'Marry him, murder him or do anything you like with him' - Conan Doyle's imprimatur.
Doyle himself famously testified to his most famous fictional character's ability to take on a life independent of his creator: 'He takes my mind from better things', he wrote of Holmes, confessing 'That pale clear-cut face and loose-limbed figure was taking up an undue share of my imagination.' Many actors who've played Holmes on stage and screen, immersing themselves in his character for months on end, have confessed to being similarly 'taken over' in a way so powerful that they've had to fight for their own identity: 'I became obsessed … during the last seven years I have merged myself so much with Holmes that I have at last reached saturation point.' (Basil Rathbone). 'Some actors have actually become suicidal playing him … I jettison him as fast as I can come the end of the day … He's very dangerous.' (Jeremy Brett).
For Doyle, the solution seemed simple: in The Adventure of the Final Problem, written in 1893 but set in 1891, he sent Holmes to his death, plunging over the Reichenbach Falls in Moriarty's deadly embrace. But Holmes, is seemed, had no wish to die and fought for his life with an energy that finally overwhelmed his creator. Public outrage at his fictional demise grew to such a pitch that black armbands were seen on the streets of London and a stream of abusive letters poured into the offices of The Strand. Doyle held out for nine years, writing the retrospective The Hound of the Baskervilles as a sop to his angry readers, but was eventually persuaded in 1902 to resurrect the great detective in The Adventure of the Empty House.
As the years went by Doyle maintained an uneasy peace with his prodigal creation, but showed no desire even to attempt to control the way he was presented on radio, play or film. As early as 1899, The American actor William Gillette, playing Holmes on stage in a story of his own invention, telegraphed to Doyle 'May I marry Holmes?' and received the reply, 'You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like with him. AD.' Doyle watched Eille Norwood filming scenes for the silent movies made in the 1920s, and saw the fifty-six year old Arthur Wontner's portrayal of Holmes in one of the first talking pictures made in Britain; he did not live to see the famous Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce pairing which from the 1940s onwards became viewed as the definitive Holmes and Watson – the all-English man of action and the genial old buffer – but if he had, he would probably have raised no word of protest.
The British hero was being cast in a new mould, popularised as never before on celluloid, and into this mould Sherlock Holmes was being reshaped to fit. Sydney Horler, detective writer of the 1930s whose Tiger Standish stood alongside Sapper's Bulldog Drummond and the heroes of Edgar Wallace as the ideal of contemporary masculinity, expressed himself thus on the subject: 'A pipe, a dog and a golf club: if you want to win the heart of a man, give him one of these. And when I say a man, I mean a MAN – not one of these emasculated cigarette smokers.'
And so we find, from the late 1930s onward, a totally transformed Holmes appearing on film, in literature and in the popular imagination: physically healthy, rugged of jaw, striding purposefully across London with pipe firmly clenched between his teeth; the boxer, swordsman and singlestick expert emphasised to the total exclusion of the ennui-prone cocaine addict; manic, but not depressive; independent of women, but not sexually ambiguous; eccentric perhaps, but only a little, and certainly not decadent! The remoulding did not go entirely unnoticed - here is Graham Greene, commenting upon Basil Rathbone's portrayal of Holmes: 'What is wrong, surely, is Mr Rathbone's reading of the great character: the good humour (Holmes very rarely laughed), and the general air of brisk good health (there is only one reference to the depraved needle).' 'Rathbone is physically made for the part of Holmes; one feels he was really drawn by Paget; but mentally, he forgets that he belongs to the end of a century, and probably met Wilde at first nights. One cannot imagine this Holmes indolent, mystical or untidy (there were tobacco jars and not – shouldn't it have been? - a Turkish (sic) slipper on the chimney piece)'.
Nevertheless, this manly, stiff-upper lipped portrayal of Holmes persisted by and large right up until the 1980s, when Jeremy Brett flounced onto our television screens in the Granada TV adaptations of the Canon. Languid as a panther and twice as deadly, sporting the 'quiet sartorial primness' of the original Paget illustrations, Brett's Holmes - partnered originally with David Burke's handsome, soldierly Watson and later with Edward Hardwicke's sensitive, intelligent portrayal - re-introduced the original troubled, cocaine-addicted Holmes to a public on the cusp of another fin de siecle. Brett soon came to replace Basil Rathbone as the 'definitive' Holmes; and his portrayal opened the door to a whole host of 21st century re-interpretations of the famous detective and his sidekick, notably Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law camping it up in Guy Ritchie's 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'A Game of Shadows', Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman wielding i-phones and dodging bucketfuls of innuendo in the BBC 'Sherlock' series, and Sir Ian McKellen taking on the mantle of 'Mr Holmes' in retirement, staving off dementia in the film adaptation of Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind.
'Marry him, murder him, or do anything you like with him?' Online fanfic and multiple pastiches have treated us to Holmes consorting with vampires -less of an update than a regression, arguably - and with Watson in a plethora 'Hwatson' and 'Johnlock' slash (if that's your thing, by the way, I can recommend Elinor Gray's Compound a Felony: A Queer Affair of Sherlock Holmes). We've had theories put forward about Holmes' gender in Ms. Holmes of Baker Street: The Truth About Sherlock, and the homoerotic subtext to the original stories has been well and truly brought out into the open with titles such as A Study In Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes and Kissing Sherlock Holmes.
