View source for The Real Sherlock Holmes (Good Words)

{{Cargo_Research_Articles
 |date=1902-03-01
 |author=Handasyde
 |topic=Prototype
 |summary=This essay identifies Dr. Joseph Bell, the celebrated Edinburgh surgeon, as the real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, highlighting his acute powers of observation, diagnostic brilliance, and personal charm. While contrasting fiction and reality, it argues that Bell's beautiful gentleness and intuitive insight made him a greater figure in life than Holmes in romance.
}}
''The Real Sherlock Holmes'' is an article written by [[Handasyde]] published in the magazine [[Good Words]] in march 1902.

This essay identifies [[Dr. Joseph Bell]], the celebrated Edinburgh surgeon, as the real-life inspiration for [[Sherlock Holmes]], highlighting his acute powers of observation, diagnostic brilliance, and personal charm. While contrasting fiction and reality, it argues that Bell's "beautiful gentleness" and intuitive insight made him a greater figure in life than Holmes in romance.


== The Real Sherlock Holmes ==
[[File:good-words-1902-03-p159-the-real-sh.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Good Words]] (march 1902, p. 159)]]
[[File:good-words-1902-03-p160-the-real-sh.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Good Words]] (march 1902, p. 160)<br /><br />The Real Sherlock Holmes]]
[[File:good-words-1902-03-p161-the-real-sh.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Good Words]] (march 1902, p. 161)<br /><br />Beautiful gentleness]]
[[File:good-words-1902-03-p162-the-real-sh.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Good Words]] (march 1902, p. 162)]]
[[File:good-words-1902-03-p163-the-real-sh.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Good Words]] (march 1902, p. 163)]]

[[Sherlock Holmes]] has lately been resuscitated to the no small joy of an omnivorous class of readers who had scarce dared hope Resurgam was writ over his hideous Alpine grave. Most persons now know the answer to the question — Who was [[Sherlock Holmes]]? Indeed it has been satisfactorily settled by the author, as likewise by the "onlie begetter" himself, but when the detective exploits first began to entrance the public the prophet was awhile without honour in his own country. Some ladies who had never before read a story of this kind, were sitting round the fire one winter's day reading and discussing [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s hero as though he were an actual person, which is one test of literary fame, when they were interrupted by the entrance of a famous and favourite physician who, with an habitual spirit of inquiry, asked what it was they were reading with so much interest? "[[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]]," they said, the story of a most entrancing individual, whom they only wished it were possible to meet with in real life. "I know the man," observed the doctor quietly; hastening away before they had time to ply him with the many surprised and anxious questions that naturally rose to their lips. Returning shortly from seeing his patient, he came back for one brief minute to finish his story, and to announce with as much modesty as might be, "I am [[Sherlock Holmes]]!" A fact that only needed to be declared to be instantly recognised; so that since then all who know the man and study the story have been able to trace the resemblance very clearly for themselves. Fame is too easily bought nowadays, we are constantly being told, while the opinions of that national mouth-piece, the "Man in the Street," are decried as of little or no account: from such a point of view then it would seem as though fame in its highest sense were incompatible with popularity. Be that as it may yet the fact remains that, were Walter Pater still among us, he might write with the tongue of men and angels about Marius the Epicurean without producing any appreciable effect, whereas [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] has only to write out an announcement of [[Sherlock Holmes]] redivivus, to at once command the applause of a prodigious, insatiable audience. And so it will ever be, what is best suited to the greatest number of brains will best command success, and authors who wish to obtain popular fame must write so that he who runs may read. To have formed a cult and created a figure head is no small literary achievement, and the writer who conceived his own greatness, and the passive prototype who had it thrust upon him, are both of them subjects of considerable interest. In contradistinction to literary literature, what might be termed "Colloquial Literature" depends for success entirely on the strength of its incident and on the persons it portrays, which was where [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]]'s discernment helped him to fame, for he at once recognised as a ready-made hero the master with whom in his student days he was daily thrown in contact. It was the old story of 

: The chiel amang ye takin' notes, 

who, quite unaware of his real vocation, while he imagined he was learning the surgeon's craft, was in reality noting the salient features of a remarkable character that was to be of more service to him in. the long run than all his surgical knowledge. Doubtless he might have evolved some almost equally popular person out of his own brain, but he could never have given us the creation of [[Sherlock Holmes]] had he not met in a northern town the progenitor of his literary reputation. And herein lies a nice point for decision, in how far an author is his own debtor, and how far debtor to his brother men? 

