When I hear of Sherlock (Doyle, actually) everywhere...

As with most Sherlockians who read a variety of different authors, I often find mentions of Holmes in non-Doylean books I read. Authors can hardly resist "the dog that did nothing in the nighttime" or "when you have eliminated the impossible" or the "three-pipe problem" or "the footprints of a gigantic hound" or the more prosaic "No shit, Sherlock." Over the first few months of this year, almost everything I read had a Holmesian or Doylean reference of some sort. 

Some of the references I remember after I finish the book, most often I don't. Every time it happens, though, I'm always glad to see it. Of this six, the Rupert Hart-Davis and George Lyttelton letters had the most references. I enjoyed these comments the most:

8 March 1956 Lyttelton: "How good Conan Doyle was with names. Jephro Rucastle and Colonel Lysander Stark have a fine villainous ring about them. But, Gosh, how thin some of those stories are. Even the best, e.g. 'The Speckled Band', the house alterations of Dr Grimesby Roylott (another superb name) could hardly have helped raising suspicion. But his women are simple souls mostly, even though one outwitted Sherlock himself."

23 January 1958 Lyttelton: "I have just read Hesketh Pearson's Gilbert--a dreadfully tiresome man--huffy and irascible, and at the same time thinking much of his fame, and despising the achievement which created it. Very like Conan Doyle, who thought highly of A Duet and scorned Sherlock Holmes." 

21 October 1961 Rupert Hart-Davis: "When I was in New York in March I paid £50 for an option to have first look at a full-length biography of Sherlock Holmes, which one of those crazy enthusiasts has compiled from the stories, and now the typescript has arrived--more than 400 pages of it, and my spirit quails a little at the prospect."

25 October 1961 Lyttelton: "I am no judge, but my impressions is that all that clever Holmes investigation--which as you say was rather overdone--has had its day. I too am a fan of the stories (especially Adventures and Memoirs, in which I once could have passed any exam) and S.H. still cuts a brave figure." 

Yes, Sherlock Holmes still cuts a brave figure with me, too. I think I would like to have dinner with these two fellows. I know I've talked about this book too often over the past two months and the kind people listening to me are probably tired of it. I have to stop.

But, quickly, before I stop, here are a couple of wonderful things from the book that have nothing to do with Holmes or Doyle. (Well, not yet anyway.)

These few sentences, written years apart, have inspired me to write a new Sherlockian pastiche:

9 March 1958 Hart-Davis: "I am staying withe octogenarian and stone-deaf (but nevertheless delightful) widow of a tin plate magnate, who lives in this huge and arctic house with her unmarried daughter."

31 October 1957 Lyttelton: "I once asked the late Mr Justice Lewis about Greenwood, and he said it was quite certain Greenwood poisoned his wife (he was a junior for the prosecution) but got off because his daughter swore she had drunk from the relevant bottle of Burgandy. She disliked her father but wasn't going to see him hanged."

And, finally, my favorite quote from the letters:

24 March 1957 Hart-Davis: "Don't you rather like this footnote: 'The remainder of this paragraph, which Coleridge wrote with his gout medicine instead of ink, has faded and is all but illegible." 

Ha! Now wouldn't that inspire some kind of pastiche.