The “Great Hiatus” is the term used by Holmes scholars to refer to the period of time between Holmes's tumble off of Reichenbach Falls in the “Adventure of the Final Problem” and his resurfacing three years later (in the chronology of Doyle's stories) in “The Adventure of the Empty House.” During those three years, Holmes was presumed dead and had gone deep undercover to trap all of Moriarty's lieutenants. By the end of that story, he had succeeded in arresting the last member of Moriarty's criminal organization who posed a threat. Holmes's activities during those three years are never portrayed in detail in any of the Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle.1 We do get occasional references to what happened during the Great Hiatus in later stories, but there is a great deal of mystery surrounding them that other writers have tried to shed light on (such as in Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Percent Solution) without reaching any consensus.
In reality, Holmes had been absent from the pages of the Strand magazine for much longer than three years. Holmes and Watson returned to the Strand in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901, but that serial seems to be set in 1889, before the events of “The Final Problem.” By his own admission, Conan Doyle had intended to kill off Holmes in “The Final Problem,” as he had grown tired of the character. Why Conan Doyle returned to writing Sherlock Holmes stories after so many years has never been satisfactorily settled, although we have some clues.
According to Conan Doyle, he received many letters condemning his decision to kill off Sherlock, including one from an old woman which began, “You brute.”2 Supposing the woman meant her words, did Conan Doyle deserve this morally loaded condemnation of his actions as an author? Did he act immorally in killing off this beloved character simply because he was tired of writing about him? Clearly, many fans of Sherlock Holmes thought that Conan Doyle owed them more adventures featuring Holmes. Had Sherlock Holmes gone from being the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to a public good?
Sherlock Holmes was the intellectual property of Conan Doyle, but what does that mean? The philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) set forth a theory of property that has become the foundation of modern liberal theory. According to Locke, something becomes our property once we put our labor into it.3 Take, for example, a blue garnet stone. For a long time it sits in the earth and does not belong to anybody. The first person who finds it is now said to own the gemstone. From the example so far, one might be tempted to think that property is simply a matter of first possession, but this theory fails to explain what it is about first possession that gives one the rights over property. It seems too arbitrary because it seems to boil down to “finders keepers, losers weepers.” Locke's labor theory has gotten far more attention because it offers an account as to why the first person to take possession has a right to continued possession.
If someone were to take away the gem from the person who dug it up after he had gone to all that trouble, then the thief has also taken the labor that belonged to the person. To Locke, this seemed like a violation of a basic natural right to our bodies. To prevent this from happening, laws have been created that govern the disposition of property and enable people to enforce their property rights. The person who dug up the blue garnet now has the right to it and can only surrender that right by making the choice to do so. No amount of labor put into the gem after the initial discovery will transfer the property rights without the owner's say-so. If the gem's owner gives it to a jeweler to cut the stone into a more pleasing shape, the jeweler does not become the co-owner of the garnet through this process. Instead, the owner only parts with it if he or she decides to give it to someone, and that usually happens only after being offered a significant amount of money in exchange. That's how the blue garnet at the heart of the mystery in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” was claimed by the person who originally found it; it then passed from owner to owner by legal means until it ended up in the possession of the countess of Morcar. When James Ryder took it from the countess, he did so without her permission. Even though he made a great effort to hide it in a black-tailed goose, he was never the rightful owner of the gem. Nor did the gem become the possession of Mr. Peterson when he found it in the goose. As long as the chain of possession could be traced back to its legitimate owner, it could not become anyone else's property. If the gem had been abandoned, however, that would be a different story. Mr. Peterson came into possession of the goose because Mr. Baker left it behind after his scuffle. If someone chooses to neglect his property, then after a certain period of time, it is possible for others to claim it because of the labor they put into it—in this case, picking the goose up and cooking it.
