Sherlock Holmes In America (42 page)

Says Holmes: “It was a favorite ditty of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran has also been known to warble it. And yet I live and keep bees upon the South Downs.”

And yet I live
. Keep that in mind. We'll come back to it in our final peroration. And what identity, of all possible identities, does the master of disguise, the man who could impersonate stable hand and wizened bookseller alike, employ? An Irishman. An Irish-American.

An Irish-American named Altamont. As in Charles
Altamont
Doyle.

Sir Arthur's father.

The pinnacle of Sherlock Holmes's career—his greatest service to England—comes as an Irish-American named “Altamont.”

In this valedictory, in which Holmes utters the memorable lines: “Stand with me here upon the terrace . . . .” Conan Doyle sums up all his ambivalence about his own nature and his own family, and seems to reconcile it at the very end. Holmes and Watson, together for the last time, with the proximate enemy, von Bork, vanquished, but an east wind coming, an east wind such as never blew on England yet. God's own wind . . . And then, embarrassed by this most un-British display of sentiment, Holmes turns his attention to von Bork's check for five hundred pounds and rushes off to the bank to cash it before the Kaiser can stop payment on it.

Thus does Holmes's quintessential Englishness assert itself.

And yet I live.
Why does Holmes say this, at this particular moment, and in this particular context? Why would he
not
live? After all, many years before, he had vanquished Professor Moriarty with his knowledge of baritsu, and dodged Colonel Moran's rocks and avoided his exploding bullet. By the time of
His Last Bow
, on the very eve of World War I, Holmes had survived every attempt on his life, every battle, every boxing match, Dr. Roylott's swamp adder in
The Speckled Band
, even Tonga's poisoned dart in
The Sign of the Four
.

On the eve of World War I . . . when just across the Irish Sea a storm was gathering that would culminate with the Harp flying, however briefly, above the G.P.O. in Dublin . . .

When both the British Empire and Conan Doyle himself stood, however unknowingly, not on the terrace but upon the precipice, into which both would soon hurtle. As Britain would lose her Empire, Conan Doyle would lose his faith, and embrace spiritualism; the father of the ultra-rationalist, “no ghosts need apply” Sherlock Holmes, would not only
reject
the faith of his fathers, he would
embrace
a far older and more primal faith: the faith in the spirit world.

The faith of the ancient Celts, who could cross over between the dark land of Mordor and the living.

Who knew that Life and Death were and are two sides of the same coin, inevitably twinned, not to be feared but embraced as a necessary duality. Like sun and moon. And: Male and female.

Which brings us to the last and most important story link in our chain:
The Sign of the Four.

In which Holmes and Watson meet another “mor” character. Who turns out to be Holmes's deadliest enemy.

Mary
Mor
stan.

Or, as she was briefly known, Mrs. John H. Watson.

Whose pivotal, vital, and indispensable role in the Canon is not sufficiently understood or remarked upon. For if Sherlock as “Altamont” was a partial salvation of Conan Doyle's father, can it not be said of Mary that she is nothing less than “the Mam”?

Moriarty, Moran, Morstan. From Holmes's point of view, the three greatest challenges of his career, each one inextricably linked by ethnicity and etymology. Moriarty and Moran we have already considered. Let us now turn our attention to the formidable Miss Morstan.

The literary parallel between her and Colonel Moran should be obvious. He was an officer in the Indian Army; her father was an officer in the Indian Army. Their names are, in fact, nearly identical, and indeed “Morstan”—with its wonderful
frisson
of implicit death—is anagrammatical for “St. Moran.” Thus, Mary Morstan is the “good side” of Colonel Moran.

Holmes, however, takes an instant dislike to her. When at the conclusion of
The Sign of the Four
Watson announces their engagement, Holmes coldly tells his Boswell that he cannot congratulate him. For Holmes has instantly sensed an enemy, however innocuous she might appear, and realizes, with the chill wind of death blowing past him in the shape of Tonga's dart, that the world will not be able to contain both him and Miss Morstan.

One of them will have to die.

Now, it may be objected that Mary Morstan is not Irish. Apparently born in India, her mother dead, she is sent to school in Edinburgh (much like Watson himself, who was packed off to boarding school in the Scottish capital as a youth), and later comes down to London. But consider the evidence:

1. Her Christian name is Mary, the most common Irish name for a girl. Conan Doyle's own mother was named Mary.
   
2. By her own admission, she has no relatives in England.
   
3. She goes to school in Edinburgh, with its large Irish population.
   
4. She earns her living as a governess, a standard occupation in England for an unmarried Irish girl.
   
5. She is described by Watson—a man who boasts of great experience with women—as blonde with pale skin and large blue eyes: typical physiognomy of the west of Ireland, with its heavy Viking influence.
   
