THE GREAT BREAK
Vienna--A Specialist in Wimpole Street--The Great
Decision--Norwood--“The Refugees”--Reported Death of Holmes.
We set forth upon a bitter winter day at the close of 1890 with every
chance of being snowed up on our long trek. We got through all right,
however, and found ourselves in Vienna, arriving on a deadly cold
night, with deep snow under foot and a cutting blizzard in the air. As
we looked from the station the electric lights threw out the shining
silver drift of snow flakes against the absolute darkness of the sky.
It was a gloomy, ominous reception, but half an hour afterwards when we
were in the warm cosy crowded tobacco-laden restaurant attached to our
hotel we took a more cheerful view of our surroundings.
We found a modest _pension_ which was within our means, and we put in
a very pleasant four months, during which I attended eye lectures at
the Krankenhaus, but could certainly have learned far more in London,
for even if one has a fair knowledge of conversational German it is
very different from following accurately a rapid lecture filled with
technical terms. No doubt “has studied in Vienna” sounds well in a
specialist’s record, but it is usually taken for granted that he has
exhausted his own country before going abroad, which was by no means
the case with me. Therefore, so far as eye work goes, my winter was
wasted, nor can I trace any particular spiritual or intellectual
advance. On the other hand I saw a little of gay Viennese society. I
received kind and welcome hospitality from Brinsley Richards, “The
Times” correspondent, and his wife, and I had some excellent skating.
I also wrote one short book, “The Doings of Raffles Haw,” not a
very notable achievement, by which I was able to pay my current
expenses without encroaching on the very few hundred pounds which were
absolutely all that I had in the world. This money was invested on the
advice of a friend, and as it was almost all lost--like so much more
that I have earned--it is just as well that I was never driven back
upon it.
With the spring my work at Vienna had finished, if it can be said to
have ever begun, and we returned via Paris, putting in a few days there
with Landolt, who was the most famous French oculist of his time. It
was great to find ourselves back in London once more with the feeling
that we were now on the real field of battle, where we must conquer or
perish, for our boats were burned behind us. It is easy now to look
back and think that the issue was clear, but it was by no means so at
the time, for I had earned little, though my reputation was growing. It
was only my own inward conviction of the permanent merits of “The White
Company,” still appearing month by month in “Cornhill,” which sustained
my confidence. I had come through so much in the early days at Southsea
that nothing could alarm me personally, but I had a wife and child now,
and the stern simplicity of life which was possible and even pleasant
in early days was now no longer to be thought of.
We took rooms in Montague Place, and I went forth to search for some
place where I could put up my plate as an oculist. I was aware that
many of the big men do not find time to work out refractions, which
in some cases of astigmatism take a long time to adjust when done by
retinoscopy. I was capable in this work and liked it, so I hoped that
some of it might drift my way. But to get it, it was clearly necessary
that I should live among the big men so that the patient could be
easily referred to me. I searched the doctors’ quarters and at last
found suitable accommodation at 2 Devonshire Place, which is at the top
of Wimpole Street and close to the classical Harley Street. There for
£120 a year I got the use of a front room with part use of a waiting
room. I was soon to find that they were both waiting rooms, and now I
know that it was better so.
Every morning I walked from the lodgings at Montague Place, reached my
consulting room at ten and sat there until three or four, with never
a ring to disturb my serenity. Could better conditions for reflection
and work be found? It was ideal, and so long as I was thoroughly
unsuccessful in my professional venture there was every chance of
improvement in my literary prospects. Therefore when I returned to the
lodgings at tea-time I bore my little sheaves with me, the first fruits
of a considerable harvest.
A number of monthly magazines were coming out at that time, notable
among which was “The Strand,” then as now under the editorship of
Greenhough Smith. Considering these various journals with their
disconnected stories it had struck me that a single character running
through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would
bind that reader to that particular magazine. On the other hand, it
had long seemed to me that the ordinary serial might be an impediment
rather than a help to a magazine, since, sooner or later, one missed
one number and afterwards it had lost all interest. Clearly the ideal
compromise was a character which carried through, and yet instalments
which were each complete in themselves, so that the purchaser was
always sure that he could relish the whole contents of the magazine. I
believe that I was the first to realize this and “The Strand Magazine”
the first to put it into practice.
