Honestly we probably don't need another Dancing Men article, but it's a story that keeps on giving. One element that intrigues me are the accusations of plagiarism against Doyle regarding the Dancing Men - there were only a few, but they did appear in the press.
A deeper read of the articles reveals that the accusation isn't really plagiarism - it's a recognition that Doyle drew 'deep inspiration' from the plot elements of other stories.
Barbados Agricultural Reporter
Wednesday, 9 March 1904
Doyle a Plagiarist?
St. Louis, Mo.,—Donald 0. Fitzmaurice, writing to the Globe Democrat, charges Sir A. Conan Doyle with plagiarizing "The Adventures of the Dancing Men," in Collier's Weekly, from Poe's "Gold Bug." He does not say it is the same language and plot, but the manner in which the mysteries are solved, he says, is the same in both cases.
After quoting from one of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories, in which the detective deprecates the astuteness of Dupin, Poe's detective in the "Rue Morgue" story, Mr. Fitzmaurice says: "To such a conclusion I Interpose nothing of objection. The particular incident referred to is that to be found in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' when Dupin is represented as conveying to the writer of the story the immediate subject of his thought, and then tracing their development or evolution step by step back to an incident which had occurred a quarter an hour earlier.
"That it was showy cannot be doubted. That it was superficial is equally plain.
"It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents the starting point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling though possibly a meretricious effect.'
"All this, whether in London or Paris, is certainly cheap enough, but it is cheaper in Doyle than in Poe : first, because with Poe it is an inspiration and with Doyle a plagiarism; and second, because while Poe this nonsense is but one manifestation of an ill balanced mind in a story of splendid imaginative power, written by the hand and brain of genius, in Doyle it fits well with other extravagances the same sort. It the plagiarist would plagiarize the best style as well as the poorest thought of the genius he would really be more excusable. But that Doyle does not plagiarze only Poe's poorest thought, the manner in which he makes Sherlock Holmes solve the cipher in 'The Adventures of the Dancing Men' is ample evidence.
"As to the plagiarism it will never be, for the proof is too overwhelming. In Poe's strange weird story, 'The Gold Bug,' Legrand tells how he deciphered the cipher writing on the parchment paper which showed the way to the pirate board. After telling how the figure 8 predominated in the cipher, Legrand goes on to say : 'Now in English the letter which most frequently occurs is E. Here, then, we have in the very beginning the ground work for something more than a mere guest. As our predominant character is 8, we will not commence by assuming it is the E of the natural alphabet.'
"Legrand, with the predominant figure of his script representing the commonest letter of the alphabet, solved the mystery of the hidden treasure. Holmes, with the predominant figure of his script standing for the same letter, solved the mystery of 'Aldthorpe Manor'. Mr. Doyle is evidently being put hard to it to turn out his products fast enough for the money.
So as we see, the charge is not REALLY plagiarism, but it certainly points to Doyle directly adapting a story element from Poe, and weaving it into a Holmes story. Fitzmaurice's letter was written shortly after Dancing Men was published and appeared in the St. Loius Globe-Democrat. His letter received rapid coverage - it was referenced in the New York Times on Christmas Day 1903. This Chicago Tribune headline appeared on December 27, 1903:
Along with articles across the United States, it was also discussed in newspapers in Australia but importantly not the UK.
The voice of reason did counter these accusations. For example, this Feb 1904 piece in the 'Worker' published in Queensland, Australia.
Worker (Brisbane, Qld), Sat 20 Feb 1904
Conan Doyle is alleged to have cribbed the plot of 'The Dancing Men' from Poe's 'Golden Bug.' Very little resemblance can be traced between the two stories. There is a type of scribbler who is always nosing around and discovering "plagiarisms" where they don't exist. He reminds one of an ill-bred terrier who makes a demonstration at every hole he comes across, under the delusion that he has run a rat to earth. The one good point about the plagiarist-hunter is that no one ever deems it worth while to plagiarise him.
Let's take a look at the code in 'Gold Bug'. The cipher was composed of conventional characters that appear in print, rather than a custom graphical code.
Nevertheless, the accusation is that the solving of the cipher was similar in both stories. The solver Legrand outlines to the narrator the initial steps to solving it:
"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e. Afterwards, the succession runs thus: a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w b k p q x z. E however predominates so remarkably that an individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevailing character. Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess... As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet."
In The Dancing Men, Holmes employs a similar strategy. That is the objection of the writer. Were the letter to appear in the UK, the writer might have worried aboot being up on a charge of libel!
