The working title for this article was "Is this some kind of bust?" - a nod to Leslie Nielsen.
“And what became of the bust?”
by JAMES LEECH AND MATTHEW D. HALL
IN 1894, THE AUTHOR AND journal editor Robert Barr (1849-1912) visited his friend Arthur Conan Doyle at his home in South Norwood to interview him for the US Associated Press. The visit and interview appeared in a number of US newspapers under the title “Conan Doyle At Home,” {1} timed with Conan Doyle’s arrival for a three-month lecture tour of the US and Canada that began in late September 1894.
In describing Conan Doyle’s study, “which is workshop, smoking room, and snuggery in one,” Barr reported:
On the bookcase in the study there stands a bust of a man with a keen, shrewd face.
“Who is the statesman?”’ I asked.
“Oh, that is Sherlock Holmes,” said Doyle. “A young sculptor named Wilkins, from Birmingham, sent it to me. Isn’t it good?”
Figure 1. Three photographs that feature the Wilkins bust. Left: Conan Doyle in his study, pictured on the cover of The Sketch for January 16, 1907. The bust is upper right atop the bookcase. This photograph was likely taken in 1894 and first appeared in McClure’s Magazine (US) in November of that year. Source: hathitrust.org. Center: “Sherlock Holmes. From a photograph of a bust by Wilkins.” This photo first appeared as part of “A Chat with Conan Doyle” in The Idler (UK) by Robert Barr in October 1894 and also used for variations of that article in the November 1894 McClure’s. Source: ACD Encyclopedia. Right: Photograph of “The Author’s Study” as a frontispiece of Through the Magic Door, first published in book form in 1907. The bust can be seen atop the bookcase. Based on timing, photograph taken at Conan Doyle’s home Undershaw in South Norwood. Source: hathitrust.org.
This bust is likely the first sculpture, and indeed first fan-made object, depicting Sherlock Holmes. That Barr, a friend of Conan Doyle’s, founder of The Idler, and the author of a Holmes parody, {2} even had to question the bust’s identity might seem unthinkable today. But this was early in Holmes’s career, and the bust does not possess the visual shorthand of pipe and deerstalker made famous by Paget, which had yet to take hold in the public imagination.
According to Barr, Wilkins “cast it in plaster, and sent it to Dr. Doyle as his ideal of Sherlock Holmes.” Wilkins has created the relatively young Holmes of the Adventures, with a rather luxurious, if slightly receding, swirl of hair and strong features. He appears to be jacketed in a dressing-gown (first mention of a gown is in “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” 1891), and the plaster may be finished in shellac. Does the dating of the bust make Wilkins the first known Sherlockian?
This bust watched over Conan Doyle while he worked for the rest of his life—at South Norwood, Undershaw, and Bignell Wood/ Windlesham, through Holmes’s death and resurrection. It’s easy to imagine Conan Doyle’s attention drifting to meet Sherlock’s gaze, and inspiration striking—did this plaster bust plant the seed for “The Six Napoleons” (source of the title for this article)? Or inspire the bust of Holmes himself in “The Empty House,” molded in wax by Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble? Perhaps even the life-like Holmes dummy in “The Mazarin Stone,” sculpted by Tavernier, the French modeller?
The bust features in photographs and illustrations that accompanied Conan Doyle interviews throughout his life, following its first mention by Barr at South Norwood in 1894. Barr’s article included a photograph of Conan Doyle at his desk with the bust atop a bookcase, and another of the bust itself (Figure 1, left). The American freelance journalist Day Allen Willey (1860-1917) visited Undershaw in early 1900 and wrote, “Perhaps the most notable feature of Dr. Doyle’s library is a bust of Sherlock Holmes, the detective whose marvelous performances as depicted by the author have been the wonder of the English-reading world.” {3} The South Norwood photograph was again used on the cover of The Sketch in 1907, {4} and the bust can be seen proudly atop a bookcase in the frontispiece (and cover, in later editions) of the 1907 Through the Magic Door, Conan Doyle’s memoir and meditation on the art of fiction (a photo presumably taken at Undershaw, Figure 1, right). {5}
The bust was clearly a treasured possession of Conan Doyle’s, and its retention suggests he did not tire of his most famous literary character. But by the time of an extensive profile of Conan Doyle in The Bookman (UK) in 1913, {6} Conan Doyle had seemingly forgotten the details of the bust. Arthur St. John Adcock (1864-1930) can only comment that “in one of the windows is a large bust of Sherlock Holmes, modelled in clay and sent to the author by an unknown admirer from Manchester.”
Richard Lancelyn Green is quoted as stating the bust was “made by one of Conan Doyle’s friends”. {7} This seems unlikely based on the above comments attributed to Conan Doyle.
Frederick Lucas Wilkins was born around 1872 in Birmingham, to William and Ellen. William was described as an artist and designer (and was also a teacher), and his son followed in his footsteps. By the age of 18, Frederick was describing himself as a sculptor when he appeared in the 1891 census, still living with his family in Birmingham (Monument Road, Edgbaston). {8} It was around this time that Wilkins was creating the first sculpture of Sherlock Holmes.
