"I do not wish to be ungrateful to Holmes..." or Doyle

 

"I do not wish to be ungrateful to Holmes, who has been a good friend to me in many ways. If I have sometimes been inclined to weary of him it is because his character admits of no light or shade. He is a calculating machine, and anything you add to that simply weakens the effect. Thus the variety of the stories must depend upon the romance and compact handling of the plots. I would say a word for Watson also, who in the course of seven volumes never shows one gleam of humour or makes one single joke."--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories & Adventures

The photo above is, of course, a mash-up. I did it awhile back (items out of copyright, thankfully) as a visual representation of how Doyle, Holmes and Watson live together in my head. As I've said before,  only Holmes and Watson lived there for many years as my life was only Sherlockian. Now it is Doylean as well. Most of the time, the three fellows have a pleasant cohabitation, although it  is sometimes disturbed by small things, like some family interactions are.

If Doyle were here right now, I would defend Holmes and Watson against the statement I've quoted above. If Holmes threw no light or shade, the vast--vast almost to the point of immeasurable--world of Sherlockiana would not exist. There is an army of Watsonians (of which I am part) ready to defend the good doctor against a ridiculous charge of being humorless; an Army also  ready to defend the idea Holmes, as we know him, could not exist without Watson.  And if Doyle were here right now, I would give him an earful about the interview where he said "I get letters addressed to his rather stupid friend, Watson,..." Rather stupid friend, indeed.

The old Doyle words from above are well-known, long talked about, sometimes forgotten. I don't hold them against Doyle. My respect for the man's work goes far beyond a few statements I might disagree with. I am grateful for the chance to live in his world in a small way; his writings are a big part of my life. I am especially grateful for the chance to write fiction with his characters. I've always mostly assumed the greater Sherlockian world felt the same way: for better or worse, Doyle is the respected founder and we are thankful for him.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when recently a Sherlockian fiction writer let me know, in no uncertain terms, how little he thought of Doyle; he told me he had no respect for Sir Arthur because of several things we know about Doyle's personal life and some of his words, including the "rather stupid friend" remark. Of course the writer is perfectly entitled to his opinions. The exchange reminded me I should not make assumptions about "the greater Sherlockian world."

I've thought about the conversation quite a few times. I've realized Dr. Watson is so real in the writer's mind, Doyle's ugly words are seemingly about a real person; Doyle is dissing the writer's good friend. Sometimes playing the Sherlockian game results in blurry boundaries. Doyle's choices were his own, too, and I'm not able to hold any of them against him: he had his life to live in his own way in a far different time. 

In today's world we hear of cancel culture, and sometimes in the Sherlockian community, we are  challenged to either accept a flawed human and all their foibles in order to have access to that human's Sherlockian work or to let the human and the work go. The lines can get very blurry then as well. I don't even pretend to have the answers. Sometimes I choose the flawed human, sometimes I choose the letting go. My instincts tell me which is best for me at the time; I seem to just know. It is as Sherlock Holmes said,

 "It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact."

I can't believe the words of Sherlock Holmes, using them at times as part of my moral compass, and yet not have respect for Doyle. They are his words, too, after all. And I'm grateful for them.

"My Collection of M's is a Fine One"

 

"My collection of M's is a fine one," said he.

 

"My collection of M's is a fine one," said he.  "Moriarty himself is enough to make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of abominable memory, and Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross, and, finally, here is our friend of to-night."

 Sherlock Holmes mulling over his M book always comes to my mind when I briefly consider cleaning out my Dropbox folder of Holmesian files. As I share a Dropbox with my better half, my folders begin with M, including the biggest folder in my Dropbox, Margie SH Archive. I started saving some things in this folder many years ago, long before I knew Holmes and his creator were going to be such a big part of my life, and long before I had access to the kind of resources now easily available on the internet. Every now and then, I get the foolish idea I should simply delete most of the things in the file. 

There is nothing rare there. Some of the files have not been opened in a decade. And, yet, when it comes to deleting them, I can't make myself do it. There was a time when I deleted with abandon but something happened awhile back to my brain and now I'm stuck. I have, to some degree, the same problem Holmes had, as described by Watson in "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual":

Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics, which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish, or in even less desirable places.  But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them, for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy, during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving, save from the sofa to the table.  Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.