The connection was widely recognized - in 1905 the American journalist and poet Arthur Chapman published a well-known pastiche titled 'The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes' in 'The Critic', which includes the line from Dupin to Holmes "I don't even hold that 'Dancing Men' story against you, in which you made use of a cryptogram that instantly brought up thoughts of 'The Gold Bug'".
A second curious case emerges from the pages of a number of magazines including 'The Boy's Own Paper' in the 1870s and 1880s. 'The Language of the Restless Fays' appeared a number of times in various magazines, and could easily have been seen by Doyle as a young man. A 'fay' is a fairy, elf, or sprite. The text is transcribed undernearth:
The Boy's Own Paper
An Odd Column
The Language of the Restless Fays
Here you have two very well-known verses written in the language of the Restless Fays. It is exactly the same as English, excepting in the form of its letters. The Fays have twenty six distinct positions, one for each letter of the alphabet. P and C, for instance, invariably lie on their backs, though the head of one points to the right and that of the other to the left. E is always seen dancing, with his arms up in the air, and X, not being often needed, sits at his ease. In due time we shall publish a full key to this interesting alphabet, for the benefit of all who wish to correspond in the new language. Meanwhile, who can read the above verses? The first letter is an "L".
Sure enough, the solution and key was ultimately published.
The remarkable similarly of the 'Restless Fays' of thirty years earlier did not go entirely un-noticed after the 'Dancing Men' were published in 1903. In 1910, a short article was published in 'The Bookman' by Lyndon Orr - the pen-name for Harry Thurston Peck (1856-1914). Peck was a Professor of Latin & Literature at Columbia University in New York.Writing in The Bookman, Orr/Lang wrote (digitized at Hathitrust) :
Now {Dancing Men} was considered a fairly good one compared with the other stories in the same book ; and some credit was given to Sir A. Conan Doyle for the ingenuity of his cryptogram. Not very long ago, however, an eminent surgeon of this city who has, like so many of his profession, a fondness for literature, happened, on a rainy day, to be looking over a bundle of old magazines. Among them was a copy of the first volume of St. Nicholas. In the number for May, 1874 (page 439), there occurs a puzzle given under the title "The Language of the Restless Imps.... {see above}.
The interest of all this comes in when one observes that the "restless imps" of the St. Nicholas magazine for 1874 are precisely the "dancing men" of Sir A. Conan Doyle's story, published just thirty years after. The alphabet has been transposed in most cases, but the "dancing men" are the same, so far as they enter into Sir A. Conan Doyle's narrative. The gentleman who made this discovery took it for granted that some one had suggested (or perhaps sold) the cryptogram to the British writer. He, therefore, wrote a courteous letter to Sir Conan Doyle, pointing out to him that his cryptogram was really three decades old and warning him against the possibility that other aged material might be palmed off to him. In reply came a half-penny post-card which read as follows:
This was not a very satisfactory answer when sent to an eminent member of Sir A. Conan Doyle's own profession. It was curt in tone and was not even provided with sufficient postage to carry it to the gentleman to whom it was addressed, without requiring him to pay for its delivery. Naturally he was somewhat incensed. Therefore, he countered on Sir Arthur by sending him a one cent post-card addressed:
We tell this story simply as it happened, leaving our readers to decide whether the coincidence was pure or impure. But this case of coincidence deserves to be set side by side with Sir A. Conan Doyle's well-known narrative which he calls "A Case of Identity."
Lyndon Orr
I'm not sure Sherlock Holmes believed in coincidences.
Who was the eminent surgeon of New York? Possibly a member of Faculty at Columbia. It is curious that the correspondence was to warn Doyle that someone was offering him previously-published ideas, and with a response so curt. So curt that I suspect it wasn't the first query ACD received on the matter.
As an aside, 1910 was an interesting time for Peck to be publishing letters that point to a potentially sensitive topic. Peck himself was embroiled in the publication of his love-letters by his former secretary as part of a breach-of-promise case in 1910. He was fired from Columbia (even though the case was dismissed) and ultimately died by suicide in 1914.
What can one make of all the multiple accusations of plagiarism and 'inspiration'? Simply that Doyle used what he discovered around him for literary purposes. He found 'tit bits' and wove them into wonderful stories. One wonders whether the range of observations filtered back to Doyle, and whether he cared at all at the recognition in the US of his inspirations.
There are some outstanding discussions of the use of the Cubitt children dancing men, and the inspirations taken from earlier literary sources. To me, the most important articles are those by Thelma Beam and Donny Zaldin that appear in Canadian Holmes (2013), and in the BSI Press facsimile edition of 'Dancing Men'.
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