by Michael Sims
authorities took action even before notifying Mary or Arthur: See letter from Mary Doyle, dated December 3, 1892, reproduced in full in Norman, 128–130.
“Has been weak minded & nervous”: Beveridge, 266.
Mary began to worry that if Charles were free: See letter from Mary Doyle, dated December 3, 1892, reproduced in full in Norman, 128–130.
“We must not . . . lose sight of the great principle”: Beveridge, 265.
“of an overpowering presentiment”: Ibid, 267.
“This morning took an epileptic attack”: Ibid.
Petite, with childishly small hands and feet: See Touie’s daughter Mary’s memories, quoted in Georgina Doyle, 101.
A. Conan Doyle, MD, wrote Arthur: Georgina Doyle, 55.
she received a larger share of her father’s estate: Ibid., 62–63.
no hearse to convey his coffin: Ibid., 61.
£100 per year: Stashower, 70.
CHAPTER 14: THE METHOD OF ZADIG
“Why do you not worship Bel?”: Quotations from Daniel stories derive from the 2011 Revised Edition of the New American Bible; I consulted the edition on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I slightly changed some punctuation to match the rest of the chapter.
“You mean her bitch”: Quotations from Zadig derive from Voltaire, chap. 3, in a nineteenth-century anonymous translation. I modernized some punctuation and changed capitalized nouns to lowercase to conform to usage in the rest of this chapter.
“This single track therefore”: Coleman, 102.
CHAPTER 15: THE FOOTMARKS OF POE
“Edgar Allan Poe, who, in his carelessly prodigal fashion”: ACD, “Preface,” vi.
“It is not improbable”: Poe, “Rue Morgue.”
“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical”: Ibid.
“The reader is disposed to believe”: Reprinted in Walker, 132–133.
“Mr. Poe is a man of genius”: Reprinted in ibid., 135.
Poe brought Dupin back: For bibliographical material, see the detailed pages on the website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore at www.eapoe.org/index.htm, esp. www.eapoe.org/works/editions/agft001c.htm.
Poe was taking to its limit his notion: Silverman makes this point, 172, and other critics do elsewhere.
“These tales of ratiocination”: Poe, letter to Phillip P. Cook, August 9, 1846, LTR240/RCL654, on www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4608090.htm.
Naturally Poe was himself drawing upon: Silverman, 149–150, re: “William Wilson.”
“drew razor swift as he could pull it”: Humphreys, 75.
“a strange chuckling hoarse voice” . . . “a deep wailing and melancholy cry”: Scott, chap. 16.
Eventually the ape kills a man: Scott, chap. 25.
CHAPTER 16: HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?
“As to work which is unconsciously imitative”: ACD, “Preface,” vi.
“Un meurtre sans exemple dans les fastes de la justice”: For details on French piracy of Poe’s “Rue Morgue,” see Wigmore, esp. 231–235, and Cutler, chap. 1.
Baudelaire began translating stories: See exhibition catalogue, “Baudelaire, Translator of Edgar Allan Poe,” Brown University, www.library.brown.edu/cds/baudelaire/translations1.html.
“You will, therefore, go there”: Dumas, 20:226
CHAPTER 17: GAMES OF CHESS, PLAYED WITH LIVE PIECES
“king’s peace”: For general background on the evolution of official police forces in Britain, from Norman days through the end of nineteenth century, see W. L. Melville Lee; for a more recent and detailed analysis of Victorian detectives, see Shpayer-Makov.
Efficient policing required: W. L. Melville Lee discusses the issue of trust and cooperation, 329ff.
“clean-shaven, farmer-like”: Sala, 1:95.
“We are not by any means devout believers”: Household Words, July 27, 1850. See Philip Collins, chap. 9, esp. 198ff.
“What he liked to talk about”: Sala, 1:76.
“Dickens had a curious and almost morbid partiality”: Ibid., 1:95.
“Any of the Detective men will do anything for me”: Dickens, Letters, 6:380 (letter to Bulwer Lytton, May 9, 1851). For more on Dickens’s attitude toward police officers and detectives, see Philip Collins, esp. chap. 9.
Inspector Jonathan “Jack” Whicher: Summerscale, 51ff.
