Reminiscent Notes of Sherlock Holmes

In 1929, at the age of 76, Gillette began the farewell tour of his play Sherlock Holmes, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Scheduled for two seasons, it was eventually extended into 1932. This essay by Frederic Dorr Steele appeared in the tour program.

Sir Conan Doyle’s own attitude toward his best known character has always been deprecatory. He is somewhat impatient with a public which insists on thinking of him first as the author of Sherlock Holmes and only afterward as the author of his novels, of his History of the War in South Africa (for which he was honored with knighthood), and of his later works dealing with occult science. In his Memories and Adventures he says: “Yet it was still the Sherlock Holmes stories for which the public clamored…. I saw that I was in danger of being entirely identified with what I regarded as a lower stratum of literary achievement.” In the preface to The Case Book he writes: “He may perhaps have stood a little in the way of recognition of my more serious literary work.”

It is possible to sympathize with this attitude when we remember that he wrote such splendid historical novels as Sir Nigel and that he created such magnificent characters as Rodney Stone and Brigadier Gerard. But no man can control the lightning of his own fame. The fact is indisputable that Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is known to more people living today than any other imaginary character (unless we except the quaint figure of Charlie Chaplin which overleaps the barriers of language.) No character in written fiction not Hamlet, nor Don Quixote, nor Pickwick is now so widely known as Sherlock Holmes.

The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes was made in A Study in Scarlet which Dr. Doyle wrote in 1886 during his leisure time as a practicing physician. After numerous rejections, it was finally sold for twenty-five pounds to the publishers of Beeton’s Christmas Annual, and was published the following year. Dr. Doyle did not take Sherlock Holmes very seriously he was much more interested in writing historical novels but after he had finished Micah Clarke, and had found the publishers apathetic, he turned again to Sherlock Holmes and wrote the second story, The Sign of the Four. This was followed by another historical novel, The White Company. Then came the memorable volumes, The Adventures and the Memoirs. In the last story of this collection, Dr. Watson recorded the end of his hero in a hand-to-hand fight with his arch enemy Moriarty, both going over an Alpine cliff in a death grapple.

We have it on the word of Dr. Doyle himself that he had feared the public might tire of his great detective, and since he himself preferred to write of other things, he “did the deed.” A few years later appeared The Hound of the Baskervilles, the longest, and one of the best, of the Sherlock Holmes tales. This, however, was an account of earlier events. Dr. Doyle of course might have continued this method indefinitely, but he felt that the public resented Holmes’ death. There were constant complaints in all walks of life. In Richard Harding Davis’ story, In the Fog (1901), one of the characters, a British cabinet minister, laments (I quote from memory): “What would I not give if just for a night Sherlock Holmes could come back to life and give us one more story!” So at last appeared (in 1903) the series called The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

In the first story of that series, The Empty House, Doyle cheerfully explained that Sherlock Holmes never had died at all: he had escaped with his life from his encounter with Moriarty, and, fearing the vengeance of the latter’s accomplices, had remained hidden for some years, even from Watson himself. These stories were published in Collier’s Weekly between September, 1903, and January, 1905, and ended with The Second Stain in which Dr. Watson announced the unwillingness of Holmes that any more reminiscences should be published “since he has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee farming on the Sussex Downs.”

Nevertheless, three more volumes were to follow: The Valley of Fear (1915), His Last Bo (8 stories, 1917) and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (12 stories, 1927). They were printed individually in Collier’s, American, Hearst’s International, and Liberty. They describe occurrences at various dates, both before and after the “retirement.” In The Veiled Lodger Dr. Watson writes: “When one considers that Sherlock Holmes was in active practice for twenty three years, and that during seventeen of these I was allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings, it will be clear that I have a mass of material at my command.”

The latest story in time of supposed occurrence was His Last Bow, which tells of the war service of Sherlock Holmes on the 3rd of August, 1914, “the most terrible August in the history of the world.” This story appeared in Collier’s for September 22, 1917, and is the final story in the collection to which it gives its name.

