ONAN DOYLE WAS NO STRANGER to controversy, and in fact seemed to enjoy churning up his fair share every now and then. For example, he was a prolific letter-writer to the papers, he publically challenged what he saw as miscarriages of justice, and his latter-day lectures and articles on fairies and Spiritualism, replete with sensational photographic “evidence,” were obviously meant to stir his audiences to action. However, there were several controversies attaching themselves to him which weren’t of his own accord. Case in point: the Piltdown Man, one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century.

It was a tumultuous time in the scientific world. The turn of the century brought with it a questioning of the established theories in almost every area of science. Medical researchers were delving into the true causes of diseases, physicists were plumbing the origins of matter, astronomers were shaping a new view of the cosmos, and biologists were hotly debating Darwin’s theory of Evolution, often finding themselves at odds with religious institutions, funders, and the fervoured opinions expounded daily in the papers. The one argument that continually broke apart the so-called scientific proof of the Evolutionists was the absence of the evolutionary bridge between the lesser primates and mankind, the Missing Link.

And then, in 1912, it was found.

The specimen, dubbed The Piltdown Man, caused an immediate sensation, providing seemingly verifiable evidence of Darwin’s theories. Science yet again asserted its superiority over religion and superstition, and the Piltdown Man became a rallying point for the much-berated scientific community. Unfortunately, it was eventually found to be a fraud. Scotsman.com presents an article entitled Conan Doyle and the hoax of the 20th century:

Forty years later when JS Weiner discovered that this so-called Piltdown Man was a fake made out of a 500-year-old skull and an orang-utan jawbone, the hunt began to find out who had perpetrated the fraud.

The main suspect has always been Dawson, possibly with the aid of his colleagues Sir Arthur Smith Woodward and Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit who had also assisted at the dig. But there is someone else in the frame. According to one theory this man had the means, motive and opportunity. He is none other than the Scottish creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I wish to draw your careful attention to the first comment, left by author Doug Elliott, who produced what I’m told is a remarkable book called The Curious Incident of the Missing Link. It apparently does an excellent job at debunking the claims that Sir Arthur was involved in this hoax.

For more information about the Piltdown hoax, see the Wikipedia entry and the many links at its page bottom, including the Piltdown Plot site.

N AN ARTICLE IDEALLY WRITTEN for newcomers to the Sherlockian mythos, the Crime Library site presents All about Sherlock Holmes by Anthony Bruno:

Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and presented through the narration of the fictional Dr. Watson, Holmes is the most brilliant detective ever. His powers of observation seem supernatural until he utters the famous phrase, “Elementary, my dear Watson,” and proceeds to enumerate the logical steps that have brought him to a prescient conclusion. The most innocuous detail can lead Holmes to profound revelations. But where did these amazing powers of deduction originate? Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle make up Sherlock Holmes out of whole cloth, or did he have a model in mind when he created the great detective?

Bruno seems to come at the topic as an outsider, but he has done due diligence with his homework here. The article covers a lot of ground and facts without getting bogged down in scholarly issues of debate, and although it barely skims the surface of Conan Doyle and Sherlockian matters, it may inspire readers to learn more. (Yes, there are a few small factual errors, but I think we can forgive him for those.)

HE TRADES has a review of Mack and Citrin’s new Sherlockian juvenile book entitled Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars: The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas:

In the spirit of the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series comes this new addition to the Sherlock Holmes legend from husband and wife team Tracy Mack and Michael Citrin. Told with a focus on the rag-tag gang of boys that got short shrift in the Doyle stories, the Baker Street Irregulars, the story is still a Holmes adventure, as seen from behind the scenes.

HERE’S A SHORT ARTICLE in the online Westmount Examiner concerning the 26-year-old Sherlockian society based in Montreal: Bimetallic Question keeps Sherlock alive:

More than a century after the fictional detective first captured the imagination of Victorian Londoners, there are still many loyal Sherlockians all over the world—with a division of followers here in Montreal, and they meet regularly at the Westmount Public Library.

