Let me ask a rather strange question: “Did there really live a brilliant detective named Sherlock Holmes?”

No? Then why did half the world beg Conan Doyle to give Mr. Holmes's real address? (It’s elementary, after all, that Baker Street was named for purposes of conspiracy.) And why did the writer bring messages (from fully grown, respectable ladies and gentlemen) to give to the person mentioned?.. Yes, I completely forgot about autographs: Conan Doyle was simply tormented with requests to get an autograph famous detective!

The consulting detective received very serious offers to investigate family secrets. The newspaper clippings bureau was wondering if a celebrity would like to become their regular subscriber. The image of Holmes (alone and with Dr. Watson) has been repeatedly depicted on postage stamps.

Holmes - V. Livanov

Someone meticulously calculated that 52 of Holmes's statements became aphorisms and were included in daily life English. The most famous of them: “This is a three-tube case, Watson!” And how many jokes about the famous detective are circulating around the world! Chapaev and Stirlitz are resting...

When Mr. Holmes retired and settled on a small farm in Sussex to indulge in his favorite pastime - raising bees, several elderly ladies were ready to manage his household, becoming a kind of successor to Mrs. Hudson. One particularly persistent lady insisted that she loved raising bees and was able to accurately “spot the queen.”

And finally, a message flashed in one of the English newspapers in 1957: Sherlock Holmes died on January 6, his birthday, at the age of 103.

So did the great detective really exist?

Dossier

Sherlock Holmes had a huge card index of all the criminals he knew. It is not surprising that information about the consulting detective himself was carefully collected and stored not only in the annals of Scotland Yard, but also in the private archives of the criminal world. We invite you to familiarize yourself with one of the documents that has reached us. The compiler and owner of the text, unfortunately, is unknown.

Dossier

Last name, first name: Holmes, Sherlock.

Year of birth: 1887 (see Encyclopædia Britannica). However, a certain Nathan Benjis, one of Mr. Holmes’ admirers, named a completely different year - 1854. And he even specified the day - January 6th.

Parents: father - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; mother - name unknown. Granddaughter of the sister of the French artist Horace Vernet (1789-1863).

Family status: single

Close relatives: brother - Mycroft Holmes, seven years older than Sherlock. Political figure.

Appearance: thin build, height more than six feet (more than 180 cm), thin aquiline nose, square, slightly protruding chin, sharp, piercing gaze, “somewhat creaky” voice.

Education: may have studied at Oxford. Cambridge is excluded.

Address: UK, London, Baker Street, 221-b. Occupation: private investigator or consulting detective.

Baker Street at the beginning of the 20th century

First thing: investigation into the causes of the sudden death of Magistrate Mr. Trevor (story "Gloria Scott").

Friends: a doctor named Watson (or Watson). The acquaintance took place in 1881.

Main enemies: Professor Moriarty, Colonel Sebastian Moran.

Bad habits: smoking, addiction to morphine and cocaine.

Hobby: chemistry, violin playing. Has a weakness for Turkish baths.

Favorite newspapers: Daily Telegraph, Times.

Sports hobbies: boxing, fencing, golf, swimming, martial arts. Shots a pistol very well.

Published works: brochures “Identification of tobacco varieties by ashes”, “Guide to bee breeding”, works on footprints, on the influence of professions on the shape of the hand, monograph “Polyphonic Motets of Lassus”. Sherlock Holmes also wrote two stories about his own investigations. The best of them is "Lion's Mane".

Special Notes: nothing is known about the life of Sherlock Holmes after 1914.

Predecessors

Among the ancestors of Sherlock Holmes were detectives Dupin and Legrand from the stories of E. Poe and Lecoq from the novels of the Frenchman E. Gaboriot. “Gaborio attracted me because of how he knew how to twist a plot, and the insightful detective Monsieur Dupin of Edgar Poe was my favorite hero since childhood,” A. Conan Doyle once admitted. The third “ancestor” of the detective-consultant can be considered detective Cuff from W. Collins’ novel “The Moonstone”.

Name

In the 19th century, the American poet, writer and scientist Oliver Wendell Holmes was very popular in England. A. Conan Doyle always had his books on his shelf: “The Autocrat”, “The Poet”, “The Professor for dining table" Sir Arthur once said: “Never have I so understood or loved a man whom I had never seen. Meeting him became the goal of my life, but ironically, I arrived in his hometown just in time to lay a wreath on his fresh grave.” Now it’s clear where the name Holmes came from? But with the name everything was not so simple. A. Conan Doyle hesitated for a long time what to call the great detective: Sheringford or Sherlock.

Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur

Modern biographers of Sir Arthur unanimously claim that for many years he was financially dependent on the consulting detective. And, as often happens in such cases, I didn’t particularly like this man. Having finally overcome the depressing lack of money, Conan Doyle happily drowned Sherlock Holmes in a Swiss waterfall. Is this true or a legend?

As you know, Conan Doyle was inseparable from Sherlock Holmes for almost his entire adult life. And his attitude towards the detective-consultant during this time was like any other normal person, has changed many times.

Well, if we're really serious...

Start:
Do you know what the young doctor meant... no, of course, not Watson, but Conan Doyle, when he said that he was able to write “something... fresh, bright and tasty”? So, these are stories about Sherlock Holmes.

After few years:
“Writing about Holmes was difficult because, in fact, each story required the same original, precisely constructed plot as a longer book. I decided that... I wouldn't write Holmes stories unless I had a real plot and a problem that really occupied my mind, because that was the first requirement to interest anyone else. If I managed to nurture this character for a long time and if the public believes and will continue to believe that the last story is no worse than the first, then I owe this entirely to the fact that I have never, or almost never, written stories through force” (A. Conan Doyle).

A little bit later:
The desire to part with Sherlock Holmes with dignity arose when Conan Doyle felt that he was tired and would soon begin to write low-grade stories. So from a trip to the Swiss mountains, the author took away not only admiration for the beauty of the land, but also the idea of ​​​​drowning the poor detective in a waterfall. “I heard that many even cried, but I myself, I’m afraid, remained absolutely cold and only rejoiced at the opportunity to express myself in other areas of fantasy.”

And suddenly Conan Doyle, just like Watson, received a dying message from the great detective. But the intonation here was not at all lyrical. “You’re a fool, you’re a fool! - wrote Sherlock Holmes. - For so many years you lived in luxury thanks to me. With my help, you rode a lot in cabs, where no writer had ever ridden before. From now on you will only travel in omnibuses!” Sir Arthur simply could not tolerate such treatment. And, offended, for ten years he tried not to think about Sherlock Holmes. (To be honest, these words belonged to James Barry, and I took them from his parody of writings about the great detective.)

Ten years later:
What made Conan Doyle return to stories about the famous detective is unlikely to be known for certain. We can assume three main reasons: requests from readers, financial difficulties and the desire to meet again the hero of his youth.

At the end of life:
One of the actors once asked Conan Doyle if it was possible to marry Sherlock Holmes. “Marry him, kill him, do whatever you want with him,” was the author’s answer. An important role here was played by the fact that Sir Arthur was increasingly confused with Holmes. Conan Doyle was especially infuriated by the bill sent to Sir Sherlock. Conan Doyle did not tolerate jokes with titles.

Result:
“I don’t want to be ungrateful to Holmes, who was a good friend to me in many ways. And if I got tired of him, it was because his image did not allow any contrasts” (A. Conan Doyle).

Declaration of love:

I have completed my simple task,
If you gave me at least an hour of joy
To a boy who is already half a man,
Or a man who is still half a boy.

(Epitaph on Sir Arthur's grave,
written by himself.)

Habits of a Consulting Detective

Unless there was urgent work, Mr. Holmes woke up late. When the blues came over him (oh, that notorious English spleen!), he, dressed in a mouse-colored robe, could remain silent for days. In the same “cheerful” attire, he carried out his endless chemical experiments. The remaining robes - red and bluish - expressed other states of mind and were used in a variety of situations.

At times, Sherlock Holmes was overwhelmed by the desire to argue, then, instead of the traditional clay one, he lit a pipe made of cherry tree. Deep in thought, the famous detective allowed himself to bite his nails (on his hands, of course). He was unreasonably little interested in food and his own health.

By the way, for some reason the consulting detective kept pipes and cigars in a coal bucket, and tobacco in the toe of a Persian shoe. However, this was only the most harmless detail of the chaos he created in the house. Justifying himself, Holmes said that in such chaos he could think better.

Sherlock Holmes' Friend: Breaking the Stereotype

You can familiarize yourself with the beginning of Dr. Watson’s life; to do this, you just need to open “A Study in Scarlet” and read the first few pages. For those who don’t have the book at hand, I’ll tell you briefly...

John Hamish Watson was born in the early 50s of the 19th century. He spent his childhood in Australia. He graduated from the Medical College of the University of London and entered the course of military surgeons at Netley. In Afghanistan, in the Battle of Maiwand, he was seriously wounded and sent into retirement.

(Further information about Watson should be closely followed throughout the numerous texts.)

Watson's father died, his older brother, having squandered his inheritance, became an alcoholic. The meeting with Holmes became a salvation from loneliness for the doctor. Watson helped the great detective for 17 years (not excluding the years when he was married). He also visited Holmes at the apiary in Sussex, after he stopped doing his investigations.

Watson was a good doctor and was popular with patients, first in Paddington and Kensington, then on Queen Anne Street, where he established a private practice.

These are all facts, and now let's turn to emotions. For some reason, many consider Watson to be a narrow-minded person and completely devoid of individuality. In fact, he was a charming gentleman, whose virtues include fearlessness, tolerance, impeccable attitude towards women, literary talent, the ability to be ironic about oneself and not to become despondent under any circumstances. And Watson was definitely not stupid. Don't believe me? Then remember the saying: “Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are.”

Take another close look at Watson. Honestly, the doctor is often much nicer than Holmes. And life, by the way, did not spoil him at all (see biography).

Is Watson right?

Watson once wrote a humorous "Certificate" of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes - his capabilities

1. Knowledge in the field of literature - none.

2. Knowledge in the field of philosophy - none.

3. Knowledge in the field of astronomy - none.

4. Knowledge in the field of politics is weak.

5. Knowledge in the field of botany is uneven. Knows the properties of belladonna, opium and poisons in general. Has no idea about gardening.

6. Knowledge in the field of geology - practical, but limited. Identifies different soil samples at a glance. After walking, he shows me splashes of dirt on his trousers and, based on their color and consistency, determines what part of London it is from.

7. Knowledge in the field of chemistry is deep.

8. Knowledge of anatomy is accurate.

9. Knowledge in the field of criminal chronicles is enormous. He seems to know all the details of every crime committed in the nineteenth century.”

10. Plays the violin well.

11. Excellent fencing with swords and espadrons, an excellent boxer.

12. Thorough practical knowledge of English laws.

It is unlikely that Dr. Watson heard Kozma Prutkov’s statement: “A specialist is like gumboil.” Mr. Holmes's biographer, however, has followed this aphorism almost exactly. And of course, I was wrong in many ways.

Let's start with the fact that Holmes did not just play the violin, but was a true music lover. He improvised, composed music himself, adored the work of German composers and constantly dragged poor Watson with him to concerts. In addition, Holmes was well versed in the advantages and disadvantages of Cremonese violins and easily discussed “the difference between the masterpieces of Stradivarius and Amati.”

Fiction was also no stranger to the consulting detective. He could choose the work of the English writer George Meredith as a topic for conversation. At times he quoted Goethe, G. Flaubert, and in the original, and once, by the way, in front of Watson, he pulled out a pocket volume of Petrarch to enjoy poetry on the road.

“Holmes had no knowledge of gardening,” said Dr. Watson. The fact in itself is dubious, because no Englishman has yet been born who knows nothing about growing plants. What can you do, national tradition! In addition, feeling London as his element, the great detective, as it turned out later, secretly dreamed of “plunging into the peace and silence of nature.”

“Let’s go for a walk in these wonderful groves, Watson, let’s admire the birds and flowers.”

So is Watson right?

There was an error

“I've never really worried about the details - sometimes you need to feel like you're in control. Once, when an alarmed editor wrote to me: “There is no second line of rails in this place,” I replied: “And I will lay one.” (A. Conan Doyle)

As you know, Dr. Watson voluntarily became Sherlock Holmes' biographer. Having taken on such a serious responsibility, he always tried to be extremely punctual. Except that in the “Motley Ribbon” the snake descended on a freely hanging cord, which, according to herpetologists, in principle could not be done, and the announcement of the “Union of Redheads” was published in the “Morning Chronicle”, a newspaper that by that time had long since gone bankrupt . But when talking about himself, Watson makes some rather strange mistakes. He cannot remember whether the bullet fired by the “merciless ghazi” was lodged in his shoulder or leg. Or he completely forgets given name. In "A Study in Scarlet" he calls himself John H. Watson (John G. Watson - in another translation), and in the story "The Man with the Cut Lip" he unexpectedly turns into James. Apparently, the war in Afghanistan did not end so harmlessly for the doctor. However, Watson preferred not to dwell on this topic too much.

Deduction method

This way of thinking logically was “taught” to Sherlock Holmes by Joseph Bell, a surgeon at Edinburgh Hospital. By the way, the famous detective partially inherited his extraordinary appearance from Bell. Don't believe me? Ask A. Conan Doyle.

“Bell was a very remarkable man, both in appearance and in mind. He was tall, wiry, dark-haired, with a long-nosed, penetrating face, attentive gray eyes, thin shoulders and a twitching gait. His voice was harsh. He was very strong in diagnostics, not only of diseases, but also of profession and character. For reasons that remained a mystery to me, he singled me out from the crowd of students who often visited his wards and made me his outpatient secretary... But I had great opportunity to study his methods and be convinced that often, having glanced at a patient, he learned more about him than I, who asked him questions” (A. Conan Doyle).

By the way, Joseph Bell was sympathetic to Sherlock Holmes and carefully followed the progress of his investigations.

Famous phrase

Sherlock Holmes's most famous line? "Elementary Watson". However, Russian translators sometimes forced the detective to pronounce the tasteless “excellent” or “primitive”, “quite simple” or “nonsense”. Only occasionally on the pages of domestic publications does one encounter the proud “elementary, Watson!” But in 1991, a newspaper of the Holmesian society was published in Sverdlovsk, which was called... Well, of course, “Elementary, Watson!”

Sayings of Sherlock Holmes

Holmes, as a rule, spoke little, but his speech was filled with aphorisms. Let me remind you of just a few of them.

“My whole life is a continuous effort to escape the dreary monotony of our everyday life. Little riddles that I sometimes solve help me achieve this goal.”

"Investigation of crimes - exact science, at least, it should be.”

“I imagine the human brain is like a little empty attic that you can furnish however you want.”

“If you throw away everything completely impossible, then exactly what remains - no matter how incredible it may seem - is the truth!”

“I never guess. A very bad habit: it has a detrimental effect on the ability to think logically.”

“You see everything, but you don’t give yourself the trouble to think about what you see!”

Unsolved cases

Among the unsolved cases of Sherlock Holmes was the disappearance of a certain James Phillimore, who returned home to get an umbrella and disappeared forever. The great detective failed to find traces of the Alicia boat, which once disappeared forever into the fog. What remains shrouded in darkness is the murder of Mr. Persano, a journalist by profession and a duelist by vocation, whose corpse was found frozen next to... a caterpillar unknown to science (or maybe a worm or even a worm; in English it’s all spelled the same - worm), in general, with something long and narrow, hidden in a matchbox.

Of course, not all of Holmes’s failures are mentioned here, but who likes to remember their defeats?!

Portrait painters

The first portrait of Sherlock Holmes was created by Conan Doyle's father, Charles Doyle. However, the publishers and, apparently, even his son did not like the work. In any case, Sir Arthur tried not to mention these drawings.

Readers first saw what the famous detective and his constant friend Doctor Watson looked like on the pages of the Strand Magazine. The author of the published portraits of Holmes and Watson was the artist Sidney Paget. The model in this case was Walter Paget, younger brother illustrator and fellow artist. From the point of view of A. Conan Doyle, Sherlock turned out to be too handsome, having largely lost the expressiveness of his appearance. “However, from the point of view of ... the readers, it was for the best,” Sir Arthur later remarked condescendingly. When Sidney died in 1904, Walter continued his work.

The Americans, however, preferred a different image of the consulting detective. It was drawn by Frederick Dorr Steele. The theater actor William Gillett, generally recognized as the best Sherlock Holmes of the 19th century, posed for him.

