The Rest Is History - 85. Sherlock Holmes

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

The games afoot! Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss the world’s favourite consulting detective. Why has the popularity of Sherlock Holmes survived more than a century and what do the stories tell us about Victorian and Edwardian London? A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Knowledge of literature, nil. Knowledge of philosophy, nil. Knowledge of astronomy, nil. Knowledge of politics, feeble. Knowledge of Christianity, profound. Plays the violin well, is an expert single-stick player,

boxer and cricketer. Has a good practical knowledge of British history. So reads John Watson's description of my co-presenter, Tom Holland. Oh, Dominic. Adapted. You are too kind. Adapted from his very similar description of Sherlock Holmes. Which makes you Dr Watson.

It does, unfortunately. I walked right into that, didn't I? You did. Bring your service revolver. Representative of the British middle classes, I'll take that. So yes, today's topic is a fictional character, but one rooted in history and obviously a historical phenomenon in and of himself. And that is, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Tom, Sherlock Holmes Holmes we've had a lot of questions about whether what why a history podcast is doing an episode about Sherlock Holmes haven't we we have um and I think one one way to answer that is with another question from Ian

at Elvis 717 um how much of the view or myth of the Victorian Victorian era stems from the Holmes stories so I think that's a crucial part of it. I think there's a huge sense in which our sense in the 20th century, 21st century, of the late Victorian period is profoundly shaped by Sherlock Holmes. But I think also, I mean, I think you can

say about Sherlock Holmes that he is probably the best, the single best known literary figure ever created globally. I think there's a lot of truth in that. Maybe Jesus would be a possible alternative. But I mean, he is instantly recognisable. And so I think that, you know, you've written about the way that Britain has created all these kind of literary myths.

Yes. But Holmes is, I mean, is probably... Holmes is the biggest, without any question. So Holmes is the character who has been portrayed on screen more than any other, by far. I mean, there are thousands upon thousands of screen iterations of Sherlock Holmes, screen and stage. Holmes has spawned a colossal industry.

There are Sherlockian studies. There are, I mean, we'll get back to this later, I think, but there are people who purport to believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real person and that Arthur Conan Doyle was merely either a pen name for Dr. Watson or a kind of intermediary. There are tons of spinoffs by very distinguished writers, sort of Michael Dibdin, Michael Chabon, and so on.

So the Holmes phenomenon is colossal. It is fixed in people's minds, an image of a particular kind of patrician Britishness, I think. And I think you're absolutely right, Tom, that the Holmes stories have become a defining image of the late Victorian and Edwardian. I mean, the cabs, the gaslights, the smog. Which in turn, I mean, they are also a fantastic reservoir

for people wanting to study the period. Because the stories are situated at the beginning of all kinds of trends that will then work themselves out over subsequent decades and centuries. So, well, I mean, the idea of the police, for starters, the idea of the detective, the idea of science, all of these are crucial parts of the Holmesian narratives. And Conan Doyle's genius really is to kind of knot these various strands together and create something that in a sense continues to define how people around the world think of London.

Well, London particularly. I think you're dead right about that. So let's give a bit of context. Conan Doyle, well, he's not Arthur Conan Doyle, is he? He starts as Arthur Doyle, and he adds Conan to his surname later. He's from a poor family in Edinburgh. I think a really important thing for understanding some of the later stories is his father is an alcoholic who basically goes mad and ends up, I think, in an asylum. He goes away to Jesuit schools and then loses his faith. He becomes very anti-Catholic.

He goes to Stonyhurst and then he goes to a Jesuit school in Austria where magnificently he complains at the lack of cricket facilities. Oh, well, I think cricket is going to play a part in this podcast, which is... Yes, it is. Which is basically one of the reasons I was so keen when you suggested it. Tiresome for some, delightful for others.

I think that's what I had to say about the theme of cricket. So yes, and then obviously he goes and studies medicine in Edinburgh. And this is the key turning point isn't it with Joseph Bell so Joseph Bell

is this you know beaky patrician kind of surgeon who is universally regarded

I think as the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes well Conan Doyle says so himself yeah he says so explicitly I mean I think he writes as much to Joseph Bell

and basically says you are Sherlock Holmes so people that's slightly disappointing because people love to speculate about these things and they basically Yeah, he says so explicitly. I mean, I think he writes as much to Joseph Bannon. Basically, he says, you are Sherlock Holmes. So that's slightly disappointing because people love to speculate about these things, and they basically can't because Conan Doyle gave the game away. But, I mean, Conan Doyle, so he then becomes a doctor in Portsmouth, I think, then South Sea. Yeah.

So he doesn't really know London very well. And so, in a sense sense his sense of london is a kind of myth makers idea of london yes it's a sort of he's a victorian richard curtis yes yes he has fog instead of snow yeah exactly um and the thing is that doyle conan doyle i mean conan doyle makes him sound grander doesn doesn't it? He adds the name Conan to Doyle. And he wants to be a writer and he obviously has literary ambitions. And all his life, I mean, Sherlock Holmes famously became this prison from which he couldn't escape because at the same time that he's writing the Sherlock Holmes stories, he's writing what he really loves, which are his

historical novels. Have you read The White Company? I have. I love it. Everyone says, oh, it's dreary. No, but I loved it. I read it as a child. And there's a sequel, Sir Nigel, which is brilliant. A Life of Nigel Farage by Tom Holland. It opens with an incredible account of the Black Death moving in on England. Right.

