by Daniel Smith
THE LITTLE PEOPLE
Conan Doyle’s father (see here) had been well known for his numerous illustrations of fairies and elves which were produced in Arthur’s childhood – so perhaps the Cottingley photos tapped into a fascination which had long been harboured in Conan Doyle’s psyche. Diabolical intrusions, indeed.
A Man of Pseudo-Science
As is evident from this book, Holmes often operated at the cutting edge of science. Yet, curiously, he found time to indulge in one branch that had already been widely discredited – that of phrenology, or the study of cranial anatomy in order to identify specific character traits. Most famously, in ‘The Blue Carbuncle’, Holmes examines a hat to establish the dimensions of the skull of its wearer, from which analysis he attempts to discern the wearer’s intellect. In ‘The Final Problem’, meanwhile, Holmes finds himself the object of phrenological investigation when Moriarty tells him: ‘You have less frontal development than I should have expected’ (a snide attempt to belittle Holmes’s intellectual capabilities). The discipline of phrenology was the creation of the German-born physiologist, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828). His single most important work was The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, with Observations upon the possibility of ascertaining the several Intellectual and Moral Dispositions of Man and Animal (1819). In it, he laid out his thesis that the brain is the organ of the mind and consists of numerous regions, each with a specific function that influences character: the larger the region, the more powerful its function. Moreover, he argued, the skull develops so that studying the cranial structure can indicate the size of specific components of the brain. His work was for a time extremely influential. It was also regularly hijacked by those who wished to put forward their own theories of racial superiority. In the field of criminology, meanwhile, the Italian Cesare Lombroso developed Gall’s ideas as he sought to prove a link between physical characteristics and inherent criminality. But as early as the 1840s, there was a growing body of scientific evidence to show that many of Gall’s teachings were erroneous. By the time Holmes was operating, the detective would surely have been up on the latest scientific papers thoroughly undermining the field. That both Holmes and Moriarty both continued to dabble in it is almost unfathomable, unless we should assume that they did it playfully to shock or to make a point.
HOME AND AWAY
Some 60 per cent of the criminals apprehended in the canon came from the United Kingdom, when in reality all but 1.2 per cent of inmates in British prisons during the late Victorian era were homegrown. Of the villains Holmes encountered, almost 20 per cent came from continental Europe and a further 10 per cent from North America. The rest were shared fairly evenly between South America, Australia, Africa and Asia.
A Jewel of a Story
‘The Mazarin Stone’ is one of only two canonical stories to be narrated in the third-person, the other being ‘His Last Bow’. ‘The Mazarin Stone’ was probably written in this way because it was based on a stage play Conan Doyle had written called The Crown Diamond. Although Watson was a featured character in the play, a key element of the dramatic plot involved eavesdropping on a pair of villainous figures – a twist that would have been difficult to render in a first-person narrative. The show debuted on stage in May 1921 (although an early draft was probably written as far back as 1912) and then appeared in its short-story form in The Strand in November that year. The narrative underwent a number of changes in that time, most notably Colonel Sebastian Moran being replaced as Holmes’s nemesis by Count Negretto Sylvius. The Mazarin stone itself, meanwhile, was named in honour of the famous French power-broker, Cardinal Mazarin. A diplomat with Machiavellian tendencies, Mazarin most famously served as Chief Minister to the French kings, Louis XIII and Louis XIV, during which time he evolved from ‘the power behind the throne’ to the de facto ruler of the French nation. He would have made a deliciously compelling nemesis for Holmes in another lifetime.