6. While the name Morstan is unusual, there is a district in County Down, near Belfast, called Morstan Park.
   

It's very likely, therefore, that Captain Arthur Morstan—interesting choice of a first name—was born in Northern Ireland (there's the Home Rule problem again), raised in Edinburgh, joined the Indian Army, not the regular Army (which might indicate that he was a Catholic, not a Protestant). In charge of a convict settlement in the Andaman Islands—a fit duty station for an Irishman, perhaps, but not an Englishman—he later dies of heart attack brought on by an attack of furious temper.

When Watson marries Mary Morstan, Holmes's world is shattered. Other than scorn, he has no way to fight back. With Dr. Roylott, he could unbend the poker; with Moriarty, he could jiu-jitsu him over the side of the Reichenbach Falls; with Col. Moran, he could outsmart him and deliver him into the hands of the police.

But against Mary, he could do nothing.

And so Holmes “dies” at the conclusion of
The Final Problem
, the best and wisest man Watson had ever known.

There follows the three years—note the symbolic number three—of the Great Hiatus, during which we read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, time in Tibet, a meeting with the Dalai Lama, a visit to—tellingly—Persia, Mecca, and Khartoum (just after the death of General Gordon, whose portrait hung upon the wall in Baker Street), and the coal-tar derivative research in Montpelier. Complete bunkum, of course, as Edgar W. Smith, the best and wisest member of the Baker Street Irregulars, pointed out. Holmes did nothing of the sort. Without the linguistic skills of Sir Richard Burton, the look-in at Mecca would very likely have ended at the business end of an Arabian scimitar.

For the truth is, during the period of the Great Hiatus, Sherlock Holmes was, in fact, dead. As dead as Mordred and Mordor and Moriarty.

And what recalls him to life? What brings him back to face the villain Moran (and thus the ghost of Moriarty) in
The Empty House
? Only one thing.

The death of Mary Morstan. The shape-shifter, Fata Morgana's sister. Without Watson's sad bereavement, there can be no return of Sherlock Holmes.

In order for Holmes to live again, Mary must trade places with him.

Thus does Holmes's greatest enemy make the most heroic sacrifice. Mary Morstan gives up her husband and returns Watson to the embrace of Sherlock Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, and Baker Street.

Just as “the Mam” had to sacrifice herself for her family in the face of Charles Altamont Doyle's alcoholism and penury, so does Mary Morstan sacrifice herself that “Altamont” might live. After all, it was “the Mam” who entreated her son to resurrect Sherlock, after his death in
The Final Problem
; and upon relenting, what did Conan Doyle say to her?

He still lives.

Just as Conan Doyle had to kill first the Irishman in him and later the Catholic, so that the Scottish-born English gentlemen and knight of letters could fully flower, so must the Irish girl die that the Englishman and his Scottish amanuensis—the two presentable sides of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—may fully live again, reborn through a woman's love. It is one of the noblest and most moving self-sacrifices in all of fiction—and for Conan Doyle, one of the most daring selfportraits in all literature.

Christopher Redmond

Christopher Redmond grew up in Kingston, Ontario, graduating from Queen's University. He received his MA from the University of Waterloo, where he is currently director of internal communications, editing the university's daily news bulletin. Redmond is the author of
In Bed with Sherlock Holmes
;
Welcome to America, Mr. Sherlock Holmes
; and
A Sherlock Holmes Handbook
. He was formerly editor of
Canadian Holmes
, the journal of The Bootmakers of Toronto, Canada's Sherlock Holmes society, and now operates the Web site Sherlockian.Net. Redmond is a member of several Sherlockian societies, including the Baker Street Irregulars of New York.

A
rthur Conan Doyle—the creator of Sherlock Holmes and so many other characters and achievements—lived, from his birth in 1859 to his death in 1930, precisely 25,978 days. A little arithmetic shows that the exact middle of his life came on December 14, 1894, a winter day that saw him, at the age of thirty-five, aboard a ship in the North Atlantic, returning home from his first visit to North America.

Conan Doyle was British through and through, but nevertheless he loved America and visited the continent four times, and enthusiasts can trace many of his steps on this side of the water, and imagine how he felt as he saw views that we still can see today.

