Sherlock purists take a deep breath. Your hero was originally going to be called Sherrinford Holmes. His old mucker Dr W started life as Ormond Sacker. These unnerving facts are clear from the pages of one of Conan Doyle’s notebooks that are currently on display in the Museum of London’s new Sherlock exhibition.
The beginning and the end of the exhibition are devoted to Sherlock, the stories, the author and his character. It starts with the babbling of twenty TV screens embedded in one wall, each showing a different actor’s portrayal of the master detective. The large number of Holmes TV series and films that have been made shows the impact the stories have had on ongoing generations although the bold claim stencilled on the wall saying ‘He has shaped how we view and imagine London’ is a little too hyperbolic.
Nearby are a selection of vintage advertising posters for a few of the films, some of which do not stick directly to the original text (I’m looking at you, A Study in Terror). Best is a simple woodcut advert for an 1899 play by dramatist William Gilette. He had asked Conan Doyle if he could marry Holmes off. Showing the distaste with which came to regard his famous creation Conan Doyle told him ‘You may marry him, murder him or do what you like to him.’ The audiences liked what Gilette did and the play was performed over 1300 times.
The great consulting detective is quoted as saying ‘It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London’. This has allowed the curators to devote a large central section of the exhibition to the London in which Sherlock is set. Maps and works of art try to evoke the period of fog and Hansom cabs. Unexpected is a painting of Charing Cross Bridge by Monet, lent by The Churchill Collection and The National Trust. It is a pastel explosion of pale yellows and greens, exploring the effects of light on fog. A dark Whistler lithotint also shows the foggy coal smoke hanging over London, though he includes suspiciously Japanese craft working the Thames.
Putting on a show about a fictional character has inbuilt difficulties. There can be no artefacts handled by Sherlock, nothing from his personal collection. Instead the museum displays items of the period which are relevant to the detective stories. There are pipes, revolvers and canes. A set of handcuffs (which were actually used to arrest Dr Crippen). Easy to miss is a small display of which Sherlock would have approved – a few different types of tobacco ash.
There are also images of 19th century aristocrats playing dressing-up, referencing Sherlock’s ability to pass himself off as many different characters. These are a tenuous inclusion in the show. Sherlock was a master of disguise whereas no one was going to mistake Lord Wolverton for King Richard, if only because he is breaking a rule so simple that Sherlock never even had to explain it to Watson. Never disguise yourself as someone who died centuries ago.
Early in the exhibition there is an acknowledgement of Conan Doyle’s debt to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue and his detective Auguste Dupin. Vitrines hold a first edition of A Study in Scarlet as well as manuscript notes and copies of Strand magazine where the stories first appeared. Overall the exhibits focus more on London and the general period than Sherlock and Conan Doyle. But the exhibition ends with two original manuscripts. The pages are covered in small, elegant writing. A few words have been added here and there. They sit under a large Turner watercolour of The Great Falls of the Reichenbach. It’s amazing to think anyone could survive falling down that raging waterfall…
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