by Michael Sims
A. Conan Doyle, MD
Bush Villa, Southsea
Eventually publication was scheduled for more than a year later, in the 1887 issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual.
In 1852 an English publisher named Samuel Orchart Beeton, barely in his twenties, made his name by gambling on publication of an incendiary anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by an American woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe. The same year, he launched a pioneering periodical, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. The son of a Cheapside publican, Beeton yearned to pursue a more ambitious profession.
In 1856 he married a smart and enterprising young woman, Isabella Mary Mayson, who soon became renowned in her own right as the mage of practical domesticity, Mrs. Beeton. The couple made themselves a household name by publishing many diverse volumes, such as Beeton’s Dictionary of Useful Information, Beeton’s Historian, Beeton’s Book of Birds, Beeton’s Book of Chemistry, even Beeton’s Book of Jokes and Jests. The Beetons first published Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management in 1861, with sequels and related volumes snatched up by an eager public. Beeton founded an equally original and successful periodical for children, Boy’s Own Magazine.
When Mrs. Beeton died in 1865, her devoted husband was all but crippled by grief. Already they had lost three children. The following year, however, fate dealt Beeton another blow. Following a banking collapse in May, many businesses closed. Beeton’s only path to escaping bankruptcy lay in selling the copyrights of all his publications. The publisher Ward, Lock and Tyler bought them, retaining the experienced Beeton at a handsome salary. The company had been known as Ward and Lock until a third partner named Tyler joined in 1865. When Tyler departed in 1873 it reverted to its earlier name, so that by the time Arthur submitted the rolled manuscript of his brief novel in 1886, the firm was again merely Ward, Lock & Company.
By this time Beeton’s Christmas Annual was a small-format magazine, of the size known in publishing as demy octavo, roughly eight and a half inches tall by five and a half inches wide. Some version of this holiday issue had appeared every winter since 1860. During its first decade, it had remained blandly noncommittal about contemporary affairs, but in 1872 and 1873 Beeton turned in a new direction and included political satire. Ward, Lock complained, despite the high sales and newspaper attention the satire drew, and Beeton lost his job. He died of tuberculosis in 1877, twelve years after his wife. Immediately the publisher changed the format of Beeton’s annual Christmas issue to feature short stories—including three by Mark Twain in the first new issue—and plays intended for home performance.
Arthur had seen his stories in Christmas issues of several magazines. He had published one in the Boy’s Own Paper, for example, every Christmas since 1883, beginning with his own holiday story, “An Exciting Christmas Eve; or, My Lecture on Dynamite.” In 1886 “Cyprian Overbeck Wells. A Literary Mosaic” appeared. By Arthur’s time, the Beeton’s annual miniature anthology was so popular that a contemporary review described it as “an old institution, and as regularly looked for as the holly and the mistletoe.” Thus Arthur was pleased to learn from Ward, Lock that his novel would appear in the 1887 issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual—the entire short novel in the December issue, not serialized, and in a venue likely to attract notice.
He was not the only family member contributing to periodicals. Back home in Scotland, near the coast north of Edinburgh, in Montrose Royal Asylum, a small in-house magazine had been launched, ambitiously titled The Sunnyside Chronicle. Arthur’s anxious, capricious, talented father soon channeled his frustrated creativity into writing and drawing for it.
In mid-October 1886, two weeks before Ward, Lock offered to buy the copyright of A Study in Scarlet, Joseph Bell retired from the Edinburgh Infirmary. As Bell himself later wrote, for thirty-two years he had “never willingly spent a day in Edinburgh without entering its gates.” He was forty-nine, and was leaving only because the Infirmary’s bylaws specified limits to various positions, including his role as senior surgeon. He had been on the full-time staff for fifteen years.
“Lord,” he wrote in his diary, “comfort me I pray thee in my sadness in parting from my dear Wards and dear friends and nurses.”
With Florence Nightingale as one of the organizers and a primary contributor of funds, a subscription began to honor Bell’s service to medicine and in particular to nursing. A few months later, in January 1887, a group called upon him at his home on Melville Crescent—a body of nurses and other staff and faculty representing not only the Royal Infirmary but also the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, the Princes Street Training Institution, and the Hospital for Incurables. They brought him enough tributes to furnish a new office, carrying in a pair of silver candelabra, a brass pen and inkwell set, a paperweight—and, as a setting for these, a beautiful oak writing table and chair.