The story I've just told is at the core of most theories of property in Western legal systems (though some of the specific details and rights might differ). However, not everyone agrees that this presentation of private property is legitimate. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is famous for his slogan “Property is theft.”4 Proudhon was taking issue with the way property rights are defined by the legal system. For example, the blue garnet might have been dug up by someone who was hired to do so, but it is legally regarded as the property of the employer. Or the countess may have bought the gem using money she obtained from renting out her land to the people who actually farmed those lands—land she probably inherited from her family (who had claimed it a long time ago, and who may not have actually farmed it themselves for centuries). Viewed in this manner, property seems to involve stealing from the people who actually put labor into it. Karl Marx was initially sympathetic to Proudhon's idea, but he eventually criticized it as self-contradictory. After all, theft implies that what is taken is someone's rightful property. Marx instead argued that the notion of property changes depending on the socioeconomic structure of society.5 From Marx's perspective, Locke and those who followed him seemed to be in the grip of a capitalist system that continues to dominate today and were perpetuating it through their particular notion of private property. Proudhon and Marx raise some important questions about whether property has an essential definition. It is true that property rights have been modified by legal systems (and not always in the same way) so that they can be transferred by the will of the original property holder. However, if property were entirely a social construction, then those who are unaware of society's rules would have no sense of property. The behavior of children at a very young age seems to indicate that notions of ownership come long before we have a sophisticated understanding of society. It's not conclusive proof, but it's a good enough reason to take Locke's notion seriously for the time being.
Even if property isn't a natural right as Locke envisioned, there are strong moral arguments as to why we need to recognize such rights. When offering reasons for a moral principle, most philosophers rely on one of two kinds of argument. The first kind is the consequentialist argument, so called because it appeals to the consequences of our actions to determine their right or wrongness. From a consequentialist point of view, property rights are good because they help organize society, keep it stable, and reward our labors. A society without property rights would be confusing because no one would know which fields to plow or where they would be able to sleep each night. If property rights are not recognized, then we would live in an uncertain world because anyone could try and take our food or shelter from us. If we cannot keep the product of our labors, why should we labor beyond what we could immediately consume?
The other kind of moral argument is a Kantian argument, which is named after the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant was a proponent of a moral philosophy in which the consequences did not matter. What mattered for Kant was that our actions be inspired by the right intentions, which he understood to be a respect for persons. We show respect for persons when we treat them as equals and rational agents capable of making their own choices. To paraphrase his words, respect means treating people as ends in themselves and not merely as means to our own enjoyment.6 Kant gives an example of someone who needs to borrow money and will only be able to do so if he promises to repay it, but he knows that he cannot repay the loan.7 In that case, the lender is being used as a mere means because the false promise is the reason why the loan is made. If the lender knew the borrower couldn't pay it back, then he wouldn't have made the loan in the first place. Treating the lender with respect would entail being honest about one's financial situation and hoping that the lender will be moved and choose to give you the money without requiring repayment. A false promise removes the lender's choice and as a result his dignity as a free agent.
In Kant's view, property is a necessary condition of agency. If we are going to be able to make plans and take actions, then we have to be secure in the belief that our efforts will not be frustrated by theft. When Ryder and the maid conspire to take the blue carbuncle from the countess, they treat her as if she existed merely to provide them with wealth. On a grander scale, if no one respected property, there would be no point in having things. Ryder's theft only makes sense if he believes that the things he buys with the gem will not be taken from him.8 Human actions depend on the assumption that we can enjoy the products of our labors. No one wants to be used as a tool to acquire things for someone else. According to Kant, people recognize the need for property rights and agree to create a system in society for enforcing them so that we can act as free human beings.
