“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 6, 1923, Carnegie Hall, Seventh Avenue at 57th Street, New York City, New York

British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 63, creator of the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, is pleased to be doing what he is meant to do:  Lecturing an audience of Americans about the importance of spiritualism.

The Conan Doyle family departing from Victoria Station for their trip to America

Doyle spent the past day constantly answering reporters’ questions about the death of George Herbert, 5^th Earl of Carnarvon, 56, financier of and participant in the recent excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun near Luxor, Egypt. Carnarvon died yesterday in the Continental Savoy Hotel in Cairo, about two weeks after shaving over a mosquito bite on his cheek that became infected. Blood poisoning combined with pneumonia and his general ill health led to his death.

Lord Carnarvon

The main question to Doyle has been, Was Lord Carnarvon’s death the result of a curse put on all who disturbed the tomb of the Pharaoh, dead over 3,000 years? The headlines have read, “Doyle Blames Spirits for Carnarvon Death,” “Conan-Doyle Says Spirits Killed Lord,” “Says Ghosts Did It,” and

Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette

Doyle has told reporters that the spirits of the Egyptians

easily may have used these powers, occult and otherwise, to defend their graves. They always opposed digging up the mummies.”

In his lecture tonight, the first on a six-month American tour, Doyle wants to leave Egyptian curses behind him and impress the crowd with a series of “spirit photographs” he has, that show ectoplasm and floating faces. He wants to convince them that, since the Great War, mankind is searching for meaning, and religion has failed. Only spiritualism can provide the necessary comfort.

During the lecture Conan Doyle rests his head in his hand and closes his eyes—such drama. He says he can see

a great church forming which will take in all sects from the Roman Catholic to the Salvation Army…which will bring religion and science together…The old Christianity is dead—dead. How else could 10 million young men have marched out to slaughter? Did any moral force stop that war? No, Christianity is dead.”

The media are already souring on Conan Doyle’s theories about the Egyptian curse. The New York Times is planning an editorial headlined, “He’s Beginning to Strain Our Patience.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, February 26, 1923, Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt; America; and the United Kingdom

Each excavator carrying an ancient, sacred object from the burial chamber is purposely leaving the artifacts uncovered so they can be seen by the throngs of tourists lurking outside the tomb, straining for a glimpse of something—anything—related to King Tutankhamun, dead these 3,200 years.

Tourists at King Tut’s tomb

The archaeologists are worried that the retaining wall near the tomb’s entrance is going to collapse from those pressing against it.

Some of the visitors are too important or famous to be turned away, including three U. S. Congressmen on their way with 250 other Americans on the SS Adriatic.

Chief archeologist Howard Carter, 48, and the project’s sponsor, George Herbert, Earl of Carnarvon, 56, are sealing up the tomb today and blocking the entrance with debris and sand, to keep it safe until they can resume excavations in the milder weather of autumn.

Ten days ago, with the antechamber nearly cleared out, Carter and Lord Carnarvon, along with 20 guests invited to serve as witnesses, broke the seal on the inner burial chamber and found the young pharaoh’s gold coffin, surrounded by thousands of precious items.

Howard Carter and King Tut

Attached to that room is one they call “the treasury,” where there is a chest holding King Tut’s embalmed organs. Carter has had that entrance closed to keep wandering souvenir hunters away.

Local workmen pack up each object cleared from the burial chamber and send it along a railway track to the Nile River where everything is being shipped to Cairo.

Tourists not engaged in rubber necking at the tomb are in nearby Luxor at the Winter Palace Hotel dancing to the “Tutankhamen Rag.”

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In America, those not lucky enough to make the trip to Egypt are creating their own Egyptian atmosphere at home by snapping up all kinds of household goods re-designed with scarabs, obelisks and hieroglyphics—furniture, clothing, fabrics, jewelry, soap. They flock to Egyptian-themed movies and hum along to the hit song, “Old King Tut.”

“Old King Tut” sheet music

*****

“Tutmania” has taken hold of the United Kingdom, too.

The country is so bored with news stories about conferences being held to cement the peace and punish Germany for the Great War, the silly season has taken over the tabloids. Page One:  A farmer has grown a gooseberry the size of a crab apple!

As other archaeological teams have done before, Carter signed a contract last month with a London Times reporter to give him exclusive media rights to access the tomb. Not surprisingly, other newspapers are responding with negative stories about Carter, Lord Carnarvon. and the whole project.

These stories don’t stop the British public from buying items like “Egyptian” toffee, a Hunter and Palmer biscuit tin shaped like Tut’s funeral urn, and a “Pharonic” Singer sewing machine.

Someone even suggested that the new Underground line from Tooting to Camden Town be called the “Tutancamden Line.”

Lord Carnarvon, his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, and Howard Carter

Now that you’ve got that tune in your head, you can watch the full Steve Martin performance here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYbavuReVF4

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, November 26, 1922, Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt

When he first received the telegram from English archeologist Howard Carter, 48, about a “wonderful discovery” at the site of a pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, Lord George Herbert, Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, 56, was not overly impressed. In the 13 years Carnarvon has been funding Carter’s adventures, the archeologist has often been wrong about how wonderful his discoveries are. Carnarvon cabled back,

POSSIBLY COME SOON.”

Lord Carnarvon

But the more he thought about it, Carnarvon started to feel as though he should make a point of getting there right away. This is, after all, the tomb of King Tutankhamun, the young pharaoh who reigned in the 14^th century BC, dying at the age of 18 after only nine years on the throne.

So he cabled again—

PROPOSE ARRIVE ALEXANDRIA TWENTIETH”

—packed up his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, 21, and took off for Luxor.

They arrived here yesterday, and today Carter is taking them to the site. He shows them the stone step his team unearthed a few weeks ago and begins to break through what is clearly the entrance.

As Carter looks through the hole he has made in the vault’s sealed door, Carnarvon asks him,

Can you see anything?”

Carter replies,

Yes—wonderful things.”

Howard Carter. Lady Evelyn Herbert and Lord Carnarvon at the entrance to King Tut’s tomb

If you now have that song going through your head, click here.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, and on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

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