‘What an excellent name for a story’
Presented to the Six Napoleons, March 14th 2025
When A Study in Scarlet was published in late 1887 as part of that year's Beeton's Christmas Annual, the story had already been on quite a journey. It is generally accepted that Conan Doyle wrote the novel over the course of about six weeks in March and April of 1886 while residing in Southsea. Following its completion, the story was submitted to several publishers including Arrowsmith before it was accepted by Ward, Lock & Co. in October 1886. To Doyle’s disappointment, the story was held over for a year before its public debut in late 1887.
A holograph manuscript of Conan Doyle's first Sherlock story does not exist, but some primary documents and commentary capturing the origins of the story and characters remain. In his autobiography, Memories and Adventures (1924), Conan Doyle reflected on the genesis of Holmes: ‘What should I call the fellow? I still possess the leaf of a notebook with various alternative names. One rebelled against the elementary art which gives some inkling of character in the name, and creates Mr. Sharps or Mr. Ferrets. First it was Sherringford Holmes; then it was Sherlock Holmes. He could not tell his own exploits, so he must have a commonplace comrade as a foil—an educated man of action who could both join in the exploits and narrate them. A drab, quiet name for this unostentatious man. Watson would do. And so I had my puppets and wrote my “Study in Scarlet.’
The leaf to which Conan Doyle refers is commonly known as the ‘Sherlock Holmes birth certificate.’
It is a single sheet that names ‘Sherringford Holmes’ and ‘Ormond Sacker’ (Watson) of ‘221B Upper Baker Street,’ and sketches out the famous comparison to Edgar Allan Poe's literary detective, Auguste Dupin. Note that Conan Doyle refers to creating the names for his ‘puppets’ before writing the story. Randall Stock notes that the image of this page has been reproduced more than twenty times, as early as 1923 in the serialisation of Memories and Adventures in the Strand Magazine, on the cover of the US dustjacket for Memories and Adventures and in Vincent Starrett's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933), in addition to being on display at the 1951 Sherlock Holmes Exhibition in London.
The second artefact ON THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUR SHEET is found on page ten of the Southsea Notebook Number 1, part of a series of notebooks kept by Conan Doyle from 1885-1889. The page fragment contains a title and two sentences of text as follows:
‘ A tangled skein – ’ A Study in Scarlet
The terrified woman rushing up to the cabman. The two going in search of a policeman. John Reeves had been 7 years in the force, John Reeves went back with them.
‘John Reeves’ evolved into John Rance, the constable who found the body at Lauriston Gardens. An image of the above sentences was reproduced in John Dickson Carr's The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1949) and included in the 2004 Christie’s auction catalogue, at which the Southsea Notebooks were purchased. They went on public display in 2014 at the Museum of London’s Sherlock Holmes exhibition at Museum of London.
While neither of the sheets are dated, the general interpretation has been that the title of the story was originally ‘A Tangled Skein’ and that it was later renamed A Study in Scarlet. This can be read in many sources, but a good example can be found in The Independent newspaper’s coverage of the 2014 Sherlock Holmes Exhibition in which it is noted that A Study in Scarlet ‘was originally called A Tangled Skein, but that is neatly crossed out and the new title... substituted.’ The Quartering Press catalog of that exhibition prepared by Nick Utechin and Catherine Cooke makes the same case. This conclusion is entirely reasonable based on the evidence available, and no further documentary evidence exists on the genesis of A Study in Scarlet - until now.
Last year at the Minnesota conference, Ira Matetsky shared his adventures doing the equivalent of literary dumpster diving – searching the archives of libraries in cities he happened to be visiting for all things Arthur Conan Doyle. He exhorted the audience to do the same, and so while Ira was speaking I began searching library archives I knew best…..
The State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW, Sydney, Australia) holds four letters written by ‘Conan Doyle to Mrs Kate Bryson’ which were donated in 1966. The identity of Kate is for a another time, but at Peter Blau’s encouragement I’ve been tracking Kate and the provenance of the letters - for now it is sufficient to observe that Kate, and her husband Dan, were friends from Conan Doyle’s with connections to his Edinburgh days, and they most likely shared a mutual acquaintance in William K. Burton, Conan Doyle’s childhood friend. In the early 1900s, Kate married Charles Bon Bernard, of a Swiss-London trading family, lived first in Colorado, and then resettled in Sydney. The letters must have been valued by Kate, who carried them across the world. Following her death in 1923 and that of Charles in 1954, the letters were offered to the State Library where they have resided for almost sixty years.