Both consequentialist and Kantian arguments arrive at the same conclusion: we need to enforce property rights. The arguments used to justify these property rights, however, are different, which has implications for how exactly we understand these rights in particular cases. Intellectual property rights, like Conan Doyle's rights to his stories, have proven particularly difficult to achieve consensus on. The consequentialist argument is the one most often cited in defense of intellectual property rights. If Conan Doyle were not guaranteed the rights to Sherlock Holmes, then he would not have had much incentive to create such a character. All the effort he put into the initial stories would have been for naught if someone else could write their own Sherlock Holmes stories and sell them to a different magazine.9 Realizing that there is no advantage to creating a new character, he could have instead spent his time writing stories about the adventures of Edgar Allan Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin. Of course Poe would have had no reason to create Dupin if Conan Doyle and others were just going to produce knock-offs. The lack of intellectual property rights would be deleterious to cultural development. New stories, ideas, or inventions would still develop as long as the effort of creation requires significant compensation. The consequentialist argument relies on the claim that the absence of copyright would create a world that possessed far less good than a world with copyright. Unfortunately for that form of argument, there are reasons to think that the loss of copyright (or placing more severe limits on it than exist today) would not have much of an adverse effect on society overall. Moreover, there are ways in which extensive copyright can have other damaging effects to society. For example, it could prevent any scholarly discussion of Sherlock Holmes stories without express permission.
The Kantian argument concerning intellectual property is not concerned with working out the benefits or costs of copyright. Instead, the question is whether intellectual property is necessary for our free agency. Indeed it is. Much like with tangible property like gemstones, intellectual property helps guarantee that people make choices freely. For example, authors choose to put effort into their creations in the belief that they will benefit in some way from the process. Most often this is in the form of money. Developing a new character like Sherlock Holmes takes a lot of work. Creating a story about Sherlock Holmes after the character has been established is not nearly as time-consuming. According to the Kantian argument, if Conan Doyle knew that his creation was going to be copied by others, then he may well not have gone to the trouble of writing those stories.10 Instead, he could have focused on his medical practice.
On its surface, the Kantian argument for intellectual property rights bears a resemblance to the one given by a consequentialist. The main difference might be that the Kantian is not interested in balancing the bad (and probably unintended) consequences of intellectual property rights against the good of free agency. The Kantian argument can go deeper than the consequentialist argument, though, because it is not just about deriving benefits from our creations. The Kantian perspective can also recognize that the act of authorship is a process in which we create a certain narrative for our character that we wish to share with the world. Conan Doyle's letter to his mother, Mary Doyle, as he was preparing to resurrect Holmes, reflects this attitude. He wrote, “I don't suppose any man has ever sacrificed so much money to preserve his ideal of art as I have done, witness my suppression of Girdlestone, my refusal to serialize ‘A Duet’ and my refusal to republish in a book the ‘Round the Fire’ series of stories. But I have done no short Sherlock Holmes stories for seven or eight years, and I don't see why I should not have another go at them and earn three times as much money as I can from any other form of work.”11 Conan Doyle's sense of himself as an artist depended on his ability to control his creations.
If Conan Doyle could not control the canonical depictions of Sherlock Holmes, then he would lose the ability to create Sherlock Holmes. Our idea of Sherlock Holmes is fleshed out in the course of Conan Doyle's stories. If other people wrote authoritative stories about Holmes without his permission, it could easily confuse the readership and even lead them to think Holmes had certain qualities that Conan Doyle did not intend to imbue him with. An unauthorized portrayal could even sour the audience on the character before he was done telling the story he wanted to tell. Imagine if someone had written The Seven-Percent Solution or Without a Clue (revisionist tales that portray Holmes as a drug-addled madman and as a bumbling fool) while Conan Doyle was still establishing the character in people's minds. It is true that Conan Doyle's estate licensed the use of Holmes in these stories, but that was at their discretion and almost a hundred years after the original stories were published (at which point it would be very hard to unseat the general impression of Sherlock Holmes as a great detective). Authorship entails the ability to create a narrative and determine its ending. Without such power, an author would be nothing more than a cog in a larger machine at the mercy of forces beyond their control, unable to act according to their desires.
The Kantian argument seems a promising defense of Conan Doyle's rights to do with Sherlock Holmes whatever he wishes. The problem with relying too much on this argument is that it is not clear we can continue to assign full ownership of Sherlock Holmes to Conan Doyle (or his estate) after a relatively short period. The Sherlock Holmes as we know him is not solely the product of Conan Doyle's labors. His original stories featuring Holmes and Watson are certainly at the core of our image of Sherlock Holmes today, but they are far from the only influence. Sherlock Holmes as an icon has certain attributes that are not to be found in anything that Conan Doyle wrote. This was true even during Conan Doyle's lifetime (at least as early as the Great Hiatus).
