A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the book assigned by the Wednesday Whodunit Mystery Book discussion group to read in March 2012 and discuss on April 4, 2012. I was looking forward to this one because, even though I was familiar with many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, I knew nothing of the story of A Study in Scarlet. I actually hadn’t read very many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but I had seen many dramatizations of them on the show Mystery on PBS. They all starred Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and were very well made. However, I never saw a dramatization of A Study in Scarlet. I knew that it was the first Sherlock Holmes story written by Conan Doyle and that it was longer than most other Sherlock Holmes stories. At around 140 pages it was more like a novella than a short story. I downloaded the book as a text file and read it on my Aluratek Libre Pro e-reader. I actually finished it by the first weekend of March.
Before I read the book, I always wondered about the meaning of the title, A Study in Scarlet. The title is explained in the first half of the book. Sherlock Holmes usually doesn’t get too involved in cases because they aren’t challenging enough. He gets involved in this case because Watson shows some interest. After their first look at the crime scene Holmes tells Watson, “I might not have gone but for you and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn’t we use a little art jargon. There’s a scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it” (p. 39). The inside flap of the graphic novel version of A Study in Scarlet explains the title a bit more:
“That title was a fin de siècle masterstroke of art jargon. The painter James McNeill Whistler had recently offered Arrangement in Gray, Note in Pink and Brown, and Nocturne in Black and Gold. Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet supplied a new and bloody perspective. And when, a year later, his friend Oscar Wilde published ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison’ (a sardonic commendation of an artistic murderer), he subtitled it ‘A Study in Green’ in conscious homage to Sherlock Holmes’ first case.”
The story is written as a first person account by Dr. John Watson as I believe all or nearly all Sherlock Holmes stories are written. Watson recounts his first time meeting Sherlock Holmes and their move to the famous address 221B Baker Street. Other characters include inspectors Gregson and Lestrade, the latter I had heard of from other Sherlock Holmes stories. The story has suspense and action along with the methodological detecting. The story does differ from most Holmes stories in that there is an abrupt change of setting and story partway through. The first chapter of this section is titled The Country of the Saints and takes place in the Sierra Blanco. I even thought there was an error in the book that I downloaded. But it is still related to the main story. One chapter in this backstory, Avenging Angels, is also the title of a greatest hits album and a song by the English rock group Space. This story also differs from others in that it involves Americans.
Watson first learns Holmes’ methods of detection in A Study in Scarlet and also Holmes’ eccentricities. Watson read an article about the skill of identifying someone’s profession based on their appearance. It turns out that Holmes wrote that article. Watson is surprised to learn that Holmes never learned about the solar system. Watson writes:
“That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth traveled around the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
‘You appear to be astonished,’ (Holmes) said, smiling at my expression of surprise. ‘Now that I do know it, I shall do my best to forget it.’
‘To forget it!’
‘You see,’ he explained, ‘I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge that 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 laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he brings into his brain attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.’” (p. 13)
The book includes several English place names and some English words and terms that were less familiar to me. Watson takes a ship back to England and lands at Portsmouth Jetty. I wonder if this is the same Portsmouth from which we took a ferry to the Isle of Wight back in 2004. Watson writes how Number 3, Lauriston Gardens wore an ill-omened and minatory look (p. 24). Minatory means menacing or threatening. Later a hotel employee is referred to as “the boots.” The English use a different term for bail as in bail to be temporarily released from jail. They call it “sureties” that makes sense to me.
While I read A Study in Scarlet, my wife and I came across several things related to Sherlock Holmes. My wife came across the English TV series Sherlock that’s a modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. It stars Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character. My nephew who is 1 year old sometimes wears a deerstalker cap like that of Sherlock Holmes. My wife also came across the book Sherlock Holmes for Dummies by Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder. The book jacket mentions that there are Sherlockian societies in the United States.
Something else we came across while visiting the University Place library for the first time was the graphic novel adaptation of A Study in Scarlet. We first saw it on February 25 and I checked it out a few weeks later. What struck us was that Sherlock Holmes was drawn as having a very large chin. This is consistent with Watson’s description: “His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination” (p. 16). Pages 62 and 74 include pictures of Sherlock Holmes smiling. This graphic novel was adapted to its form (i.e. text adapted) by Ian Edgington, illustrated by I.N.J. Culbard, and published in 2010. The inside flap of the book states that Sherlock Holmes has spawned a host of imitators from Poirot to Maigret, Morse to Dalgliesh. This is a good segue to the next book that we planned to read: Cover Her Face by P.D. James, the first in her series of Adam Dalgliesh novels. The forward mentions that Arthur Conan Doyle was a rising twenty-six-year-old doctor and “a Scot, he had the Celts’ sense of darkness that is never far from civilization.”
I thought the graphic novel was an excellent adaptation of the original. It actually retains much of the original text. Only some very minor elements of the story are omitted. The suspense elements and Holmes’ methodological detection are maintained. The pictures even add to the story. There’s a humorous one of a dejected Lestrade and a smug Gregson. My wife also enjoyed the graphic novel.
I knew I would enjoy reading A Study in Scarlet. But I was pleasantly surprised to get to read it in another medium and learn so much about Sherlock.
Comments