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N. C. Wyeth illustration for Scribner's Magazine |
Hello and welcome to Episode 53. Today, we discuss ‘The Coming of the Huns,’ one of Conan Doyle’s Tales of Long Ago, written and published in 1910.
You can read the story here: ACD Encyclopaedia
– The Coming of the Huns.
Or listen to an audiobook reading here: The Coming of the Huns –
Magpie Audio.
You can listen to the episode here:
The episode will be uploaded to our YouTube channel soon,
where you can listen with closed captions. In the meantime, you can subscribe
to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle
Synopsis
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Illustration by N. C. Wyeth |
One evening, two years into his retreat, Simon’s peace is
disturbed by the fleeting appearance of an oddly conformed stranger. The next morning,
the plain beneath his refuge is covered by a vast multitude of horsemen heading
steadily westwards…
Writing and publication
‘The Coming of the Huns’ was one of a series of historical
vignettes, written around 1910, that Conan Doyle later collected as Tales of
Long Ago (1922). Of all his works, these were the ones he most wished
preserved for posterity. As well as being short historical pieces, they were
conceived as parables to address contemporary questions as diverse as British preparedness
for war and the abandonment of India.
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Stonyhurst College |
The surviving correspondence from Jimmy Ryan to ACD in the
1910s reveal him working as a kind of unpaid research assistant. Ryan offered Conan
Doyle a range of story ideas – some good, some very bad – one of which was
taken up (‘The Iconoclast’). He also commented on drafts of The Lost World
and The Poison Belt.
‘The Coming of the Huns’ was first published by Scribner's
Magazine in November 1910. It may have been offered to and rejected by the Strand
who also rejected ‘Giant Maximin.’
‘The Coming of the Huns’ was included in The Last Galley:
Impressions and Tales (1911) and later Tales of Long Ago (Murray, 1922).
In the USA it was included in The Last of the Legions and Other Tales of
Long Ago (Doran, USA, 1922).
Historical fiction and parables in the 1910s
There was not a great deal of short historical fiction when the
story was published but plenty of examples of epic novels. They include Francis
Marion Crawford’s Zoroaster (1885), Wilkie Collins’ first novel, Antonina
or the Fall of Rome (1850), and Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of
Pompeii (1834). Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880) and Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis (1895-96)
had furthered the interest in ancient Rome.
As well as historical novelists, historians were likely
influences, notably Thomas Babington Macaulay and his Lays of Ancient Rome
(1842). Conan Doyle had memorised the first of the Lays, ‘Horatius’, as a child
and could still recall it in later life. Gibbon too was an influence (see
later).
In terms of parables, one could argue that H. G. Wells’
speculative fiction achieves this function, with the interesting comparison
that Wells looks to the future for his settings while ACD looks to the past.
Someone also looking to the (mythic) past was Rudyard Kipling in Puck of
Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Faeries (1910).
The Arian Controversy
The Arian Controversy was a religious schism in Christianity
in the Fourth Century that centred on the question of who or what was Christ
and could he be both God and man. Followers of the Alexandrian priest Arius
argued that Christ was a derivative of God and they could therefore not be one
and the same. This was the position adopted by the Homoiousians while the rival
Homoousians held the view that Christ and God were the “same in being.” Constantine
the Great, who had granted freedom of worship to Christians in the Roman
Empire, sought to resolve the differences at the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD).
This Council upheld the Trinitarian view.
The use of the term ‘Arian’ should not be confused with the
racial term ‘Aryan’ although it’s worth noting that the latter was in common usage
when ‘The Coming of the Huns’ was first published. H S Chamberlain’s horribly
antisemitic book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century was published
in 1899 and propelled race theory. It would be weaponised by the Nazis against
the Jews in the 1930s.
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Old Orhei, in present day Moldova |
The location mentioned in the story might be Old Orhei in present day
Moldova. The site has cave chapels that were used as late as the 1690s by the
Hajduk, hiding from the Ottomans. The suggestion was made by a reviewer on Trip
Advisor.
The Huns
After a beautifully written brief interlude, Simon’s peace
is shattered by the arrival of the Huns. He finds Paul dead, his head beaten in
with a crucifix, and is forced to defend himself with Paul’s cudgel, before
alerting Caius to the impending invasion. The sequences are some of Conan Doyle’s
best writing.
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Source: Wikimedia |
The Huns left no written records so our picture of them (and
their dramatic arrival) is taken from contemporary Romans. They include Saint
Jerome, who would go on to translate the Bible into Latin, and who wrote Chronicle,
a history of the world from mythology, that ended with the arrival of the Huns.
Later historians, referring to Jerome, saw the arrival of the Huns as a
watershed moment in European history.
Another contemporary of ACD who explored this invasion narrative
was Bram Stoker who made Dracula a descendant of Attila.
Gibbon
Conan Doyle was hugely influenced by Gibbon. In his article
‘Before my Bookcase’ in 1894, which was later reworked into Through the
Magic Door (1907), he stated: “If I were to spend the remainder of my life
upon an island, and were condemned to choose only one book as my companion, it
would certainly be Gibbon.”
In Through the Magic Door (1907), written three years
before ‘The Coming of the Huns’, ACD discusses Gibbon’s view of the fall of
Rome and highlights the threat from the East. Specifically, he gave the
contemporary view that the Huns came from North China and that the country
could rise again with the same results. In 1908, he had written another parable,
‘The Pot of Caviare’ (Doings
of Doyle - Episode 49) which depicted a threat from the East and warned
against defeatism.
Next time on Doings of Doyle
We return to Baker Street for ‘The Adventure of the Second
Stain’ (1904). You can read the story here: ACD
Encyclopaedia – The Adventure of the Second Stain.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our
supporters on Patreon and Paypal.
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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