I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere: Mattias Bostrom

Showing posts with label Mattias Bostrom. Show all posts

The 2024 BSI Trust Lecture

<h4 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">“a course of lectures” [COPP] </h4><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilSeQ9puf9TOJ6O6dp3Cz2MYP8wSo251TePRUcLQUijUZ2DfvMi15bVkdq4ZheTV83kyOnrNym1FbvvaxxtP1_0FG6X-si5iqntCEzrc-Im43rAFOOU55IBZ83GBD4_XaeZ8q7cCNVDbvs8e5b3xvWX3OCizj3xGlA4vN_tbz8tBYPESsj5ye70OqFN9my/s925/Mattias%20Bostrom.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="925" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilSeQ9puf9TOJ6O6dp3Cz2MYP8wSo251TePRUcLQUijUZ2DfvMi15bVkdq4ZheTV83kyOnrNym1FbvvaxxtP1_0FG6X-si5iqntCEzrc-Im43rAFOOU55IBZ83GBD4_XaeZ8q7cCNVDbvs8e5b3xvWX3OCizj3xGlA4vN_tbz8tBYPESsj5ye70OqFN9my/w640-h480/Mattias%20Bostrom.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> The name Mattias Boström, BSI ("The Swedish Pathological Society") will be familiar to the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere audience. He previously appeared on <a href="https://ihose.co/ihose127" target="_blank">Episode 127: From Holmes to Sherlock</a>.Mattias is author of the Agatha Award-winning <a href="https://amzn.to/3z6yg7F" target="_blank">From Holmes to Sherlock</a> (2017) and serves as one of the editors for the <a href="https://wessexpress.com/html/newspapers6.html" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in the Newspapers</a> series of books. He resides with his wife and two daughters outside of Stockholm, Sweden, and is a member of various Sherlockian societies including the BSI.And he will be giving the fourth annual BSI Trust Lecture, titled "'The public shall know': The Impact of the Baker Street Irregulars Over 90 Years" on Zoom on Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 2:00 pm EDT.Mattias will use an analysis of thousands of newspaper articles and a deep dive into the activities of the <a href="https://bakerstreetirregulars.com/" target="_blank">BSI</a> to shed light on how the BSI has helped to create and shape the Sherlockian landscape for nearly a century.Registration is for this free Zoom webinar is open to everyone but does require <a href="https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AiJlhQLLQ8uHGdl1UUQFEA#/registration" target="_blank">advance registration</a>. <h4 style="text-align: left;">The BSI Trust Lecture</h4>Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 2:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time (New York)<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Online using Zoom</li><li>Open to all Sherlockians & the public</li><li>Free – no registration fee</li><li>Advance registration required</li><li>Registration closes when event reaches capacity</li></ul><a href="https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AiJlhQLLQ8uHGdl1UUQFEA#/registration" target="_blank">Register now</a> to attend what will be a comprehensive and fascinating event for fans of Sherlock Holmes and those curious about the history of the Baker Street Irregulars. <h4 style="text-align: left;">Listen to Mattias Boström on <a href="https://ihose.co/ihose127" target="_blank">I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere Episode 127</a>:</h4>
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The 2024 BSI Trust Lecture

“a course of lectures” [COPP] The name Mattias Boström, BSI ("The Swedish Pathological Society") will be familiar to the I Hear o...

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by Scott Monty

The Real First Publication Date of A Study in Scarlet

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"The date being–?" [CREE]</h4>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">LitHub's <a href="http://lithub.com/lithub-daily-december-1-2016/" target="_blank">erroneous claim</a></td></tr>
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A number of sites across the Internet mentioned that December 1 is a day that Sherlock Holmes fans should celebrate, since Beeton's Christmas Annual — containing A Study in Scarlet — was published on that date in 1887. It would seem to make sense, as the beginning of December would be the natural time for a Christmas annual to make its way to the newsstand. 
 
However, this is not the case. 
 
No information about the exact date is to be found on the Annual itself, but since it's a Christmas publication, December would not be a terrible guess. The first thing to do is to check what the foremost experts on the subject have said about it, in this case <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bibliography-Conan-Doyle-Soho-Bibliographies/dp/0198181906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480647719&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Bibliography+of+A.+Conan+Doyle" target="_blank">A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle</a> by Richard Lancelyn Green and John Michael Gibson. They mention that the Annual was issued in November 1887. 
 
To get even closer to an exact publication date we must check the British newspapers for November 1887, searching for advertisements. And the very first one we find is in the Standard, November 21. It states that the Beeton's Christmas Annual is "Just Ready, in Picture Covers. One Shilling." The same advertisement is then repeated in the newspaper on several occasions that week, and it can also be found in other newspapers, e.g. the Daily News, November 22, the Yorkshire Post, November 23, and the Glasgow Herald, November 24. Remember: these were the days before Amazon's pre-order system was in place; Ward, Lock, and Co. wouldn't have advertised if the publication wasn't for sale yet. 
 
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Nov. 21 ad in The Standard.</td></tr>
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November 21 was a Monday, and no advertising for the Beeton's Christmas Annual can be found in the Standard during the previous week. In 1886 we find an advertisement for the Annual as early as Wednesday, November 17. And in 1885 on Monday, November 16. 
 
We can therefore be sure that the 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual wasn't published on December 1, or on any other December date. It was definitely issued in November— most likely on November 21. If it had been published the week before, it seems strange that the publisher didn't advertise it. 
 
 
Editor's note: Mattias Bostrom, together with Matt Laffey, is co-editor of the series of books <a href="http://ihose.co/shnewsvol1" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in the Newspapers</a>, an exhaustive collection of contemporary news and commentary relating to the Great Detective and his creator. 
 
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The Real First Publication Date of A Study in Scarlet

"The date being–?" [CREE] LitHub's erroneous claim A number of sites across the Internet mentioned that December 1 is...

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by Mattias Boström

Arthur Conan Doyle's Unlikely Nickname

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"that cross-hit of yours under the jaw" [SIGN]</h4>
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Some secrets are more well kept than others. For the first time we can now reveal a previously unknown nickname of Arthur Conan Doyle. 
 
As a young medical student, only 20 years old, Conan Doyle spent eight months in Birmingham, working as an assistant to Dr. Reginald Hoare. It was a lucrative inner-city general practice, and Conan Doyle joined Dr. Hoare on his rounds and assisted in the surgery. Conan Doyle liked both Dr. Hoare and his wife Amy, and he felt more like a son than an assistant. In his spare time he started to write fiction, trying to get a story published for the first time. 
 
Furthermore, Conan Doyle, who was quite athletic, spent some time boxing at the Lion Gymnasium. There he fell in with the 17 year-old George Barber, who worked at the Kynoch percussion cap factory in Witton. One day Barber, who also played football in the newly formed Aston Villa F.C., was sparring with Conan Doyle, when the latter landed a blow which considerably damaged Barber's nose. 
 
Many years later, at the age of 71, Barber remembered the incident. "That," he said with some pride, "is my souvenir to-day of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." 
 
Barber also remembered one more thing – the nickname of his opponent. The hefty youth at the Lion Gymnasium was not Arthur Conan Doyle among the Birmingham boxers. He was instead – and here it comes – "Piggy" Doyle. 
 
Source: The Evening Telegraph, August 16, 1933, with the headline 'Sparred with Conan Doyle' 
 
Editor's note: Mattias Boström is editor, along with Matt Laffey, of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle and the Newspapers, available from <a href="http://wessexpress.com/html/newspaper2.html" target="_blank">Wessex Press</a>. 
 
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Arthur Conan Doyle's Unlikely Nickname

"that cross-hit of yours under the jaw" [SIGN] Some secrets are more well kept than others. For the first time we can now rev...

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by Mattias Boström

“Elementary, my dear Watson” — The Birth of a Quotation

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"placing it upon record." [BLAN]</h4>
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To anyone who has heard of Sherlock Holmes, “Elementary, my dear Watson” is always the quotation. 
 
Sherlockians know that the phrase is not a Doylean original, but still we have placed it together with the deerstalker and the curved pipe on our sacred canonical mantelpiece. We definitely do feel an emotion akin to love for it. Conan Doyle used “elementary” a few times in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and “my dear Watson” many times. In “The Crooked Man” (1893) both of these components are included. But there are 52 words between them. 
 
It is often stated that the line was first used in the American movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes from 1929. Sherlock Holmes was played by Clive Brook, and this was the first sound film about the detective. At the end of the movie Brook delivered the famous line. 
 
Other sources—e.g., Christopher Redmond’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Quotations-from-Baker-Street/dp/1896032168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471444433&sr=8-1&keywords=quotations+from+baker+street" target="_blank">Quotations from Baker Street</a> (2009)—point out a much earlier occurrence: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Psmith-Journalist-Collectors-Wodehouse-P/dp/1590201051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471444454&sr=8-1&keywords=Psmith%2C+Journalist" target="_blank">Psmith, Journalist</a> by P. G. Wodehouse, published as a book in 1915. The story had run as a serial in The Captain from October 1909 to March 1910. And it was in the February issue that Psmith murmured, “Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary.” No earlier occurrences have until now been known. But they do exist. 
 
