Sherlock Holmes

Rivers of ink have flowed since 1887, when Sherlock Holmes was first introduced to the world, in an adventure entitled A Study in Scarlet.

Most of the great detective's fans know him so well, that they feel they have actually met him. It would therefore be presumptuous to try and define him here, as his many friends and admirers may each have very different views about this legendary personage.

For those who have not made-up their minds, it might be useful if they read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Autobiography, Memories and Adventures. They will undoubtedly come away with the notion that Sherlock Holmes resembles in many ways Dr. Joseph Bell, one of the teachers at the medical school of Edinburgh University. Arthur Doyle was seventeen years old when he first met Dr. Joseph Bell, who was then thirty-nine. The doctor left an indelible impression upon the young student.

This is how Conan Doyle described him much later: A "thin wiry, dark" man, "with a high-nosed acute face, penetrating gray eyes, angular shoulders." Dr. Bell "would sit in his receiving room with a face like a Red Indian, and diagnose the people as they came in, before they even opened their mouths. He would tell them details of their past life; and hardly would he ever make a mistake."

We owe the improved looks of the great detective, to Sydney Paget, who took his "strikingly handsome" brother Walter as model, when he illustrated a great number of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Conan Doyle dedicated The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Bell, who gave credit to the author for Sherlock Holmes's genius. "You are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it," he wrote him.