WORK IS THE BEST ANTIDOTE TO SORROW 

Sherlock Holmes was standing and smiling at me across my study table.

In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than in his words. 'Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,' said he, 'and I have a piece of work for us both to-night which, if we can bring it to a successful conclusion, will in itself justify a man's life on this planet.' In vain I begged him to tell me more. 'You will hear and see enough before morning,' he answered. 'We have three years of the past to discuss. Let that suffice until half past nine, when we start upon the notable adventure of the empty house.' It was indeed like old times when, at that hour, I found myself seated beside him in a hansom, my revolver in my pocket and the thrill of adventure in my heart.--"The Adventure of the Empty House"

Like many Sherlockians, I've often found Arthur Conan Doyle's treatment of the reunion of Holmes and Watson in "The Adventure of the Empty House" to be a bit unbelievable if I'm being kind, or a whole lot ridiculous if I'm not. However the scene contains one of those lines from the canon that is always memorable: "Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson."

When I was new to Doyle and the work, I blithely assumed the sorrow reference meant the death of Mary Morstan for Watson, perhaps written by Doyle after the death of his first wife, Louisa. I was, of course, wrong about all of it.

The matter of Watson's wives is beyond my scope here but certainly from my reading with the Sherlockian Chronologists Guild I know we can not be sure we are talking about Watson's wife much less specifically Mary Morstan. We are not talking about Doyle's response to the death of his wife either. "The Adventure of the Empty House" first published in Collier's magazine in September 1903 (US) and in The Strand Magazine in October 1903 (UK). Louisa Doyle died July 4, 1906.

After reading closely about Doyle's first marriage, I've come to believe that perhaps he would not have written the scene with as much emotional recklessness if he had been writing after the death of his wife.

In Teller of Tales, Daniel Stashower explains how Doyle reacted to the death of his wife:

"...as his wife was laid to rest in Hindhead, the cumulative stresses of the thirteen-year illness sent Conan Doyle to his lowest ebb. Tortured by insomnia, he grew weak and listless. His work ceased. The intestinal complaint of his South Africa days returned to plague him. He carried flowers to his wife's grave and spent dark hours alone with his thoughts. It would be months before he roused himself."

Despite the months of darkness he endured, Doyle did take his own advice. Towards the end of 1906 he threw himself into the George Edalji case, working tirelessly to help the man. The work helped restore him. By September 1907 he was ready to marry again.

He was ready to go on, just as Watson was ready to forget the previous three years, forgive Holmes for the deception, and return to the game, with "...the thrill of adventure in my heart."

Why this rumination on grief and work today? Our household has suffered a loss this week and grief abounds at the moment. Several times in the last three days I've told myself "'work is the best antidote to sorrow' so you might as well get on with it."

Several days ago, before, I planned to write here about the effects of the chronology of Watson's wife/wives on my own work but my heart wasn't in it today. Today seems to be about just one memorable line. 

Hopefully I'll soon feel like returning to the game, with a thrill of adventure in my heart.

 

 

 YOU SAY THAT WE GO ROUND THE SUN

'But the Solar System!' I protested.
'What the deuce is it to me?' he interrupted impatiently: 'you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a penny-worth of difference to me or to my work.'
--Dr Watson & Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

That may be true for you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, but perhaps not quite true for me.  A case in point:

My patient friends have listened to me go on about Arthur Conan Doyle for months as I try to understand his personality and possible motivations behind his writings. During our monthly lunches in the wee British Tea Shop near her office (real Brits baking British food and serving good tea!) my friend C. listens to me go on about it with far more courtesy and interest than I deserve. C. is an expert in several things, including commercial banking, the life of Richard III, and astrology. 

At our lunch in April, she explained to me that in the study of astrology, the where and when of birth matters, and when expands beyond the date to include what time of the day. In other words: where was the place Doyle was born in relation to the stars when he made his appearance?

The where and date are easily known:  Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 may 1859, at Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. Knowing the actual time proved to be a problem; I couldn't find it well-documented anywhere. After some chats on twitter last May with folks I know to be knowledgeable (who were also not sure) I landed at the National Records of Scotland web site which includes a scan of Doyle's birth record.

 

The scan is not easy to read. The handwriting is not clear. After much fretting over the second column, I settled on 4:55 am (4h.55m a.m.)  The scan is offered in black and white at the ACD Encylopedia and it might be a tad easier to read. 

 

 

(A bit of serendipity: The topic came up again this week on twitter. The brilliant Phil Bergem joined the discussion this time. He posted: "The source is the birth registration book for Scotland. Registration District 685 2, entry 367. I make the time recorded as 4:55 am." If Phil says it is 4:55, I believe him.)