My butter dish is 98% spotless (The husband sometimes leaves toast crumbs!) and my files are all sorted into categories in specific folders in a timely manner, but they can not, on no account, be deleted. Sometimes a duplicate will turn up when I've forgotten I saved the same document or photo four or five years ago. I have trouble deleting the duplicate. A few old things I have can't be found too easily anymore, like a monstrous and wondrous spreadsheet which begins with:

"Just the Facts"  Canonical Database version 10.1      © 2004-2012  Joseph E. Dierkes

Welcome to the latest version of the Canonical Database!   This is a genuine work in progress, and future versions with even greater accuracy and more detail will be made available as time permits. Be sure to visit this website often to check for the latest updates.  It was created with Microsoft's Excel 97 software, is named "Just_the_Facts_V10.1.xls", and is sorted into "Doubleday Order"  (the order as given in "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" vols 1 & 2).

I realize a serious collector would look at my files and say with a justifiably haughty sneer, "Amateur." True, but still. It is my stuff and I want it. I try to keep the main folders to a minimum:

 The system is not perfect. Somewhere along the way, I lost my files for The Sound of the Baskervilles for 2007-2014. I want to cry when I think about it. I don't know what happened. The ones titled My Special Projects and  Reference Materials actually need to be about a dozen more separate folders but it all starts feeling too messy if I add any more separation. I keep trying for the neatness Watson longed for.

These files don't include any of my fiction writing/editing projects, or any work I've done for The Arthur Conan Doyle Society. Those files are in a separate Margie Writing Archive. I guess I should be grateful I don't have to keep all this stuff on paper. I know there are Sherlockians with mountains of paper files. I envy them in many ways. But, as said before, I am an amateur. My M files won't be going to any library archives anywhere.  They will just be here, making me happy. 

Holmes ends his thoughts about his M file with "...here is our friend of to-night." My files have my Sherlockian friends in them--papers, photos, quizzes, blog posts, etc. It makes me feel good anytime I look in the files and I see names I care about. 

Whenever I feel too much darkness around, I can open an M file and get a 7% solution of happy, like this:

I think Watson would understand. I have a feeling a certain dispatch box wasn't exactly small.

You may do what you like, Doctor...

'You may do what you like, Doctor.'

 

 

 

Towards the end of A Study in Scarlet, Holmes explains his reasoning which allowed him to identify and corral Jefferson Hope. It is a great moment because it is, as far as I can tell, the first time Watson thinks about writing an account of Sherlock Holmes for publication:

'It is wonderful!' I cried.  'Your merits should be publicly recognized. You should publish an account of the case. If you won't, I will for you.' 'You may do what you like, Doctor,' he answered.

 Of course, Holmes didn't exactly mean what he said; we know he complained about Watson's writings on more than one occasion, often slowing the publication of a particular adventure, or preventing the publication entirely with his "own aversion to publicity." I've thought a great deal recently about Holmes giving Watson carte blanche as I've worked on first draft edits for the submissions to the new anthology, Sherlock Holmes: Into the Fire. 

I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking, reading, and researching questions such as: Did Holmes mean he was undercover all of 1912 when he told Watson  in August 1914 he had been undercover for two years as Altamont ("It has cost me two years, Watson, but they have not been devoid of excitement.") 

A specific plot point in one of the tales for Fire depends on historical events in 1912. Can Holmes be available to do something for two to three days in early 1912? I laugh a little when I type this because I know for sure Arthur Conan Doyle wouldn't care about the question. Note this paragraph from his How I Write My Books article in The Strand Magazine (December 1924):

In short stories it has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter If I can hold my readers? I claim that I may make my own conditions, and I do so. I have taken liberties in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I have been told, for example, that in "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," half the characters would have been in jail and the other half warned off the Turf for ever. That does not trouble me in the least when the story is admittedly a fantasy.

His declaration is followed immediately with "It is otherwise where history is brought in. Even in a short story one should be accurate there." I decided to agree with him. The author will keep the historical events of 1912 in place in her story, and we will accept the fantasy of Holmes being available in early 1912 for three days. 

Playing the Sherlockian "game" gets complicated at times. Of course, we know (all too well) half the fun of Sherlockiana is found in such complications.  These sorts of questions are, for me, the fun part of serving as editor for a new collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures.