Not that Joe Bell was going to retire from medicine. He was writing a textbook for nurses and remained editor of the Edinburgh Medical Journal. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh elected him president. And in May, a ceremony in the Hall of the Royal College of Surgeons presented Bell with a large portrait of himself and a raft of testimonials from colleagues. “Mr. Bell’s whole career has been distinguished by the most honorable attention to his duties,” proclaimed his colleague Henry Littlejohn on behalf of the Infirmary,
whether as a teacher of systematic surgery in the Medical School, or as a teacher of clinical surgery in the Infirmary, whether as regards the patients committed to his charge, the nurses on his staff, or the students who thronged his classrooms and wards. An accomplished and dexterous surgeon, he secured the confidence of his patients and the public. His teaching powers were freely devoted to the nursing establishment of the Infirmary, while to the students he endeared himself by the practical character of his teaching and his frank and sympathizing manner.
In November 1887 the Royal Hospital for Sick Children appointed Bell surgeon to the children’s ward, where almost half the cases were already attended by him because of his legendary way with young people. Herds of diseased, handicapped, and wounded children swarmed through the hospital. There were fractures and contusions resulting from falls on Salisbury Crag or from tenement windows, broken limbs from tram and carriage accidents. Birth defects of every kind were rampant: harelip, cleft palate, clubfoot, spina bifida. Neglect especially angered Bell. Frequently he treated small children who suffered from starvation, frostbite, eczema, ulcers, burns, and even genital injuries. He worked to both rescue the children and punish their alleged caretakers. A testament to scientific knowledge guided by compassion, the man who had served as Arthur’s model for Sherlock Holmes was flourishing.
CHAPTER 24
The Preternatural Sagacity of a Scientific Detective
I never at any time received another penny for it.
—ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, ABOUT A STUDY IN SCARLET
In July 1887, during the busy summer while Arthur was waiting for A Study in Scarlet to appear in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, a brief letter of his was published in the spiritualist periodical Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research. He wrote about his readings of Major General Alfred Wilks Drayson, Alfred Russel Wallace, and others, and added a curious assertion: “After weighing the evidence, I could no more doubt the existence of the phenomena than I could doubt the existence of lions in Africa, though I have been to that continent and have never chanced to see one.”
Recently Arthur had been, he claimed, debating whether to buy Leigh Hunt’s book Comic Dramatists of the Restoration for research on a writing project, and he insisted that he had mentioned this thought to no one. Then he attended his first séance with a professional medium, who, claiming to be inhabited by a spirit, wrote a message for Arthur in pencil: “This gentleman is a healer. Tell him from me not to read Leigh Hunt’s book.”
“Above all,” Arthur exhorted in this first public admission of his spiritualist leanings, “let every inquirer bear in mind that phenomena are
only a means to an end, of no value at all of themselves, and simply useful as giving us assurance of an after existence for which we are to prepare by refining away our grosser animal feelings and cultivating our higher, nobler impulses.”
* * *
In November, the month in which Joseph Bell went to work as surgeon to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Arthur finally saw his Sherlock Holmes novel in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. The periodical title ran across the top in relatively small black letters on a yellow band, and below it in much larger type appeared each year’s issue title. In 1887 the lower band bore in bright red type, occupying a third of the cover, the words A Study in Scarlet. In the well-drawn illustration, a man in a frock coat was shown from behind, rising from a low-backed Windsor chair, his right hand grasping the chair’s curving arm and his left reaching up toward a candle suspended in a holder from the S in Study. His tense posture implied shock and possibly fear; like Arthur’s title, however, the cover illustration revealed nothing about the story within.