However, it seems that Moscow artist Leonid Kozlov has surpassed everyone, who created 10,000 (!) drawings on the theme of “the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.” Conan Doyle's daughter Jane, married to Lady Broument, blessed him in writing for such a great feat. Unfortunately, only one album by Leonid Kozlov has been published so far. (And there were supposed to be seven of them.) Gentlemen, publishers, when will we see the rest?

Theater

The young Doctor Conan Doyle, who wrote his first story about Holmes and Watson, could not have dreamed that he would make his heroes appear on the stage. Moreover, in order to save the rented theater from collapse.

However, a few years later, Conan Doyle had to write a play about Sherlock Holmes in a week. It was called, like the story of the same name, “The Speckled Ribbon.” The play firmly entered the theatrical repertoire and began to be performed throughout the country with triumph. "For execution title role(Please note!) We had an excellent rocky boa constrictor, who was my pride,” Conan Doyle recalled. “So you can imagine my indignation when I learned that one literary critic ended his dismissive review with the words: “ Critical moment in this production is caused by the appearance of an obviously artificial snake.” I was ready to pay him decent money if he decided to take her to bed with him... In the end, we began to use artificial snakes..."

The Speckled Band was the second play about Sherlock Holmes. The first, as Conan Doyle said, “was written and best directed by William Gillett, the famous American actor. I really liked the play, the performance, and the financial result.”

There was also a play “Sherlock Holmes”, which combined the plots of several stories by Conan Doyle. She lasted on stage for 30 years, performing 230 performances. Among the performers was young Charles Chaplin. (The play was shown on American television in 1975.)

However, deep down, Conan Doyle was dissatisfied with all the productions without exception. “Before leaving the subject of the various theatrical incarnations of Holmes, I can say that all of them, like his portraits, differed from my original plan.”

I wonder if Sir Arthur has seen how Holmes dances dashingly in musicals or soars over the stage in a ballet?..

Movie

Did you know that in terms of the number of film adaptations (more than 200), Holmes and Watson were included in the Guinness Book of Records. And that the role of the great detective was played by 80 actors (and one of them, Sam Robinson, was black).

The first film, Sherlock Holmes Perplexed, was directed by Thomas Edison in 1900 and lasted 30 seconds. A film was later made based on William Gillett's play, but the film has not survived. Dr. Watson first appeared in 1906 in the American film Sherlock Holmes and the Great Murder Mystery. In 1912, The Speckled Band (England-France) was staged, and in 1914, The Hound of the Baskervilles. In 1927, the sound film “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle” appeared on the screens, where the writer himself talks about his books about Sherlock Holmes. I'd like to see it!..

Obviously, it is impossible, and it is not necessary, to analyze all the films about Holmes and Watson. Therefore, N. Chernetskaya acted very wisely by dividing the history of foreign Holmesian cinema into five periods and naming the most famous couples Holmes-Watson.

1. The era of silent films and early sound films (1900-1939).

2. The Rathbone-Bruce era (1939-1946).

3. The period of disparate film and television versions.

4. Brett - Burke - Hardwick era (1984-1993).

5. Modern era.

Famous acting duets:

The first successful duet in the history of cinema was actors Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, with whose participation 14 films were shot. For Rathbone, Holmes's main characteristics were his energy and quick thinking. Bruce's Watson had outstanding slowness and slowness, which set off the famous detective.

A grandiose era in Holmesian cinema was the films (40 episodes!) with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and David Burke, and then Edward Hardwick as Doctor Watson. Brett managed to embody in his hero the unity of opposites: consistency and spontaneity, energy and inertia, rationality and richness of feelings. Burke's and Hardwick's Watsons were each good in their own way. Burke personified youth, energy, simplicity, spontaneity, Hardwick portrayed a balanced, intelligent English doctor of the Victorian era.

The option with reincarnations is interesting. Thus, actor Patrick Macnee first played Watson opposite Roger Moore, then turned into Holmes in the television film The Phantom of London (1993).

Patrick Macnee played the role of Watson in another film, “The Incident at Victoria Falls” (1997). Sherlock Holmes here - Christopher Lee (Christopner Lee). Interestingly, in another film, Christopher Lee was Mycroft Holmes.

You can read more about foreign film adaptations on the Russian-language website “Sherlock Holmes at Nadezhda Chernetskaya”.

However, we know that the best Holmes in the world is, of course, Vasily Livanov, and the most charming Watson is Vitaly Solomin. It’s just not entirely clear whether foreign admirers of A. Conan Doyle share our opinion. In some sources you will read that foreigners recognized Livanov and Solomin as the most famous Holmes and Watson, in others that foreign moviegoers do not even suspect the existence of brilliant Russian actors. I wonder where the truth is?.. In any case, the “Russian” Holmes and Watson are familiar to the British. Having opened one of the British sites dedicated to the great detective, I was surprised to find Solomin and Livanov smiling on the screen.

Memorial places

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. in London, on Baker Street there was no house 221-b (the letter “b” simply means the second floor).

Now such a house exists, and it houses a permanent Sherlock Holmes Museum. It all started with an exhibition, which was opened by the widow of the writer Jean Conan Doyle in a house on Baker Street in the 1950s. Then some of the things were moved to the Sherlock Holmes Tavern on Northumberland Street. Here they are to this day, as well as portraits of film actors who played the role of a consulting detective. They say that in England there is a tradition - all those entering service in Scotland Yard consider it their duty to stop by the tavern on Northumberland Street and have a glass or two there.

However, let's return to the main museum. Those wishing to visit it can go to the Baker Street metro station. And let them not be surprised if a tall gentleman approaches them and extends his business card with the surname Holmes. You are simply invited to visit the legendary house at number 221.

And here is a staircase of seventeen steps, which, as expected in the text, leads to the second floor. The famous Baker Street drawing room. Fireplace, armchairs, retorts for chemical experiments, a pipe in a coal bucket, master keys, a magnifying glass... However, fans of Sherlock Holmes will list all this without me, without even crossing the threshold of the museum.

(You can watch a video clip showing the setting of the famous living room on the English-language website.)

Downstairs, in the basement of building 221, there is a restaurant called Mrs. Hudson's, and next to it is a souvenir shop that sells pipes, key chains, postcards, handcuffs (real or not?), a model cab, a bust of the great detective and ... porcelain figurines of heroes, upon closer inspection, they turn out to be a table set of Holmes and Watson pepper shakers and salt shakers. Oh this one English humor! Or maybe business? However, it is curious which of the friends is the pepper shaker and which is the salt shaker.

The memory of Holmes is carefully preserved not only by the staff of the two museums.

There is a plaque at St. Bartholomew's Hospital stating that it was here, in 1881, that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson first met. The second memorial plaque was installed in Switzerland at the infamous waterfall.

Sculptures of Sherlock Holmes have been erected in several cities in England.

Awards

For reasons that are not fully clear, Sherlock Holmes refused to be knighted. This was in June 1902. However, he considered it an honor to accept the Legion of Honor. About several memorable gifts received by the detective from crowned heads and others powerful of the world Let us modestly keep silent about this.

And most recently, on October 16, 2002, Mr. Holmes was accepted as a member of the British Royal Society of Chemistry. Typically, this honor is awarded mainly to laureates Nobel Prize, outstanding scientists and industrialists. Secretary General society, Dr David Giachardi, commenting on the decision to admit the great detective to the society, said: “It was great person, who used his clear mind, courage and scientific achievements in the fight against evil."

Hymn

This is not a bad joke, but a real anthem of one of the Holmesian societies. By the way, you are supposed to sing while standing.

Sherlock Holmes look-alikes

Doubles of Sherlock Holmes began to appear with incredible speed. I don’t know how it is in England and America, but here in Russia we have always been quite careless about... um... borrowing. Steal? Why not? The author is far away, but the reading public will like it. Therefore, I dare to suggest that the freshly baked Holmeses especially flourished in Russia. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Levinson publishing house released a series of books about the “adventures of Sherlock Holmes.” History is silent about who composed these fake crafts; most likely, it was a group of eternally hungry beginners or tragically untalented writers. The “epic” “The Secret of the Red Mask” was especially popular. This endless (96 issues!) work totaled 1536 pages. (Let Tolstoy and Tolkien be jealous!) And a certain Mr. Orlovets offered readers “reports on the adventures of Holmes in Russia.” In some publications, Holmes had a young assistant named Harry (and where did they put Watson?). So the noble private detective of Victorian England became a brother of Nat Pinkerton and Nick Carter. However, this is not entirely true. Contemporaries argued that more literate people wrote about Sherlock Holmes, “and Pinkerton - whoever is not too lazy.” It was not for nothing that Pinkerton was worth five kopecks, and Holmes was worth seven.

