WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

"Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the Royal Family of Scandinavia, and to the french republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches."

In an adventure dated in the spring of 1891 Sherlock Holmes tells Watson about his match of wits with Professor Moriarty and the resulting dangers. As we all know, "The Adventure of the Final Problem" ends with Holmes's supposed death. When I first read the story many years ago I found it interesting that Holmes mentions  he is now financially set to the point he could retire if he wished.  In just a few years he had advanced from needing someone to split the rent to being able to make what ever choices he wanted as to where, how, and if he would work.  

In the early years I spent with Holmes, knowing very little of Arthur Conan Doyle, I presumed this point in time in Holmes's life was equal to the point in time with Doyle's life. In my mind, when Holmes had enough funds accumulated to decide if he would work that meant Conan Doyle had enough funds accumulated to decide if he would work. It was a while before I learned to be a Sherlockian and understood the dates in the adventures did not match the dates in real life.

I naively thought everything Holmes ultimately decided everything Doyle. [Full disclosure: I was such a newbie I thought the sixty original Sherlock Holmes stories were written in chronological order, and, even beyond that, I thought that order aligned closely with the Granada episodes. Insert face palm to the head here.]

Later on I believed the one liners I read (and heard):

"Doyle hated Holmes."

"Doyle made enough money from Holmes that he could quit medicine."

 "Doyle made so much money from Holmes he could quit writing Holmes and write other things, things no one read."

"Dole only made money from the Holmes short stories in The Strand Magazine"

"Doyle only made money with Holmes so he had to revive Holmes."

We all know the spiel. None of these things were totally true of course. Life is rarely so absolute.

Doyle did make the decision to leave medicine in 1891 like I thought but that decision had nothing to do with FINA. I finally got it into my memory that although FINA is dated in April-May 1891 (perhaps Doyle's nod to his decision in August 1891), it does not appear in the world until freshly penned and published in 1893.

I looked hard at that old idea that Holmes made it possible for Doyle to leave medicine in 1891 and I had to laugh at my former self.  When Doyle left medicine, exactly three Holmes adventures had seen print: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and "A Scandal in Bohemia." STUD and SIGN had not done particularly well in sales, and SCAN had only been published the month before. One month before.

I've learned that Doyle had severe financial woes as a student and a young doctor and he worked hard to earn a living; he worked hard at doctoring and at writing. By the time SCAN published, he had more than 45 publishing credits to his name, of which at least six were novels. (The output is so great my counting gets sketchy.) By the time SCAN appeared, his hard work was paying off. He could realistically leave medicine and realistically trust he would make enough by writing to support his growing family.

Sorting this out in my mind will be good for me as I approach his other works. I need to stop looking at his work as Holmes-or-Not-Holmes. There is a wealth of work to be mined. Will I like it all? Of course not but I'm going to have fun finding what I do like. And that is enough for me right now.