Sherlock Holmes: Complete Novels & Stories in One Volume. Arthur Conan Doyle

At the request of the editor, I have spent some days in looking over an old letter box in which, from time to time, I have placed letters referring directly or indirectly to the notorious Mr. Holmes. I wish now that I had been more careful in preserving the references to this gentleman and his little problems. A great many have been lost or mislaid. His biographer has been fortunate enough to find readers in many lands, and the reading has elicited the same sort of response, though in many cases that response has been in a tongue difficult to comprehend. Very often my distant correspondent could neither spell my own name or that of my imaginary hero, as in a recent instance which I here append.

Many such letters have been from Russians. Where the Russian letters have been in the vernacular, I have been compelled, I am afraid, to take them as read; but when they had been in English, they have been among the most curious in my collection.

There was one young lady who began all her epistles with the words “Good Lord.” Another had a large amount of guile underlying her simplicity. Writing from Warsaw, she stated that she had been bedridden for two years, and that my novels had been her only et cetera, et cetera. So touched was I by this flattering statement that I at once prepared an autographed parcel of them to complete the fair invalid’s collection. By good luck, however, I met a brother author upon the same day to whom I recounted the touching incident. With a cynical smile, he drew an identical letter from his pocket. His novels also had been for two years her only et cetera, et cetera. I do not know how many more the lady had written to; but if, as I imagine, her correspondence had extended to several countries, she must have amassed a rather interesting library.

The young Russian’s habit of addressing me as “Good Lord” had an even stranger parallel at home, which links it up with the subject of this article. Shortly after I received a knighthood, I had a bill from a tradesman which was quite correct and businesslike in every detail save that it was made out to Sir Sherlock Holmes. I hope that I can stand a joke as well as my neighbors, but this particular piece of humor seemed rather misapplied, and I wrote sharply upon the subject.

In response to my letter there arrived at my hotel a very repentant clerk, who expressed his sorrow at the incident, but kept on repeating the phrase, “I assure you, sir, that it was bona fide.”

“What do you mean by bona fide?” I asked.

“Well, sir,” he replied, “my mates in the shop told me that you had been knighted, and that when a man was knighted he changed his name, and that you had taken that one.” I need not say that my annoyance vanished, and that I laughed as heartily as his pals were probably doing round the corner.

There are certain problems which are continually recurring in these Sherlock Holmes letters. One of them has exercised men’s minds in the most out-of-the-way places, from Labrador to Thibet; indeed, if a matter needs thought, it is just the men in these outlying stations who have the time and solitude for it. I daresay I have had twenty letters upon the one point alone. It arises in the “Adventure of the Priory School,” where Holmes, glancing at the track of a bicycle, says: “It is evidently going from us, not toward us.” He did not give his reasoning, which my correspondents resent, and all assert that the deduction is impossible. As a matter of fact, it is simple enough upon soft, undulating ground such as the moor in question. The weight of the rider falls most upon the hind wheel, and in soft soil it makes a perceptibly deeper track. Where the machine has wobbled a little one can see whether the deeper or more shallow track has crossed the other — and so the problem is solved.

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