To begin with, Sidney Paget's illustrations helped shape the image of Sherlock Holmes in the mind of the audience. Actors like Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett were popular (at least in part) because they looked like Paget's illustrations of Holmes. When we see Holmes as a tall, lanky figure with slicked-back hair, it just seems right, but that's because of Paget's illustrations. Paget is also credited with adding some elements to the portrayal of Holmes that have become the costume by which most people recognize him, most notably his deerstalker cap and Inverness coat, with its cape. Nowhere in the writings of Conan Doyle are these specific details mentioned. As Paget's labors mixed with Conan Doyle's on thirty-seven stories and one novel, it would seem like Paget deserves at least some of the credit of being the author of the popular Sherlock Holmes. Paget's style was so definitive that after his death in 1908, other illustrators imitated it when depicting Holmes.
Paget's image of Holmes was further popularized by the actor William Gillette who, beginning in 1899, starred in seven different Broadway productions of Sherlock's adventures. Gillette wore the deerstalker cap and the Inverness coat as part of his costume, and he also smoked the distinctive large calabash pipe that most people associate with Holmes. In Conan Doyle's stories, Holmes smokes several different kinds of pipes, but it is the question-mark-shaped calabash that sticks in people's minds as they imagine Holmes pondering a problem. In fact, that particular pipe goes against the portrayal of Holmes in Conan Doyle's stories because the kind of tobacco that Holmes is said to prefer would not have been well suited for a calabash pipe.
In many ways, Basil Rathbone's portrayal of Holmes in fourteen films just reinforces the elements of Paget's and Gillette's presentations of Holmes. However, those films also add well-known elements to the Sherlock Holmes mythos. The oft-repeated phrase, “Elementary, my dear Watson!” is one of the best-known movie quotes and is often included in any homage to Holmes. The closest that Holmes ever comes to saying something like that in Conan Doyle's stories is in “The Adventure of the Crooked Man,” when he says, “Elementary!” in response to Watson's “Excellent!”12 That is the only time it is ever said. The Rathbone films also gave us the popular image of Watson as a much older, retired gentleman who is a bit of a bumbler. Lestrade too suffers in those films, presumably to make Holmes seem all the more impressive in his deductive abilities. Those images of Watson and Lestrade have had a long legacy, though more recent portrayals of Watson (such as the Guy Ritchie movies with Jude Law and Stephen Moffatt's series for the BBC with Martin Freeman) have sought to restore the image of Watson as a much more vigorous companion to Holmes.
Most people know Sherlock Holmes as a character, and far more know of him from iconic popular images rather than from having read the stories. Show people a picture of a tall, thin man with a deerstalker cap, Inverness coat, and calabash pipe, holding a magnifying glass and shouting, “Elementary, my dear Watson!” and you can rest assured that most of them will identify him as Sherlock Holmes. This image of the world's greatest consulting detective is the product of many people's labors and has taken on a life that transcends the original works of Conan Doyle. Moreover, the numerous parodies and noncanonical explorations of Holmes (many produced with the permission of Conan Doyle's estate, which still owns the property) have further transformed this complex and well-loved character into an icon.
