The curious incident of Conan Doyle's 150th

The Meiringen museum is a near replica of the Holmes museum near Regent's Park in London. "Everything here is authentic to the last detail," the museum manager explains during a guided tour, "but it looks lived in – as if [the landlady] Mrs. Hudson had not yet tidied up."

Visitors, of course, will be drawn to the towering Reichenbach Falls. It was there at some 400 feet above the Aare Gorge that Holmes and Professor Moriarty engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle. In "The Final Problem," Dr. Watson described the falls as a "fearsome place," the site Conan Doyle resolved would be where Holmes's career would end.

Fittingly, Holmes and Watson were tourists themselves as they sought to evade Moriarty and his gang, staying overnight at a Meiringen hotel, the Englischer Hof. Salverda says Conan Doyle and his wife actually stayed at the current Park Hotel du Sauvage and the author simply renamed it the Englischer Hof for his fictitious account.

But how did Conan Doyle, under duress from the revered detective's worldwide fans, manage to resurrect Sherlock years later in a way that satisfied his following? As the author allows Watson to explain in "The Empty House," the physician, after marrying, had left his Baker Street flat. He faints in shock when Holmes reappears at his new home.

Yet the police consultant explains his absence as a ruse to mislead Moriarty's henchmen. He had left Watson in the dark for his own safety. When Holmes tripped the gang leader with an artful baritsu move at the waterfall, the professor had indeed taken a fatal plunge into the whirlpool of the Aare Gorge. But Moriarty's agents remained at large (even in serene Switzerland), so the sleuth had to lie low.

After managing to reach the gorge on foot, Holmes followed its trail to safety and disappeared – first to Italy, then to Tibet, Persia, and the Sudan. Finally a murder that baffled Scotland Yard brought its star criminologist back to London and reunited him with Watson.

Conan Doyle, who had hoped to dispose of Sherlock and focus on serious writing, felt thwarted. But there was one consolation. By 1902 the physician-author had become Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, knighted by King Edward VII.

Ironically, the honor owed to the writer's service as a pamphleteer supporting Britain during the Boer War. Actually a Holmes fan himself, King Edward greatly admired the author's creative flair. But the knighthood paid tribute to Conan Doyle's patriotism, not his inspiration in championing world literature's first great detective.

Previous

1 | 2