Classic partners in crime
Remember Sherlock Holmes, but don’t forget Watson! Arthur Conan Doyle’s invention of Holmes and Watson was a literary tour de force that has not been bettered before or since, writes Patrick Coyne
‘DATA! data! data!” Holmes cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay!”
Anybody but a dedicated student of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories might be forgiven for thinking that this modern-sounding quotation was false. But the knowledgeable student would point out that the quote came indeed from the collection of stories titled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in the story named The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.
What is true is that a newcomer to Sherlock Holmes might always be surprised at how modern-sounding ConanDoyle’s dialogue is.
It is a century since Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr John Watson ended their famous crime detection partnership, in which Holmes solved the cases and Watson wrote about them. The team had worked together for 33 years, from March 1881 right through to August 1914 when, even as the Great War loomed, Holmes’s dramatic feat of espionage rescued Britain from disaster (as described in His Last Bow).
During most of that time, Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street in London, though by 1904 he had relocated to Sussex to keep bees and publish his Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.
American tourists have long asked London policemen for directions to “Sherlock Holmes’s house in Baker Street”. They know that Holmes and Watson were real, living people, and refuse to credit the insulting, heinous suggestion that the stories were written not by Dr Watson, but by that failed medico, Arthur Conan Doyle. Today they visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum in droves.
The truth is that Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories added up to a literary phenomenon, a freak success story, and a tour de force that has arguably never been bettered before or since. Ironically, the author never accepted that these stories were his best works.
Edinburgh-born Arthur Conan Doyle was a disappointed medical doctor, who took up writing because he grew tired of waiting in his London consulting rooms for patients to arrive.
Like another famous author, Nevil Shute (A Town Like Alice, On the Beach, Pied Piper, etc), Conan Doyle found that his writing hobby took over from his profession as the far more important activity in his life. Yet, he was reluctant to realise that his original calling had actually benefited his writing.
When Conan Doyle was a medical student, one of his favourite professors was Dr Joseph Bell, whose lectures were never humdrum. Bell entertained his students by demonstrating his rare ability to make deductions about his patients simply by observing their appearance and mannerisms. Conan Doyle remembered this, and in one of his flashes of inspiration, decided that Bell’s peculiar skill was the sort that a detective should have. So, he moulded his unforgettable character – Sherlock Holmes.
Conan Doyle’s power of characterisation took him one crucial step further: he created Watson. If his invention of Holmes was brilliant, that of Watson was one of genius. For without Watson, Holmes would have been nothing. Aficionados agree that out of the 60 published adventures, the four stories in which Watson does not appear aren’t in the same street as the others. And they don’t mean Baker Street.
Ironically, the character of Watson – the chronicler of Holmes’s cases, the sturdy “number two” who carries his old service revolver as a precaution (but rarely fires it), the reliable lieutenant with his respectable medical background – is the one character that most bothers directors of the innumerable plays and films based on the Sherlock Holmes stories.
As Loren D Estleman writes, directors simply don’t know what to do with Watson. His presence in 56 of the adventures is crucial, for he is both the storyteller and the buffer between the cold, blinding light of Holmes’s intellect and the reader. On stage and screen he is a fixture, but directors hate characters who don’t appear to be doing anything.
The result is that in plays and films Watson is usually depicted crudely as “a duffer, a comic foil, one who usually gets his foot stuck in the mop bucket, who ruins clues instead of finding them”, whereas, as true Sherlockists know, he is far superior to that.
Estleman remarks: “Watson has the endearing ability to appear less astute than the reader, rendering himself more approachable than the aloof and awesome Holmes, without sacrificing respect for his native intelligence.”
But you only have to read Holmes’s sometimes backhanded compliments about his lieutenant to realise that he accepted and respected Watson. When the detective missed his friend’s help in The Blanched Soldier, he reflected: “A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is a always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate.” At the very least, Holmes used Watson as a listening post.
In the story of the racehorse named Silver Blaze, Holmes said: “Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person”, and more kindly added: “I can hardly expect your co-operation if I do not show you the position from which we start.”