Half a year before the first installment of Wodehouse’s serial, the astronomer and Harvard professor Edward C. Pickering claimed that there was a way of signalling to the planet Mars. It all depended on correct positioning of mirrors that should reflect the sunlight. “Elementary mathematics,” as Pickering expressed it himself. Or as that statement was commented in an American news item: “‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ as Sherlock Holmes was wont to say. ‘Elementary.’” (The Times Dispatch, 24 August 1909) 
 
Wodehouse did not coin the classic words. Nor did that Richmond, Virginia, newspaper. On the contrary the line seems to have been commonly known—the wording in the Times Dispatch indicates that—and during the following years it appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers: 
 
<ul>
<li>The Washington Herald, 10 August 1910, from an article about a real-life detective: “Mr. Holmes always insisted that his methods were simplicity run riot. His most famous deductions invariably were characterized by himself as ‘elementary my dear Watson; elementary.’”</li>
<li>The New York Times, 30 April 1911, from an article about the detective William J. Burns: “‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ says Sherlock Holmes. And since it’s not elementary, but rather occult and esoteric, the reader is apt to feel annoyed and to think the expression pure ostentation on Sherlock’s part. However it isn’t. Detectives all talk that way. Doyle is realistic, after all.”</li>
<li>Kansas City Star, 2 December 1911, from another article about Burns: “As Sherlock Holmes himself might put it, ‘Quite elementary, my dear Watson.’”</li>
</ul>
 
 
Always cited as a matter of course that this was Sherlock Holmes’s most famous line. And certainly with no knowledge that that was not so. 
 
During the following years the line appeared in widely differing contexts in magazines like the British Sketch (1912), the American Everybody’s Magazine (1913), the American Western Electric News (1913) and The Journal of the American Medical Association (1914). Sometimes the line was used with a reference to Sherlock Holmes, but more and more it stood by itself, with no reference to the source at all. “Elementary, my dear Watson” had become a common phrase. The line could be used in connection with anything; it didn’t need to be about detectives. 
 
In the Louisville Courier-Journal the following four-line funny story was published at the end of 1914: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Does Wombat own or rent his house?” 
“Rents it.” 
“How do you know?” 
“I know all right. He scratches matches on the paint.”</blockquote>
This had obviously nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes. But the headline for the four lines was nevertheless “Elementary, Watson”—since the story was about sharp wit, and such was best represented by Holmes’s most famous line. (In this case in a shorter version, since ”my dear” were cut.) And over the years also in travesty versions. The word ”elementary” was sometimes changed to other words that sounded similar to get a comical effect. And on 2 February 1920 The New-York Tribune wrote in a political commentary: “That is elementary, my dear Senator.” The origin in the Holmes quotation is evident, and the reader is expected to understand it. 
 
During the ’20s the use of the phrase widespread. Agatha Christie included it in the Tommy and Tuppence novel The Secret Adversary: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Good morning,” said Tommy amicably. “You have not used Pear’s soap, I see.” 
Conrad growled threatingly. 
“No light repartee, have you, old bean? There, there, we can’t always have brains as well as beauty. What have we for lunch? Stew? How did I know? Elementary, my dear Watson—the smell of onions is unmistakable.”</blockquote>
 
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The line also worked in advertising. The picture shows an advert for suits, from The New-York Tribune 14 May 1921. 
 
And it is in an ad that we can find the first published appearance of the line, even if it is in a slightly parodic form. 
 
In the late fall of 1901 an advertisement for Charles Ford’s Bile Beans for Biliousness was published in many British newspapers (e.g., Northampton Mercury 15 November 1901). This alleged cure-all had been popular for more than ten years, and many thought it really worked. (Adverts for the medicine were often designed to look like editorial text—the only thing that revealed that it was an advert was the letters ADVT at the end of the text.) The ad had the headline “Sherlock Holmes’s Latest” and was written as a Sherlock Holmes parody. Here follows the beginning of the text: 
 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One winter’s morning, a few years after my marriage, I was lying by my hearth, smoking a red herring, and nodding over the Encyclopedia Britannica, for my day’s work had been a hard one. Since first meeting Shylock Combs my practice as a doctor had, as a matter of course, rapidly declined. My presentation clock had chimed 4.47 a.m., and I was in the act of blowing out the gas when I heard the clang of my front door speaking tube. Thinking it must be the milkman I went into the hall, opened the door, and, to my astonishment, Shylock Combs stood upon my step. “Ah, Potson,” he said; “I hoped I should not be too early to catch you. I perceive the wind has changed round to N.N.E. by S.W. again.” I was astounded, as he had not had time to observe the thermometer in my bedroom. He noticed my amazement and smiled that wonderful smile of his. “Elementary, my dear Potson,” he said; “I observed the left-hand side of your moustache inclined about 47 5/8 degrees towards the west, and coming as I did from Butcher-street I at once deduced from which quarter the wind was blowing.”</blockquote>
Here we find, in 1901, the quotation “Elementary, my dear Potson,” an obvious parody on the classic line. But no smoke without fire, and no parody without something to parody. From where then did the quotation come? We can but speculate about this, since we don’t have any written evidence. I have neither any examples of appearances of the line between 1901 and 1909. It is however evident that the quotation spread in both Great Britain and the U.S., and on a wide front in widely differing contexts. 
 
The origin of the quotation must be something that united the U.S. and Great Britain. And there was only one Holmes-related success that ranged over both continents. It wasn’t a book; it was nothing that had been written in the newspapers. It was William Gillette’s 1899 play Sherlock Holmes. It had been playing London in 1901. And that makes it no mystery that a quotation from the popular play was used in a British advertisement the same year—the play had by then been seen by a great many Englishmen. 
 
With the continued concurrent performances and tours of the play in the U.S. and in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century, it influenced people’s idea of Sherlock Holmes. To many theatergoers the master detective in the play became more real than the canonical Holmes. The deerstalker and curved pipe came to be connected with Holmes largely thanks to the play. Professor Moriarty had previously only figured in one single short story, but here he was established as the Napoleon of crime. And it is not unlikely that the famous quotation was born there. 
 
In the script Holmes once says “elementary, my dear fellow.” But since he also says “my dear Watson” a number of times, it might very well have happened that “elementary, my dear fellow” turned into “elementary, my dear Watson” after Gillette—and the other actors who played Holmes—had performed the play for some years, even though they never changed the written script. 
 
And even if the line was never actually uttered in the play, the audiences might very well have collectively mixed together those two phrases into one and thought that they had heard “elementary, my dear Watson.” In all probability it
was through the spoken line that the phrase was coined, and it happened thanks
to William Gillette. Conan Doyle had created Sherlock Holmes as a character,
but there is no doubt that it was Gillette’s success that turned the master
detective into one of the world’s most famous and recognizable symbols.

Author's note: I wrote this some time ago, wanting to elaborate on some facts I mention in my book From Holmes to Sherlock (published in Swedish in 2013), and I thought it fitting to post my findings in connection with the forthcoming English edition in 2017. However, since <a href="http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/07/14/watson/" target="_blank">Quote Investigator</a> posted a similar article a few weeks ago – based on pretty much the same sources – I see no reason to wait any longer with sharing these observations. 
 
Editor's note: In addition to the English edition of From Holmes to Sherlock, Mattias is also the co-editor (with Matt Laffey) of <a href="http://wessexpress.com/html/newspaper.html" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in the Newspapers</a>, a multi-volume project under the banner of Wessex Press. 
 
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“Elementary, my dear Watson” — The Birth of a Quotation

"placing it upon record." [BLAN] To anyone who has heard of Sherlock Holmes, “Elementary, my dear Watson” is always the quot...

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by Mattias Boström

Harper Collins Needs to Do More Detective Work for The Crime Club

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"what do the public, the great unobservant public...care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!" [COPP]</h4>
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I really don't have time for this. My second daughter Esther was born the day before yesterday, and right now I have to spend the rest of my spare time finishing the English version of my book From Holmes to Sherlock. So you will all understand that I have plenty of important things to do - and writing this blog post was definitely not on that list. 
 
However, that British newspaper The Sunday Times makes it impossible for me not to react. Today they published the utmost rubbish (<a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/literary-sleuth-unmasks-conan-doyle-as-plot-thief-gsrkfvflq" target="_blank">"Literary sleuth unmasks Conan Doyle as plot thief"</a> [paywall] regarding Conan Doyle, and I just get so annoyed. It seems that anyone can claim whatever they want about Conan Doyle – and the newspapers will believe it. Even The Sunday Times. 
 
We have seen it so many times before. Just mention Conan Doyle's name, and the journalists will lose all interest in checking the credibility of the source. Especially if the source is not at all a Conan Doyle expert. In the newspaper world anyone saying anything about Conan Doyle is an expert. In the case of <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/02/conan-doyle-didnt-write-lost-sherlock.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the Scottish man who found a short story last year</a> that he thought was written by Conan Doyle, he even said himself that he was no Conan Doyle expert, yet the newspapers treated his views on the authenticity of the story as the views of an expert. And they saw no need to contact a real Conan Doyle expert before spreading the extraordinary news over the world. (The Scottish man was <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/03/the-final-word-on-lost-sherlock-holmes.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wrong</a>, of course.) 
 