And then you end up with Sir Nigel fighting with Sir John Shandos, who really existed, who was absolutely epitome of English chivalry, and ends with the Battle of Poitiers and the Black Prince. And Sir Nigel captures the French king. So it's set in the Hundred Years' War in the 14th century. But the first one is not quite Hundred Years' War. Am I right in thinking that the Black Prince is doing something to do with Castile? That's right, yes.

Trying to restore the king of Castile or something. Yes. So very... Maybe that... Yeah, that's the White Company, I think. Right. So yes, he wants to do that, doesn't he? Conan Doyle.

That's his dream. And he's written... I'm trying to remember my dates. He's written A Study in Scarlet in 1887. And then he comes back... That's obviously been a big hit. That's the first Sherlock Holmes novel. And then the...

So this is... You have to put this into context. I don't know if you've seen that brilliant book. Then he does A Sign of Four, I think. A Sign of Four, I think, is a bit... Maybe it's a bit later. I don't know whether he's done some of the stories in between. We'll get written.

We'll get attacked by Sherlockians. We will. Well, we're going to get attacked by Sherlockians. There's no doubt about that because we don't know... We're not claiming to be Sherlockians, are we? We're historians who enjoy Sherlock Holmes, but we're not Sherlock Holmes sort of boffins. So I don't know if you've seen that brilliant book

edited by Philip Hensher about the golden age of the British short story. So it came out last year. And Conan Doyle was in there. And Henry James is in there. And lots of H.G. Wells and lots of people from this era. And Philip Hensher points out that in this period, so 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, going up to the 1910s, short stories were incredibly lucrative. So if you were a writer, you'd make the large part of your income from writing for magazines like The Strand, which is where…

The Strand is which is where... The Strand is where, yes, it is. And a lot of these great writers do publish in The Strand, and they're paid the equivalent of tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds today for a story, and they're reaching this relatively newly literate population. I mean, literate within the last sort of 50 or 100 years. And Conan Doyle is to kind of

magazines like the strand what dickens was to the novel you know i mean he's he's he's the guy who really sets the whole format ablaze yeah kind of reading that uh once sherlock holmes has taken off um having conan doyle's name on the cover would add a hundred thousand readers yes exactly right you can see why they would be keen to keep Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes. Yeah. I guess, in a sense, Conan Doyle gets fed up with him and chucks him off the Reichenbach Falls with...

Well, the amazing thing is that that period, which is the sort of heroic age of Sherlock Holmes, when he's a new character and when Conan Doyle is really into it, that's only a two-year period, 1891 to 1893. And 1893 is when he publishes The Final Problem, when he basically throws Sherlock Holmes off the Reichenbach Falls. And as far as he's

concerned, he created him in 1887, then he did two years worth of short stories, and now he's finished. He never needs to think about Sherlock Holmes again. But, of course, he can't escape. Yes, and doesn't he he kind of he slightly runs out of money yeah I think he set up very I mean he has a very interesting life outside literature so as a young man he he goes on a whaler ship to Greenland

as I didn't know that that's a good fact and he he goes to the Burr War and he covers um he goes to Egypt doesn't he because his wife has tuberculosis. That's right. And she needs to recover. And he gets kind of embroiled in colonial escapades there. And then he goes to the, he volunteers to fight in the Boer War. He's incredibly keen on the Boer War. He's a big, large, I mean, frankly, overweight man.

He's a big unit, I think. He's a big unit. He's a big unit. So he doesn't get signed up that he goes and covers it a bit like churchill as a he writes like a six volume history of the boer war or something saying how what a great operation it was yes it was splendid there's nothing to see here move on um but he comes back from that he doesn't he doesn't really get paid for that and so that's when he i think he resurrects yeah well exactly so the boer war i

think ends in i can't remember it ends in 1901 or 1902 but hound of the baskervilles is 1901 yes but but hound of the baskervilles is set before he has fallen off the reichenbach falls with professor moriarty and then he does a story in which it turns out that sherlock holmes had faked his own death and had then gone off to off to Tibet for two years to study with llamas. Yeah. So that's the empty house, 1903.

And then, yes. And then basically he, he rather grumpily, you know, continues to sort of churn out home stories now and again. So right up to, I think the,

the case book stories, which are the last, pretty much the last stories. And feature Sherlock Holmes fighting German agents. Yeah, it's 1927. In disguise as an American. And some American critic said, Sherlock Holmes seems to have taken down

every conceivable American expression and uses them whenever he can. Oh my God. That's like your impersonation. That's like your American impersonation. Yeah, it is. Imagine him. So I suppose the question is question is why that's the real

question isn't it why does it become so resonant so quickly and what is it about the sherlock holmes stories that gets under people's skin at the time what's it tell us about victorian edwardian readers what's your theory tom well um i think that I think that if you're situating it in the context of the age, you have the existence of police forces. And in England, you're starting to have detectives who are employed for this. You also have people who are starting to experiment with writing about detection. We've had Edgar Allan Poe was the murders in the Rue Morgue. That's basically the first, and the Moonstone, I suppose. Well, the focus is really Paris.