“On the mat at the stair-foot”: Wills, 104ff.
“Gaboriau had rather attracted me”: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 7.
PART 3: MR. HOLMES AND DR. WATSON
“No writer is ever absolutely original”: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 12.
CHAPTER 18: DR. SACKER AND MR. HOPE
“A tangled skein” . . . red marbled notebooks: Bergem.
“The difficulty is to seize at the beginning”: Gaboriau, 45.
“There’s the scarlet thread of murder”: ACD, 1887, chap. 4.
He remembered his aquiline face: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 8.
Faulds presented his idea to London’s police department: Godfrey, 136–138; see also Donald Reid. I discuss the growth of fingerprint studies in Sims, Adam’s Navel, 166–173.
Ormond Sacker [or Secker]—from Sudan: See illustration, ACD, A Life in Letters, 245.
Sacker or Secker . . . Stamford Street: Harrison, Study in Surmise, 33–37. Harrison postulates numerous possible roots for names that ACD used; I cite only those that seem reasonable, not far-fetched, and relevant to my story.
Belmont Street . . . William Rance: Donald A. Redmond, 33.
Charpentier . . . Cowper: Ibid., 32–33.
remembering Joseph Alexandre Lestrade: Ibid., 35.
Reverend J. Gelsen Gregson: Ibid., 33; Porter, 276.
not “Mr. Sharps or Mr. Ferrets”: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 7.
surnames, including Sherrington Hope: Stoker, 8.
Chief Inspector William Sherlock: Home Chronicler, March 2, 1878, 137, and February 25, 1878, 122; Times, November 3, 1877. Mrs. Meredith, “Juvenile Delinquency,” Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1881, 375. Quail, 158 quotes Stavert.
The 1881 census listed Inspector Sherlock: www.archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/LONDON/2000-10/0970943447.
In February 1881, The Portsmouth Evening News reported: Portsmouth Evening News, February 16, 1881, available at www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=6163.0.
Inspector Sherlock was in court at Westminster: Booth, 107.
The Times reported another of Sherlock’s exploits: Times, January 6, 1883.
The 1881 post office directory: Harrison, Study in Surmise, 38–39.
under the jurisdiction of Chief Inspector William Sherlock: Ibid., 39.
fame of Sir Thomas Watson: Ibid., 177–178.
the famed physician had also studied in Edinburgh: See the Royal College of Physicians site, www.munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/4657.
The first Afghan War . . . again invaded Afghanistan: For general background information on the British view prevalent in ACD’s time, see Hanna.
“Arthur borrowed a memorable image: ACD used the gouty knuckle image in the 1904 Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.” For original source see Thomas Watson, vol. 2, 1067. For background see Klinger 1999, 28–29. Klinger alerted me to this borrowing.
a gigantic iron statue of a lion was erected in Reading: web.archive.org/web/20070928000734/http://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/collections/album/pdfs/maiwand-25.pdf.
Watson would have been an acting surgeon: Klinger 2006, 3:8 n. 3.
Chopin composed no pieces for solo violin: Baring-Gould 1:178, n. 111.
“neither kith nor kin” . . . “naturally gravitated”: ACD 1887, Chapter 1.
CHAPTER 19: BOHEMIANS IN BAKER STREET
“Sherlock Holmes [is] a bastard”: ACD, letter to Robert Louis Stevenson, 1893.
number 33, Rue Dunot: The street address is given in the third Dupin story, “The Pu
rloined Letter.”
Baker Street was not more than a quarter of a mile long: Baring-Gould, 1:86.
Upper Baker Street . . . dense with London history: Examples in this paragraph derive from Wheatley, 1:90–91.
The B in the street number: Baring-Gould, 1:85, 86.
“Underneath the table”: Reade, 2:125–126.
“She became a perfect Bohemian ere long”: Thackeray, chap. 44.
“As the phrase ‘Egyptian’ was once generally used”: Anonymous, “Literature of Bohemia,” 17–18.
CHAPTER 20: A LITTLE TOO SCIENTIFIC
“The fatal mistake which the ordinary policeman makes”: Saxby, 23–24.