Looking at all of this, one might conclude that after more than 125 years, Holmes has become a communally held cultural property and should no longer be the limited possession of anyone. However, all of this happened much later and should not be a factor in judging Conan Doyle's rights to the character when he embarked on the Great Hiatus. Only Paget's contributions might undermine Conan Doyle's claim, and they undoubtedly depended on later portrayals to really make them iconic. There is one other creator of Sherlock Holmes who needs to be considered. By Conan Doyle's own admission, the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell.13 He even relates a story of Bell deducing someone's history that sounds strikingly similar to our first introduction to Sherlock's method when he identifies Watson as a recent veteran of Afghanistan.14 That particular scene is one of a few of the more famous deductions that have been reproduced in a number of adaptations as a definitive example of Holmes's method. In light of how much Holmes is defined by the practice of the science of deduction, it seems that some credit for his creation should go to the real person who introduced Conan Doyle to it. Holmes's connection to Bell was clear to Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote to Conan Doyle after the publication of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, “Can this be my old friend Joe Bell?”15
The reason for dwelling so much on the question of who created Holmes is because most people think of intellectual property in terms of the labor of creation, and the claim that Conan Doyle had a right to kill off Holmes often rests on the argument that he was free to do what he wanted with his intellectual property. Even if we do not like how he uses it, it was his to do with as he wished. We might be appalled if someone bought the Mona Lisa just so he could scrub the smug smile off her face, but there is no legal recourse to prevent him from exercising his property rights. The idea that Holmes might not really belong to Conan Doyle would go a long way to justifying the antipathy that greeted his decision to kill him off in “The Final Problem.” If Holmes had ceased to be Conan Doyle's sole creation, then perhaps he would not have had the right to end the story in such a final manner.
Sherlock Holmes illustrates how difficult it is to ascribe authorship to a single individual, especially over time as a character or story is adapted into different media. Early in his career, Conan Doyle was the sole owner of Sherlock Holmes, and as time went on and others contributed to the popular images of Holmes and Watson, his claim of ownership became weaker until the character belonged to the public. The uncertainty in determining credit for Sherlock Holmes as we understand him today shows that it is impossible to own an idea, character, or story the way one owns a car or piece of jewelry.16 There is no doubt that Conan Doyle is the author of the stories he wrote, but it is less clear that he is the sole author of the character of Sherlock Holmes. Without a clear sense of ownership, Conan Doyle's decision to kill off Holmes cannot be excused on the basis of intellectual property rights alone. Conan Doyle's sense of himself as an artist means that we cannot require him to write more Sherlock Holmes stories. Conan Doyle explained his reticence to write more Sherlock Holmes stories in a 1903 letter to his editor, in which he said, “You will appreciate more fully now my intense disinclination to continue these stories which has caused me to resist all entreaty for so many years. It is impossible to prevent a certain sameness and want of freshness.”17 Killing off Holmes in “The Final Problem” goes a step further than Conan Doyle's right not to write more short stories. What he did was to prevent anyone else who had contributed to the Sherlock Holmes character from being able to create adventures and mysteries for the public to enjoy. I would argue Conan Doyle's claim to ownership after the first two rounds of short stories was not strong enough to justify such a drastic action. If he was justified in killing off Holmes, it has to be for another reason than that he owned Holmes.
Not everyone will be convinced by the argument that intellectual property is a weak concept, but even those people might be persuaded by a secondary consideration concerning the morality of what Conan Doyle did. Let's grant that Holmes was the sole property of Conan Doyle during his lifetime, which gave him the legal right to do with it whatever he wanted and to prevent anyone else from supplying the public's demand for more adventures. Nevertheless, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, or that you are a not a bad person for doing so. The hypothetical person who buys the Mona Lisa in order to deface it is displaying a lack of respect for the painting and the importance it has for so many people.
In the case of Conan Doyle, his concern for his audience should run even deeper than some random person who buys the Mona Lisa. The argument might go like this. Sherlock Holmes was a financial success for Conan Doyle because of the audience. The popularity of those stories also gave him a special status in society and literary prominence. Although I would not go so far as to say that he owed his audience for the success that he derived from Sherlock Holmes, he should have accorded them a certain level of gratitude. Out of respect for all that Sherlock Holmes had made possible for him (and later his family), he should, so this argument goes, have given greater thought to the impact of such a final act as killing off the character. Conan Doyle himself expressed surprise at the reaction to “The Final Problem.” If he had been ignorant of how beloved the character was, he cannot be regarded as intentionally disrespectful his audience. Once he learned of how people reacted, maybe he morally should have considered how he might supply them with their regular Sherlock Holmes fix.