This time it's Harper Collins that just want publicity for a forthcoming anthology. So they contacted The Sunday Times. On June 16 they will publish <a href="https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780008137335/the-crime-club" target="_blank">The Crime Club</a> – and this is how they describe the book on their web site:  
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The Detective Story Club’s first short story anthology is based around a London detective club and includes three newly discovered tales unpublished for 100 years, plus a story bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story but written some seven years earlier."</blockquote>
The story with the "uncanny resemblance" is a short story from 1915 with a plot that is extremely close to the plot of "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Thor_Bridge" target="_blank">The Problem of Thor Bridge</a>", which Conan Doyle wrote in 1921 and published in 1922. According to The Sunday Times it was the proof reader Hugo Lamb who noticed this resemblance, and David Brawn at Harper Collins "has no doubt that Lamb has solved a literary crime." Brawn concludes, "It's real plagiarism." 
 
Oh, please. Why not take the time to do some research before you contact The Times? Or here's a stretch: how about <a href="http://lmgtfy.com/?q=thor+bridge+plot+origin" target="_blank">a good old fashioned Google search</a>? I tried – it took me two minutes to search for "thor bridge plot origin", which led me to search for "thor bridge hans gross" – and then I had all the material I needed. 
 
This is no secret – anyone can find it in e.g. Leslie S. Klinger's <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0393059162" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="866f1592d72ea067d1f364502c4ba168" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes" href="http://www.amazon.com/New-Annotated-Sherlock-Holmes-Complete/dp/0393059162/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=866f1592d72ea067d1f364502c4ba168&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1417641" rel="nofollow" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes</a><span style="border-color: initial !important; border-image-outset: initial !important; border-image-repeat: initial !important; border-image-slice: initial !important; border-image-source: initial !important; border-image-width: initial !important; border-width: initial !important;"><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1417641" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=866f1592d72ea067d1f364502c4ba168&_cb=1465182932715" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> (published by W.W. Norton). It was Conan Doyle's editor at the Strand Magazine, H. Greenhough Smith, who gave Conan Doyle the plot idea for this story. Smith had found it – an authentic crime case – in Dr Hans Gross' Criminal Investigation – A Practical Handbook, published in English in 1906, and in German already in 1893. Since the authors of the 1915 story were a superintendent and a police historian, they had of course read the same non-fiction book, and based their story on it. 
 
What really bothers me is not only this article in The Sunday Times, but the fact that Harper Collins, according to their presentation of the book, seems to make a mystery of something that is not a mystery, and while doing so are making accusations against Conan Doyle that are totally unfair and false.  
 
However, anyone can be a Conan Doyle expert. Just go ahead and claim whatever you want. People will publish it. And I will – again – waste my time on complaining about it. 
 
 
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Finally, I want to apologize to my family and to my American publisher Otto Penzler for having written this blog post. I had no choice. 
 
 
[Editor's note: Mattias Bostrom, BSI ("The Swedish Pathological Society") is the author of <a href="http://www.piratforlaget.se/bocker/fran-holmes-till-sherlock/" target="_blank">Från Holmes Till Sherlock</a> and writes for I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere typically only under duress.] 
 
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 </div>

Harper Collins Needs to Do More Detective Work for The Crime Club

"what do the public, the great unobservant public...care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!" [COPP] I really d...

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by Mattias Boström

Original Holmes and Parallel Holmes

<h4 style="text-align: center;">
"running on parallel lines" [HOUN]</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkifMgcxbJbhKhMMvN5BS4UzZldB1dT9EIiNjyN7LEVtgcBiUxq1ZEmrTH1ONR00lQ4AnSUO0eR4m_tFKeq8iBF49FR8ZbijOdyoSugr0mXTXZN8AZGAiFSwiOV5EKdiYb6MIQ8IJaNKL/s1600/Twin+Sherlock.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkifMgcxbJbhKhMMvN5BS4UzZldB1dT9EIiNjyN7LEVtgcBiUxq1ZEmrTH1ONR00lQ4AnSUO0eR4m_tFKeq8iBF49FR8ZbijOdyoSugr0mXTXZN8AZGAiFSwiOV5EKdiYb6MIQ8IJaNKL/s640/Twin+Sherlock.png" width="640" /></a></div>
 
Someone asked me recently what I think about <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="SEARCH" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="70ae33057d1791c34cc06229a54c230d" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies" href="http://amazon.com/s/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Guy%20Ritchie%E2%80%99s%20Sherlock%20Holmes%20movies&tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=70ae33057d1791c34cc06229a54c230d&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_3883869" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_3883869" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=70ae33057d1791c34cc06229a54c230d&_cb=1452234544849" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> – do I really like them, even though their resemblance to Conan Doyle’s original is so little? My answer was not specifically about those two movies, but rather the whole genre of Sherlock Holmes adaptations. 
<h3>
 
A Tale of Two Holmeses</h3>
My way of seeing this is that there are two kinds of Holmes. There is the original Holmes – and there is the parallel Holmes. The parallel Holmes has existed almost since the beginning (the first parody came just a few months after the first Sherlock Holmes short story in 1891), and is a version of Holmes that other persons have formed, rather than Conan Doyle. 
 
For many people this parallel Holmes is often more true than the original version. Without parallel Holmes, the detective would lack many of his most characteristic features: the deerstalker, the curved pipe and the line "Elementary, my dear Watson." The deerstalker was of course put there by Sidney Paget – and that’s definitely connected to the original Holmes – but without William Gillette’s use of it, Holmes would have had no characteristic hat, and his easily recognizable silhouette would be less easily recognizable. 
 
When Gillette’s play toured America and all around Europe at the turn of the century, more people had seen this Sherlock Holmes on stage than had ever read a book about Conan Doyle’s detective. [Is this true? Even with subscriptions of The Strand (in which Paget's drawings existed) soaring? -Ed.] Even if Gillette’s Holmes had lines and plot taken from original Holmes, and even if Conan Doyle had said okay to the manuscript, it was nevertheless a parallel Holmes – Gillette’s own view of the detective. Gillette’s Holmes play showed generations to come what could be done with the detective (e.g. his emotions towards Alice Faulkner) and how far away from original Holmes he could be taken – while still being able to call him Sherlock Holmes. 
 
But Gillette’s Holmes wasn’t the only forefather of future parallel Holmes. The parodies of the 1890s had done as much to create that parallel Holmes. They had sped up the plots and made Holmes’s deductions faster and more impossible – and, of course, sometimes entirely wrong, since they were parodies. They had given Holmes even sharper features and more insane personality. And they had spread and further established Sherlock Holmes’s increasingly famous name among the readers. 
<h3>
 1 + 1 = ∞ ?</h3>
These two early sorts of parallel Holmes melted into one big category, and formed what was to become the popular icon Sherlock Holmes. Parallel Holmes was – and still is – the Holmes that most people know about. Much fewer have read the original stories. Original Holmes was the origin of parallel Holmes, but parallel Holmes was the origin of popular icon Holmes. 
 
Parallel Holmes can be almost anything, and it can be boring and it can be fun. The most boring examples are often the ones that painstakingly want to be original Holmes, but are made with such lack of love that they entirely miss the goal. They are mainly just constructed mystery plots with an investigating cliché duo in the middle. However, when parallel Holmes is made with love and genius, and when it comes really close to original Holmes, it’s just a pleasure to consume, e.g. some of the best episodes of <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B000RPCJB6" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="532edbb2d62a2af44f3b56afbc329aea" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="the Granada series" href="http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Complete-Granada-Television/dp/B000RPCJB6/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=532edbb2d62a2af44f3b56afbc329aea&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1954625" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the Granada series</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1954625" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=532edbb2d62a2af44f3b56afbc329aea&_cb=1452236001230" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> with Jeremy Brett, <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/02/interview-author-lyndsay-faye-on-art-of.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lyndsay Faye</a>’s novel <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1416583319" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="8e65af0d391af9cbf36451ef5da326a5" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Dust and Shadow" href="http://www.amazon.com/Dust-Shadow-Account-Ripper-Killings/dp/1416583319/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=8e65af0d391af9cbf36451ef5da326a5&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_6944122" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dust and Shadow</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_6944122" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=8e65af0d391af9cbf36451ef5da326a5&_cb=1452235406143" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" />, or <a href="http://ihose.co/ihose85" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nicholas Meyer</a>'s <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0393311198" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="fe0f0b2d2df357685fcf62102ca682d2" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="The Seven Percent Solution" href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Seven-Per-Cent-Solution-Reminiscences-Paperback/dp/0393311198/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=fe0f0b2d2df357685fcf62102ca682d2&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_5740271" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Seven-Per-Cent Solution</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_5740271" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=fe0f0b2d2df357685fcf62102ca682d2&_cb=1452235398743" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" />.  
 
Many of the most interesting parallel Holmes productions are the ones where the creators are doing something totally different. They move away from Conan Doyle, and their foundations are sometimes to be found in other genres, not necessarily crime fiction related. They want to tell something else, and they often demand more of the reader/viewer. To look upon such productions as detective stories can be risky – in their cores they often hold a vibrating packet full of emotions. 
 