The background to the publication of these stories makes encouraging reading for any beginner writer. In 1886, Arthur Conan Doyle’s first attempt at a Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was rejected outright by several publishers: the first one did not even bother to read it. Eventually, Beeton’s Christmas Annual gave him £25 for it.
The story turned out to be popular and was published in book form, so, in 1888 Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine published his other brilliant novella The Sign of Four. In 1891 a new journal The Strand Magazine appeared, and this was the beginning of Conan Doyle’s huge success: The Strand published a long series of Sherlock Holmes stories. Later still, these stories appeared in book form and became bestsellers, their enthusiastic readers clamouring for more.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1892. Unfortunately, by that time, Conan Doyle had grown tired of Holmes and decided to kill him off. So, in The Final Problem, the last story in that collection, the author had Holmes ending his life in the dramatic Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, locked in the arms of his arch-enemy, criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.
What happened after Holmes’s demise was a unique literary event. In fury, 20 000 Strand readers cancelled their subscriptions. Men and women appeared in London streets wearing black mourning armbands or veils. As Estleman wrote: “Public pressure made a Lazarus of Holmes”. The result was that Conan Doyle was forced to bring him back to life again.
The first story in The Return of Sherlock Holmes (The Empty House) is noteworthy for a brilliantly ingenious explanation of why Holmes did not drown in the Reichenbach Falls. So much so, that the reader is almost tempted to credit Conan Doyle with leaving himself a way out while writing The Final Problem – just in case he would one day have to resurrect Holmes.
I shall not give away the secret of this achievement because there might still be readers out there who have never read Conan Doyle. My message to them is: don’t be put off by the dates of stories published during the late 19th and early 20th century. The style of the writing, especially the dialogue, is surprisingly crisp, modern and readable. The only clue for today’s reader that these stories were written years ago might be that in the novellas, for example, one finds a couple of rather lengthy pieces of background that are – dare one say it? – skippable.
But, nevertheless, the four longer Holmes stories are great reads. For many, the most thrilling is The Hound of the Baskervilles. This novella also reveals Conan Doyle’s supreme skill in atmospheric writing. Who will ever forget his description of the cruel, inhospitable Devon Moor, with its great Grimpen Mire in which “a false step means death to man or beast”, its resident, murderous, escaped convict and its gigantic, half-wild hound whose mournful howls echo across the moor in the dead of night?
Excerpts from the Sherlock Holmes stories have been quoted over and over – such as the detective’s favourite axiom: “When the original possibilities have been discounted as impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Then there is the famous line that countless dramatists and writers have insisted on attributing to him: “Elementary, my dear Watson.” He never said that. What he did say, however, in the case of The Crooked Man, answering Watson’s “Excellent!” was simply: “Elementary.” Still, it seems a pity to spoil a legendary quote purely in the interests of accuracy…
Most people don’t know the surprising but true fact that Arthur Conan Doyle once took upon himself the role of Sherlock Holmes.
A woman called Marion Gilchrist was murdered in Glasgow. The only article found to be missing was her diamond brooch. Oscar Slater was arrested because he had pawned a diamond brooch shortly afterwards. A servant had seen a man coming from Miss Gilchrist’s room and had identified Slater as the man.
Slater was found guilty and sentenced to death, later altered to life imprisonment. All through the trial Slater had protested his innocence and had offered proof that he was elsewhere at the time of the crime, but to no avail.
Conan Doyle became interested in the case, examined the evidence, and, using Holmestype deductions, became convinced that Slater was innocent. He wrote to the newspapers, called for a re-trial, and got a commission formed to re-examine the case. But nothing came of it, and Slater remained in gaol.
The author stuck to his task for 19 years, spending much energy and money on the task. Finally, in 1928, Conan Doyle succeeded. Slater was declared innocent, was released, and given £6 000 as compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
This exercise in deduction was certainly never “elementary”. However, Arthur Conan Doyle’s final achievement two years before his death perhaps ranks as greater and nobler than any Sherlock Holmes story he ever wrote.
Sources: HM King: Introduction to The Second Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (John Murray, London).
Loren D Estleman: Introduction to Sherlock Holmes – The Complete Novels and Stories (Bantam Classics, New York).