A Study in Scarlet

Book 0: Modern Library Classics

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

"A Study in Scarlet" is the first novel featuring Sherlock Holmes, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published in 1887. The book introduces the iconic characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson, who become roommates and, shortly after, close friends. The novel's narrative is centered around the investigation of a mysterious murder in London, showcasing Holmes' brilliant deductive reasoning skills. The story also features a lengthy flashback to the American West, explaining the motives behind the crime. Overall, "A Study in Scarlet" sets the stage for the Holmesian canon, blending elements of mystery, drama, and complex human emotions.

Release date: December 18, 2007

Publisher: Modern Library

Print pages: 160

Sample

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Picardy Place in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859, son of Charles Altamount Doyle and Mary (Foley)
Doyle, and one of seven children who survived to adulthood. The Doyles were an artistic family, the most successful being
Arthur’s uncle ‘Dickie’ Doyle, the noted illustrator for Punch, but his father suffered from alcoholism and later epilepsy, and was eventually committed to a mental hospital. Conan Doyle
maintained a distant relationship with him, but it was his mother, whom he affectionately referred to as ‘the Ma’am’, who
encouraged his love of literature, and he remained close to her throughout his life. The young Arthur was educated at the
northern Jesuit school Stonyhurst, going on to study medicine at Edinburgh and was an enthusiastic reader and storyteller
from a young age, as well as being an active sportsman.


Conan Doyle incurred the wrath of his rich relations when he announced he was an agnostic. Rejecting their strict Catholicism
and cut off from their patronage, he decided to set up his own practice in Southsea in 1882. There he met his first wife,
Louise Hawkins or ‘Touie’, and the couple were married in 1885, later having two children, a son and a daughter. But in 1897
Conan Doyle met and instantly fell in love with Jean Leckie. They maintained a platonic relationship for ten years and Conan
Doyle struggled with his feelings of guilt and deep affection for his wife and his passion for Jean. When in 1906 Touie died
of consumption, Conan Doyle genuinely mourned her. He finally married Jean in 1907 and they had two sons and a daughter, living
very happily together on their estate in Sussex, Windlesham, until Conan Doyle’s death in 1930.


It was in the year after his first marriage that Conan Doyle began toying with a character called Sherrinford Holmes. This
was to become the first Sherlock Holmes story, his ‘shilling shocker’, A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887.


And so the celebrated detective was born, with the faithful Dr Watson at his side. Conan Doyle consistently gave credit for
the character to Dr Joseph Bell, an old tutor of his from Edinburgh University whose precision and powers of deduction Conan
Doyle greatly admired. On the origins of the name, he commented that ‘I made thirty runs [at cricket] against a bowler by
the name of Sherlock, and I always had a kindly feeling for the name’.


But it was in the new, popular literary magazine the Strand that the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes really took off, with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ appearing in 1891. It was an instant
hit. Sidney Paget created the distinctive illustrations of Holmes, based on his younger brother Walter, depicted in a deerstalker
(the pipe would come later). This iconic image became etched in the public’s mind and was more glamorous than Conan Doyle
had envisaged; ‘the handsome Walter took the place of the more powerful, but uglier, Sherlock, and perhaps from the point
of view of my lady readers it was as well.’


By this time Conan Doyle had given up practising medicine entirely to write. He yearned to concentrate on his historical novels
and, despite his success, saw Holmes as ‘taking his mind from better things’. So, after only two years, in 1893 he decided
to kill him off in ‘The Final Problem’, where Holmes famously met his end alongside his nemesis Professor Moriarty. The public
outcry was instant: women wept, men donned black armbands and subscriptions to the Strand plummeted by over 20,000, yet Conan Doyle was unmoved: ‘I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.’ It wasn’t until 1901 that Holmes
reappeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles (a story that predated his death) and, with the public clamouring for more, Conan Doyle finally brought him back to life
in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903). By the beginning of the twentieth century the fan base for Sherlock Holmes was massive
and far-reaching, from a Boston cabby in America to Abdul Hamid II, the then Sultan of Turkey, and has continued growing to
this day. There have been countless stage productions and films, with Holmes defined by such actors as Basil Rathbone, Jeremy
Brett and Michael Caine. And the stories weren’t merely entertainment; the investigative methods Conan Doyle used are said
to have had a huge influence on police processes at the time.