These creators are not just satisfied with playing the game, but are instead constantly adding to it, evolving it. Mitch Cullin’s novel <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1400078229" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="e43988e5c7776901c8725e0297c7865e" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="A Slight Trick of the Mind" href="http://www.amazon.com/Slight-Trick-Mind-Mitch-Cullin/dp/1400078229/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=e43988e5c7776901c8725e0297c7865e&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1353403" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Slight Trick of the Mind</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1353403" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=e43988e5c7776901c8725e0297c7865e&_cb=1452235633556" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> (which became the film <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B014PIQYIO" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="8f6f4a31a4822c30e484288dcba94237" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Mr. Holmes" href="http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Holmes-DVD-Digital-McKellen/dp/B014PIQYIO/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=8f6f4a31a4822c30e484288dcba94237&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1945634" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mr. Holmes</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1945634" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=8f6f4a31a4822c30e484288dcba94237&_cb=1452235643516" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" />) is one modern illustration of this. And Billy Wilder’s movie <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B00K6D1R0I" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="b83af11c30d4fb4f283e19b36c37fc90" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" href="http://www.amazon.com/Private-Life-Sherlock-Holmes-Blu-ray/dp/B00K6D1R0I/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=b83af11c30d4fb4f283e19b36c37fc90&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_7658103" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_7658103" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=b83af11c30d4fb4f283e19b36c37fc90&_cb=1452235653371" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> and Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s TV series are other examples. They don't just play the game, they keep changing it. 
 
It is sometimes the case that when parallel Holmes gets even further away from original Holmes, great entertainment is to be extracted. I love the film <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B00RYZFSJM" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="6cc182abc3cb65377b8e1e0390997fac" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Without a Clue" href="http://www.amazon.com/Without-Clue-Michael-Caine/dp/B00RYZFSJM/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=thebakerstree-20&linkId=6cc182abc3cb65377b8e1e0390997fac&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_5736662" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Without a Clue</a><img alt="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_5736662" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=thebakerstree-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=6cc182abc3cb65377b8e1e0390997fac&_cb=1452235717367" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> – it's definitely not original Holmes, but it's fun. I also like such a thing as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOj-Is2ylA0" target="_blank">the short rap version of The Hound of the Baskervilles</a>. 
 
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wOj-Is2ylA0?rel=0" width="640"></iframe></center>
 
And many other crazy things that have been made. And I like the Guy Ritchie movies – not because they are good adaptations of original Holmes, but because they are good versions of parallel Holmes. They effectively make use of the popular icon Holmes and make something new out of that and something that can attract a lot of people that prefer to watch a film with a super hero rather than a film with a serious thinker. 
 
And since Warner Bros have succeeded in making these films that people want to see, I have no trouble at all with this not being close to the original Holmes. Because I love parallel Holmes as much as I love original Holmes. 
 
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Original Holmes and Parallel Holmes

"running on parallel lines" [HOUN] Someone asked me recently what I think about Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies – do I ...

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by Mattias Boström

A Sherlock Holmes Christmas Carol

<h4 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
"I thought it was his ghost at first" [NOBL]</h4>
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<div>
 </div>
[Editor's note: This is the second in our series of Christmas posts. Mattias Bostrom, BSI ("The Swedish Pathological Society") was kind enough to submit this, and even though we typically don't publish stories, we thought this was too unique to pass up.] 
<div>
 
Sherlock Holmes was dead. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. His body had disappeared after falling down the Reichenbach Falls, locked in the arms of Professor Moriarty, ending up deep down in a dreadful caldron of swirling water and seething foam. Any attempt at recovering his body had been absolutely hopeless. 
 
The real murderer was, of course, Dr A. Conan Doyle, who had got tired of his fictitious character, wiped him out with his pen and ink and made sure that the master detective was no more. 
 
Conan Doyle – oh! what a cold-hearted man he was, selfishly he had put an end to the joy of hundreds of thousands, and cowardly he had left his country only days before his decision was made public. And now, he walked the streets near the Kurhaus Hotel in Davos in Switzerland with something akin to a smirk on his face. A white frost had settled on his head, and on his eyebrows, and on his large waxed moustache. 
 
At close quarters, however, he wasn’t smiling at all. His smile had frozen. His wife had fallen ill, and the dry and crispy Alpine air was a better alternative than the damp winter climate of London. 
 
It was just a fortnight since the readers had opened the Strand Magazine, only to find that Sherlock Holmes was gone, never to return. The news spread like wildfire. Not even on the streets of Davos was Conan Doyle safe from comments upon his deed. 
 
  ‘If I didn’t kill him, he would have killed me,’ Conan Doyle defended himself to an English acquaintance he happened to meet on the snow-covered street.</div>
<div>
  ‘Bah!’ said the fellow Englishman. And, ‘Humbug!’ he added. 
 
Conan Doyle tried to reply, but the man was gone. Instead the author entered the post office. The Swiss woman who sold him stamps looked suspiciously at him. 
 
  ‘You brute,’ she muttered. 
  ‘My good woman, I invented Holmes,’ said Conan Doyle. ‘What I then do with him is a decision for me – and not for the entire mankind – to make.’ 
  ‘Bah,’ she said to herself. And, ‘Humbug.’ 
 
Conan Doyle walked straight out, forgetting to post his letter to the Ma’am. Snow had started to fall. An elderly gentleman came towards him and barely had the man opened his mouth before Conan Doyle exploded and waved his right forefinger in the direction of the man. 
 
  ‘Don’t you, too, go bah and humbugging me!’ 
  ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ said the old man in a weak and hoarse voice, ‘I had no intention at all to do that. I just wanted to tell you that you happened to drop a letter when you walked down the steps from the post office. A merry Christmas!’ 
 
And Conan Doyle intended indeed to have a merry Christmas, although the dark clouds were gathering in his life. He went back to the hotel, to spend the rest of this Christmas Eve with Touie, his wife. 
 
The evening passed, and the night came. The light snowfall turned into an intense storm, and no one dared go outside. Touie went to bed and was soon asleep. Conan Doyle himself was wide awake, listening to the creaking sounds around him, staring upwards in the dim light from the fading glow of the fire. Above him was a plaster ceiling, and when he looked really hard he thought he could make out some of the pattern. It took the form of a hawk-like profile. No! It couldn’t be. Not Sherlock Holmes. He closed his eyes, but he still saw the profile. He opened his eyes and the sight was gone. 
 
A few minutes later he heard a sound from the hotel room door, as if someone was knocking very softly. It must be midnight, who could that be? He got up from bed and went over to the door. He opened it – no one was there. It must have been the storm that made it creak. Strange. Back to bed then. As he did so he caught a glimpse of something moving just outside the window, in the snowstorm. But the room was on the second floor! Oh, it was nothing but an image of himself, mirrored in the glass. 
 
He lay down on the bed, but heard another tapping sound. Not from the door this time. He tried to locate it. It came from the window. He went back, and stood there watching the storm outside and saw nothing apart from his own mirrored silhouette. He stood there, silently staring at himself, when the head in front of him slowly turned to one side, and he saw its hawk-like profile. It was located on the outside; he could see how the snow fell through it. 
 
He jerked backwards. Looked again. Now he could only see his own image in the glass. His mind was playing tricks on him. 
 
  ‘My dear Doyle,’ someone said behind him, a voice both hollow and sharp. He had never heard that voice in real life, only in his own head, but he knew it all too well. 
 
Conan Doyle turned around. No one was there. Or rather, that was his first impression, but then he noticed the shape of a man, a thin slice of fog, floating in the dusky room. But a fog with dead-cold eyes. 
 
  ‘Who are you?’ said Conan Doyle. 
  ‘I seem to be your lingering nightmare.’ 
 
Conan Doyle was a tall man, but this figure grew even taller. 
 
  ‘What do you want with me?’ said Conan Doyle. 
  ‘You are a clever man, Doyle, you can deduce it.’</div>
<div>
  ‘I’m not that clever. If you are the one I believe you are, you are the clever one.’ 
  ‘Only because you made me like that. But you are wrong. I am not the clever one. I was. Don’t you remember? You killed me, Doyle.’ 
 
The author shook his head. ‘Impossible, because you’re fictitious. You never lived!’ 
 
  ‘And yet I’m dead, standing here in front of you as a ghost.’ 
  ‘I don’t believe in spirits.’ 
  ‘Then maybe, my dear Doyle, it’s time for you to start. Once you do, spirits will eventually be the only thing you believe in. We do exist, you know. My friend the late Professor Moriarty is quite upset with you as well.’ 
  ‘Your friend Professor Moriarty?’ 
  ‘He turned out to be rather a decent man after all – or, should I say, after death.’ 
 
Conan Doyle raised his arms in front of him, as if defending himself against the unbelievable. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Please, stop this nonsense. You are a figment of my imagination, we both know that. You have always been that, that’s what you are right now, and who you will be forever on. I don’t know what you are after, but whatever you say can’t hurt my mind.’ 
 
  ‘I know,’ said the Ghost and floated closer, his voice but a whisper. ‘But your heart.’ 
  ‘Sorry?’ 
 
Conan Doyle looked puzzled. 
 
  ‘Come, if convenient,’ said the Ghost. 
  ‘If inconvenient?’ Conan Doyle wondered. 
  ‘Come anyway.’ 
 
The Ghost put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped Conan Doyle by the arm. They made towards the window. 
 