At thirty-five, Conan Doyle presumably considered himself a young man still, even if now carrying the responsibilities of middle age including two children and a wife, the former Louise Hawkins, who was slowly dying of tuberculosis. Young though he might still be, it was because of his considerable achievements already that he had been invited to come to North America to tour and lecture. He had managed to acquire an education—something not to be taken for granted by a youngster growing up in poverty in smoky Edinburgh, capital of Scotland—and then a medical training. After a few false starts in his medical practice, he had managed to earn a respectable income from it, in the Southsea suburb of Portsmouth, England's largest Channel port. He succeeded there sufficiently, supplementing his medical income with occasional modest payments for magazine stories and newspaper articles, to become a principal source of financial support for his extended family, and be able to start a family of his own. He had married Louise in 1885, and initially they had lived in Southsea and then in South Norwood, a modest suburb of London, but Louise fell ill and they spent time at a number of resorts in the hope of finding a climate that would bolster her health.

Eventually, he abandoned medicine for writing as a career. He had produced scores of short stories in a number of magazines by then, some intended for boys and some for adults. By the time he sailed for America in 1894 he had published seventeen books of fiction, in fact, including three historical novels of which he was particularly proud. Most important, of course, he had invented his Great Detective, and had presented him to an increasingly enthusiastic public in two novels and twenty-four short stories. That little industry he had just brought to an end, however, against the advice of the author's friends and family. The detective was not only wearing out his welcome with his creator, but taking time and attention away from what Conan Doyle considered his more important work, particularly his historical fiction. In December 1893 he published the short story called
The Final Problem
, in which he invented an arch-enemy for Holmes, one Professor Moriarty, and disposed of them both at an encounter in the Swiss Alps.

With Holmes making no more demands on him, ACD moved on to other projects. He and his ailing wife spent the fall of 1893 to the summer of 1894 in Switzerland, at Davos, which was not yet a ski resort, but was considered to have a splendid climate for lung patients. He spent time with her and their new acquaintances there, enjoyed winter sports and had skis shipped to him from Norway, and worked diligently at his desk. This period accounts for his semi-autobiographical novel
The Stark Munro Letters
, and it was also at this time that he created one of the three great characters of his literary career, Brigadier Gerard, a picaresque cavalry officer in Napoleon's service.

In every sense, he was in the middle of his work and the middle of his life. That was the position when an invitation came from Major James Burton Pond in New York, who was in the business of bringing celebrity speakers to platforms across the United States. An earlier generation had welcomed educational lecturers, but by the 1890s the biggest audiences turned out for speakers who could be entertaining as well as improving, and Pond was the top of his profession, acting as manager to the likes of Henry Ward Beecher and Mark Twain. (He surely did not imagine that a device that had been demonstrated earlier in 1894 by Thomas Edison, a gadget that could throw an image of a moving photograph onto a wall, would soon almost entirely replace lecturing as a form of entertainment.)

Major Pond thought there would be a receptive public for Arthur Conan Doyle, and made him an offer of fixed fees for some lectures and a percentage of the box office for others. ACD agreed to go on tour from the beginning of October until the first of December. (In the end he stayed a few days extra.) He landed in New York on October 2, accompanied by twenty-one-year-old Innes Doyle, taking leave from the British Army to be his older and famous brother's traveling companion throughout the tour.

Conan Doyle stepped off his ship into a land that perhaps was stranger to him than he realized. His idea of America had been shaped largely by his childhood reading, including the frontier novels of James Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid and the historical works of Francis Parkman; and as soon as he had the opportunity, he headed north to what he liked to call “Parkman Land,” the territory in and around the Adirondacks where the French and Indian War had been fought. In this region nearly every name was magic to him: Fort Edward, Bloody Pond, Ticonderoga. Now he was able to compare the genuine terrain with the descriptions he had already drawn in his novel
The Refugees
, much of it set in this borderland between America and Canada. “It was very much as I had pictured it,” he reported later, “but the trees were not as large as I thought.”

For a few days he was able to indulge himself as a tourist. He had hoped to do one other thing early in his American trip: pay a respectful visit to Boston and shake hands with Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great old man of American literature, whose name he had borrowed for his own detective. But Oliver Wendell Holmes died on October 7, 1894, at the age of eighty-five, while ACD was deep in the northern woods, staying at a six-bedroom hunting lodge near Saranac Lake made available by a friend of a friend. By the time he emerged from Parkman Land and was able to visit Boston, the best he could do was to place a wreath on Holmes's grave.

It is exhausting just to list the places Conan Doyle visited during his lecture tour that fall. He spoke repeatedly in New York and Chicago, and made single appearances in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Washington, Baltimore, Elmira, Glens Falls, Schenectady, Jersey City, and some twenty other places. He gave the same lecture thirty-four times in two months, and other lectures or readings a total of five times, and the biggest variation seems to have been the opinions of local reporters about what his accent was like. One of them called it “a mixture of English, Irish, Scottish, and cold,” and it is no wonder if he came down with a virus after so many nights consisting of straining his voice to speak in a gigantic hall, being delivered to the railway station at midnight, catching a few hours' sleep aboard a train, arriving in a new city the next morning, seeing a few of the local attractions, having dinner with local literary figures or social climbers, then lecturing once again, and repeating the process, day after day with few breaks.

