The Illustrated Letters of Richard Doyle to His Father, 1842–1843. Doyle Richard

responds by sketching rather than writing. “I am very happy to see that I am half way down my second page,” he announces, “although as yet I have not been able to think of any good subject to write about. Don’t imagine that I have got any interesting or marvellous anecdote to tell you, because you see the above strange assemblage of hobgoblins, for it really does not illustrate any known circumstance either in history or fiction, but was just invented by me for the sake of occupying so much space and thereby having less paper to cover in the writing” (no. 46).

      Toward the end of the series of letters, in fact, the visual improvisations not only relieve the labor of handwriting but begin to take precedence. More and more space is allotted to the pen-and-ink designs, which become increasingly elaborate and fanciful, textured with cross-hatching and chiaroscuro. The letter of October 15, 1843, for example, offers a complex visual reenactment of one of his dreams (no. 49); that of November 19, 1843, uses its seven brief words to introduce a bustling three-page carnival of hybrid figures (no. 52; see plates 7–9 in the gallery); and the very last page of the final letter depicts an allegorical self-portrait that is carefully glossed in the text. In these late letters, the London of parks, theaters, galleries, and concert rooms gives way to the teeming metropolis of Doyle’s own mind. Far from inhibiting his artistic faculties, by the final months the pressure of the weekly assignment has generated the most fully realized and dazzling of his visual creations.

      The question remains about the ultimate purpose of John Doyle’s unusual assignment to his sons. In the end, why did he commission these weekly productions, which in Richard’s case gradually began to assume the form of graphic compositions rather than conventional letters? In the absence of any hard evidence we can only offer conjectures here. At the most basic level, Doyle may have wanted to keep an eye on his sons as he himself pursued his own career as a political cartoonist and was frequently away from home. London was a city rife with opportunities for trouble, offering an even greater temptation to boys who were schooled at home by tutors. Thus the letters may have served as a kind of disciplinary exercise, a weekly report of his sons’ activities while he was at work. He may also have wanted to keep them preoccupied in the absence of their mother as well as affording their elder sister Annette a respite from minding the children and an opportunity to attend to other household responsibilities.

      But all of these reasons are unsatisfying given the actual content and form of the letters themselves. It is far more plausible that Doyle envisioned the assignment as a means of preparation and training for his sons’ professional careers, either as art critics, portrait painters, graphic artists for the exciting new illustrated magazines, or social and political commentators. The letters of James and Henry are full of reflections on pictures, plays, and concerts, and many of Richard’s letters mimic the style and format of the standard exhibition review found in the newspapers and magazines of the day. Lending further credence to this idea is that Doyle remunerated his sons and required that the letters be posted, thus certifying them with a kind of professional seal. He wanted to give the assignment rigor by enforcing a deadline and encouraging his sons to see the task as a journalistic assignment, a real job. In this regard it cannot be an accident that Richard’s position as a graphic illustrator at Punch dovetails beautifully with his increasingly elaborate work in the letters; that in effect, the one assignment leads directly and organically into the other. Taken as a whole, Richard’s collection of letters to his father must have served as an impressive portfolio, a vivid testimony of his skill as a draughtsman, and thus played a key role in earning him the coveted position.¹⁹

      BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT

      John Doyle, Richard’s father, was the son of a tailor. He was born in Dublin in 1797, three years before the Act of Union with Britain, which led to years of social and economic upheaval in Ireland. He attended the Dublin Society’s Drawing Academy and studied with the landscape painter Gaspare Gabrielli and the miniaturist John Comerford. On February 13, 1820, he married Marianne Conan, and the couple had their first child, Annette, in January 1821. Because of the lack of opportunities for a young artist in economically depressed Dublin, the Doyles moved to London at about this time. The early years in the city were difficult as Doyle tried to cultivate patrons and find his footing as an animal and miniature painter. In 1825 he gained some success in conventional oils by exhibiting his first painting at the Royal Academy, Turning Out the Stag, which was followed each of the next two years by portraits of gentlemen.

      It was the new art of lithography, however, that eventually ignited his career. In the late 1820s he began creating lithographic portraits of prominent men like the Dukes of Wellington and York, which were then printed, and sold in large numbers. He visited the House of Commons, where he quietly watched the proceedings and then later drew caricatures of statesmen and politicians from memory. Soon he began publishing sketches, the forerunners of today’s political cartoons, under the pseudonym “HB.” In a more tempered and classical style than predecessors James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson or fellow cartoonists like George Cruikshank, Doyle satirized political figures gently and gained a wide following. From 1827 to 1850 he produced 917 of these sketches, carefully guarding his identity and maintaining his anonymity until his retirement.²⁰

      In the meantime the Doyle family grew. The Doyles’ first child, Ann Martha (Annette), was followed by James (1822), Richard (1824), Henry (1827), Francis (c. 1829), Adelaide (1831), and Charles (1832). The family moved house several times in the early years in London. By 1833, however, and as a result of John Doyle’s success, they had settled in a fashionable new neighborhood near Hyde Park at 17 Cambridge Terrace, now Sussex Gardens. Most of the children would spend their adult lives there. It was not until 1864 that Richard moved again—with his father and several siblings to 54 Clifton Gardens, Maida Hill—and another ten years before he finally established his own residence, which he shared with his sister Annette. The youngest son, Charles Altamont Doyle, was the only one of the Doyle children to move away for good (to Edinburgh in 1849), and the only one to produce offspring of his own, prodigiously, as it turned out. He and his wife, Mary, had nine children, the second of whom was Arthur Conan Doyle. The brothers James and Henry married late in life and were childless, Richard remained a bachelor until his death, and both his older sister Annette and his aunt Anne took their vows as nuns.

      The five years that bookend Richard Doyle’s letters to his father, between 1839 and 1844, were a tumultuous time for the family. Earlier studies have not placed enough emphasis on the events of this period because of uncertainties surrounding key dates. Recent investigations, however, have uncovered enough reliable information to help us clarify the exact sequence of events during this time.²¹ Until very recently, biographers of the Doyle family believed that John’s wife, Marianne, died in 1832, shortly after giving birth to their last child, Charles.²² The recent discovery of her death certificate reveals that in fact she lived for another seven years, dying of a “Diseased Heart” at the age of forty-four on December 11, 1839. At about this time, Marianne’s brother, Michael Conan, who was a barrister and a freelance literary, music, and drama critic, moved in temporarily to help the Doyle family. He brought with him his two sisters, Anne and Elizabeth.²³

      A few years later, Richard’s younger brother Francis (“Frank”) also passed away, though the exact date and cause of his death have long been a matter of debate. At one point in his biography, Rodney Engen states that he “died about 1840” (13), only to claim later that “about 1843 Francis . . . became ill and died” (35). Georgina Doyle admits that the date of his death “is a mystery,” though like Phillip Bergem she leans toward early 1843. Although I have not been able to track down Francis’s death certificate, I did locate his burial record at the London Metropolitan Archives. It gives the date and place of his interment as June 15, 1843, in the South Metropolitan Cemetery, now known as Norwood Cemetery in Lambeth. This would put his death a few days earlier, between June 10 and 14, 1843. A Conan Doyle biographer has maintained that Francis died in a typhoid epidemic but offers no supporting evidence.²⁴ Neither is there any evidence for the claims of other scholars who speculate that he died of consumption, though his sister did succumb to this disease only ten months later. Adelaide (“Adele”) died on April 2, 1844, at the age of thirteen, and like her mother and older brother was buried in the South Metropolitan Cemetery.

      The death of Richard’s mother, combined with the tragic early