The Outstanding Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Gerard Kelly

Those fans of Sherlock Holmes (and they would appear to be in the majority) who dislike any deviation from the canonical style of the orginal detections will love this book. The reader can almost hear Sherlock himself speaking from the comfort of his armchair by the fire in Baker Street. The stories are good. Some are very good: and all are enhanced by the author's own illustrations. While these lack the tautness of Sidney Paget, their fuzzy outlines give them an eldritch quality which is quite pleasing, and one is used with great effect on the cover of what is a very well-produced article. Something  which we have come to expect from this publisher. My favourite story is perhaps the very short 'The Disappearance of the Good Ship Alicia', if one accepts that a whole vessel and its crew can become buried in the sand. The research here is familiar, and not so self-consciously 'clever' as in some of the other tales. Codes abound for Sherlock to solve, and riddles - some well-known, others invented by the writer, and all making 'The Musgrave Ritual' seem very small beer indeed. There are investigations which sound positively Dickensian, and one at least which is certainly not for the squeamish or for the recently bereaved. Altogether a good buy!

The Case of the Grave Accusation A Sherlockian Adventure by Dicky Neely Editor Paul R. Spiring

This is not so much a book as a 'conceit'. Holmes and Watson 'come off the [Victorian] page' and into our world to defend their creator against the charges of plagiarism, adultery and incitement to murder. It reads like a piece of ephemera, and as such sits somewhat uneasily with Mr. Spiring's careful and solid scholarship - so one is not surprised to learn that the tale first appeared in a (now defunct) Texas newspaper. Having said that, the whole thing is great fun - and was writtten well in advance of the Cumberbatch/Freeman 'modernisation' of the canon by the BBC. We have Sherlock showing Watson "a truly marvellous invention" called a desktop computer, and bringing him a suit of clothes "more in keeping with  the contemporary fashion." Watson says that, although showers were around in his day, "they were nothing like this one, which produced torrents of hot water for so long as I desired. What luxury!" The pair have travelled to Devon to refute the allegations of  'Roger la Pelure d'Ail' (a pseudonym for the real-life Rodger Garrick-Steele who in 2000 wanted Bertram Fletcher Robinson's body exhumed to prove he had been poisoned by Doyle because he was about to reveal himself as the real author of The Hound of the Baskervilles). Paul Spiring ably refutes this in a series of contemporary notes after Holmes and  Watson give d'Ail his come-uppence and then return "to the pages of books that were written long ago." Altogether a very refreshing piece of hokum which must (and should) be popular with all Sherlockians, and sell like the proverbial hot cakes.

Shall We Join The Ladies?

   Fictional female detectives in the nineteenth and early twentieth century had to have a very pressing reason for entering what was mainly a male preserve. Loveday Brooke, for example, was desperately poor. And as late as 1898 Dorcas Deane ("A real sob-sister was Dorcas") worked to support an artist husband who had gone blind. Even so, some women still  didn't escape becoming social outcasts, which is probably why the gloriously named Miss van Snoop made only one appearance. Florence Cusack, however, was an exception. Young, beautiful and wealthy, she travelled from country to country  trying  to clear her dead husband's name in a series of stories and (most unusually) "ended up in the arms of her narrator."
   Madelyn Mack, "the delightful, golden-haired and beautiful college girl" invented by the American writer  Hugh C. Weir, had to earn her own living and decided to copy Sherlock Holmes, referring to her "dissecting-room experiences" and using expressions which do credit to him as a model. She was also fond of staging dramatic denouments. But her admiration for the man wasn't exactly unqualified. In fact, she became somewhat dismissive of him. There were, said Miss Mack, only two rules in detection: hard work and common sense. "Not uncommon sense, like our friend Sherlock Holmes." However, like Sherlock, Miss Mack had "a grip of steel" and was not averse to drug-taking. Only she went in for coca berries as a stimulant rather than cocaine. She also had her 'Watson'. Miss Noraker ('Nora') was on hand to ask questions, and to say things like "I'm afraid I don't quite follow you. There is nothing at all out of the ordinary that I can catch." And, like John H. Watson, she doesn't  always know where Madelyn is  or what she's  up to. Nevertheless, Nora  too is prepared to go anywhere with little or no notice and at any time of the day or night. Her reference to "the tyrant of our city editor's desk" implies that she also wrote up Madelyn's investigations in the best Watsonian manner. Unlike the little helper of "Lady Molly of Scotland Yard." Mary appears to be a servant of some sort and has the very irritating habit of  referring to her employer as "my dear lady" at the end of every sentence. She sounds even more admiring than the Watson. But the road was being well-paved for today's feisty forensic females.

Let's Hear it For Bohemia!

"The rough-and-tumble of Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man"- Watson in 'The Musgrave  Ritual.'

"It was not a collection of residential flats, but rather the abode of Bohemian bachelors" - Watson in 'The Three Garridebs.'

As Holmes went out to pursue the elusive Mrs. Sawyer, Watson passed the time "skipping over the pages of Henri Murger's Vie de Boheme." A Study in Scarlet.

