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Old 03-08-2023, 02:18 PM   #2 (permalink)
Trollheart
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A quick profile

Before we get going, a few facts about the man who created the world’s most famous detective. I’m not going into all the details of his life - there are plenty of biographies around you can pick up, and they’re well worth reading. But there are a few small points I didn’t realise about Doyle which I just want to note here.

First, I was always under the impression that he was knighted for his literary work. Not so. It appears the “Sir” in his name is for military service. I suppose when even so legendary a writer as Charles Dickens was not knighted for his literature - and if anyone deserved the honour surely it was he - perhaps it’s naive to think that Doyle would be afforded the distinction.

Second, again I always assumed that Doyle came from a police background, or some sort of scientific analytical one, and again, wrong. He pursued a career in medicine (hence, presumably, the character of Watson, who might be assumed to be a self-portrait) and did travel widely, being engaged as a ship’s surgeon. But his model for Holmes seems to have been one of his university teachers, a Joseph Bell, whose keen mind and logical methods Doyle imbued his most famous character with.

Third, I did not know that he played amateur sleuth himself in two cold cases, in 1907 and 1908, proving the innocence of and overturning the convictions of both parties, and indirectly helping to have the Court of Criminal Appeal set up.

What I did know, and you probably do also, but it’s worth mentioning, is that in 1891, five years after Sherlock Holmes had become a literary celebrity and assured him of a lucrative career, Doyle considered knocking him off, wishing to concentrate on his historical novels. His mother, incensed at the idea, begged him not to. But he did anyway, writing what was to be the detective’s last case in 1893, appropriately titled “The Final Problem.” He literally killed the sleuth, and intended him to stay dead. But his public - or perhaps it might be more accurate, if crazy, to say, Holmes’s public - would not stand for it, and a campaign to have the world’s favourite detective resurrected was acquiesced to when he wrote, in 1901, what was to become his most famous and enduring Holmes story, “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” This novel though, did not explain how Holmes had escaped death in “The Final Problem”, and so it was necessary to write “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, which came out in 1905 and in fact ended up being literally the detective’s triumphant return as it led to another twelve stories featuring him and Watson.

I did find out, through reading his biography, that Doyle was into spiritualism, or what was at the time called mesmerism, which is odd really when you consider how coldly logical and grounded Sherlock Holmes is, never trusting to any sort of supernatural intervention in his cases, even when it seems some devilish agency must be at work in “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” I suppose that might have been Doyle’s “I am not Spock!” declaration, an attempt to separate the writer from the character, to show he was different to Holmes. The famous resident of 221B Baker Street may have placed no faith in the spirit world, but his creator did.

Let’s, before we get going though, explode a few popular myths.

The phrase so often used as Holmes’ catchphrase, “Elementary, my dear Watson” is never used in any of Doyle’s writings. Rather like “Play it again Sam” and “Beam me up Scotty” it has attained a life of its own, and was somewhat surprising to me to discover that it does not appear, but it does not. The word elementary is used, though not that often, but never in that sentence with the same words.

In the books and stories, Holmes is never mentioned as wearing the headgear which has become synonymous with him, the deerstalker, and his cape. This was an affectation practised by the first man to play him on stage, William Gilette, as was the pipe which is now associated with him. Though Doyle has Holmes smoke a pipe, he never refers to it as the type known as calabash, but through Gilette’s portrayal of him, this is now the image we have of the detective’s pipe.

Although Professor Moriarty is known to be Holmes’ diabolical nemesis, he only appears in one story, the one supposed to have been the last, and so titled “The Final Question.” His appearance in, and control of London’s underground is back-referenced by Holmes in order to really you’d have to say shoe-horn him in as a valiant adversary for Holmes, one Doyle obviously believed worthy of defeating the great detective.
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