Well not Sherlock Holmes exactly, but 2009 sees the 150th anniversary of the birth Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930) the author who created Sherlock Holmes.
Our schedule of London walks includes several sojourns into the London of Sherlock Holmes. We have a walking tour, for example, that sets off from Baker Street Station, where there is a statue of Sherlock Holmes, and crosses to the site of 221B Baker Street, now a block of luxury flats, where Holmes and Watson lived.
We also have a Sherlock Holmes Lond0n walks around Strand and Northumberland Avenue, which includes the Sherlock Holmes Pub, on the upstairs floor of which is a recreation of Holmes and Watson’s sitting room at 221B Baker Street.
But what were the origins of this great detective, and how did a doctor from Edinburgh come to create a figure that is instantly recognised the world over? Was there a real life Sherlock Holmes? These are just some of the questions that we answer on our Sherlock Holmes London walks which follow in the footsteps of Holmes and Watson as they pit their wits against a number of cunning villains in the gas lit streets of Victorian London.
Walks are a great way to explore the London of Sherlock Holmes since they enable you to get into the old cobbled mews, and narrow thoroughfares that are heavy with the ambiance of 19th century London.
But the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who created the world’s best known detective, is in itself a fascinating and stirring tale.
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born at 11 Picardy Place Edinburgh on 22nd May 1859. Although the house that he was born in no longer stands, there is a plaque commemorating him on the exterior of 2 Picardy Place, opposite which number 11 used to stand, and a statue of his great creation and a statue of Sherlock Holmes stands close by.
Doyle was born into a not particularly well off Anglo-Irish Catholic family. His father Charles Altamont Doyle, a talented artist, was a chronic alcoholic, prone to depression and epilepsy, and he was eventually institutionalized.
Arthur’s mother, Mary, was desperate to keep the young Arthur away from his father’s destabilizing influence, and in 1868 the nine year old Doyle was sent to a Jesuit boarding school in England.
He later returned to study medicine at Edinburgh from 1876 to 1881, where he was tutored by the charismatic and brilliant Dr. Joseph Bell on whom he part based Sherlock Holmes.
Whilst still at University, on February 28th 1880, Conan Doyle joined the crew of the Greenland Whaler Hope and spent many months hunting seals and whales. He returned to Edinburgh with a £50 share of the crew’s profits.
He at once threw himself into his studies and later put his experience into fiction almost immediately with the story Captain of the Pole Star, which was published in Temple Bar magazine in 1883.
Summing up this period of his life Conan Doyle later recalled “I went on board the whaler a big, straggling youth, I came off a powerful well-grown man.”
In June 1882 he set up in practice as a doctor in Portsmouth, where he rented an unfurnished house at 1 Bush Villas, Elm Grove, Southsea for the sum of £40 a year.
The cash-strapped Doyle went scavenging for chairs and tables and acquired just enough furniture to fill his consulting room. He lavished attention on his front room only, reasoning that this would be the only part of the house his patients would see.
He then hung out a red lamp - which he had purchased on credit - to advertise the fact that a doctor now resided at the house and then spent days waiting by the front window for patients to arrive.
However, patients were conspicuous by their absence and few crossed the young doctor’s threshold. On the rare occasions when patients did appear Conan Doyle tried applying the diagnostic methods of his old tutor Dr. Joseph Bell. On one occasion a smartly attired man turned up in his consulting room and proceeded to cough and clear his throat. Confidently, the young doctor diagnosed a bronchial ailment only to be told by the man that “There’s a small sum due on the gas meter.”
However, over the next few years more and more patients began arriving and by the end of his third year the practice was bringing in the not unsubstantial sum of £300 a year.
Doyle is often portrayed as an unsuccessful doctor who began writing stories to compensate for this lack of success. The truth is that he was an understanding, hardworking and extremely competent physician who was very popular with his patients.
However, whilst waiting for patients in his consulting room, he did write stories and later recalled how he divided his time between his patients and literature commenting that “It is hard to say which suffered most.”
At this time he met Louisa Hawkins, the sister of one of his patients, and they were married on 5th August 1885.
His short stories were appearing regularly in magazines, but he soon realised that he would get nowhere as a writer if he continued to write one off short stories “what is necessary” he wrote “is that your name should be on the back of the volume… and… you… get full credit or discredit of your achievement.”
Part two of this article will follow tomorrow so be sure to check back.