Fortunately, Conan Doyle did not know the Russian language (it is known for certain that he immediately put letters from Russia in a box, considering them read), and it never occurred to anyone to translate all this nonsense into the author’s native language. Sir Arthur was quite familiar with the nonsense that flashed in the English and American press with the regularity of meteorites. One “timeless masterpiece” was dedicated to a woman who came to Holmes for advice: “I don’t know at all what to think, sir. In one week I lost a car horn, a broom, a box of golf balls, a dictionary and a shoe horn...” “Nothing could be simpler, madam,” Sherlock replied. “It’s clearer than clear that your neighbor keeps a goat.” Another story “tells how Sherlock went to heaven and, thanks to his extraordinary powers of observation, immediately recognized and greeted Adam” (“gentlemen, hussars, be silent!”).

Then they began to write well and seriously. Among the authors (it is impossible to list them all) were Adrian Conan Doyle (son of Sir Arthur), the master of the detective genre John Dixon Carr, and the creator of numerous “horror films” Stephen King. (Their stories about Holmes have been translated into Russian.) US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not remain indifferent to the image of Holmes. He is the author of the book “The Baker Street Folio: Five Notes on Sherlock Holmes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt” (1945).

It is recognized that one of the best serious works is “A Study of Fear” by Ellery Queen (pseudonym of Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee). Here Holmes solves the case of Jack the Ripper, whose sinister figure kept all of London in fear for a long time. (Queen E. A Study of Fear // Doyle A.K. Valley of Terror; Queen E. A Study of Fear. - St. Petersburg: Terra Incognita, . - P. 93-198.)

Among more or less modern works, we can offer a collection of stories by Mikhail Trushin and Vladimir Petrin “Illuminations of Sherlock Holmes” (1997). The cover was made by L. Kozlov. The book is written in the classic Doyle style and received brilliant reviews, including from Georgy Weiner. Unfortunately, it was published in Penza, and therefore is inaccessible to many readers. But fans of Sherlock Holmes can be consoled by books (“The Secret Archive of Sherlock Holmes,” “Sherlock Holmes in Orbit,” etc.) from the “Baker Street Mysteries” series, published by Terra publishing house. Of course, the level of essays, as happens in such cases, is not always the same.

The works of Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dixon Carr were published in the magazine Science and Life in the 1960s and 1970s. Nowadays the easiest way to find texts by these authors is on the Internet. Look, for example, for such books by A.K. Doyle, D. Carr: “The Wax Players”, “Two Women”, “Ruby Avas”, “The Mystery of the Locked Room”, “The Deptford Horror”, “The Fowlkes Crime” Race", "The Case of the Golden Watch".

These texts may disappoint you somewhat. And the point here is not in the authors of the stories, but in the translators. It’s not that they were completely bad, it’s just that few people are able to compete with Korn Ivanovich Chukovsky.

But there are no problems with the story “The Investigation of Dr. Watson” by Stephen King. It was published in the author’s collection of the “king of horrors” “Nightmares and Fantastic Visions” (M.: Mir, 1994).

Parodies

The image of Sherlock Holmes also attracted recognized classics. True, they preferred to write mainly parodies. For example, Bret Harte created “The Adventure of a Stolen Cigarette Case”, Mark Twain - “The Adventure of Double Sight”, O. Henry - the stories “The Adventures of Shamrock Johns” and “The Bloodhound”, James Barry - “The Adventures of Two Co-authors”. I give a bibliographic description of the last mentioned work, otherwise you will never find this text. (Barry J. Adventures of two co-authors // Doyle A.K. Life full of adventures. - M.: Vagrius, 2001. - P. 115-118.)

Literary hooliganism

This story is quite scandalous. Once upon a time, the world famous master detective ("father" of Nero Wolfe) Rex Stout gave a speech at a dinner of fans of the inhabitants of the house on Baker Street. In it, using the method of deduction, he proved that under the pseudonym “Doctor Watson” was hiding a lady, the legal wife of Sherlock Holmes. And he even named (with the evidence provided) her name - Irene Watson. How the writer came out of dinner alive is not known for certain. But all Conan Doyle fans still shudder at the mention of Rex Stout’s essay “Watson Was a Woman.”

Almost a joke

Once a certain S. Borisov created a story for a literary quiz, “The Death of a Russian Landowner.” The plot here is extremely simple: Holmes, sitting on Baker Street, discusses F. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov” with Watson. One can only guess how this wretched story by S. Borisov ended up in one of the collections of A. Conan Doyle’s original works...

Holmes studies

Research works about Sherlock Holmes appeared already at the beginning of the 20th century. The books by R. Knox “A Study of the Literature Dedicated to Sherlock Holmes” (1911), H. W. Bell “Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, a Chronicle of Their Adventures” (1931), H. Brenkenley “Sherlock Holmes: Fact and Fiction” are considered classics to this day. "(1932).

The pinnacle of “Holmology studies” was “The Sherlockian Encyclopedia: A Universal Dictionary of Information Established About Sherlock Holmes and His Biographer, Dr. John G. Watson” by Jack Tracy. This work is considered the best reference book, a reference book for all Holmes fans. “Sherlockiana” was translated into Russian by I.N. Bogdanov. For this work, the Ural Holmesian Society awarded him the Watson Literary Prize. I wouldn't want to offend anyone, but what does that mean?..

Sherlock Holmes and everyday life

Sherlock Holmes has become such a part of our lives that sometimes you don’t know where you’ll meet your favorite hero. For example, you accidentally go to “Children’s World”, and there are comics on the theme of the adventures of a consulting detective (not necessarily stupid ones) or a board game called “Sherlock Holmes”. You say this is for little ones? Nothing like this. Absolutely adult uncles and aunts play interactive games on the Internet, one of which is called, for example, “Sherlock Holmes: The Return of Moriarty.” And while walking home from work, you may accidentally hear the phrase “elementary, Watson!” or a mobile phone ringing that plays... the melody of Vladimir Dashkevich from the television film “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” (directed by I. Maslennikov). My neighbor in the country has a huge dog named the Hound of the Baskervilles, of whom the whole neighborhood is desperately afraid. And one inhabitant of a neighboring village built himself a house on the edge of the swamp, which the locals don’t call anything other than “Baskerville Hall”.

And God forbid that you need a private detective agency in your life. It's called... guess for yourself.

"Sherlock Holmitos"

Just don’t think that this is some kind of snake or caterpillar. This is what modern Latin Americans call short, skillful conclusions that are not relevant to the matter. In short, what Sherlock Holmes considered to be false alternative moves. The term “Sherlock Holmitos” arose after the local population became acquainted with the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Jokes

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes has always been a fertile target for jokers..." - said Conan Doyle. Indeed, there are many anecdotes about Holmes and Watson floating around the world (and the Internet). Unfortunately, almost all of them are either quite stupid or completely indecent (and sometimes both at once). Anyway, I only managed to pick six.

Holmes and Watson spend the night in a tent in the forest.
- Watson, does this constellation mean anything to you?
- Good weather, Holmes!
- Watson, our tent was stolen.

* * *

What do you think, Holmes?
- Elementary Watson!

Barrymore, what's that squishing in my shoe?
- Oatmeal, sir!
- But what is she doing there?
- It's squishing, sir.

What kind of howl is heard over the swamps?
- Elementary Watson! Sir Henry was again served porridge for breakfast.

Holmes and Watson are going on a trip. Holmes sends a friend to look at the thermometer. Returning, Watson reports: “Hanging.”

Holmes, it seems we have got to the bottom of the truth!
- Yes, Watson, now let's try to get out of the hole.

Listen, Watson... What is your strange name - Doctor?..

Quite seriously

“Don’t you know that I am not the creator of the image of Sherlock Holmes? It was the readers who created it in their imagination.” Conan Doyle spoke these words at a gala dinner in honor of his seventieth birthday. Something to think about, right?

