Tag Archives: Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock In The Records Office? – Get Real!

Sherlock Artwork

The recent attempt to place the Richard Lancelyn Green Bequest in the demolition-threatened Public Records Office, Portsmouth is a sad indictment of the lack of vision and desperation of protesters – and the incoherent cultural strategy of Portsmouth City Council. I’m glad to say that little piece of fantasy town planning has at least been rejected.

Don’t get me wrong. I am sympathetic to attempts to stop development of the Records Office Site.

Indeed, I can imagine the outrage of the good citizens of Old Portsmouth and its environs when they were told they were going to get a block of flats built on the obviously knackered Records Office in the Portsmouth Museum’s grounds.

And rightly so. After all, with the arrival of the revolting, steroid-bulked and vomit-inducingly ugly sport complex across the road in Ravelin Park, we see yet more of the few pieces of open space and open sky in this part of the city lost forever. Soon, I am sure, Ravelin Park will be reduced to a few square metres of lawn edged with University cafes, bars and dorms infilling the open space wherever possible and closing out yet more Pompey sky with the UoP’s specialism: badly-scaled and oppressive architecture.

On that level, the thought of yet more flats going up on the old Clarence Barracks grounds is, indeed, horrible. Let’s face it, over the wall at the back of the Museum stands an estate of faceless suburban infill. Dull little houses and non-descript blocks of flats. The residents in that little slice of suburbia grafted onto one of the most historic parts of Portsmouth are right to make a fuss. “We don’t need more homes like ours! After all, when we’re indoors, we don’t have to look at the ones already here!”

And so, in desperation, they cast around for a reason to save one of the few Victorian heritage buildings left in the area. I can imagine the concerned denizens of Old Portsmouth seeking a saviour, and hoping that none other than the great sleuth himself, Sherlock Holmes might don his deerstalker and save the day. And so the idea was born:

“The council has been promising us a museum dedicated to Sherlock Holmes for nearly two decades now, let’s put it in the Records Office and kill two birds with one stone!”

It probably appeared like a sure-fire winner to put pressure on the council, especially with the addition of celebrity endorsement…

…Or maybe not. Stephen Fry has been known to get behind such attempts in the past with mixed results. He brought his influence to bear ineffectively at Hindhead – failing to save Undershaw, Conan Doyle’s old gaff, from developers who converted the site into a special needs school.

But let’s be clear, putting Conan Doyle in the Records Office was just… well… silly. Though I do have strong support for preventing yet more urban infill in the grounds of the former Clarence Barracks, you need to find a way to both stop that happening – AND keep your hands off Sherlock at the same time.

Yes, a Conan Doyle / Sherlock Holmes Museum in Portsmouth is a great idea. No, putting it in that Records Office was not. The building is knackered and will cost a fortune to underpin. But more importantly, stuffing what should be a world-class exhibition in a building so badly suited for the purpose would betray the people of Portsmouth and the Conan Doyle legacy. It would be like stuffing the Crown Jewels into Milton Village Community Association hall. – Sure, it’s a good building. But not for that.

I mean how mean and low have our sights here in Portsmouth fallen?

This brings us to the question of what Portsmouth should expect from a Conan Doyle Museum. Definitely not a few cramped rooms in the Records Office to show off the 40,000 documents and 18,000 further artefacts, that’s for sure! Where’s the sense of scale in Portmuthians? Where’s the understanding of the bloody goldmine we’re sitting on?

Sherlock Holmes remains one of the most enduring icons of the 19th and 20th Centuries. His fame now is as big as it has ever been. Conan Doyle’s characters have spawned countless films, plays, games… the list goes on. A look at PCC’s Arthur Conan Doyle Collection will show you just what the massive appeal is. Similarly, a visit to Northumberland Avenue off Trafalgar Square will show you some of the potential. Stand outside the Sherlock Holmes pub – a site that is totally manufactured and has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes – and in normal times you will see busloads of tourists swing by, take a few snaps, then go inside to buy a pint and a meal. It’s a completely invented site with no links to Holmes and Doyle and it might as well be printing its own money.

The main failing in Portsmouth’s view of the potential a Conan Doyle Museum presents is embodied by the idea that the Records Office will be good enough for a world-class exhibition. It won’t. The Sherlock Holmes Museum, when it comes, needs to be a conference centre, a place where theatrical performances and arts groups can be supported, and it needs to be in an area where the massive crowds of fans, scholars, sightseers, conference-goers and more besides can relax and enjoy their visit.