A Study in Scarlet 1887 

The Sign of the Four 1890 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (12 stories) 1892 

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (11 stories) 1894 

The Hound of the Baskervilles 1902 

The Return of Sherlock Holmes (13 stories) 1905 

The Valley of Fear 1915 

His Last Bow (8 stories) 1917 

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (12 stories) 1927

One story, The Cardboard Box, published in the Strand Magazine as one of the series, The Adventures, was suppressed by the author and did not appear in book form until 1917, when it was included in His Last Bow. One or two titles were changed, to the confusion of the bibliographer: as The Singular Experience of Mr. J. Scott Eccles, which became Wisteria Lodge in the same book. The total number of Sherlock Holmes stories is sixty. Of the thirty-three stories written since 1903, I have had the pleasure of illustrating twenty-nine.

Dr. Doyle long since told us that the character of Sherlock Holmes was based on his memory of Dr. Joseph Bell, surgeon in the Infirmary at the University of Edinburgh. Not only were Dr. Bell’s physical traits described — his hawk-like features, his tall, angular figure — but also many of his habits and his methods of deduction. But it is an interesting fact that the character of Holmes underwent a marked evolution during the first few years of its existence. Beginning as a self-disciplined thinking machine who rigidly excluded from his mind all information not pertinent to the case at hand, knowing or caring nothing for the arts, Holmes developed within a few years into a veritable encyclopedia of such knowledge.

In almost every instance the Sherlock Holmes tale is told in the first person by the faithful Watson, but there are a few exceptions. In the latest volume, The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone is told by an abstract narrator, both Holmes and Watson being referred to in the third person. In The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier, and The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane the story is written by Holmes himself, Watson being referred to, but having no part in the events.

In the second chapter of A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson tells how, in 1881, he and Sherlock Holmes engaged rooms at “221B Baker Street.” These lodgings have become for thousands of readers almost a hallowed spot — like The Old Curiosity Shop or Ann Hathaway’s cottage. Pilgrimages have been made to it. Poems have been written about it: witness Miss Carolyn Wells’ well-remembered Ballade of Baker Street. Numerous attempts have been made to prove a particular house to be the one described by the author. Mr. Maurice speaks of the locality as “Upper Baker Street,” and prints a photograph of the street, but without designating the house.

No better instance of the keen interest aroused in readers of the tales can be cited than the researches a few years ago of Dr. Gray C. Briggs of St. Louis, a devoted Sherlockian, who spent part of a summer vacation in London, mapped Baker Street with great care, fixed the place as No. 111 by an analysis of the story The Empty House, and took his findings to Sir Conan Doyle. In a letter to me he reported in part as follows:

“It may interest you to know that I mapped Baker Street, checking every house. In The Adventure of the Empty House the description of this old pile is definite. It is approached by turning into a narrow alley or passage, going thru a wooden gate, thru a yard, thru a straight hall which extends to a front door of solid wood but having a fan-shaped glass transom. This house Doyle refers to in this way: ‘We are in Camden House which stands opposite our own old quarters.’ There is only one house on the whole of Baker Street which answers this description. It has a rear entrance of wood leading into a blind alley. I saw the long straight hall extending clear thru the house. And when I told Sir Arthur that the sign ‘Camden House’ was over the door he was amazed. He told me, with such seriousness that I could not doubt him, that he did not believe he had ever been on Baker Street in his life, and, if he had, it had been many years ago – so long that he had forgotten! There is something spooky about Doyle anyway.”

Many of the earlier stories made their first appearance in the Strand Magazine, London, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. In America some of the early stories appeared serially in Harper’s Weekly, with pen and ink illustrations by W. H. Hyde. A glance at Hyde’s pictures, or for that matter at Sidney Paget’s reveals a marked unlikeness to our present conception of the character. That conception was entirely created by Mr. Gillette.