In his memoirs, Sir Arthur called the surgeon Joseph Bell the prototype of Holmes, and Major Wood the prototype of Watson. Readers stubbornly thought otherwise. Some equated Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, others - between Doyle and Watson. It seems that both of them were not far from the truth: if you create a portrait of one person from two famous heroes, then, most likely, you will get an alter ego of their creator, Arthur Conan Doyle.

Why are stories and tales about Holmes and Watson so attractive to us? A dashingly twisted plot? Victorian era flavor? Perhaps all this is not the main thing. How many detective stories were created before and after Holmes and Watson, but it was Conan Doyle who managed to write something special, so to speak, number one. Moreover, this procedure is not subject to revision.

The secret of Holmes and Watson's success is in the harmonious duet and in the glorification of male friendship. Almost like A. Dumas in “The Three Musketeers”. Indeed, what is Holmes without Watson and Watson without Holmes?.. It is not without reason that stories where the great detective finds himself alone for some reason are much weaker than all the others.

I don’t know how the residents are perceived Foggy Albion other nations, but for us the symbol of the English gentleman has long been Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. We just never thought about it.

Nadezhda Voronova

Baker Street at the beginning XX century

• In the original, the brilliant detective Mr. Holmes and his devoted friend Dr. Watson lived at 221B Baker Street, but the director-producers had to abandon filming on the famous street. “There's a lot of traffic on Baker Street, and there are signs with the name 'Sherlock Holmes' everywhere,” explained Mark Gattis (producer, director and actor). As a result, the role of Baker Street was played in the series by neighboring North Gower Street.
• "No to Hollywood A-listers." This phrase became an expression of the series' politics. As Mark Gettys said, several celebrities approached him for roles in the series, but he refused because he “wanted to give way to not the most famous” - Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrey Scott (Jim Moriarty). They were famous in the film world, but after Sherlock they became international British stars.
• In Arthur Conan Doyle's book, Sherlock's brother is described as a "large and corpulent man." The directors couldn’t miss this fact, but they didn’t want to replace Mark Gettys with another actor. So they introduced a dialogue into the series where Sherlock asks Mycroft if he dialed again excess weight. Mycroft replies that he was on a diet and lost weight.
• Sherlock keeps forgetting Inspector Lestrade's name. He calls him Graham, Gavin, or Jeff. But this is not just a joke. This is again a director's move. In Conan Doyle's book Arthur, the inspector's name is never mentioned, only his initials.
• To film the series, Cumberbatch had to change her light brown hair color to a darker one through tinting. Moreover, for this role he had to learn to play the violin. His teacher was the violinist Eos Chater. Who actually played Benedict's parts, since, while on the set, she synchronized the game with his movements.
• A new and radically changing atmosphere of the Sherlock series, the authors' idea was for the main characters to address each other by names other than classic version, but by name. This idea is also reflected in the title of the series.
• The authors of the idea for the series approached the technological innovations that were to be used by the heroes of the series with great trepidation. Almost all the characters in the series use Blackberry mobile phones. However, Watson uses a Nokia, and in some places an iPhone appears.

In the story "The Bruce-Partington Blueprints", set in November 1895, Mycroft Holmes is described as follows:

Portly, even overweight, he seemed the embodiment of enormous potential physical strength, but above this massive body towered a head with such a magnificent forehead of a thinker, with such penetrating, deep-set steel-colored eyes, with such a firmly defined mouth and such a subtle play of facial expression that you they immediately forgot about the clumsy body and clearly felt only the powerful intellect dominating it.

He occupies a significant post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although when Holmes did not know Watson well enough, he said that his brother “checks the financial statements of one ministry.” Sherlock, in the same story “The Bruce-Partington Drawings,” tells Watson about his brother:

He is in the service of the British government. And it is also true that he is sometimes the British government itself.<…>Mycroft receives £450 a year, occupies a subordinate position, has not the slightest ambition, refuses titles and titles, and yet is the most independent man in all of England<…>You see, he has a very special role, and he created it for himself<…>He is presented with the conclusions of all departments, he is the center, the clearinghouse where the overall balance is drawn up.<…>In his powerful brain, everything is sorted into shelves and can be presented at any time. More than once one of his words decided the issue of state policy - he lives in it, all his thoughts are absorbed in that alone.

Holmes also noted that Mycroft's specialty was "to know everything". Like Sherlock, Mycroft is brilliant at the “deductive method”, even significantly superior to his brother in his mastery, but does not use it as a working tool, here is what Sherlock says about this: “If the art of the detective began and ended with brooding in the quiet armchair, my brother Mycroft would be the greatest crime-solver in the world. But he has no ambition and no energy.". Mycroft is also one of the founding members of the Diogenes Club of Whitehall, which brings together the most unsociable people in London. He rarely communicates with Sherlock: in the story “The Bruce-Partington Drawings” Sherlock says that Mycroft only visited him once on Baker Street, and by that time the detective had been living there for more than 10 years. Mycroft calls Sherlock “my boy”, and the detective calls his brother “dear Mycroft”.

Mary Morstan

She first appears in the work “The Sign of Four”, as a client. Until the age of seventeen, she was brought up in a private boarding school in Edinburgh.

She was a very young girl, blonde, fragile, graceful, dressed with impeccable taste and wearing impeccably clean gloves. But in her clothes there was noticeable that modesty, if not simplicity, that suggests straitened circumstances. She wore a dress of dark gray wool, without any trimmings, and a small hat of the same gray tone, which was slightly enlivened by a white feather on the side. Her face was pale, and her features were not distinguished by regularity, but the expression of this face was sweet and inviting, and her large blue eyes shone with spirituality and kindness.

Chapter II “We get to know the case”, novel “The Sign of Four”

Mary was supposed to inherit the wealth, but at the last moment it was lost. Immediately after this became clear, Watson confessed his love to her. Subsequently, they decided to get married, which Holmes was extremely upset about.

Holmes let out a cry of despair. - I was so afraid of this! - he said. - No, I cannot congratulate you.
- Don't you like my choice? - I asked, slightly hurt.
- Like (...) But love is an emotional thing, and, being such, it is the opposite of pure and cold reason.

The death of Mary Morstan is mentioned in passing by Sherlock Holmes in the story “The Empty House” with the words:

Somehow Holmes managed to find out about my wife's death, but his sympathy was expressed rather in his tone,
than in words.
“Work is the best antidote to grief, dear Watson,” he said, “and what awaits you and me tonight is
such work that the person who manages to successfully complete it will be able to safely say,
that he didn’t live his life in vain.

Before this, Watson himself says that his wife gave birth to a son, but both the son and Mrs. Watson died. After her death, Watson moves back to Baker Street.

Policemen

Mr Lestrade

Hopkins appears in the 1894 short story "Pince-nez in Gold," in which he is described as "a young, up-and-coming detective in whose career Holmes took an interest." In the story "Black Peter", set in 1895, there is a description of Hopkins by Dr. Watson:

“A thin, agile man of about thirty came into our room. He wore a modest woolen suit, but his bearing showed that he was accustomed to wearing a military uniform. I immediately recognized Stanley Hopkins, a young police inspector who, according to Holmes, showed great promise. Hopkins, in turn, considered himself a student of the famous detective and admired his scientific methods."

He comes from a good family, received an excellent education and is naturally endowed with phenomenal mathematical abilities. When he was twenty-one, he wrote a treatise on Newton's binomial, which won him European fame. After this, he received a chair in mathematics at one of our provincial universities, and, in all likelihood, a brilliant future awaited him. But the blood of a criminal flows in his veins. He has a hereditary tendency towards cruelty. And his extraordinary mind not only does not moderate, but even strengthens this tendency and makes it even more dangerous. Dark rumors spread about him on the university campus where he taught, and in the end he was forced to leave the department and move to London, where he began preparing young people for the officer exam...

The most brilliant mind in Europe, who also leads all the forces of hell.

Also, Holmes describes him as the "Napoleon of the underworld." This phrase was borrowed by Arthur Conan Doyle from one of the Scotland Yard inspectors in the case of Adam Worth, an international criminal of the 19th century who served as the prototype for the literary Moriarty.

It is interesting to note that Professor Moriarty, who became a shining example of a fictional villain and even managed to become a nomadic character in culture (as well as the “femme fatale”, Irene Adler), in Conan Doyle’s original works he himself appears directly in only one story - “The Last Case” Holmes." In addition, there is a description of Moriarty's appearance:

This man looks amazingly like a Presbyterian preacher, he has such a thin face, and gray hair, and stilted speech. Saying goodbye, he put his hand on my shoulder - like a father, blessing his son to meet the cruel, cold world.