  ‘I am a mortal,’ Conan Doyle said, ‘and liable to fall.’ 
  ‘Trust me,’ said the Ghost. ‘I know a few things about falling. And I have no reason to kill you. Come Doyle, come! The game is afoot!’ 
 
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood on a street in front of a three-storey house. The darkness, the storm, and the snow had all vanished. The sun was shining, it was a spring day. 
 
  ‘Good Heavens!’ said Conan Doyle, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. ‘It’s Bush Villas. I used to live here! And not that long ago, actually. Although it feels like an eternity.’ 
 
A woman came out of the door. 
 
  ‘Why, it’s Touie!’ Conan Doyle exclaimed. ‘Touie! Touie! She can’t hear me? Oh, we are not really here, I see. She looks so young. And healthy.’ 
  ‘She was young. You were too. You know what day this is?’ 
  ‘No. It seems like any day. Life back then was a long row of routine. Waiting for patients to knock on the door, writing short stories to afford the basic things. But we had each other, and we had a place to call our home.’ 
  ‘This is not just any day,’ said the Ghost. ‘For neither of us.’ 
 
The Ghost waved his hand, and they stood inside the house. The woman and her husband were having dinner. He looked at her and smiled. 
 
  ‘You seem so happy today, Arthur,’ the wife said and returned the smile. ‘Any new stories?’ 
  ‘I just had the most excellent idea,’ said the husband. ‘You remember me talking about my old professor, Joe Bell, and his marvellous powers of observation and deduction?’ 
  ‘You will make a detective based on Bell.’ 
  ‘Exactly!’ said the husband. ‘How did you know that?’ 
  ‘It’s elementary, my dear Arthur. You have brought your notes to the dinner, you can’t take your eyes off them, and, you know, I do have the gift of reading upside-down.’ 
  ‘Oh, Touie, maybe I should write about a lady detective instead.’ 
  ‘I think your ideas are better,’ she said and nodded at his notes. ‘But those names – Sherrinford Holmes and Ormond Sacker – you can do better than that. You always go for so odd names – Octavius Gaster and such. Call that other fellow Watson or something plain for once.’ 
 
The Ghost started to raise his hand. Conan Doyle stopped him. 
 
  ‘Can’t we stay here for a while, please,’ said the author. ‘I had forgotten about this moment. It’s dear to me.’ 
  ‘One more minute,’ the Ghost replied. ‘This is after all a very special moment – for me, too. It’s not often you get to see your own birth.’ 
 
They stood there in silence, while the man and the woman continued their dinner. Not a word was spoken at the table. Everything the married couple said was said through glances. 
 
  ‘Now is the time,’ said the Ghost and waved his hand. 
 
They were in a sitting-room. 
 
  ‘Where are we?’ Conan Doyle wondered. 
  ‘In half a million different places.’ 
  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Conan Doyle. 
 ‘You will.’ 
 
There was a man, about forty years of age, sitting in an easy chair near the fireside. There were Christmas decorations on the mantelpiece. The man was reading a magazine. 
 
  ‘When is this?’ said Conan Doyle. 
  ‘A few nights ago.’ 
  ‘Who is he?’ 
  ‘Anyone.’ 
  ‘But why are tears running down his face?’ 
  ‘Oh, Doyle, you are such a cold-hearted man,’ said the Ghost. ‘You understand nothing. The other day you wrote in your diary, “Killed Holmes”. You must be blind. Look what you have done!’ 
 
The man’s wife entered the vision. 
 
  ‘He’s dead,’ said the man. 
  ‘I know,’ the woman replied. ‘I know. I heard about it at the butcher’s this morning. I didn’t know how to tell you.’ 
  ‘We can cancel our subscription now,’ he said. 
 
The man and the wife stood close to each other. 
 
Conan Doyle searched for words. 
 
  ‘I didn’t …’ he began. ‘Sherlock Holmes is …’ He looked at the Ghost. ‘You are my creation.’ 
  ‘And you have brought an entire country into national mourning. You see, you are not just the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. You are also God in your created world, the unseen power behind everything. And what a maker does, that affects people – inside that created world, but also on the outside, among the mortals. There must not be such a thing as a selfish God, who makes decisions out of his own desires, that would entirely ruin the balance and make the pain of the created world explode out into the real world. I’m not a religious man, and you know that, of course, so the God I’m talking about is just a normal man, but a man with total power. And such a God must understand the power of his own decisions. But I forgive you, I think you simply didn't know.’ 
 
Conan Doyle stood silent. There was a look of sorrow in his face. As if something inside him had changed. 
 
  ‘I can live with being a Ghost of myself, but can you?’ the Ghost said, and then he waved his hand. The room was gone.</div>
<div>
They stood in front of an iron gate. Conan Doyle paused to look around before entering. 
 
A churchyard. Trees were overshadowing them, yellow leaves were falling down. 
 
The Ghost stood among the graves, and pointed down to one. Conan Doyle advanced towards it trembling. 
 
  ‘Is it mine?’ Conan Doyle said. He didn't dare to look at the tombstone. 
  ‘Is it of any importance?’ the Ghost replied. ‘We will all die. Just look at me.’ 
 
Conan Doyle turned to the dim figure and laughed. ‘Holmes, I'm starting to like you.’ 
 
  ‘As you once did.’ 
  ‘Well, actually I have nothing against you personally, believe it or not. It's all about me. I need to know who I am without you.’ 
  ‘Fair. Let's make a deal, Doyle. I give you ten years.’ 
  ‘Why?’ 
  ‘To figure out who you really are,’ said the Ghost. ‘I think you need ten years for that.’ 
  ‘And then what?’ 
  ‘Then you will revive me,’ said the Ghost. 
  ‘But what if I don’t want to do that? How can you know that I am going to bring you back from the dead?’ 
  ‘It was you who said it. That I am the clever one. And do you really doubt Sherlock Holmes?’ 
  ‘No, I suppose not.’ 
  ‘In the autumn of 1903, ten years from now,’ the Ghost said, ‘Sherlock Holmes will rise from the dead – never to die again. I have no problem with being dead for a decade, because after that I will turn eternal. Such will be the power of your future decision. The forces you unleash when you bring me back will give me an everlasting life of crime-solving. The world of fiction will be forever thankful.’ 
 
Conan Doyle was deep in thought when he happened to look at the tombstone. He smiled. 
 
  ‘I thought it was my grave,’ he said. ‘Where exactly are we?’ 
  ‘In your mind, I think,’ the Ghost replied. 
 
On the tombstone was the name of Sherlock Holmes, and the year of his death. 
 
Conan Doyle made a decision. He was going to make a deal with Sherlock Holmes. 
 
He looked at the tombstone again. The text had vanished. 
 
  ‘But will it not be boring to be a Ghost for ten years?’ said Conan Doyle. 
  ‘With all this new Spiritualism going on in your world, I will have enough work just exposing fake spirits in my own.’ 
 
They began to walk back to the iron gate, side by side. 
 
  ‘It was a pleasure to meet you at last,’ said the author. 
  ‘Merry Christmas, my dear Doyle,’ said his creation. 
 
The Ghost waved his hand and it was all dark again. Conan Doyle lay in his bed at the Kurhaus Hotel. Outside the storm had disappeared and the night was calm. 
 
 
 
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I had a nightmare, the Englishman thought when he woke up. And such an elaborate one. Ever since childhood he had had similar dreams. His older brother Mycroft had them too. Complicated, detailed fantasies, with an intriguing beginning, an investigative middle, and a surprising end. Nothing like any dreams he and Mycroft had ever read about. None of the Holmes brothers were especially good story-tellers, they both relied too much on facts, so these dreams were not stories, they were pieces of information put together in a logical and definite way. They felt so real, but were full of fantastic things. He couldn’t understand how he could believe in them while sleeping. It was a relief to wake up to a real world where no ghosts need apply. 
 
He knew of the author of historical novels, Arthur Conan Doyle, because Watson had mentioned meeting him at some club. But this! He had no idea how that man had entered into his mind. It was such a strange dream. Probably an effect of Watson’s writings, in which both of them had turned into fictitious characters, almost. Good old Watson, he missed him. Two and a half years had passed since that day at the Reichenbach Falls when he had had to leave Watson behind. When Professor Moriarty had plunged to his death, and he himself had fled to Tibet, without a word to anyone but Mycroft. 
 
The sunbeams reached his bed. After the cold night it was already beginning to get warm in the room. The Sudan heat could be unbearable. 
 
He put his feet on the floor. It was cool. There was a stack of books on a table next to the bed, brought there from the Khalifa’s private library. The Khalifa probably wanted him to feel as if he were at home, in England, because all of the books were popular English ones. The one by Dickens he had read the previous evening. For some reason he had never read it before, but when he realized that yesterday actually was Christmas Eve, it had felt appropriate. 
 
Which of course meant that today was Christmas Day, not like any Christmas Day he had experienced before. He looked out through the window and saw the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile at distance. 
 
  ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,’ he said to himself and turned his head to one side. A hawk-like shadow fell on the wall. 
 
-- 
 
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A Sherlock Holmes Christmas Carol

"I thought it was his ghost at first" [NOBL] [ Editor's note: This is the second in our series of Christmas posts. Matt...