The copy editing is another thing entirely, and, honestly, rarely as much fun. Fortunately for me, the authors contributing to the project are doing good work. The not-as-fun part is not as drawn out as it could be otherwise. Grammar, spelling and punctuation must be seen to as best we can. I have a jingle I sometimes repeat; it is also on a sticky note on my computer:

Anyway, it was so very like that there and it was just because of that passive verb especially what it had been.

The jingle is a reminder of a few writing evils I search for when reading the texts. Doyle doesn't mention copy editing in his article about how he writes. No great surprise there. Watson's wife does call her husband "James" rather than John.

I do wish we could match Doyle for speed in the creation of the book:

As I grow older I lose some power of sustained effort, but I remember that I once did ten thousand words of "The Refugees" in twenty-four hours. It was the part where the Grand Monarch was between his two mistresses, and contains as sustained an effort as I have ever made. Twice I have written forty-thousand-word pamphlets in a week, but in each case I was sustained by a burning indignation, which is the best of all driving power.

The world today is full of burning indignation, especially on social media. I have a feeling if Doyle were writing now, the energy of his fire might be expended in shorter posts rather than 40,000 word pamphlets. I think we will continue to plod along, trying to do good work, leaving the burning indignation to others.

Well, except when it comes to the over use of the word that in a text. I sometimes feel a little burn then. Doyle uses that at least five times in the two inset paragraphs I've quoted here. Two of them are unnecessary and one is part of sentence which should be rewritten.  In the least, I would ask him to tidy up the "...it has always seemed to me that so long as you produce...". 

I imagine he would tell me to bugger off.

A False Facade, Dr. Watson's Agency & AI

A little, wizened man darted out.

Sidney Paget's drawing from "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" at the point when Sherlock Holmes's trick pulls the despicable Jonas Oldacre out of hiding  sometimes makes me think of The Wizard of Oz, and the revelation that the mighty wizard is just another man not telling the truth. Perhaps the wizard is not as despicable as Oldacre, but he still is a fraud--a fraud hiding behind a facade. 

This fraud behind a facade has been on my mind of late due to the information I read in the news and on social media about AI creation and use. The revelation that the work of many writers was stolen to train AI is maddening. Another particularly sad truth: publishers are selling author's work to the AI companies without the author's consent or compensation. The entirety of the situation is overwhelming to an individual like me but I still care very much about the writers whose works are appropriated.

My writing is on a very small scale, mostly niche, and often pastiche particularly inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle. In a recent group discussion about the use of AI in fiction writing I was asked if there are any real differences between using another writer's characters to write a story and using AI to write a story. I think there are many differences, mostly having to do with permissions and legalities, but in the most basic sense the difference between the two is that a pastiche writer may be writing a story about known characters but she is actually writing the words and hopefully writing with intent, with skill,  and with respect for the creator of the characters. AI is gluing together words from many sources, words that may or may not make sense.

As for respect, I would never use another writer's characters if the characters were not in the public domain, or if I did not have specific written permission from the copyright holder if needed. Some people seem to dismiss the idea of public domain and the rules surrounding the use of literature in the public domain. They seemingly see little difference between the use of public domain characters for pastiche and the AI harvesting of language from everywhere and everyone. The nuances of the issue keep rolling around in my head. I can't help but wonder what Arthur Conan Doyle would think about it all.

I look at the preceding paragraphs and I'm surprised at what I've written. I didn't sit down here to talk about the AI travesty; I planned to write about something else that has been taking up space in my head for a long time. (I use this blog to think out loud, if you will.) Today, I thought I was going to think about something Dr. Chris Pittard said in a Zoom meeting about a year ago as part of a discussion with Oxford Worlds' Classics editors for the new Sherlock Holmes volumes. 

He mentioned the ending of "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" with an interesting thought about Sherlock Holmes's last statement:

"I fancy that for some few years you will find your time very fully occupied," said he. "By the way, what was it you put into the wood-pile besides your old trousers? A dead dog, or rabbits, or what? You won't tell? Dear me, how very unkind of you! Well, well, I dare say that a couple of rabbits would account both for the blood and for the charred ashes. If ever you write an account, Watson, you can make rabbits serve your turn." (Emphasis mine.)

