A MAN WHOM I SHOULD BE PROUD TO DO BUSINESS WITH

An impression like a fine bundle of telegraph wires ran down the centre of it.

"A criminal who was capable of such a thought is a man whom I should be proud to do business with. We will leave this question undecided and hark back to our morass again, for we have left a good deal unexplored." --Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Priory School"

The end of this month marks a year I've been immersed in the life and works of Arthur Conan Doyle. In that time, I feel like I've read, studied and learned so much but I know I've hardly scratched the surface of Doyle's work. I'm not sure I've even scratched the surface of understanding the man himself. He was capable of so much and, like Holmes and his theoretical tire-switching criminal, I find myself thinking Doyle is a man whom "...I should be proud to do business with."

In my year of study, I've read at least 4,000 book pages by or about Doyle. I know there are more but those are only the ones I can easily count. The count doesn't include rereading or one-off, stand-alone articles or essays. In the same period, I've written eight Doyle-inspired short stories. I plan to write five more, hopefully at a little faster rate than last year. I reread often as I worry about not retaining enough of what I've read. I need the retention in order to do the work well. 

This week I finally finished a short story that I've agonized over for about twelve weeks.  "The Perishable Hours" is a gothic story inspired by Doyle's  "Round the Fire. I. - The Story of the Beetle Hunter" with a bit of a character backstory from The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter. As I read through my story text for the billionth time this week, I saw that it had inspiration from more than the two most-obvious and intended Doyle stories. 

After a hard look, I realized additional influences for the story included:

The Stark Munro Letters

"After Cormorants With a Camera"

"The Adventure of the Speckled Band"

"The Story of the Brazilian Cat"

A Study in Scarlet

The Hound of the Baskervilles

"The Adventure of the Empty House"

"The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet"

"The Story of the Latin Tutor"

"The Terror of Blue John Gap"

"The Perishable Hours" is not a Sherlock Holmes story but there is no getting away from the influence of the Sherlockian Canon on my work and I think I'm okay with that. The Canon has been a part of daily life for almost twenty years. Canon may be better classified as second-nature rather than influence by this point.  I believe the influence of The Stark Munro Letters will eventually become second-nature as well. The book is teaching me who Arthur Conan Doyle was as a young adult. I like that young adult very much. I like that book very much. I keep returning to it.

Other influences on my story included a portion of Wordsworth's Prelude and a portion of Longfellow's "Haunted Houses." I think Doyle would approve. The influences of his poetry reading run like telegraph wires down the center of his work. [Full disclosure: I find reading Doyle's poetry a tough go for the most part. I've not read too much of it.]

Actually when considering the total of Doyle's writing output, the truth is I've not read too much of it at all. There is so much of it and I've only so many reading hours left to me. I doubt I will stray much from my rounds of Holmes, Stark Munro, and the stories collected in the Oxford World's Classics Arthur Conan Doyle Gothic Tales. It is an entertaining combination. 

I'm not a Doylean scholar. I think of myself as more of an admiring co-worker. Time to get back to business.

 

 

 

"Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it."

 

"I even embodied it in a small brochure, with the somewhat fantastic title of A Study in Scarlet."'
He shook his head sadly.
"I glanced over it,' said he. 'Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it." 

--Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson, The Sign of Four

As someone trying to find their way to good writing and then, hopefully, to a few appreciative readers, I can imagine Watson's chagrin at Holmes's inability to congratulate him for A Study in Scarlet. I suppose it does help lessen the blow when Holmes goes on to complain about romance being part of the story rather than Watson's writing ability but it had to sting a little.  A kind word from a reader raises a writer's spirits, especially, perhaps, for a writer just beginning to put their work out into the public.

The Arthur Conan Doyle Society certainly lifted my spirits on January 5 when I received Doylean Honors for Excellence in Fiction and Poetry at the society's 2023 awards ceremony. I'm grateful to the society for the recognition. I feel encouraged to continue my work on the Doyle-inspired gothic tales. I work so very slowly it can be easy to lose momentum. This praise for my first gothic tale, "Whitney's Reflection," is wonderful validation that I'm on the right track, even if that track is painfully slow moving.

I was surprised to see that each of the three works acknowledged in the 2022 Fiction and Poetry awards appears in the newly-published Steel True, Blade Straight from Belanger Books. I haven't had a chance to read the book as yet but I have read the other two pieces honored: "The Ascent" by Paul Hiscock and "The Unintended Offenses" by David Marcum. Unlike Holmes, I can certainly congratulate the two gentlemen upon their writings.

"The Ascent", a lovely poetic work, concerns a subject that I've thought about often: the relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and his first wife, Touie. I think Touie is often forgotten about entirely, or relegated to footnote status. I sometimes feel as if Doyle relegated her to footnote status, especially after meeting Jean Leckie,  but then I remember how much he cared for her in many ways over the course of her long illness and how much he grieved in the months following her death. 

 

Hiscock's touching work in Touie's voice gently examines this unevenness in their relationship. I found this part particularly moving:

...I assumed the ascent./We finished together,/Not quite hand in hand./He climbed quietly beside me,/Never leaving my side...

Not quite hand in hand. Brilliant, that.  

Marcum's piece, part Sherlockian pastiche and part what I would deem a Doyle confession of sorts is an interesting bit of fiction.  His imagining of the personal relationships between Doyle, Holmes and Watson shows us one way Doyle might have come to be the literary agent and the ways he might have failed Watson over their long collaboration. The uneasiness between Doyle and Holmes within the story seems to capture the spirit of the real life uneasiness Doyle felt about his most famous creation. 

I found the ending memorable as Doyle struggles with his shame over the way he treated Watson and as he longs for a sign of forgiveness from his deceased friend:

I prayed that he would hear my apology but no sign was forthcoming. He didn't let me know that he understood. There were no whispered words of comfort—simply the eternal wind sighing through the weary trees.

These words seem right as coming from the man who told us "What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.”

Such good work, all round. I am inspired by their work and grateful to be among them.

Tomorrow I return to the story writing, buoyed by the time I spent in New York with the Arthur Conan Doyle Society and the many Sherlockian writers I was lucky enough to speak with over the course of the BSI weekend. I wish I could personally congratulate each one.