We talked about this with Agnès Paré in the episode on Paris, that there is this sense of criminals and detectives engaged in titanic battles kind of in the sewers of Paris and, you know, in the grand apartments and so on. And that's what Poe is then buying into when he sets his, I think he does three detective stories and they're set in Paris. What's the detective called? Is it Arsene? It's Dupin. Dupinsene? It's Dupin. Dupin, yeah, it's Dupin, exactly. And Poe gets bored of that very quickly. You also have Dickens,

who in Bleak House introduces Inspector Bucket. Yes. There are no great kind of mysteries or anything, but he's the kind of the prototype. I suppose he becomes Inspector Lestrade or Gregson, all the various inspectors that you get. Sergeant Cuff in the Moonstone. Yeah, in Wilkie Collins.

And in Wilkie Collins' book, that does feel quite Holmesian because the threat is coming from India. From outside, isn't it? Which I think we're going to get into later on because I think this is a really fascinating aspect of the Holmes stories. But what Conan Doyle does is to take these kind of various semi-formed ideas for a literary tradition and just crystallizes it. And it's the figure of Holmes, clearly,

because Holmes is also the embodiment of the idea that pure science can solve everything. And so the very word science has not been used in the sense that we use it now, commonly until kind of the middle of the 19th century. Yeah, because science just means kind of knowledge, right? Yeah. So as late as, I think, the second half of the 19th century, science in Oxford means the study of Aristotle, which is everything in a sense that Holmes is rejecting.

And so you have... Knowledge of literature and philosophy nil, according to Watson. Although, very interested in history. So he writes apparently a monograph on early English charters. Oh, right. He's interested in linguistics. He writes a paper on the Chaldean roots of early Cornish. Yeah.

But of course, the papers that he famously writes are on cigarette ash. Yeah, toxins. Toxins. yeah but of course the papers that he famously writes are on cigarette ash yeah toxins toxins and on fingerprints which is also incredibly new science so developed in india in the the 1850s by the colonial authorities there and there are people in england who say well we should pick this up but it's rejected by scotland yard in 1886 which is you know that's the decade when chelock homes is starting to appear and so i think that that also is a crucial aspect, isn't it? It is that we've had a lot of people asking about this. Is Sherlock Holmes the first superhero? So that tradition of someone who is smarter, cleverer, more knowledgeable than the police and the conventional authorities.

And that's the key thing. That's why people come to him. You know, he's come to his rooms in Bakerstreet. So I think that's all part of it. But I think above all, it's the atmosphere of it, isn't it? I mean, it's the language, of Sherlock Holmes in 1933, which is kind of the first great study of Sherlock Holmes as a literary phenomenon. And he says of it that the 1880s are a smug and happy time, a time of prosperity and great contentment, which of course is deeply ironic because all kinds of terrible things are going on. But there is also, I think, that sense that Sherlock Holmes is the guardian angel of London at its imperial and cultural peak. Well, this is one of the fascinating things, that London is a world city in this period. It is clearly the world's great metropolis. And you get a massive sense of that in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

But just before we come back to London, this thing about Holmes as a superhero, we had an enormous number of questions about this. So Ian, Elvis717, who basically bombarded us with questions. One of them is, he says, why does Holmes still resonate today? The use of science to solve crime,

does that make him the original superhero? So the superhero is really the superhero is developed a few decades later in america um a character who appears to be normal but has powers right and and not necessarily batman doesn't well batman doesn't have superpowers batman i guess is the closest and i think that there are kind of Batman-Sherlock Holmes crossovers. But just before America, there is also, and this is quite topical, Maurice LeBlanc writes a character called Lupin, who is a kind of thief.

He's a gentleman burglar. And he, so Lupin crosses swords with Sherlock Holmes. And Conan Doyle complained about this, that it was kind of copyright infringement. Oh, they rip off Holmes and put him in the books? Okay. So LeBlanc calls him Herlock Sholmes and Dr. Wilson. Brilliant. No one would guess it.

And they kind of cross swords and develop a kind of respectful admiration for each other. And in a way, it's rather like Umberto Eco's tribute to the English character in William of Baskerville in The Name of the Rose, which is modelled on Sherlock Holmes. In a way, the portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, Herlock Shames in Lupin, is, I think, one of the great French tributes

to England and to English character. And it's kind of really telling that, obviously, we've had the updated version of Sherlock Holmes. Benedict Cumberbatch. But the French equivalent of that is Lupin, which is kind of also running at the moment both both i think fantastic um so there is that sense again that the the there's a kind of the

interconnection between london and paris the um the great detective the great burglar the great robber um and and then yeah that tradition migrates to america where it becomes much more vital um let's talk a bit about... So Holmes is a very patrician figure, isn't he? So he and Watson are both upper middle class, I suppose, aren't they? Watson has been to Afghanistan and come back with a war wound, wants to take rooms, and he's recommended... Somebody says there's this very strange fellow

that you might get on well with him. Why don't you go and and he gets there and homes homes is rich you know he has expensive habits obviously the cocaine um all his instruments and stuff he charges astronomical fees to for well consultancies because he doesn't always charge but no he's a robin hood figure yeah there is mention of when the fees are mentioned they're very large and very rich people. He takes large feeds from people who can afford it. Exactly. So that he can then afford to take on cases for people who can't afford it.