Sadly, one of the great potential venues for such a site appears to have been lost. Southsea Debenhams is set to be converted to yet more residential property, although there has recently been some talk about using part of that space by using one floor. But, really, is one floor enough for a world class draw? Think about how good it could be were it a really large scale venue providing far more than an exhibition. Stepping out from the Museum, tourists would be surrounded by shops and cafes. It was in many ways perfect… but neither the money nor the will to do it has yet been found.

So, my own view, is – yes, by all means save the Records Office. Woohoo! We don’t want to lose more Victoriana in Portsmouth.

But don’t insult Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes with such a stupid idea as putting them in that tiny, unworkable space.

Portsmouth deserves better.

Holmes Fest 2019 – The Fest that never was

Looking back over the last two years, it has been an extraordinary time of highs and lows. There was the amazing success of The Snow Witch projects, which led to an art exhibition in Cascades shopping centre, Portsmouth, and to a three week odyssey of transmedia storytelling that played out on facebook, through street art and graffiti, via puzzles, tarot readings, a treasure hunt and finally a gig at the Groundlings Theatre, Portsea. This was thanks to the £15k fund we got from The Arts Council, Cascades and the enthusiasm of local artists and creators, and the amazing team who rallied round.

These successes had their casualties, however.

It was with some regret that I realised I just wasn’t going to be able to do Holmes Fest last year. I made the decision late in the day after I’d put out the artwork above inviting people to participate. With a whole series of other commitments, something had to give.

However, when I posted the idea on facebook in March 2019 the willingness of people to get involved really told me about the amazing dynamism in Portsmouth, so hopefully I’ll be back on it next year. What’s great is that I’ve got some of the branding work done already – and it’s interesting to think how easy it is to recycle things – in this case the artwork from A Study In Scarlet, and the new strapline – either Portsmouth – Sherlock’s Home, Southsea – Sherlock’s Home, or Pompey – Sherlock’s Home.

A Study In Scarlet was kind to me in 2019. Earlier that year locally born international megastar Neil Gaiman retweeted news about my reprint of A Study In Scarlet. And, of course, having done the artwork already, it didn’t take much to adjust things a little for the upcoming Fest. So… for the upcoming Holmes Fest 2021, here is a retrospective on the artwork that we’ll be using in the future…

Really chuffed with that strapline!

So, after a dormant 2020, roll on 2021 – and here’s to a bigger and better Holmes Fest!

Why Conan Doyle’s Southsea Life Should Inspire Writers

Writers looking for reasons to keep going when times are tough, should look no further than Arthur Conan Doyle’s early life in Southsea. His story of struggle, finding his way and eventual success is one for every writer to learn from.

In his autobiography, Memories and Adventures, Doyle talks about those early years after his arrival in Southsea.

I made £154 the first year, and £250 the second, rising slowly to £800, which in eight years I never passed, so far as the medical practice went. In the first year the Income Tax paper arrived and I filled it up to show that I was not liable. They returned the paper with “Most unsatisfactory” scrawled across it. I wrote “I entirely agree” under the words, and returned it once more. For this little bit of cheek I was had up before the assessors, and duly appeared with my ledger under my arm. They could make nothing, however, out of me or my ledger, and we parted with mutual laughter and compliments.”

So, what changed? Doyle confesses that he never imagined he’d be able to make a living from writing. In the early days, he was so poor he had no staff at his surgery on Elm Grove and cooked bacon over the gas lamp in the back room. But, he adds:

In many ways my marriage marked a turning-point in my life. A bachelor, especially one who had been a wanderer like myself, drifts easily into Bohemian habits, and I was no exception… with the more regular life and the greater sense of responsibility, coupled with the natural development of brain-power, the literary side of me began slowly to spread until it was destined to push the other entirely aside.

Though Doyle did write before he married, he was paid an average of £4 per story and made around £10 or £15 a year from his work, which works out at between £1000 to £1500 a year.

A great insight into his creative life follows:

But though I was not putting out I was taking in. I still have notebooks full of all sorts of knowledge which I acquired during that time. It is a great mistake to start putting out cargo when you have hardly stowed any on board. My own slow methods and natural limitations made me escape this danger.

A Study In Scarlet in the famously rare 1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual, of which only 11 complete copies are known to exist.

After he married, he wrote most of the stories that appeared in his book, The Captain of the Polestar. He progressed steadily, until he appeared in the prestigious Cornhill magazine, with his short story Habakuk Jephson’s Statement.

Doyle had to deal with hostile reviews and keep on, even then. One reviewer stated: “Cornhill opens its new number with a story which would have made Thackeray turn in his grave.”