While all four letters are undated, two are addressed from Portsea, the strip of land on which Southsea is located. Of the two Portsea letters, one can be dated to 1885, while the other is likely prior to 1887 (and possibly prior to 1885). Several biographers have noted the weeding of Conan Doyle’s correspondence from the Bush Villas period by members of the family which biographer Andrew Lycett has suggested was an attempt by Conan Doyle’s sons to minimize Louise Hawkins’ place in the family. This is evident in the letters collated and published by Lellenberg, Stashower and Foley (eds.), Arthur Conan Doyle – A Life in Letters (2007) which reveals a paucity of correspondence from 1885-1888. As such, the Bryson letters held in Sydney offer insight into a formative period of Conan Doyle's writing career.
And NOW – in the spirit of Ross Davies, Matilda will distribute a unique and limited edition postcard created EXCLUSIVELY for this Six Napoleon’s meeting – cherish it and don’t lose it or you’ll need to buy one for exorbitant prices at some future Sherlockian trade room. Both sides contain images from the letter.
The 1885 letter consists of two leaves with writing on both sides and is in very bad condition as unfolding and refolding has caused the letter to separate into pieces. Internal evidence suggests that the letter was written in April, May or June of 1885. It cannot have been written before April as Conan Doyle makes two references to his engagement to Louise Hawkins, which occurred in that month. In the ‘cat obituary’ (of which more below!), Doyle notes that the cat ‘heard of my intended marriage’ while, in closing the letter, he states ‘I get married on or about the 6th of August.’ In a pleasing further detail, Conan Doyle notes about Louise: ‘we correspond pretty regularly. I think she is a very good little girl and will make a jolly partner in life. I shall keep my married household in quite as Bohemian a style as my single one.’ The latest the letter could be written is June since Conan Doyle refers to a story that has been accepted by Belgravia but which has no yet appeared: ‘I don't know when Belgravia will publish that - nor when they will pay me for it.’ This story can only be ‘The Great Keinplatz Experiment,’ Conan Doyle’s comic body-swap story, which was published in Belgravia in July 1885.
This letter is addressed from ‘Station Hospital, Portsea’ and appears to contain a watermark of the Coat of Arms of Her Majesty's Government. The context for this address can be found in Memories and Adventures, in which Conan Doyle offers this insight into his days as a struggling doctor: ‘A new phase of medical experience came to me about this time, for I suddenly found myself a unit in the British Army. The operations in the East had drained the Medical Service, and it had therefore been determined that local civilian doctors should be enrolled for temporary duty of some hours a day. The terms were a guinea a day, and a number of us were tempted to volunteer where there were only a few vacancies.’
The letter provides colourful detail into this posting, which has hitherto gone undated. ‘I have been stuck on here to look after troops which is a very good thing but probably won't last long. They have run short of army medics it appears so have to fall back upon civil practitioners. I still run the shop at Bush Villas, so that my hands are pretty full. It is very fun as I have many men under me and can say to one come and he goeth with as Holy writ remarks. The other night I was run in as a prisoner by some bould [sic] militia men who seemed to think I had an O'Donovan-Rossy sort of look about me. Their excuse was that I didn't know the counter sign. The screw is about 12 pounds a month so if it lasts it will be a capital thing but it is liable terminate any moment.’
The text in the letter is wrapped around a small pen-sketch by Conan Doyle of himself in top hat towering above eight militia men escorting him as prisoner. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was an Irish Fenian leader who organised the first bombings of British cities, and was the subject of an assassination attempt in early 1885. Unlike Conan Doyle, Rossa had a thick goatee and Irish accent, but like Doyle he was certainly a tall man at over six feet.
In addition to this description of his army medical appointment, Conan Doyle’s 1885 letter to Kate covers a range of topics. He apologizes to Kate for not writing sooner and hopes to visit her at her New Malden home, asks after her husband Dan, and after ‘Bill’ who, based on context from the other letters, is believed to be Willy Burton. Conan Doyle then moves on to the sad news that his cat has died, which transforms into a delightful light-hearted obituary:
‘We have had a heavy blow in the shape of the death of our pet cat. She was a very high minded and independent cat, but jealousy was one of her failings and when she heard of my intended marriage she looked at me reproachfully, went across the road to the Marston Lodge cat and made arrangements as to the disposal of her property, and then came back and deliberately committed suicide by getting into the oven allowing herself to be shut in and suffocated. She was a cat of considerable attainments. She used sometimes during the night to assemble all the neighbours cats in my back garden and used to address them from the top of the wall with much vehemence. From the respect with which her remarks were always listened to I judge that she was considered the best orator in this quarter. Whether on those occasions she was [...] of her [...] or whether she merely discussed the passing events of the hour is more than I have been able to determine. It is my duty to say that she had faults. Her morals were loose and her language was free. I once heard her speak to a dog who came into our passage in a manner which shocked one much. Still her tastes were refined. She was fond of botany and entymology. The first led her carefully to dig up everything which we planted in the garden. The second took her into strange places in pursuit of flies. I have no doubt that her spirit has gone to some Cat's paradise where innumerable corks hang from countless doorknobs, and where mice who have died in a state of sin scuttle about all day and afford fine sport to the [...] won't have as clean a sheet to show if our books are ever overhauled. Cats don't do shabby things. But there - I musn't start moralizing or I shall bore you.’
And at this juncture, Conan Doyle turns to several staccato topics, the first of which is striking – AND AGAIN I REFER YOU TO YOUR POSTCARD:
Holograph description of ‘A Study in Scarlet’ as the title for a story."‘A Study in Scarlet’ - what an excellent name for a story depending upon a murder and the interest lying in the difficulty of unravelling the facts and who the murdered was. It struck me quite suddenly and I at once recognized it was a splendid name. I shall write it."
This is likely the first appearance of the title A Study in Scarlet and possibly the only one that can be categorically dated to 1885. Written in the midst of work at a garrison hospital, Conan Doyle indicates that the title for the story came first - in fact it struck him quite suddenly. He concludes by resolving to write a story about a murder. There is no mention of prior titles or drafts of a story. In fact, immediately following this extract, he states that ‘Literature is slack. I am torpid. My brain won't work.’
In the light of this new evidence, how do we rationalize the received wisdom that ‘A Tangled Skein’ was the original title of the first story and was later replaced with (A) Study in Scarlet? One possibility is that the title was in fact ‘A Tangled Skein’ - A Study in Scarlet, before Conan Doyle thought better of a double-barreled title. The inverted commas around ‘a tangled skein’ suggest it was perhaps intended to be a quote in a longer title, and that it was removed from the working title, rather than being replaced at a later date by A Study in Scarlet. Whatever the case, it is significant that we now have proof that the title was being considered a full twelve months before Conan Doyle is believed to have put pen to paper on Holmes’s first adventure.
There it ends ; I hope you’ve enjoyed being the first to learn about Doyle’s ‘excellent name’. This will appear as an article in the Sherlock Holmes Journal later this year, and the obsessive dive into Kate’s life is a story for another evening. Enjoy the souvenir!
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Well it doesn't end there, as I'm currently in Sydney I've had the chance to visit the State Library of New South Wales and inspect the four letters that they hold. I visited with my daughters, and attended the wonderful Mitchell Library reading room to access their rare documents collection.
Once there, the requests slips were completed, and the letters were each delivered in their individual archival folders. One trifle that impressed me was that the collection of letters were weighed on an analytical scale before being handed to me, and then weighed again afterwards t ensure nothing was missing!
One of the Conan Doyle letters on the desk for reading.
The three photographs above show the state of the key 1885 letter described in the talk above. It truly is in fragments, and each has been placed in a plastic archival sleeve. The pieces were placed together to obtain a scan of the entire letter. In the coming weeks I'll post each of the four letters and their transcriptions.
The correspondent, enjoying time with the letters, and the fragment of letter that contains the reference to 'Study in Scarlet'.