On New Year’s Eve 1896, Wilkins married Emily Olive Horner at St. Mary’s Church Islington (London), though Wilkins stated that he was still living at his childhood home. {9} The couple settled in Birmingham where they had their only child in 1899, Dorothy Evelyn. The 1901 census shows the family living in Handsworth on the outskirts of Birmingham, where Frederick was a sculptor working on his “own account.” {10}
Around 1908, Frederick began employment with Messrs. H.H. Martyn of Sunningend, Cheltenham (Gloucestershire) as a sculptor and modeler. Herbert Henry Martyn established the firm in 1888 in Cheltenham and it quickly grew, with over 1,000 employees in 1910. The firm completed important work in that period for Buckingham Palace, Marble Arch, Windsor Castle, and the Lal Bagh Palace in India. {11} Undoubtedly, Frederick contributed his sculpting skills to a range of important sites. He couldn’t be located in the 1911 census indexes but was present at the 1924 marriage of his daughter in Birmingham to Alfred Russell Wallace Ventris-Field. Wilkins stayed with the firm for 30 years, departing around 1938 and continuing to freelance. {12}
In late 1939, just after the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain compiled a Register of the civilian population of England and Wales to enable administration of activities such as identification cards, ration books, and those eligible to fight. Fred—“Artist (sculptor)”— and Emily Wilkins were living on Noel Road, Edgbaston (Birmingham). {13} In the cold of January 1940, Frederick’s wife died when the fireplace she was sitting near caught her nightclothes on fire. {14} Her elderly mother found her aflame, and extinguished the blaze, but Emily died in hospital. Frederick died three years later on 25th October 1943, aged 71. His death was noted in the Gloucestershire Echo, which stated, “He was a contemporary of Harry Dean, the famous exponent of the Grinling Gibbons style of carving, and...he was an excellent craftsman and ‘an artist to his finger-tips’.” {15}
While most of Frederick’s career was dedicated to commercial work, he was actively exhibiting sculptures from 1895 to 1899, and in the subsequent decades, at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. {16} Displayed were busts, bas-relief, and preparatory models, on occasion offered for sale as part of the exhibition. Titles of works included The Snake Charmer (1895—inspired by “The Speckled Band,” perhaps?), Head of Willis G. Crisford, Esq. (1895) and The Late Rev. Thomas Wilkins (1898). The latter was a marble medallion memorial to Frederick’s uncle, and was installed in St. Michael’s and All Angels, Neepsend, in 1899. {17} One of Wilkins’s sculptures is held at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, titled “Henry Irving, as Hamlet” (Figure 2). {18}
Figure 2. Henry Irving (1838–1905), as Hamlet, by Frederick Lucas Wilkins. Plaster and paint. Circa 1890-91. Held by the University of Bristol Theatre Collection. A label with the item explains that the sculptor came from Birmingham and this was modelled when he was 18—around the time the Sherlock Holmes bust may also have been created.
It is unknown exactly when Conan Doyle came into possession of the bust. It was first mentioned in 1894 but had probably been with him for a while at that point. The sculpture now resides at the Musée Sherlock Holmes de Lucens in Switzerland. Paperwork accompanying the sculpture reads “vers (about) 1890.” {19} If accurate, this would mean it was sculpted before Sidney Paget began illustrating the stories for The Strand. How then account for the fact that the sculpture appears to be based on Paget’s version of Holmes? Before Paget, artists had not depicted Sherlock with a hawk-like visage (although his “hawk-like nose” is described in chapter two of A Study in Scarlet.) After Paget would place the bust’s origins somewhere between July 1891 and late 1894. Regardless, it’s an example from early in Wilkins’s career. He was 18 in 1891 (the same time that the Henry Irving sculpture in Figure 2 was created).
When Conan Doyle passed away in 1930, the bust stayed within the family. John Dickson Carr’s biography of Conan Doyle includes a photograph of the study at Bignell Wood (Conan Doyle’s retreat from 1924-1930), almost arranged like a shrine, with a range of “trophies” including small busts of Brigadier Gerard and Professor Challenger. {20} Next to the desk is Wilkins’s large bust atop a column pedestal. The photograph appears to be contemporary to the 1940s. In Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes, Andrew Lycett describes how Conan Doyle’s children divided up “various papers and mementoes.” {21} Notably, “Jean wanted a Sherlock Holmes bust,” which we can reasonably assume is the one from Conan Doyle’s office. This must not have come to pass, as when the bust appeared in the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition of London in 1951 (“a bust by F. L. Wilkins”), it was credited in the catalog as having been lent by Adrian Conan Doyle. {22} The exhibition featured more than one bust of Holmes, with Hugh Skellen’s depiction of the bullet-damaged wax bust from “The Empty House” taking pride of place by the window in a meticulous recreation of Holmes and Watson’s Baker Street room.
It seems the bust made the trip across the Atlantic for the 1952 New York exhibition curated by Adrian. It is not listed in the catalog, {23} but some printings of the US edition of Doubleday’s The Complete Sherlock Holmes feature a rare photo of the New York exhibition with the bust present. Afterwards, the bulk of the exhibits were housed at the Sherlock Holmes pub, and remained there from 1956 until 1965, and the bust is listed in the catalog of that collection. {24} Adrian Conan Doyle established the bust’s current home, the Musée Sherlock Holmes de Lucens, in 1965, and the bust was presumably transferred at that point. In 2014, the bust traveled once more to London as one of the exhibits in the Museum of London Sherlock Holmes Exhibition, and the catalog of that exhibition by Catherine Cooke and Nicholas Utechin provided the first solid information on the bust’s provenance. {25} The curator of the Musée Sherlock Holmes de Lucens, Vincent Delay, provided the recent pictures of the bust (Figure 3), assuring the authors that “it is still keeping well.”
Figure 3. The Wilkins bust now resides at Musée Sherlock Holmes de Lucens in Switzerland. Photographs: Vincent Delay, 2024.
The unclear timing of the creation of the bust leads to a controversial question about the classic Sherlock look: Who came first— Wilkins or Paget? While a death notice for Sidney Paget in the Irish Independent stated that “Conan Doyle had his own materialized ideal of Sherlock to spur his imagination: a small marble bust of some French celebrity which adorned his mantel piece,” {26} no mention of this appears to have been made anywhere else, raising the question of whether someone saw the Wilkins bust and drew the wrong conclusion.
Howard Ostrom’s exhaustive catalog of Sherlock Holmes statues does not include Wilkins’s bust. {27} Perhaps a bust is not a statue, but as the genuine prototype sculpture of Holmes, it warrants inclusion. With the volume of Holmes media produced by fans now far outweighing what Conan Doyle produced, it’s a rare privilege to see that one of the first examples has stood the test of time. A beautiful rendition of Holmes, one who accompanied his creator for decades, the Wilkins bust is a testament to the power of an idea.
2 Robert Barr (under the pseudonym Luke Sharp), Detective Stories Gone Wrong: The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs, The Idler, May 1892. This was later published in book form as The Great Pegram Mystery.
3 Day Allen Willey, “Dr Conan Doyle—A Popular Author at Home,” Cobram Courier (Australia), April 19, 1900.
4 The Sketch (UK), January 16, 1907.
5 Arthur Conan Doyle, Through the Magic Door, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1907.
6 Arthur St. John Adcock, “Doyle’s Crowborough Home,” The Bookman, February 1913.
7 Nicholas Utechin and Catherine Cooke, Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die, The Museum of London Exhibition, New York: Baker Street Irregulars Press, 2015.
8 The National Archives of the UK (TNA); Kew, Surrey, England; Census Returns of England and Wales, 1891; Class: RG12; Piece: 2359; Folio: 62; Page: 3; GSU roll: 6097469.
9 UK Marriages December 1896, Volume 1b, Page 485. Index accessed at www.freebmd.org.uk.
10 The National Archives of the UK (TNA); Kew, Surrey, England; Census Returns of England and Wales, 1901; Class: RG13; Piece: 2709; Folio: 72; Page: 20
11 John Whitaker, The Best: A History of H. H. Martyn & Co., England: Promenade Publications, 1985.
12 “Death of Mr. F.L. Wilkins: Was Sculptor at Martin’s,” Gloucestershire Echo, November 3, 1943. Digital copy available at https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
13 The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/5528A.
14 Birmingham Mail, Jan 15, 1940. Digital copy available at trove.nla.gov.au.
15 “Death of Mr. F.L. Wilkins,” op. cit.
16 See: “Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951,” sculpture.gla.ac.uk/mapping/public/ which has indexed records such as exhibition catalogs in the UK. It contains at least ten items exhibited by Wilkins.
17 “Ecclesiastical news,” Sheffield Daily Telegraph, April 18, 1899. Digital copy available at https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
18 Accessed at Art UK catalogue: artuk.org/discover/artists/wilkins-frederick-lucas-b-c-1860.
19 Communicated to the authors in 2024 by Vincent Delay, acting president of the Musee Association.
20 John Dickson Carr, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, London: John Murray, 1949, facing p. 204.
21 Andrew Lycett, Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes, London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 2007, p. 459.
22 Sherlock Holmes, Catalogue of an Exhibition held at Abbey House, Baker Street, London May-September 1951, Borough of St Marylebone Public Libraries Committee, 1951.
22 Adrian Conan Doyle, The Sherlock Holmes Exhibition Catalogue, New York: L. Middleditch Co., 1952.
23 Ibid.
24 Richard Lonsdale-Hands Associates, The Sherlock Holmes, Northumberland Street, London, W.C.2., Catalogue of the Collection, London: Whitbread & Co. Ltd., 1963.
25 Utechin and Cooke, op. cit.
26 “Sherlock Holmes’ Portrait Painter,” Irish Independent, February 10, 1908. Digital copy available at https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
27 Howard Ostrom, The World of Sherlock Holmes Statues, accessed March 2025 at https://www.nplh.co.uk/sherlock-statues.html.
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