: The beings of the mind are not of clay; 
: Essentially immortal they create— 

and yet the very man who wrote those lines was, as he wrote, drawing on his own personality for the being of his mind who haunts his melancholy cantos. Meanwhile the original of the model for all detectives plies his daily task quite independently of [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]] or the [[HOUN|Baskervilles]] with their ominous hound, and even without the aid of [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]] would have made himself sufficiently famous as a more than usually skilful surgeon. Prodigies of valour, kindness, and humanity are in the powerful hands of a great doctor, and no one could wield all three more cleverly than this man, who in his own city is a lively example of Luke the beloved physician. Charm, sympathy, intelligence — it is difficult to bracket his chief characteristic, though the expressive Scots phrase, "Gleg in the uptak," very nearly epitomises what one would say. It will be remembered [[Sherlock Holmes]]' receptive faculties were ever so keenly on the alert that no smallest detail could possibly escape his penetrative eyes, even so with the detective surgeon who has himself learnt the answer before he asks his patients a question, and from whose vigilance no deception or evasion can ever be successfully hid. "Your first child, my good woman?" with perfect confidence he asked some mother of some infant in the crowded out-patients' ward of the great infirmary: thereby more than mystifying the good woman who answered, as he had foreseen, in the affirmative; she, simple soul, having no idea that there could be any significance in the brilliant tartan cape she had bought with such pardonable extravagance for her first-born bairn. So to the poor working man suffering from spinal complaint, his sympathy was instant and comprehensive, "It aches, does it? I have no doubt it does, and carrying a heavy hod of bricks won't improve that, will it?" he said, in his kind, brisk way-but the afflicted bricklayer being a speechless Scot, kept his surprise to himself till the end of the interview, when he asked, with canny curiosity, "I'm no saying ye're wrang, but wha tell't ye I was a brick-layer to trade?" For to his circumscribed brain it had never occurred that the man, occupied only with his spine, could have noticed his rough, horny hands, that to the practised eye at once revealed his trade. [[Sherlock Holmes]] would have noticed these things, and thereby would have hung a tale; but [[Sherlock Holmes]], even in his dramatised version, was never so lovable as this man; he might very possibly without counting, be able to tell the number of buttons on his waistcoat, but he would never have had sufficient geniality to play fairy godfather to a delighted hospital of sick children, or have had the friendliness to claim acquaintance with every white-capped hospital nurse he came across.

The pictured presentment of [[Sherlock Holmes]] differs materially from the man as he actually is, and those who are familiar with the one would not willingly exchange it for the angular, "lean game head" of the other. We are told it is wrong to judge by appearances, but it is difficult to avoid doing so, and a comely countenance must ever be its own reward, so that the man with a pleasing exterior must always exact more than his deserts. The exterior of the beloved physician is a more than pleasing one, and his face, mainly on account of wonderful magnetic eyes, once seen is not readily forgotten. His face is the clean-shaven face of a surgeon, the only outward feature by which he resembles the detective, and his hair is prematurely grey, 

: his eye 
: Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still...
: His faultless patience, his unyielding will,
: Beautiful gentleness, and splendid skill—

it is these lines of Henley's, though written for another Scottish doctor, which best describe him; more especially the "beautiful gentleness," which is his dominant attribute, as it should be of all those who would strive for success as a surgeon. His profession and nationality should write him down a sober Scot, but there is at times a total lack of sobriety about this great man which pleasantly leavens the national trait; with a fatherly charm of manner he is ever more than willing to obey the apostolic mandate, "Love thy neighbour as thyself," and as it were, plays with his patients even while he cures them. His swift, swinging gait belongs to a man who never lets the grass grow under his feet, while his general air of protective kindness establishes that rare sensation of confidence and perfect trust, so necessary to a doctor, who to a certain extent, must ever rely on the Faith Cure. 

