Is this pipe-smoking doctor the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes?
Photo clue to solving mystery of detective hero
IT is an exquisite conundrum which might even pique the deductive powers of the great Sherlock Holmes.
Did the gentleman clad in a deerstalker and puffing on a briar pipe on the right of this photograph offer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a spark of inspiration for his celebrated detective?
Such a tantalising thought is rendered less improbable by the fact that a young Conan Doyle is standing just yards away in the centre of this group shot.
It was taken in July 1880, several years before his most famous creation would catapult him to fame, when the fledgling author had sought adventure serving as a physician on the Arctic whaler Hope.
Pictured third from the left with hands dug firmly in pockets against the bitter Siberian cold, Conan Doyle was among those from the Peterhead-registered Hope welcomed aboard the Eira after a chance meeting with the ill-fated ship of explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith.
The man with the deerstalker and pipe was Conan Doyle’s counterpart on the Eira, Dr William Henry Neale.
The remarkable image has come to light as Russian divers announced this week they believe they have discovered the wreck of the Eira, which sank on a subsequent voyage after being crushed between two giant icebergs.
Conan Doyle was in his third year of a medical degree at Edinburgh University in February 1880 when he put aside his studies for six months travelling the Arctic on a whaling ship.
The voyage, he later wrote, had a major impact on him. Turning 21 halfway through it, he noted with pride: ‘I came of age at 80 degrees north latitude.’
He turned the experience into his first story about the sea, chilling ghost tale Captain of the Pole-Star, and two nonfiction articles, The Glamour of the Arctic and Life on a Greenland Whaler.
He returned to his studies in autumn 1880 and obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree a year later.
After graduation, he served as a medical officer on the steamer Mayumba, navigating between Liverpool and west Africa, but never found Africa as seductive as the Arctic and gave up the post on landing back in England.
It was not until March 1886 that Conan Doyle began writing the novel which catapulted him to fame. At first it was named A Tangled Skein and its two main characters were Sheridan Hope and Ormond Sacker.
In 1887, it was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, under the title A Study in Scarlet, introducing the world to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. It is commonly agreed the character traits of Holmes were inspired by Dr Joseph Bell, a teacher at the medical school of Edinburgh University.
But Conan Doyle used his own memories to conjure up the complete character, including his dress and personal habits. He made him a smoker of an ‘old briar-root pipe’ and, while never explicitly referring to his hero’s choice of headgear as a ‘deerstalker’, his narrator Dr Watson describes ‘his ear-flapped travelling cap’ in The Adventure of Silver Blaze.
As the deerstalker was typical countrywear of the time, it is unsurprising the original illustrations for the stories by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine popularised Holmes as a ‘deerstalker man’.
With Russian explorers hoping soon to study the Eira further, Sherlock Holmes fans will be wondering whether an old sepia print taken on its ancient deck is a clue to their hero’s own history.
‘Came of age at 80 degrees north’