Sherlockiana, Travel Writing and the Co-Production of the Sherlock Holmes Stories

Mobile Holmes: Sherlockiana, travel writing and the co-production of the Sherlock Holmes stories David McLaughlin Department of Geography University of Cambridge This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Emmanuel College May 2017 Mobile Holmes: Sherlockiana, Travel Writing and the Co-Production of the Sherlock Holmes Stories David McLaughlin Abstract This thesis is a study of the ways in which readers actively and collaboratively co-produce fiction. It focuses on American Sherlockians, a group of devotees of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. At its centre is an analysis of geographical and travel writings these readers produced about Holmes’s life and world, in the later years of the twentieth century. I argue that Sherlockian writings indicate a tendency to practise what I term ‘expansionary literary geography’; that is, a species of encounter with fiction in which readers harness literature’s creative agency in order to consciously add to or expand the literary spaces of the text. My thesis is a work of literary geography. I am indebted to recent work that theorises reading as a dynamic practice which occurs in time and space. My work develops this theoretical lens by considering the fictional event in the light of encounters which are collaborative, collective and ongoing. I present my findings across four substantive chapters, each of which elucidates a different aspect of Sherlockians’ expansionary literary geography: first, mapping, where Sherlockians who set out to definitively map the world as Doyle wrote it keep re-drawing its boundaries outside of his texts; secondly, creative writing, by which readers make Holmes move while ensuring he never wanders too far from the canon; thirdly, debate, a popular pastime among American Sherlockians and a means for readers to build Holmes’s world out of their own memories and experiences; and fourthly, literary tourism, used by three exemplary readers as a means of walking Holmes into the world. I conclude with a call for literary geography as a discipline to continue to broaden its horizons beyond the writers and readers of self-consciously literary fictions. The kinds of reading practices I discuss here can take us closer to demonstrating the role that literature and encounters with fictions play in the wider production of space in everyday life 2 Acknowledgements Every piece of research is a journey. This particular voyage has taken me from London, to Cambridge, and then on, across the Atlantic to Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, Minneapolis and San Francisco. I have been mobile in other ways, too; I have grown in thought, in experience, and with my friends and colleagues. My travelling companions on this journey have been many. None have been with me as consistently, nor as patiently, as my supervisor, Dr. Philip Howell. Others in the Geography Department, including Dr. David Beckingham and Dr. Shane McCorristine, have walked with me through some of the way. Outside of Cambridge, Dr. Sheila Hones of the University of Tokyo, has offered unfailing support over the past two years, consoling me when I have been down and buoying me up again. A special thanks goes to my friends and colleagues in Emmanuel College and in the Department: Edward-John, Olga, Therese, Mak, Riva, Emily, Sophie, Oliver and so many others. Some debts I accrued before this project even began. I owe much to Dr. Tim Youngs of Nottingham Trent University, and Dr. Corrine Fowler of the University of Leicester for their support and encouragement in the early days. Ed Parsons (who has always looked out for me) gave me the copy of Michael Saler’s As If which still sits on my desk. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for the material support they provided to this research, from a PhD Studentship, without which I could never have accomplished this endeavour, to supporting my stint as a British Research Councils Fellow at the Library of Congress. The staff at the Library of Congress Kluge Center for International Scholars deserve a special mention for the work they put in to making research in the Kluge as enjoyable as it was. Also, the staff at the University of Minnesota’s Elmer L. Anderson Library, who were so helpful for that one, frenetic week in May 2015, get my thanks. My time in America was an important part of my development as a researcher but it also gave me a PhD support group and a set of lasting friendships. Where would I have been without Antony, Ben, Maria, Gemma, Ted, Ave, Mark, Gbenga, Ester, Roxy and Ben, Pier, Max, Bori, or Eddie? To all of you I owe a great deal indeed. Finally, I could not have done any of this without the support of my family. Mum, Nick and Rachel, Dad and Jane. But most of all, Lynsey and Henry: you have given me the energy to keep going, even when it seemed too much. All I can say is: thank you. 3 4 Table of Contents List of illustrations 6 Chapter 1 – The game is afoot: introduction 8 Chapter 2 – Fictional encounters: methodology 36 Chapter 3 – Plotting and mapping: the world strictly according to Doyle? 