By all popular accounts, Sherlock Holmes was dead when the American magazine publisher Peter Collier asked Arthur Conan Doyle whether there might be more to the story of his demise. Collier offered $45,000 to Conan Doyle if Holmes turned out to have survived his notorious tumble from Reichenback Falls. “I have done no Sherlock Holmes stories for seven or eight years,” Conan Doyle wrote to his mother, “and I don’t see why I should not have another go at them and earn three times as much money as I can by any other form of work.” Conan Doyle accepted Collier’s suggestion, and found Sherlock to be as vital as ever.
The tumultuous story behind the story of Sherlock Holmes is the subject of an engrossing new exhibition and catalogue produced by the Grolier Club, comprising 221 objects from the extraordinary collection of former Apple executive Glen S. Miranker. Ranging from first editions to manuscript pages to personal correspondence, the objects provide clues to the literary backstory that Miranker has followed for years with a focus that might have impressed Holmes himself.
Some of the objects merit inclusion for their aesthetic appeal, such as iconic drawings by Frederick Dorr Steele that still inform people’s perceptions of the detective’s appearance and demeanor. Equally beguiling is a generous selection of pirated editions revealing the myriad ways in which unscrupulous publishers sensationalized the cerebral detective. Between the pipe-smoking gentleman gracing Steele’s chaste magazine illustrations and the scantily-clad women animating book covers in the unauthorized Great American Detective Series, you can see how Conan Doyle managed to reach an astonishingly large swathe of late 19th and early 20th century readers. Given the right presentation, Sherlock Holmes could appeal to practically anybody’s taste.
Although much of this happened without Conan Doyle’s involvement or intention – especially in the case of the pirated editions – his staggering pragmatism also contributed significantly to the detective’s enduring appeal. Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes was the least of it. Conan Doyle’s openness to adaptation became almost comical as the famous actor William Gillette sought to transform Holmes into a character for stage, and asked to break the author’s rule that Sherlock shouldn’t have a love interest. “May I marry Holmes?” Gillette asked in a cable. “You may marry Holmes or murder him or do anything you like with him,” replied Conan Doyle.
Yet Conan Doyle was no hack. As Miranker observes in his catalogue text, the manuscripts were written with great care, evident in the neat penmanship and judicious editing. Further evidence comes from the fact that Conan Doyle killed off Holmes in the first place, and from the contemporaneous correspondence with his mother. “I am in the middle of the last Holmes story,” he wrote. “I am weary of his name.” Sherlock was a substantial enough presence to elicit these strong emotions. Conan Doyle had an authentic relationship with him, a relationship that could be confusing or tempestuous or tortured, especially as it comingled with circumstances of Conan Doyle’s own life and aspirations.
The materials displayed at the Grolier Club and referenced in the catalogue show in visceral terms the internal conflict between making a living and having a life independent of a fictional character that provided it. Indeed, the vitality of Sherlock probably owes a lot to the permeability of Conan Doyle’s reality, lived on both sides of the page. Miranker has collected evidence of each. The Grolier exhibit leaves it up to each viewer to deduce how Sherlock attained immortality.
