Something quite extraordinary
lies beneath the murky grey green waters of a Surrey lake: a gem of Victorian
architecture - a strange memorial to an unconventional man. If you take a moment to Google ‘ballroom
beneath the lake’, you will uncover images such as this:
More properly entitled ‘The
Billiard Room’, it was the invention of a singularly visionary and
contradictory character, Whitaker Wright.
Yet nowadays, the property is in private hands and closed to the public,
and Wright has effectively been airbrushed from history.
In particular, he has vanished
from the known life of his next-door- neighbour, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yet I find it hard to believe that these two fascinating individuals could
not have been at the very least acquainted - and it is more than possible they
could have been close friends.
Lea Park was acquired by Wright
in 1890, and Conan Doyle arrived in the neighbourhood less than a handful of years later, after a
friend recommended the beneficial Hindhead air for Doyle’s ailing wife Louise.
By 1897, Doyle’s self designed
home ‘Undershaw’ was built.
Lying less than three miles from
Undershaw, the billiard room beneath the lake was the venue for many
séances. Mediums were invited to attend
and commune with the water spirits from the lake above. That a man so keenly interested in mediumship
as Conan Doyle, and so well connected in psychic circles should be unaware such
activities taking place within walking distance of his home is unlikely.
The fact that Wright’s life was
blighted by a scandal that culminated in his suicide, would more than
adequately explain his absence from Conan Doyle’s diaries, yet perhaps he is secretly
celebrated in no less a place than the very address of Sherlock Holmes.
Born into an ecclesiastical family,
Wright made his fortune mining silver in Canada and the Americas before
returning to England. He purchased and
transformed Lea Park, utilizing his expertise as an engineer, embellishing it
with lakes and hidden tunnels, and crowning his achievement with the
marvelously domed room beneath the lake.
Then his eyes turned to greater things, and he started tunnelling beneath
London to create what was then called The Baker Street and Waterloo
Railway.
Wright was an exceptional
engineer, but a poor financier. When he
began stripping money from one concern to bankroll another, Wright was caught
out. Convicted of fraud, he took cyanide
to avoid bitter disgrace - and a seven year jail sentence.
HG Wells was so taken with
Wright’s story that he created a very similar character, named him George Ponderevo,
and let him narrate a novel, published five years after Wright’s death, called Tono-Bungay. Another coincidence is that Wells is also
strongly connected with Baker Street. He
lived in Chiltern Court, a block of apartments virtually on top of Baker Street
railway station.
Contemporaries painted Wright as
an out and out fraudster, citing his excesses as vulgar, but all of this came
after his fall; beforehand he was seen as a public benefactor affording gainful
employment to armies of people who created his grand scale works.
That Conan Doyle should have remained
silent when his neighbour was taken to court and ultimately took poison - all
done whilst Doyle was still living less than three miles from the hapless
Wright’s estate - speaks of a shocking lack of interest, or does it?
A downright
villain or hopelessly mired, either way, Wright is a fascinating character, and
it stretches credibility too much to suggest Conan Doyle was disinterested
enough in Wright’s fate to make no comment in public or, as far as I can tell,
in private.
Conan Doyle's silence is tantalising.
Sometime later, Doyle’s interest
in mediumship ended his friendship with the rather more sceptical Harry Houdini. Before all of this, might not Doyle’s passionate
defence of seances have found a strong bond with fellow enthusiast Wright? Perhaps even Wright’s suicide was an escape... into another life he was certain he
could have after death? It might be too
much to assume Conan Doyle attempted to commune with Wright ‘beyond the grave’,
but surely the thought, and maybe even the temptation, must have crossed his mind?
Yet Conan Doyle is as complex and
confusing a character as Wright. The
genius who created Sherlock Holmes was also taken in table turning charlatans
and even by two devious little girls and a handful of paper fairies – but having
lost a son in The Great War, maybe he wanted to be?
Here I have to hold my hand up
and admit I too have cast Wright as the villain in The Last Changeling, my
novel that weaves fantasy with history.
In it, I have him draw a pistol on Conan Doyle, after they have become
bitter enemies.
Enemies or friends, I would like
to think their fascinating lives overlapped rather more than history would have
it.
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