TO SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
“Steel true, blade straight”
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction by John le Carré
The World of Sherlock Holmes
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA
THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE
A CASE OF IDENTITY
THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY
THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS
THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP
“A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME . . .”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE
A WINTER’S CROP
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND
“IT IS A SWAMP ADDER! . . . THE DEADLIEST SNAKE IN INDIA.”
THE GUNS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER’S THUMB
THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET
THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES
THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
SILVER BLAZE
“. . . AND THE CALCULATION IS A SIMPLE ONE”
“I STAND TO WIN A LITTLE ON THIS NEXT RACE . . .”
THE CARDBOARD BOX
THE YELLOW FACE
THE STOCK-BROKER’S CLERK
THE “GLORIA SCOTT”
THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL
THE RITUAL OF THE MUSGRAVES
THE REIGATE SQUIRES
THE CROOKED MAN
THE INDIAN MUTINY
THE RESIDENT PATIENT
THE TEXT OF “THE RESIDENT PATIENT”
THE GREEK INTERPRETER
MYCROFT HOLMES
THE NAVAL TREATY
THE FINAL PROBLEM
REVISIONS OF “THE FINAL PROBLEM”
Chronological Table: The Life and Times of Sherlock Holmes
Other Annotated Books
Also by Leslie S. Klinger
PREFACE
IN 1968, WHEN I was supposed to be engrossed in law school studies, I received a gift of William S. Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, published the previous year. This magical pair of volumes entranced me and led me back to the stories that I had enjoyed when I was young(er) and had subsequently forgotten. More importantly, the books introduced me to the idea of Sherlockian scholarship, the “game” of treating the stories as biography, not fiction. In later years, as I avidly collected things Sherlockian, I dreamed that someday I, too, would produce an annotated version of the Canon.
Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes remained in print for more than twenty-five years and became the cornerstone of every Sherlock Holmes library. Yet it had its idiosyncrasies, with the stories arranged in the controversial chronological order created by Baring-Gould and with footnotes that embraced, in many cases, Baring-Gould’s personal theories regarding the life of Holmes. Sadly, Baring-Gould did not live to see publication of his greatest work, and as a result, occasional errors were not corrected. In contrast to the Baring-Gould edition, the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, published in 1993, presented the stories in nine volumes (as they were originally published in book form), but the scholarly notes largely ignored Sherlockian scholarship, concentrating more traditionally on analysis of Conan Doyle’s sources.
I set out to create for this edition an annotated text that reflects the spectrum of views on Sherlockian controversies rather than my own theories. In addition, this work brings current Baring-Gould’s long-outdated survey of the literature, including references to hundreds of works published subsequently. Recognizing that many of the events recorded in the stories took place in England over 100 to 150 years ago, it also includes much background information on the Victorian age, its history, culture, and vocabulary. For the serious scholar of the Sherlockian Canon, there is an extensive bibliography at the end of Volume II. Chronological tables, summarizing the key dates in the lives of Holmes, Watson, and Conan Doyle and major world events, are set forth at the end of each volume. I have avoided “lawyerly” citations of the works consulted, but full citations may be found in the nine volumes of my Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, published by Gasogene Books.
Thirty-seven years have passed since publication of Baring-Gould’s monumental work, and the world of Sherlock Holmes has grown much larger. This edition was created with the assistance of new resources that now exist for the serious student—Ronald L. DeWaal’s The Universal Sherlock Holmes, Jack Tracy’s Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, Steve Clarkson’s Canonical Compendium, and scores of other handbooks, reference works, indexes, and collections, many in computerised format. It also reflects the aid of a new tool—the Internet, which makes accessible immense quantities of minute detail.
This is not a work for the serious student of Arthur Conan Doyle. While Doylean scholarship is vitally important, the reader of these volumes will not find reference to the literary sources of the stories or to biographical incidents in the life of Sir Arthur that may be reflected in the Canon. I perpetuate the gentle fiction that Holmes and Watson really lived and that (except as noted) Dr. John H. Watson wrote the stories about Sherlock Holmes, even though he graciously allowed them to be published under the byline of his colleague and literary agent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
To keep this work from approaching the length of a telephone book, it is published in three volumes: The first two volumes consist of the fifty-six short stories that appeared from 1891 to 1927 (Volume I containing the stories collected in the volumes called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Volume II containing the stories collected under the titles The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow, and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes); the third volume (to be published in 2005) presents the four novels, A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Valley of Fear (1915). All in all, here is the complete record of the career of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. For the first-time reader of these tales, my best advice is to plunge immediately into the stories, skipping the introduction. Whether this is your first reading or your fifty-first reading of the Canon, I wish you joy in the experience, and I hope that you find that this edition enriches it.
