No, Virginia, There Is Not A. Conan Doyle

Dear Mr. Keefauver,

I have been a big fan of Sherlock Hotmes since the fifth grade. Now that I am in junior high, I have many older friends who have told me about "the Writings about the Writings." Needless to say, I want to read them all and find out all I can about Sherlock Holmes.

In the more recent writings, however, I keep seeing the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I don't ever remember reading about him in the stories. Am I missing something?

Your loyal fan,
Winnie Skeffington
La Crosse, Wisconsin

Yes, Winnie, yours is but one of many letters to reach this columnist on that subject in the past couple of years. Sherlockians all across the country are confused, irritated, and downright frustrated because they think they have missed something in their Sherlockian readings. Well, Winnie, let me reassure you and all those other poor souls: There are only sixt stories of Sherlock Holmes in the true and proper Canon. And none of them contain Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Sherlockian Canon is a marvelous place, as I've written here so many times before. It's full of slop shops, khitmutgars, cormorants, gasogenes, and other things. We read of the brilliant writer Winwood Reade, the eminent biographer Boswell, ar even the tightrope walker Blondin in its pages. But nowhere in the Canon do we find this Conan Doyle. The indexes of Goodrict and Harrington both back me up on this-neither have even one listing for Doyle.

Tracy's marvelous Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana does have a listing for Doyle, explaining "He is known to have acted as literary agent for Dr. John H. Watson in the placing for publication of Watson's adventures with Sherlock Holmes. It is generally agreed that he also wrote the American retrospectives of A Studv in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear, and possibly the third-person narratives 'His Last Bow' and 'The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone'." What Tracy does not explain is just who it was who knew Doyle acted as Watson's literary agent, and how that person found out.

Dr. Watson certainly never mentioned his "agent." Sherlock Holmes seems to have had no quotable comments about him. Indeed, there appears to be no Canonical proof of Conan Doyle's existence. He seems, at the very most, an apocryphal being.

The extra-Canonical proofs of Doyle's existence are astounding, I must admit. His life is well documented, his artifacts are preserved. But the same can be said for Groucho Marx. Groucho Marx is also absent from the Sherlockian Canon, which is why we Sherlockians don't study him. We're Sherlockians, and the proper study of Sherlockians is Sherlock. The Marxists can study Groucho. The Doyleans can study Sir Arthur.

The best argument I ever heard for including the study of Conan Doyle in our studies of Holmes was: "Look, his name's on the outside of the booki" That one was hard to argue. Almost every copy of the Canon I ever saw had "A. Conan Doyle" on its spine. In response, however, I must repeat that age-old adage that we all know to be true: You can't judge a book by its cover.

And so, Winnie Skeffington, and all you other befuddled Sherlockians out there, don't worry about Doyle . . . Sherlockian/Doylean half-breeds may give you a hard time about it, call you narrow-minded or somesuch, but stand your ground. General Gordon is in the Canon. Paganini is in the Canon. Even good old honest Abe Lincoln appears in Watson's stories of Sherlock Holmes. But Doyle doesn't.

To paraphrase the Best and Wisest One, the Canon is big enough for us. No spiritualists need apply.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, September 1990 )