A LACK OF ORIGINALITY: A COMPLAINT

"Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality..."

I planned to write today about the lack of originality in many Sherlock Holmes pastiches and about my own struggles to find the balance between the well-loved tropes and the odds of being boring. I decided instead to post a bit of satire I wrote on this subject for However Improbable: Being a Scrapbook of Strange Holmesiana, a fun collection from Doyle's Rotary Coffin in 2020.  Yes, the irony of it: I'm repeating myself. 

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Speaking of incidents in the life of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur recalled Mr Gillette's preparation for the presentation of the famous detective on the stage. 'Mr Gillette,' he said, 'wired to me from America asking if he might marry Sherlock Holmes in the play. I replied at once, "Marry him, kill him, or do what you like with him!"-- Daily Mail (8 October 1904, p. 3)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Incorporeal Spirit, Location Unknown
American Exchange, Strand — to be left till called for

My dear Sir,

It is with perhaps a touch of hubris that I attempt to speak to you at this late date, but I’m afraid I must do so, as the situation is becoming an impossible one. The flood-gate you opened with your rashly given permission to Mr. Gillette, and thereafter appropriated by thousands upon thousands, concerning Holmes — ‘Marry him, kill him, or do what you like with him!’ — has left me seriously inconvenienced by you. How is a faithful reader to remain above water in such a deluge? And further, how does one create his own unique contribution to such a collection? Surely almost any effort will lack distinction, as a drop of water must inevitably become indistinguishable from any other drop in an Atlantic or a Niagara. I confess the situation leaves an unpleasant effect upon my mind.

As you yourself noted as long ago as 1926, ‘the public has lost the sense of novelty with Holmes and his methods. This has been helped by the repeated Parodies.’ Indeed. I must note that your permissive attitude towards adaptation certainly has not helped the situation. I grant that this permissiveness with the Holmes stories is not so surprising considering your admission, ‘I have never taken them seriously myself.’ Perhaps you should have taken the adaptation matter more seriously.

Let us consider the first part of your flippant direction, ‘Marry him.’ Here, you give permission to degrade a series of logic-driven adventures into a course of tales forever tinged with romanticism. Well, Sir, I should not offend your intelligence by explaining what is obvious, but you allowed for a man who ‘never loved’ to be contorted into every possible type of romantic entanglement. Actually a few of them may only be possible on the written page, as some laws of physics do matter.

I will omit the onerous details, but even with all my omissions there is enough to startle and amaze. No doubt there exists a tale of romance between Holmes and an injured lady, a black cannibal, a wooden-legged ruffian, a conventional dragon, a wicked earl, and any other horror the human mind can imagine. The desire to combine Holmes and romance stimulates the imagination. As you may remember: where there is no imagination there is no horror. Could you possibly have foreseen the horrific results of this part of your response to Mr. Gillette? Unfortunately, that ’ship has sailed, leaving the faithful reader and aspiring contributor further incommoded.

The unhealthy excitement continues with the second part of your directive: ‘kill him.’ Apparently there is still nothing new under the sun. Your original work included a death for Holmes, and yet you gave permission for it to be done again. And it has been done, and done, and done until your faithful reader despairs of any hope of originality or mystery. Occasionally an author has surrounded the death with outre and sensational accompaniments, but it is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. No new or special features can be drawn from what is now a commonplace little murder, and I find myself absolutely hampered in my plans.

When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals, and you, Sir, despite your nerve and knowledge, went terribly wrong with the final part of your instruction to Mr. Gillette: ‘do what you like with him!’ Could you not anticipate and prevent the inevitable torrent of public participation? What do the public, the great unobservant public, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction?

Instead one is subjected to every imaginable contortion of Holmes and his world. An enormous multitude of individuals took it upon themselves to create their own alternative — each grotesquely improbable, no doubt, but still just conceivable. Were you perhaps encouraged by the judicious stimulation of large cheques sent to you by devious methods?  You might be startled to learn that the Holmes world has become so twisted as to have Dr. Watson competently solving cases. Yes, Watson! And this despite your own insistence that ‘Watson never for one instant as chorus and chronicler transcends his own limitations.’ Not limiting itself to twisting Watson, this public also has Lestrade competently solving cases, as well as the housekeeper, the other Holmes brother, various previous clients, and assorted street urchins. I have never read such rubbish in my life. 

The enthusiasm for creating such ineffable twaddle continues unabated. Any attempt at critical review of this inundation is bound to be lost in the tremendous abyss. So much public attention has now been drawn to the subject of Sherlock Holmes that no good purpose can be served by affecting to disregard what is a common subject for conversation. Therefore now, at the close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your careless persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty to create original extensions or critical exegeses.

Oh, it drives me half mad to think of, and I cannot sleep a wink at night.  I often resort to a large correspondence, twenty or thirty a day, 280 characters at a time, to discuss the matter with others, although no two of them write exactly alike. The correspondents often have a way of wandering into unlikely positions (there are always some lunatics about — it would be a dull world without them), and then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and immaterial?

What then is left? I see no possible solution beyond the laying aside any creative aspirations, and returning to simply rereading the sixty-some oddly original tales you created. I don't think anyone could make much of this choice, but if they should, I will tell them: ‘You work your own method, and I shall work mine.’

Perhaps you see nothing remarkable in my decision to limit myself to only reading your original Sherlock Holmes work on account of your permissive liberality.  But wait a moment! Was this a subtle trap, a clever forecast of coming events? (You have all the cleverness which makes a successful man.) Were you looking far into the future? This is a trick that you are playing upon me. He! he! You are a funny one. Never mind me. I shall stand behind a holly bush and see what I can see.

Pray give my greetings to Mrs Doyle, and believe me to be, my dear fellow,

Very sincerely yours,
A. Prolix Riposte

 

KNOWLEDGE OF LITERATURE. --(sorta) NIL.

Josef Friedrich, A Study in Scarlet, 1907

 

SHERLOCK HOLMES - his limits
1 Knowledge of literature.  - Nil.  2 Knowledge of Philosophy. - Nil. 3 Knowledge of Astronomy. - Nil. 4 Knowledge of Politics. - Feeble. 5 Knowledge of Botany. - Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening. 6 Knowledge of Geology: Practical, but limited.  Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them. 7 Knowledge of Chemistry. - Profound. 8 Knowledge of Anatomy. - Accurate, but unsystematic. 9 Knowledge of Sensational literature.  - Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century. 10 Plays the violin well. 11 Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman. 12 Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Dr. Watson rather famously assessed the limits of Sherlock Holmes as he attempted to discern exactly what Holmes was "...driving at by reconciling all these accomplishments, and discovering a calling which needs them all..." and, as we know, he could not sort it out, eventually tossing his list into the fire. It is just as well since the list proved to be highly inaccurate. We are not told how Watson specifically defined "literature", although he also apparently held a personal definition for "Sensational literature."

Sherlockians have spilled a lot of ink arguing one point or another about the list. I have nothing to add to that considerable body of good work. However, I am interested in Arthur Conan Doyle and what he considered to be literature, sensational or otherwise, within his own work. Much has been written on this topic, too, and especially, perhaps, about his dismissal of the Holmes work as unworthy of the title.

I agree with him. I'm a die hard Holmes fan but I seldom think of the Canon as great literature. I've not had an extensive education in great literature and perhaps I couldn't define it in purely academic terminology but I know it when I read it. Doyle did have an extensive education and he knew it when he read it, too.

Britannica.com defines literature as

a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter.

By that definition, all of Doyle's work is literature. Of course it is in that general sense, but he wanted his work to be more, and certainly more than what today we might call genre fiction—very well done genre fiction, but still.

My thoughts go to a letter he wrote to H. Greenhough Smith after his story, "The Leather Funnel", appeared in The Strand Magazine in June 1903:

That "Leather Funnel" was literature, or as near literature as I can ever produce. It is not right to print such a story two words to the line on each side of an unnecessary illustration. It's bad economy to spoil a £200 story by the intrusion of a 3 guinea engraving.

As near literature as I can ever produce. I realize he was annoyed about the magazine layout and probably exaggerating while in a snit but perhaps he was absolutely right. He only gets near to literature, as he defined it. I first read "The Leather Funnel" in the Oxford World's Classics Arthur Conan Doyle Gothic Tales. I found it to be a well written supernatural tale as many other readers have and I didn't give much thought to it as literature.

I see so much advice to writers on the internet and elsewhere, and so much discussion about what defines literature. I can enjoy Doyle's work without worrying too much about definitions and labels. I can also continue to look to him for inspiration and as a teacher in many ways.

I want to write good short stories. Will they rise to my own definition of great literature? No. But they might be somewhere near to it. I can work hard to write them with some of the characteristics of good literature that I admire. I have a note on my wall that I copied from somewhere. It reads: good fiction is elegant, lyrical and layered. 

I think Doyle would understand.

 

TO REST IN THE FLOWERS ON JULY 7

'There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,' said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. 'It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.'

--Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty"

Arthur Conan Doyle died 92 years ago today. Every year on July 7, I drink a silent toast to him and I hope he found after his death what he believed he would find.

We know from his voluminous writings what his early and later opinions were on the subjects of religion, the existence of God, and the continuation of life after physical death. My first exposure to his thoughts on the subject of religion are the words noted above that he put in the mouth of Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty." I heard these words before I read them because my first introduction to the story came via the Granada episode. (Like many in the Sherlockian world, I came to Holmes via Granada and Jeremy Brett.)

When I first watched Brett portray Holmes in the scene with "rest in the flowers" speech, I was puzzled. Why did it appear in the story? What did it have to do with the plot? Would Sherlock Holmes (with what I knew about him at the time) really say such a thing? Later, when I read "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty" for the first time, I was equally puzzled and left with the same questions.

Over time I came to understand more about Holmes's nature and to see him as a complicated man with many differing (and sometimes competing) kinds of knowledge, beliefs, actions and experiences. The description certainly fits Doyle as well. However, Doyle finally came to an absolute certainty in his beliefs about man, nature and the spiritual. What kind of certainty Holmes came to accept is not so clearly known.

As serendipity would have it on this July 7, I happened to read an analysis of Holmes from the brilliant David Stuart Davies titled "That Great Heart: Considering Holmes as a Metaphysical Detective" published in the current issue of the Sherlock Holmes magazine. Davies's thoughtful and thorough look at Holmes as a metaphysical detective gives me a good understanding of why the "rest in the flowers" speech fits Holmes. Finally! I'm only twenty-five years on from my first questioning read.

I wanted to quote parts of the analysis here to explain why it seems to perfectly answer my questions about the "rest in the flowers" speech but I kept adding and adding to the point I almost had the entire article reproduced here, which is hardly the right thing to do. Do yourself a favor and go read it.

Davies ends his article with "Sherlock Holmes was the best and wisest of men..." and that is true but I think Mr. Davies is among the wise as well.