“Elementary, My Dear Sir Arthur . . . and ‘Happy Birthday!’ ”

“Elementary, My Dear Sir Arthur . . . and ‘Happy Birthday!’ ”

Actually, it’s “Watson,” not “Sir Arthur,” but since today is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 150th birthday, I felt like teasing you.

Yes, he was born May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a master storyteller (his mother) and a chronic alcoholic (whose only known accomplishment was fathering Arthur). When Conan Doyle was nine, he was sent (crying, yet!) to a Jesuit boarding school in England. There, he rebelled against corporal punishment (which was common back then), but enjoyed playing cricket, and later realized he was as great a storyteller as his mother.

Conan Doyle graduated at seventeen. As he put it himself, in those days he “was wild, full-blooded and a trifle reckless,” but a lot was going on with him. With his mother, he co-signed papers that committed his demented father.

You’d think he’d pursue a career in the arts. Instead, he went to medical school! There he met Dr. Joseph Bell, a master of diagnosis and deduction. Dr. Bell became the model for (You guessed it!) Sherlock Holmes!

A few years into med school, Conan Doyle wrote his first short story, “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” which was published in Chamber's Journal, an Edinburgh magazine. It wasn’t until 1886, however, (while he was struggling to be a doctor and writer) that he began the novel that launched him into fame. A Study in Scarlet introduced the world to the sharp-witted consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, and Dr. Watson.

Conan Doyle wrote four novels, and fifty-six (or more) short stories starring Holmes. In all of these, Holmes is almost too cool for words: always insightful, on top of things, and one step ahead, both of the cops, and the killers.

A century before forensics became popular, Holmes is an expert on physical evidence. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes reads a warning note in which only one word, “moor,” is handwritten. He notes the ink’s bad quality and recognizes the cut-out letters from the previous day’s newspaper. He also detects that the letters were cut with small nail scissors, indicating a woman was behind the note. Holmes can even smell her perfume!

Holmes became so popular that even in recent years, countless Holmes pastiches have sprung up, for the detective’s many fans. Two of the latest are The Secret Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Gary Lovisi (published by Ramble House), and Sherlock Holmes: The Great Detective in Paperback & Pastiche, also by Lovisi (published by Gryphon Books). There are even elite Holmes clubs, like The Sherlock Holmes Society of London and the Baker Street Irregulars.

Back to Sir Arthur. He became “Sir Arthur” in 1902 and was appointed Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. Conan Doyle believed he was knighted as a result of his pamphlet, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which defended the UK's role in the Boer war and was translated all over.

Years later, Conan Doyle became fascinated with spiritualism and wrote The History of Spiritualism in 1926. He was so into it, that he refused to believe spiritualist Margaret Fox was a fraud, even after she publicly confessed! He also lost the friendship of magician Harry Houdini, who was obsessed with debunking spiritualists.

What’s worse was, Conan Doyle—creator of the skeptic Sherlock Holmes— also believed in . . . fairies. His book, The Coming of the Fairies (1921) showed he’d been duped by hoax photos of the Cottingley Fairies. Taken by two young girls, Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths, these photos (see below) featured paper cut-outs of fairies stuck to a bush. Conan Doyle believed these fairies were real.

In 1982, years after Conan Doyle’s death (in 1930, of a heart attack) old Elsie and Frances finally admitted they’d faked four of the photos. Too bad he wasn’t around for that. . . .

He would’ve known they were lying.