53. The Coming of the Huns (1910)

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:

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Synopsis

Illustration by N. C. Wyeth
Weary of the infighting between Christian sects in Fourth Century Constantinople, the Trinitarian Simon Melas heads northwards, beyond the Dneister, to live a secluded life of contemplation. Yet even in the wilderness he cannot find complete solitude. In a neighbouring cave he encounters an established hermit, Paul of Nicopolis. Their discourse however proves short-lived as Paul is a follower of the rival Arian philosophy.

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.

Stonyhurst College
All the Tales of Long Ago take place in the ancient world. ACD may have been inspired to use this setting by his Stonyhurst school friend, James (Jimmy) Ryan, who had a lifelong interest in ancient Rome. Ryan followed Conan Doyle to Edinburgh to study medicine (and became Bryan Charles Waller’s lab assistant) but he abandoned that career when he inherited the family’s tea plantations in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). He worked there most of his life and died in 1920. He also had a house in Rome (A photograph of Ryan at Stonyhurst has recently been discovered – see Stonyhurst Association, Summer 2022 - page 27).

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.

Further afield, historical epics included Maurice Hewlett’s The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay (1900), about Richard the Lionheart, which was a favourite of T. E. Lawrence. Of short fiction, John Buchan’s ‘The Lemnian’ (1911) was released a few months after ‘The Coming of the Huns’ and is set in the Lemnos of ancient Greece.

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.

Old Orhei, in present day Moldova
Conan Doyle appears to be making a point about the insignificance of doctrinal differences, although for contemporaries the issue was a major one. The tensions between Simon and Paul are initially played for laughs, and while Simon is initially the more tolerant, he is shown to be as small-minded as Paul when he dismisses the ‘pagan’ beliefs of Roman soldier Caius Crassus, who suggests the teachings of Plato or Marcus Aurelius over the Bible.

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.

Source: Wikimedia
The Huns were a nomadic peoples who lived in central Asia, the Caucasus and eastern Europe in the 4-6th century. Although their origins were unclear, by the time of their arrival in eastern Europe they were a collection of peoples from across the Steppes. They flooded eastern Europe in 375 AD and rose in dominance until the death of Attila (453 AD) after which their Empire vanished.

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

One of the main sources for the story is Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789). ACD writes ‘The Coming of the Huns’ as Gibbon’s central thesis in microcosm: that Rome fell as a consequence of decay from within, the erosion of civic virtue and the rise of religious intolerance

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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