The issue went on sale in November for one shilling. Like most magazines, Beeton’s was primarily a vehicle for commerce, and atop the early pages ran the heading Beeton’s Christmas Annual Advertiser. The text and illustrations were black-and-white, but a few advertisers had paid for a three-color tipped-in insert on poorer-quality paper. Advertisements filled the first fourteen pages—announcements for everything from Sir James Murray’s Pure Fluid Magnesia (“an excellent Remedy in cases of Acidity, Indigestion, Heartburn, Gravel, and Gout”) to Darlow’s magnetic Lung Invigorator. Plaudits and promises for Steiner’s Vermin Paste jostled those for Southall’s Sanitary Towels for Ladies and the Patent Thermo Safeguard Feeding Bottle (designed to rescue “Thousands of Infants who are now being Ruined in Health”). The back cover of the magazine bore a full-page advertisement for Beecham’s Pills, “A Marvelous Antidote” for everything from “Wind and Pain in the Stomach” to “Disturbed Sleep, Frightful Dreams, and All Nervous and Trembling Sensations, &c.”
After marching through this carnival of industry, Arthur found that the title page, opposite half-page advertisements for both Irish cambric pocket handkerchiefs and electrical treatments at Pulvermacher’s Galvanic Establishment in Regent Street, bore, below a vestigial A, the words STUDY IN SCARLET in huge capitals, with By A. Conan Doyle prominent underneath. The other works in the 170-page volume—clearly minor by comparison, if allocated title page real estate was any clue—were described as “Two Original Plays for Home Performance,” a popular form of party entertainment.
This title page masked considerable real-life drama. The author and illustrator of the first play, Food for Powder: A Vaudeville for the Drawing Room, which began on page 96, was listed as R. André. This was the second tightly guarded pseudonym for William Roger Snow, a fifty-three-year-old outcast member of a prominent London family. His indiscretions with an Irish actress had wrecked both his military career and his marriage, resulting in the need to write for money under pen names unknown to both the military and his wife. Before hiding behind the name Richard André, Snow had disguised himself as Clifford Merton. Wildly prolific, under each nom de plume he was popular as both a writer and an illustrator for adults and children. He garnished the Beeton’s edition of his farce with whimsical sketches of the characters.
The Four-Leaved Shamrock started on page 115, where it bore the informative subtitle A Drawing-Room Comedietta in Three Acts, as well as the performance note “May also be acted as a Charade to the word ‘Stoppage.’” Its author hid not a secret past but merely her gender behind a pen name. Catherine Jane—writing as C. J.—Hamilton had published three of her five novels, including Marriage Bonds: Or, Christian Hazell’s Married Life, with Ward, Lock. She had also published some stories and her novel Hedged with Thorns under the pseudonym Retlaw Spring. Although born in England, Hamilton moved to Ireland after the death of her father, an Anglican vicar, and wrote from there. Later she was also known for her literate and celebratory nonfiction series Women Writers: Their Works and Ways. Hamilton’s play was adorned with a few character portraits by the popular illustrator Matt Stretch, who portrayed the antics in a satirical mode reminiscent of illustrations for early Dickens by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz).
Then came another page of advertisements and the contents page, followed by seventeen more commercial pages, many of them featuring blurbs for books such as The World’s Inhabitants: Mankind, Animals, and Plants and John Forster’s Life of Goldsmith. When readers finally reached the official page 1, they could at least see ahead an expanse of text uninterrupted except by illustrations. Arthur’s novella filled the next ninety-five pages.
Arthur was twenty-eight. Eight years had passed since the publication of his first story, “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” in Chambers’s Journal.
Beeton’s commissioned D. H. Friston to illustrate the work. Friston set the stage with a frontispiece portraying the moment when Sherlock Holmes peers through a large magnifying glass at the word Rache scrawled upon the wall of the murder scene at 3, Lauriston Gardens. Clad in bowler hat and a belted, caped Inverness—a Scottish style of cloak only recently adopted in England—Holmes may have looked more stylish than Arthur intended. With a receding lower lip and chin, however, Holmes lacks the forceful demeanor he presents in Arthur’s novel. But Friston furnished him with an appropriately aquiline nose, equipped him with a magnifying glass, and portrayed him towering over the police detectives.