Although Sir Air Arthur Conan Doyle’s name will always be synonymous with Sherlock Holmes, his volume of works was huge and
wide-ranging, including historical fiction such as Micah Clarke and The White Company, histories of the Boer War and World War One, as well as the Professor Challenger stories, The Lost World (seen as the inspiration for Michael Crichton’s hugely popular Jurassic Park) and The Poison Belt. Conan Doyle’s fascination with spiritualism very much governed his outlook later on in life and he wrote The Coming of the Fairies in response to the case of the Cottingley fairies. Many fans found it hard to associate the creator of a detective so wedded
to cool logic and fact with this ardent champion of the supernatural, but he never swayed in his beliefs.


Conan Doyle died in 1930 at the age of seventy-one, with his beloved Jean by his side, and was buried in the grounds of Windlesham,
with the headstone inscribed, at his request, ‘Steel True, Blade Straight’. Sir Winston Churchill said, ‘I had a great admiration
for him. Of course I read every Sherlock Holmes story … [they] have certainly found a permanent place in English literature.’


In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through
the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland
Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the Second Afghan
War had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes and was already deep in
the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded
in reaching Kandahar in safety, where I found my regiment and at once entered upon my new duties.


The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from
my brigade and attached to the Berkshires with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder
by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the
murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a packhorse
and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.


Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded
sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the
wards, and even to bask a little upon the verandah, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions.
For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated
that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched, accordingly,
in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government
to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.


I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air – or as free as an income of eleven shillings and
sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into
which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel
in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had considerably more freely than
I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become that I soon realised that I must either leave the metropolis and
rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative,
I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel and to take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.


On the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when someone tapped me on the shoulder
and, turning round, I recognised young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Barts. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant
thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm,
and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the
Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom.


‘Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?’ he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London
streets. ‘You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.’


I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.

‘Poor devil!’ he said commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. ‘What are you up to now?’

‘Looking for lodgings,’ I answered. ‘Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at
a reasonable price.’


‘That’s a strange thing,’ remarked my companion, ‘you are the second man today that has used that expression to me.’

‘And who was the first?’ I asked.

‘A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could
not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found but which were too much for his purse.’


‘By Jove!’ I cried; ‘if he really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer
having a partner to being alone.’


Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wine glass. ‘You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,’ he said; ‘perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.’


‘Why, what is there against him?’

‘Oh, I didn’t say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas – an enthusiast in some branches of science.
As far as I know he is a decent fellow enough.’


‘A medical student, I suppose,’ said I.

‘No – I have no idea what he intends to go in for. I believe he is well up in anatomy, and he is a first-class chemist, but
as far as I know he has never taken out any systematic medical classes. His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but
he has amassed a lot of out-of-the-way knowledge which would astonish his professors.’


‘Did you never ask him what he was going in for?’ I asked.

‘No; he is not a man that it is easy to draw out, though he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him.’

‘I should like to meet him,’ I said. ‘If I am to lodge with anyone, I should prefer a man of studious and quiet habits. I
am not strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement. I had enough of both in Afghanistan to last me for the remainder
of my natural existence. How could I meet this friend of yours?’


‘He is sure to be at the laboratory,’ returned my companion. ‘He either avoids the place for weeks, or else he works there
from morning till night. If you like, we will drive round together after luncheon.’


‘Certainly,’ I answered, and the conversation drifted away into other channels.

As we made our way to the hospital after leaving the Holborn, Stamford gave me a few more particulars about the gentleman whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.


‘You mustn’t blame me if you don’t get on with him,’ he said; ‘I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting
him occasionally in the laboratory. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold . . .