September 7, 2003

JUST off the hustle and bustle of a popular tourist area, not very far from Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum and close to Regent Park, in London, there is a comparatively quiet patch of a broad street. A typical English pub on the left faces a row of bookstores and souvenir shops on the opposite side of the street.

It takes a few moments to register that the fat policeman with the typical bobby hat, a baton, huge boots and dark shabby uniform is a member of the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which shares the pub entrance, and not a real policeman. This is the famous 221b Baker Street, London, NW1, where Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson lived, worked and their colourful clients poured out their dreadful woes for almost 25 years.

Most people assume that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was knighted for creating Sherlock Holmes. Actually his services to the British soldiers in the Boer War earned him the title in 1902. He was often in the news for many adventures and causes that were completely detached from the archetype fictional character that he created. In fact he enjoyed phenomenal popularity among people who had never read Sherlock Holmes, and for that reason major political parties approached him to join them. None of his multifarious passions though surpassed his life long zeal for spiritualism.

Born in Scotland in 1859, he was a natural athlete. In a film footage by Fox-Case Movietone produced in 1929, Conan Doyle comes into shot, walking down a set of grassy steps. As he begins his flirtation with the camera, he removes his hat, and explains that he has been asked to say a few words, so as to test the recording equipment. Considering the novelty of film at that time and the inexperience of Conan Doyle before camera, he is a consummate performer. His accent is melodious, softly Scottish, careful, deliberate. The film fades in and out with the sunlight, giving a strange, otherworldly feel and ambience.

“There are two things that people always ask me; one is how I came to write the Sherlock Holmes stories, the other is about how I came to have psychic experiences.” He explains that as a young doctor he read detective stories. Nevertheless, he found them annoying and frustrating because the crimes were solved by fluke, or the solutions were left unexplained. He decided to apply scientific methods to deduction, which he did, but readers did not take much interest in his stories in the beginning.

Gradually, however, they became so hooked to his style that Conan Doyle got weary of the constant demand for more. He actually ‘killed’ Sherlock Holmes in one of the stories, but had to revive him on popular demand (“my hand was forced.”). Sherlock Holmes’ stories, just as popular today, were originally published in a London periodical The Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1927.

Was Sherlock Holmes a real person? Not exactly, but Dr Joseph Bell was the remarkable real life person who inspired the unique character of Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle met Dr Bell, one of the professors at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, in 1877. This gave Conan Doyle the opportunity to view Dr Bell’s remarkable ability to deduce quickly a great deal about a patient — before the patient uttered a single word. Dr Bell observed the way a person moved. The walk of a sailor varied vastly from that of a soldier.

If he identified a person as a sailor, he would look for any tattoos that might assist him in knowing where his travels had taken him. He trained himself to listen for small differences in his patients’ accents to help him identify where they were from. Bell studied the hands of his patients because calluses or other marks could help him determine their occupations.

A Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery, Conan Doyle gave up medicine in 1891 in favour of writing. Ten years later, he published his classic, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Readers can come across passages in Sherlock Holmes’ stories where the ace detective, when faced with an exceptionally complex case, sits in a fixed position with his eyes closed (to the chagrin of his equally famous companion). Then, after hours of silent withdrawal, Sherlock Holmes would leap out of his chair with uncontrollable energy, almost shouting, “Let’s go Watson!” to pursue the case with renewed vitality. Could it be that the man with such a proven scientific background, and who created the ever-logical Sherlock Holmes, believed in ghosts?

In the same film footage he explains, “Spiritualism is the basis for all religious improvement in the human race.” Then becomes more forthright, “I have sat with enormous number and variety of mediums all over the world, and do not like people contradicting me when they know nothing on the subject. When I talk on this subject I’m not talking about what I believe, I’m not talking about what I think, I’m talking about what I know.”

