Being on a vacation gives me time to pause, dig, and think. My previous post was on a remarkable add highlight that there was a Mr. and Mrs. Sherlock of Holm Leigh.
Saturday 03 December 1887
A NEW NOVELIST
The publishers of Beeton's Christmas Annual (Messrs. Ward Lock and Co.) have been fortunate to secure the services of our townsman, Dr. A. Conan Doyle, who is now well known in literary circles as a rising writer of fiction. Dr. Conan Doyle has prepared for Beeton's Christmas fare A Study in Scarlet, which for exciting incidents, clever construction, and artistic development of plot, will compare with any of the Christmas annuals with which the bookstalls are now deluged. This student in scarlet is one Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective of most amusing eccentricities and strangely balanced powers. For instance, in a curious table which a young medical man who shares rooms with Sherlock Holmes draws up for his own amusement we learn that this strange creation knew nothing of literature, philosophy, astronomy, or politics ; that his knowledge of botany was confined to poisons ; that his geological information was summed up in being able to tell different soils from each other at a glance, and to know by looking at the mud splashes on his trousers in what part of London he had received them ; that his knowledge of chemistry was profound; and that he appeared to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century. As he said himself "A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying hands on it." This was his excuse for knowing nothing of the solar system. Sherlock Holmes carried on this theory to its extreme limits, and by training his powers of observation to an extraordinary degree became a master of the science of deduction and an unrecognised Prince among the detectives of London. The story proper tells how the "Lauriston Garden Mystery " was solved by this strange being. We will not let the public into the secret of the mystery here. They must go to the book itself for that, and we promise them that their shillings will be well expended. It is sufficient to say that the mystery is mixed up with love and Mormonism; that it presents weird pictures of the terrible autocracy of Brigham Young: exciting passages of escape through the lines of his relentless sentinels ; the merciless pursuit of a revengeful purpose from the home of the chosen people to the busy streets of London; and the triumphant application of the science of deduction in the person of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Conan Doyle's reputation as a man of letters will be greatly enhanced by this remarkable tale, which is bound to be popular, and which our readers will do well not to overlook.
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