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Speaking of Sherlock . . . and Conan Doyle

Every now and then in the course of being an avid Sherlockian, an opportunity comes up to speak about one’s chosen hobby before a non-Sherlockian audience. Sometimes it may be to a class of school kids, sometimes it might be to your boss’s chapter of the Lion’s Club, sometimes it might be to the general public at the local library. Today, the good Carter and I had the opportunity to speak as a part of our local church’s summer forum series. My old friend Burr had done the same thing for the same church a long time before, and at least one member remembered the talk with fondness . . . we had a bit to live up to.

Giving a general Sherlock Holmes talk to the general public is one of the harder things for the seriously Sherlockian brain to formulate. Non-Sherlockians are usually not interested in the finer points that fascinate more avid Sherlockians, and the wealth of information available to present to them could, and has, easily fill a semester-long college course. Deciding just what to talk about for a single hour is a tricky thing.

We decided early on that Carter and I were going to divide up the chores for this presentation. I would take the Canon and the beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, and she would take Sherlockians and all the marvelous things that came after. Simple enough, no?

No.

You see, talking about the beginnings of Sherlock Holmes usually requires talking about Arthur Conan Doyle, and if you have noticed by the contents of the rest of this site, I am not someone who enjoys dwelling on Conan Doyle. I’ve heard speakers, such as Roy Pilot, whose enthusiasm for Doyle can make the subject enjoyable even to a reprobate such as myself. I’ve read writers like Daniel Stashower who can do the same. But left to my own devices with such a presentation to make . . . I always feel like I’m trying to get myself to take cod liver oil, or some equally repugnant tonic. Sure, it’s supposed to be good for you, but . . . .

I’m a Sherlock Holmes fan, plain and simple. And when I leave the subject of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the Canon, which I often do, there are a hundred other subjects which fascinate me. Conan Doyle has just never been one of them. As Doyle himself once wrote, "The doll and its maker are never identical." And the maker of a delightful doll can actually be a rather irritating person.

I pondered upon this in preparing my talk. If The Complete Sherlock Holmes is my favorite book, then Arthur Conan Doyle must be my favorite author, right? Somehow it just never worked that way. And once more I began to realize why . . .

Because I’m a Sherlock Holmes fan. And Conan Doyle was, most definitely, not.

You’ll hear Sherlockians try to argue otherwise. And you’ll hear Sherlockians paint Doyle as a saint next to Mother Theresa, sometimes as well. But nobody’s perfect. And when you come right down to it, Doyle was irritated by Holmes.

Think about it. If Doyle wrote his play "Angels of Darkness" before A Study in Scarlet, as it seems he did, Sherlock Holmes was the filler Doyle added to puff the Mormon tale up to novel length. When it came time to write the second tale, The Sign of Four, Doyle whipped it off in a month so he could get back to the nearly a year per tale he spent on his historical novels. He had a cash offer for a Holmes tale, so he’d be a fool not to do it, but he wanted to get Holmes out of the way.

Time after time, Sherlock Holmes was the commercial venture that Conan Doyle used to get the money he needed for other things. Holmes was what he did well, and the rest of the world drafted him to do Holmes whenever it could. But when you come right down to it, if Conan Doyle had the world under his control, we wouldn’t be Sherlockians. We’d be spiritualists.

But, having said that, we all still have to pay our dues to the guy, even now. The talk I delivered this morning was, in the end, as much about Conan Doyle as Sherlock Holmes. Doyle led a colorful life, and there’s material aplenty there to amuse a non-Sherlockian audience with bits they never knew. My talk went well, and the good Carter followed with a Powerpoint presentation that would have amused and delighted even a crowd of seen-it-all Sherlockians.

It’ll be a long time until I have to pay my Doyle dues again, I hope . . .

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver

COLUMN DISCLAIMER: I present the above statements knowing full well that I am falling into that area called "wrong" for a number of people, and have had my wrongness explained to me on numerous occasions. From past experience, however, I can tell you that such explanations have so far seemed to have little effect of my hardwired Sherlockian back-brain, so further attempts at reform are probably a wasted effort.