The Sunday Gentleman (71 page)

In his Swiss retreat at 3 Quai Turrettini, Geneva, Adrian Conan Doyle was apparently contemplating his bent lance and sifting through a mass of clippings reviewing my book and its chapter on Dr. Bell. At last, Adrian Doyle took to his pen. If he could not have my neck in a court of law, he would have it in the court of public appeal. His letters went out to such diverse newspapers as the
Northern Echo
, Priestgate, Darlington; the
Bristol Evening World
, Bristol; and
The Bulletin and Scots Pictorial
, Glasgow.

While both J. L. H. Stisted, on behalf of Dr. Bell’s family, and I had replied to Adrian Doyle in the
Sunday Times
of London, and felt our presentation of the facts sufficient, we were now shaken by the force and detail of Adrian Doyle’s fresh and most determined assault. My time was valuable to me, and I saw no use in dredging up all the. old facts once more. I felt any new defense I made would engage me, possibly unto eternity, with a seemingly tireless opponent.

But then I began to read what Adrian Doyle was writing to the British press in February and March of 1957, and I knew that I must rally my strength for one last battle. There was, after all, much at stake. Possibly more for me than for Adrian Doyle. For while the son was defending the integrity of a relative, I was defending my own integrity as an author.

I studied the letter that Adrian Doyle was sending to the press. The full version of Adrian Doyle’s letter, as it appeared in the
Northern Echo
, February 5, 1957, read as follows:

Sir,

Owing to my absence abroad, it is only recently that my attention has been drawn to a book allegedly on the subject of Sherlock Holmes by a Mr. Irving Wallace.

I have never denied that Dr. Bell played a distinguished part in setting the model for Holmes’s methods in my father’s mind and in developing the latter’s own powers for observation and deduction. But that was all. As this American author quotes an 1892 letter in which my father, with typical modesty, attempted to endow his old professor with the identity of Holmes, it is worth while to consider Bell’s reply—“No, no, my dear Conan Doyle, you are yourself Sherlock Holmes, and well you know it.”

The correctness of Bell’s assertion was proved by later events, such as the Slater case, the Edalji case, the Missing Dane, etc. Mr. Wallace attempts to make play with the fact that Stevenson, when expressing his admiration for my father’s writings, identified Bell from the Holmes-trick of deduction. Of course, he did, for this was the very characteristic that first planted in my father’s imagination the idea of developing his own type of detective. But what else did Stevenson write in 1894? “In the forefront of every battle for justice will be seen the white plume of Conan Doyle.” It was a prophecy that came true.

It was Conan Doyle, not Bell, who created Sherlock Holmes, arid it was Conan Doyle, to a far greater degree than Bell, who put into practice Holmes’s methods for the solution of crime in real life. This fact was recognised almost from the first by such famous criminologists as Dr. Edmond Locard, H. Ashton-Wolfe, Dr. Katju, William J. Burns, and others, some of whom came to England for the express purpose of consulting him on difficult cases.

Though Mr. Wallace is ignorant of the real identity of Holmes, the police officials knew, certain criminals knew and so did those who wrote such letters to him as (I quote from the archives): “Sir Conan Doyle, you breaker of my shackles, you lover of truth for justice’s sake”; or “I have had an extraordinary escape and I dread to think what might have happened. I don’t know how to thank you sufficiently…for all you have done for me”; or “There are those who say you have not long to live. I won’t answer for your safety a day.”

We are now told that Bell played a leading part in the Chantrelle murder case, etc., and yet I am informed by an expert in criminological history that his name is not even mentioned in any of the documentations which are given in full in Notable British Trials. It seems that the editors of England’s most renowned encyclopaedia of crime have been startlingly remiss.

Reasonable criticism one accepts, however much one may disagree with it, but I will not remain silent in the face of downright inventions about my father. There is not a word of truth in the assertion that he wrote “letter after letter to Bell, asking him, and thanking him, for plots.” As curator of his records, which incidentally include many thousands of letters covering every period of his life, I am in a position to state that he corresponded very little with his old teacher.

