Pierre Nordon in London
Pierre Nordon in London is an article written by Christopher Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 9, june 1999).
This address by Pierre Nordon reflected on the links between Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and France, while mixing literary commentary with personal anecdote. He discussed French receptions, translations, influences, and scholarly connections, but in the form of an after-dinner speech rather than a formal analytical study.
Pierre Nordon in London
An Address to The Sherlock Holmes Society of London's Annual Dinner January 1999
Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I found it hard to convince Inspector Lestrade and his men on the door that I was not they man they wanted, and that my home address was not Boulevard Assassin.
But here, in your midst, relying on your long practice of Holmes's methods, I am fortunately spared the tedium of introducing myself.
Let me say how delighted my wife and I are to be admitted in this white company of yours, a distinction which is by no means deserved by our expertise in Sherlockian lore.
The fact is that I am wading through Watsonish perplexities when I try to understand what justified this invitation.
Did your Chairman intend to commemorate in this way Holmes's presence in France a hundred years ago...?
At all events the speculation provides me an opportunity to recall the links between Holmes's creator and France.
Michael Conan, who first chaperoned his nephew through Paris, lived in Avenue de Wagram near Place de l'Etoile, a site brimming with Napoleonic associations.
Such associations later culminated with 'The Six Napoleons' who, in 1904, gave a special lustre to the signature of Entente Cordiale.
Before Conan Doyle, Napoleon, first Emperor of France, had — one wonders why — been unfairly and even harshly treated by British authors. To the sinister and gloomy representation of the Corsican ogre, Sir Arthur substituted a more presentable image, an image associated with the figure of Brigadier Gerard. Etienne Maurice Gérard, whose statue stands in the grande Place of Damvillers, his native little town in the Meuse, is a page in the history of France. Before he was twenty he joined in the Republican army and then served in the Imperial cavalry. He distinguised himself in Russia, was wounded in Leipzig, served Napoleon till the end, and led his men to their last victory at Ligny, only two days before Waterloo. After a period of exile he returned to France, and in 1830 King Louis Philippe made him Maréchal of France and his Minister for War. He was Prime Minister in 1834.
Conan Doyle's delightful treatment of Gerard is a humorous tribute to a figure which no historian could recreate with such felicity. In fact, it is to this recreation — in every sense of the word recreation — that the French reader is now acquainted with Gérard. So much so that the French publishers have perpetuated a funny mistranslation. 'Brigadier Gerard' is currently presented as 'le Brigadier Gérard'. Now, it so happens that the French word 'brigadier' designates a non-commissioned officer, a sergeant in the artillery.
'The Ma'm' had introduced her son to tales of chivalry drawn from the mediaeval French chroniclers. The deeds of derring-do celebrated in those early readings left their mark in Arthur's character, his sense of courtesy, of chivalry, his public commitments, and they directed all his literary works from the mediaeval to the Holmesian.
Other readings included French authors, recent or contemporary — Gaboriau, Dumas, and Jules Verne. He read them in English. Late in life he developed a certain linguistic interest, but oddly enough preferred to study the ancient Cornish language rather than modern French.
Last, but not least, like the French in general, like Holmes, and like your good selves, Ladies and Gentlemen, Sir Arthur had nothing against good food and good wine.
Holmes's links with France are therefore a splendid illustration of art in the blood. He claims French ancestors, is an expert on Lassus's motets, refuses to be knighted but accepts the Legion d'Honneur, chooses Oscar Meunier, then Tavernier to mould his bust, and pursues his research at Montpellier University.
Love, or so I am told, is not always a mutual affair, but in this case it was. Why did the French so immediately and so lastingly take to Sherlock Holmes?
Here was an author who through the skein of his intrigues gave them a new image of England and London, an image so different from what they found in the pages of, say, their dear old Charles Dickens.
For the sake of transition let me bring another Charles in the field. Charles De Gaulle read and liked Conan Doyle. The words with which, then President of France, he acknowledged the receipt of the centenary book sent to him by Adrian speak for themselves.
In the pre-war years the French had paid to Holmes's teachings more attention than to De Gaulle's warnings. Our criminologists studied and learned by his methods. And since I seem to be in at quoting mood, let me read a letter from Edmond Locard, one of the founders of criminology in France, whom I approached when engaged in my scholarly book:
- Lyon, le 13-1-LIX
- Monsieur,
- Vous avez choisi un admirable sujet de recherche. J'ai écrit sur Sir Arthur Conan Doyle une étude qui a paru dans une revue parisienne, puis a été incorporée dans le livre Policiers de roman et policiers de laboratoire. Payot, Paris 1924.
- D'autre part, j'ai été en relation avec l'illustre romancier par l'intermédiaire de Ashton Wolfe, auteur de The Invisible Web. Je ne sais ce que Wolfe est devenu depuis son séjour au laboratoire de police de Lyon. Il est à Londres, s'il vit encore. Il était intime avec le père de Sherlock Holmes. Vous sauriez beaucoup de choses par lui.
- Croyez, je vous prie, Monsieur, à mes sentiments très distingués.
- Edmond Locard
In his book Locard compares real detectives and detectives of fiction. He devotes a chapter of sixty pages to 'La méthode policière de Sherlock Holmes' [1], analysing the various technical aspects of the famous methods.
The French amply demonstrated that imitation was the best form of flattery.
In 1914 Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes was a great tribute to Sherlock's fertility. It proved that the breeding of bees was by no means incompatible with the breeding of illegitimate children.
