There was no particular reason for the Observer Magazine to write about the enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes for its issue of 6 January 1974, but then did it need a reason? It began with a peek into the working life of Leslie Whitson, ‘Sherlock Homes’s secretary’, when 221b Baker Street was part of the Abbey National’s headquarters.
Whitson received about 60 fan letters a month and I detected a little de haut en bas: ‘Letters from Americans usually come from people who have not read the books, but have seen films or television plays about Holmes.’
Dr Joseph Bell taught surgery at Edinburgh University when Doyle was a medical student, and was the inspiration for Holmes. Bell was noted for his ‘logical and deductive approach to medical problems’ and Doyle was taken by ‘his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details’. In the Strand Magazine, illustrator Sidney Paget gave the detective his distinctive deerstalker, which is never mentioned in any of the stories.
Len Deighton wrote that Doyle ‘created the genre of crime fiction and made it a respectable pastime for readers, from judges to junior clerks… The stories drew such tremendous interest and enthusiasm from policemen, detectives and scientists all over the world because they demonstrated that no scientific aid could replace careful thought and detailed observation.’
Graham Greene at the age of 10 was very impressed by The Sign of Four, in which ‘the great detective for the first time comes completely to life in all his complexity’. He also noted a strain of end-of-the-century melancholy – ‘Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world?’ Holmes proclaimed, which perhaps explained the drug addiction.
‘Which is it today, morphine or cocaine?’ Watson once asked Holmes testily. Barely even a one-pipe problem.
