Sir Nigel, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Almost all readers know that Arthur Conan Doyle created the immortal Sherlock Holmes, the seminal precursor to all the idiosyncratic detectives which have since become a welcome (mostly) plague upon all our houses and libraries. And those readers more familiar with the creator of the duo of Holmes and Watson are usually aware that Doyle was not entirely enamored of his creation. But few know Doyle also wrote historical fiction, which he always believed was his most outstanding work, and fewer still read those works which shall never be part of ‘the canon’ of Sherlock fans on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I, myself, only accidentally stumbled upon one of Sir Arthur’s other brilliant protagonists—the dashing and quite clueless Brigadier Gerard—which had been misfiled in the ‘Mystery’ aisle of a used bookstore. But I had never read either of his medieval novels before, and now can well understand why Arthur Conan Doyle thought them his worthiest creations; Sir Nigel is wonderful.
Springing to right and swooping to left, now with its tangled wicked head betwixt its fore-feet, and now pawing eight feet high in the air, with scarlet, furious nostrils and maddened eyes, the yellow horse was a thing of terror and of beauty. But the lithe figure on his back, bending like a reed in the wind to every movement, firm below, pliant above, with calm inexorable face, and eyes which danced and gleamed with the joy of contest, still held its masterful place for all that the fiery heart and the iron muscles of the great beast could do.
A boy and his horse.
Doyle’s novel, written in 1906, is actually a belated prequel to his earlier tale of the XIVth Century, The White Company, written fifteen years earlier. Where the latter book features as hero Sir Nigel Loring as the wise master of many battles and combats, our book Sir Nigel follows the same protagonist from his earliest days upon a failing manor estate in the south of England through his initial successes upon the path of chivalry. It is a delightful picaresque full of incident and interest. The author’s ear for dialogue and description never fail him, and the extensive research he made into the period of the Hundred Years’ War manifests itself upon every page. Best of all, the novel is overfull of that delight for writing and words which Arthur Conan Doyle evinced in those initial stories of the Sherlock Holmes tales (I exempt A Study In Scarlet, which drags).
There he had gone first to the goldsmith and had bought back cup and salver and bracelet, mourning with the merchant over the evil chance that gold and gold-work had for certain reasons which only those in the trade could fully understand gone up in value during the last week, so that already fifty gold pieces had to be paid more than the price which Nigel had received. In vain the faithful Aylward fretted and fumed and muttered a prayer that the day would come when he might feather a shaft in the merchant’s portly paunch. The money had to be paid.
Doyle deigns to indulge in some delightful irony
Of course, the tale is not for everyone. Many will thrown by Doyle’s imperial viewpoint of England and her old nobility, and the English author was definitely a man of his time. No less than Kipling did Sir Arthur support the dominion of the United Kingdom. But of more concern to some readers may be his forthright treatment of violence and the brutality of the age of which he writes. Though knights may be spared for ransom, all lesser combatants would be slain upon the field after battle, as Doyle is at pains to relate. The fierce savagery of the fighting is also honestly told, viewed though it often is through the eyes of young Nigel Loring, who sees in terms of a chivalric vision which was already out of date during the period related here. But the ferocity only serves to underline the splendor of both the prose and the bygone world it tells.
A fearsome sight was Pommers that day, his red eyes rolling, his nostrils gaping, his tawny mane tossing, and his savage teeth gnashing in fury, as he tore and smashed and ground beneath his ramping hoofs all that came before him. Fearsome too was the rider, ice-cool, alert, concentrated of purpose, with heart of fire and muscles of steel. A very angel of battle he seemed as he drove his maddened horse through the thickest of the press
A young man and his horse
I look forward to reading the earlier sequel, The White Company, to learn more of the success of Sir Nigel. The book under consideration is his origin story, and is more of a succession of episodes than any complex plotted tale. (This, in fact, is Doyle’s strong suit, as the success of the Holmes’s short stories over most of the novels (excepting The Hound of the Baskervilles) proves.) As my label of ‘picaresque’ is meant to imply, Nigel at the close is very much the same as Nigel in the beginning. But he is a thrilling and compelling character, full of passion for right and action, bravery and derring-do. Those who enjoyed the tales of King Arthur, or such romances, will find this a wonderful read.
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