Tag: Arthur Conan Doyle

The Fiend of the Cooperage

Roger Casement was a guest at a Johnson Club supper in 1896. As was Joseph Conrad.*

Conan Doyle’s short story, ‘The Fiend of the Cooperage’ was published in 1897.  Doyle was a guest speaker at the Irish Literary Society, 13 February, 1897.

In the story, two men are isolated in the jungle and have only each other for company. ‘Dr Severall is a rank Radical and I am a good stiff Unionist’ They argue about Home Rule for two solid hours every evening.**

*John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad,  p.133.

** Jane Stanford, ‘Moriarty Unmasked: Conan Doyle and an Anglo-Irish Quarrel’, 2017, p.38.

O’Connor Power – political strategist

O’Connor Power was described as a  ‘man of mystery’, enigmatic, elusive. Behind the scenes he worked with ‘a dogged tenacity of purpose’ to forward the goal of an independent Ireland.  He anticipated Niall FitzGerald’s approach:

In this era of the adoration of celebrity, we should remember that there is no limit to what a man can achieve so long as he doesn’t care who gets the credit.

As quoted in UCD Connections Alumni Magazine, 2012

To go unnamed:  ‘It was the method of Livingstone as against the method of Stanley. The former takes the braver and the better man.’   Arthur Conan Doyle, Through the Magic Door.

‘boasting , as the apostle says, is excluded.’ The Forty Years of the Johnson Club 1884-1924.