But I suppose what he exudes, what both of these men exude, what international audiences at the time would recognise as a kind of stereotypical Britishness or Englishness, wouldn't they? I mean, these are precisely the kind of mad dogs and Englishmen who would eat beef steaks for breakfast in in india or something at the time well they i mean there's a lot about their breakfast yeah you know they they're always they i think they get up late and have rashers they do they have colossal very meaty breakfasts yes and then kind of ladies and veils turn up exactly i

think that that um for decades after that tourists to tourists to London would expect it to be swathed in fog and to have rashers and bacon and eggs for breakfast. Well, actually, another character who's defined by his breakfasts, who's, I think, one of the literary descendants of Sherlock Holmes is James Bond. Ian Fleming describes in great detail how Bond's housekeeper gives him the right jam the right eggs boiled to the right temperature I mean this is very very Holmesian kind of behavior and the sort of setup in Bond's flat I mean there's no Dr Watson because I think it's I think it's almost impossible for any any English writer not to do breakfasts not not to be influenced by that legacy yeah I mean it's

you know so so both Bond and smiley are recognizably influenced by by the by the home stories i think that's absolutely right i think something that we should definitely talk about is empire this is the heyday of the british empire and funny so um i i have to be careful not to keep mentioning him on these on these podcasts but my son is really into sherlock hol Holmes and we watched all the Jeremy Brett Granada adaptations um which are brilliant and we listened to Stephen Fry a friend of the show um doing reading um the stories as an audiobook on the way to and from school and my son said to me god it's you know he didn't say god because he's sort of eight, but he said it's extraordinary how India is mentioned all the time.

There are always characters coming back from abroad. Including Dr. Watson. Yeah, Dr. Watson's come back from Afghanistan, hasn't he? Or the Northwest Front. Yeah, he has. And he's, yes, badly wounded. And so there is that sense that if you go to India or to the Empire, you're going to come back and you're going to be wounded and you're going to bring danger.

That's it. So there is that sense. I mean, famously, the description of London is that it's that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. Yes. But there is also, I mean, yeah, so the sign of four. I mean, you were going to say that's the classic example. So the Indian mutiny is in the background. The Indian mutiny is part of the backstory.

There's a character called Major Sholto. I mean, I don't want to give the plot away for people who might be inspired to read Sherlock Holmes, but there's basically treasure that has been stolen during the Indian mutiny. And one of the key figures is a man called Jonathan Small, who has one leg, who is in the third buffs and ends up at the Agra Fort.

And then he ends up on the Andaman Islands and he has a friend called Tonga. And they come to... And that, I mean, if you're a sort of historian who likes kind of post-colonial jargon, I mean, you can have a field day with this kind of stuff. That, you know, there's the sort of guilt of empire and there's importing the violence and the cruelty and all of this sort of guilt of empire and there's importing the violence and the cruelty

and all of this sort of stuff from the imperial periphery back into the metropolis. And that happens again and again in these stories, actually, that somebody has been to India or thereabouts and has been driven mad or has committed some hideous crime or there's some ghastly secret, and then they bring it back into London or they bring it back into kind of middle class suburbia. Yeah. So actually, one of the very best, most frightening Sherlock Holmes short stories, The Speckled Band.

And again, I don't want to give away plot, but it involves, I think, an Indian swamp adder, which isn't good news for anyone involved. And there is that sense the the empire risks blowback basically so and again i think i think that that part of the appeal of of homes for english readers the original english readers again rather like kind of the figure of batman standing proof against you know the the darkness that's bred in gotham city is that, is that he's kind of like a guardian angel who can stand proof against the menace of the outside. And also, of course, there's quite a bit of American stuff as well.

So the Valley of Fear, which has kind of Pinkertons and Strikers and all that Andrew Carnegie stuff going on in America. So there is this sense in which, although Holmes is a very English figure, everything from around the world is coming here. My two favourite examples of those things you've talked about are one. So with India, you mentioned the Speckle Band. So there's a character in Speckle Band called Dr. Grimesby Roylott. What a brilliant name. And he's been in Calcutta.

And you kind of know something weird is going to happen because he's brought back a baboon and a cheetah which are roaming around they're roaming around outside his house and he's also made friends with a lot of gypsies which in in sort of readers of Enneablighton will know is never a good sign no well that's very the moon that's very the moonstone isn't it because that's kind of Wilkie in Wilkie Collins there are these itinerant Indian fakirs or something and you know that they bring doom, but also they relate to something that's happened out in the Empire. And my favourite American thing is, very strange actually,

the Five Orange Pips. That's basically a story about the KKK. So the first iteration of Ku Klux Klan has gone, but they basically pitch up in England to seek revenge on somebody who has betrayed them. And I guess what that gives you is exactly what you were saying, that the sense that the stories are happening

at the centre of a massive network, and that actually Conan Doyle is writing for people who may not automatically be British. I mean, they may be American or Australian or something, and they may, you know have this sense of travel, but also travel is something that's quite unsettling. Yes. So, I mean, as a kind of source for historians,

Holmes is fascinating on the relationship of the metropolis to the imperial peripheries. Yeah. Fascinating on the evolution of the relationship between Britain and America, because America is a kind of running theme throughout. But also, what we've talked about quite a lot, the build up to the First World War, because plans for submarines and battleships and so on are always being pilfered, and Holmes is always having to get it back. And in the kind of the wonderful sense of depth that

you get with Holmes's character, lots being unsaid. There are kind of allusions to how he's been employed by the Dutch royal family to sort things out for them and that kind of thing. We've got a question from Dr. Crom, great classicist. Which Holmes case that is merely alluded to would be the best to exist as a full version by Conan Doyle himself? For me, it still has to be the giant rat of Sumatra, as mentioned in the adventure of the Sussex vampire. And the giant rat of Sumatra famously is the one, the tale for which the world is not yet ready.

