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.
“Beeton’s Christmas Annual (Ward, Lock & Company),” read the notice in Lloyd’s “Literature” column, “has for leading subject ‘A Study in Scarlet’ by A. Conan Doyle, a tale replete with stirring incidents, and described as a reprint of reminiscences of Army-surgeon Watson. The number also contains two original drawing room plays.”
The 1887 Annual sold out of its tens of thousands of copies within a few weeks. When The Graphic published its review of the issue on the tenth of December, the reviewer omitted Arthur’s name entirely, describing the author as anonymous and dismissing the book’s originality. “It is not at all a bad imitation,” puffed the reviewer on a more positive note, and then added perceptively, “but it would never have been written but for Poe, Gaboriau, and Mr. R. L. Stevenson. The hero of the tale is simply the hero of ‘The Murder [sic] in the Rue Morgue.’ Those who like detective stories, and have not read the great originals, will find the tale full of interest. It hangs together well, and finishes ingeniously.”
Next, on the seventeenth of December, a review appeared in The Glasgow Herald, ranking Holmes much higher in relation to his ancestors—though this first laudatory review also misspelled Arthur’s name. “The piece de resistance” of the current issue of Beeton’s, the reviewer proclaimed, was
a story by A. Conair Doyle entitled “A Study in Scarlet.” It is the story of a murder, and of the preternatural sagacity of a scientific detective, to whom Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin was a trifler, and Gaboriau’s Lecoq a child. He is a wonderful man is Mr Sherlock Holmes, but one gets so wonderfully interested in his cleverness and in the mysterious murder which he unravels that one cannot lay down the narrative until the end is reached. What that end is wild horses shall not make us divulge.
Two days later, a reviewer in The Scotsman gave Arthur’s book unstinting praise:
The chief piece in “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” is a detective story by Mr A. Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. This is as entrancing a tale of ingenuity in tracing out crime as has been written since the time of Edgar Allan Poe. The author shows genius. He has not trodden in the well-worn paths of literature, but has shown how the true detective should work by observation and deduction.
This review ended with a prediction for Arthur: “His book is bound to have many readers.”