The Play’s the Thing
Sherlock Holmes and The Crown Diamond were not Conan Doyle’s only attempts to transfer his literary son from the page to the stage. In 1910, for example, he wrote and produced a stage version of The Speckled Band (originally to have been called The Stonor Case). The previous year, Conan Doyle had hired London’s Adelphi Theatre to stage a non-Holmes drama called The House of Temperley, which was a commercial flop and closed earlier than its playwright had hoped. Under threat of a huge economic loss, Conan Doyle hit upon the idea of unleashing a new Sherlock Holmes play onto the public in the hope of replicating the success Gillette’s production had recently enjoyed. The script for The Stonor Case was apparently completed in an intense week of writing. A mere two weeks after The House of Temperley folded, a company was inside the Adelphi rehearsing the new show. It largely stuck to the plot of the short story on which it was based, with a few names being altered (for instance, the Stoners became the Stonors, Roylott became Rylott, and the dead sister Julia became Violet). H. A. Saintsbury, who had enjoyed huge success in the title role in Gillette’s production, reprised the role for Conan Doyle, with Lyn Harding being suitably terrifying as the villain, and Claude King playing Watson. The show opened on 4 June 1910 and ran for 169 performances, before transferring to another West End theatre and then going on a national tour. A New York run followed. Conan Doyle had not only averted financial disaster but had created a fully fledged cash-cow.
THE BOA STAR
The real star of the show in The Stonor Case was undoubtedly the snake. While some critics believed they were witnessing a fake beast, Conan Doyle insisted that a very much living rock boa was used, usually turning up for the curtain call draped around the neck of the game Lyn Harding.
Raffle Winner
E. W. Hornung, creator of the Raffles stories, was another writer who took inspiration from Holmes. He was, in addition, Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law after marrying Connie Doyle in 1893. Conan Doyle and Hornung even briefly collaborated on a play for Henry Irving the following year before the project was aborted. In 1898, Hornung wrote ‘The Ides of March’, a short story that introduced the characters of Arthur J. Raffles – gentleman thief and enthusiastic cricketer – and his sidekick and chronicler, Harry ‘Bunny’ Manders. It appeared in the June issue of Cassell’s magazine and featured in a Raffles collection entitled The Amateur Cracksman which appeared the following year. In all, Hornung authored twenty-six Raffles short stories, two plays and a novel. The similarities between Raffles and Bunny, on the one hand, and Holmes and Watson, on the other, were obvious even before The Amateur Cracksman was dedicated to Conan Doyle. However, he was never quite sure what to make of his brother-in-law’s invention. ‘I think I may claim that his famous character Raffles was a kind of inversion of Sherlock Holmes, Bunny playing Watson,’ he would write.
He [Hornung] admits as much in his kindly dedication. I think there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal a hero.
Yet in a strange inversion, it seems that Conan Doyle drew at least a little upon the Raffles tales when he was persuaded to bring Holmes back to life in 1903’s ‘The Empty House’. Critics have drawn parallels between the famous scene in which Holmes reveals his true identity with a similar unmasking scene that featured in Raffles’ ‘No Sinecure’, published in 1901.
Local Rivals
In the 1950s, an opinion poll was conducted to discover the nation’s most popular fictional detective. The winner was a now largely forgotten character by the name of Sexton Blake. Sherlock Holmes was not only not the world’s favourite investigator, but he was ranked only second among the candidates based in Baker Street – Sexton’s own address for a good part of his career. It was a remarkable success for a character who first appeared in 1893 in a very conscious effort to cash in on the success of Conan Do
yle’s stories. For some eighty-five years, Sexton Blake was the face of an extraordinary franchise that took in short stories and novels, comic strips, radio, TV and the silver screen. He changed with the times, too, migrating from his position as ‘the poor man’s Sherlock Holmes’ to become an international action man.
A CULTURAL PHENOMENON
By the time he was effectively retired in the 1970s, Sexton Blake had featured in around 4,000 stories, authored by some 200 authors and running to several million words. From humble beginnings, Sexton Blake became a cultural phenomenon. Today, though, it is safe to say that Baker Street belongs to only one detective.