Doyle was also willing to take on any writing job that came his way:

I was still in the days of very small things—so small that when a paper sent me a woodcut and offered me four guineas if I would write a story to correspond I was not too proud to accept. It was a very bad woodcut and I think that the story corresponded all right. I remember writing a New Zealand story, though why I should have written about a place of which I knew nothing I cannot imagine. Some New Zealand critic pointed out that I had given the exact bearings of the farm mentioned as 90 miles to the east or west of the town of Nelson, and that in that case it was situated 20 miles out on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. These little things will happen. There are times when accuracy is necessary and others where the idea is everything and the place quite immaterial.

Doyle’s next realisation about his writing is a useful one for any writer.

It was about a year after my marriage that I realized that I could go on doing short stories for ever and never make headway. What is necessary is that your name should be on the back of a volume. Only so do you assert your individuality, and get the full credit or discredit of your achievement.

His first venture was The Firm of Girdlestone, which he acknowledges as a “worthless book”. He adds:

When I sent it to publishers and they scorned it I quite acquiesced in their decision and finally let it settle, after its periodical flights to town, a dishevelled mass of manuscript at the back of a drawer.

Then came his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes:

Gaboriau had rather attracted me by the neat dovetailing of his plots, and Poe’s masterful detective, M. Dupin, had from boyhood been one of my heroes. But could I bring an addition of my own? I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer to an exact science. I would try if I could get this effect. It was surely possible in real life, so why should I not make it plausible in fiction?

Doyle adds: “It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it—such examples as Bell gave us every day in the wards…” Next came the choice of the name. something not too obvious for a clever man, such as Mr Sharps or Mr Ferrets, but something else.

First it was Sherringford Holmes; then it was Sherlock Holmes. He could not tell his own exploits, so he must have a commonplace comrade as a foil—an educated man of action who could both join in the exploits and narrate them. A drab, quiet name for this unostentatious man. Watson would do. And so I had my puppets and wrote my “Study in Scarlet.”

In fact, Doyle wrote the book over a period of 3 weeks in 1886. It was a novella rather than a novel – but he was rightly proud of his achievement.

For the writer, the question then, is how to deal with publishers who just don’t “get” your work? To push on and hope, appears to be the answer. And a matter of luck is always part of the equation, it seems:

I knew that the book was as good as I could make it, and I had high hopes. When “Girdlestone” used to come circling back with the precision of a homing pigeon, I was grieved but not surprised, for I acquiesced in the decision. But when my little Holmes book began also to do the circular tour I was hurt, for I knew that it deserved a better fate. James Payn applauded but found it both too short and too long, which was true enough. Arrowsmith received it in May, 1886, and returned it unread in July. Two or three others sniffed and turned away. Finally, as Ward, Lock & Co. made a speciality of cheap and often sensational literature, I sent it to them.

“Dear Sir,” they said,—”We have read your story and are pleased with it. We could not publish it this year as the market is flooded at present with cheap fiction, but if you do not object to its being held over till next year, we will give you £25 for the copyright.

“Yours faithfully,
“WARD, LOCK & Co.”
“Oct. 30, 1886.”

The story famously appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. Doyle never received another penny for it.

Doyle did not wait for publication the next year, but wrote a historical romance, Micah Clarke. For which pains, he was asked by publishers how he could waste his wits and time writing historical novels. Other comments from publishers were in a similar vein.

I was on the point of putting the worn manuscript into hospital with its mangled brother “Girdle-stone” when as a last resource I sent it to Longmans, whose reader, Andrew Lang, liked it and advised its acceptance. It was to “Andrew of the brindled hair,” as Stevenson called him, that I owe my first real opening, and I have never forgotten it. The book duly appeared in February, 1889, and though it was not a boom book it had extraordinarily good reviews, including one special one all to itself by Mr. Protheroe in the “Nineteenth Century,” and it has sold without intermission from that day to this. It was the first solid corner-stone laid for some sort of literary reputation.

As for Sherlock Holmes, British literature was fashionable in the United States at the time, and it was a Mr Stoddart, an American agent for Lippincott’s who asked to meet up with him in London in 1889. He thus had dinner with Stoddart and Oscar Wilde, the latter of whom had read Micah Clarke, and liked it very much.

The result of the evening was that both Wilde and I promised to write books for “Lippincott’s Magazine”—Wilde’s contribution was “The Picture of Dorian Grey,” a book which is surely upon a high moral plane, while I wrote “The Sign of Four,” in which Holmes made his second appearance.

Doyle now went on to write The White Company, feeling once again the urge to write historical romance. When he finished, he writes:

I felt a wave of exultation and with a cry of “That’s done it!” I hurled my inky pen across the room, where it left a black smudge upon the duck’s-egg wall-paper. I knew in my heart that the book would live and that it would illuminate our national traditions. Now that it has passed through fifty editions I suppose I may say with all modesty that my forecast has proved to be correct.

