That
would of course be both his murderer and creator. Arthur Conan Doyle. This
is a solid one hour documentary about the life of Doyle, a man nearly forgotten
but his creation still immensely popular over a hundred years since his last
appearance in The Last Bow (1917). There is the usual nonsense of having
actors pretend to be Holmes and Watson as well as Doyle but it is the Doyle/Holmes
experts who make this worth watching. Like most people I expect, as much
as I love Holmes, I knew precious little about Doyle. Born in Edinburgh in
poverty to an alcoholic father and a loving mother, he grew up on the tough
streets of that city and was part of a street gang when he was young. So
that he would not get into trouble he was sent off to a Catholic Jesuit school
by his mother. His father was institutionalized by now. After this he entered
medical school and during the off periods he joined whaler fishing ships.
In medical school he met and was taught by Joseph Bell who most experts single
out as the model for Holmes. Both in build and analytical ability.
After graduating, Doyle set up practice in Portsmouth. He had already written
some short stories and had one published but it was in 1887 that he wrote
his first Holmes story – A Study in Scarlet which introduces the character
and that of Dr. Watson who meets Holmes in the story. The Holmes stories
were printed in the Strand Magazine and became so popular that their circulation
jumped incredibly. But by 1894 Doyle for reasons unexplained killed off Holmes
at the Reichenbach Falls in a fight with Moriarty. The focus of this documentary
is to try to deduce why Doyle did this to the Golden Goose. But they don’t
really know. They conjecture that Doyle felt trapped by the popularity of
the character and so his many non-Holmes books were ignored. He was incredibly
prolific. The public literally went into mourning. The Royal Family objected.
And so it stood for seven years until Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles
but he wasn’t really ready to bring Holmes back and so set the story before
his death. It wasn’t until 1905 and at great reward that he brought him back
in The Empty Room. Sherlock had gone undercover and on a personal journey
for those 11 years. They were as popular as ever. Later in life Doyle became
very involved in Spiritualism and wrote about it extensively. He passed away
in 1930.