In chasing the shadow rather than the substance, Mr. Wallace has missed a golden opportunity. Had he been a researcher, he would have found himself engrossed in my father’s wonderful archives, where he might have learnt of the part that Holmes, or rather his “fabulous original,” played behind the scenes of Britain’s national life. Only a few weeks ago, a learned professor who, at the instigation of a world-famous university, has been occupied with these very researches, preparatory to a fully documented 300,000-word standard reference work on my father, wrote to me: “In spite of Dickson Carr’s fine Life of Sir Arthur, I did not realize the wide range of influence, all the more extraordinary because it was hidden, that your father wielded in national affairs during that critical period from the turn of the century until the end of the Great War.” There, in the facts of that hidden influence functioning on a noble level and in his country’s interests, we have the epitome of the living Holmes.

Yours etc.,

Adrian Conan Doyle

I knew that I could not permit this attack on my Dr. Bell story to go unchallenged. And so, marshaling my research notes, I replied to Adrian Doyle carefully and at length. I sent off my defense of Dr. Bell as prototype not only to the
Northern Echo
, where it appeared in full on March 27, 1957, but to every other British newspaper which I learned had published Adrian Doyle’s attack. My letter, as it appeared in the
Northern Echo
, read as follows:

Sir
,

Several months ago, the
Northern Echo
was kind enough to review my book,
The Fabulous Originals
, which concerned itself with unusual real persons who inspired the creation of memorable characters in fiction. Among the most notable of these was Dr. Joseph Bell, consulting surgeon to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, whose remarkable talents inspired one of his students, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to invent Sherlock Holmes.

Recently, I have been informed there appeared in your pages a letter, signed by Mr. Adrian Conan Doyle, taking strong exception to the facts in my book—facts unearthed after years of research and first-hand interviews. Since Mr. Doyle disparages my research, my biography of Dr. Bell, and the abilities of Dr. Bell himself, I feel it my duty to have my day in court.

While one must, indeed, admire Mr. Doyle’s filial devotion, one cannot help but feel that this very devotion detracts from his objectivity. I have made the full case for Dr. Bell as the original of Sherlock Holmes in my book. I shall do no more than briefly summarise that case here.

1. The star witness in the case for Dr. Bell remains none other than the creator of Sherlock Holmes himself. A. Conan Doyle, in a letter to Dr. Bell dated May 7, 1892, frankly acknowledged the source of his inspiration. He admitted that he owed the creation of Holmes to his old instructor’s teachings and to his demonstrations of deduction, inference and observation. A. Conan Doyle further acknowledged Dr. Bell as the prototype in interviews given to the press and in his autobiography.

2. Over a period of years I corroborated A. Conan Doyle’s admission by correspondence or personal interviews with other students who, like Doyle, had studied under Dr. Bell in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and who knew the role their mentor played in the creation of Sherlock Holmes. Among these were Dr. J. Gordon Wilson, Mr. Z. M. Hamilton, and Dr. Harold E. Jones. Even Robert Louis Stevenson, in 1893, after meeting the “ingenious and very interesting’ Sherlock Holmes in print for the first time, asked A. Conan Doyle in a letter from Samoa, “Only one thing troubles me. Can this be my old friend, Joe Bell?”

3. Though A. Conan Doyle’s place in modem literature is secure, though he performed wonders in the Edalji and Slater cases, there are still those who have written that Doyle was “singularly unobservant.” Dr. Bell, on the other hand, performed miracles of observation and deduction before his students, among them Doyle—and his investigations in the Chantrelle, Monson, and Jack the Ripper murder cases cannot be dismissed lightly. Mr. Adrian Doyle remains highly suspicious of Dr. Bell’s detecting abilities, since an “expert” had informed him that the Notable British Trials edition of the Chantrelle murder made no mention of Dr. Bell. On the other hand, Mr. Adrian Doyle’s “expert” neglected to inform him that many other English sources did give fair credit to Dr. Bell’s role in this case, among them the late William Roughead, a leading editor of the Notable British Trials series.

With little relevance to the issue at hand, Mr. Adrian Doyle has made a spirited defence of his father’s “hidden influence” in the affairs of England. I do not doubt this, and never have. A. Conan Doyle is as admired and beloved in America as in his homeland. This, however, makes him no better a candidate for the prototype of Sherlock Holmes than Dr. Bell, who counted among his supporters Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale—and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Mr. Adrian Doyle’s untiring argument for his father as prototype and detective seems to me unnecessary. His father has his immortality as author of the Sherlock Holmes saga. It is enough. He does not require (nor, I feel sure, would he demand, were he alive) the additional honour of being the model for his own hero. Undoubtedly, were he alive today, he would repeat what he asserted more than a half-century ago—that Dr. Joseph Bell was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.

