Tuesday, 14 March 2023

On This Day 14th March

Jean Leckie, ACD’s second wife, born #OTD 1874. Was hers the hand that rocked the planchette?



Jean Elizabeth Leckie (14 march 1874 – 27 june 1940) was the second wife of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They married on 18 september 1907, but Conan Doyle was in love with her since 1897, a platonic love until the death of his first wife in 1906. They were installed in Crowborough (Sussex), where she gave him 3 children (Denis in 1909, Adrian in 1910, Lena Jean in 1912).

In 1897, when Conan Doyle met her, she was a tall, thin, and delicate woman, but also athletic and passionate.

In his Memories and Adventures (1923), Arthur Conan Doyle wrote:

« On September 18, 1907, I married Miss Jean Leckie, the younger daughter of a Blackheath family whom I had known for years, and who was a dear friend of my mother and sister. There are some things which one feels too intimately to be able to express, and I can only say that the years have passed without one shadow coming to mar even for a moment the sunshine of my Indian summer which now deepens to a golden autumn. She and my three younger children, with the kindly sympathy of my two elder ones, have made my home an ideally happy one. My wife’s people had a house at Crowborough, and there they had gone to reside. As they were very attached, I thought it would be a happy arrangement not to separate them, so I bought a house close by, named “Windlesham.” »

External Links

Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

No comments:

Post a Comment

On This Day 4th April

Home Rule OTD in 1912, the Daily Mail published a letter from ACD on the subject of Home Rule in which he expresses sympathy for the positio...