The Inner Room

Template:About Template:Use dmy datesTemplate:Short description "The Inner Room" is a poem by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in his 1898 poetry collection Songs of Action.<ref>Arthur Conan Doyle, Songs of Action (1898), pp. 116-20.</ref> Unlike most of Doyle's poetry, the poem is "a deeply personal, highly introspective effort,"<ref>Daniel Stashower, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (1999), p. 210.</ref> which has been interpreted as "describing the various battles within [Doyle's] mind."<ref>Christopher Roden, Introduction to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Oxford U. Press 1993), p. xvii.</ref>

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."<ref>Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (1924), ch. 10.</ref> 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."<ref>Stashower, p. 210.</ref> 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."<ref>Martin Booth, The Doctor and the Detective—A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1997), p. 222.</ref>

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.<ref>Stashower, pp. 210-11; see also Booth, pp. 222-23.</ref>

"At the end of the poem, Doyle resigns himself to what he is."<ref>Booth, p. 223.</ref> 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

<poem> 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.

</poem>