But there's also one involving a trained cormorant, which I think would be brilliant. And there's the strange case of Isadora Passano, who was found stark staring mad with a matchbox in front of him, which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science. So that's, I mean, that's part of the fun as well, isn't it? It is, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

He works for the Prime Minister, I think, at one point, doesn't he? There's the naval treaty that goes missing. And then obviously in his last bow, at the end, there's a brilliant quote. Actually, I was going to read this because I thought it's so First World War. So at the end of his last bow, Holmes says to Watson, Good old Watson, you are the one fixed point in a changing age. There is an east wind coming all the same. Such a wind has never blew on

England yet. It will be cold and bitter Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But, and this you see Conan Doyle's kind of jingoism. Conan Doyle says, but it's God's own wind nonetheless, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared

i might have that read at my funeral actually i think that would be i love that in mind i'll bear that but also a bit he um holmes gets given an emerald um tie pin by queen victoria does he yes he he um he foils the plot to steal the Bruce Partington. The plans for the Bruce Partington submarine. So it's incredibly interesting as a mirror held up to all the paranoias and the complexities and the ambivalences and the ambiguities of Britain's global role at the end of the 19th century. So I think that provides justification enough for talking about homes. Do you think we should have a break now? And perhaps when we come back,

have a look at Conan Doyle himself? Sure, that's a great plan. All right, see you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip.

And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. welcome back to the rest is history you know our methods by now uh tom holland we're talking about sherlock holmes and you have a question i believe or do you want me to ask the question why don't you i think you want to answer it so andrew lysett who i believe is a a henchman or crony of yours well he's a biographer of conan doyle he knows far more about this than we do but he's a cricketing person isn't he he plays in the authors the team i play for which for which conan doyle

was a founding member yeah i knew you'd want to mention that so he asks or he what he asks i mean he knows the answer he asks about the origin of the name sherlock holmes in his opinion the idea that he was called after two nottinghamshire cricketers was always far-fetched although his creator was known for his cricketing feats, he claimed the wicket of WG Grace, and he played for one or two interesting teams. He's talking about his own team. He did.

So talk to us about all this. Talk to us about Sherlock Holmes' names, and then I'll allow you on Cricket. So the theory that Sherlock Holmes derives from two Nottinghamshire cricketers. So there was the wicket-keeper, Mordecai Sherwin, and there was a fast bowler, Frank Shacklock. So that's the theory. I mean, I don't think it's convincing.

Sherwin and Shacklock, and you get Sherlock Holmes. Yeah. Except that when Shacklock then moved to play for Derbyshire, where his fellow fast bowler was called William Mycroft. Oh, right. Mycroft is... Yeah William Mycroft. Oh, right. Mycroft is... Yeah, Mycroft is Holmes' brother. Holmes' brother.

So that's... Who knows? But I think it's likelier. I think... I mean, Conan Doyle had various relatives. So there was some relation of his aunt or something. Had been... Was called Sherlock, I think, or something like that. And there was someone he was at school with at Stoneyhurst

who was called Sherlock. Also at Stoneyhurst, there were two brothers called Moriarty. One of whom was called James. Yeah, but that's kind of unsurprising, though, because authors often use the names of, I mean, names they're familiar with, obviously. I think the interesting thing is how the Sherlock Holmes formula became a formula.

So if you look at other Edwardian or early 20th century detectives, the most famous one is Sexton Blake, which is clearly, I mean, Sexton Blake became the stuff of lots of kind of... Bulldog Drummond and all that. Well, Bulldog Drummond is more of a James Bond antecedent, and the name isn't quite as similar. But Sexton Blake is. I think we talked before, Sonny,

I basically talk all the time about the Billy Bunter stories, the Greyfriars stories, very popular with boys and girls, I guess, in these years. And there's a detective in that who's the headmaster's brother who's called Ferrer's Log. And there's also the detective who fights Fu Manchu who's called Nayland Smith. So there's obviously this sort of pattern

that you have a two-syllable first name and then a one-syllable second name. And in the Anthony Buckridge Jennings stories, which are written... Have you ever heard of those, Tom? Jennings and Derbyshire? In the 1950s and 60s about schoolboys. They try to invent their own Sherlock Holmes-style detective.

And they write... The first name they come up with is Nehemiah Beltitude. And they agree that this is a terrible name for a detective. And the next name is Egbert Snope. And they agree that that's also... And they settle for Flickston Slick, which is, again again kind of two syllables then one syllable so that is interesting but i don't think it's the most interesting i

think it's very interesting i think you know i think the most interesting aspect is as uh andrew pointed out the link crickets i was trying to take you off that but but also more generally colin doyle was an incredibly active sportsman so he played almost every sport. Yeah. So he played cricket, played rugby, made Watson a rugby player. Yes. Played football. I think he played.

He played for Portsmouth. He did. Well, antecedent of Portsmouth or something. Yeah. So he helped set up the club there. He played golf and reputedly is one of the first people to play golf in America. He played with Kipling.

I think lost to Kipling. Wow. Who knew Kipling was so good at golf? And he was an early adopter of skiing, an English, early British adopter of skiing. Well, obviously, he'd been to Switzerland, hadn't he? Yeah. Hence the right amount of folks. But really, it's the cricket for which he's chiefly known.

And apparently he wasn't a bit like me. He was terrible at school. Right. Took it up and became a great player. So there's hope for you yet, Tom. Yeah. I've become a great player, Dominic. And his greatest feat, which Andrew alludes to in his question,

is that he got the wicket of WG Grace and Grace was I mean for American or or non-British listeners probably the most famous Englishman yeah an absolutely titanic figure I mean massive massive large in the way that Conan Doyle was large or Nigel Bruce in the Basil Rathbone adaptations massive great beard um colossal figure and so to get him out was the greatest thing that any critic would want um and uh he had scored a century by the time that Conan Doyle got him out um but Conan Doyle still celebrated and um in a in an earlier podcast the the one about the uh Ukraine I quoted Tennyson I'm now going to quote Conan Doyle's poetry.

And this is him writing about W.G. Grace. Before me, he stands like a vision, bearded and burly and brown, a smile of good humor derision as he waits for the first to come down with the beard of a goth or a vandal, his bat hanging ready and free, his great hairy hands on the handle, and his menacing eyes upon me. Oh, that's very good. Magnificent stuff. Although his great hairy hands, that's not the nicest image. Okay, so Conan Doyle. Now, Conan Doyle is an absolutely 24-carat fascinating man.

He was the judge, Tom. Did you know this? He was the judge in the world's first ever bodybuilding contest. Well, there's a sport again, you see, isn't there? I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised to learn it. He stood twice for Parliament as a liberal unionist. So, in other words, that's the sort of very much the imperialist kind of wing of the liberal family, hence the Boer War. He's obviously become very well known now because of the Adelge case.

So these are kind of the great wily outrages, as they were known. In, I think, 1906, there was one of the very first Indian vicars in the Church of England. He was a Parsi, wasn't he? Yeah, he was a Parsi. Julian Barnes wrote a novel about it. A brilliant novel, Arthur and George. And his son, George, was falsely accused of these maimings of animals in a village near sort of just northern Wolverhampton.

Now, is that before or after Silver Blaze? I think it's after, actually, but I might be wrong. Contains the famous passage, which is incredibly useful for historians always to bear in mind, about the dog that doesn't bark in the night. Yes. The curious incident of the dog in the night. It's actually 14 years after I've just looked it up. So Conan Doyle obviously was remarkably prescient.

Yes. The curious thing is that the dog doesn't bark. And of course, for historians, you're right. How many of us have used that yeah you know that um as the the thing that didn't happen is the really interesting thing and the other one is um it is a capital mistake my dear watson to theorize before one has the facts that's very good well that's a lesson to us all isn't it um but i suppose let's put aside conan door amateur detective because he gets george

off effectively. He does, but there's another one as well. There's Oscar Slater. Do you know about him? I saw that. I know very vaguely, but you probably know far more about it than I do.

So, so Oscar, so, so just as George Adalge was a Parsi and therefore subject to prejudice from the police, which Conan Doyle was very, very clear about. Oscar Slater was a German Jew. And there is, this is in Glasgow.

An old woman gets murdered. Her jewels get stolen. And Slater gets accused of it because he's pawned a jewel, which is not from the jewels that have been stolen from this murdered woman. But the police, basically, because he's a German Jew, finger him for it. And he crosses America, gets arrested when he lands in New York, gets sent back to Glasgow, gets convicted.

And Conan Doyle leads the campaign to get him free. And it takes a very, very long time before he is. When he finally gets released, Conan Doyle has put up some money, basically, to pay for the retrial and is then outraged because Slater doesn't pay him back. And so Conan Doyle said of Slater that he is not a murderer, but an ungrateful dog. Well, I suppose you'd take that, wouldn't you? I mean, if you're out and you're free.

You probably would um you probably but i mean those two miscarriages of justice i think are really interesting because we've slightly cast conan doyle as a um you know he's he's clearly an enthusiast for empire but he's also a man who's evidently very very sensitive and alert to miscarriages of justice and racially based miscarriages of justice yeah i think that's absolutely right i think um a very interesting i think it's easy to paint con Doyle as a comic figure. And actually, we shouldn't do that. Although that said, the one thing that most people know about Conan Doyle, apart from Sherlock Holmes, is the fairies and seances and all of this carry on, which has allowed people to perceive him as a comic figure.

So I imagine you've got lots to say about that, because religion is your department, isn't it? Yeah, well well so lots of people have asked questions about um how how do we square the creation of sherlock holmes this arch rationalist with conan doyle's kind of increasingly public enthusiasm for spiritualism and i think it's clear that that spiritualism fills a void for people in the late vict, early 20th century. People who've lost their religious faith, but want to have some sense that there's an afterlife and some sense of communion with those who've died.

Well, it's exactly what Roger Clark was saying. Yeah. What did he say? It was a, a decayed form of religion in a secular age or something like that. I can't remember. I'm misquoting him,

but Conan Doyle loses his faith as when he's at school. Yeah. He's gone to Stonyhurst Catholic school. It's in the aftermath of that, that he creates Holmes. And Holmes is a, is a, is a figure in whom you are Watson.

He constantly tells Watson to have faith in him. And Holmes has powers. His power of deduction is almost superhuman, isn't it? And Holmes has, Holmesism, an almost inhuman figure. He's a kind of, you could imagine him as a kind of religious ascetic or something. Well, I think, so Conan Doyle is writing, creates the figure of Holmes in the 1880s.