Although raised a Catholic, Conan Doyle came to question those beliefs and declared himself an agnostic. The Spiritualism movement stressed that there was indeed life after death and that communication with those who had “passed over” was entirely possible. By 1855, two million people were followers of the movement. However, as time went by, disorganization within the movement and fraudulent practices lead to the movement’s decline. By 1900, Spiritualism had lost its popularity. After the first world war the movement once again became popular as people struggled to deal with the loss of loved ones.

What occurs to people after death? “The evidence on this point is fairly full and consistent,” says Conan Doyle in his first book on spiritualism, The New Revelation. “The departed all agree that passing is usually both easy and painless, and followed by enormous reaction of peace and ease. The individual finds himself in the spirit body, which is the exact counterpart of his old one, save that all disease, weakness, or deformity has passed from it.

“This body is standing or floating besides the old body, and conscious both of it and of the surrounding people. At this moment the dead man is nearer to matter than he will ever be again, and hence it is that at that moment the greater part of those cases occur where, his thought having turned to someone in the distance, the spirit body went with the thought and was manifest to the person.” He argues with compelling evidences from personal and other sources.

He wrote books, articles and made countless public appearances to promote his beliefs. He was so sincere that even opponents of spiritualism considered him to be well intentioned.

Another member of the Society for Psychical Research, Harry Price, who made a reputation for himself by exposing false mediums, considered Conan Doyle having extraordinary and most lovable personal qualities, however, “Among all the notable persons attracted to Spiritualism, he was perhaps the most uncritical. Poor, dear, lovable, credulous Doyle! He was a giant in stature with the heart of a child.”

Conan Doyle’s support of spiritualism damaged his reputation, as he knew it would. He was never one to back away from a fight, and the fight for Spiritualism was one he fought until the end.

In the preface to his 1924 autobiography, Memories and Adventures, Conan Doyle attempts to sum up his life: “I have had a life which, for variety and romance, could, I think, hardly be exceeded. I have known what it was to be poor and I have known what it was to be affluent. I have sampled every kind of human experience. I have known many of the most remarkable men of my time. I have had a long literary career after a medical training which gave me the MD of Edinburgh. I have tried my hand at very many sports, including boxing, cricket, billiards, motoring, football, aeronautics and skiing, having been the first to introduce the latter for long journeys into Switzerland.” He travelled as doctor to a whaler for seven months in the Arctic and afterwards to the West Coast of Africa. He saw three wars, the Sudanese, the South African and the German.

“Finally, I have been constrained to devote my latter years to telling the world the final result of my thirty-six years of study of occult, and in endeavouring to make it realize the overwhelming importance of the question. In this mission I have already travelled more than 50,000 miles and addressed 300,000 people, besides writing seven books on the subject.”

No mention whatsoever of Sherlock Holmes or the dear Doctor Watson! Posterity, however, preserved his place in public mind mainly as the creator of the eccentric genius.

A few days before his death Conan Doyle wrote, “The reader will judge that I have had many adventures. The greatest and most glorious of all awaits me now.” Death did not frighten him because it was not death at all. He was ready for it. He knew it.

At 8:30 on the morning of July 7, 1930, the 71 year old quietly entered the world we can only imagine. The British oak headstone on his grave at Windlesham, Sussex, reads, ‘Steel true, blade straight’.

A creaking narrow wooden staircase leads you to the upper floors of the Sherlock Holmes Museum. One feels suddenly transcending into another era. Heavily furnished sitting room with faded upholstery, the fireplace and old photographs on the corner tables and walls, 100-year-old newspapers and letters from all over the world that people wrote to the famous detective, are enough to disorientate you in an eerie manner.

Walking through the well-preserved worn-out ambiance; complete with heavy drapes, opium pipes and the slippers that Sherlock Holmes wore; even the skeptic cannot help sensing a creepy feeling lurking in the air. One needs to be constantly reminded that Sherlock Holmes may have overshadowed his creator, but still was just a fictional character with no soul. Or, was he?

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