Possesses untold wealth. He takes every opportunity to hide his position, since his official income as a professor is approximately seven hundred pounds a year. Here is how he himself speaks about this:

...He tries to hide the size of his wealth. Not a single person should know this. I think he has at least twenty bank accounts, and it is likely that the main capital is located abroad, somewhere in Germany or France.

It also appears in books that are continuations of the stories about Sherlock Holmes, but written by other authors. For example, in the novel “The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes” by Jamyang Norbu, as well as in the novels by D. Gardner “The Return of Moriarty” (Russian translation was published in 2012 by the Veche publishing house, ISBN 978-5-9533-5837-8), “Moriarty’s Revenge” (Russian translation was published in 2012 by the Veche publishing house, ISBN 978-5-9533-6010-4), “Moriarty. The Last Chapter" (Russian translation was published in 2012 by the Veche publishing house, ISBN 978-5-9533-6011-1), in which Sherlock Holmes is no longer present.

Sherlock Holmes' clients

The famous detective's clients included people from the lowest strata to kings ("Scandal in Bohemia"). Most often, Holmes sees the client in advance while standing at the window. He brings this to Dr. Watson's attention, talking about how they are looking for a house at 221-b Baker Street. After Holmes solves the client's riddle, the latter ceases to be interesting to him, and Holmes no longer communicates with him.

Sherlock Holmes - main character stories, consulting detective, fluent in the “deductive method.”
“His character is difficult. Very difficult. I would even say unbearable,” this is how their mutual friend recommended Holmes to Watson. As Watson himself noted after a short acquaintance with him - “He has a very narrow circle of interests. He does not know the simplest things. Although he knows criminal law, chemistry perfectly - or rather, that section of it that concerns poisons and explosives. He knows everything about weapons - bladed and firearms. Probably a good shooter." And he boxes, as Watson had the opportunity to experience in practice.
He is selfless, prefers not to take money from low-income clients, and calculates his income in opera tickets.

Dr. Watson- friend, assistant and biographer of Sherlock Holmes.
The search for inexpensive housing turned into regular dangerous adventures for him, and reading London newspapers prompted him to take up his pen.
He was the regiment's boxing champion. His preferred weapons are revolvers and chairs. Has experience killing wild muskets. Knows how to cut stylish masks from black silk. He is amazing at breaking open Indian caskets with an English poker. Loves animals - especially a saddle of lamb. Indispensable when catching dangerous criminals and discussing orchids.
He was noticed in only two sins: snoring at night and studying pharmacology.
He repeatedly showed extraordinary courage: he single-handedly tracked down a killer in an abandoned house, caught runaway convicts in a swamp, and even shaved with a straight razor on a moving train.

Mrs. Hudson- landlady at 221B Baker Street.
By letting such a tenant as Holmes into the door, she doomed herself for life to a restless life for the good of Britain and an unconscious mastery of the deductive method.
A model of Victorian equanimity, punctuality and constancy.

Mycroft Holmes- brother of Sherlock Holmes, seven years older than him.
He is married, has a son, loves his dog, a red setter, and works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Very famous... in his circle.
His brother Sherlock believes that Mycroft is very observant (much more observant than himself - moderator's note), and he could make an excellent detective if he did not prefer silence and everything in the world. easy chair in club.

Mary Morstan- Doctor Watson's wife.
A respectable, moderately modest, moderately smart girl. Perfect couple for the same moderately modest and moderately intelligent gentleman.
She received the news of possible wealth without unnecessary emotions, which characterizes her from the best side. She also reacted indifferently to the news that wealth was being abolished.

Scotland Yard investigators

Inspector Lestrade- Scotland Yard detective.
Holmes spoke about him simply: “Fox terrier. Lots of energy, little intelligence.”
Tobias Gregson- Inspector of Scotland Yard, “the most intelligent detective of Scotland Yard,” according to Sherlock Holmes. He willingly accepts the help of the great detective.
Inspector Bradstreet- Scotland Yard detective.
Stanley Hopkins- a young Scotland Yard detective.

The rest of the characters.

Episode No. 1. Acquaintance.
Dr Grimsby Roylott- owner of a mansion near London; served in India, from where he brought a hyena and a baboon (as it later turned out, a poisonous snake). All the animals were allowed to roam around the mansion and garden at night.
According to Holmes, "really a brute." Prone to damaging good things, sophisticated murders through exotic animals.
He served in India for a long time, but his career ended in the most unpleasant way.
Character "rude, unrestrained." He perceived Watson as “every fool,” Mrs. Hudson as an “old hen,” and Mrs. Farintosh, unknown to us, as an “old fool.” According to other reviews, he is a “bandit” and a “terrible person” with a “mad disposition” (“everyone in their family is like that.”
Killed by his own weapon (a snake) while trying to kill his stepdaughter.
Helen Stoner - The adopted daughter of Dr. Grimsby Roylott and the twin sister of Julia Stoner, who was killed, as the investigation revealed, by her stepfather with the help of a poisonous snake.
Her intention to get married endangered her own life, due to the greed of her stepfather, who tried to prevent her stepdaughter from inheriting rights.
An unhappy but brave girl.

Episode No. 2. Bloody inscription.
Jefferson Hope- a man whose bride died at the hands of the Mormons, who decided to take revenge on the “fanatics.” He offered his victims two pills: one harmless, the other with poison, with the words “If there is no justice in the world, then I have no reason to live.” He left the bloody inscription “Revenge” at the crime scene. He was exposed by Sherlock Holmes, who considered Jefferson Hope "a ferocious, dangerous, but in some ways a very noble man" and died in prison from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Episode No. 3. King of blackmail.
Charles Augustus Milverton- in fact, the king of blackmail, by obtaining “careless letters”, then extorted money for non-disclosure.
The king of blackmail, played on people's vices, mistakes and weaknesses. He has many victims to his name. "One of the nastiest people in London", according to Sherlock Holmes. In addition, he played an important role in Professor Moriarty’s networks - he obtained funds.
Lady Huxley- one of Milverton's victims. Her husband could not stand the publicity of her secret correspondence and died of cardiac arrest. Kills Milverton. Later she helps Holmes by giving him a secret code from Moriarty's papers, which she stole from Milverton.
“What a woman, what self-control, what common sense!” - Holmes spoke about her, almost being harmed by her enterprise.

Episode No. 4. Death fight.
Professor James Moriarty- the head of a powerful criminal organization, a genius of the criminal world. From a good family, he received an excellent education. Endowed with phenomenal mathematical abilities, allowing him to subtly manipulate the underworld of London. Sherlock Holmes crossed his path many times, but the murder of Milverton and the resulting loss of valuable documents of the organization, which allowed Holmes to expose him, were the last straw. Dies in a fight with Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls.
“This man has entwined his networks all over London, and no one really knows anything about him,” says Holmes.
Sebastian Moran- the second most dangerous person in London after Professor Moriarty. Retired Colonel, former officer in Her Majesty's Indian Army. He served in the first Bangalore Engineer Regiment. He was caught red-handed and fell into the trap of Sherlock Holmes.
A card sharper and hitman in the service of Professor Moriarty.

Peter Steiler Jr. - Involved in the case of the theft of Cupid's head at the Royal Museum
– all his life he was drawn to beauty, he could not resist. Holmes then
one treated him humanely.

Steiler was released early for good behavior and
lifting bought a modest hotel in the modest Swiss Alps.

If it were not for Holmes, he would not have lived here and admired this
beauty (damn it).

Episode No. 5. Tiger hunting.
Sir Ronald Adair- an honest young man, having won together with Colonel Moran and exposing him in fraud, gave the money to other players, as a result of which he ended up owing the colonel a round sum. He was shot by a colonel for non-payment of a debt.
Regular player and board member of the Bagatelle club. An avid gambler, but never goes beyond the limits of prudence. The youngest son of the governor of one of the English provinces in Australia.
Marker -
The spectacular six of Professor Moriarty.
Prone to colds, especially in spring. Widower, father of two children - a younger boy and an older girl. I was going to remarry, despite gout and a not quite correct bite.
He carried out small assignments and, thanks to his specific appearance, served as a means of psychological pressure on Moriarty’s “clients”. Catchphrase: “My advice to you.”