+ Read more »

by Mattias Boström

The Scandalous Sherlock Holmes Copyright Issue

<h4 style="text-align: center;">
"They are not very hard to deceive" [LAST]</h4>
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Much has <a href="http://www.sherlockian.net/acd/copyright.html" target="_blank">already been written about Andrea Plunket</a> (see Sherlockian.net), the woman who claims that she holds the rights to the name Sherlock Holmes and the stories, and who repeatedly has been told in court that she doesn't. But it is one thing to claim something, and it is another to have people actually buying licenses from you - <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2014/08/7th-circuit-orders-conan-doyle-estate.html#.VbmbF_lViko" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">as the Conan Doyle Estate found out last year</a>. 
 
It is true that Plunket has registered a number of trademarks concerning Sherlock Holmes, but strong doubts remain that these trademarks can be used to demand license payments from publishers when they want to publish Sherlock Holmes pastiches. However, many have accepted her trademark claims and believed that she is the copyright holder of Sherlock Holmes, and among them are some major book publishers, e.g. Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster and Oxford University Press. 
 
The Case of the Confused Copyright starts in the 1950s with Sheldon Reynolds, an American TV producer who was contacted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sons, Adrian and Denis, and after Denis' persuasive dinners in Paris, Reynolds agreed on buying a license for the Sherlock Holmes TV rights, and thereafter made a TV series in 1954 with Ronald Howard playing the great detective. 
 
<h3>
"You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins" [REDH]</h3>
We move on to the mid 1970s. Sheldon Reynolds was thinking about making a new Sherlock Holmes TV series and for that reason he contacted the copyright holder. At that time the copyright holder had for a few years been the Baskervilles Investments Ltd, which was owned by Princess Nina Mdivani Conan Doyle Harwood. She had been married to Denis Conan Doyle, who died in 1955, and then remarried his secretary (who was not really his secretary, but rather Nina's protégé) Tony Harwood. She was definitely not a princess, but she had claimed to be that all since the 1920s (along with her siblings, all of them "princesses" and "princes" who had fled from Georgia). The fascinating story of "<a href="http://wwd.com/eye/people/mdivanis-the-marrying-kind-3595202/" target="_blank">the Marrying Mdivanis</a>," who became famous for marrying the richest and most famous of heiresses and film stars, is unfortunately beyond the focus of this article. 
 
Reynolds contacted the Baskervilles Investments Ltd, only to find out that the company was held by a receiver, Mr William G. Mackey, appointed by the Royal Bank of Scotland. And Mr Mackey wanted to sell the complete Conan Doyle literary estate. So Sheldon Reynolds didn't walk away from the meeting with just a license to make a new TV series, but he decided to buy the whole estate. However, he didn't have any money. But his wife Andrea had. Or rather her mother, who had inherited a fortune from her late husband, an heir of Pfizer chemicals. 
 
For the next few years, Sheldon and Andrea Reynolds - together with her parents - ruled over the Sherlock Holmes copyright, until it ran out, fifty years after the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A new copyright act had by then come into use in the US, which made it possible for Conan Doyle's only surviving child, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, to get the copyright back for some stories that were still in US copyright. 
 
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<h3>
"no claim on it at all" [SHOS] </h3>
And this is where it starts to get complicated. Andrea Reynolds, who nowadays is remarried as Andrea Plunket, says that a number of juridical errors were made when forcing her to give away the remaining copyright to Dame Jean. In the late 1990s, after the death of Dame Jean, Andrea Plunket started to sue companies who used Sherlock Holmes without paying her. She always lost in court. But that didn't keep her from continuing to run something that she called the <a href="http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/" target="_blank">Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate</a> and claim on her web page: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Professor Challenger, Brigadier Gerard and the Hound of the Baskervilles among others are trademarked by the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate. Use of any character or any book not in the public domain for any purpose whatsoever is prohibited without a license from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate." </blockquote>
The web page is now under re-construction, so this text is from the old web page. It's a mix of trademark and copyright claims. 
 
The trademark business is a complicated one, and it is difficult to completely protect a name like Sherlock Holmes with a trademark. A blog post from the <a href="http://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/Blog/detail.aspx?g=645b6180-c549-4a61-8945-2a4239865fb2" target="_blank">World Trademark Review</a> tells more about the Plunket trademark case and her company Arthur Conan Doyle Characters Ltd. 
 
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The <a href="http://www.conandoyleestate.com/index.php/copyright/" target="_blank">Conan Doyle Estate Ltd</a> - whom you may remember from <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/search/label/%23FreeSherlock#.Vbmg1_lVikp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">its recent legal battle</a> with Leslie Klinger, BSI ("The Abbey Grange") - warns people about Andrea Plunket on its web page. One of its issues is that so many publishers accept Andrea Plunket's copyright claims at face value and believe that they are buying a legitimate license from her, often through her British agent Jonathan Clowes Ltd. It is not far-fetched to believe, thanks to the evidence presented, that a license from Plunket is totally worthless. 
 
I have no insight at all into the money being paid, but I can clearly see that Jonathan Clowes and Andrea Plunket are mentioned on the copyright pages or in the acknowledgements of many books. And it's probably a good guess that money has been involved, since that is the aim of their business. We should also remember that outside the U.S., money never has to be paid for a license to write about Sherlock Holmes or to publish Conan Doyle's stories. There is no trademark or copyright stopping that. In the U.S., the situation was previously rather more complicated, until recently when <a href="http://ihose.co/freesherlock" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leslie Klinger succeeded</a> in his lawsuit against the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. - with a few exceptions - couldn't force publishers to pay a license to publish Sherlock Holmes pastiches. 
 
<h3>
"a question which has puzzled many an expert" [STUD]</h3>
So which authors and publishers have believed in Andrea Plunket's copyright and trademark claim? A quick search through Google Books gives an interesting list. 
 
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It's not surprising to find some self-published books on such a list. The author pseudonym Radkris, who has written The Adventure of Black Drop, published by AuthorHouse in 2011, mentions that the characters are used with permission from Clowes and Plunket - and actually also from Jon Lellenberg at the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. 
 
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<a href="http://www.mxpublishing.com/category/Sherlock+Holmes+Books" target="_blank">MX Publishing</a> - the biggest purveyor of Sherlock Holmes pastiches at the moment - published Kieran Lyne's The Last Confession of Sherlock Holmes in 2014. From the Acknowledgements page: "The characters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are used here by the kind permission of Jonathan Clowes Ltd, on behalf of Andrea Plunket, Director of the Arthur Conan Doyle Trademark (EU)." However, on the copyright page it says: "Use of the Sherlock Holmes characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by permission of Conan Doyle Estate Ltd, www.conandoyleestate.co.uk". The matter is indeed complicated. 
 
In 2012, the British independent publisher Robert Hale published Sherlock Holmes and the Queen of Diamonds by Steve Hayes and David Whitehead. Holmes and Watson are used with the kind permission of Clowes/Plunket. That is also the case in the Hale book Sherlock Holmes at the Breakfast Table by L. F. E. Coombs (2013). 
 
It is a surprise to find Oxford University Press among the publishers who have accepted Andrea Plunket as the copyright holder - and has done so twice! In 2000 they published The Book of Heaven: An Anthology of Writings from Ancient to Modern Times, edited by Carol Zaleski and Philip Zaleski. Among the texts is an excerpt from Conan Doyle's The Land of Mist. Reprinted by kind permission of Jonathan Clowes Ltd., London, on behalf of Andrea Plunket, Administrator of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Copyrights. 
 
In the same year, 2000, Oxford University Press published The Oxford Book of Detective Stories, edited by Patricia Craig. "The Blue Carbuncle" was included and again with a permission from Clowes and Plunket. 
 
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Other anthologies etc. mentioning permissions from Clowes/Plunket are Jesus: Authors Take Sides (HarperCollins, 1999; from Conan Doyle's "My Religion"), Wildest Dreams: An Anthology of Drug-Related Literature (Arktos Media, 2014), Authors in Depth: Gold Level (Prentice Hall, 2000), The Practical Guide to Writing (Pearson Education Canada, 2007), and Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2002). 
 
I find it a little bit sad to find such a great author as Robert Ryan on the list. His Dead Man's Land is a really good Doctor Watson story. In the Acknowledgements he writes: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Very early in our discussions about writing a WWI historical thriller, my editor, Maxine Hitchcock, came up with the idea of a detective in the trenches, and had the patience and tenacity to wait until I had worked out it had to be a doctor and a famous one at that. David Miller, my clear-headed agent, then pointed out that Dr Watson has been trademarked by the Conan Doyle Estate. So thanks to him and to Olivia Guest of Jonathan Clowes, which administers the estate. She listened while I pitched the idea over the telephone, and supported its progress through to permission being granted." </blockquote>
A permission that, as we have seen, was rather worthless. The book was published by Simon & Schuster in 2013. On one of the first pages of the book, there is a "Note from the author" telling about the permission Ryan has been given to use the character Doctor Watson. 
 