The motto used by the Royal Artillery and Hamlet's ghost should with equal justice be dedicated to the society of detectives. Verb. sap., so far as [[Sherlock Holmes]] was concerned, for never was man more systematically ubiquitous. Here again he is fairly matched by the Scottish surgeon, who in the town where he lives, could establish an alibi any day of his life, and this without wholly putting his trust in horses, though his before long get their heads in front of everything else on the road! You leave him behind you in a thoroughfare, only to immediately come upon him in some remote suburb, driving past in the rapid fashion peculiar to himself. You thought it was certainly his consulting hour, when you met him face to face on the steps of a club. You left him writing a learned treatise on vaccination for a London newspaper, and find him leading the idle life of a country gentleman in a home by some green hills far away. No wonder that Conan Doyle was fascinated, and thought more of producing his versatile hero in book-form than of mending broken arms and legs. A personality by degrees creates its own centre, and social fame comes to those who earn it, and there the reputation, now almost world-wide, might have ended had not the shade of Boswell fallen on [[Arthur Conan Doyle|Conan Doyle]], who thereupon compiled one of the most striking figures known to modern literature. In no branch of life is the detective instinct of such service to a man as in the art of healing. The scouting General so well known to fame is indeed a past master in the art, and has abundantly proved how efficacious such a faculty can be made; but the surgeon who seeks to locate some bodily ill, that from nervousness or lack of knowledge his patient cannot explain for himself, finds the possession of such a faculty a matter of life or death. And this quality is not necessarily innate, but may be cultivated by many intelligent people, if they would but remember straws show which way the wind blows, and that the smallest finger-post may often-times lead to the largest town.

The people who make an impression are those gifted with a certain intuitive grace that evades all description, though its effect is so readily felt. Some years ago now such an impression was made by this very man on a child who to this day can clearly recall his every look, and word, and movement, though he must manifestly have forgotten the interview long since. In the dark ages of childhood doctors were classified with ogres, and the child as she entered the great man's presence, was in a somewhat woeful plight, being too small to be courageous and too big to say she was afraid. A man in a black, professional coat, with hair that was iron-grey then, and a face that could only be the face of a friend, got up from a table at which he was writing, and instantly all her nervous fears and apprehensions vanished. She never told him she was too frightened to speak; she never told him she loved the open fields and working in her garden, or how sadly she had been coerced with nauseous, orthodox remedies, and yet he clearly knew all these things as he stood talking so pleasantly in the sunny consulting room, that had turned out so vastly superior to an ogre's den. Instead of a tonic he spoke of strawberries and cream; he advocated a live-long holiday, and calmly remarked in a voice of authority that she was never to be contradicted! concluding with one of those easy, graceful, personal remarks, that come so naturally to the man who has the gentle art of making pretty speeches. It was almost more than a child who had been brought up to be seen and not heard, could reasonably desire or deserve! She threw her arms round his neck shortly afterwards when chloroform had set her fancy free; indeed, it seemed the most natural thing to do; and as she subsequently apologised to the beloved physician, she was not at all sure that chloroform was altogether to blame for her indiscretion. She knew nothing about his professional reputation, [[Sherlock Holmes]] had not yet been invented; she only knew she had met a wonderful new friend whom it was impossible she could ever afterwards forget.

The best of names convey so little to us till we have proved them, and the grateful child who survived the ordeal of an interview with Dr. Joseph Bell, the great Edinburgh surgeon, did not know that his was a name with which to conjure; and that persons far older and wiser than she would time and again be forced to acknowledge the predominating charm of a personality able to know and understand all things before they are either spoken or seen. [[Dr. Joseph Bell]], with his public and private reputation, occupies a unique position; and it is matter for lively conjecture which he values most, the fame of the kind Scottish surgeon that has given him so firm a place in the hearts of Midlothian, or the more world-wide reputation achieved by the cosmopolitan detective, [[Sherlock Holmes]]. 

HANDASYDE. 








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