IT MIGHT BE A DESCRIPTION OF WATSON

'Yes, there were two of them. They were, as nearly as possible, captured red-handed. We have their footmarks, we have their description; it's ten to one that we trace them. The first fellow was a bit too active, but the second was caught by the under-gardener, and only got away after a struggle. He was a middle-sized, strongly built man — square jaw, thick neck, moustache, a mask over his eyes.''

That's rather vague,' said Sherlock Holmes. 'Why, it might be a description of Watson!'

  --"The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"

Arthur Conan Doyle didn't spill a lot of ink within the Sherlock Holmes canon describing Watson. We certainly know more about Holmes's appearance. Does it matter? Do we need a lot of description of  Watson in order to appreciate who he is? Do we need a lot of adjectives at all when we read? No less than Mark Twain and George Orwell warned other writers against them.

Doyle certainly used adjectives, and used them well. Consider the introduction of Mary Sutherland in "A Case of Identity"-

He had risen from his chair, and was standing between the parted blinds, gazing down into the dull, neutral-tinted London street. Looking over his shoulder I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess-of-Devonshire fashion over her ear. From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated backwards and forwards, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves the bank, she hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp clang of the bell.

Doyle's craftsmanship sets a stage for the reader with only 123 words including well-chosen adjectives. I appreciate what he can do with an economy of words. As a writing exercise, I typed the quote above without the adjectives. The paragraph still made sense and moved the story along but a richness vanished. Where is the balance between too many and not enough?

My pondering of this question is affected by Proust. I spent six weeks this summer reading Marcel Proust’s Swann's Way, the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time.) Proust is famous, of course, for his long sentences. Many of them in the volume I read (C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation) ran more than 200 words, and one clocks in near 600. 

This does not mean that I did not enjoy reading Proust. He made me think, he made me laugh, he made me angry and once he made me cry. I appreciate his craftsmanship, too. Proust will put 123 words in a sentence before the first comma, with several hundred more words and a lot of commas to follow. 

Neither man is wrong. So, where do I look for inspiration? To them both because they are both masterful story tellers. I do not have the wherewithal to structure like Proust but I can learn from him. I do not have the discipline to structure like Doyle, but I can learn from him.

Earlier this month I spent four days poring over a short story (only 7,700 words), rewriting and rewriting to remove as many adjectives and adverbs as possible. (Yes, I believe Stephen King when it comes to adverbs.) I also axed passive voice constructions and I murdered a few darlings as the old injunction goes. I hope I got the balance right.

In the midst of all this, I read something else that led to many more thoughts about adjectives. Sometimes when the topic is illustrious enough and there are so many possible descriptions, it might be best to cut it to the barest of bones.

At the excellent website Berfrois: Literature, Ideas, Tea,  an intriguing essay by Andre Gerard appeared concerning Doyle's early work and inspirations (including some possible inspirations for Holmes) along with the text of Doyle's "After Cormorants with a Camera."  At the end of the essay, I found this:

About the Authors 

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer. He created Sherlock Holmes.
Andre Gerard is a Canadian writer. He created Fathers: A Literary Anthology.

I had to stop and think about how I would describe Arthur Conan Doyle in a brief author's bio. I don't think I could do it as succinctly as Gerard. It takes a sure hand to describe Doyle in 11 words with the emphasis on Holmes. 

After all, "He was a middle-sized, strongly built man — square jaw, thick neck, moustache,..." with an alphabet soup of letters after his name. The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia has, as part of the header of the home page, "... M.D., Kt, KStJ, D.L., LL.D., Sportsman, Writer, Poet, Politician, Justicer, Spiritualist." Is it lacking without a mention of Holmes?   Certainly there are different purposes between a site header and the end of a blog post but I got lost in a rabbit hole for awhile thinking about how we describe people.

As for Doyle's adjectives, perhaps the situation is as noted in A Life in Letters:  "Sherlock Holmes is a far more vivid presence on the literary landscape than the versatile and intriguing man who created him."

Lovely sentence, that, with excellent adjectives.