After Maurice Leblanc Holmes's French family tree never stopped spreading in a variety of directions. It has been remarkably luxuriant over the last two decades. I particularly enjoyed Les Mémoires de Mary Watson published in 1980 by the French Académicien Jean Dutourd and Histoires secrètes de Sherlock Holmes published in 1993 by René Reouven, an active member of the Franco-Midland Society.
I have professionally been interested in the achievements of Conan Doyle's translators. Some, like Sylvain Policard in Lyon, are more successful than such others, who, for instance, mistook Barts, i.e., St Bartholomew's Hospital of young Stamford fame, for some kind of locality, possibly in the suburbs of London.
In its French translation the title of Holmes's Last Bow [pr. bau] has given birth to what I take to be a felicitious misapprehension. The spelling similarity between Bow [pr. bô] and Bow [pr. bao] gave the first translator the idea of rendering His Last Bow by Son dernier Coup d'archet [2], possibly referring to the master's Stradivarius. As one says in Stradivarius's native country, Non era vero ma ben trovato [3].
As in many other countries, The Hound of the Baskervilles remains by far the most popular work of Doyle in France. Yet the title — titles again — raises a problem which I am afraid will remain final.
Once more I find myself in a Reichenbach of perplexity. What could be the French equivalent for Hound? The word molosse from the Greek molossos might suggest the size and origin, but, unlike the word Hound, it does not connote the hunting instinct or the ferocity. You see, our dogs are tamer, more convivial. We have to make do with chien [4]. The only trouble is that the unprepared reader might expect a tale about a French poodle.
In this adventure of mine, my merit, if any, was very largely the result of Adrian Conan Doyle's help and support.
At the time I lived in Tunisia but travelled frequently to England.
Being in London it occurred to me that John Murray might possibly have kept some records of their connection with Conan Doyle. I went to Albemarle Street and was shown into the office of the elderly John Murray.
The office could have been more appropriately described as a sitting room, with its fitted carpet and, standing almost in its middle a beautiful old Chinese screen. There was a touch of the Thaddeus Sholto about it.
My interest in Doyle was soon relegated behind old Murray's pleasure in telling me the story of the Chinese screen which apparently had once belonged to Lord Byron.
Doyle then kept quietly behind the screen until John Grey turned up. He was the old gentleman's son. They had no records of Doyle's, he said. He advised me to communicate with Adrian whose address he gave me.
Adrian invited me to visit him in Sintra, where I flew in March '56. He and his wife lived quietly in a Quinta. Adrian had a secretary who lodged at the local hotel. In those days there was only one hotel in Sintra.
This secretary was yet another French connection. He was an elderly Frenchman named Corneille Benoit. Oddly enough, Corneille was his first name and Benoit his family name. Monsieur Benoit, who had once owned a very chic hotel in Marseilles, had apparently been unsuccessful in business, and eventually found his way to Tangiers. There he had met Adrian who had offered him security and sinecure. For Monsieur Benoit's duties hardly detained him more than a couple of hours a day.
Adrian was no hermit, but he was immensely dedicated to the memory of his father. He grieved over the fact that his importance as a public figure had been overshadowed by the success of Sherlock Holmes.
I visited Sintra again before Adrian settled in Switzerland.
The progress of my manuscript was hampered by a number of private or professional circumstances, but it was eventually ready by 1963.
Adrian had allowed me free treatment of the material he had laid at my disposal. I agreed to let him read the manuscript before it went into printing. But never did he at any time interfere with what he had read.
John Dickson Carr had not been very concerned with the question of Conan Doyle's commitment to Spiritualism. We discussed the problem in the days when he lived in Hampstead. We could not decide on Adrian's views on the matter. I did my best to approach it impartially but as thoroughly as possible.
My book tried to keep a fair balance between biography and literary appreciation. It certainly made no claim to be the final word on the subject. Published in 1983, Richard Lancelyn Green and John Michael Gibson's bibliography unveiled many facts of considerable historical interest. In a different perspective, Martin Booth, whose recent biography has been open to discussion, adds to our knowledge of Doyle's medical career.
In France Conan Doyle's writings have recently elicited a number of interesting and brilliant responses in the field of literary research. Their trend is often post-Freudian or neo-critical, paying minute attention to style and images, especially in the supernatural tales and late Holmes stories.
My own discoveries are on a far more pedestrian level.
You may remember that a hundred years ago, short of four days, Conan Doyle dedicated A Duet to Mrs Maude Crosse. So, I re-read the story and although it does not stand comparison with, say, War and Peace, I enjoyed the reading.
Yet, it occurred to me that the title was rather misleading.
One expects A Duet to contain verbal exchanges between Holmes and Watson and provide details that are left out in the canon.
Unfortunately, the story of Frank deprives us of such treats, with the exception of one interesting revelation.
The intrigue introduces a certain Mrs Watson. She is 'Frank's trusty housekeeper', and the narrator adds significantly enough that disorder is very alien to her habits'. The hint seems to me clear. enough. This Mrs Watson can be no other than James Watson's sister-in-law. But what of her husband, James's brother, who lets his wife housekeep for Frank? Has he left her in the lurch? The Watson family honour precludes such desertion. The obvious answer is rather that he has widowed her. I sympathize with Mrs Watson and I also feel that her loss is our loss. For, had he lived, Watson's brother would have been to Mycroft what his brother James was to Sherlock, and we might all have become members of a Mycroft Holmes Society....
And so, as the phrase goes, the game remains afoot.
To keep the memory green may lead to a facile and hackneyed pun, but it is, Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the many tasks to which Richard is dedicated, and for this, let me, with his permission, give him a cordial handshake.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