 Dr. Pittard talked briefly about how the relationship between Holmes and Watson had evolved by the time of NORW, and how Holmes's consideration of Watson's writings had changed. He noted Holmes makes the writing of the account to be Watson's choice, and Watson can decide to end the story as he desires, including simply stating the bones were those of rabbits, even if he did not know for sure. Dr. Pittard discusses how this statement indicates how much Watson's agency within the relationship had changed from the earlier days.

I have read that paragraph many times and this thought about Watson's agency never crossed my mind. Now. I'm interested in combing through the time period where NORW falls and see if I can find more examples of Watson's role growing larger. The change is interesting; Dr. Pittard's thoughts are interesting. It is, as Christopher Redmond wrote in Canadian Holmes in 2009 (Vol 31, Number 4, p.2), the "...sort of thing that in a Canonical context would give us the opportunity to spend many happy hours creating Sherlockian papers."

When thinking about Watson's ways overall, I think it is safe to say he does not put on a false facade. Watson tells us when he has changed something, and he tells us when he can't remember something. He is honest about any deliberate changes or ambiguity. In an era of writing disarray, it is comforting to know we can trust Dr. Watson.

As for the AI thieves, I can only quote Sherlock Holmes, "Dear me, how very unkind of you!" To be honest, I would like to say something much harsher. Much harsher, indeed.

GRATITUDE FOR THE PEG FILLERS

 

I'll fill a vacant peg, then.

    I've always loved the opening of "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" when Holmes shows up, unexpectedly at near midnight, invites himself to stay over for the night, and then proceeds to keep an exhausted Watson up for a while longer to explain the case the two of them will work on in a few hours. Exhausted Watson perks right up, of course, because Sherlock Holmes is usually the most interesting and invigorating thing in the room. Watson's tiredness dissipates and he is ready for whatever "exceptional features of interest" are waiting for them in Aldershot. Holmes sometimes fills a vacancy like no one else quite can. 

    This past week I felt Watson's weariness. It had been a long week of too many tasks, and a 48 hour road trip with two young dogs, and a painful accidental head bash with some lasting side effects. I needed something to help the weariness dissipate. I needed some features of interest. And while Sherlock Holmes did not turn up on my doorstep at midnight, he did send some wonderful envoys to my desktop: the always engaging discussion leader Bob Katz and the rest of the Crew of the Barque Lone Star; the Worldwide Doyle 2024 speakers of wonder: Ross Davies, Mark Jones, Paul Chapman, and Mattias Boström; and the inimitable Monica Schmidt in the company of The Bimetallic Question. 

    They brought enough Sherlock Holmes (and Arthur Conan Doyle) to "fill a vacant peg, then." Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, "Smack! smack! smack! Three gone before you could wink!" 

    Sunday: As part of the many  fun parts of a Barque Lone Star meeting, Bob Katz asked some very leading questions about the major  characters of "The Problem of Thor Bridge." He had the Zoom audience in his hands; the man is a natural born speaker and leader. I'm still thinking about his idea that with THOR, Doyle created an outdoor locked-room mystery. This idea never, ever would have occurred to me. It is a bloody brilliant bit of thinking and I'm still pondering it these several days later.

    Monday: As a part of Worldwide Doyle 2024, Ross Davies, Mark Jones and Paul Chapman presented a wonderful program about Doyle, his (sometimes unwelcome) involvement with the British military, his caring for the everyday soldier, and how the bicycle shaped his thinking in many ways. The group then surprised the audience with the reveal of a tantalizing photo (of Sherlock Holmes?!) from the Doyle Salisbury Plain photo album. I can hardly wait for my postcards adorned with the photo to arrive from Portsmouth.

 

    Tuesday morning: Worldwide Doyle 2024 offered another bit of excellence, Mattias Boström presenting"Was Killing Sherlock Holmes a Stroke of Genius?" Mattias has a gift for imparting a lot of information, including statistics, in the most genial and accessible way. He, step by step, explained how the appreciation for Sherlock Holmes grew, slowly but steadily, up to the point of "The Final Problem" and how it grew astronomically after Holmes's "death", especially as the lines between Sherlock Holmes being a fictional character and a real person started to blur. Mattias explained something I did not understand very well before: Arthur Conan Doyle didn't always know what the public thought about his work. For example, Mattias explained how Doyle didn't understand that his initial popularity in the United States was not due to Sherlock Holmes, but due to the pirated printings of Micah Clarke instead. I could listen to Mattias talk all day and I hope to someday have the opportunity. 