Hound of the Baskervilles.
Dr James Mortimer -
Country doctor, moved from London to the country in 1884.
Unambitious, absent-minded, dearly loves his cocker spaniel Snoopy. There is indirect evidence that he is married, although no one has ever seen his wife.
He became the unwitting initiator of the investigation when he discovered traces of an “og-huge dog” near the body of Sir Charles Baskerville.
Thanks to his “damned forgetfulness” and professionalism, he often switches to Latin when communicating with people, sees the skeleton in his interlocutor first of all, and prefers living grave remains, in which he often digs. As a result, he even managed to call Holmes “the second largest European expert.”
Sir Henry Baskerville -
Most spent his childhood and youth in the United States and Canada and would have lived there happily if he had not received an inheritance in England.
Typical representative"golden youth" of the New World. Outwardly he is energetic, active and courageous, but inside he is unbalanced, prone to alcoholism and dependent.
I was very upset to learn that the Old World differs from the New World not only in clothes, but also in the menu.
In a stressful situation, he instinctively reached out to the first suitable person of the opposite sex.
Catchphrases: “Who do they take me for in this hotel!”, “What is this, what, what is this, what was that?”
Secretly hates oatmeal and dogs.
John Barrymore- Sir Henry's butler
Butler. Representative of the fifth or sixth generation of Barrymores to live at Baskerville Hall. As a result, he has all the virtues of an English butler (probably at the genetic level), such as pathological equanimity, chronic neatness and punctuality, perfect diction, monumental coordination of movements and everything else that the owner to whom he is zealously devoted usually does not have.
Special features: neatly dressed, beard... black.
Catchphrase: "Oatmeal, sir!"
Eliza Barrymore- the wife of the butler John Barrymore, Sir Henry's housekeeper, cunning, curious, verbose, hysterical in nature. Thanks to this, she clarified a lot of things in the investigation, essentially pointing out the involvement of Laura Lyons in the case.
Jack Stapleton- cunning, friendly, cheerful.
A criminal adventurer with an entomological bent. Unable to cope with the loss of his social position after an “unpleasant incident” with an epidemic in the school he headed in Yorkshire, Stapleton, according to the old English tradition, went to great lengths, wanting to get the inheritance of Sir Charles Baskerville. The family legend about the dog only added to the charm of this purely English murder.
Baryl Stapleton -
Mrs Laura Lyons - Her maiden name was Laura Frankland. She married an artist named Lyons, who came to sketch, and then shamelessly abandoned her.
He makes a living by typing and is sliding down an inclined plane. She gives the impression of an intelligent woman, but apparently only externally. Her promiscuity in men almost destroyed her, making Laura an instrument in Stapleton’s criminal plans.
Mr Frankland- Laura Lyons' father. Active old senile. Behind long years practicing bad character, he lost all public interest in his person.
After a quarrel with his loving daughter Laura, he was left completely alone. He is trying to compensate for the current situation by attracting public attention through the judicial system.
He spent his entire fortune on legal fees. At the same time, he pretends that he has no personal interest in these matters - he is only fulfilling a public duty.

Treasures of Agra.
Irene Adler- a woman who managed to unravel Holmes’s plan when he, under the guise of a priest, wounded in a fight with beggars, entered her house and escaped. Holmes considered this case his defeat (despite the fact that he achieved his main goal), and about Irene Adler said: “This woman,” and instead of the reward offered by the King of Bohemia, he preferred to take a photograph of the above-mentioned person.
A mythical creature, the materialized personification of the feminine principle of Sherlock Holmes.
Before her, the great detective is powerless, like a savage before the idol of God. Abstract female logic cannot be analyzed, but is no less effective, and deduction is not a competitor to female intuition. A pure and cold mind next to someone like Irene Adler is nothing more than a beautiful yacht on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. You have a little time to enjoy the swim... while the ocean is truly "quiet"...
Thaddeus Sholto- an honest, eccentric, hypochondriac person, passionate about Eastern culture.
He gives the impression of a non-greedy, noble and stupid person. He loves to smoke hookah and at the same time worries about the mitral valve of his heart.
Bartholomew Sholto- Twin brother of Thaddeus Sholto.
Jonathan Small - Probably, about such people they say “Gentleman of Fortune”. The golden mean is not for them, they lead gambling with this illusory “luck”, which accordingly gives them only two options: Pan vs Lost. Or the treasures of Agra, or hard labor on the Andaman Islands. Their element is piracy. And piracy is not a banal robbery, it is the expropriation of expropriators, which gives a big jackpot and some kind of moral right. This is what Jonathan Small himself said. And he bears no ill will towards Sherlock Holmes... because those are the rules of the game of "luck".
Major Sholto - A typical representative of people who inadequately perceive cash. The result was acute attacks of stinginess, persecution mania, loss of conscience and common sense. Which is what he died with.
The jewelry, as expected, did not go to either him, his children, or Jonathan Small.
King of Bohemia

The twentieth century begins.

100 great literary heroes [with illustrations] Eremin Viktor Nikolaevich

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

“He was not a great writer; he cannot be compared with such geniuses of English literature as Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Thackeray, Dickens,” said the Russian writer, translator and outstanding literary critic K.I. about Arthur Conan Doyle. Chukovsky (1882–1969). Let us clarify: Conan Doyle could have become a great writer (just remember his wonderful historical novel “The White Company” about the events of the Hundred Years War), but he was ruined by the main literary hero of his work and life - Sherlock Holmes. The paradox, apparently, is that Conan Doyle himself knew about this and tried to get rid of Holmes, and many in his circle - friends, household members - understood this, but all of them together turned out to be powerless in the face of the temptations of that powerful force that today we call mass culture. So, Sherlock Holmes is one of the most solid creations of the literature of mass culture, moreover, he is the cornerstone in the foundation of mass culture, but precisely because he is characterized by all the weaknesses of mass culture - schematicism, lightness and... gradual aging.

Yes Yes! Precisely aging, since today, after a little over a hundred years, books about it are read less and less. And the point is not that the interest of new generations in reading is falling in general. Fiction, especially as printing developed and became cheaper, from the 18th century. largely filled out the second part of the famous cry of the ancient Roman mob “Bread and Circuses” for educated people. But if initially the dominant role in the work was played by the artistry of description and thought, then by the end of the 19th century. The fascination of the plot began to come to the fore. The literature of mass culture has finally moved to the position of “popularity”, pure entertainment for the crowd. Its pioneers and leaders were Alexander Dumas the Father and Arthur Conan Doyle, which is why their works in embryo still bear the remnants of a philosophical and artistic beginning. Entertainment, as we know, requires more and more new updates; the old becomes boring and forgotten. A big role in this is played by the endless number of epigones eager to make quick money, who, with their large numbers and lack of talent, devalue the original source.

K.I. also understood this. Chukovsky, who communicated more than once with Conan Doyle himself. He tried to justify the popular hero with a saving reference: “Sherlock Holmes is loved by children all over the world, and although books about his adventures are written for adult readers, they have long become children’s (read: always in demand - V.E.) books...” Today, this thesis is gradually becoming obsolete. However, Sherlock Holmes' brothers in criminal investigation presented in this book - Hercule Poirot and Commissioner Maigret - age many times faster than the main detective of world literature.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh into a large Irish Catholic family. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle (1832–1893), was an artist and architect. Mother, born Mary Foley (1838–1921), was a housewife. Arthur Conan is the writer's name, but over time he himself began to use his middle name as part of his surname.

Unfortunately, the father of the future writer was a chronic alcoholic (by the time Arthur came of age, he had gone crazy due to drunkenness), and the family was often in poverty. However, the Doyles' wealthy relatives took charge of the boy's education. For seven years, Arthur studied at a closed Catholic school in Stonyhurst, which belonged to the Jesuit order. After successfully graduating from school, the young man began to prepare to take the priesthood.

But first, Arthur went on a pleasure trip to the continent, where he first became acquainted with the works of the father of the detective genre, Edgar Allan Poe (Auguste Dupin from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” can be considered the first detective in the history of world literature).

Upon returning to Scotland, the young man learned that his father had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic and that worries about supporting the family fell entirely on his shoulders. The solution was the medical faculty of the University of Edinburgh, where you could get a good scholarship.