“Monsieur G——, the Prefect”: Poe, “Rue Morgue.” Although the Holmes story “The Adventure of the Second Stain” was published after the period my book concerns, it is Conan Doyle’s most Poe-like story in its construction; it involves an indiscreet letter that has gone missing, the threat of blackmail, and a hiding place that isn’t hidden—but then it was a reboot of “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Note: All quotations and descriptions involving Dupin not otherwise cited derive from Poe’s three Dupin stories.
“the same very rare and very remarkable volume”: Poe, “Rue Morgue.”
Robert Louis Stevenson and the American Bret Harte: ACD explicitly invokes Stevenson and Harte in numerous places; e.g., see Stoker and ACD, Magic Door, chap. 6.
attributed Arthur’s own “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” to Stevenson: Lycett, 107–108.
Arthur saw himself as brave and indomitable: ACD demonstrates this view of himself in many letters to his mother in ACD, A Life in Letters, and later in a variety of autobiographical contexts, including his own account of the 1880 whaling voyage and his later comments about his volunteer work with the military.
“They ascended to the room in question”: Lecoq, Mystery of Orcival, chap. 7.
When reading detective stories, he found it annoying: See filmed interview with ACD, (1927), available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWjgt9PzYEM.
CHAPTER 21: THE BOOK OF LIFE
“I began to think of turning scientific methods”: ACD, in filmed interview (1927), at www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWjgt9PzYEM.
Holmes uses the term deduction instead of induction: Snyder makes this point, 105. A good introduction to Holmes’s method is Konnikova, 155–208.
Bacon explicitly defined “inductive history”: Bacon, “Advancement of Learning.”
“‘I ate minced pies on Monday and Wednesday’”: Macaulay, 428.
“The patient, too, is likely to be impressed”: How, 188.
CHAPTER 22: A BASILISK IN THE DESERT
“I had written in A Study in Scarlet”: ACD, Second American Adventure, chap. 5.
convicted confidence artist Joseph Smith: See court record reprinted in Anonymous, “Original Prophet,” 229–230 (see full article for context); Fawn Brodie, 121.
Joseph Smith became embroiled: for general background on Smith, see Fawn Brodie.
baptized forty-three thousand English converts: Tracy, 41–42.
Although polygamy had been forbidden in England: Wall and Ames, 2.
in part through accounts of virtuous women described: Arrington and Haupt, 244ff. General information about fictional responses to Mormonism not otherwise cited derives largely from Arrington and Haupt. Arrington was affiliated with the Mormon Church and apparently skeptical about criticism thereof, but this article serves as a guide into primary sources.
“His presence was that of the basilisk”: Ward, 66.
“A Terrible Tale of the Danites of Mormon Land”: Arrington and Haupt, 257. The novel was Gold Dan, by Albert W. Aiken.
“Latter-day Saints who are set apart”: Twain, chap. 12.
The Washoe were a tribe: Tracy, 62, led me to the Washoe clue; it is his assertion, following his own extensive review of nineteenth-century representations of Mormons, that the word Washoe appears in no others.
“Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada”: Twain, 160.
CHAPTER 23: A BORN NOVELIST
“If the secret history of literature”: ACD, Narrative of John Smith, p. 27.
Optimistically, he sent the manuscript to James Payn: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 8.
Arthur sent the manuscript to J. W. Arrowsmith: Ibid.; details about Arrowsmith derive from www.discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/rd/387891c4-3179-43e8-8d76-4cdbcbceb70a. See also The Bookseller, January 24, 1908, 40.
Finally he thought to send it to Ward and Lock: In ACD, Memories and Adventures, ACD stated that he sent the book to Ward, Lock & Co. That was indeed the name of the publisher by the time ACD wrote his autobiography, but in 1886 it was still officially Ward and Lock. See www.wardlockredguides.org.uk.
He first self-published The Mystery of the Hansom Cab: Pierce, 114, 274.
“Being a detective, and of an extremely reticent disposition”: Fergus Hume, chap. 4.
George Thomas Bettany: For background on Bettany, see Anonymous, “George Thomas Bettany”; for anecdote about Jeanie Gwynne Bettany “discovering” A Study in Scarlet, see Kernahan, from which derive most details in this scene.
She read through the pages written in Arthur’s neat round hand: Kernahan.
Arthur replied immediately, on the first of November: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 7.
“We regret to say”: Ibid., chap. 7. Following details about ACD’s thoughts derive from this source.
The son of a Cheapside publican: Bergem, 1.
Following a banking collapse in May: For general background on the financial crisis, see Collins 1992 and Elliott.
The company had been known as Ward and Lock: See Liveing.
Beeton turned in a new direction and included political satire: Bergem, 2.
“An Exciting Christmas Eve; or, My Lecture on Dynamite”: www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Boy%27s_Own_Paper.
“an old institution”: Solberg.
Bell retired from the Edinburgh Infirmary: Liebow, 150–151.
“Lord,” he wrote in his diary: Ibid., 151.
in January 1887, a group called upon him: Liebow, 151.
textbook for nurses . . . Royal Hospital for Sick Children: Liebow, 152–153.
“Mr. Bell’s whole career”: Edinburgh Medical Journal, June 1887, 1145.
diseased, handicapped, and wounded children . . . Birth defect: Bell, “Five Years’ Surgery.”
CHAPTER 24: THE PRETERNATURAL SAGACITY OF A SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVE
“After weighing the evidence”: ACD, “A Test Message,” Light, July 2, 1887.
The issue went on sale in November for one shilling: Bergem, 3; also www.bestofsherlock.com/beetons-christmas-annual.htm.
was listed as R. André: Young, 199; and guide to the Richard André Papers at the University of Southern Mississippi, at www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/DG0028f.html.
Hamilton had published three of her five novels: www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_author.php?aid=2178.
David Henry Friston: Most information about Friston derives from Bergem, 4–6.
“JUST READY, IN PICTURE COVERS”: From original advertisement in The Graphic, November 26, 1887, reprinted in Solberg.
An illustrated weekly, The Graphic: Bills; Korda, esp. 76–84.
“It is not at all a bad imitation”: Quoted in Solberg.
CHAPTER 25: TRUTH AS DEATH
“His brush was concerned not only with fairies”: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 1.
The young woman blushed and asked for a copy of the drawing: Baker, 12. All descriptions of Charles Doyle’s artwork in this passage derive from images reprinted in Baker.
told a physician that he had encountered his wife: Norman, 147, from a Sunnyside record dated October 6, 1887.
At this time Charles was worrying often about death: Beveridge.
“Has no memory for anything recent”: Norman, 147, from a Sunnyside record dated March 23, 1888.
Char
les produced six drawings for Ward, Lock: For images, see www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/A_Study_in_Scarlet#Illustrations.
“somewhat unfinished” . . . “contented with his lot:” ACD, A Life in Letters, 270.
“for Papa’s drawings for the Study”: Ibid., 251 (n.d.).
Henry Ball . . . create wood engravings: Ibid., 250–252.
“Ward & Lock are perfect Jews”: Ibid., 251.
they owed him nothing beyond the amount they had already sent: Ibid., 255, 256.
Ward, Lock had bought the rights to publish Smith’s Select Library of Fiction: Cox and Mowat, 20.
Conway sold outright to Arrowsmith . . . Called Back: Law, n.p. Most information on the publication of Called Back derives from this article.
Arrowsmith’s Christmas Annual: More info on this annual at www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_journal.php?jid=130.
her gravestone read “Called Back, May 15, 1886”: Habegger. Dickinson’s bedroom in Amherst displays a copy of Called Back.
Conway had died suddenly of typhoid: Anonymous, Truth, May 21,1885.
Young Folks’ Paper: The weekly appeared under a variety of different titles between 1871 and 1897. Some sources list Young Folks as the title during publication of Kidnapped, but that title had been enlarged to Young Folks’ Paper in December 1884.
“A chemist on each side will approach the frontier with a bottle”: ACD, Memories and Adventures, chap. 7. ACD’s response to Wilde appears here as well.
“it is no part of the publishers’ plan”: Mott, 396–401.
CHAPTER 26: WATSON’S BROTHER’S WATCH
an error that he would write to J. M. Stoddart to correct: Klinger, 3:234, n. 50.
“It is a fullgrown book”: Boström and Laffey, 27.
“Dr. A. Conan Doyle has gone at one stride”: Ibid., 28.