Tuesday afternoon: On to the The Bimetallic Question meeting and the chance to listen to the brilliant Monica Schmidt explain how one goes about playing cricket.  I've been trying to get to a Bimetallic Question meeting for ages but I have trouble making the 4PM (Pacific Time) work for me. (I'm especially disappointed to have missed the recent The Stark Munro Letters discussion--it is one of my favorite books.) This week was a good time for it finally to work out. I hear of Monica everywhere because she does so many good things for the world of Sherlockiana. This presentation was certainly no exception.  Thanks to Monica's well delivered Cricket-101 program, I have a vague understanding of the game and I will have a better understanding of Doyle's history, and the context of his letters when he writes about his cricket experiences. Now that I do understand more, I plan to spend an afternoon rereading Doyle's letters about his cricket experiences. The letters will certainly prove more interesting to me than they were before.

Now, it is Wednesday evening. I'm still thinking about what I've learned over the past few days. I have a stack of notes to sort out; reading them again will be fun. I'm feeling a more energized and inspired, thanks to Sherlock Holmes and his representatives. I'm ready to return to my Sherlockian writing after a few days away, away physically and mentally.

OK, I've rattled on a bit here. I'm glad to be feeling more normal. I'm also having a John Watson style moment: 

"In the whirl of our incessant activity it has often been difficult for me, as the reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those final details which the curious might expect..."--SOLI

 

Where are we going to now?

 "Where are we going to now?' I asked, as we left the office.

 The Paget illustration and the quote above are from "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty." I was poking around in that Sherlock Holmes case this morning trying to sort out when the events of the case likely occurred. Oh, do not take that the wrong way. I was not attempting to discern Watson's chronology. I was simply rereading the opening of the story followed by the notes of several Sherlockian chronologists as to their thoughts upon the matter. A comparison of sources indicates the major chronologists do not agree as to the dates but that is hardly surprising. Of the ones I generally consult, they mostly agree the events occurred in July, but vary between 1887, 1888 and 1889. Why am I spending time on this? Because, like Watson, I need to know "Where are we going to now?"

I'm at the beginning of writing a Sherlock Holmes story, my first new one in six months. The first part of my (possibly unnecessarily laborious) process is to sort out the "where" of my story: where are we in the Holmes/Watson relationship, where are we in the natural aging of two men, where are we in relation to other cases just finished and those soon to come up? The Holmes and Watson of A Study in Scarlet certainly are not the Holmes and Watson of The Hound of the Baskervilles or of "His Last Bow." Where we are matters.

I don't want Holmes and Watson to be caricatures. I want their actions and words to make sense in relation to what we know about them. I want them to behave in keeping with their ages and changes in circumstances. As Watson said in HOUN, "I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing." And that is it exactly. Watson does not think and behave in HOUN like he did in STUD. I believe if a writer wants to create a Holmes and Watson story that has the breath of life about it, that feels real, the writer must know clearly where we are going to now.

The brief I'm working to requires my story to be inspired by the events of Doyle's "The Leather Funnel." FUNN (as I'm dubbing it for now with thanks to Jay Finley Christ for the training) requires a look at psychometry, and what happens when we dream. How does this fit with a Sherlock Holmes who said "No ghosts need apply"? Well, the same Sherlock Holmes said:

I shall sit in that room and see if its atmosphere brings me inspiration. I'm a believer in the genius loci.  You smile, friend Watson. Well, we shall see.

Are those opposing statements? Perhaps not. The ghost statement comes from "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire." He said the other, the belief in the  genius loci, during the events of The Valley of Fear.  Understanding where Holmes was in time when he made each of those statements will help me to write a better story. And it will help me to make a decision of where to place Holmes and Watson for the new work. 

For some reason unknown to my conscious mind, I have a habit of starting Holmes and Watson stories right after the events of REDH, or right after the events of EMPT.  Will this new story fit in one of those places? I don't know yet.

I know many writers will think me foolish for all this contemplating and will write a half dozen tales while I dither. I can't seem to work any other way. I can't write until I know where we are going now.

Go ahead and smile, friend. I'm smiling, too. We shall see how well it works out.