75 Chapter 4 – Between the canon and the commons: writing Holmes’s 104 world Chapter 5 – Experience and memory: debating Holmes’s world 139 Chapter 6 – Sherlockian travels: walking in Holmes’s world 173 Chapter 7 – Conclusion 195 Bibliography 215 5 List of illustrations 1.1 Front cover of Richard Warner’s Guide Book 10 1.2 Relief map of Holmes Peak 14 1.3 Taking things too far? Hammer and friends on Holmes Peak 16 1.4 Frontispiece of Cerveny and Brazel’s Weatherwise article 21 1.5 Card from the Sporthotel Sherlock Holmes 25 3.1 Franco Moretti’s map of Sherlock Holmes’s London 77 3.2 ‘The World Strictly According to Doyle’ 80 3.3 Julian Wolff’s imaginative mapping of The Hound of the Baskervilles 84 3.4 Julian Wolff’s imaginative mapping of The Final Problem 84 3.5 Julian Wolff’s Sherlockian map of England 87 3.6 The East End as Sundin represents it 92 3.7 Merriman’s map of the City and the East End 93 3.8 Screenshot of Google Maps Street View of Pall Mall (2017) 99 4.1 Sherlock Holmes among the Associated Shades 106 4.2 David Hammer’s photograph of the site of Cox and Co. 109 4.3 Julia Wolff’s ‘Map that was wanted’ 113 4.4 A photograph of Sherlock Holmes, aged six 117 4.5 One of three ‘Priory School’ maps 132 5.1 Hench’s map of the Reichenbach Falls 140 5.2 A sample of Hench’s handwritten topographical observations 144 5.3 Inspector Gregson takes the stairs three-at-a-time 145 5.4 John Shelton Reed’s map of the caves on Long Island, New York 150 5.5 Headlines from the 1989 special issue of the Grimpen Mire Gazette 157 5.6 Weller’s idiosyncratic map of Sherlockians’ Dartmoor 170 6.1 Arthur Alexander’s reproduction of the Empty House Walk 178 6.2 Hammer’s perspective draws the reader on 184 6.3 Reproduction of the Holmes Peak historic marker 189 6 ‘Come Watson, come! The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!’ - Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’ ‘The tale is the map which is the territory. You must remember this.’ - Neil Gaiman, American Gods 7 Chapter 1 - The game is afoot: introduction Beginnings This project began with an attempt to understand how readers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories had received or interpreted these texts. I first encountered these stories as a commuter, in London. Sitting each day for an hour and a half underground, travelling between south London and Oxford Street, I found that Doyle’s stories provided a suitable distraction to the monotony of the Northern Line. From my own experience, I had an idea that these stories provided a form of escape. I wanted to understand the extent to which Doyle’s readers saw these stories as a means of what Robin Jarvis calls ‘imaginative transport’ (Jarvis 2011: 8). However, in the archives I found accounts written by readers of their encounters with Doyle’s stories that challenged this idea. I could not, I came to realise, simply write about readers interpreting Doyle’s stories: I had to write about the active role they have played in shaping them. This thesis is about a group of readers – American Sherlockians, self-confessed devotees of Doyle’s detective – who have consciously added to or extended the literary spaces of these stories, through a reading practice that I here call ‘expansionary literary geography’ (I will say more about this in a bit). Through a reading of travel writing and geographical texts about Holmes’s world written by these Sherlockians, I propose to demonstrate that American Sherlockians, reading together, have collectively created Holmes’s world, in the image of their own expectations, memories and experiences. My study is guided by an aim, influenced by recent work in literary geography, to explore how encounters with fiction can be shared, collective, co-productive experiences. I will pursue this aim through two objectives: through building a collection of Sherlockian travel writings, or texts which talk about the geography of Holmes’s world; and through focusing on Sherlockians’ delight in the repeat or re-performance of their original reading of Doyle’s stories. I will demonstrate how Sherlockians individual reading experiences, the things they think and remember and believe when encountering Doyle’s texts, have spilled over into 8 still more collective, collaborative, and co-productive encounters with these texts, which together have driven the cultural production of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

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