Murger's sketches of the true bohemian life, which he had lived himself, enjoyed enormous success as a series of newspaper articles. These later came out in book form, as a play and finally, half a century later, an opera by Puccini. Talented young artists, writers and sculptors with no money hung out in a derelict farm- house near the Barriere d'Enfer (one of the gates of Paris) coming regularly into the City hoping to earn the price of a cup of coffee at the Cafe Momus. Murger later became respectable, deserting the Momus for the Cafe Riche but continuing to write novels which painted the really bohemian existence in the grimest of colours. It led, he said, to The Academy, the hospital or the morgue. There was nothing for it but extremely hard work, and young men without talent who simply wanted to sample the life did so knowing they could return home after a short, romantic and not too painfully poor stay in a garret, drinking in noisy taverns with genuine artists and sleeping with little grisettes.As soon as the game palled they could go home, as Murger put it, "to marry their cousins and set up as solicitors in a town of thirty thousand souls where, sitting by the fire in the evening, they boasted of their poverty-stricken artist days with all the exaggeration of travellers describing a tiger-hunt."

Taking Watson Seriously

In 1987 the Radio Times for December 5-11 printed a series of articles in honour of the first appearance a hundred years earlier of A Study Scarlet in Beeton's Christmas Annual. Tim Piggott-Smith, one of the few actors to have played both Holmes and Watson, had this to say about the latter: "You always have to take [him] seriously as a practising doctor, and some of the bits that work best are when Watson is examining a victim and naming the bones which have been damaged." While this is a moot point for some of us and may have been made in stage productions rather than stressed in the canon, the Doctor "represents the average reader". He is there "so that Holmes can think out loud." But for Piggott-Smith, the most important point about Watson is that he stands for decency and straightness -the perfect upright citizen. "It all serves to throw the character of Sherlock Holmes into even sharper relief." A strange man, with something chilling about him, a sense of cruelty beneath the surface. "If you had to choose between Holmes and Watson as holiday companions, you might find Watson a little dull, but a much easier person to be with [and] I think it's pretty terrific what Conan Doyle has achieved with him."    

Doyle on Doyle

    Given the continuing complusion to mine what by now can only be the minutiae of our hero's writing, perhaps it's time to consider what Conan Doyle himself said on the subject. In a letter to the Critic, New York, in 1893 objecting to the unauthorised publication of some of his early short stories, he said  they were meant to have the ephemeral life they deserved, and "it is slightly annoying to an author when work which he has deliberately suppressed is resuscitated against his wish."
    The main thrust of his letters to the press shows a robust common sense, curiosity and, on the whole, a fair amount of liberal-mindedness. How foolish to let loose a detachment of diseased prostitutes on soldiers returning to Portsmouth harbour after service in India because the suspension of the Contagious Diseases Act prevents doctors from affending the women's modesty by giving them medical examinations. How idiotic to give publicity to a woman  who objects to members of the Young Men's Christian Association (the Y.M.C.A.) singing 'worldly songs' in church. "What, because Mr Young is Vicar of St. John's, shall there be no more cakes and ale in the land?" What right had W. H. Smith to exclude George Moore's controversial novel Esther Waters from its railway station bookstalls? It was the duty of a distributor to distribute, not act as an unofficial censor.
    Nothing if not practical, Doyle wanted to see cavalry replaced by bicycles in the interests of speed and efficiency, as well as expense. But he would never believe the change had taken place "until I see100 lightly equipped men, with rifles slung on their backs, and bandoliers across their chests, riding behind the King's State Carriage, in place of the present picturesque but medieval guard."
     Many of his later letters to the newspapers deal with the more outre aspects of spiritualism, as well as his firm belief in the existence  of fairies. But it's pleasant to know that his very last letter, printed in the Daily Telegraph on the day he died,  is a perfectly lucid comment on the disastrous expedition to the Dardenelles during WW1.

Aside Arthur Conan Doyle

This fine compilation by Paul R. Spiring does a great deal to reinstate Bertram Fletcher Robinson and bring him before a wider public. A prolific journalist, it details the surprisingly large and varied amount of work Robinson published: and raises the question how much more he might have accomplished if his life hadn't been so tragically cut short. His detective Addington Peace, although no Holmes, is competent and interesting and demonstrates the nineteenth century fashion (along with Sherlock) for giving odd names to one's sleuth. The editor of 'The Lady's Home Magazine' (later renamed 'Home Magazine of   Fiction') in which Peace appeared, made full use of Robinson's connection with Doyle, something which has been rather played down over the years, by  repeating at the head of each tale that he was "Joint author with Sir A. Conan Doyle of his [Doyle's] best story, 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. Other stories from such magazines as Pearson's, Cassell's, The Windsor and the lesser-known Appleton's are also included in this book - some of them whimsical ('The Battle of Fingle's Bridge'), others more dramatic; but all a good read and giving a fair  idea of Robinson's range. The size, almost A4 and with a floppy cover, makes it difficult to handle and the punning title is decidedly  off-putting. But, once inside, the reader is rewarded by a large number of interesting illustrations and the charm of a writer rescued (thanks to Mr. Spiring) almost from oblivion.