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After taking June and July away from the world of Arthur Conan Doyle (except for a little work for the Blue John Gap Project), I'm enjoying finding my way back in August. The first two weeks I spent on the JHWS Treasure Hunt. It was good fun to poke around in the Sherlockian Canon with my team members, finding old bits I remember well and some I had forgotten. In that process I was reminded how skilled Doyle was at crafting interesting story openings, including the arrival of the "unhappy John Hector McFarlane" above.
His skill with openings certainly extends out of the Sherlockian Canon and into his other work. More than once, I've stopped reading a story in order to reread the opening paragraphs and admire how Doyle crafted a scene. He used a deft touch to show the reader what the people in the story were like. I'm fascinated by how effortless he makes it seem. Two of my favorites, oddly enough, come from Doyle writing about photography.
The first, After Cormorants with a Camera, begins:
It was about the end of July that my old friend "Chawles" dropped in upon me in Edinburgh. We always called him "Chawles" though no one could ever tell why, as his name is Thomas. Unshackled by a profession, and a keen shot, he is endeavouring to vary the humdrum monotony of ordinary sport, either by the discovery of some fresh game or by devising new means of circumventing the old. He disclosed his latest project amid clouds of tobacco smoke:- "The Isle of May, my boy! That's the place for this year! None of your tame rabbits and semi-civilised pheasants over there; but fine, old, pre-Adamite cormorants 'with a most ancient and fish-like smell.' That's where a fellow can knock the cobwebs out of him, Bob! By the way, old man," he continued, glancing at my camera and batch of printing-frames cooking in the sunshine, "why not come along? It's the very place for you. Think of the old black cliffs, the caves, the basalt, and all that sort of thing. Bring your filthy paraphernalia along with you. Start on Wednesday and we shall be back by Saturday night. Why not? Say 'yes' and it's a fixture."
Why not, indeed? The University session was over, my friends out of town, Princes-street a howling wilderness, and I in need of a change. The Isle of May seemed to offer "fresh fields and pastures new" both for myself and to my camera.
"Well, 'Chawles,' " I said, "if you won't drink my cyanide or 'fiddle' with my plate-carriers, and will promise to conduct yourself generally like a respectable christian, I'm your man."
"Done with you!" said "Chawles," reaching over his hand to ratify the bargain. "That is a fixture then."
"Couldn't we get another fellow?" said I. "We'd have room to quarrel then." Who could we get! This was a question easier to ask than to answer. There was Singleton, but he didn't drink; there was Jack Hawkins, but he drank too much; then there was Holmes, but he neither smoked nor drank; while Godfrey's continual wails about his pipe were fatal to peace and quietness. Who should it be? "Happy thought!" said I. "Who d'ye think I met in town today? The Doctor! He is our man!"
When I first became aware of this story, I read the opening several times before I finished the rest of it. Doyle makes me want to go on the trip, and I already like Chawles and, of course, I like the doctor. In Doyle's world, the doctor usually is our man. And what an astute assessment of human nature: "Couldn't we get another fellow?" said I. "We'd have room to
quarrel then." It is always good for a group of people to have some room to quarrel, just in case. At this very moment, I don't remember the rest of the story although I've read it at least twice. But this beginning? I know it and it makes me laugh every time I read it.
The second, Dry Plates on a Wet Moor, begins:
My esteemed friend, whom I shall call the "Commodore," as he is known to a small circle under that sobriquet, is a man who is always toiling painfully along some twenty years in the rear of the main body of the human family. I am sure he will not take umbrage at my remark, but rather be the first to acknowledge its truth. Railways and telegraphs have gradually begun to overcome the vis inertice of the Commodore's mind and to obtrude themselves as undeniable facts, but that is apparently the last concession which he will allow to progress, and he fiercely resents any allusion to telephones, electric lights, and other departures from the ways of our ancestors. He has the courage of his convictions, too, as is to be seen by the shares in which he eagerly invests, having at last made up his mind that, as a lighting power, coal gas is preferable to oil. This being the character of the man, it is not surprising that as a photographer he is an ardent supporter of collodion, and revels in every process which the rest of the fraternity have agreed to abandon. There is something majestic in his conservative scorn for improvement, and he looks upon a gelatine-bromide plate very much as a chevalier of the old regime might have gazed upon a bonnet rouge of the republic. Still, those who have seen the Commodore's results will allow that he has something to justify him in his opinions, and that skillful manipulation is independent of any process.
When the Commodore strode into my apartment in the middle of August, and interrupted me in retouching a batch of plates, I knew that something was up. He is not a demonstrative man; on the contrary, his emotions are all deeply seated and seldom show upon the surface, but it was evident that he was in high spirits and bursting with some piece of information. I mischievously left him to simmer for some time upon a chair, while I finished my retouching.
"Well, Commodore," I said at last, "what is it?"
The murder was soon out. The office were to have a holiday after their ten months servitude at the desk — only for three days, it is true but still a holiday. The Commodore had been brushing up his fossil apparatus, and was bent upon a short campaign among the wilds. He had come up to know if I would accompany him. Dartmoor was to be the destination, and the train started within an hour and a half.
Don't we all have a friend like this? The one we might affectionately call a Luddite with a shake of our head. I was immediately intrigued by the Commodore's sobriquet. Obviously, he is not really a military man. A three-day holiday on the moor--what could possibly go wrong? For those of us that read Sherlock Holmes, we know a lot can go wrong on the moor. This opening drew me right in.
I'll be ready soon to start a new manuscript having to do with Doyle's Round the Fire stories. I won't forget what he has taught me about how to set a stage for a reader. As Holmes tells Watson in "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" once Lestrade and the unhappy McFarlane depart, "... But it is evident to me that the logical way to approach the case is to begin by trying to throw some light upon the first..."; I will try to do the same.
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