It's not surprising to think that Conan Doyle underestimated the value others placed on his creation, as he did not think too highly of it when compared to his other work. As he described it in “The Truth about Sherlock Holmes,” he put Sherlock Holmes aside after The Sign of Four because he was
encouraged by the kind reception which “Micah Clarke” had received from critics…. Hence came my two books, The White Company, written in 1889, and Sir Nigel, written fourteen years later. Of the two I consider the latter the better book, but I have no hesitation in saying that the two of them taken together did thoroughly achieve my purpose, that they made an accurate picture of that great age, and that, as a single piece of work, they form the most complete, satisfying, and ambitious thing that I have ever done. All things find their level, but I believe that if I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.18
He could not have been more off base in assessing his literary status, but this just shows how he thought that Holmes was interfering with his true calling as an author. In light of the importance that Sherlock Holmes had for his audience, maybe it was indeed wrong, especially in retrospect, for Conan Doyle to kill Sherlock Holmes off merely because he wanted to do other things. Still, just because Conan Doyle shouldn't kill Holmes does not mean that he had to write more stories. Saying that Conan Doyle was in some measure obliged to produce more Holmes stories would be equivalent to saying that he should not be able to live his life in the manner he finds most fulfilling. It would mean treating him as a means to our aesthetic satisfaction and not respecting him as an end in himself.
The fear that Holmes was taking away from his real literary work was not the only reason Conan Doyle gave for doing away with the character. He also found writing Holmes to be a difficult and unfulfilling task. It was difficult because “every story really needed as clear-cut and original a plot as a longish book would do.”19 After a while, Conan Doyle grew tired of having to invent new plots. He even tired of the character. In his opinion, Holmes's character “admits of no light or shade. He is a calculating machine, and anything you add to that simply weakens the effect.”20 In the same essay, Conan Doyle even takes a dig at Watson as someone who never evidences a bit of humor in all his stories. Writing Holmes stories had ceased to be enjoyable to him. From a Kantian perspective, to insist that he continue to do something that he did not enjoy would be to endorse a form of enslavement.
Looking at Conan Doyle's reasons for wanting to do away with Holmes, it seems that the arguments rest on his desire to stop writing these stories. That is certainly a good reason why he should be allowed to stop. It is not as clear that this is a good reason for withdrawing Holmes from the public completely. He could have given permission to someone else to continue the stories, perhaps even commissioning a ghostwriter to publish them in Conan Doyle's name as so many mystery and thriller writers did in the twentieth century. At the very least, he could have ended his run with a triumphant story as opposed to foreclosing the possibility of his return by killing him off. The joy that his readers derived from the latest adventure in the Strand was a public good that he should not have taken away lightly.21 However, his responsibility to his audience must be balanced against his free agency as an author. It would not have been morally right for him to kill Holmes simply because he was tired of the character or to spite his audience, or readers would be justified in regarding his actions as morally deficient for showing disrespect to his audience. At the same time, an author creates a narrative for some specific purpose. If Holmes's death in “The Final Problem” could be shown to fit with an admirable narrative, then we (the readers) do not have the right to condemn Conan Doyle for what happened at Reichenbach Falls and Conan Doyle wouldn't have been a brute after all. I will argue that “The Final Problem” was a fitting send-off for Holmes and Watson precisely because of its narrative power.
To see why “The Final Problem” was an ending that readers should have been content with, consider the character of Sherlock Holmes. He was defined early on by his desire to solve puzzles that befuddled an ordinary intellect. In The Sign of Four, an idle Holmes turns to drugs to relieve his boredom. He craves work and mental exaltation. Other than “the woman,” Holmes did not seem to care much for the fairer sex. Nor did he seem very interested in cultivating family relationships or other sorts of social bonds. His work was nearly all-consuming; only his violin, his occasional drug use, and his friendship with Watson distracted him.
“The Final Problem” was the greatest problem Holmes had ever solved. Everything after that was bound to be anticlimactic for the detective. Holmes had discovered “the Napoleon of crime” after years of trying to decipher the malevolent force behind many of the crimes in London. The crimes were so varied that only Holmes's intellect could detect the existence of a pattern of influence. It is even implied that a number of his earlier cases were indirectly connected to Professor Moriarty. Discovering and then taking down this organized crime ring was the greatest of achievements. As he says to Watson, “If I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit.”22 When he finally confronts his nemesis, Holmes knows that ridding the world of Moriarty may mean his own death, but he accepts it: “My career had in any case reached its crisis…. No possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this.”23 Solving such a difficult puzzle and triumphing over someone whose intellect matched his own made for a fitting climax to the stories. That Conan Doyle's instincts were right can be seen in the fact that most adaptations of the iconic Holmes (the ones that aren't trying to be faithful to a particular story) try to work Moriarty into the mix even though he only appeared in the one story and was mentioned in a few others. No other villain seems adequate to Holmes, but repeating their confrontation (or making Moriarty a constant presence in the mysteries) does not break new narrative ground.
Let's face it: the Holmes stories after the Great Hiatus are more of a mixed bag. Some of the stories seem to be retreads of older stories. A return to more traditional drawing room mysteries with cheating spouses, stolen items, and other bourgeoisie deceptions was a real letdown after defeating the Napoleon of crime. For example, the basic conceit of “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons” hearkens back to “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” As a boatman once told Conan Doyle, “when Holmes fell over the cliff, he may not have killed himself, but all the same he was never quite the same man afterwards.”24
I'm not claiming that there is nothing redeeming about the post-Reichenbach stories. A number of those stories show Conan Doyle developing as a writer, even helping to create the new genre of spy thriller with “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” and The Valley of Fear. In fact, the second time that Conan Doyle appeared to bring an end to Holmes's adventures is a pretty interesting story too. “His Last Bow” is set during Holmes's retirement, so it is the latest chronologically of all the Conan Doyle stories. This story also has an important narrative as Holmes takes action to aid in the war effort. In “The Final Problem,” Holmes was trying to bring an end to Moriarty's criminal empire. In “His Last Bow,” he was trying to put a stop to the expansionist policies of Germany. Both stories feature eminently worthy causes. If Conan Doyle was going to end the series, then a spy story was the second-best ending after Reichenbach Falls.
Conan Doyle continued to supply the public's appetite for Sherlock Holmes after “His Last Bow,” but he did so more sporadically. The final twelve stories that would be published as The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes are arguably weaker in general. Undoubtedly there are people with favorite stories from the Case-Book, but many readers find most of them to be inferior to those that came before. The letter to his mother quoted earlier (as well as other letters that mention what he was being paid for each story) suggests that the amount of money he could get for each new Holmes story was driving his writing more than artistic inspiration, especially in his final set of short stories.
If Conan Doyle was writing more for the paycheck in the last ten years of his life, that is his right as well. His dignity as an author does not depend on purely artistic motives, nor does it depend on quality writing. It just depends on letting him craft his narratives as he sees fit. Conan Doyle was never obligated to write more Holmes stories (though perhaps he should have handed over the reins on the last dozen). The reason why he didn't have this obligation could be based on an appeal to intellectual property rights, but, as I have indicated above, I find much that is problematic with that argument because I don't think it can be said that Conan Doyle still owned his creation at the end of his life.25 Instead, I am appealing to Conan Doyle's dignity to justify his decision to stop writing Sherlock Holmes stories, but his dignity alone is not enough to justify killing off Holmes. Even someone who thinks that Holmes is still the sole property of the Conan Doyle estate needs to recognize that ownership does not license all actions toward one's property, especially if it is something of great significance to the public.
