Defending Reality

"I believe all the Sherlock Holmes stories I read. It is so much pleasanter to believe them true. If they weren't true they wouldn't be so wonderful."

John Kendrick Bangs
The Enchanted Type-writer, 1899

You may remember last month's column rambling on about Edgar Smith's persistence in keeping the reality of Sherlock Holmes a steady fact during his tenure on The Baker Street Journal. He was a great proponent of^ that simple idea, and offtimes it seems like the Baker Street Irregulars of his day were the first to really defend that notion. As the date below the above quotation indicates, however, they did have their predecessors in the cause.

It may seem strange that the reality of a man as well known as Sherlock Holmes should even need defenders. Real is real is real, right? Well, most of the time.

The problem with Sherlock Holmes's reality stems from his close relationship with a man named Arthur Conan Doyle. No one is quite sure exactly how Holmes and Doyle regarded each other away from the public eye. Dr. John H. Watson and Conan Doyle were obviously fairly close, as their long partnership in getting Holmes's cases in print seems to indicate, and even that relationship is a bit mysterious. As hidden as the true ties between Holmes, Watson, and Doyle may be, however, the ties are undeniably there, and therein lies the problem:

Doyle was a little bit of a prankster.

While attending the "Founder's Footprints" symposium in Minneapolis this August, I was fortunate enough to hear Roy Pilot speak on me events surrounding Doyle's writing and publishing of The Lost World, a marvelous work of fiction featuring the daring Professor Challenger and a newly discovered each of live dinosaurs. Simply writing a book and publishing it, in the case of The Lost World, was not enough for Conan Doyle. He wanted to make his work of fiction seem as real as possible, despite the dinosaurs, and set about having photographs created of the main characters to be included in the book. He himself posed for Professor Challenger, after gluing on massive amounts of facial hair.

Did this rose actually fool anybody? Well, talk of at least one expedition being mounted to search for Doyle's lost world of dinosaurs actually did occur, and there may have been others. Apparently the words "By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" on the outside cover had little effect on a few people. When one considers that "By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" was also on the outside cover of "The Strange Case of Oscar Slater," a non-fiction work, during mat same year, a Httle confusion could be understandable.

In recent years, Doyle's name has come up time and again in association with the Piltdown man hoax. And while experts agree that Conan Doyle probably had nothing to do with the fraudulent skull of a missing link, there seem to be a few people quite willing to cast him in the role of hoaxter. Which brings us back to Sherlock Holmes.

If Conan Doyle was willing to go so far as to fake photos to make his fictional character Professor Challenger look more real, well, what are we to think of a very real-seeming fellow like Sherlock Holmes who was popularized in books with Doyle's name on the cover?

That Holmes is fictional?

Next thing you know, you'll be thinking that me Lyceum Theatre was fictional, or Simpson's restaurant, or Jabez Wilson's pawn shop! You'llstart thinking that Mycroft Holmes wasn't real, and since he was the British government, well, I guess that makes them mythical, and . . . gee, do you really trust your friends who claim they've been to this "England" place?

As you can see, without Sherlock Holmes, civilization as we know it starts to break down very quickly. Does die reality of Sherlock Holmes need defenders? No. Reality as we know it needs defenders. Our entire way of life needs defenders. That bright spark we call humanity in the dark cosmic void of infinity needs defenders.

Believe it or not, Sherlockians are those defenders, forming the front line against the breakdown of cosmic order. From John Kendrick Bangs, through Edgar Smith, to you and me, the loyal order of Sherlock marches ever onward.

Sure, we may seem like a bunch of bookworms sprinkled with a handful of true maniacs and hard drinkers to the outside world. It makes a great era masse secret identity for concealing our true purpose. Silly, you say? Well, some things are. But like John Kendrick Bangs said, "It's so much pleasanter to believe them true." I agree.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, September 1998)