Looking round for my central character I felt that Sherlock Holmes,
whom I had already handled in two little books, would easily lend
himself to a succession of short stories. These I began in the long
hours of waiting in my consulting room. Greenhough Smith liked them
from the first, and encouraged me to go ahead with them. My literary
affairs had been taken up by that king of agents, A. P. Watt, who
relieved me of all the hateful bargaining, and handled things so well
that any immediate anxiety for money soon disappeared. It was as well,
for not one single patient had ever crossed the threshold of my room.
I was now once more at a crossroads of my life, and Providence, which
I recognize at every step, made me realize it in a very energetic and
unpleasant way. I was starting off for my usual trudge one morning
from our lodgings when icy shivers passed over me, and I only got
back in time to avoid a total collapse. It was a virulent attack of
influenza, at a time when influenza was in its deadly prime. Only three
years before my dear sister Annette, after spending her whole life on
the family needs, had died of it at Lisbon at the very moment when my
success would have enabled me to recall her from her long servitude.
Now it was my turn, and I very nearly followed her. I can remember
no pain or extreme discomfort, and no psychic experiences, but for a
week I was in great danger, and then found myself as weak as a child
and as emotional, but with a mind as clear as crystal. It was then,
as I surveyed my own life, that I saw how foolish I was to waste my
literary earnings in keeping up an oculist’s room in Wimpole Street,
and I determined with a wild rush of joy to cut the painter and to
trust for ever to my power of writing. I remember in my delight taking
the handkerchief which lay upon the coverlet in my enfeebled hand, and
tossing it up to the ceiling in my exultation. I should at last be my
own master. No longer would I have to conform to professional dress or
try to please any one else. I would be free to live how I liked and
where I liked. It was one of the great moments of exultation of my
life. The date was in August, 1891.
Presently I was about, hobbling on a stick and reflecting that if I
lived to be eighty I knew already exactly how it would feel. I haunted
house-agents, got lists of suburban villas, and spent some weeks, as
my strength returned, in searching for a new home. Finally I found a
suitable house, modest but comfortable, isolated and yet one of a row.
It was 12 Tennison Road, South Norwood. There we settled down, and
there I made my first effort to live entirely by my pen. It soon became
evident that I had been playing the game well within my powers and that
I should have no difficulty in providing a sufficient income. It seemed
as if I had settled into a life which might be continuous, and I little
foresaw that an unexpected blow was about to fall upon us, and that we
were not at the end, but really at the beginning, of our wanderings.
I could not know this, however, and I settled down with a stout
heart to do some literary work worthy of the name. The difficulty of
the Holmes work was that every story really needed as clear-cut and
original a plot as a longish book would do. One cannot without effort
spin plots at such a rate. They are apt to become thin or to break.
I was determined, now that I had no longer the excuse of absolute
pecuniary pressure, never again to write anything which was not as good
as I could possibly make it, and therefore I would not write a Holmes
story without a worthy plot and without a problem which interested my
own mind, for that is the first requisite before you can interest any
one else. If I have been able to sustain this character for a long
time and if the public find, as they will find, that the last story is
as good as the first, it is entirely due to the fact that I never, or
hardly ever, forced a story. Some have thought there was a falling off
in the stories, and the criticism was neatly expressed by a Cornish
boatman who said to me, “I think, sir, when Holmes fell over that
cliff, he may not have killed himself, but all the same he was never
quite the same man afterwards.” I think, however, that if the reader
began the series backwards, so that he brought a fresh mind to the last
stories, he would agree with me that, though the general average may
not be conspicuously high, still the last one is as good as the first.
I was weary, however, of inventing plots and I set myself now to do
some work which would certainly be less remunerative but would be more
ambitious from a literary point of view. I had long been attracted
by the epoch of Louis XIV and by those Huguenots who were the French
equivalents of our Puritans. I had a good knowledge of the memoirs
of that date, and many notes already prepared, so that it did not
take me long to write “The Refugees.” It has stood the acid test of
time very well, so I may say that it was a success. Soon after its
appearance it was translated into French, and my mother, herself a
great French scholar, had the joy when she visited Fontainebleau to
hear the official guide tell the drove of tourists that if they really
wanted to know about the Court of the great monarch, they would find
the clearest and most accurate account in an Englishman’s book, “The
Refugees.” I expect the guide would have been considerably astonished
had he then and there been kissed by an elderly English lady, but it
was an experience which he must have narrowly missed. I used in this
book, also, a great deal which was drawn from Parkman, that great but
neglected historian, who was in my opinion the greatest serious writer
that America has produced.
