His Last Bow

By Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (1859-1930) was a Scottish author. He is most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell. Other works include The Firm of Girdlestone (1890), The Captain of the Polestar (1890), The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892), Beyond the City (1892), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896), The Great Boer War (1900), The Green Flag (1900), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Lost World (1912).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Dec 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781625585592

Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, writing his debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle wrote notable books in the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.

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The Miracle of Sherlock Holmes

by Darrell Schweitzer

Sherlock Holmes was Arthur Conan Doyle’s miracle. Like many miracles, it came of its own accord and rather overwhelmed its recipient. There may have been times when St. Paul, after his experience on the road to Damascus, really wished he could go back to his old life, but he couldn’t, and he knew it. Conan Doyle, too, reluctantly came to the same conclusion, though only after a desperate struggle. He felt that the Holmes stories were taking time and public attention away from his more serious work. So, with great deliberation he killed off his detective in the 24th story in the series, the ominously entitled The Final Problem, sending both Holmes and his arch-nemesis created for the occasion,  the Napoleon of Crime, Dr. Moriarty, over the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. That, Doyle sincerely hoped, would be the end of that.

But miracles do not stay dead, of course, even if, during the period in which Holmes was officially deceased, the fantasy-humorist John Kendrick Bangs, with permission, depicted the posthumous doings of Sherlock Holmes’s shade on the River Styx in The Pursuit of the House-boat (1897). In his unsuccessful attempt to kill off Holmes, Doyle came very close to creating a second immortal character, in the person of Moriarty, who has certainly had a substantial later career in the hands of other writers.

The Final Problem appeared in 1893. For all Conan Doyle might have wished otherwise, the world had not seen the last of Sherlock Holmes.

The beginning of the series was considerably less dramatic. Doyle, unsuccessful in his medical practice, in need of money and a more satisfying career, had already sold a number of magazine stories when he wrote the novella, A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, which, after many rejections, was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887. Doyle got twenty-five pounds for all rights to the story. He never received another penny for it, although fortunately, in one of those little contractual details that could have changed literary history forever, he retained rights to the character. Something very similar hung in the balance when Edgar Rice Burroughs originally sold Tarzan of the Apes to All-Story in 1912. If he had not retained control of the character, he wouldn’t have been able to publish the subsequent series.

A Study in Scarlet got mixed reviews, and Sherlock Holmes might have had no further outings, except for another small detail. In those days the United States did not recognize British copyrights, and so British books were widely pirated in America. It was, ironically, the success of the pirate edition which caused the American publisher Lippincott to commission (and presumably pay for) another Holmes story. This resulted in the novel, The Sign of the Four, published in Lippincott’s Magazine for February 1890, to great acclaim. Then Doyle began a series of shorter Holmes stories in the leading British magazine of the day, The Strand, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Holmes of course would not stay dead, despite Doyle’s best efforts to dispose of him. The public was outraged. You beast! a female reader is reputed to have written to him. People purportedly confronted him on the street. In 1902, Doyle relented a bit and produced a memoir, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and in 1903 gave in unconditionally, and in The Adventure of the Empty House, brought Holmes back and reassured the readers that the Great Detective was once again available for future investigations. After that, the stories continued to appear. The story, His Last Bow and the collection of that title (1917) proved to be nothing of the sort. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes appeared in 1927, three years before Doyle’s death. Even that was not the end, as thousands of other writers (myself included) have since written all manner of apocryphal Holmes pastiches, sequels, parodies, and more. Holmes was popular on the stage in Doyle’s day. He has had a lively radio, movie, and TV career since. The end is not in sight.

The miracle of Sherlock Holmes, then, is that for twenty-five pounds in 1887, Conan Doyle created a truly universal and immortal literary figure. Sherlock Holmes is a household word in virtually every country in the world. A few of Shakespeare’s characters are nearly that well known, probably Hamlet and Falstaff and maybe the Bard’s version of Richard III. Other possible rivals include Robinson Crusoe, Dracula, Tarzan, and James Bond, but beyond that, we have to turn to tradition and folklore. Sherlock Holmes is as instantly recognizable as Robin Hood. King Arthur may be somewhere in the same league. But that’s about it.

All this is commonplace. You can read elsewhere how Doyle based the character of Holmes on Dr. Joseph Bell, an amazingly deductive instructor he encountered while a medical student in Edinburgh. The publication history of the Holmes series is readily available. Peter Haining’s The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (1974) helps document the diffusion of Sherlock Holmes into all aspects of popular culture.  There are any number of Sherlockian reference works and journals, plus biographies of Conan Doyle, and other secondary sources to fill in the background. A time-traveler from 1890, examining, for example, Jack Tracy’s The Encyclopedia Sherlockiana (1979) or The Annotated Sherlock Holmes would be astonished to find entries on types of cabs, commonly worn garments, money, transportation, and numerous other details of everyday life as if the future were only looking back upon the Victorian Age through the perspective of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

It is an exaggeration to say this is the case, but it is not entirely off the mark. Almost every image we have of 19th century whaling comes from Moby Dick. Our entire conception of the pre-Civil War Mississippi steamboat industry comes from Mark Twain. A writer can have that effect. In the Holmes series, Conan Doyle preserved forever a fog-shrouded, gaslit London of the 1890s, which exists in our minds now almost as a myth, like Middle Earth.

