It is to the same end that Sir Arthur, a writer of plain English, sometimes uses orgulous words:Įxactly! But does the name Isadora Klein convey nothing to you? She was, of course, the celebrated beauty. So, too, with his drugs they are prescribed by that cunning physician, Sir Arthur, for their effect on the reader’s imagination, not for their effect on Holmes’s intellect. It helps us to realise how intricate the puzzle is that Holmes should fill his oldest and foulest pipe before sitting down to it.
The laugh at what is exaggerated in the portrayal of Holmes is a tribute to the lucidity with which he is drawn. The laugh may be at him as well as with him but that still leaves Sir Arthur an achievement upon which he might, one would think, congratulate himself. The company does not stand up on the entry of Holmes, it makes room for him with a laugh.
Holmes is not the idol of a clique it is not a mark of culture to know him but not to know him is a sign of lacking some common sense of humanity. Divide the people who had an opportunity of knowing Holmes into people who think and people who do not think, and the proportion who took advantage of the opportunity is probably higher in the first class than in the second. Of the characters created by living writers of fiction none is known to so many readers as Sherlock Holmes and it is not merely his trade that is suggested by the mention of his name, but also his habits, his habitat, his henchman. But Holmes, though like other people he had more than one parent, inherits his vigour from Sir Arthur he was a man of action as well as of thought, and he gives us not only the solution of a puzzle but the thrill of a set-to. His attitude to Watson is intelligible there are ugly rumours about the paternity of Watson some say he is a changeling introduced into the Baker-street household by a public who fastened on “Holmes, you amaze me!” and refused to recognise it as the utterance of the competent fellow Holmes would have preferred to work with.
Sir Arthur appears to take little pride in his association with Holmes, and his dismissal of Watson is contemptuous. There is to be no more Holmes after this. Mavrogordato, 23 rd June 1927): Sir Arthur Conan Doyle issues The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes almost as a concession to the children of all ages who have been wheedling the great detective to tell them just one more story before bed-time. Not only does this novel complete the amazing career of the great Sherlock, but it ends, even finely, the successful series of romances-in-reality in which he has played his parts.
This volume brings to an end the tales of the exploits and adventures of the most famous detective in fiction.
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