 

 

 

 

 

Get out the cherry wood: it is time to be disputatious

 

"You have erred, perhaps,' he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs, and lighting with it the long cherry wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood - "you have erred, perhaps, in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing."

I always feel a lot of empathy for Watson when Sherlock Holmes decides to be "disputatious" mostly by being critical of Watson's writings. I can imagine Holmes's tone and diction. As one who struggles to write stories with "colour and life," I can also imagine Watson's chagrin. He had not erred, of course, and, as we know, Holmes came to appreciate Watson's words, going so far as to admit Watson had "some power of selection" and that we must look upon him  "as a man of letters" who, as a chronicler, was "always of use."

Holmes's words have been on my mind of late as I do some of the first editing work for the new anthology. It is not always easy to know where to draw the lines. How does one know how much is too much "colour and life" and how much is too little "severe reasoning?" A good Sherlockian tale must have a balance.  Defining the balance is subjective as hell. 

It was quite easy this week for me to feel disputatious when I read a Sherlock Holmes story within the covers of a major magazine that included something I would heartily discourage in any story I edited: Sherlock Holmes was in an Inverness coat and deerstalker while on a case in the heart of London. Now, I hear the people who will say "And what is wrong with that?" and I'm sure they are correct; it is a vision a modern reader likely accepts without question. 

But this disputatious editor can't see including those words in a traditional Sherlock Holmes adventure. In fact this narrow-minded editor doesn't like to include words that Doyle never used in the Canon. I read a pastiche recently wherein Watson said something about "Holmesian reasoning." There is nothing inherently wrong with those words but I would have recommended removing them from the text. I can't imagine Watson saying "Holmesian" anymore than I can imagine him referring (as I read recently in a supposedly traditional story collection) to Mycroft Holmes as "Sherlock's brother." Canon Watson does not call Holmes by his first name. A search at the Arthur Conan Doyle encyclopaedia tells me that "Sherlock's" does not appear anywhere in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes fiction. It tells me Inverness, Holmesian and deerstalker are not found either. (And don't get me started on Irene Adler being around all the time.)

I realize, however, that a good writer can use those words and still write an excellent story. My task becomes how to be like Watson. I need "some power of selection" as I attempt shape a book readers will enjoy. Sometimes it as Watson answered another one of Holmes's criticisms: "But the romance was there" and "I could not tamper with the facts."

I must not, disputatiously or otherwise, tamper too much.

 

 

"I PICKED UP A MAGAZINE..."

"Then I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion munched silently at his toast."

Watson only uses the word "magazine" once in the Canon, when, over breakfast, he famously declared an article to be "ineffable twaddle" before he knew the thing had in fact been written by Sherlock Holmes. In my own head canon, the magazine became an issue of the Strand, of course, because when the lines blur between reality and fiction, the only magazine of any importance in the world of Holmes and Watson is the Strand. Even now, when I know better--the Strand did not appear until January 1891--I still imagine Watson holding one of those blue covers not long after his arrival at Baker Street. 

Although I've read information about the Strand from different sources over the years, very little of the information stuck with me other than very limited basics, and, of course, Greenhough Smith's often repeated quote about Doyle's first Holmes short stories being "...a godsend in the shape of a story that brought a gleam of happiness into the despairing life of this weary editor."

This week, however, I read an interesting essay that allowed me to better understand the Strand's place in British society. The generous Sherlockian book man and artist Jeff Decker sent two lovely volumes to me from the London Folio Society (1992): Short Stories from the 'Strand' and Crime Stories from the 'Strand.'  The introduction to the short story collection by Frank Delaney presented in a clear and distinct way how the evolution of the Strand shaped the reading habits of a populace. 

Delaney surprised me with:

If this suggestion of wide influence on British life seems unrigorous, consider the circulation. Just before the first world war, an estimated two million readers saw each copy, with no competition as yet from radio or television. Hardly an adult of measurable literacy could have been unalert to the magazine's existence. Therefore, in its pages we may at least glimpse, as in a museum, what Britain liked popularly to think and talk about in the first half of this [the twentieth] century.

Two million readers for each copy is not a shabby circulation number even by today's standards. And no wonder Greenhough Smith was weary. Delaney notes that in just the first ten years of Greenhough Smith's long tenure, he received forty thousand manuscripts of which he printed eighteen thousand from six thousand authors. I've realized how limited my thinking has been about the Strand, believing it to be, mostly in an abstract way, comprised of Arthur Conan Doyle and whatever few others. 