LESLIE S. KLINGER
INTRODUCTION BY JOHN LE CARRÉ
DR. WATSON DOESN’T write to you, he talks to you, with Edwardian courtesy, across a glowing fire. His voice has no barriers or affectations. It is clear, energetic, and decent, the voice of a tweedy, no-nonsense colonial Britisher at ease with himself. Its owner is travelled. He has knocked about, as they say, browned his knees. Yet he remains an innocent abroad. He is a first-class chap, loyal to a fault, brave as a lion, and the salt of the earth. All the clichés fit him. But he is not a cliché.
Finer feelings confuse Dr. Watson. He is a stranger to art. Yet, like his creator, he is one of the greatest story-tellers the world has ever listened to. On the rare occasions he leaves the stage to Holmes, we long for him to return. Holmes—mercurial, brilliant, complex, turbulent Holmes—is not safe out there alone. Oh, he manages. He can dissemble, go underground, disguise himself to the point where his own mother wouldn’t know him, he can act dead or dying, trawl opium dens, wrestle with Moriarty on a cliff’s edge, or dupe the kaiser’s spy. But none of that changes the fact that when he is alone, he is only half the fellow he becomes the moment fait
hful Watson takes back the tale.
No amount of academic study, thank Heaven, no earnest dissertations from the literary bureaucracy, will ever explain why we love one writer’s voice above another’s. Partly it has to do with trust, partly with the good or bad manners of the narrator, partly with his authority or lack or it. And a little also with beauty, though not as much as we might like to think. As a reader, I insist on being beguiled early or not at all, which is why a lot of the books on my shelves remain mysteriously unread after page twenty. But once I submit to the author’s thrall, he can do me no wrong. From my childhood onwards, Conan Doyle has had that power over me. I love his Brigadier Gerard, and his wicked pirate Sharkey, and his Professor Challenger, too, but I love Holmes and Watson best of all. He has the same power over my sons, and I look on with delight as one by one my grandchildren fall under his spell.
Peek up Conan Doyle’s literary sleeve and you will at first be disappointed; no fine turns of phrase, no clever adjectives that leap off the page, no arresting psychological insights. Instead, what you are looking at is a kind of narrative perfection: a perfect interplay between dialogue and description, perfect characterisation and perfect timing. No wonder that, unlike other great story-tellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Conan Doyle translates without loss into practically any language.
Professional critics can’t lay a glove on Conan Doyle, and never could. They could mock his spiritualism, his magpie obsessions; they could declare the later Holmes to be no longer the man he once was. But nobody was listening then, and nobody is listening today. Now, as in his lifetime, cab-drivers, statesmen, academics, and raggedy-arsed children sit spellbound at his feet—proof, if proof were needed, that Doyle’s modesty of language conceals a profound tolerance of the human complexity. Even in his own day, Conan Doyle had many imitators, all vastly inferior, though successful. If one of them, by some awful accident, had spawned the wicked Professor Moriarty, it’s a pound to a penny, Moriarty would have been a scheming Jew. If Joseph Conrad, then an anguished Balkan radical hellbent on the destruction of industrial society. But Conan Doyle carried no such baggage. He knew that evil can live for itself alone. He has no need of hate or prejudice, and he was wise enough to give the Devil no labels.
Reflect for a moment on the cunning with which Doyle places the reader midway between his two great protagonists. Holmes the towering genius is miles ahead of us, and we know we shall never catch him up. We aren’t meant to, and of course, we don’t want to. But take heart: for we are smarter by a mile than that plodding Dr. Watson! And what is the result? The reader is delightfully trapped between his two champions. Is there anywhere in popular literature a sweeter portrait of what Thomas Mann sonorously called the relationship between the artist and the citizen? In Holmes, we are never allowed to forget the artist’s urge towards self-destruction. Through Watson, we are constantly reminded of our love of social stability.
No wonder, then, if the pairing of Holmes and Watson has triggered more imitators than any other duo in literature. Contemporary cop dramas draw on them repeatedly. They are almost singlehandedly responsible for the buddy-buddy movie. The modern thriller would have been lost without them. With no Sherlock Holmes, would I ever have invented George Smiley? And with no Dr. Watson, would I ever have given Smiley his sidekick Peter Guillam? I would like to think so, but I doubt it very much.
I was nine years old and at my second boarding school when the headmaster’s brother, a saintly man with a golden voice, read us The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes once a week in the junior common room before bedtime. He followed the next term with The Hound of the Baskervilles and I can hear him now, and see his great bulk, with his bald head glinting before the coal fire.
“Footprints?”
It is Holmes, questioning Dr. Mortimer.
“Footprints.”
“A man’s or a woman’s?”
Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered.
“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”
Now read on. You have in your hand the Final Solution to the collected Sherlock Holmes stories, enriched by a lengthy and learned introduction. Do not be dismayed. Nobody writes of Holmes and Watson without love.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
October 24, 2003
THE WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
ALTHOUGH THE TWENTIETH century produced many firsts, the mystery or detective story was not among them. In 1901, one critic made reference to “thousands of tales of detection” published in the previous fifty years. Even then, however, only three detectives were memorable: Edgar Allan Poe had written three stories about Monsieur Dupin, a private investigator; Émile Gaboriau had invented tales about Monsieur Lecoq, a French policeman; and Arthur Conan Doyle had brought to the public’s attention a series of adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Today, Lecoq has effectively vanished, and while Poe’s short stories are revered as models of writing, the character of Dupin is all but forgotten.