Oh, and you might also enjoy these two: My Dearest Holmes and A Case of Domestic Pilfering. Happy reading!
For Doyle, the solution seemed simple: in The Adventure of the Final Problem, written in 1893 but set in 1891, he sent Holmes to his death, plunging over the Reichenbach Falls in Moriarty's deadly embrace. But Holmes, is seemed, had no wish to die and fought for his life with an energy that finally overwhelmed his creator. Public outrage at his fictional demise grew to such a pitch that black armbands were seen on the streets of London and a stream of abusive letters poured into the offices of The Strand. Doyle held out for nine years, writing the retrospective The Hound of the Baskervilles as a sop to his angry readers, but was eventually persuaded in 1902 to resurrect the great detective in The Adventure of the Empty House.
As the years went by Doyle maintained an uneasy peace with his prodigal creation, but showed no desire even to attempt to control the way he was presented on radio, play or film. As early as 1899, The American actor William Gillette, playing Holmes on stage in a story of his own invention, telegraphed to Doyle 'May I marry Holmes?' and received the reply, 'You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like with him. AD.' Doyle watched Eille Norwood filming scenes for the silent movies made in the 1920s, and saw the fifty-six year old Arthur Wontner's portrayal of Holmes in one of the first talking pictures made in Britain; he did not live to see the famous Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce pairing which from the 1940s onwards became viewed as the definitive Holmes and Watson – the all-English man of action and the genial old buffer – but if he had, he would probably have raised no word of protest.
The British hero was being cast in a new mould, popularised as never before on celluloid, and into this mould Sherlock Holmes was being reshaped to fit. Sydney Horler, detective writer of the 1930s whose Tiger Standish stood alongside Sapper's Bulldog Drummond and the heroes of Edgar Wallace as the ideal of contemporary masculinity, expressed himself thus on the subject: 'A pipe, a dog and a golf club: if you want to win the heart of a man, give him one of these. And when I say a man, I mean a MAN – not one of these emasculated cigarette smokers.'
And so we find, from the late 1930s onward, a totally transformed Holmes appearing on film, in literature and in the popular imagination: physically healthy, rugged of jaw, striding purposefully across London with pipe firmly clenched between his teeth; the boxer, swordsman and singlestick expert emphasised to the total exclusion of the ennui-prone cocaine addict; manic, but not depressive; independent of women, but not sexually ambiguous; eccentric perhaps, but only a little, and certainly not decadent! The remoulding did not go entirely unnoticed - here is Graham Greene, commenting upon Basil Rathbone's portrayal of Holmes: 'What is wrong, surely, is Mr Rathbone's reading of the great character: the good humour (Holmes very rarely laughed), and the general air of brisk good health (there is only one reference to the depraved needle).' 'Rathbone is physically made for the part of Holmes; one feels he was really drawn by Paget; but mentally, he forgets that he belongs to the end of a century, and probably met Wilde at first nights. One cannot imagine this Holmes indolent, mystical or untidy (there were tobacco jars and not – shouldn't it have been? - a Turkish (sic) slipper on the chimney piece)'.
Nevertheless, this manly, stiff-upper lipped portrayal of Holmes persisted by and large right up until the 1980s, when Jeremy Brett flounced onto our television screens in the Granada TV adaptations of the Canon. Languid as a panther and twice as deadly, sporting the 'quiet sartorial primness' of the original Paget illustrations, Brett's Holmes - partnered originally with David Burke's handsome, soldierly Watson and later with Edward Hardwicke's sensitive, intelligent portrayal - re-introduced the original troubled, cocaine-addicted Holmes to a public on the cusp of another fin de siecle. Brett soon came to replace Basil Rathbone as the 'definitive' Holmes; and his portrayal opened the door to a whole host of 21st century re-interpretations of the famous detective and his sidekick, notably Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law camping it up in Guy Ritchie's 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'A Game of Shadows', Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman wielding i-phones and dodging bucketfuls of innuendo in the BBC 'Sherlock' series, and Sir Ian McKellen taking on the mantle of 'Mr Holmes' in retirement, staving off dementia in the film adaptation of Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind.
'Marry him, murder him, or do anything you like with him?' Online fanfic and multiple pastiches have treated us to Holmes consorting with vampires -less of an update than a regression, arguably - and with Watson in a plethora 'Hwatson' and 'Johnlock' slash (if that's your thing, by the way, I can recommend Elinor Gray's Compound a Felony: A Queer Affair of Sherlock Holmes). We've had theories put forward about Holmes' gender in Ms. Holmes of Baker Street: The Truth About Sherlock, and the homoerotic subtext to the original stories has been well and truly brought out into the open with titles such as A Study In Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes and Kissing Sherlock Holmes.
Oh, and you might also enjoy these two: My Dearest Holmes and A Case of Domestic Pilfering. Happy reading!
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