A typical day of the trip was Thursday, November 1, when ACD travelled from Boston to Worcester, Massachusetts. He was a guest of the Woman's Club of Worcester, which had invited him to give one of the lectures in the series it was sponsoring that season. All 827 seats in the downtown Association Hall were filled when Conan Doyle appeared at eight o'clock on a stage decorated with large palms, ferns, and white chrysanthemums. The speaker was introduced by the president of the club, the wife of a local manufacturer and state legislator, and she explained Conan Doyle to the audience as “the author of those famous detective stories which have entertained, delighted, and mystified two continents.” After the lecture, which lasted about an hour, the ladies carried their guest off to a reception at the home of another local industrialist and his wife. Arthur and Innes, as well as the leaders of the Woman's Club, shook the hands of about 175 people in the receiving line before there was finally a chance for some rest. Experiences of this kind, in which local dignitaries missed no opportunity to meet the celebrity author, were repeated day after day through the exhausting ten weeks of the trip.

As for Conan Doyle's lecture itself, it was the same almost every night, under the title “Readings and Reminiscences.” He had come to North America hoping to give several literary talks in rotation, including one about the novelist George Meredith, whom he considered to be the greatest author of his time—but sponsors and audiences were not interested in George Meredith. What they wanted to hear about was Sherlock Holmes, and Holmes is what his obliging creator talked about, time and again. Newspaper reports of his successive lectures quote various sentences and paragraphs, to the point that it is possible to reconstruct the entire hour's ramble about how he became an author, together with some comments on Holmes and some on the writing of his historical novels. Many sentences and whole paragraphs of his talk later found their way into his autobiography,
Memories and Adventures
.

Here is one anecdote from childhood mentioned only briefly in the autobiography, but told more fully in the lecture from 1894: “I can remember that into the little flat in which we lived there came one day a great man—gigantic he seemed when viewed from the height of two-foot-nothing. His shoulders, I remember, spanned the little door and his head was somewhere up near the gas chandelier. His voice, too, was as big as his body and I have since learned that his heart was in the same proportion. I can still remember the face of the man, clean-shaven, pugilistic, with an old man's hair, a young man's eyes, and a child's laugh. Above all I remember his nose, which fascinated me by its strange distortion. Long after I had been tucked into my little crib I could hear him roaring and rumbling in the next room, and his bare personality left as vivid an effect upon my three-year-old mind as his name and fame could do upon the thousands who knew him as William Makepeace Thackeray.”

Along with the reminiscences came the readings, which included two passages from Sherlock Holmes—the classic section from
The Sign of the Four
in which Holmes examines Watson's pocket watch and deduces more about Watson and his family than Watson was prepared to hear, and a brief section from “The Greek Interpreter” in which Holmes and his brother Mycroft match observations about people in the street below, from at the window of the Diogenes Club in Pall Mall. Then, just about at the end of his performance, Conan Doyle set Holmes aside to read an entire short story from his other work, which seems generally to have been one that had only just been published in
The Strand Magazine
in England and a number of American newspapers,
The Lord of Chateau Noir
. It would eventually form part of the collection
The Green Flag and Other Stories
, issued in 1900. The tale is fairly gruesome, in keeping with a theme of physical mutilation that surfaces repeatedly in Conan Doyle's writing, especially his stories of crime, including
The Cardboard Box
and
The Crooked Man
, but also his general and historical fiction. After the lecture in Worcester, for example, the local newspaper, the
Evening Gazette
, complained that it had been a mistake for the visitor to read such a thing, calling it “painful,” “brutal,” and “unpleasant.”

What emerges from these sources is not just the story of one lecture tour, but a portrait of social and literary America in 1894.
²
He did not see the whole country, going no further south than Washington, D.C. and no further west than Milwaukee, but within that scope there was plenty for him to see, plenty of people to meet, and plenty more he might have enjoyed meeting if the pressure had not been so intense and continuous. After shaking those 175 hands at the reception in Worcester, he may have felt mixed enthusiasm for getting up the next day, traveling to Amherst, and giving the same talk all over again, this time for an audience of college men. But there were clearly good times as well. One of the best may have been his day in Indianapolis, where he stayed at a hotel that was also home to the local poet laureate, James Whitcomb Riley. They met with mutual enthusiasm, and apparently spent several hours talking in one or both of their rooms upstairs—and anyone who knows of Riley's habits will suspect that while they talked, a bottle and a couple of glasses were not far away.