But the most significant thing about Doyle’s London was that it was inhabited by Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, who seem more real to us than most historical figures. They’ve managed to convince any number of people of their reality. Presumably the British post office no longer receives letters address to Sherlock Holmes from all over the world, but once upon a time, it received thousands. While he was touring the Western Front during World War I, Conan Doyle was asked by a French general what rank Holmes was presently holding in the British army.  The astonished Doyle could only explain in broken French that Holmes was too old for active military service.

Never mind the sometimes amusing fiction observed by most Sherlockians, that Holmes was real, that Dr. Watson was the actual author of most of the stories, and Conan Doyle was merely his literary agent. Such a pretense is of no use here. If we examine the Sherlock Holmes stories as fiction, as something Conan Doyle made up, beginning in 1887, we begin to discover the secret of literary immortality.

Such immortality may not be something any writer can achieve deliberately, but the main cause of it is the creation of a character of such universal appeal that this imaginary person both typifies and transcends the period in which he or she was created. We don’t think of Sherlock Holmes as one of the popular characters of the late Victoria Era. Instead we think of the late Victorian Era as the time of Sherlock Holmes.

Such characters are seldom realistic ones. They are not as subtly delineated as those in a novel by Henry James. Instead they tend to be cartoons, drawn in broad strokes. Sherlock Holmes is not so much a real man as a collection of exaggerated characteristics and quirks, but put together with such charm that he rises above realism. He is someone we wish could exist, all brain, but compassionate where appropriate, a genius who will see through all mysteries, exonerate the innocent and bring the guilty to justice. He is, of course, the most remarkable person Dr. John H. Watson has ever met, which is why the Good Doctor spends so much effort remarking on him, writing the stories. Yet Holmes can be so caught up in his preoccupations that he becomes, at times, socially difficult, although we have to admit that one of the appeals of Sherlock Holmes is that he does not follow conventional rules. He can go where the rest of us can’t and do things the rest of us wouldn’t dare. One of Watson’s chief functions in the Holmes-Watson team is to act as the go-between, facilitating Holmes’s interactions with normal people. This only makes Holmes all the more magical. Each strange new detail adds to the Holmes mythos.

As Watson knows him, Holmes can be a person of great, eccentric charm. How completely wonderful he is in The Musgrave Ritual when he finally concedes that Watson’s complaints about the messiness of their shared apartment is justified, sits down to put his things in order, and begins a fascinating reminiscence about one of several cases he solved on his own before he and Watson met. The mystery itself is very good, but it is the glimpse into Holmes’s mind that fascinates. Wouldn’t we all like to have an amazing friend like that?

Let me suggest then that the core fantasy of the Sherlock Holmes series is this: we do not presume to imagine that we could be Sherlock Holmes, but we can imagine that we could have met him, and we might even flatter ourselves into thinking that we could merit the respect and friendship of such a great man. The reader-identification character in the series is not Holmes, but Watson. He is the ordinary man who serves as our connection to the remarkable life and adventures of the Great Detective. While every once in a while Holmes himself narrates one of the cases, Doyle very wisely lets Watson do most of the storytelling, if only because he (Doyle) cannot actually reproduce the mind of such a genius. Sherlock Holmes remains convincing because we see him (most of the time) from the outside, through the eyes of Watson. He is always a little mysterious. Sometimes his mental leaps are beyond Watson’s (or our) ability to follow. This is as it should be. Holmes is smarter than we are. Doyle isn’t necessarily smarter, but by this means he is able to fake it, as any author must when dealing with extraordinary or even superhuman characters. Sometimes such characters can only be glimpsed from afar. It is by deft illusion, by literary sleight-of-hand, that Doyle gives us the impression of Holmes’s reality, but what he created instead was a new archetype, who will inhabit the dream-life of all of us for a very long time to come.

—Darrell Schweitzer

A Reminiscence of Mr Sherlock Holmes

I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had received a telegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply. He made no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters, said he. How do you define the word ‘grotesque’?

Strange—remarkable, I suggested.

He shook his head at my definition.

There is surely something more than that, said he; some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognize how often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal. Think of that little affair of the red-headed men. That was grotesque enough in the outset, and yet it ended in a desperate attempt at robbery. Or, again, there was that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips, which let straight to a murderous conspiracy. The word puts me on the alert.

Have you it there? I asked.

He read the telegram aloud.

"Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult you?

"Scott Eccles,

     Post Office, Charing Cross.

Man or woman? I asked.

Oh, man, of course. No woman would ever send a reply-paid telegram. She would have come.

Will you see him?

My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers. My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.

A measured step was heard upon the stairs, and a moment later a stout, tall, gray-whiskered and solemnly respectable person was ushered into the room. His life history was written in his heavy features and pompous manner. From his spats to his gold-rimmed spectacles he was a Conservative, a churchman, a good citizen, orthodox and conventional to the last degree. But some amazing experience had disturbed his native composure and left its traces in his bristling hair, his flushed, angry cheeks, and his flurried, excited manner. He plunged instantly into his business.

I have had a most singular and unpleasant experience, Mr. Holmes, said he. Never in my life have I been placed in such a situation. It is most improper—most outrageous. I must insist upon some explanation. He swelled and puffed in his anger.

Pray sit down, Mr. Scott Eccles, said Holmes in a soothing voice. May I ask, in the first place, why you came to me at all?

Well, sir, it did not appear to be a matter which concerned the police, and yet, when you have heard the facts, you must admit that I could not leave it where it was. Private detectives are a class with whom I have absolutely no sympathy, but none the less, having heard your name—

Quite so. But, in the second place, why did you not come at once?

Holmes glanced at his watch.

It is a quarter-past two, he said. Your telegram was dispatched about one. But no one can glance at your toilet and attire without seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment of your waking.

Our client smoothed down his unbrushed hair and felt his unshaven chin.

You are right, Mr. Holmes. I never gave a thought to my toilet. I was only too glad to get out of such a house. But I have been running round making inquiries before I came to you. I went to the house agents, you know, and they said that Mr. Garcia’s rent was paid up all right and that everything was in order at Wisteria Lodge.

Come, come, sir, said Holmes, laughing. You are like my friend, Dr. Watson, who has a bad habit of telling his stories wrong end foremost. Please arrange your thoughts and let me know, in their due sequence, exactly what those events are which have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt, with dress boots and waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of advice and assistance.

Our client looked down with a rueful face at his own unconventional appearance.

I’m sure it must look very bad, Mr. Holmes, and I am not aware that in my whole life such a thing has ever happened before. But will tell you the whole queer business, and when I have done so you will admit, I am sure, that there has been enough to excuse me.

But his narrative was nipped in the bud. There was a bustle outside, and Mrs. Hudson opened the door to usher in two robust and official-looking individuals, one of whom was well known to us as Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard, an energetic, gallant, and, within his limitations, a capable officer. He shook hands with Holmes and introduced his comrade as Inspector Baynes, of the Surrey Constabulary.

We are hunting together, Mr. Holmes, and our trail lay in this direction. He turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor. Are you Mr. John Scott Eccles, of Popham House, Lee?

I am.

We have been following you about all the morning.

You traced him through the telegram, no doubt, said Holmes.

Exactly, Mr. Holmes. We picked up the scent at Charing Cross Post-Office and came on here.

But why do you follow me? What do you want?

We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which let up to the death last night of Mr. Aloysius Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, near Esher.

Our client had sat up with staring eyes and every tinge of colour struck from his astonished face.

Dead? Did you say he was dead?

Yes, sir, he is dead.

But how? An accident?

Murder, if ever there was one upon earth.

Good God! This is awful! You don’t mean—you don’t mean that I am suspected?

A letter of yours was found in the dead man’s pocket, and we know by it that you had planned to pass last night at his house.

So I did.

Oh, you did, did you?

Out came the official notebook.

Wait a bit, Gregson, said Sherlock Holmes. All you desire is a plain statement, is it not?

And it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eccles that it may be used against him.

Mr. Eccles was going to tell us about it when you entered the room. I think, Watson, a brandy and soda would do him no harm. Now, sir, I suggest that you take no notice of this addition to your audience, and that you proceed with your narrative exactly as you would have done had you never been interrupted.

Our visitor had gulped off the brandy and the colour had returned to his face. With a dubious glance at the inspector’s notebook, he plunged at once into his extraordinary statement.

I am a bachelor, said he, "and being of a sociable turn I cultivate a large number of friends. Among these are the family of a retired brewer called Melville, living at Abermarle Mansion, Kensington. It was at his table that I met some weeks ago a young fellow named Garcia. He was, I understood, of Spanish descent and connected in some way with the embassy. He spoke perfect English, was pleasing in his manners, and as good-looking a man as ever I saw in my life.

"In some way we struck up quite a friendship, this young fellow and I. He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee. One thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge, between Esher and Oxshott. Yesterday evening I went to Esher to fulfil this engagement.

