By Paul Carrier
Arthur Conan Doyle has long been overshadowed by his creation, the famed Sherlock Holmes. But as Michael Sims makes clear in Arthur and Sherlock, a biography focused on Doyle’s literary exploits, the author was a fascinating individual in his own right.
Sims presses a lot of the right buttons in this slim volume, introducing readers to the people -- real and imaginary -- who breathed life into Doyle’s fictional private eye. They included a beloved professor whose keen powers of observation impressed Doyle as a student; assorted mystery writers who preceded Doyle (including Edgar Allan Poe); and real-life 19th-century detectives.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland (to Irish parents), Doyle was raised in that city. A robust, active child with a fondness for physical exertion and sports, he didn’t shy away from the occasional fight with kids who encroached on his turf. But he also was a bookish, insatiably curious lad who read widely.
Sims does not suggest a childhood genesis for the birth of Holmes, although Doyle did have a classmate named Patrick Sherlock, and he probably was familiar with a late 17th-century British divine, William Sherlock. In 1868, when Doyle turned nine, an Irish writer named Sheridan Le Fanu published a novel that featured a character named Carmel Sherlock. As for Holmes’ surname, Doyle’s family had a fondness for the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
That may help explain where Holmes got his moniker, but his modus operandi owed more to Doyle’s encounters with his favorite professor in medical school. Dr. Joseph Bell, “a surgeon and brilliant diagnostician,” impressed Doyle and other would-be physicians with his ability to "perceive details about patients’ personal lives" before the patients themselves revealed them.
The remarkable Bell did this through close observation of a person’s general appearance, posture, behavior, accent, skin condition, clothing, etc., from which he made very perceptive and accurate deductions that amazed his attentive but baffled students.
Bell, it turns out, was positively Sherlockian.
Doyle created the most famous fictional detective of them all with a solid grounding in the work of writers who preceded him, whose influence he freely acknowledged. Doyle “was drawn to detective stories,” Sims writes. He explains that Doyle admired “the logical mind” of Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin; the adventures of Émile Gaboriau’s police detective, Monsieur Lecoq; and Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket from Bleak House. Those investigators “already cavorted in (Doyle”s) imagination when he decided to create his own.”
But Doyle also found inspiration beyond the world of fiction, as the prominence of Bell points out. Full-time police forces were well-established in urban areas by the time Doyle put pen to paper, and police detectives were part of the mix. Dickens celebrated the real-life detective Charles Field of Scotland Yard. One of Field’s colleagues, Jonathan “Jack” Whicher garnered his share of publicity as well.
A magazine profile of Whicher “furthered detectives’ growing reputation as heroic figures who acquired power over criminals through detailed knowledge of them,” Sims writes. By the second half of the 19th century, identifying and capturing criminals was being reinvented as a “modern and scientific” process that combined “observation, evidence, and courage — an idealized image of science in the pursuit of justice.”
Doyle seems to have done a lot of tinkering as he went about the business of creating Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, and that certainly included toying with various names for his duo before settling on those we know so well today.
Such experimentation was a good thing, because Doyle at one point considered naming his detective Sherrington Hope, and then Sherringford Holmes. As for Holmes’ sidekick, he was, in Doyle’s mind, named Ormond Sacker for a time, before Doyle finally settled on John Watson. Sherrington Hope and Ormond Sacker? It's too painful to contemplate.
The rest is history. Or, to be more precise, the factual history of a fictional icon. Once Doyle began to write, it took a while for him to gain the upper hand in dealing with condescending publishers. But in time, The Strand magazine in Britain, and supportive publishing magnate S. S. McClure in America, turned Doyle’s creations into legends, and Doyle into a highly successful author.
Sims presses a lot of the right buttons in this slim volume, introducing readers to the people -- real and imaginary -- who breathed life into Doyle’s fictional private eye. They included a beloved professor whose keen powers of observation impressed Doyle as a student; assorted mystery writers who preceded Doyle (including Edgar Allan Poe); and real-life 19th-century detectives.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland (to Irish parents), Doyle was raised in that city. A robust, active child with a fondness for physical exertion and sports, he didn’t shy away from the occasional fight with kids who encroached on his turf. But he also was a bookish, insatiably curious lad who read widely.
Sims does not suggest a childhood genesis for the birth of Holmes, although Doyle did have a classmate named Patrick Sherlock, and he probably was familiar with a late 17th-century British divine, William Sherlock. In 1868, when Doyle turned nine, an Irish writer named Sheridan Le Fanu published a novel that featured a character named Carmel Sherlock. As for Holmes’ surname, Doyle’s family had a fondness for the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
That may help explain where Holmes got his moniker, but his modus operandi owed more to Doyle’s encounters with his favorite professor in medical school. Dr. Joseph Bell, “a surgeon and brilliant diagnostician,” impressed Doyle and other would-be physicians with his ability to "perceive details about patients’ personal lives" before the patients themselves revealed them.
The remarkable Bell did this through close observation of a person’s general appearance, posture, behavior, accent, skin condition, clothing, etc., from which he made very perceptive and accurate deductions that amazed his attentive but baffled students.
Bell, it turns out, was positively Sherlockian.
Doyle created the most famous fictional detective of them all with a solid grounding in the work of writers who preceded him, whose influence he freely acknowledged. Doyle “was drawn to detective stories,” Sims writes. He explains that Doyle admired “the logical mind” of Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin; the adventures of Émile Gaboriau’s police detective, Monsieur Lecoq; and Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket from Bleak House. Those investigators “already cavorted in (Doyle”s) imagination when he decided to create his own.”
But Doyle also found inspiration beyond the world of fiction, as the prominence of Bell points out. Full-time police forces were well-established in urban areas by the time Doyle put pen to paper, and police detectives were part of the mix. Dickens celebrated the real-life detective Charles Field of Scotland Yard. One of Field’s colleagues, Jonathan “Jack” Whicher garnered his share of publicity as well.
A magazine profile of Whicher “furthered detectives’ growing reputation as heroic figures who acquired power over criminals through detailed knowledge of them,” Sims writes. By the second half of the 19th century, identifying and capturing criminals was being reinvented as a “modern and scientific” process that combined “observation, evidence, and courage — an idealized image of science in the pursuit of justice.”
Doyle seems to have done a lot of tinkering as he went about the business of creating Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, and that certainly included toying with various names for his duo before settling on those we know so well today.
Such experimentation was a good thing, because Doyle at one point considered naming his detective Sherrington Hope, and then Sherringford Holmes. As for Holmes’ sidekick, he was, in Doyle’s mind, named Ormond Sacker for a time, before Doyle finally settled on John Watson. Sherrington Hope and Ormond Sacker? It's too painful to contemplate.
The rest is history. Or, to be more precise, the factual history of a fictional icon. Once Doyle began to write, it took a while for him to gain the upper hand in dealing with condescending publishers. But in time, The Strand magazine in Britain, and supportive publishing magnate S. S. McClure in America, turned Doyle’s creations into legends, and Doyle into a highly successful author.
No comments:
Post a Comment