The Inner Room
"The Inner Room" is a poem by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in his 1898 poetry collection Songs of Action.[1] Unlike most of Doyle's poetry, the poem is "a deeply personal, highly introspective effort,"[2] which has been interpreted as "describing the various battles within [Doyle's] mind."[3]
The poem describes Doyle's "inner room"—his own brain or soul—as being inhabited by several different individuals. In Doyle's own words, these "describ[e] our multiplex personality."[4] Discussing the poem, Doyle's biographer Daniel Stashower observes that Doyle "conceived of his own personality as a 'motley company' of conflicting impulses, each represented by a different character—a soldier, a priest, an agnostic—and all of them struggling for control of his soul."[5] Another biographer, Martin Booth, describes this "intensely serious" poem as "fascinating, for it lays bare the powers that [Doyle] believes were in him, eternally fighting to get the upper hand on his soul."[6]
The poem's fifth stanza introduces "a stark-faced fellow, / Beetle-browed, / Whose black soul shrinks away / From a lawyer-ridden day, / And has thoughts he dare not say / Half avowed." Stashower describes this as "quite possibly the most personal and revealing line Conan Doyle ever wrote," perhaps reflecting the difficulties of Doyle's personal life in the mid-1890s.[7]
"At the end of the poem, Doyle resigns himself to what he is."[8] He suggests that none of the competing personalities will prevail over the others. Instead, "if each shall have his day, / I shall swing and I shall sway / In the same old weary way / As before."
Text
It is mine—the little chamber,
Mine alone.
I had it from my forbears
Years agone.
Yet within its walls I see
A most motley company,
And they one and all claim me
As their own.
There's one who is a soldier
Bluff and keen;
Single-minded, heavy-fisted,
Rude of mien.
He would gain a purse or stake it,
He would win a heart or break it,
He would give a life or take it,
Conscience-clean.
And near him is a priest
Still schism-whole;
He loves the censer-reek
And organ-roll.
He has leanings to the mystic,
Sacramental, eucharistic;
And dim yearnings altruistic
Thrill his soul.
There's another who with doubts
Is overcast;
I think him younger brother
To the last.
Walking wary stride by stride,
Peering forwards anxious-eyed,
Since he learned to doubt his guide
In the past.
And 'mid them all, alert,
But somewhat cowed,
There sits a stark-faced fellow,
Beetle-browed,
Whose black soul shrinks away
From a lawyer-ridden day,
And has thoughts he dare not say
Half avowed.
There are others who are sitting,
Grim as doom,
In the dim ill-boding shadow
Of my room.
Darkling figures, stern or quaint,
Now a savage, now a saint,
Showing fitfully and faint
Through the gloom.
And those shadows are so dense,
There may be
Many—very many—more
Than I see.
They are sitting day and night
Soldier, rogue, and anchorite;
And they wrangle and they fight
Over me.
If the stark-faced fellow win,
All is o'er!
If the priest should gain his will
I doubt no more!
But if each shall have his day,
I shall swing and I shall sway
In the same old weary way
As before.
References
- ^ Arthur Conan Doyle, Songs of Action (1898), pp. 116-20.
- ^ Daniel Stashower, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (1999), p. 210.
- ^ Christopher Roden, Introduction to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Oxford U. Press 1993), p. xvii.
- ^ Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (1924), ch. 10.
- ^ Stashower, p. 210.
- ^ Martin Booth, The Doctor and the Detective—A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1997), p. 222.
- ^ Stashower, pp. 210-11; see also Booth, pp. 222-23.
- ^ Booth, p. 223.