My thinking had allocated Doyle's numbers (according to the always indispensable Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia, the Strand published "...no less than 121 short stories, 70 articles, 9 novels, 2 interview and 1 poem by Arthur Conan Doyle.") as being the driver of the publication. Delaney's statistics have me thinking more clearly about Arthur Conan Doyle's place within those pages. While he certainly was extremely important to the magazine's success, it was not all about him and Holmes. 

A look at some of the other names that graced those pages makes it clear that although many of the popular writers of the period are now ignored and often forgotten, there are those that most certainly are not. In addition to Doyle, we can get to name dropping: P. G. Wodehouse, Graham Greene, John Steinbeck, D. H. Lawrence, Jerome K. Jerome, O. Henry, Dorothy Parker, Pearl S. Buck, Rudyard Kipling, etc, etc. Delaney explains that the Strand's policy of paying well and illustrating nicely attracted some of the best. While it hardly intended to publish great literature, more than one Nobel Prize winner is represented the Strand.

The Strand's philosophy,  as set by founder George Newnes,  was to have "content to plod on, year after year, giving wholesome and harmless entertainment to crowds of hard-working people craving for a little fun and amusement." As a Sherlockian, I can get behind that idea. Isn't it at least partially the reason we stay so enamored with Watson's words?  Well, except maybe for the wholesome bit. Have you seen what the Guttersnipes are doing with that yellow back novel prompt?

Dr. Watson, A Yellow-Backed Novel, and A Frisky Matron

 

I tried to interest myself in a yellow-backed novel.

Tonight I found myself avoiding the real work by "doing research."  The rabbit-warren I fell into was entirely Dr. Watson's fault. While searching for something that might have actually helped me accomplish my real task, I stumbled across Watson trying to interest himself in that  yellow-backed novel. You know, the one he eventually flung across the room because:

"The puny plot of the story was so thin, however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the fiction to the fact..."

Of course I know what a yellow-backed novel is, but, in the spirit of my procrastination-fueled research, I took Les Klinger's annotated down from the shelf to review his note concerning Watson's reading in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery." As always, his work was interesting to consider:

A novel usually bound in vividly illustrated  yellow boards, intended for railway travellers. Also known as "sensation novels," books of this genre revelled in stories of adultery, bigamy, murder, and illegitimacy. For example, In Mary Elizabeth (M.E.) Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), the heroine abandons her child, murders her husband, and considers poisoning her second husband. Other very popular works were Wilkie Collin's The Woman in White (1860) and Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood's East Lynne (1861). Sensation novels were in many ways precursors to thriller and even detective fiction.

Now, I should have stopped right there and went back to the real work. But, no. In the spirit of my membership in the The Baker Street Guttersnipes: The Society for the Canonically Coarse, I started laughing at the use of the phrase "...through which we were groping..."; I wondered if he were feeling a little Canonically Coarse when he wrote it. And then I realized that I had never actually looked at a real yellow-backed novel from Watson's era. Time for a Google search. There was nothing else to do. (Well, other than going back to work.)

I quickly found a treasure trove of yellow-backed pages but I settled on viewing a nice collection at Emory Center for Digital Scholarship | Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

Some of the titles are an absolute delight: 

• Sir Harry and the Widows, or, Nothing hazard, Nothing Lose, a Love Story, Humorous and Pathetic
• Flower and Weed and Other Tales
• A Mental Struggle
• Princess Napraxine
• Moths
• Puck, His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies
• Uncle Ezekiel and his Exploits on Two Continents
• Gerard, or, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, a Novel
  

Sounds very much like life in 2024, yes?  I think my favorite though was the simply titled A Frisky Matron. I'm willing to bet A Frisky Matron would sell better on Amazon than most "literature." (It is probably already there. I didn't look.)

Maybe the Guttersnipes should sponsor a writing contest: Who can write the best short story inspired by the title "A Frisky Matron for Dr. Watson." I may go suggest it. 

 

Poor Watson, he didn't have the internet in his pocket to help him waste his time while he waited for Holmes to return. But if the internet had existed then he might never have written a word at all and my life would have been half as much fun as it is now.