Text Box: OBITUARY MR SHERLOCK HOLMES 1854-1928 VERY little is known about the early life of Mr Sherlock Holmes who has recently died. It is thought he was descended from a long line of country squires. His grandmother was a sister of Vernet the French artist. His only known relative was a brother Mycroft, seven years his senior, who pre-deceased him. Sherlock Holmes cultivated his natural talents for observation and logical deduction by undertaking an erratic course of study at Oxford University and St Bartholemew’s Hospital. His researches included chemistry, anatomy and botany with special reference to poisons. Early on he gained a reputation for eccentricity when in the anatomy class he belaboured the specimens with a stick to study the bruising. All his studies had the object of making himself an expert in criminal detection and in this aim he triumphantly succeeded. Setting up in business in 1878, he soon became the leading consulting detective of his generation and a pioneer of methods that have since become standard practice in police forces throughout the world. Sherlock Holmes was an expert singlestick player and swordsman and one of the finest amateur boxers of his weight. However he preferred not to expend his energies wastefully and, considering unnecessary physical activity deprived him of food for the brain, would recline for hours on the sofa, occasionally even retiring to bed for several days to husband his thought processes. Yet, when enthused by the chase of combating crime, he would spring into action and disclose the vast reserves of strength that resided somewhat improbably in his tall spare frame. Sherlock Holmes had a large store of outré knowledge gained from extensive reading and, although he had an interest in all the muses, his chief love was music, perhaps the most mathematical of all the arts. He owned a Stradivarius violin which he played excellently but when in deep thought often preferred to scrape tunelessly across his knees. His bęte noir was ennui and he rebelled at an inactive brain, at times choosing to keep stagnation at bay by injecting himself with a seven per cent solution of cocaine. His professional career spanned some twenty-three years and in hundreds of cases he defeated the enemies of law and order in several countries. After refusing a knighthood in June 1902, Holmes retired in1903 to keep bees on the Sussex Downs where he died peacefully in his modest villa on Saturday last. This is the second time that Sherlock Holmes’ death has been announced. In 1891 it was believed that he had perished in the Reichenbach Falls in mortal combat with the arch-criminal Professor Moriarty, but this proved to be a false alarm and Holmes returned from obscurity four years later to resume his career. He was a man of ascetic character and had one friend only – myself, John H Watson, MD, Late Indian Army. Reprinted from The Morning Telegraph by kind permission of the editor.

WHO WAS SHERLOCK HOLMES?

In all of literature there are very few characters who pass into the common language.  Even the most illiterate being knows what is meant when somebody is called “a proper little Romeo” and when a person is described as being “tighter than Shylock”.  Even better known is the ace detective Sherlock Holmes.

 

Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Holmes featured in four novels and some fifty-six short stories from the pen of the master story-teller.  Doyle himself considered that Holmes distracted him from more serious work and he killed Holmes off in 1893 by casting him down the Reichenbach Falls.  However, such was the demand for more Holmes stories that Doyle resurrected him in 1901 and wrote further tales until 1927.

 

By then Holmes and his faithful companion Dr Watson, who narrates the stories, had taken on lives of their own and had become figures of almost mythical status.  Because readers clamoured for more and more stories about Sherlock Holmes, other writers adopted the well-loved characters.  Holmes and Watson have also featured in many films, plays and even musicals!

 

But the characters are most comfortable on the written page and many authors, both professional and amateur have been tempted to emulate the great originator. 

 

Alas, some authors have let their imaginations run riot and Holmes has been involved with Jack the Ripper, Dracula, the Titanic, and flying saucers to name but a few.  He has been placed in modern America, into the future and far into the past; we have been given his schooldays, his biography and various clones.  Poor old Holmes has been mangled and distorted to provide fodder for many ludicrous yarns and unbelievable concepts.

 

However, some authors have sincerely attempted to imitate the authentic Conan Doyle style and many of these tales are credible and entertaining.  Such stories have become known by the term pastiche.  This is an unfortunate designation as the word pastiche really means a work made up of parts from other pieces.  The word derives from the same root as “paste”.  However, pastiche also means a work carried out in sincere imitation of another and it is in this sense that new Holmes stories are referred to as pastiches.

 

The best of the pastiches do not attempt to stretch the accepted boundaries of the original canon.  The conventions are observed and the author who knows his job will ensure that nothing anachronistic appears in his work.  A sense of period is essential if the reader is to find himself comfortably at home in the late Victorian era.  For the true joy of the pastiche is to imagine that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has taken up his pen once more and given us a further batch of splendid Sherlock Holmes tales.

 

One of the best collections of Holmes’ pastiches for some time is                                                      

 

 

               

 

 

 

 
Cover of The Singular Adventures of Mr Sherlock Holmes