There was an amusing episode connected with “The Refugees,” when it was
read aloud in some strict Irish convent, the innocent Reverend Mother
having mistaken my name and imagined that I was a canon, and therefore
of course a holy man. I am told that the reading was a tremendous
success and that the good sisters rejoiced that the mistake was not
found out until the story was completed. My first name has several
times led to mistakes, as when, at a big dinner at Chicago, I was asked
to say Grace, as being the only ecclesiastic present. I remember that
at the same dinner one of the speakers remarked that it was a most
sinister fact that though I was a doctor no _living_ patient of mine
had ever yet been seen.
During this Norwood interval, I was certainly working hard, for besides
“The Refugees” I wrote “The Great Shadow,” a booklet which I should put
near the front of my work for merit, and two other little books on a
very inferior plane--“The Parasite” and “Beyond the City.” The latter
was of a domestic type unusual for me. It was pirated in New York just
before the new Copyright Act came into force, and the rascal publisher
thinking that a portrait--any sort of portrait--of the author would
look well upon the cover, and being quite ignorant of my identity, put
a very pretty and over-dressed young woman as my presentment. I still
preserve a copy of this most flattering representation. All these books
had some decent success, though none of it was remarkable. It was still
the Sherlock Holmes stories for which the public clamoured, and these
from time to time I endeavoured to supply. At last, after I had done
two series of them I saw that I was in danger of having my hand forced,
and of being entirely identified with what I regarded as a lower
stratum of literary achievement. Therefore as a sign of my resolution
I determined to end the life of my hero. The idea was in my mind when
I went with my wife for a short holiday in Switzerland, in the course
of which we saw there the wonderful falls of Reichenbach, a terrible
place, and one that I thought would make a worthy tomb for poor
Sherlock, even if I buried my banking account along with him. So there
I laid him, fully determined that he should stay there--as indeed for
some years he did. I was amazed at the concern expressed by the public.
They say that a man is never properly appreciated until he is dead,
and the general protest against my summary execution of Holmes taught
me how many and how numerous were his friends. “You Brute” was the
beginning of the letter of remonstrance which one lady sent me, and I
expect she spoke for others besides herself. I heard of many who wept.
I fear I was utterly callous myself, and only glad to have a chance of
opening out into new fields of imagination, for the temptation of high
prices made it difficult to get one’s thoughts away from Holmes.
That Sherlock Holmes was anything but mythical to many is shown by the
fact that I have had many letters addressed to him with requests that I
forward them. Watson has also had a number of letters in which he has
been asked for the address or for the autograph of his more brilliant
confrère. A press-cutting agency wrote to Watson asking whether Holmes
would not wish to subscribe. When Holmes retired several elderly
ladies were ready to keep house for him and one sought to ingratiate
herself by assuring me that she knew all about bee-keeping and could
“segregate the queen.” I had considerable offers also for Holmes if he
would examine and solve various family mysteries. Once the offer--from
Poland--was that I should myself go, and my reward was practically
left to my own judgment. I had judgment enough, however, to avoid it
altogether.
I have often been asked whether I had myself the qualities which I
depicted, or whether I was merely the Watson that I look. Of course I
am well aware that it is one thing to grapple with a practical problem
and quite another thing when you are allowed to solve it under your
own conditions. I have no delusions about that. At the same time a man
cannot spin a character out of his own inner consciousness and make it
really life-like unless he has some possibilities of that character
within him--which is a dangerous admission for one who has drawn
so many villains as I. In my poem “The Inner Room,” describing our
multiplex personality, I say:
“There are others who are sitting,
Grim as doom,
In the dim ill-boding shadow
Of my room.
Darkling figures, stern or quaint,
Now a savage, now a saint,
Showing fitfully and faint
In the gloom.”
Among those figures there may perhaps be an astute detective also, but
I find that in real life in order to find him I have to inhibit all the
others and get into a mood when there is no one in the room but he.
Then I get results and have several times solved problems by Holmes’
methods after the police have been baffled. Yet I must admit that in
ordinary life I am by no means observant and that I have to throw
myself into an artificial frame of mind before I can weigh evidence and
anticipate the sequence of events.