Conference
at the School of Advanced Study, Senate House, London, 21-22 June 2013
On Friday
and Saturday I spent a pleasant two days in the superb surroundings of Senate
House, University of London, listening to papers on the subject of Sherlock
Holmes and his cultural impact. It is a
mark of the significance of Holmes that the organisers, Jonathan Cranfield and
Tom Ue, could attract over sixty speakers, and to cram it all in there were
sometimes four sessions going on simultaneously,
necessitating some very hard choices.
The event could easily have stretched across a third day.
The
audience was heterogeneous by normal conference standards, including – in
addition to the usual post-grads and early career academics – a variety of
enthusiasts of the canon (the sort who can instantly name a story from a brief quote)
and its branches, from cosplay to fan fiction and art. These categories are not of course mutually
exclusive. There aren't many serious conferences
where attendees come dressed as fictional characters, so it was clear from the
start that this was going to be an unusual experience for even the hardened
conference-goer. Yet there was no ‘them
and us’, and no sense of condescension.
The range
of the papers was immense. We had
historical analyses, discussions of the influence of Holmes on media, his
constant regeneration through the pastiche industry in print and online (though
pastiche is a term that does not do justice to the inventiveness), the
dissemination of the Holmes model of detective fiction around the world, and
much else. Conan Doyle cropped up
occasionally, but this was his creation’s show, though with none of the foolish
pretence that Holmes and Watson were real and Conan Doyle just a literary agent,
and with few references that I heard to The
Game.
The
result was a scholarly but accessible series of talks. It would be invidious to pick out individual
ones as it was not possible to attend more than a small proportion of them. For the same reason it is impossible to say what
was missed out. For example, I didn’t hear
anyone refer to Billy Wilder’s The
Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, but I was assured that it did come up in a
talk I missed. I did hear a fair amount
about the BBC Sherlock of
course, and the
Johnlock fanfic genre. I now know what
PWP stands for: ‘Plot, What Plot?’ As
well as the inevitable Benedict Cumberbatch I saw a fair few pictures of Robert
Downey Jr, with Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone a long way behind. Such narrow emphases entailed some overlap at
times, but there were enough variations in perspective to avoid any danger of
monotony.
The peg
for the conference was Holmes’s forthcoming 160th birthday in 2014,
though it didn’t honestly need a peg. There
were a number of supporting activities to the conference, including a small display in Senate House from its Historic
Collections which showed items relating to Holmes and his world. I was also obliged by my companion to make
the short pilgrimage to Speedy’s Cafe
in North Gower Street, sadly shut by the time we arrived. I later learned that other delegates had made
the sensible decision to combine their pilgrimage with breakfast on the second
morning, though I suspect that finding an empty table would have taxed even
Holmes’s ingenuity.
It is a
mark of the enduring popularity of Conan Doyle’s creation that there was so
much to say about a single fictional character. Whether Conan Doyle would have been pleased or
irritated by all the attention being lavished on Holmes is impossible to know;
he would probably have preferred a conference on his historical output. He might have been surprised at the extent to
which the Holmes/Watson format has mutated – naturally there were numerous
references to Elementary, with Joan
rather than John Watson – and would doubtless have lifted a quizzical eyebrow
at the sheer quantity of works using his creations that are being produced,
with no sign of a decline in their number. Certainly his response on hearing about some
of the things that Holmes and Watson get up to in the racier reaches of fan
fiction would be easy to guess (some definitely NSFW, a term included in the
title of a paper on the subject).
The
organisers plan to gather the best conference papers for a volume to be
published in 2014, as well as issuing an edited collection on Holmes’ fan
phenomena. They are also hosting a one-day
symposium on Professor Challenger in December.
There are few opportunities for Challenger slash fiction one might
think, but it would be rash to bet on it.
-O-
Last year
I was contacted by an American High School student who was researching a paper
on Conan Doyle. He was presumably
contacting anybody he could find with an interest in the man so that he could
gather enough information to compile a term paper without having to make a huge amount
of effort. He asked me a series of
somewhat random questions which I endeavoured to answer as well as I could. I hope he found my replies useful, but as he
never bothered to acknowledge them, I can’t be sure.
Why
did you take an interest in Arthur Conan Doyle?
Most
people first come across Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by reading, or more likely
seeing an adaptation of, a Sherlock Holmes story. I think my earliest exposure to Holmes was
the Basil Rathbone films on television.
These are great fun, however much one deplores Nigel Bruce’s depiction
of Watson, and however far the plots stray from the originals. However, my first brush with what Conan Doyle
wrote wasn’t the Holmes stories, it was a volume of his Brigadier Gerard tales
which I came across as a pre-teenager.
These are historical romps set during the Napoleonic Wars, and I was
immediately taken by the characterisation and narrative drive. They are much underrated.
My
interest in Conan Doyle developed as I appreciated what wide-ranging interests
he had. At the age of 15 I read Hesketh
Pearson’s 1943 biography (which I still own), and from that grew a fascination with
Conan Doyle’s character and career. Some
time later I picked up the one-volume Penguin edition of the complete Holmes stories,
and read them straight through. They
complemented my more general enjoyment of Victorian and Edwardian literature
and gothic and detective fiction. Holmes
taps into the nostalgia that many people have for the late nineteenth century,
as exhibited by the currently popular neo-Victorian literary genre. Since then I have read a number of Conan
Doyle biographies as well as other works by him, and seen numerous screen
adaptations. I’ve found you cannot fault
his fiction for sheer entertainment value.
What
does he mean to you?
Reading
biographies, I was particularly struck by his determination to pursue justice,
demonstrated in his outspoken defence of George Edalji and Oscar Slater, causes
that were not fashionable but which he felt strongly about. I admired his doggedness, such as his
adherence to Spiritualism, even though it damaged his reputation. I don’t think he always behaved well towards
his family and he betrayed a degree of self-absorption not uncommon among men
of his time, but in general he had a sense of honour.
Are
there any things you think are important to tell me about him specifically?
There is
now a huge literature on Conan Doyle, which is a testament to his enduring
popularity. You need to take his
Spiritualism into account in assessing his work, and if you have to focus on
one aspect of a busy life you might find his relationship with Houdini is a
useful way of bringing out aspects of his character in a dramatic way. You should try to read a biography if you can
– I would recommend Andrew Lycett’s Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes as
a good overview. I can also recommend
Michael Dirda’s short book On Conan Doyle as a fascinating examination of the
strong effect that reading Conan Doyle’s books can have. Stress that there is
much more to him than Sherlock Holmes. He can also be very funny, which may
seem surprising given his serious appearance.
Was
there an exact moment when you realised you wanted to know more about Arthur?
No, my
interest grew gradually, though I remember being excited on hearing that a
Conan Doyle Society had been formed in the late 1980s. I did write to them but didn’t join, though
it was a stimulus for a more sustained exploration of his life.
What
was the thing that interested you most about him?
It is
often said that there is a strange discontinuity between the rationalism of
Holmes and the credulity of Conan Doyle’s Spiritualist beliefs. I find his complexity intriguing. I am also fascinated by the variety of his
work: the Holmes novels and stories, historical fiction, science and uncanny fiction,
general short stories, war histories, pamphlets, books on Spiritualism – his
range was prodigious. He was an
all-rounder, keen on sports as well as literature, and was adventurous; the
British Library has just published the journal he kept on his trip to the Arctic
on a whaler. He had an enormous zest for
life. His literary style is natural and
unforced, and even when he is not on his best form he is extremely readable.
November
2012