At the university, Arthur was especially strongly influenced by his teacher Dr. Joseph Bell (1837–1911), an excellent diagnostician, surgeon and pathologist who developed a method of research (mainly diseases), which later became known as deductive. It was Bell who later served as the prototype for Sherlock Holmes.

At the university, Arthur Conan Doyle began his literary career: in 1879, his first story, “Secrets of the Sussex Valley,” was published in Chambers magazine.

And the next year, in order to earn extra money, the young man set out as a surgeon on a voyage to the Arctic Circle on the whaler Nadezhda. The voyage lasted seven months. After graduating from university in 1881, Doyle became a doctor on the merchant ship Mayumba and made a trip to Africa, after which he chose to write off ashore. In 1882, he opened a private practice in the small seaside town of Southsea, where he lived for seven years - until 1890, when he said goodbye to medicine forever. The fact is that initially the young doctor had no clients, and out of boredom he returned to writing stories.

When Conan Doyle married Louise Hawkins (1858–1906) in 1885, he decided to earn money to support his family through literature. Since the stories provided little income, Doyle wrote the novel Girdlestones Trading House, but could not publish it - all publishers refused. The second novel seemed to suffer the same fate, but publishers were found who published it (though only two years after the manuscript was submitted) in Beaton's Christmas Weekly for 1887. It was A Study in Scarlet, where for the first time Private detective William Sherlock Scott Holmes, better known to us as Sherlock Holmes, and his friend and assistant Dr. John Hamish Watson appeared. It is curious that in the same year and for the rest of his life, Conan Doyle became interested in the “study” of life after life - spiritualism.

The name Sherlock Holmes did not arise by chance. Or rather, the detective’s surname - it was borne by Doyle’s favorite American writer and satirist poet, and at the same time medical scientist Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894).

At first, Sherlock Holmes did not interest the reading public. Considering it only an episode in his literary destiny, Conan Doyle became interested in writing historical novels, in particular, he created “The Adventures of Mickey Clark” (1888) and “The White Squad” (1889–1890) (the latter was recognized as the best English historical novel during the author’s lifetime after "Ivanhoe") And suddenly, in the midst of work on “The White Squad,” the writer received an invitation to a meeting from the American editor of Lippincott’s Magazine. The recommender turned out to be Oscar Wilde, who was then unfamiliar with Doyle; one might say, the godfather of the great detective. With his light hand, the young writer was commissioned to write a story about Sherlock Holmes. Thus, in 1890, The Sign of Four appeared, which brought Conan Doyle international fame and made Sherlock Holmes the most popular hero of the detective genre. By the way, the word “detection” translated from English means “discovery”, “discovery”, therefore, the center of a detective work is not the crime or the criminal, but the person solving the crime and his path to solving the crime. Edgar Allan Poe laid the foundations of the genre, and its true creator was Arthur Conan Doyle.

In total, Conan Doyle wrote nine books about Sherlock Holmes - four novels (A Study in Scarlet - 1887; The Sign of Four - 1890; The Hound of the Baskervilles - 1902; The Valley of Terror - 1914-1915 gg.) and five collections combining fifty-six stories (“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” – 12 stories; “Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes” – 12 stories; “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” – 13 stories; “His Farewell Bow” – 7 stories”; “ Sherlock Holmes Archive - 12 stories"). In total, Conan Doyle worked on the Holmes series for about forty years - the last work about the brilliant detective, “His Last Bow,” appeared in 1927.

While working on stories about the brilliant detective for the Strand magazine (the writer collaborated with this magazine throughout his life), illustrator Sidney Edward Paget (1860–1908), together with Conan Doyle, developed the appearance of Sherlock Holmes, which became canonical. It's funny, but Paget's model for Holmes was his younger brother Walter Paget (1863–1935), also an artist, who picked up the baton of illustrating works about Holmes after Sidney's death. This is how our domestic illustrators began to portray Holmes.

The stories in The Strand, especially "The Man with the Cleft Lip", brought Doyle world fame. He left medical practice and devoted himself entirely to literature. By the beginning of 1892, the writer was tired of Sherlock Holmes and tried to return to historical topics. However, this was not the case. When he was offered £1,000 for a story about Holmes, the writer did not have the strength to refuse. But even then it was becoming more and more difficult to come up with new stories.

At the beginning of 1893, Conan Doyle and his wife went on vacation to Switzerland. There, at the Reichenbach Falls, the writer came up with the idea to kill his hero in order to close the topic of Sherlock Holmes once and for all. When the story "Holmes's Last Case" was published, twenty thousand subscribers at once abandoned the Strand magazine!

The writer did not agree to revive his hero for almost ten years. But his income gradually decreased - they paid several times less for works on other subjects, readers demanded the return of Sherlock Holmes, and new stories about the adventures of the detective were ripened.

At the beginning of 1901, the writer’s friend, journalist and editor of the Daily Express, Bertram Fletcher Robinson (1872–1907), told Doyle a terrible legend about a 17th-century man. in Devonshire, Sir Richard Cabell, who sold his soul to the devil, for which he was subsequently torn to pieces wild dogs. This was one of the versions of the ancient legend about a huge ferocious dog that once lived in Norfolk and bore the nickname Black Devil. The idea to write a novel on this topic immediately appeared. The friends agreed on co-authorship, as Conan Doyle announced in a letter to his mother. Fletcher invited Doyle to Dartmouth to show him the places where the events were to take place. A certain Harry Baskerville worked there as a groom for co-author Conan Doyle...

As work on the novel progressed, the idea arose to make not a simple horror novel, but a detective story, that is, to bring back Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. To avoid any discrepancies, the events of the novel had to take place before the death of the detective in the waterfall.

However, Conan Doyle was not going to share his heroes. The Hound of the Baskervilles was published in 1902 in the Strand magazine only under his name, but with thanks to Fletcher Robinson, which subsequently disappeared from reprints. And already in 1902, rumors began to spread that the novel was written by Robinson, and Doyle only allowed him to use the name Holmes. Fifty years after the novel was first published, this gossip was confirmed by Harry Baskerville!

The writer’s biographers have long since refuted it based on facts, but the story of how in 1907 Conan Doyle persuaded his mistress, Mrs. Robinson, to give poison to her typhoid-stricken husband and thus hid the secret of the birth of the “Hound of the Baskervilles” is still being circulated in the tabloid press. .

The publication of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” spurred new wave interest in Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle at first refused to return to his hero, but when the United States received an offer to pay 5 thousand dollars (over 80 thousand dollars at the modern rate) for each story about the detective, the writer gave up. Sherlock Holmes escaped from the waterfall and returned to further investigations. By the way, passionate fans of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, based on the works of Conan Doyle, clearly calculated the years of life of their favorite heroes: Dr. Watson (1852–1929), Sherlock Holmes (1854–1930). The detective died along with his author.

These dates only confirm the famous words of the writer spoken by Conan Doyle on the day of his seventieth birthday:

“…Don’t you know that I am not the creator of the image of Sherlock Holmes? It was the readers who created it in their imaginations!”

This is the key given to us by Doyle to reveal the true image of Sherlock Holmes. If initially the writer treated his hero with respect and tried to give him as many attractive features as possible - Holmes is an energetic, sympathetic, and disinterested person, ready to come to the aid of the humiliated and insulted to the detriment of the rich and noble, then Doyle later began to openly mock his hero, but it was too late - mass culture did its job and elevated the detective above his creator. But the writer showed him as both a narrow-minded ignoramus - Holmes has no idea that the Earth is round, and a slow-witted person who utters banal truths, and a drug addict - his thought processes are activated mainly under the influence of morphine and cocaine, and in some cases even a complete fool... Everything was justified by the readers, the true creators of Sherlock Holmes! All the evil was attributed to Conan Doyle. But Holmes himself remained, according to K.I. Chukovsky, almost the only “of the characters in children’s world literature whose main occupation is thinking and logic.” Mass culture defeated Conan Doyle, who hated him, Sherlock Holmes - the father of mass culture - triumphed, because he was and remains wise at the level of the crowd.

Suzanne Dean, Odetta Suzanne Holmes, Detta Suzanne Walker, Mia “I am three women... who I was at first; one that had no right to be, but was; and the one you saved." (TB-2) Five-year-old Odette Holmes had a brick fall on her head when the whole family came north for her aunt's wedding.