This is a good place to answer the question so often asked, “Which came first, Gillette’s play or Steele’s pictures?” The play first saw the calcium in 1899, but The Return of Sherlock Holmes, with my pictures, was not published (in Collier’s Weekly) until four years later. Everybody agreed that Mr. Gillette was the ideal Sherlock Holmes, and it was inevitable that I should copy him. So I made my models look like him, and even in two or three instances used photographs of him in my drawings. But while the actor was seen by thousands, the magazines and books were seen by millions; so after a score of years had gone by, few could remember which “did it first.” Even so well informed a historian as Mr. Clayton Hamilton has tried to give me credit which belongs entirely to Mr. Gillette. I did not see the play until a later revival, some time after my first series of drawings in Collier’s Weekly was completed. Mr. Gillette was good enough to ask me back to his dressing room and to chat with me about our mutual friend.

During 1907-8 a Sherlock Holmes play, copied, with many alterations, from the Gillette play, was given in Paris, with M. Gemier in the title role. It had an entirely new last act, based on the capture of Colonel Moran in The Empty House, but it was Moriarty (instead of Moran) who shot at the dummy of Holmes across the street and was caught in the act.

Countless imitations and parodies of Sherlock Holmes have been written. Perhaps the most interesting of these was a parody called The Adventure of the Two Collaborators, which was written for Dr. Doyle by James M. Barrie to commemorate their partnership as joint librettists of a light opera which met with dismal failure at the Savoy. This delightful bit of nonsense may be found in Memories and Adventures.

Advertisers have seized upon Holmes for their own purposes. He has been put on the stage many times; Weber and Fields burlesqued him; Montgomery and Stone did a Holmes and Watson scene in The Red Mill. Not only Mr. Gillette’s supremely successful play, but several other attempts have been made on the stage, and later in the movies. John Barrymore is credited with an admirable film rendering of the great detective. A play based on The Sign of the Four met with some success in America. Sherlock Holmes plays have been produced in Germany, France, and Spain.

There is a sheaf of index cards, perhaps an inch thick, pertaining to Sherlock Holmes, under “Doyle, A. Conan” in the New York Public Library. You may see, if you wish, stories and plays translated into several European tongues; you may read, if you can, The Sign of the Four in the advanced style of Pitman’s Shorthand; you may feast your eyes on The Police King; or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, translated into Arabic, Beirut, 1911; you will find three or four Spanish plays, one of which bears the resounding title La Captura de Raffles, or El Triunfo de Sherlok Holmes, Melodrama Modero, by Luis Millay Gacio, Barcelona, 1912.

In a lucid paper called The Technique of the Detective Story, Brander Matthews once laid down principles and ethics for the game the author plays – or should play with his reader. Briefly summarized, the triumph of the author consists in his laying before the reader clearly and fairly all the clues (including, of course, false clues) which are available to the detective, who then solves the problem. Such is the formula for the true detective story. Analyzed on this highly technical theory, the Sherlock Holmes stories sometimes fall short. In some, accident, rather than deduction, plays a part in the solution; in a few there is no solution at all (as in The Veiled Lodger). But where Doyle never fails is in the atmosphere with which he surrounds the adventures, the racy picturesqueness of the persons and events which, while often fantastic, are made believable to us by their matter-of-fact, homely narration. Half the battle was won when he had invented the inimitable Watson: no detective could hope to compete with Sherlock if presented by any other than precisely that delightful person. Thanks to Watson we do not merely wonder and admire, but are admitted to a discreet degree of personal friendship with the greatest detective of all time.

A fondness for detective stories is almost universal. I know few people who will not confess, when pressed, their addiction to this form of narcotic. I myself am happily or unhappily immune. I have never been able to read Gaboriau, nor “Arsene Lupin,” nor Oppenheim, nor Van Dine. But Sherlock Holmes is another matter. He is the supreme anodyne. In the hands of honest Dr. Watson, I am ready, when he gives the word, to lie back, relax, and “breathe deep.”