And that's the same period, I think, 85, 86, maybe 86, I think, when he starts to develop an interest in spiritualism. And in a sense, I guess it's kind of two aspects of the faith that he's abandoned. There's the faith that the church provides frameworks that if you put your faith in it, then it explains everything. And that's the role that Holmes serves. But it also provides the hope of life after death. And that's what the interest in spiritualism does. And it obviously then becomes turbocharged by the First World War, as it does for many, many people.

For lots of people. The sense of loss. Conan Doyle becomes a public enthusiast for it in the same way that he's become a public spokesman for, say, sticking up for the British effort in the Burr War or for miscarriages of justice. He feels that it's his duty and responsibility to take a stand where other people are not. He thinks he's speaking up for what is right, doesn't he?

He does. I mean, obviously, he completely believes it. And what's interesting is, of course, that Holmes has no time for ghosts. So there's the Sussex vampire, which has all kinds of fascinating lines for anyone who's interested in Conan Doyle's spiritualism. Holmes literally says, no ghosts need apply. But you see, that is the mistake that people make, isn't it? They equate Holmes and his creator. But Conan Doyle created Holmes as a portrait of, as a version of Joseph Bell, not of himself. I mean, he's more Dr. Watson, actually. And by creating Holmes as a sceptic, he doesn't mean that he's Bell, not of himself. I mean, he's more Dr. Watson, actually. And by creating Holmes as a sceptic,

he doesn't mean that he's a sceptic himself. I mean, he can be quite critical of Holmes, in a way, as the creator of the stories. And I also think that Conan Doyle probably thought, if you put him on the spot with this very question, he would say there is no contradiction between science and spiritualism, because spiritualism merely represents a form of higher knowledge

that we haven't attained yet yeah and then the two are not intention at all he's interested in scientific service so that's the um the cottony fairies which is well that's obviously the disastrous for him isn't it i mean photographs of girls with fairies which turn out not to be but he's he's approaching that as as homes might uh yeah it's just that his powers of deduction are not quite as good as Holmes'. Well, you've eliminated everything else. What remains must be the truth or whatever. But what he hasn't really eliminated is the prospect

that these are clearly cardboard cutouts. I mean, I was having a look at the photographs of Ferris this morning, and I thought to myself, I mean, they're living in a world kind of awash with photography at this stage. I mean, I know photography is expensive and it's more difficult, but they're very familiar with photographs. And even by the standards of 1920, these are quite obvious. Well, Dominic, there's one other dimension of famous fakery,

which Conan Doyle is very kind of obliquely drawn into, which is the case of the Piltdown Man. A great historical story. So tell me about that. So Piltdown Man, the context for this is the discovery in France and Germany of prehistoric humans. So Neanderthals famously in Germany and what come to be called Cro-Magnon Man in France. And the British feel

left out. You know, they're annoyed that the French and the Germans have early hominids. Where are ours? And the answer to that, of course, is that basically Britain is buried beneath ice, so there aren't nearly as many. But there is a sense that the challenge has been raised. Britain has to find an early hominid. And in due course, 1912, fragments of an early hominid are found in a quarry in Sussex, in a village called Piltdown, very close to where Conan Doyle is living. And these fragments are found by a solicitor called Charles Dawson. He presents a paper saying, you know, these are early hominids. All the British scientists are delighted.

So they call it Aeoanthropus Dawsoni, the dawn ape of Dawson. And over the course of the succeeding months and then the next couple of years up to the start of the first world war more and more finds are made and the most the most the most ludicrous of these finds is and i'm sorry to bring the subject up again a cricket bat an ancient cricket bat made Made out of elephant bone. And it seems astonishing that people haven't figured out that this is all a massive fraud, but people want to believe it. Are they claiming that Stone Age men played cricket? That seems to be the implication,

that people were playing cricket back in the Ice Age. And it's not until after the Second World War that finally it conclusively gets proven that this was all a fake. So the likeness identity of the faker is obviously Charles Dawson, this guy who's discovering it. But you still have to wonder,

where's the cricket bat coming from? And you think this is kind of Doyle. So one theory, the theory that I think is the most convincing is that it's a guy called Martin Hinton, who's a volunteer at the Natural History Museum, who works out that it's a fake and basically comes up with a cricket bat as a way to completely make it all ludicrous so that people will just give up. But it doesn't work. But it doesn't work. It's brilliant. is that it was Conan Doyle who was trying to, you know, who was kind of playing Moriarty, that he was putting out

misleading people and that the cricket bat was put in as a clue to his identity. I don't see Conan Doyle doing that because Conan Doyle is quite straight, isn't he? He plays a straight bat. Yes, very good. Yeah, he does. I don't see Conan Doyle doing

that, to be honest with you. So I said it was tangential. Yeah, no, it's a good story. It's a great story. Just before we do a couple of questions and then call it a day, I think one of the fascinating things about Sherlock Holmes is its afterlife, obviously, so in films and so on. And I think what's very unusual is that it creates this industry

in which people write Holmes pastiches and things. And actually, often the people who are very interested in this period will do that. So Nicholas Meyer wrote a book called The 7% Solution where Holmes meets Sigmund Freud. Michael Dibdin wrote a brilliantly dark book called The Last Sherlock Holmes Story about Holmes and Jack the Ripper.