It’s a typical piece about the 5 W’s, including location, fees, typical activities, and so forth, but of course the greatest benefit of articles like this is the local publicity that draws in new members.

Hmmm. Are there any other Sherlockians (or Doyleans) here in Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories, I wonder?

HE BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S Inside Justice website currently has a poll entitled Who is your all-time favourite British justice character?. Of course, the Great Detective is in the list, but he’s currently tied at second place with Inspector Morse, while “Danger Mouse” is number one. I can’t say I’m familiar with the aforementioned rodent, but I suspect I’d rather count on Sherlock Holmes if my neck was on the line. Keep the memory of the Master green — head on over and vote.

Update: Apparently, you can vote once per day.

LOVE CANDID INTERVIEWS with writers, and especially with those who expose both personality and writing process without shielding themselves by a thin veneer of propriety or pomp. The Sacramento Bee has a fascinating interview with Sherlockian author and bad boy Michael Kurland, the author of the recent Moriarty series and the editor of a series of pastiche anthologies.

From Elementary, My Dear Kurland:

“I didn’t want to write a pastiche,” Kurland says. “I don’t like doing what somebody else has done. If I write a Holmes story and let Dr. Watson tell it, I can’t win. I’m going to be compared to Doyle and I’ll lose. Why would I do that? A lot of people do just that because the books sell. But if you write a Watson story and add anything to it, 10,000 Sherlockians are going to hate you.” […]

“Holmes is a bit of a prig,” Kurland points out. “He’ll occasionally break the law, but he won’t break the social bond, no matter how stupid it is. In Doyle’s day, Holmes was the perfect Victorian. Not as we think of Victorians today, as lacy and uptight. But the way Victorians thought of themselves, as modern, scientific and logical.

“Moriarty thinks all that is bull. Basically, Moriarty is a late-20th-century man living in the late 19th century.”

(From what I can tell, the Sacramento Bee website allows you to read this article without registration the first time, but if you revisit the site, you have to undergo a free registration to see it again.)

F, LIKE ME, you watched Sesame Street in the seventies, you should be quite familiar with a character whose propensity for trifles is even greater than that of Sherlock Holmes, and who too has a faithful sidekick called Watson. See the Muppet Wiki entry for Sherlock Hemlock:

Sherlock Hemlock, a Muppet spoof of Sherlock Holmes, first appeared on Sesame Street in Season 2 (1970), and was last seen in Season 23 (1991).

Sherlock is the self-appointed “World’s Greatest Detective.” He solves mysteries by concentrating on the little clues and overlooking the big ones. When he finds a clue, he shouts, “E-GAD!”

I’ve recently been watching some Sesame Street with my two-year-old, and wondering about this Muppet’s mysterious disappearance. Perhaps there was a Moriarty Muppet too?

Oh well… I guess a “Tickle Me Sherlock” toy wouldn’t have been a very hot Christmas toy.

T ISN’T UNUSUAL to find our favourite detective used to illuminate some modern mystery, and especially those political ones mused by pundit journalists. A case in point — the Palm Beach Post of July 31st has a dialogue between Holmes and Watson in which they discuss Valerie Plame: Watson, the Plame game is afoot.

“You know, Holmes,” I said, “there is still something about the Valerie Plame matter that mystifies me.”

“No doubt,” the great man replied. There may have been a note of condescension in his response, but it was a relief from his infernal violin scraping. It was partially to stop the violin that I had spoken up. As we talked, however, I realized our thoughts were headed for the case book. Call it the Singular Case of the Missing Victims.

For those of you not in North America, or who don’t care enough to follow American political scandals (they do tend to bore me), Plame was a CIA agent “outed” by a high profile politician in the Bush entourage after her husband wrote an article criticising the U.S. invasion of Iraq. More details can be found in the Wikipedia entry for Valerie Plame.

HERE have been so many depictions of Sherlock Holmes over the years that, to many people, they all become an amorphous blob of characteristics, such as a long gaunt face, a well-endowed proboscis, and (of course) some smoking implement, usually of a wooden nature — an adjective which seems to apply equally well to many of the lesser-known actors falling flat in their ulsters.