Yet a century after this observation, Sherlock Holmes is quite alive and well.1 The short stories have not been out of print since they first appeared in 1891, and the books have appeared in virtually every language. Hundreds of actors have portrayed Holmes on stage, radio, and screen, in his own milieu and in contemporary—even imaginary—settings. Dozens of scholarly books and magazines are published about Sherlock Holmes annually, and the stream of imitations appears to be inexhaustible. Fan clubs, some with scholarly agendas, others who gather for sheer enjoyment, meet every month in every major country. Holmes has been characterised as one of the three best-known personalities in the world, sharing the spotlight only with Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus.
What is it that we love (or should love) in Sherlock Holmes? Edgar W. Smith, then leader of The Baker Street Irregulars and editor of the Baker Street Journal, pondered this question in 1946.2 Perhaps emblematic of the times, he concluded:
Left to right: Robert Barr (publisher of The Idler), Miss Doyle (probably Ida, Arthur’s sister), Arthur Conan Doyle, Louise Hawkins Doyle, and Robert McClure (publisher of McClure’s Magazine).
The Idler, October 1894
[Holmes] stands before us as a symbol . . . of all that we are not but ever would be. . . . We see him as the fine expression of our urge to trample evil and to set aright the wrongs with which the world is plagued. . . . [He] is the personification of something in us that we have lost or never had. For it is not Sherlock Holmes who sits in Baker Street, comfortable, competent, and self-assured; it is we ourselves who are there, full of a tremendous capacity for wisdom, complacent in the presence of our humble Watson, conscious of a warm well-being and a timeless, imperishable content. . . . That is the Sherlock Holmes we love—the Holmes implicit and eternal in ourselves.
But this answer, although psychologically insightful, is necessarily only a partial one, for the stories are not mere character studies of Holmes but rather detective stories, set in a specific time and place, with a large cast of supporting players.
THE VICTORIAN AGE
HOLMES was not the first detective in literature. Some say that that honour must be given to the biblical sleuth Daniel, for his fine investigations into the cases of Bel and the Dragon and Susanna and the Elders. Others point to François Eugène Vidocq, a French detective whose memoirs, published in 1828, captured the public’s eye and established the sleuth as a man of action. American writer Edgar Allan Poe introduced the cerebral detective, also French, in the character of C. August Dupin. Dupin first appeared in Poe’s short story “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). Also, Poe invented the character of the partner and chronicler (nameless in Poe’s tales) who is less intelligent than the detective but serves as a sounding board for the detective’s brilliant deductions. In the three Dupin stories, the detective outwits the police and shows them to be ineffective crimefighters and problem solvers. Yet Poe apparently lost interest in the notion, and his detective “series”
ended in 1845.
Another Frenchman, Émile Gaboriau, created the detective known as Monsieur Lecoq, drawing heavily on Vidocq as his model. First appearing in L’Affaire Lerouge (1866), Lecoq was a minor police detective who rose to fame in six cases, appearing between 1866 and 1880. Although Sherlock Holmes describes Lecoq as a “miserable bungler,” Gaboriau’s works were immensely popular, and Fergus Hume, English author of the best-selling detective novel of the nineteenth-century The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), which sold over 500,000 copies worldwide, explained that Gaboriau’s financial success inspired his own work.
In England, criminals and detectives peopled Charles Dickens’s tales as well. While certainly not regarded as an author of detective fiction, Dickens created Inspector Bucket, the first significant detective in English literature. When Bucket appeared in Bleak House (1852–1853), he became the prototype of the official representative of the police department: honest, diligent, stolid, and confident, albeit not very colourful, dramatic, or exciting. Wilkie Collins, author of two of the greatest novels of suspense of the nineteenth century, The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), contributed Sergeant Cuff, who appears in The Moonstone. Cuff is known as the finest police detective in England; he solves his cases with perseverance and energy rather than genius. Sadly, after The Moonstone, he is not heard from again.
Without question, the British public, by the late nineteenth century, had become accustomed to the notion of a police force. Introduced in England in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel, the official police spread to the countryside of England in 1856. The detective bureau—the real Inspector Buckets of London—had been added to Scotland Yard in 1842, with two detectives, remarkably non-uniformed. By 1868, this had increased to fifteen detectives. In 1878, the detective and the constable were separated, and the Detective Department was renamed the Criminal Investigation Department. Thus by the end of the nineteenth century, the English were familiar with official detectives, and perhaps, like Holmes, regarded them as a “bad lot,” unlikely to solve complex crimes without help. In England, as contrasted with America, the rule of law was intimately connected with the constabulary, and guns and violence were the domain of the criminal, not the police.
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