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A trip with Louisa during the winter of 1896 to Egypt, where he hoped the warm climate would do her good, gave birth to another of his novels: The Tragedy of the Korosko.
During that same period, Conan Doyle wrote a play about Sherlock Holmes. It was not to give him new life but to shore-up his bank account. The very successful American actor William Gillette having read the script, asked for permission to revise it. Conan Doyle agreed, and when the actor asked permission to alter the Holmes persona, he replied, "You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like to him." By the time Gillette's revisions were sent back, there was little left of Conan Doyle's original script. The author's laconic comment to Gillette was: "It's good to see the old chap again." Continued...  Back to Biography page 1 |
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It is believed that Conan Doyle, a man with the highest moral standards, remained celibate during the rest of Louisa's life. That didn't prevent him from falling deeply in love with Jean Leckie the first time he saw her in March of 1897. Aged twenty-four, she was a strikingly beautiful woman, with dark-blond hair and bright green eyes. Her many accomplishments were quite unusual for those times: she was an intellectual, a good sportswoman as well as a trained mezzo-soprano. What further attracted Conan Doyle, was that her family claimed to be related to the Scottish hero Rob Roy.