Doyle's Sherlock or sheer luck

By Shireen Senadhira

Out of Colombo, staying in an old homestead, I awoke before dawn and went out to the verandah. The colour was deep grey before discerning shapes of the surroundings appeared at dawn. There was a chill in the air though the wind had died down. As I was imbibing all this, there came a baying of a hound. I felt a thrill and a chill! Were the Baskerville hounds afoot? Aha! Before I could engage in further thoughts, a second baying followed and that stopped me in mid step. However, I regained my room. The baying, was it from a neighbourhood large dog?

Sherlock Holms

A Great Dane, perhaps? ‘I must find out in the morning,’ I said to myself. With such thoughts swirling around in my head, I looked at the lawn through the window in the gloom. I saw the moors of Devon in Dartmoor. It spread its length in the eerie light with rocks and mounds on one side and swampy bogs here and there.

Did Arthur Conan Doyle hear a similar baying like this and connected it with Devon’s folklore which included tales he had heard of a fearsome supernatural dog known as the Yeth hound. The Baskerville Hall in the story, is said to have been inspired by a visit to Cromer Hall in Norfolk in England. Also, some other elements of the story had been garnered by Doyle’s stay in Royal Union Hotel in West Renton, where he heard of a ghost dog in the Cromer area which was said to have run between Overstrand, a place in the east and East Renton, in the west.

Was this how Doyle combined all this with part of the history of the Baskervilles of Devon and spun an intriguing tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles? A story that has come down the ages and never lost its fearsome mystery that is so well portrayed in the detective tale.

Searching for more details of this fascinating setting, I found out that Doyle’s inspiration for the Baskerville tale of a hellish hound and cursed country squire was drawn from the legend of Richard Cabell. Incidentally, Cabell’s tomb can be seen in the Devon town of Buckfastleigh.

Squire Richard Cabell was a local country squire of Buckfastleigh and lived in the 17th century. He was a passionate hunter and was then described as a ‘monstrously evil man.’ Among other things, he gained a reputation for immorality and having sold his soul to the Devil! It was also rumoured that he had murdered his wife. He was laid to rest in the sepulcher when he died, but what happened then? The night of his interment brought forth a pack of hounds baying across the moors to howl at his tomb.

Then onwards, he could be found leading the pack across the moors usually on the anniversary of his death. If the pack of hounds were not out hunting, they could be found howling and shrieking around his tomb. This was intolerable for the people of the area and they tried to rest the soul of the deceased by building a large structure around the tomb and to be doubly sure, a huge slab was placed on the top of the grave to stop the ghost of the squire escaping.

What a beginning for a story and then to weave a tale of intrigue with many different characters.

The main character is Sherlock Holmes, the detective and his assistant is Dr Watson. There is a housekeeper and her butler husband. Sir Charles Baskerville, the owner of Baskerville Hall, had died in fear in the hall’s grounds.

Furthermore, there were large paw prints on the soil near his corpse. There is the heir to Sir Charles, Sir Henry Baskerville, recently arrived at the Hall from Canada. Dr Mortimer, a medical practitioner and friend of the Baskervilles with rather eccentric habits who was made the executor of Sir Charles’s estate. It was Dr Mortimer who informed Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson of the strange events surrounding Sir Charles’s death. Also, a former school master, Mr Stapleton and his sister Miss Stapleton, a Latin looking dusky beauty . In addition, a few other characters, including an attractive lady who was disinherited by her rich cranky father and to top it all an escaped convict too. Thus the story was written in the late 19th century and continues to fascinate, chill and thrill the hearts of mystery readers even at present times. The story has been adapted in many film versions and very commendable as it is still able to hold the viewer spellbound from beginning to end. There is news to say that yet another version will be aired as a BBC mini-series in the autumn of 2011.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Actually, Doyle’s detective novels are Sherlock all the way and not merely sheer luck. The many puzzling cases are deduced, reasoned and solved. It is believed that Doyle, partially modelled Sherlock Holmes after his former university teacher, Joseph Bell . It was Bell who inculcated in his student, the power of deduction, after careful inference and observation. There were many writers that inspired Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson was one of them. Stevenson, then living in faraway Samoa was able to recognize the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes. Stevenson wrote to Doyle “My compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Can this be my old friend, Joe Bell?”

First detective story

A Study in Scarlet was Doyle’s first detective story to be published. It featured Sherlock Holmes who later became one of the most famous literary detective characters with long lasting appeal. This story of Conan is well known, probably, as it is the world’s introduction to the illustrious Sherlock Holmes where his friendship was cemented with Dr Watson, after meeting each other for the first time. It was also their first mystery together. It is a longer and more detailed story than his later stories.

It was Dr Watson’s old pal, Stamford, who introduced the famous duo to each other. Therefore, it is surprising that Stamford after being so specifically written about in the first pages of this book, is not alluded to in any other detective story. Another point of interest is that, A Study in Scarlet was the first work of fiction to use the magnifying glass as a sleuthing tool. The title of the book was derived from a statement made by Holmes to Watson, when he described the nature of his work, the murder investigation of the story as a ‘study in scarlet;’ followed by, ’there’s a scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, isolate it and expose every inch of it.’