The second illustration doesn’t even show Holmes’s face. While Gregson and Lestrade argue, Holmes is bent over the corpse in the room at Lauriston Gardens, the caption reading, “As he spoke, his nimble fingers were flying here, there, and everywhere.” No other illustrations appear until Part 2, when John Ferrier awakens in the desert to find himself and the little girl Lucy rescued by Mormons. Friston showed two men helping the ragged and worn Ferrier stumble along, while another man carries Lucy on his shoulders. For his final illustration, Friston captured the moment when Jefferson Hope comes to the besieged Ferrier family and offers to help spirit them away during the night.
In his mid-sixties, David Henry Friston was a well-known artist. After his first wife’s death in 1854, with seven children to support, he worked prolifically. His paintings had been exhibited at the Royal Academy, British Institution, and Royal Society of British Artists, but he was better known for his illustration work. Between 1871 and 1872, he illustrated the serial publication of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s sensuous vampire novella Carmilla in the short-lived London literary magazine The Dark Blue. His numerous illustrations for books had included at least two published by Ward, Lock. Like Matt Stretch and the pseudonymous Richard André, Friston had been providing drawings for Beeton’s since 1885.
A Study in Scarlet was not the first work of Arthur’s that Friston had been commissioned to illustrate. Working often at this time for London Society, he had illustrated four of Arthur’s short stories during the last few years. For the Christmas 1881 issue, he illustrated both “That Little Square Box” and “The Gully of Bluemansdyke.” The next year’s Christmas issue saw Friston’s drawings adorning Arthur’s story “My Friend the Murderer.” And in December 1885, only weeks before Arthur began writing A Study in Scarlet, he saw that his London Society story “Elias B. Hopkins—The Parson of Jackman’s Gulch” had been illustrated by Friston.
Ward, Lock advertised the forthcoming Beeton’s Christmas Annual in the November 1 issue of The Publishers’ Circular, the fortnightly organ of the publishing and bookselling trade that had been founded half a century earlier, twenty years ahead of its current rival, The Bookseller. After exploiting their new author’s urgent desire for publication, Ward, Lock added insult to injury by misspelling his name.
JUST READY, IN PICTURE COVERS, ONE SHILLING, BEETON’S CHRISTMAS ANNUAL, 28th Season, the leading feature of which is an original thrilling Story entitled
A STUDY IN SCARLET
By A. Condon Doyle.
This story will be found
remarkable for the skilful presentation of a supremely ingenious detective, whose performances, while based on the most rational principles, outshine any hitherto depicted. The surprises are most cleverly and yet most naturally managed, and at each stage the reader’s attention is kept fascinated and eager for the next event. The sketches of the “Wild West” in its former barren and trackless condition, and of the terrible position of the starving traveller with his pretty charge, are most vivid and artistic. Indeed, the entire section of the story that deals with early events in the Mormon settlement is most stirring, and intense pathos is brought out in some of the scenes. The publishers have great satisfaction in assuring the Trade that no annual for some years has equalled the one which they now offer for naturalness, truth, skill, and exciting interest. It is certain to be read, not once, but twice by every reader; and the person who can take it up and lay it down again unfinished must be one of those people who are neither impressionable nor curious. A Study in Scarlet should be the talk of every Christmas gathering throughout the land.
Then Ward, Lock placed at least a few advertisements in newspapers. An illustrated weekly, The Graphic, had garnered respect and influence in the world of European art since its founding eight years earlier, by the artist William Luson Thomas, as a more accomplished rival of the popular Illustrated London News, which was known for its sensationalism rather than for a commitment to serious visual artists. Thus the advertisement that appeared in the Saturday, November 26, issue would be seen by a variety of readers, many of them culturally sophisticated. It simply quoted from the earlier announcement in The Publishers’ Circular—including the misspelling of Arthur’s name.
Ward, Lock’s staff also mailed notices about their latest holiday Beeton’s to various newspapers. Many columnists would announce the publication of a book or periodical even if they lacked space or time (or desire) to review it. Several papers took brief notice of Arthur’s first published novel. One such note—with Arthur’s name spelled correctly this time—appeared in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, another rival of The Illustrated London News. Published every Sunday morning, Lloyd’s had been flourishing ever since the repeal of the stamp tax in 1860 had permitted the publisher to lower the cost to a penny per issue.