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What Holmes really said to Watson was “You see; but you do not observe.” Watson did not know how many stairs led up from Baker Street to their rooms. Holmes knew. The minutiae which Watson and (as a man) Doyle missed were his joy. Holmes remarked what Doyle scribbled hastily in an old notebook:
‘The coat-sleeves, the trouser-knee, the callosities of the forefinger and thumb, the boot — any one of these might tell us; but that all united should fail to enlighten the trained observation is incredible.’
If it is true that Doyle himself was not observant, the fact illustrates his genius in imagining himself Holmes. The genius caused him to create, and not merely invent, one who was destined to become a world figure. Just so did Cervantes create Don Quixote, or Dumas the three musketeers.

I learned from Mr. Hesketh Pearson’s book on Doyle something which confirms the point. Where more ingenious modern writers, of great talent, invent idiosyncrasies for their great detectives, sometimes small clownings, sometimes facetious mannerisms of speech, Doyle, the originator, told us little but what seemed to arise naturally from unlimited knowledge of Holmes. Mr. Pearson quotes from an unpublished story one more detail of a night journey by train which proves this:

‘It was one of Holmes characteristics that he could command sleep at will. Unfortunately he could resist it at will also, and often and often have I had to remonstrate with him on the harm he must be doing himself when deeply engrossed in one of his strange or baffling problems he would go for several consecutive days and nights without one wink of sleep. He put the shades over the lamps, leant back in his corner, and in less than two minutes his regular breathing told me he was fast asleep. Not being blessed with the same gift myself, I lay back in my corner for some time nodding to the rhythmical throb of the express as it hurled through the darkness. Now and again as we shot through some brilliantly illuminated station or past a line of flaming furnaces, I caught for an instant a glimpse of Holmes’ figure coiled up snugly in the far corner with his head sunk upon his breast.’

Do you not see the scene? The anxious exasperation of Watson at his friend’s willpower? The secret of his loyalty? It is all in that description, so bare, so undistinguished in style, yet so free from fanciful adulteration. Having created Holmes, Doyle could not go wrong. As for ourselves, that is why we cannot have enough of him.

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Frank Swinnerton, “Sherlock Holmes - World Figure”, John O’London’s, February 19, 1954. (via sidgwicks)

#[ save; ]  #[ monographs; ]  #[ logic is rare; ]  #[ the creator; ]  #put that in your queue and smoke it mr. busybody holmes!  

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    The mentioned unpublished story is actually a pastiche called The Man Who Was Wanted by Arthur Whitaker. He sent it to...
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