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In a preface for The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 2013 by Simon & Schuster, Robert Ryan wrote more about the process of getting the permission: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"And so we started on the road to Dead Man's Land, the story of the good doctor's adventures in World War One. But there was one fly in this petroleum jelly ointment, in that Dr Watson has been trademarked by the Conan Doyle Estate, along with Holmes, Moriarty and Professor Challenger (although the tales themselves are all technically out of copyright in this country). So it seemed worthwhile getting the Conan Doyle Estate's blessing. I contacted Olivia Guest at Jonathan Clowes Agency (which represents the ACD estate), who asks me to pitch the story (at that point rather sketchy) over the telephone. She liked the concept enough to take it to Andrea Plunket who rejoices in the title Administrator of the Conan Doyle Copyrights and Director of the EU Trademarks. After a few tense weeks I received a green light." </blockquote>
I don't think the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/books/19sherlock.html?_r=3" target="_blank">especially happy about the confusion</a> that makes Ryan use their name for Plunket's company. He evidently has no idea that there is another, true Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. 
 
The list of authors and publishers who have paid money to Clowes/Plunket is probably much longer. These are just the examples I have found at Google Books. 
 
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image credit: <a href="https://flic.kr/p/7Efws7" target="_blank">opensource.com (Flickr)</a></td></tr>
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But maybe the most exceptional book to be found on the list is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, published by Penguin Books in 2011 (a reprint of the 1981 edition). In the book the following text is found: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Copyright © the Copyright holders of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle works, reproduced by kind permission of Jonathan Clowes, Ltd, London, on behalf of Andrea Plunket. Trustee and Administrator. All rights reserved." </blockquote>
 
This text is not found in the 1981 edition. Penguin, with their long history of Conan Doyle books, should not make such a mistake. And they should indeed know that there is no copyright protection of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, wherever in the world they wish to publish it. And that is a minor scandal. 
 
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(Thanks to my Twitter friends <a href="http://twitter.com/jankathecat">@jankathecat</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/raywilcockson">@raywilcockson</a> for research help!) 
 
 
 Image source: <a href="https://flic.kr/p/9RQRd5">Christopher Dombres (Flickr)</a> 
 
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The Scandalous Sherlock Holmes Copyright Issue

"They are not very hard to deceive" [LAST] Much has already been written about Andrea Plunket (see Sherlockian.net), the wom...

+ Read more »

by Mattias Boström

The Final Word on the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story

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<h4>
"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing" [BOSC] </h4>
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[Editor's note: we've covered the lost Sherlock Holmes story previously, in articles written by <a href="http://ihose.co/ACD_not" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mattias Boström</a> and <a href="http://ihose.co/ACDstyle" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vincent W. Wright</a> and in an interview with <a href="http://ihose.co/1Gps7j1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lyndsay Faye</a>. Mr. Boström returns for another analysis.] 
 
You can stop reading now if you are already 100% sure that <a href="http://ihose.co/LostStory" target="_blank">the Sherlock Holmes story found in Selkirk</a> is not by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It will save you a lot of time, since this blog post is long. Very long. 
 
On the other hand, you will miss some interesting facts about Doyle’s views on Holmes pastiches. 
 
So keep on reading. 
 
 
<h3>
The Find</h3>
Recently an old, anonymous Sherlock Holmes pastiche was found in Scotland. Its title was “Sherlock Holmes.”: Discovering the Border Burghs, and, by Deduction, the Brig Bazaar, and this 3-page story was originally published in a booklet called The Book o’ the Brig, sold in December 1903 during a bazaar in Selkirk to raise money for the restoration of a local bridge. The bazaar went on for three days (Thursday to Saturday) and for each day a new bazaar book was published, and a week later they were all collected and published in a single volume. 
 
Walter Elliot, the 80-year old man who found the Saturday bazaar book in his attic, said to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11424549/Lost-Sherlock-Holmes-story-discovered-in-mans-attic.html" target="_blank">The Telegraph</a>: "The Saturday was opened by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He had written a wee story about Sherlock Holmes and Watson and this was in the book.” 
 
Walter Elliot had no proof for his claim. He said to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/20/a-new-sherlock-holmes-mystery-is-1300-word-yarn-a-lost-conan-doyle" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>: “It’s unsigned, and I’m not a specialist, but the vocabulary seems pretty close to the way Conan Doyle wrote. I’m fairly sure it was written by him.” 
 
Since Elliot, according to himself, is not a specialist and <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/02/a-stylistic-analysis-of-lost-sherlock.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the vocabulary of the story</a> – according to all Conan Doyle experts in the world – is not even close to Conan Doyle’s way of writing, the news about a lost Conan Doyle story was just a big mistake. Elliot had made the mistake because Conan Doyle’s name actually could be found in the same booklet – not in connection with the story, but on the last page under the headline ”To-Day’s Programme”, where it was stated that ”the famous litterateur” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would open the bazaar. 
 
 
<h3>
A Fairy Tale</h3>
It was an easy mistake to make, and we should not blame Walter Elliot. He was just very enthusiastic about his find. We could blame the journalists who reported about the find, but we won’t do that either. They just relied on the information that Walter Elliot gave them, without checking with any Conan Doyle experts, and if they had any doubt they hid it well in their articles. 
 
It is such a good fairy tale – about the retired woodcutter who finds a treasure in his attic and with a happy smile tells the world about it. That fairy tale will probably live on forever, because such is the nature of good fairy tales. It has already spread all over the world and been mentioned thousands of times in numerous languages. And this is not necessarily bad – even false news about Sherlock Holmes put the master detective in focus, over and over again. 
 
We will never be able to totally stop the false news. And we will probably never find a comment from Conan Doyle on the story, and the name of the real author will most likely also remain unknown. So what is there to be done? Well, only one thing, and that is to definitely certify that the story is not by Conan Doyle, and by doing so the Sherlockian world can treat it as an anonymous pastiche which is only interesting to discuss and publish in connection with other early pastiches and parodies. 
 
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<h3>
The Early Parodies and Pastiches</h3>
If Conan Doyle’s name hadn’t been in the bazaar book and if he hadn’t opened the bazaar that day, no one would have come up with the idea that this was a genuine Sherlock Holmes story by him. We would not think so nowadays, and the readers did obviously not think so back then. I will explain why. 
 
Parodies and pastiches of Sherlock Holmes were quite common in those days. Some of them were anonymously published, while others were published with a clever signature or the real name of the author. They could be found in popular magazines, newspapers, books, and even as texts in advertisements. Sometimes Sherlock Holmes was called Sherlock Holmes, and sometimes he had a slightly changed name, often with a humorous touch. More than eighty Sherlock Holmes parodies or pastiches had been published before the Selkirk bazaar, from 1891 until late autumn 1903. The readers and the real author of the pastiche were all used to seeing Sherlock Holmes spoofs in Tit-Bits, Punch or other periodicals. The difference between parody and pastiche wasn’t always very clear, especially since most of the stories were really short, which easily gave them a feeling of parody anyway. 
 
 
<h3>
When Conan Doyle Liked the Parodies and Pastiches</h3>
We don’t know that much about Conan Doyle’s views on these early parodies and pastiches, but we have some examples when he actually commented upon them. 
 
When James M. Barrie anonymously had written the first Sherlock Holmes parody in November 1891, Conan Doyle a month later, after having met Barrie on a dinner, wrote to his mother: “It was Barrie who wrote the skit on Holmes in the Speaker.” No opinion about the story, but he clearly knew about it before the dinner. And Barrie soon became one of his best friends. 
 
In 1893 Barrie also sent a personal, hand-written parody to Conan Doyle, which the latter thought was good enough to publish in full in his autobiography Memories and Adventures (1924). Conan Doyle wrote that it was “the best of all the numerous parodies.” Which might indicate that Conan Doyle had read at least some of them. 
 
Before that, in December 1892, the local Lancashire newspaper Burnley Express published a short story called “The Man Who ‘Bested’ Sherlock Holmes”, written by Joseph Baron, a local author and journalist. The newspaper, or Baron himself, had sent the story to Conan Doyle before publication, and in Conan Doyle’s reply he described the story as “emphatically good.” 
 
When the American author John Kendrick Bangs wrote his novel The Pursuit of the House-Boat in 1897, he made Sherlock Holmes – now dead after Reichenbach and travelling on the river Styx – one of the main characters. The book was dedicated “To A. Conan Doyle, Esq. With the author’s sincerest regards and thanks for the untimely demise of his great detective which made these things possible.” And Conan Doyle wrote back to Bangs, who he had met on his American tour in 1894: “How very good of you to inscribe your most amusing and original book to me! I begin to have hopes of immortality now that I have got onto your fly-leaf.” 
 
 
<h3>
When Conan Doyle Got Upset</h3>
It wasn’t until later that Conan Doyle changed his opinion of other authors writing about Sherlock Holmes. In 1909 he protested against a German publisher who during the years 1907–1911 published 230 booklets with quite terrible Sherlock Holmes pastiches, in which Holmes was changed into an action hero. Many of these booklets were also translated and published in a number of other European countries. 
 