To justify bringing an end to Holmes's career (and any stories that could have been written about him after Reichenbach Falls), Conan Doyle needed to do so in a way that it was necessary for the story and it should be a story that further developed Holmes beyond the stories that had already been written. “The Final Problem” was a well-crafted ending on both those counts. To show what a great nemesis Moriarty was, it was important that Holmes achieve victory at great cost. And “The Final Problem” was an important addition to the canon because it tied together many of Holmes's previous cases into one final expression of his superior deductive skills (as no one else had noticed this immense pattern). The story was even presented in a way that made the resurrection of Holmes possible. (Whether or not that was Conan Doyle's intention, it does show some respect for the idea that later writers should be able to produce more Sherlock Holmes stories to whet the public appetite.) “His Last Bow” was another great ending in this respect. It put Holmes in retirement as a beekeeper, but that also enabled Conan Doyle to emphasize how important the war effort was by bringing Holmes out of retirement to aid it. We were fortunate to see a series after the Great Hiatus with a number of strong stories, but that does not mean Conan Doyle was any less justified in his original decision to kill off Holmes. Had Holmes never returned from Reichenbach Falls, we still would have had such a strong ending to the Sherlock Holmes saga that we could not have demanded more from Conan Doyle.
1. It is true that “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge” is dated to 1892, but many think this is an error.
2. Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Truth About Sherlock Holmes,” in The Complete Sherlock Holmes (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003), 2:684. Subsequent citations to Conan Doyle's work are from this text.
3. John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689; reprint, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980).
4. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property?, trans. Donald R. Kelley and Bonnie G. Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 13.
5. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848; reprint, New York: International Publishers, 1948).
6. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by James Ellington (1785; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).
7. Ibid., 37.
8. One might object that Ryder has good reason to think that most people would not violate his property rights and therefore he can feel secure in his possession of the blue carbuncle. However, Kant's philosophy is not based on such consequences. Kant would point out that even though Ryder is not likely to be the victim of theft, he is not treating people equally if he thinks that he has a right to violate other people's property rights, but they do not have the right to violate his.
9. Which is not to say that a proliferation of knockoffs cheapens the original product. The point is just that the usual reasons for writing something are to make money or to become well known, and neither could happen in a world where people can easily copy an author's creation.
10. The Kantian argument is not interested in the actual consequences of our immoral actions (that is for the consequentialist to worry about). Conan Doyle seemed to enjoy the parodies of Sherlock Holmes, but that doesn't change the fact that someone was usurping his role as author and therefore taking away his freedom. That's what makes it an immoral action for Kant.
11. From Arthur Conan Doyle, A Life in Letters, ed. Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Press, 2007), 512.
12. “Crooked Man,” 1:492.
13. “Truth,” 679.
14. The anecdote can be found in “Truth,” 679–80. Holmes's deduction about Watson is to be found in A Study in Scarlet, page 10, but the explanation, which bears striking similarities to the Bell anecdote's explanation, is found on page 18.
15. Kyle Freeman, introduction to vol. 2 of Conan Doyle, Complete Sherlock Holmes, 2:xv.
16. It's also worth bearing in mind that copyright started as a way to protect book publishers. Copyright literally meant the right to make copies of a book, not some special ownership over the ideas contained inside it. The copyright guaranteed that no one else could produce a cheaper copy that would compete with the inventory already in circulation, as unsold inventory would eat into the profit margin.
17. Conan Doyle, letter to Strand editor H. Greenhough Smith, in Life in Letters, 514.
18. “Truth,” 682–83.
19. Ibid., 684.
20. Ibid., 688.
21. That Conan Doyle recognized this public good is evident by his statement that “from time to time I endeavored to supply” the public with a supply of new Holmes stories. Ibid., 684.
22. “Final Problem,” 558.
23. Ibid., 569.
24. Freeman, introduction, 2:xxviii.
25. This is obviously a point on which I disagree with the law governing copyright, but moral philosophy is not beholden to what legislators decide (although they should consider moral arguments when constructing their laws and not just lobbyists from Disney). How long copyright should be extended is an arbitrary matter and varies from country to country, which is why Sherlock Holmes is completely in the public domain in the United Kingdom and completely not in the public domain in the United States.