Sherlock Holmes

Waterloo; Trafalgar Square; Museum of the College of Surgeons, Long
Down; St Oliver’s private school, East Yorkshire; Ross & Mangles,
Fulham Road; Mexborough Private Hotel, Craven Street; Folkestone
Court.
Unrecorded Cases: The Vatican cameos, Wilson of the district
messenger office, blackmail of a well-respected person, similar
incidents in Grodno, Little Russia in 1866, the Anderson
murders in North Carolina, Colonel Upwood’s card scandal at
the Nonpareil Club, Mme Montpensier’s murder charge
against her daughter Mlle Carère.
Holmes: Frequently stays up all night. Has written a monograph
on dating old manuscripts. Thinks getting into a box would
help concentrate his mind. Can recognise many different news-
paper typefaces. Has crude ideas about art. Thinks this case is
the most complex of the 500 cases he has worked on. In the
country he wears a tweed suit and cloth cap. Has a love of
personal cleanliness. He doesn’t laugh often, but when he does
it means that he’s closing in on his foe. Doesn’t explain his
plans until he’s acted on them. Can differentiate between 75
different kinds of perfume. Quotes from the Bible (Matthew
6.34: ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’).
Watson: Has lived with Holmes for years and is fast on his feet.
S H E R L O C K H O L M E S
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Elementary: Deduces Mortimer’s career and character from his
walking stick.
Quotable Quotes: ‘It may be that you (Watson) are not yourself
luminous; but you are a conductor of light… in noting your
fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.’
‘In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the
Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task.’
Problems:The arrival time of Sir Henry’s train at Waterloo reduces
by 25 minutes during (at most) a two-minute conversation.
Holmes’ false beard theory seems tenuous at best – and, if it was
a false beard, then clearly it wasn’t Barrymore (whose beard was
real), so Watson needn’t be suspicious of him. How would
Holmes have heard about Laura Lyons? Even a ‘cunning prepara-
tion’ of phosphorescent paint can’t create a flaming mouth and
eyes – can it? Cornish tin mines are transported to Devon.What
happened to Watson’s missing diary page? (The story makes
perfect sense without it.)
Observations: In April 1901 Doyle went on a golfing holiday to
Cromer with his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson (later
editor of Vanity Fair). It was on this trip that Robinson regaled
him with tales of spectral hounds – specifically one that
haunted the Norfolk coastline called Black Shuck, and another
that was said to terrorise Dartmoor.
The Dartmoor legend is as follows. In the seventeenth
century Brook Manor, near Buckfastleigh on the edge of the
moor, was owned by evil squire Richard Cabell (who is buried
at Buckfastleigh churchyard). Cabell attacked his wife in a
jealous rage, and she fled across the moor with her faithful
hound. Cabell pursued and killed her, but the hound tore his
throat out before dying of knife wounds inflicted by the squire.
The dog was then said to appear to each new generation of the
Cabell family.
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Doyle had visited Dartmoor back in August 1881 but,
intrigued by the tales, he and Robinson returned there less
than a month after the golfing trip, both staying at Rowe’s
Duchy Hotel in Princetown in the shadow of Dartmoor jail.
(Today the hotel is a museum.) Doyle sensed that the lonely
tracts of heath and exposed moorland would make the ideal
setting for a book, and they sometimes walked up to 14 miles
a day exploring the area.
Doyle borrowed the topography of the moor, but changed
certain names. A compound of Fox Tor Mire (where prisoners
and ponies had been swallowed by oozing mud) and
Grimspound Bog became the Great Grimpen Mire.The hamlet
of Merripit near the prison gave its name to the fictional
Merripit House. Bovey Tracey or Totnes became Coombe
Tracey. The convict Selden apparently shared his name with
one of Dartmoor Prison’s toughest warders.
The character of Sherlock Holmes was only introduced
after the plot was decided upon, which explains his absence
from much of the story. The name Baskerville was allegedly
mentioned by Doyle to his mother before the Dartmoor trip,
but the coachman who drove Doyle and Robinson around,
Harry Baskerville, said Doyle used his name. He also claimed
that Robinson had thought of the story himself and had co-
written it with Doyle. This was denied by Doyle’s son Adrian.
(It is unclear how much input Robinson had but, in providing
the central idea of the demon hound, he was probably the cata-
lyst.)
Doyle began the novel at the Duchy Hotel, completing it on
an extended journey home through Sherborne, Bath and
Cheltenham to watch the cricket. For each instalment he was
paid £460–£680, according to length. In the front of the book
he acknowledges Robinson’s help: ‘This story owes its incep-
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tion to my friend, Mr Fletcher Robinson, who has helped me
both in the general plot and in the local details. ACD.’
Barrymore is one of the chief suspects in Sir Charles’
murder, and Doyle subtly hints at this when he writes the
butler was ‘the first to dog the new heir when he returned to
England’ (emphasis mine). Beryl, wishing to be free of her
cruel and philandering husband, is used to highlight Doyle’s
ongoing campaign against outmoded divorce laws.