When someone sent a Danish one to Conan Doyle he wrote to his literary agent A. P. Watt: “It is entirely a fake, just as a Spanish one was. I should dearly like to prosecute these infernal villains.” He also wrote: "These things cover Europe and entirely elbow out the real S.H. stories.” He didn’t prosecute, but he published a letter in Danish newspapers: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Sir! Would you have the great kindness to state that I have no connection with the cheap illustrated stories about Sherlock Holmes which are published in Denmark and other countries. I leave it to your readers how far it is just to steal the name of a character in such a fashion. Yours faithfully, Arthur Conan Doyle.”</blockquote>
 
Parodies and pastiches had never been a problem before, but now it actually threatened his own sales abroad. And he didn’t want others to make money on his creation – Conan Doyle did not give Maurice Leblanc permission to use the name Sherlock Holmes in the Arsène Lupin stories (so Leblanc changed it to Herlock Sholmes). 
 
There was also another reason why he changed his opinion. When Conan Doyle was writing the very last Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place" in 1927, he wrote to Herbert Greenhough Smith at The Strand Magazine: 
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“… I cannot hide from myself that the public has lost the sense of novelty with Holmes and his methods. This has been helped by the repeated Parodies. Therefore even if I could keep him on the same level I can’t expect, do what I will, to produce the same effect.”</blockquote>
 
 
<h3>
The First Evidence That Conan Doyle Actually Wrote the Story</h3>
The conclusion of all of this is that Conan Doyle rarely mentioned the parodies and pastiches, and he had for a long time not much against them, as long as they didn’t threaten the reputation and sales of his own creation. When he arrived in Selkirk on December 12, 1903, and noticed that there was a short text about Sherlock Holmes in the bazaar book he could hardly have been surprised, maybe he just felt honoured by this welcoming gesture. 
 
There is a reason why I have written at such length about the Sherlock Holmes parodies and pastiches, and about Conan Doyle’s views. Because this could have been the first evidence that Conan Doyle actually wrote the story. Without our knowledge about the early parodies and pastiches, and Conan Doyle’s views upon them, it would seem strange to publish another author’s text about Sherlock Holmes in a booklet that Conan Doyle would see. But with our knowledge this is not strange at all. Sherlock Holmes parodies and pastiches were common and Conan Doyle didn’t protest against them, at least not as early as 1903. 
 
 
<h3>
The Second Evidence That Conan Doyle Actually Wrote the Story</h3>
After the news of Walter Elliot’s discovery, the media reported on <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/mystery-over-second-sherlock-novel-found-in-borders-town.119541089" target="_blank">another copy of the Saturday bazaar book</a>. Another Selkirk citizen owns this copy, and it is signed by Conan Doyle himself! This absolutely looks like evidence that Conan Doyle actually wrote the Sherlock Holmes story in the booklet. Why would he sign a story that isn’t his own? 
 
First of all, he didn’t sign the story – he signed the booklet. It was most likely signed directly after his opening speech on the Saturday. The local newspaper The Southern Reporter reported on December 17, 1903 about the opening speech: “Sir Arthur afterwards appended his signature to a number of copies of the bazaar book, and these sold readily at an increased price." 
 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the most famous authors in Great Britain, and he was the celebrity who opened the bazaar that day. Nothing is strange about him signing copies of the bazaar book, in which his name also was printed in the programme on the last page. 
 
It is by no means evidence that he had written the text about Sherlock Holmes. If Holmes pastiches and parodies had been rare, and if Conan Doyle had been totally opposed to them, it could have been evidence that he wrote the Selkirk story. But now it isn’t. The signed copy of the booklet is just a signed copy of the booklet. 
 
 
<h3>
There Is No More Evidence</h3>
These two things – that Conan Doyle visited Selkirk the same day the booklet was published, and that he signed copies of it – are the only main pieces of evidence in favor of Conan Doyle being the real author. I have explained why we can’t rely upon these things as evidence. And this means that we are left with no evidence at all pointing to Conan Doyle as the author of the story. 
 
However, there will still be people wishing it to be true that Conan Doyle wrote it. So to really make sure that there is no doubt that Conan Doyle didn’t write the story, please imagine what it would have been like if he actually did write it. If you recognize the following text, it is because you have read a similar one among my own comments to my previous blog post. I felt however that it would fit nicely also here. And if you want the full background to the facts below, please read <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/02/conan-doyle-didnt-write-lost-sherlock.html#.VPZPvlp13rY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">my previous blog post</a> first. 
 
 
<h3>
Another Fairy Tale: How It All Happened When Conan Doyle Wrote the Selkirk Story</h3>
[If you for some reason start reading this blog post here, please understand that in the following text I have made use of the Faculty of Imagination.] 
The editor of the Bazaar Book asked Conan Doyle to write a story for them, probably in mid November when Conan Doyle had been invited to be the Unionist candidate for the Border Burghs. It was maybe around then that he wrote to his mother that "I intend to go up to Hawick for a fortnight early in December and have a bit of a campaign". 
 
Conan Doyle accepted to contribute something to the Bazaar Book. He then wrote three "Notable Interviews" in which he was using the perspective of being a person in the staff working with the Bazaar Book, pretending to interview – through imagination – Sir Walter Scott, Mungo Park, and Sherlock Holmes. 
 
Or if you prefer that Conan Doyle only wrote the Sherlock Holmes story: the editor gave Conan Doyle exact instructions about the two previous Notable Interviews, so Conan Doyle could mention them at the beginning of the story, and also the fact that this was to be published in the Saturday part of the Bazaar Book. 
 
Or if you prefer that Conan Doyle didn't write the beginning of the story: the editor, or someone else, felt that it wasn't enough to get a story by Conan Doyle, so they needed to edit it and add text to make it fit with the format of two other texts that someone else had written. 
 
In the Sherlock Holmes part of the story, which Conan Doyle then absolutely must have written, he places the detective at Sloan Street instead of Baker Street for no obvious reason at all, and he also doesn't write from the perspective of Watson. Conan Doyle had been occupied with writing at least nine of the short stories for The Return of Sherlock Holmes during the last months, so his head was full of Sherlock Holmes and the special literary style that he used in these stories. But instead of using that style that he knew so well he chose to write something completely different here – not because he was lazy or was in a rush, but because it would be a bigger challenge and take him more time to completely reinvent his style instead of just writing a little, simple scene with his normal language. 
 
The idea of changing Baker Street to Sloan Street was one of those things that were more complicated to come up with than just sticking to Baker Street. He also constructed Sherlock Holmes’ deductions so that they were mainly based on very local Borders knowledge, things that Conan Doyle would have needed to research – probably through correspondence – to find out about, since he had no actual local knowledge himself, which he later indicated in his opening speech. 
 
Then the editor put the story into the Bazaar Book. He had asked Conan Doyle to write the story, but he didn't want the readers to know that Conan Doyle had written it, so he omitted the name of the author. The editor didn't think that the Bazaar Book would sell more if Conan Doyle's name was mentioned as the author – and this was at the same time as The Strand Magazine had just started to publish new Sherlock Holmes stories, and the detective was more popular than ever. 
 
Or if you prefer: Conan Doyle had asked the editor not to mention his name as author of the story, maybe because he felt that it wasn't a good story. In that way the readers would believe – thanks to the special format of the story – that it was one of the local literary talents that had written it. Anonymously published stories (mostly parodies) about Sherlock Holmes were, as we know, quite common around the turn of the century. 
 
Then the Bazaar Book was published. The editor had managed to keep it a secret that Conan Doyle – one of the most famous authors in Great Britain – had written the "Notable Interview" about Sherlock Holmes (or maybe all of the three Notable Interviews). Even the local newspaper thought it was written by one of the local literary men. And when the publisher made an advertisement for the Bazaar Book they had no interest in showing that Conan Doyle – one of the most famous authors in Great Britain – had written one (or even three) of the texts. 
 
The money they raised by selling the book would help the town Selkirk building a new bridge. Conan Doyle had previously been generous enough to donate to the fund all what he earned during the recital a few days earlier, and he was there as a politician who later would ask the citizens to vote for him in the next election. But he definitely didn't want them to know that he had made them the honour of writing the story for the Bazaar Book – which otherwise would have made it sell even more and in that way generate more money to the fund – although he had several chances of mentioning it. 
 
Or if he mentioned it – during the recital or during his opening speech (both of them reported in detail in the newspaper) – the newspaper journalist thought that it was a totally unnecessary information that it was actually Conan Doyle who had written the Sherlock Holmes story in their local book. And this at a time in history when even the tiniest detail was reported in the newspaper. 
 
After this Conan Doyle never ever mentioned officially that he had written the story. 
 
 
<h3>
Conan Doyle Didn’t Write the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story</h3>
This is the scenario that must have happened, if Conan Doyle wrote the Selkirk story. It is an absurd story, and not just improbable, but in view of all the presented facts: impossible. I am sure that it is possible to criticize single facts and single conclusions mentioned above, but if you look at the whole picture – the combination of all the evidence – we can’t be but 100% sure that Conan Doyle did not write the Selkirk story. 
 
 
<h3>
The Final Word on the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story</h3>
It is my sincere hope that this may be the final word on the lost Sherlock Holmes story. We don’t need more evidence that it is not by Conan Doyle, and we can treat the Selkirk story just as another example of early parodies and pastiches. It deserves no bigger attention than that. 
 
At least this will be my final word on the matter. 
 
 
Image credit: <a href="https://flic.kr/p/br6jSZ" target="_blank">Scottish Indexes (Flickr)</a> 
 
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