The most famous British detective leaves his no less famous London address of the 221b Baker Street to enter the Pléiade library, where some Gothic novels and Commissioner Maigret are waiting for him. This edition recalls both the incredible fate of the character, to countless adaptations and declinks, while swept away some certainties and emphasizing the complex relationship that its author Arthur Conan Doyle had with a creature that had ended up going beyond.
Under the supervision of Alain Morvan, this edition in two volumes incorporates the four novels and fifty-six news (withdrawal and reissued), published between 1887 and 1927 and which formed the Holmésian “canon”, as well as “extranecanonic stories”, whose brief and cruel How Watson learned the thing. In addition, investigated by Baudouin Millet, an album from La Pléiade is devoted to Sherlock Holmes himself (a first for a fictional character) and not to its author, decidedly forever victim of his success.
A tagged silhouette, an aquiline nose in a face cut with the serpe, a cap between all identifiable, a magnifying glass and, in the comfort of a dressing gown, a pipe or an opium sting. To these few distinctive signs, a respectful whisper seizes us: Sherlock Holmes. Since its birth in 1887 (Red study), the “detective consultant”, so he likes to define himself, has acquired a unique notoriety in the history of literature. The almost immediate success announced lush posterity.
An identity matter
Thus, with some 300 – yes, three hundred! – Adaptations to the screen, Sherlock Holmes is probably the most used character for making films or series, but also comics, radio pieces, board games, video games, ballets, etc. It is found in various variations, from the luxury feather pen to the collection of pipes due to the Irish manufacturer Peterson. Without forgetting various pastiches or avatars, including that of the French novelist Maurice Leblanc in 1907 with Sherlock Holmes arrives too latenews which has become later Herlock Sholmès arrives too latethis prudence may be explained because Arthur Conan Doyle had placed the name.
Without being quoted in this edition, the companionship so British de Blake and Mortimer owes a lot to the atmosphere of the 221b Baker Street, between taste for “”poetics of nicotism “ (The smoke, this mystery to dissipate), a living room heavily decorated with colonial memories and until the name of their logger, Mrs Benson, so close to that of Mrs Hudson.
We tend the nets
Several museums pay tribute to Sherlock Holmes. In Switzerland, where he died temporarily, in Lucens (canton of Vaud) and Meiringen (canton of Bern), without forgetting the necessary Sherlock Holmes Museum in London, at … 239 Baker Street. We no longer count the associations and networks of amateurs. One of the most prestigious, the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI), can boast of having counted among its honorary members Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. We cannot too much advise our former presidents, especially those with some trouble with justice, to avoid joining the Sherlock Holmes de France company. Also in accordance with the misogyny of the detective, the BSI refused until 1991 to welcome women.
The science of deduction
We measure it, Sherlock Holmes has everything of myth. To build his character, Arthur Conan Doyle drew from the best sources: Émile Gaboriau and his famous Lerouge case (1866), which is not unrelated to the title of the first novel putting his hero, Edgar Allan Poe and his detective Dupin, who cohabited with his historiographer. Maybe even Voltaire who, with Zadig (1747-1748) sketched “A manual of the investigation story (by) reading the clues”.
Drama actors
Above all, Sherlock Holmes aggregates other myths. Here he is sphinx, speaking by enigmas, Cassandre, who sees clear but in vain, Circé, because he metamorphoses, doctor Frankenstein, because monster in his desire to know, even Don Quixote, emaciated character decked out of a plump partner, or even vampire, living at night, suddenly emerging from an apparent sleep, resuscitating on occasion.
Light in darkness
Like any myth, he built his legend. However, this edition scratches some pillars. Thus of the famous “elementary my dear Watson” which turns out to be apocryphal. We owe it to the pen of the British-American author Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, admirer of Arthur Conan Doyle, in Psmith, journalist (1915). Likewise, it was to the British illustrator Sidney Paget that the honor of having hated in 1891 the detective of a DeStalkerhideout inseparable from the character that the Scottish author did not quote then, but that he will later mention in Silver flame (The Adventure of Silver Blaze1892).
Finally, the curved pipe is no more Arthur Conan Doyle. “We owe it to the American actor William Gillette (1853-1937), performer at the theater of the character of Sherlock Holmes.” Certainly, like this brave Frankenstein, the creature quickly escaped its creator. In fact, the glory of Sherlock Holmes exceeds that of Arthur Conan Doyle which he finds himself almost condemned to live in the shadow of the detective, more erased than Doctor Watson.
The dying detective
Quickly annoyed by the success of his character, Arthur Conan Doyle plans to make him disappear very early on. In 1891, he wrote to his mother: “I think of killing Holmes and setting her account once and for all. He prevents me from devoting myself to greater projects. ” In fact, the British writer does not intend to produce “In series of easy successful stories” And “The adventures of his illustrious Limier are only a reduced part of his production”that it does not hold as essential.
Historical novels, pamphlets, science fiction, theater, scientific writings: it is prolix and its publications are of quality. Alas! Readers accuse the detective accounts, to the detriment of the author’s other texts. In 1892, new letter to his mother in which he announced that he had completed Red beech trees. “And now, goodbye, Sherlock.”
Death on the moor
For this symbolic farewell, Arthur Conan Doyle requests an extravagant sum (a thousand pounds) from his publisher to write other news. “I sincerely hope they will not accept.” Obviously, the Strand Magazine editions accept. The following year, about to complete a new series, he wrote to his mother again: “I am in the middle of my last story on Holmes, after which this gentleman will disappear, so that never reappears again. His name is important to me. “
This time he keeps his word. At the end of 1893, appeared The last problem. By facing his terrible enemy, Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes is damaged in the falls of Reichenbach, located near Meiringen, Switzerland. The emotion is considerable. “20,000 readers of the Strand would have terminated their subscription overnight and, as a sign of mourning, some arrested a black armband.”
The retired color merchant
However, he will have to resuscitate the bulky character, who eclipses his author but sheltered him from the need and made it possible to abandon his profession as a doctor. From then on, he will just put him in retirement “Without prohibiting him from resuming service punctually, for the needs of his customers, private or the whole nation”. Because how can we imagine that Sherlock Holmes can be satisfied to practice beekeeping in the hills of Sussex (The second task1904)?
The chief
Since in July 1891, the English illustrated monthly The Strand Magazine has published A scandal in bohemiawhich propelled him from 200,000 to 300,000 copies, the success of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes has never denied. In addition to the talent of its author, whose concern for likelihood pushed him to list each rue de London and especially each of his stations, but also to know “The salary of a governess or that of a hydraulic science engineer”
With as much care as the value of a tiara appearing among the treasures of the crown, it is undoubtedly the personality of the detective, more than its sense of deduction, which explains it.
At his silhouette and her face, immediately recognizable and engraved in our collective imagination whatever the actors who embodied him, attaches an extraordinary personality. His sagacity would be nothing without his extravagance, his abruptness, his absences, his great culture, his misanthropy, his detachment of contingencies such as his dependence on drugs, his appearance of a hunting dog, enhanced the atmosphere to find there, when all the possible solutions have been envisaged the only worth: the impossible solution.
When the curtain falls
It is therefore necessary to return to the myth a thousand times declined since its creation to admire this “Amazing Sherlock’s transmigration capacity from one medium to another, largely favored by the promptness with which everyone can recognize their silhouette, but also by the celebrity of their name, on which the authors, producers and screenwriters now. More than ever, by emancipating himself from the writings where he had first published, Sherlock continues to steal the show from Arthur Conan Doyle and gives himself to be seen as an autonomous, free and conquering being. “