He goes on:

This was the last book which I wrote in my days of doctoring at Southsea, and marks an epoch in my life, so I can now hark back to some other phases of my last years at Bush Villa before I broke away into a new existence. I will only add that “The White Company” was accepted by “Cornhill,” in spite of James Payn’s opinion of historical novels, and that I fulfilled another ambition by having a serial in that famous magazine.

These remembrances should act as inspirations for writers in Portsmouth, and indeed, everywhere. It’s one reason I decided to celebrate him and his greatest creation Sherlock Holmes by bringing out a facsimile reprint of the first appearance of A Study In Scarlet through my publishing company, Life Is Amazing. The truth is, the most famous writers come from somewhere. One of those places could be where you are right now. In fact, one of those writers could be you.

[NB: This article was updated on 12th February 2019]

Yoga and Sherlock Holmes – a brace of Pompey events

Two very different cultural events occurred in Portsmouth yesterday, that I was lucky enough to attend.

The first was the limb-stretching Yoga for Writers, a workshop run by writer and Yoga teacher Helen Salsbury. A good hour and a half long, the workshop addressed the particular issues met by writers who spend too long at their desks and don’t take breaks. The stretches and exercises dealt with a number of issues: posture, ergonomics, stiffness of joints due to too much inactivity and glassy-eyed staring into the distance. For anyone who forgets to take a break and loosen up the body, Helen’s soothing lesson is a recommend. Another part of the training – and let’s face it, yoga is all about breath control and meditation, was how to just chillax. Entering different states of consciousness is the heart of the writer’s job. And with her hypnotic talk and relaxation exercises, the spaced out feeling of deep chilledness at which the doorway to creativity so often opens for many writers was a welcome reminder of the power of doing nothing. I walked away from this one feeling lighter and more focused. You can find out more about Helen Salsbury here: http://www.helensalsbury.com/

Another cultural event was the final instalment of The Sign of Six – a deeply joyous homage to one of Portsmouth’s great literary heroes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the character who is so famous I am sure he is even recognised in far-flung galaxies across the universe, Sherlock Holmes (and of course, his bosom buddy Doctor Watson!).

The Sign of Six was a series of six short plays performed at different venues across the city throughout the week. From Paulsgrove, to Southsea, Holmes and Watson were on the track of a deadly assassin who variously tried to bomb, gas, mine, poison and generally polish off the super-sleuth owner of the deerstalker. Each of the six venues yielded a clue to the identity of the would-be killer – until finally it was revealed that the man trying to kill off Holmes was none other than Conan Doyle himself.

The team behind the plays was Periplum, whom I went for drinks with after the final show, in Southsea. Dan, the villain of the piece described how working with the public in Pompey had its challenges – like being pushed in the Commercial Road fountain or dealing with people questioning them mid-rehearsal as to what they were doing. Yet, this was all part of the excitement of the live performance, and it worked out really well. A suitable street theatre compliment to one-time denizen of Portsmouth, Arthur Conan Doyle.

Each play was broadcast on Facebook Live, the verve and fun with which this whole project was performed can be still be viewed, here: https://www.facebook.com/conandoylescasebook

There’s always something happening in Portsmouth!

Conan Doyle and his belief in ghosts – a talk

Conan Doyle and the Mysterious World of Light, 1887 - 1920, by Matt Wingett

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is renowned primarily for one thing: the creation of the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes. Yet, there was far more to the man, including his prominence in later life as a leading Spiritualist.

For many who regard Holmes’s rational take on the world as a wonderful example of applied logic and empiricism, his belief in ghosts can be something of an unfortunate fact that doesn’t fit in with their view. Many rationalise that after the death of his son, Kingsley, in World War I, Sir Arthur turned to Spiritualism for comfort, and became increasingly obsessed with the belief.

This view is wrong. In fact, Arthur Conan Doyle first announced himself to be a Spiritualist in 1887 in a letter to the occult magazine “Light”. It was the very same year that his first novel starring Sherlock Holmes “A Study In Scarlet” was published.

Both of these events happened during a deeply influential period of his life in Southsea, where he was working as a GP at Bush Villas on Elm Grove.

How he came to be a devout Spiritualist, the twists and turns of his faith, and how he regarded his Spiritualism as for more important than his ficitional detective is a fascinating story. It involves ghost stories, poltergeist investigations, approaches from secret societies and a belief that science would one day prove the existence of the soul.

It’s this world that I explore in my book Conan Doyle and The Mysterious World of Light, 1887-1920, and which I elucidate in my talks on the matter.

I’m delighted when an audience finds out new things about this fascinating person. After all, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was very, very much more than a teller of tall tales, as my talk on the matter reveals!