 

When C. and I met in May, she  surprised me with a list of traits that might be expected in a person born under the same circumstances as Doyle. From what I've read about him, the list seemed to be a good fit:

 

Sun/Ascendant in Gemini: Intellectual curiosity, sharp mind, quick wit. Enjoys socializing with different types of people. Adaptable and flexible. Excels in communication and convincing people of his own ideas. Once he believes there's nothing left to learn of a situation, boredom sets in and he can become restless.

 

Sun in 1st House: Strong-willed, independent, self-motivated.

 

Moon in Aquarius: Emotionally detached, intelligent, original, independent. Friends are important. Intellect may override feelings.

 

Moon in 9th House:  Yearns to experience different cultures and his worldview (including religious, ethic, moral and philosophical beliefs) is influenced by travel. Emotional well-being tied to educational and intellectual achievements.

Mercury in Taurus: Commonsense approach to situation and values practical ideas.

Mercury in 12th House: Able to get in touch with unconsciousness--may be psychic or intuitive. Has a richly creative imagination, excels in make-believe. Talent in writing fiction or fantasy.

Venus in Aries: Falls in love at first sight. Impatient romantically. Needs a mate who respects his independence.

Venus in 11th House: Love and friendship are of equal importance. Loves intellectual companionship.

Mars in Gemini: Can easily express himself assertively but avoids real conflict. Combines intellect with action. Active and restless mind.

Mars in 1st House: Fiery temperament. Tremendous energy. Impatient.

 

C. explained to me about the influences in some depth. I had to laugh when she said that Doyle may have not always been strongly empathetic and may have been, as one old adage goes, "a mile wide but only inches deep."  I'm not sure about that part but it made me laugh (and think) to hear it. C. is a great lunch companion. 

Doyle might have described his nature in the best possible way in the autobiographical The Stark Munro Letters when he wrote, as Stark:

My father says that I seem to look upon the universe as if it were my property and can't be happy until I know that all is right with it. Well, it does send a glow through me when I seem to catch a glimpse of the light behind the clouds.

I wonder if Doyle's father actually said that to him? I like to think that he did. 

 

(A digression: I'm currently reading a 1928 edition of the book published by John Murray which I quoted here. The emphasis on the word 'does'  caught my eye--it seems unusual for the Doyle works I've read. I also have an 1895 edition published by D. Appleton and Company. There is no emphasis on the word in that printing. Did Doyle actually put an emphasis on it? Argh! I wish I could see the manuscript. Another rabbit hole...)

 

I'm not sure of Doyle's thoughts on Astrology; I've not researched it.  I don't know how he would view this list of possible traits determined from the location of the stars at a point in time. He certainly considered the stars because he told us, again as Stark Munro:

Are you conscious of the restful influence which the stars exert? To me they are the most soothing things in Nature. I am proud to say that I don't know the name of one of them. The glamour and romance would pass away from them if they were all classified and ticketed in one's brain. But when a man is hot and flurried, and full of his own little ruffled dignities and infinitesimal misfortunes, then a star bath is the finest thing in the world.

We have, then, two parts of Doyle: the part that is Sherlock Holmes will not give up precious brain space to store scientific information about the stars as it doesn't help him work, and the part that is Doctor Stark Munro (Doctor Watson?) will not store scientific information about the stars because it robs him of their glamour and romance. 

Well, as C. would tell you, Geminis are known for their dual nature.

 

 

 

 "I DESIRE NO DISTRACTIONS..." BUT THIS HAPPENED

Raymond Pallier in Le Petit Journal illustré

'I am very busy just now, and I desire no distractions,' my friend answered.
--"The Adventure of the Three Students"

I've been working (in theory) on a new story inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sealed Room" for two weeks now. I've written a total of 730 words. I've stayed very busy with other things-- the news, idly doom-scrolling on Twitter, drinking tea, experimenting with non traditional flours in baking, reading Doyle's The Stark Munro Letters, reading John Lithgow's Poet's Corner, having coffee and book discussions twice with Sherlockian friends, arranging possibilities for a program for the Sound of the Baskervilles in December, and a few other things.  In other words: procrastination fueled by distraction. Today, I acknowedged my failings and had the goal of accomplishing a hopefully interesting blog post about Doyle's gift with writing memorable lines.

I had the pleasure recently of listening to Bob Katz lead a discussion for The Crew of the Barque Lone Star on this topic. Bob noted that Doyle could not only write the brilliant lines that are unforgettable ("'Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!'") but he could also write about mundane things in a way that made them memorable ("'It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson,' said a well-known voice.  'I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in.'") 

One of the best examples I could think of is coal-tar derivatives. ("'Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpelier, in the south of France.'") I haven't the faintest idea what a coal-tar derivative is but I never forget that line. 