Well, Jack the Ripper. I was going to mention Jack the Ripper because in a sense, the afterlife of Jack the Ripper is a riff on Sherlock Holmes. It is. It absolutely is. I mean, the fog, the alleys, the sort of sense of opium dens in the background.

So that's 1888. So that's a couple of years after studying Scarlet. It's absolutely of the period, isn't it? But I think the whole, because we had Hallie Rumenhold on, who wrote a brilliant book, Five, about the victims. And one of the reasons why the victims get occluded is because it's all about the villain

and supposedly the person hunting him. So it's essentially the template is Holmes and Moriarty being wrapped up. It absolutely is. And I think we didn't really talk about Moriarty much. It's really interesting that Moriarty actually features so little in the home stories. I mean, I think he's pretty much only in the episode

of the Reichenbach Falls story. Yeah. That he has come to overshadow the series to such an extent. And I think obviously the fact that he's called Moriarty gives you some indication of the anxieties of Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle is a Liberal Unionist. And the reason the Liberal Unionists broke from the Liberal Party is they have a home rule for Ireland.

And I think it's no coincidence that he's called Moriarty. So he's both of London and not of it. He's not Indian. He's not Afghan. But he's Irish. And I think that's one reason why he, there's something in him. And there's the idea of that super criminal as well. Obviously that's very much.

Napoleon of crime. Napoleon of crime. Exactly. But yeah, the way that Holmes has created this, this industry. So we had a question about Holmes creating fandom. And I think that's probably right.

The Baker street irregulars, the first Sherlock Holmes society was set up in New York in 1934. So it's basically the first fan club. Anyway, let's do a couple of questions, shall we? Yep. We've got a question about illustrations. Cora Beth, how much do you think Paget's illustrations contributed

to the success of the stories? Massively, right? The look of Holmes, yeah. Yes, because it's Paget who creates the look of Holmes. It's a bit like Dracula. He doesn't wear it. Bela Lugosi doesn't correspond to Bram Stoker's description. And Paget's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes doesn't correspond really to Conan Doyle's.

But there's an interesting story about Pgett that apparently the guy who commissioned him thought that he was getting another Padgett, who was the illustrator for some magazine on the expedition to rescue General Gordon. Is that so? Yeah. And it was the wrong Padgett. And they got the wrong one. So it's like Scoop. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a very good story. But that's crucial. I mean, the deerstalker and the the pipe the pipe which he never smokes i think in the um or not much in the in the stories because that's why homes is so internationally famous is that you can just put a pipe and a deerstalker and everyone knows yeah but that that's your superhero analogy isn't it that he has a costume um which i think is is often crucial to the success of these characters particularly when they move on to celluloid um what about uh the modern sherlock holmes so chilton hundred did stephen moffat ruin sherlock by turning him into a kind of james bond superhero or is that dynamic present in the stories all along so this is the sort of

very 21st century um modernized version of Sherlock Holmes has been incredibly popular not just in Britain but all over the world what do you think of this Tom um I thought the um that the early episodes were fantastic and clever and knowing and witty and you could enjoy them if you didn't know the stories and if you did your your knowledge of them was enormously enhanced um I I thought that a bit like Doctor Who, it ended up becoming a complete mess. Yeah. There were too many subplots,

too many people dying and coming back to life and all kinds of things. It became a tremendous muddle. Yeah, I actually didn't like it. You'd expect that of a professional grump, I mean, I suppose. I do. Yes, I do. I'm not at all surprised.

Have you seen Lupo? No, I haven't. It's really good. I think better. Right, okay. It's obviously modelled on it. They're not paying you, Tom. No, they're not.

They're not. But obviously, if people want to send me free copies of Lupin, feel free. I'm an influencer. You are an influencer. I'm here for hire. I'm here for hire. The business with biscuit tea is shocking and shameful.

I've seen piles of it now. Do they keep sending you every time you mention it on the podcast? Biscuit tea. Biscuit tea. Let's see. Bye, guys. Can I end on a personal note? Do.

Is it going to be very moving? No, it's not. Okay. But it's to do with where I live in Brixton. And Study in Scarlet is set in a house in brixton lauriston gardens and i i'd always look it up in the a to z couldn't find it couldn't work out where it was and then tony our producer sent me a message um about i don't know a couple of months ago saying guess where i am i'm in max roach park which is where the study in Scarlet was set.

And it turns out that Laurison Gardens never existed. But from the description of it, it's a house that was set back from Brixton Road that then got, these all got demolished and they put a park up and it's now called Max Roach Park. So that is where Sherlock Holmes begins. And so this is just a shout out to Tony, our producer. Everyone knows the massive Sherlock Holmes. He's a very big Sherlock Holmes fan. Yes. You know what, Tom?

You're a great man for these walks, aren't you? You love a walk. And I know- We're going to do a Sherlock Holmes walk. We should do a podcast of a Sherlock Holmes walk. I mean, basically, if you're not interested in Sherlock Holmes, too bad. But if you are,

for the three remaining listeners who've stuck with us to the end of the podcast, you really do have a treat to look forward to. That'd be a great idea. Let's do that. Sherlock Holmes walk. Tom loves these walks. He's already thinking about it, even as I speak. I am.

That's very, very fun. The phone is going, so I think I should call it a day. The game's afoot. Goodbye. Goodbye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com.

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