63. The Man from Archangel (1885)

Detail from illustration in 'Good Literature' (1906)

This episode we travel to the very north of mainland Scotland where one man’s solitude is interrupted by two mysterious castaways, in ‘The Man from Archangel’ from 1885.

You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Man_from_Archangel

Or listen to a Librivox reading here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts2yXxclU-c

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Synopsis

Having come into an unexpected inheritance, the morose and misanthropic John McVittie is able to give up his unrewarding legal practice in the English Midlands and retire to a remote coastal estate in Caithness in eastern Scotland. Here he pursues his esoteric scientific and philosophic interests, with only his aged housekeeper for company. But his quiet existence is disrupted when a Russian schooner is wrecked in a storm and McVittie rescues a young woman from the doomed ship. Apparently, however, she is not the only survivor as shortly afterwards McVittie discovers that his lonely house is under observation from a mysterious bearded stranger…

Writing and publication history

The story was most likely written towards the end of 1884, when Conan Doyle was based in Southsea and supplementing his income by writing. He was also publishing non-fiction in the likes of the British Journal of Photography and The Lancet, and getting involved in civic life through membership of the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society. He met his wife to be, Louise Hawkins, in the summer, and joined Portsmouth Football Club (for whom he played in goal as A. C. Smith) in the autumn.

‘The Man from Archangel’ was most likely offered to (and rejected by) The Cornhill before it was accepted by London Society. The editor, James Hogg, had been a proponent of ACD since 1880, and while they had their ups and downs, he was a significant early figure in ACD’s writing career. The story was first anthologised in Hogg’s Mysteries and Adventures, which reprinted ACD’s London Society stories without permission, much to ACD’s annoyance. ACD included ‘The Man from Archangel’ in his first authorised anthology, The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales, in March 1890.

In The True Conan Doyle (1945), Adrian Conan Doyle wrote: “As a footnote, I might mention that my father considered his finest piece of writing to be ‘The Man from Archangel’ from his Tales of Adventure.” This episode explores why that might be the case.

The narrator

Shades of early Holmes?
Illu. from 'A Scandal in Bohemia'

McVittie is not the sort of mild-mannered and well-meaning narrator we typically associate with Conan Doyle’s fiction. However, around this time, Conan Doyle seems to have been experimenting with misanthropic types, including That Little Square Box (1881) and The Lonely Hampshire Cottage (1885). Owen Dudley Edwards has suggested that McVittie’s determination to remain aloof from society may be ACD reflecting on the chaos of life at home in Edinburgh and seeking some peace and quiet.

McVittie is pompous, pretentious and unsociable, and there is comedy in this – McVittie takes himself so seriously! But there is also a dark side, with McVittie leaving his practice because he almost killed a man in anger, and his views on death and fate. Partly this may be influenced by ACD’s early interest in spiritualism – death is just part of the ‘eternal and ever-changing career’ of man – but also McVittie is highly unreliable as a narrator. His words and actions are often in conflict.

McVittie also shares characteristics with James Upperton in ‘The Surgeon of Gaster Fell’ (1892) who seeks isolation to pursue his scientific interests. He also bears similarities with Raffles Haw in The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891) who pursue the secrets of alchemy. And many of the characteristics of McVittie – misogyny, bohemianism, anti-social – make their way into the earliest depictions of Sherlock Holmes.

Influences

Illustration from 'The Wrecker' in 
The Bookman, 1892

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Pavillion on the Links (1880) is a strong influence in this story, and others. Here, our misanthropic narrator seems to draw on Casillis and Northmoor. There is also similarity in the remote coastal setting. There are similarities to Stevenson’s The Wrecker (1892), which would come out after ‘Archangel.’

The shipwreck owes something to W. Clark Russell, whose “fine sea stories” are enjoyed by Dr Watson in ‘The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips’ (1891). In particular, Clark Russell’s breakthrough novel, The Wreck of the “Grosvenor” (1877) has a misanthropic captain, a love interest, and plenty of shipwrecks.

The descriptions of the coast and McVittie’s melancholy reflects on the sea owe much to ACD’s own experience as a ship’s surgeon on the Hope and the Mayumba. These voyages also influenced ACD’s classic short story, ‘The Captain of the Pole-star.’

The ‘Russian’ characters

Sophie Ramusine is a classic ‘damsel in distress’ – almost a prop – and it is convenient that she doesn’t speak English as this means she can give no explanation of her circumstances. Her function is almost to underscore McVittie’s misogyny.

Sophie is something of an unusual name for a woman whom, it is implied, is Finnish or Russian. At this time, Sophie is something of an exotic name, for example in Anthony Hope’s Sophy of Kravonia (1906). ACD creates the character of Sophie Kratides in ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’ (1893).

Ourganeff is a dashing, piratical figure, something of a romantic Gothic type. He is also a stereotype of manly bravery in the face of death. Ourganeff is also very perspicacious, and quickly gets the measure of McVittie, his comments about McVittie’s motivations serving to enhance the idea of the unreliable narrator. His name may be a play on Turganev – drop the ‘T’ - the great Russian author whose Fathers and Sons (1862) was widely admired, including by ACD.

We later discover that Ourganeff stole Sophie from the altar, but this may not be the full story. There is perhaps a hint that both could be Russian nihilists. It is notable that Sophie is able to disassemble, oil and repair McVittie’s gun. British commentators and novelists were obsessed with nihilists in the 1880s, especially after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. We previously discussed the panicked reaction to Oscar Wilde’s Vera. ACD’s ‘A Night Among the Nihilists’ (1881) and ‘An Exciting Christmas Eve’ (1883), and later ‘The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez’ (1904) – have nihilist back stories.

The ending

Illustration from The San Francisco Examiner

The ending is ambiguous. At one level it is a conventional Gothic romance, with Sophie and Ourganeff apparently reconciled before they die in a storm. But McVittie’s motivation and the story told by Ourganeff are both fanciful. There is also no external confirmation of the events, including McVittie not notifying the authorities and conducting an illegal burial at the end. We also learn, at the end, that McVittie has written the story for his own ‘amusement’, though what that might be is unclear.

Charles Higham notes the sexual undercurrents in the story, with McVittie and Ourganeff both at times laying claim to possess Sophie. There is also the political undercurrent that the characters may be nihilists, perhaps pupil and master as is the dynamic between Professor Coram and Anna in ‘The Golden Pince-Nez.’ Of course, it could all be a lie, and McVittie just murdered the pair of them in cold blood…

ACD’s “finest” work

Why might ACD have regarded this story so highly? The ambiguity of the story marks it as an evolution of his writing: it is much more psychologically deft than other stories of this time, with plenty of wry humour which further underscores the debt owed to Stevenson. The prose is arguably the floweriest that Conan Doyle ever produced, and there is a sense he pruned this back afterwards. There may also be elements of the ‘private’ Conan Doyle in the narrator. He clearly thought it worthy of The Cornhill, even if they didn’t.

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We discuss ACD’s unconventional ghost story, ‘The Story of the Brown Hand’ (1898), from his Round the Fire Stories.

Acknowledgements

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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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