There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact
SHERLOCK HOLMES, ‘THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY’
What is Sherlock Holmes to you? Is he, as he is for millions, that figure in a deerstalker hat, smoking a curved pipe? Or perhaps in your mind’s eye he is Basil Rathbone, or Jeremy Brett, or maybe Benedict Cumberbatch? When you think of Holmes, do you conjure up a master of deduction, an unfeeling brain without a heart? And what about Watson? Is he that buffoon so entertainingly depicted by Nigel Bruce, and rehashed by countless actors since?
Sherlock Holmes is so enduringly popular that he has become virtually detached from himself. Everyone thinks they know what sort of character he is, but our views are inevitably tinged by the effect of countless secondary interpretations of the original stories in which he appeared. That deerstalker and pipe were never there in Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of the detective. As you will read, they were adornments added by an illustrator and an actor, respectively. That is what happens when a literary creation gains sufficient popularity to become a cultural property belonging to everybody. Holmes is in rarefied company in this respect – Dracula, Peter Pan, Harry Potter – creations that exist beyond the texts that birthed them come along only every now and again.
The idea of this book, then, is to go back to Conan Doyle’s original stories of the world’s greatest consulting detective and explore forgotten aspects of Sherlock Holmes – both the literary character and the cultural phenomenon. From clues in the text, we will explore everything from the personality traits of Holmes and Watson to the publishing history of the stories and the real-life cases that fuelled Conan Doyle’s imagination. There will be tales of grisly murders, friendships between famous names, curious plot anomalies that got past both Conan Doyle and his editors, and much more besides.
Conan Doyle was one of history’s great story-tellers. With an unstinting curiosity about the world, he crafted narratives that rip along and characters who – even when infuriatingly other-worldly, as Holmes can sometimes seem – are ultimately rooted in a profound humanity to which we can all relate. If Holmes were merely the ‘brain without a heart’ that he is sometimes depicted as, his readers would have lost interest decades ago.
But Conan Doyle had a complicated relationship with his literary son. While the world at large loved Holmes, his creator quickly grew weary of him. Were it not for the extraordinary financial incentives he had to carry on with the stories, Holmes might well have had a much shorter career. Indeed, Conan Doyle thought he had successfully killed him off after just two novellas and twenty-four short stories – only to find his creation was already starting a life beyond his control. This all meant that Conan Doyle did not always write the Holmes stories with the same eye to detail with which they have been read in the 125 years and more since. As a result, the tales are littered with inconsistencies and apparent errors that raise fascinating questions in their own right, all adding to the rich tapestry of the Holmesian universe.
A quick comment on terminology. The adjective ‘Holmesian’ – relating to all things related to Holmes and to those people who dedicate themselves to its study – is used widely. I have opted for this terminology over the commonly used alternative, ‘Sherlockian’. The words are, to a large extent, interchangeable, although historically Holmesian has been more widely used in Britain, with Sherlockian more popular in the US. As a born-and-bred Londoner who grew up in the southern reaches of the city, several areas of which make appearances in the stories, I defend my right to prefer the British variant!
You will also see many references to ‘the canon’ and things ‘canonical’. The canon comprises simply the four Holmes novellas and fifty-six short stories (as published by the Strand magazine) written by Conan Doyle between 1887 and 1927. The founding texts, as it were. A great many were prefixed with the phrase ‘The Adventure of. . .’ when they originally appeared in the Strand, but for the sake of brevity I have rendered titles in their shortened forms in this volume. So, for instance, I refer to ‘The Speckled Band’ rather than ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’.
There is no right or wrong way to enjoy Sherlock Holmes. If Rathbone or Cumberbatch is Holmes for you, that’s just fine. Conan Doyle certainly wouldn’t have worried. He, least of all people, believed in venerating his sage of Baker Street. But if the fancy takes you, this book will take you back to the author’s original stories – a springboard from which you can dive into the fascinating wider world of the great detective as Conan Doyle envisaged him, full of forgotten facts and intriguing anecdotes. This is a chance, then, to unlock Sherlock. To paraphrase Holmes: ‘Come, reader, come. The Game is afoot!’