En: Conan Doyle, Kipling, Rider Haggard, Jerome K Jerome and the The Authors’ Lodge

Conan Doyle, Kipling, Rider Haggard, Jerome K Jerome and the The Authors’ Lodge

by Dr. David Harrison

‘Once a priest, always a priest; once a mason, always a mason; but once a journalist, always and forever a journalist.’

Rudyard Kipling

Freemason Rudyard Kipling, A Matter of Fact, Many Inventions, 1893

There is a Masonic lodge which still meets in London called the Authors’ Lodge No. 3456, which, when founded in November 1910, received letters of goodwill from ‘Brothers’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Jerome K. Jerome. Rudyard Kipling, had been initiated into Freemasonry in the Hope and Perseverance Lodge No. 782, based in Lahore, India, in 1886, and went on to become an honorary member of the Authors’ Lodge. The lodge had a direct connection to the London based Authors’ Club, which had been founded in 1891, being constituted by the Masonic members of the Authors’ Club, founders such as Max Montesole and A.F. Calvert, who had famously discovered an early Masonic Catechism dating from the early eighteenth century, which he eventually sold to Masonic historian Douglas Knoop. The consecration of the Authors’ Lodge reveals the intricate relationships between certain gentlemen’s clubs and Freemasonry; the founding of the lodge being seen as not only a way of promoting the Authors’ Club amongst Freemasons, but also providing a means of promoting Freemasonry within the club, attracting literary men into the Craft ‘could not fail to add lustre to the Order.’

Rider Haggard

Kipling and Rider Haggard were very close friends, and they both famously conveyed Freemasonry in their work. Indeed, Masonic themes can be seen in Rider Haggard’s late Victorian works King Solomon’s Mines and the wonderfully exotic novel She, a story which deals with death and re-birth. Both of these works present the idea of the heroic explorer searching lost civilisations for hidden knowledge and, along with Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King, testify not only to the popularity of Freemasonry at the time, but also the acceptance of the Craft in Victorian society, which, within these literary contexts also conveyed an element of mystery and the occult. Rider Haggard was also a close friend of Egyptologist and occultist Ernest A. Wallis Budge, both of them, along with Kipling, being celebrated members of the literary Savile Club.

Victorian gentlemen’s clubs – popular amongst the literary gentlemen of the time, had links to Freemasonry during the period. Indeed, many Victorian writers, artists and politicians were members of both, the thriving social scene offering networking and social advancement, both Freemasonry and the clubs having similar dining etiquette, strict dress codes and rules on balloting for new members. The networking that took place in the London clubs attracted the vivid imagination of Victorian writers, some of whom even wrote about their experiences of the mysterious activities that occurred behind the closed doors. Arthur Conan Doyle, who was initiated into the Pheonix Lodge, No. 257, at Southsea, Hampshire, on the 26th of January, 1887, made a literary reference to a London gentleman’s club in his 1893 Sherlock Holmes short story The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, were Sherlock Holmes visits his brother Mycroft at the mysterious ‘Diogenes Club’ which he describes as:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

‘the queerest club in London’ being for gentlemen ‘who have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals.’

The bizarre rules of the club are described:

‘No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Strangers’ Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, permitted, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother (Mycroft) was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.’

The location of the club in the story was given as being on Pall Mall, a short distance from the Carlton Club, Conan Doyle presenting its interior as having a games room and ‘a large and luxurious’ reading room. The ‘Diogenes Club’ was fictional, but with Mycroft’s secretive career in government, the club was presented as having possible deeper mysterious political agendas. Conan Doyle was obviously being inspired by the secrecy and mysterious nature of such gentlemen’s clubs, so it is not surprising that he also occasionally referred to Freemasonry in his Sherlock Holmes stories, such as in The Red-Headed League, when Holmes – who was obviously very familiar with Masonic symbolism – recognised that a certain gentleman was a Freemason, the particular gentleman being surprised that Holmes knew of his membership:

‘I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an arc and compass breastpin.’

He also referred to Freemasonry in other Sherlock Holmes stories, such as The Adventure of the Norwood Builder and The Adventure of the Retired Colourman, as well as mentioning Freemasonry in his other works.

Conan Doyle, along with other Victorian Freemasons, such as Arthur Edward Waite, had embraced psychic research, an interest that developed after the death of his wife and several other close family members, and until his death in 1930, he ardently supported spiritualism and constantly sought proof of life after death, a curiosity which can be somewhat paralleled with writer and Freemason Mark Twain’s interest in parapsychology in the USA. Conan Doyle’s 1926 work The History of Spiritualism also lent his support to séances conducted by various psychics at the time and their supposed spiritual materialisations. One of the spiritualists that Conan Doyle supported was Daniel Douglas Home. Fellow Freemason Lord Lindsay was also a supporter of Home, having witnessed the spiritualist mysteriously levitate out of a third story window only to return through the window of an adjoining room.