Backing the Underdog
Throughout the canon, Holmes is seen gaining as much gratification from proving the innocence of the wrongly accused as from cornering villains. It is a character trait that was also evident in his creator. Conan Doyle repeatedly took up the causes of those he believed had been wronged by the justice system, as he did in the case of George Edalji. But perhaps his most famous attempt to right a wrong concerned the case of Oscar Slater. In December 1908, Marion Gilchrist, a reclusive 83-year-old spinster, was attacked and beaten to death in her Glasgow home. Despite there being several valuable treasures on the premises, the assailant was disturbed and got away with only a brooch. Slater – a petty criminal – lived a few streets away and suspicion fell on him when he was connected to a pawn ticket for a brooch. Moreover, he left the country for New York just a few days later. However, it was a pre-planned trip, the pawn ticket was a red herring and identification evidence was severely compromised. Nonetheless, he was tracked down in America and extradited to face trial for murder. Despite a chronic lack of evidence, he was convicted by majority verdict – amid suspicions that his background (he was a German Jew) had counted against him in the eyes of some. His death sentence was at least commuted to a life sentence in prison and he would go on to serve almost nineteen years. Conan Doyle looked into the case in detail in 1912 and concluded that Slater had been ‘framed-up’ by a mixture of ‘stupidity and dishonesty’. He wrote a book on the case and pressed for a full pardon, which was not forthcoming. In 1914, he again agitated for a judicial review of the verdict but, once more, to no avail. Then, in 1925, a desperate Slater secretly wrote to Conan Doyle from prison to plead for his intervention one more time. Conan Doyle campaigned for his release with renewed vigour and after an arduous two years, Slater was at last granted his freedom. It should have represented an unmitigated triumph – an exhaustive pursuit of justice that rivalled Holmes’s own efforts in terms of dogged determination. However, this tale was to have an ultimately unsatisfactory ending. Conan Doyle had spent a small fortune on Slater’s behalf, and when Slater was awarded £6,000 in compensation (equivalent to several hundred thousand today), he expected some recompense. For Conan Doyle, it was a matter not of finances but principle. However, Slater, embittered by the hand life had dealt him, had no intention of sharing his windfall. Where Slater had once been the author’s cause célèbre, he was now seen by Conan Doyle as an ungrateful freeloader.
High Spirits
‘This world is big enough for us,’ Holmes declared in ‘The Sussex Vampire’. ‘No ghosts need apply.’ As we have already seen in the case of the Cottingley Fairies, the supernatural was an area upon which the opinions of Holmes and Conan Doyle diverged. Generations of Holmes enthusiasts have struggled to reconcile the detective’s rejection of other-worldly phenomena with Conan Doyle’s wholehearted commitment to spiritualism. In a life marked by extraordinary achievements and passionate campaigning, it was the desire to spread the gospel of spiritualism that came to dominate his life, although his spiritualist beliefs did not come to public notice to any great extent prior to the late 1910s. Some considered it a response to the losses he had suffered in the First World War and its aftermath – he lost both his son, Kingsley, and his brother, Innes, in quick succession, as well as two brothers-in-law (including E.W. Hornung; see here) and two nephews. He was certainly not alone in harbouring hopes of being able to reconnect with lost loved ones at that time of industrialized slaughter. In 1918, he published New Revelation, an extended essay which was subtitled: What is Spiritualism?: Can we, or can we not, speak with our beloved dead? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle answers YES. It marked his arrival as a spiritualist champion and, by the time of his death in 1930, he had authored some twenty titles on the subject – including the landmark The History of Spiritualism (1926) – to become perhaps the most famous spiritualist advocate in the world. But Conan Doyle’s interest in the subject had actually started much earlier. He began to read widely around the subject in the 1880s and even attended séances while still practising as a doctor. Then in 1893 he joined the British Society for Psychical Research, a recently established organization devoted to investigating supposedly paranormal phenomena with a scientific vigour. Conan Doyle became satisfied that such phenomena as telepathy had scientific veracity long before he emerged on to the public stage as the poster-boy for spiritualism. He paid a heavy price for his beliefs, however, at once courting controversy and prompting mockery. There was a personal cost, too. The illusionist Harry Houdini, for instance, was a friend who felt the need to break off ties with Conan Doyle after the two fell out over the issue. It is safe to assume Holmes would have sided with Houdini on this particular question.
