicate, had recently gone bust and he had just made the expensive
move to Windlesham in Crowborough, East Sussex.
The story was
first collected in The Last Galley (1911) and later in Tales of Long
Ago (1922).
The changing nature of ghost stories
 |
| M. R. James |
Conan Doyle’s ‘The Haunted Grange at Goresthorpe’ (c. 1877), https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Haunted_Grange_of_Goresthorpe
William Hope
Hodgson, Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder (1913)
E. Heron, Ghosts:
Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low (1899)
Algernon Blackwood,
John Silence (1908)
Edward Bulwer
Lytton, The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain (1859)
Charlotte
Perkins Gillman, The Yellow Wall-Paper (1892)
Henry James, The
Turn of the Screw (1898)
M. R. James, Ghost
Stories of an Antiquary (1904)
Psychic research
Place memory: Edmund Gurney (1847-88) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Gurney and Eleanor Sidgwick (1845-1936) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Mildred_Sidgwick
Nigel Kneale, The
Stone Tape (BBC, 1972), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stone_Tape
Psychometry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometry_(paranormal)
Edison’s phonograph
(1877)
T. C.
Lethbridge (1901-1971), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._C._Lethbridge
Mirrors
 |
| Dr John Dee |
R. L.
Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Alfred Lord Tennyson,
The Lady of Shalott (1842)
Scrying mirrors,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrying
Dr John Dee
(1527-1609), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
Sir Walter
Scott, ‘My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror’ (1828)
Mary Elizabeth
Braddon, ‘The Face in the Glass’ (c. 1880) and Lady Audley’s Secret
(1862)
The Silver Mirror as spiritualist text
Kyle DeDecker’s paper at the Edinburgh Conan Doyle Project conference 2020, https://edinburgh-conan-doyle.org/conference-2020/ (Panel 4).
Charles Altamont Doyle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse
Palace of Holyrood House, https://www.rct.uk/visit/palace-of-holyroodhouse
Charles
Altamont Doyle (1832-1893), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Altamont_Doyle
The Murder of Rizzio, 9 March 1566
 |
| Opie's The Murder of Rizzio |
Mary, Queen of
Scots (1542-1587), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Queen_of_Scots
Henry, Lord
Darnley (1545-1567), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stuart,_Lord_Darnley
Patrick Ruthven,
3rd Lord Ruthven (c. 1520-1566), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Ruthven,_3rd_Lord_Ruthven
James Hepburn,
4th Earl Bothwell (c. 1534-1578), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hepburn,_4th_Earl_of_Bothwell
Sir Walter
Scott, Tales of a Grandfather (1828-1830)
David Tweedie, David Rizzio and Mary Queen of Scots: Murder at Holyrood (2014)
Related Conan Doyle works
‘The Haunted Grange at Goresthorpe’ (c. 1877)
‘Through the
Veil’ (1911)
‘The Leather Funnel’
(1902)
‘The Voice of
Science’ (1892)
‘The Story of
the Japanned Box’ (1899)
‘The Adventure
of the Mazarin Stone’ (1921)
‘A Physiologist’s
Wife’ (1885)
Next time on the Doings of Doyle…
We head to nineteenth century Japan for ‘Jelland’s Voyage’ (1892). You can read it here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Jelland's_Voyage
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books: www.belangerbooks.com, and to our patrons on Patreon.
Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.
Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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