This book was first published in 1887 in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Though the story and its main character attracted little public interest at that time, it was a forerunner to the modern detective stories. It must be noted, however, that there are only 11 copies of Beeton’s Christmas Annual still around and they are of immense value.

A study in Scarlet is divided in two parts, the first part is the story up to the arrest of the murderer, and the second part furnishes details of the background of the story. Part two takes the reader across the ocean to the original settlement of Salt Lake City in Utah in North America and a story of hardship, love, greed, Mormons and revenge and then back to London for the conclusion. The two parts are of the same size and as you read it, you think of whether such explanations are necessary , with Mormons on the American landscape and such till you get the gist of it and then you realize Mormons can add a lot of colour and excitement too.

The style of writing in this book is very proper as it was written in the late 19th century. Doyle’s description of the less known lands of America is majestic and breathtaking in comparison to London’s dirty streets full of vice and crime.

The first part of the story is narrated by Dr Watson and the second part is written in the third person. One of the drawbacks is, that a reader solver of the mystery does not have enough clues to solve the crime by himself in the first part of the story and the first part ends in arresting the culprit. The writing in this book is captivating and Doyle brilliantly sums up the personalities of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. In fact, in a very short time, readers feel as if they know these two men.

Plots and themes

In, The Hound of Baskervilles, the story is followed in Watson’s perspective. The time span is brief as it is only a matter of a few weeks for the story to unfold. The usual climatic conditions of England is seen mostly in the last two days only. The old warning legend is told by Dr Mortimer and also gathered from Dr Watson’s diary entries of recorded conversations. All this and the descriptive setting contribute to the plot bringing in the correct atmosphere making the legend believable. It is usual that the plot follows the collection of clues and results. There are three possible leads in the story and that is a puzzle for the readers to untangle.

Evil and supernatural themes are exposed in this story. Though the two doctors, Mortimer and Watson scoff at the hound as just a curse and a myth, nothing can be done to stop it, as the area is well steeped in legend. The ambience of supernatural is everywhere, about the moors, from the fog and the swamp land to the Neolithic caves and gothic like mansions on the environs of the moors. There is a criminal too hiding in the moors. The reader is left without the details of his crime and therefore cannot sympathize with the victim.

There is also the pursuit of money and power, a human trait that is seen to the present day. Stapleton’s large collection of pinned butterflies in glass cases show cruelty to animals. Butterflies could be caught, observed for research purposes and set free. Many lies too are uttered in the story and these are a cover up to the situation.

In A Study of Scarlet, there is the eternal issue of love between man and woman and jealousy. Greed and revenge too are displayed as the story goes on and it is enhanced by the bloody word, Rache, written on the wall. The word was not short for Rachel but revenge in German. The novel introduces, the famous twosome, to the reader successfully. It also shows how Sherlock is a consultant to Scotland yard.

An abrupt flash back in the middle of the novel is striking. Just as we eagerly await the solving of the case, we are thrown back to a completely different story. It could be debated that most readers would find a summary of the flash back story sufficient. Nevertheless, the flashback though lengthy, is written well as Doyle’s other writings and is less disruptive when you are aware of it. The setting of this novel is in two countries, one, in the late 19thcentury London and the other, the State of Utah in North America. The Mormons in the story add a special angle to the story.

Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scotsman, was born in Edinburgh and later studied medicine there too. At Edinburgh University he met his mentor, professor and Doctor Joseph Bell. Inspired by Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe and Guy de Maupassant, Doyle’s now iconic mastermind sleuth and his companion, Dr Watson, brought forth a new detective genre. Doyle’s medical training under Dr Bell and his practical experience as a doctor were the foundation for Holmes’s methods of deduction in solving the mysteries.

Eventually, Doyle served as a physician in the Boer War (1899-1902). By the 1920s he was deeply interested in Spiritualism. At that time, others including, Elizabeth Barrett Browning believed that the living could communicate with the dead. After writing, A study in Scarlet, he followed it with 56 more short stories, 4 novels featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. He also wrote many other fiction and non-fiction.

While Doyle was serving as an eye specialist having consulting rooms at Devonshire Place, near Harley Street in 1891, we must be thankful to the citizens with eye trouble who did not visit Doyle’s offices. Why? It is because, it was there, waiting for the patients who never came, that Doyle began to form and write the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

Thus, the Sherlock Holmes Saga has given the mystery lovers to read, over and over again the stories, as well as the world, much pleasure. Also, it has brought the familiar scenes of Holmes’s sitting rooms in Baker Street, London, to us. We can easily visualize Holmes stretched out on the sofa in a fit of dumps: perhaps he is scraping on the violin, bemoaning the dearth of imaginative crime.

These rooms we know so well. There are the great volumes of scrap book records, which sometimes Holmes pulls out and throws them all over the floor. Bullet marks are on the wall, the siphon bottles, the Persian slipper for tobacco and tea laid out on the table. In comes, Mrs Hudson with a message and all are once again, ‘off.’ A hansom is heard rattling through the streets of Waterloo, Paddington and Charring Cross.