Bob Bryne, in his essay The Definitive Holmes, writes:

The name Sherlock Holmes is uttered, and we all form an image in our minds. It might be a drawing by Sidney Paget or Frederic Dorr Steele, or maybe Basil Rathbone or Peter Cushing. Over a century with the great detective has given us very clear images of how we think he looks.

Since Charles Brookfield did a short skit entitled “Under the Clock” in 1893, Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed on stage, screen and radio far beyond anyone’s ability to count. Each medium (publishing, stage, movies and television) has seriously affected the way Holmes is viewed by current and succeeding generations.

This excellent piece has many graphics included (be sure to click on the links to see them), and serves as a tight little survey of the most popular depictions — to include them all would be next to impossible.

Byrne also has a series of other great Sherlockian content on this site of his, Sherlock Holmes on Oxford Lane (a.k.a., HolmesOnScreen.com), including pieces on various key actors, quizzes, original fiction, an essay on how the Canon’s themes reflect Joseph Campbell’s journey of the hero, and much more. Well worth a visit.

HEN I READ A NOVEL like Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, a vivid setting is often constructed in my head, an environment that not only facilitates the story and offers milieu to the characters, but that also lives and breathes on its own. As I have the habit of reading in bed, I usually drift off to sleep clinging to fleeting fragments that I want –oh so much– to make real.

And then, someone lets me know that they are real.

From The Seoul Times: An Unearthly Plateau in Venezuela, which presents a unique travelogue with ACD’s The Lost World as an ever-present point of reference:

Seven years later, Everard Im Thurn and Harry Perkins made a successful ascent of Roraima, an ancient 9,219-foot sandstone mesa towering above the tropical rain forest and savanna. Im Thurn’s colorful account is believed to have partly inspired Conan Doyle’s 1912 sci-fi novel “The Lost World,” about a Jurassic Park-like plateau roiling with prehistoric beasts.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, masquerading as a flea market tip, from the U.K.’s Sunday Mirror: What to look out for -

OLD MAGAZINES: Beeton’s Christmas Annual from 1887 is considered the most priceless mag in the world, as it features the first-ever appearance of master detective Sherlock Holmes. There are 28 known copies - and they sell for £100,000 each!

So, if you do happen accross a copy of Beeton’s in a pile of discarded People magazines, going for just a few pennies, do pick it up. Just so you know….

S ONE MIGHT GLEAN from its title, Skeptical Inquirer is a magazine devoted to “separating fact from myth in the flood of occultism and pseudoscience on the scene today.” I’ve read a few issues myself, and it truly is a fascinating publication. Exposés of Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, cold fusion, lost continents, cryptozoological oddities, and so on are perfect fodder for research and dissection (or, if you would, ripping apart). If they had been around at the time of Conan Doyle’s conversion to the quasi-religion known as Spiritualism, unfortunately rife with charlatans lightening the wallets of gullible grieving people everywhere, there’s no doubt that poor ACD would have yet another periodical tearing at his beliefs.

It’s no surprise, therefore, to see that a review of Massimo Polidoro’s book Final Seance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle appeared in its pages (in March 2002), and is now online for our reading pleasure. As one may discern from William Harwood’s opening paragraph, there seems to be a certain bias at work.

I have long been aware that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ended his friendship with Harry Houdini on account of Doyle’s blind, gullible belief in the very scam Houdini had disproven over and over. But not until I read Final Séance did I become convinced that incurable adherence to a security belief in the face of irrefutable evidence can only be described as a form of insanity. And I am far from the first person to reach that conclusion.

I don’t have the book yet, but the review seems to be overly critical of ACD’s devotion to his late-life cause, and to his insistence that Houdini was indeed tapping into the realm of the spirits. For example, there’s no evidence given in the review of the many other factors that led to his conversion to Spiritualism, its historical context, and why he thought it was such a worthwhile channel for his energies. It seems that the reviewer is dwelling less on the actual quality of the book, and more on the skeptical material it presents.

I’m curious if anyone here has read the book. Is it a good read? Is it balanced? Please feel free to leave a comment below.