So, this morning, early, I started a list of the brilliant lines no one ever forgets and a few of the more mundane ones that are not quite as well-remembered but are still great ("'...but I confess that I covet your skull.'") That several hour process led me to the idea that perhaps I should limit my listing to quotes from The Hound of the Baskervilles as Doyle was particularly on fire with great phrasing in that novel. That idea reminded me of a project another Bob (Coghill) did about all the different covers used for HOUN over the years. I stopped what I was doing with the quotes to reread Bob's paper which reminded me that the Arthur Conan Doyle encyclopedia has a section about HOUN covers. I then spent some time looking through those pages.

While there, I came across a set of illustrations for HOUN that I have never paid much attention to, the work of  Raymond Pallier in Le Petit Journal illustré. At that point, all hope I had for seriously accomplishing very much today vanished. These drawings are so different than what I'm accustomed to for HOUN, I got lost in trying to match the illustrations to the specific parts of the tale. This one befuddled me for a minute as I thought it was an execution:

I then realized, of course, it was this: "In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten balk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman.  One towel passed round the throat, and was secured at the back of the pillar."  I had never pictured the moment as being quite like this drawing. If this is accurate, how did Beryl Stapleton survive until rescued? I think her feet need to be on the floor.

Our hero doesn't look at all like I normally imagine him. Holmes's first coat is a bit ill-fitting and unflattering, and he does not wear a deerstalker, but he is quite handsome in his dinner attire. He apparently has a different coat for mucking about in the mire for Stapleton's boot.

It is now three in the afternoon and here I am wondering why my story still only has 730 words. I shall walk a dog and then begin again. I hope I manage to write a memorable line somewhere along the way, perhaps even in this sad tale of a father and son and too many secrets that I will eventually finish. One thing for sure: it will not have anything to do with coal-tar derivatives.

 

 

 

 

  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.

 KNOWING IS EASIER THAN EXPLAINING

Holmes pulled out his watch.

 

"It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it."—Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet" 

This past Saturday I attended my first in-person Sherlockian event since March 2020. Initial awkwardness aside, it was a grand afternoon--a pot-luck picnic in a lovely park with a small beach on Puget Sound and twenty-five members of The Sound of the Baskervilles, my local scion for the past 15 years. I love these people. However, I encountered a small difficulty when attempting to answer the question "So, what are you doing with yourself?" 

How to explain my falling off into an Arthur Conan Doyle rabbit hole of epic proportions is a tough task; I am quite sure I blathered. The kind SOBs were too polite to pull out their watches (really, their phones) to signal to me that I needn't go on.

I tried to explain that I'm committed to producing two books and, as part of that process, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time reading, rereading and studying Doyle's short stories. I went on about the stories collected in the Oxford World's Classics Arthur Conan Doyle Gothic Tales.

I tried to explain how I want to understand how Doyle wrote short stories, and specifically short stories that do not include Sherlock Holmes.  While I love a good Holmes yarn, I want to understand more about Doyle's short story writing beyond Holmes, and not just plot or characters: I want to get down in the weeds of syntax and common word usage. I can talk about it all day. I'm fascinated with Doyle's syntax. I worry, a lot, about my own sentence structure. 

I didn't have a good answer when a patient listener once said "Why do you worry so much? It is not like you are going to hurt Doyle's feelings." That is true but I still feel an obligation to him.

Many authors write quality short stories inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's work in half the time as I do and they do so without excessively obsessing over sentence structure. I know the eventual readers won't spend a great deal of time wondering if my sentences move in companionship with Doyle's common usage. The reader just wants a good story.

My aim is not to "sound just like Doyle" but if I'm appropriating his characters and form (as in pastiches), or am inspired by his imagination and style in other works, I feel a need to be respectful of the source. I also have a duty to write original stories. It is a balancing act.

There is also the matter of something I think of as familial memory. There is a thing in families wherein a family story is told over and over until a family member that had no involvement in the actual origin event can not only tell the story, but has a feeling of being part of the event—a memory of sorts. It is an elusive feeling to capture. I want to write unique stories that engage the Sherlockian and Doylean reader while still leaving them with a feeling of remembering an old family story.

Lofty goal. Probably unreachable. I think it is worth trying for.

At least for the next year, I think my relationship with Doyle will be very much like Violet de Merville's relationship with Baron Gruner ("The Adventure of the Illustrious Client"):

The villain attached himself to the lady, and with such effect that he has completely and absolutely won her heart. To say that she loves him hardly expresses it. She dotes upon him, she is obsessed by him. Outside of him there is nothing on earth. She will not hear one word against him. Everything has been done to cure her of her madness, but in vain.

Hopefully my efforts aren't in vain. Maybe I should think of it not as a madness but as acting like Sherlock Holmes:

"Some touch of the artist wells up within me and calls insistently for a well-staged performance."

Well-staged is a good goal, too.

 

 

 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. 

-------

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.