"He had described his household to me before I went there. He lived with a faithful servant, a countryman of his own, who looked after all his needs. This fellow could speak English and did his housekeeping for him. Then there was a wonderful cook, he said, a half-breed whom he had picked up in his travels, who could serve an excellent dinner. I remember that he remarked what a queer household it was to find in the heart of Surrey, and that I agreed with him, though it has proved a good deal queerer than I thought.

"I drove to the place—about two miles on the south side of Esher. The house was a fair-sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving drive which was banked with high evergreen shrubs. It was an old, tumbledown building in a crazy state of disrepair. When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly. He opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great show of cordiality. I was handed over to the manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed to continually

Reviews for His Last Bow

[nx74defiant · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A nice mystery. An older Sherlock reflects on the past.

[jguidry-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The last book in this series that my library has. Bummer. I enjoyed the stories, enjoyed the narration, and I even got used to the musical interludes. My favorite short story in this episode was "His Last Bow". This was an interesting story leading up to WWI and has Holmes getting Watson and others involved in political intrigue. "

[john257hopper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This should have been the last Sherlock Holmes story Conan Doyle wrote; being set on the very eve of the First World War (and written in 1917), it has a world-weary and seemingly significantly older Holmes and Watson foiling the plans of a German agent Von Bork to steal vital military and other technical data, and feels in all respects like the end of an era, including being written in the third person, unlike the earlier stories. In fact Conan Doyle published a further twelve stories throughout the last decade of his life, the 1920s, collected together as The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, stories widely seen as considerably inferior to the earlier stories and novellas featuring the Great Detective. This one is a real masterpiece with a strong impact on the reader.

[lukerik-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

OK, so this isn't as excellent a collection as The Adventures but there are still some funny moments, fine writing and good mysteries. It's flaw is perhaps that it repeats some elements from earlier stories. The Devil's Foot is particularly good, as is The Bruce-Partington Plans with the body on the Underground tracks.

[oscarwilde87_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To set what I will say below into perspective: I love Sherlock Holmes. So most likely my thoughts will not be shared by some of you. Yet, to everyone who is not sure whether to read stories about the famous detective, just try a few of the stories and see how you like them. While His Last Bow is not a good point to start when you want to start right at the beginning, it gives a good impression of what Holmes stories are all about. If you are already familiar with the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this volume of stories is quite likely something you will enjoy.His Last Bow is another of many story colletions centered around detective Sherlock Holmes and his work. As it is a collection of stories I will refrain from going into detail for each one. While His Last Bow features many great stories, "The Dying Detective" is the one I liked best. On the outset, Watson is called to Holmes' rooms at 221b Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes apparently lies on his deathbed as the title of the story suggests. He seems to be terribly sick and is hardly able to speak. After refusing to be treated by Watson, he sends the latter to find Mr. Culverton Smith, who is not a doctor but very experienced with tropical diseases. As the narrative goes on and Smith arrives in Baker Street it slowly becomes clear that Holmes is actually perfectly healthy and that he just pretends to be deadly ill in order to get a confession out of Culverton Smith who murdered his own nephew.Even if it were just for the sake of "The Dying Detective", this volume is highly recommendable to readers of good detective fiction. It is on the whole a good collection of stories, each of its own worth reading. One might think to get bored by a volume of on the outside similar detective stories but this is actually not the case. The stories each have their own little twist that sets them apart from the rest. I think one of the strong points of this volume is that the stories are not overdone and, being rather short, very much to the point.On the whole, four stars.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really do enjoy these short works better than the full novels. Every one of them was quite good.

[ctpress_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"I followed you."(Holmes)"I saw no one."(Dr. Sterndale)"That is what you may expect to see when I follow you." (Holmes)This is the fourth out of the five short story collections with the famous detective from Baker Street. It contains eight stories - my favorites were "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box", "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", and specially "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" - Watson refers to it as the strangest case Holmes ever handled. A lot of vintage Holmes and Watson in this collection - two severed ears, stolen plans for a secret submarine, a vanished lady, madness and hallucinations, Holmes on his deathbed - or so it seems.The final story "His Last Bow" is not classic Holmes as it is a patriotic spy story written during WW1 - featuring Holmes as an under cover agent. Again Arthur Conan Doyle tries to say goodbye to the detective - the last page has yet another finality to it as Holmes and Watson are going to retire: Holmes to Watson: “Stand with me here upon the terrace, for it may be the last quiet talk that we shall ever have.”Well, it didn't work - Doyle wrote yet another 12 stories that are in the final collection "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes" - looking forward to that one.

[breakerfallen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I prefer these longer stories over the earlier ones, but I like the character development in the earliest books the best. More Holmes and Watson is always a good thing.

[bobleino · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The reading by Tom Whitworth was hard to follow because the character's voices were too similar.