Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir | Almost elementary, my dear Watson

Property from the Collection of Robin Bradley Martin

Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir

The only surviving portion of the autograph manuscript of the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Crooked Man"

4 pages (322 x 202 mm), written on the rectos only of 4 large leaves of writing paper, the first two with a blindstamp of the "Reform Club, Pall Mall S.W.," [South Norwood, 1893], with a number of authorial deletions and emendations (and a few others evidently by an editorial hand); slightly toned, scattered spotting, small hole in upper left corners where pierced by a paper fastener. Red cloth portfolio gilt.

"'Excellent!" I cried. 'Elementary' said he.

Just as Rick Blaine never commands the pianist at his café to "Play it again, Sam" in the film Casablanca, so the seemingly most well-known phrase from the Sherlock Holmes corpus—"Elementary, my dear Watson"—does not appear anywhere in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. But the present surviving holograph from the Doyle’s manuscript of "The Adventure of the Crooked Man," gets as close to that mythical pronouncement as possible.

As the story opens, Holmes calls on Watson at his surgery in the evening and remarks that the doctor has had a busy day. Watson agrees that he has indeed been busy, adding "'but really I don’t know how you deduced it.'" Holmes, after chuckling to himself, explains: "iI have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson,' said he, 'When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a Hansom. As I perceive that your boots although used are by no means dirty I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the Hansom.'" And this simple deduction is enough for Watson’s enthusiastic reply to lead to Holmes’s celebrated response:

"'Excellent!' I cried.

"'Elementary' said he."

The four pages of Doyle's manuscript, about 1,100 words comprising a bit less than twenty percent of the full story, track almost exactly with the beginning of the story as published. "The Adventure of the Crooked Man was first published in July 1893 in The Strand Magazine (UK) and Harper's Weekly (U.S.). It was first collected in book form in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, later that year. Doyle considered it among the best quarter of his 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories. "Crooked Man" is one of the earliest locked-room mysteries, although its solution does not depend on solving that problem. The story contains another celebrated Sherlockian phrase—"You know my methods, Watson"—but that line appears later in the story and is not part of the surviving manuscript.

PROVENANCE:

House of El Dieff, New York, Catalogue 71 (issued November 1971), item 15; sold to — Alastair B. Martin, by bequest to — Robin Bradley Martin