Re-creating Sherlock Holmes
Re-creating Sherlock Holmes is an article written by David Stuart Davies published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 1, No. 3) in september 1990.
The article argues that between A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, Arthur Conan Doyle deliberately reworked and enriched Sherlock Holmes, correcting weaknesses and adding vivid traits, habits, and contradictions. It concludes that Holmes's drug use, sharper eccentricities, and narrative refinements show Conan Doyle consciously re-creating the character to strengthen his appeal and dramatic credibility.
Re-creating Sherlock Holmes
It is very difficult to determine whether Arthur Conan Doyle regarded A Study in Scarlet as the first in a planned series of Sherlock Holmes adventures. but I suspect that this idea is unlikely. In establishing Holmes' character in the early pages of the novel. Conan Doyle apparently failed to consider fully the implications of some of the limiting statements that he makes about his detective; statements which, if he'd possessed the foresight. would have been seen to be unworkable should he have wished to continue the Holmes saga in subsequent volumes.
Take, for example, Watson's observation: "Knowledge of Literature - Nil". By looking at the remaining fifty-nine stories. we can see that this is patently not truce. Holmes quotes freely in these tales from a wide range of literary sources including Shakespeare. Goethe and Petrarch. thus demonstrating that he has a broad and well-developed knowledge of literature - like his creator. It could be argued that Conan Doyle was trying to show Watson's lack of perception in branding Holmes as a literary dunce, but I believe the truth is that Conan Doyle, in attempting to make Holmes seem unusual with his sporadic knowledge. had not appreciated how much this facility for literature would be useful in giving depth to the character of Holmes and a pithy element to the stories, It must be remembered, of course, that at this stage in his career, Conan Doyle was very much a novice in the writing stakes and, in a sense, still learning his craft.
A similar point can be made about Holmes' supposed ignorance of Philosophy. In the second novel, The Sign of the Four. Holmes gives praise to the philosopher Richter, maintaining that there was much food for thought in his philosophy, and agreeing with the German writer's belief that "the chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness." Here. Conan Doyle is shifting Holmes nearer to his own philosophical viewpoint as he does when he has Holmes praising Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man. These are hardly the musings of a man who has no knowledge of philosophy. It was simply that Conan Doyle had changed his mind about these aspects of Holmes by the time of the second book.
Conan Doyle was obviously disappointed at the initial response from publishers to A Study in Scarlet, and we can imagine that when he was more or less forced to sell the story outright in order to get it into print, he symbolically waved farewell to Sherlock Holmes as well as the Manuscript.
By the time he came to write The Sign of the Four, he had developed as a writer, having more foresight and confidence. What triggered off his thoughts concerning a new Sherlock Holmes novel is not recorded. Maybe he had already had some sketchy ideas about a revenge story involving Indian treasure and a one-legged man, and with the successful reprint of A Study in Scarlet earlier in the year (1889), the two elements came together in his vivid imagination. It may have been. as with The Hound of the Baskervilles later, that he had conceived the elements of an intriguing mystery and realised that he needed a detective figure as a catalyst in order to create an effective unified narrative, Whatever, he wrote in his diary on September 3: "I shall give Sherlock Holmes of A Study in Scarlet something else to unravel."
So, in embarking on a new Holmes novel. this wiser and more practised writer had to set about performing two tasks: re-establishing Holmes in the consciousness of the reading public and, while doing so, tidying up some of the weaknesses from the original novel and providing further embellishments to add more colour and depth to the character. In other words: he set about re-creating Sherlock Holmes.
One of the most obvious embellishments we encounter on the first page:
- Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the comer of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist. all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally. he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston. and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.
This is news to the reader. There was no hint of such an addiction in A Study in Scarlet. Or was there? In Chapter Two of A Study in Scarlet, Watson records:
- I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.
This is not lack of perception on Watson's part, this is the author's decision to make a statement about his character's mode of life. A decision which he reverses in The Sign of the Four:
- "What is it today," I asked, "morphine or cocaine?"
- He raised his eyes languidly from the old black leather volume which he had opened.
- "It is cocaine," he said, "a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?"
By allowing Holmes to take drugs on his second outing, Conan Doyle was increasing his Bohemianism, his flamboyancy, making him more alluring to the Victorian middle-class who loved to flirt secretly with such vices. It may have been his meeting with the outré figure of Oscar Wilde at the Langham lunch that gave Conan Doyle the idea to add this colourful facet to Holmes' character.
It was not only Holmes whose circumstances changed either. In order to re-establish the detective's special talent for observation and deduction, Conan Doyle introduced the watch episode at the start of The Sign of the Four. It has no connection with the plot; it merely demonstrates Holmes' peculiar talents and alerts the reader to what he can expect when Holmes is on the scent of a real crime. For this episode, he invents a brother for Watson. How can this be, when Watson reveals in A Study in Scarlet:
- "I had neither kith nor kin in England"?
Well, of course, if one plays the Sherlockian game. various theories may be concocted as to where Watson's "unhappy brother" was at this time. But this pursuit is not appropriate for these pages and, therefore. approaching this problem from a practical writer's point of view, we must assume that Conan Doyle was not bothered that Watson had been without kith and kin in the earlier novel — he was now involved with Sherlock Holmes Mark II. a new and improved version, and fidelity with the original did not matter. And he had to get it right this time, for he knew this story would reach a much wider audience than his first Holmes novel.
That is probably why, while the Baker Street Irregulars appear in both stories, Lestrade and Gregson are notable by their absence in The Sign of the Four. Instead we get Athelney Jones, a new, breezier policeman, for the new Holmes and Watson — a Watson who is far more outspoken and emotional than in the first book. Consider how he rails at Holmes over his drug addiction and how he reveals his deep passion for Mary Morstan. This is not the stiff and awkward Watson of A Study in Scarlet whose display of anger is relegated to being outraged at an article in The Book of Life and throwing down his egg spoon.
Of course it is true to say that in The Sign of the Four Conan Doyle was dealing with a maturing relationship, not an embryonic one, but everything about the way Holmes and Watson behave in the later book suggests a subtle development and, on Conan Doyle's part, a greater awareness and surer handling of his characters. He had hacked away the unworkable appendages and fashioned new ones. In other words: he had re-created Sherlock Holmes.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