My Word!
According to word frequency analysis published in the Guardian newspaper in 2015, every single canonical case is described as ‘singular’, ‘remarkable’ or ‘curious’. Moreover, eleven cases are described as both ‘singular’ and ‘remarkable’, seven as ‘singular’ and ‘curious’, and five as ‘remarkable’ and ‘curious’. Then there are some eighteen cases that are described as ‘singular’, ‘remarkable’ and ‘curious’!
Value for Money
Despite his phenomenal skills as a detective, Holmes did not profit as much as might be expected. He generally worked on a fixed fee system, and every now and again even offered his services for free. This was, in part, the reason why he came to buddy-up with Watson – so that he might be able to share the strain of an expensive London rent. However, he did manage to enjoy a few significant paydays when the client was sufficiently wealthy. For example, he received £1,000 after recovering the beryl coronet, a further £1,000 for recovering the blue carbuncle, another £1,000 in cash and gold from the King of Bohemia in light of his difficulty with Irene Adler (plus a bonus ‘snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid’ for a job well done), and a fine emerald tie-pin from Queen Victoria for his part in protecting national security in the Bruce-Partington affair. It is reasonable to assume he was also well recompensed for his work, which is only alluded to in broad terms, for both the French government and the King of Scandinavia. However, his largest payday that we can be sure about occurred in ‘The Priory School’ when the Duke of Holdernesse paid him £12,000 for solving a case and being discreet about it.
Love Rat
Holmes was famously unattached in romantic terms. As we have seen, among the women of the canon only Irene Adler in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ seemed to make anything like an enduring impact – earning herself the epithet of ‘the woman’. Yet it is often forgotten that Holmes was, albeit briefly, betrothed. In ‘Charles Augustus Milverton’, he took on the persona of a plumber and ingratiated himself with a housemaid called Agatha. ‘You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?’, he teased the doctor one day, before adding: ‘You’ll be interested to hear that I’m engaged.’ The motive behind his proposal, he revealed, was a quest for information, with Watson pondering: ‘Surely you have gone too far?’ It emerged that Holmes had been walking out with the poor dupe each evening, talking extensively with her (‘Good heavens, those talks!’). But with her purpose served, he showed her little compassion. In response to Watson’s question, ‘But the girl, Holmes?’, he merely shrugged. ‘You can’t help it, my dear Watson,’ he said. ‘You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is
on the table. However, I rejoice to say that I have a hated rival, who will certainly cut me out the instant that my back is turned. What a splendid night it is!’ Holmes was many admirable things, but not the sort of chap you’d want your sister to bring home.
The Hounds of Hell
The Hound of the Baskervilles, probably the most famous Sherlock Holmes story of them all, is based on a myth which had already been doing the rounds in Dartmoor – where the novel is set – for over two hundred years when Conan Doyle first heard it. The focal point of the legend was a dastardly local squire who went by the name of Richard Cabell and lived at Brook Hall in the Buckfastleigh district of Devon. He was not much liked by the locals, who were terrorized by his fearsome temper. He was especially known for his love of hunting, his desire to kill defenceless creatures seeming to fit neatly with the general opinion as to his bad nature. However, his blood lust – it was claimed – did not end with wild animals. He was strongly rumoured to have done away with his unfortunate wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of a baronet.
Cabell was thought to have made a pact with the devil. When he died in 1677, there were few tears shed but he continued to inspire fear even in death. So worried were locals that his wicked spirit would escape the grave that he was buried in a coffin fixed shut with a lid of thick slate, which in turn was enclosed in a specially constructed sepulchre at Holy Trinity Church, Buckfastleigh. But the forces of hell could not be contained, so the legend goes. On the night when his body was interred, a pack of ghoulish spectral hounds raced across the fog-covered moors to howl at his tomb. Ever the hunter, he could be seen for years to come – so said the locals – leading these hell hounds across the moors, especially around the anniversary of his death.