Yours etc.,

Irving Wallace

With the publication of my letter, there came silence and peace, and it was wonderful. This zany literary conflict about who was the real Sherlock Holmes ended in 1957, and has not been revived to this day. It is my hope that a mellower Adrian Conan Doyle has come to a closer understanding of what the Dr. Bell heirs feel and what I believe: that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle deserves all of the credit for being the creator of one of the greatest and most enduring characters of fiction, Sherlock Holmes, and that Sir Arthur’s university instructor. Dr. Joseph Bell, deserves credit for having possessed extraordinary gifts that inspired the invention of Doyle’s character.

I shall conclude with a summary of the controversy, written by the Marquis of Donegal in
The Sherlock Holmes Journal
, tenth issue, published by the Sherlock Holmes Society of London:

“There, for the moment, the matter rests…Let us call the fair-minded layman’s attention to Dr. Bell’s preface to the 1893 Ward, Lock and Bowden edition of
A Study in Scarlet
.

“Obviously, Dr. Bell’s modesty forbade him to lay direct claim to being the ‘prototype.’ But he writes:—(the italics are ours)

“‘Dr. Conan Doyle’s
education as a student of medicine taught
him how to observe, and his practice…has been a splendid training for a man such as he is,
gifted
with eyes, memory and imagination.

“‘
Trained
as he has been to
notice
and
appreciate
minute detail, Dr. Doyle saw how he could interest his intelligent readers…’

“
So
, as Jonathan Small asked, in
The Sign of Four
:—‘Is there any other point you would like to ask about?’”

20

Don’t Call Her Madam

This is about sex in Japan.

For five years now, week after week, the Tokyo radio has been promising elimination of the geisha girl. The most recent shortwave reports state that all geisha will soon become members of women’s labor battalions.

I am here to say it will not come to pass.

In mobilizing their empire for a last-ditch stand in this Second World War, the Japanese leaders can go far. They can make their people eat dried seaweed, canned grasshoppers, bread baked of straw and green leaves. They can make their people give up telephones, warm kimonos, weekend vacations, autos, tobacco, foreign movies, romantic songs, dancing. They can eliminate formal wedding ceremonies. They can remove the sacred metal from a hundred thousand temples.

All this they can take away, and no trouble. But let them touch the geisha—and comes the revolution.

The reason, of course, is that in Japan sex is a special subject, kept apart from all others, as are Bushido, flower arrangement, Sendai chests, slave labor, and the emperor. I learned this in Tokyo a year before Pearl Harbor, when I visited Mr. Hidezo Kuo, known variously as President of the Shimbashi Geisha Guild and the yellow woman’s John L. Lewis.

It was only in order to understand the nature of the Japanese better that I explored the subject of the geisha girl.

Japan is a man’s world. The average wife is no more than a passive instrument for breeding. Romance and love in the Western sense do not warm the Japanese family hearth. But there is another guise for sex—or sexual stimulation. In Japan, the geisha girl alone represents a lofty world where flirtation and romance are raised to professional arts, mellowed and refined by centuries of practice. The geisha girl is sex in Japan. And she is there to stay.

I was first introduced to the geisha by a lanky, toothy Indian named V. Chockalingam, who was recommended to me as the one person who could show me the Tokyo not to be found in the guidebooks. He eked out a living by writing occasional dispatches for the United India Press. He spoke several Indian tongues, a perfect Japanese which he had learned while at his university, and English. He read banned books and argued world politics in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel.

It was Chock who took me, one Saturday night, first to the renowned Yoshiwara district of Tokyo. The Yoshiwara is a city within a city, where at least 6,000 of Japan’s 70,000 licensed “one-night wives” or prostitutes—who are not geisha—are segregated. Most of them are in semislavery, each dwelling in a tiny cage-style house with barred windows. This system has had apologists. In an English-language guidebook published by the Hokuseido Press of Tokyo, an Englishman, George Caiger, writes of the Yoshiwara: