Stephen Browning - On the Trail of Sherlock Holmes

On the Trail of Sherlock Holmes

DEDICATION

To every child who has picked up a magnifying glass and made deductions by inspecting a broken twig, footprint in the mud or scruffy old hat.

Stephen Browning

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

Pen & Sword History

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Stephen Browning 2022

ISBN 978 1 52677 901 4

eISBN 978 1 52677 902 1

The right of Stephen Browning to be identified as Author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs

and Patents Act 1988.

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P rimary acknowledgement must go to the creator of Sherlock Holmes who inspired the author at the age of about 12, and countless others of every age all over the world, to gain a love of reading and puzzles. As regards this study, thanks to the British Library for courteous and professional assistance and to all the Sherlock Holmes buffs who gave their opinions. I am grateful to the National Archives in Kew, London. Special thanks to Daniel Tink, for permission to use some of his wonderful photographs www.danieltink.co.uk : all other photographs are by the author. Thank you to Laura Hirst at Pen and Sword for handling production. My thanks also to Karyn Burnham for editing and making some excellent suggestions.

H olmes and I had sat in companionable silence for some time after we finished our excellent meal at Simpsons in the Strand. The Beef Wellington, named in honour of our greatest ever military man, was sublime. When he did not have a case and decided to eat at all, Holmes liked to partake of the very finest cuisine. It was the early spring of 1914, just after seven in the evening and we could see the bustling hoards scurrying along the street below. Some were going home after a very long day, and others just coming out for a nights entertainment.

Do you think, Holmes said suddenly, that people in a hundred years will remember us?

Probably not, I replied. There will be all sorts of wonders, then. Like flying machines and probably devices to instantly communicate, and ships that sail underwater. People will have holiday homes on the moon. Your excellent treatises on cigar ash and bee-keeping will be small change in such a world.

He had aged of late. I knew he was desperately concerned about the state of the Empire given the current grave situation and only that morning had advised the Prime Minister at Downing Street. He still had those incredible bright eyes each side of his hook-like nose, but his hair was tinged with silver now. My words had annoyed him that was nothing new but I cared so much for this man that I indulged in some sentimentality; a trait, among many others, for which I had been often soundly, and unjustly in my opinion, reprimanded. I was, after all, as he had often reminded me during the past twenty-odd years, just an ordinary man who often saw but rarely observed. So, I felt justified in trying in my crude way to add some balm to the situation.

Maybe, Holmes, maybe, people will pass this place and say: Holmes and Watson used to eat there. Perhaps, even, some folk in a hundred years will walk the streets of London to get a sense of your great gifts and want to feel the atmosphere as you solved mysteries and crimes that had beaten the finest brains of Scotland Yard.

Why on earth would they do that, Watson?

Because, Holmes, you are you are indescribable. You are one of a kind. You are unique in the annals of the history of these islands.

Just these islands, Watson? he came back quick as a flash with a cheeky grin. He was mollified.

During our many adventures together, I had noticed that he was surprisingly susceptible to flattery, and I sensed he was a happier man as we strolled the two miles back to Baker Street. I had an idea of writing a book then, of walks around our illustrious capital which his many admirers could use. I could perhaps also add details of other places in Britain which witnessed his extraordinary talents. Alas, although I have started it, demands upon my time in the present dreadful war have prevented its completion and the manuscript, such as it is, remains, among notes for many other stories such as The Giant Rat of Sumatra in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co, the Strand.

It is an idea for a future writer, maybe.

Dr John H. Watson

Undisclosed British Army base, 19 September 1917

I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could, I think, hardly be exceeded .

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Crowborough, 1924

O n 22 May 1859, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family was reasonably prosperous but Arthurs father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was chronically addicted to alcohol. His mother, Mary Doyle, was fond of books and remembered by her son as a wonderful storyteller.

Arthurs boyhood, he wrote later in his life, was spartan at home and more spartan at the Edinburgh school where a tawse-brandishing schoolmaster of the old type made young lives miserable. From the age of 7 to 9 he suffered under this pock-marked, one-eyed rascal who might have stepped, he wrote, from the pages of Dickens.

He was to later tell his firm friend, Bram Stoker, that he produced and illustrated his first book of adventures at the age of 6 and that at this time he also discovered a talent for telling a story and then sharing innumerable episodes right through a whole term if necessary. He retained this ability throughout his school life.

At the age of 9, Arthurs family enrolled him in a Jesuit boarding school in England Stonyhurst, where he excelled at cricket. Touching letters to his mother survive; he was to write to constantly up to her death in 1920. Conan Doyle considered the general curriculum medieval but sound, producing as decent a set of young fellows as any other school would do. Corporal punishments were the norm and he considers that no other boy endured more of it. He graduated at the age of 17, by which time his fathers mental health problems and alcohol addiction were becoming too much to deal with in the family. In 1876, Charles Doyle was dismissed from his job and in 1885 was admitted to Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum.