Lucy Worsley: Sherlock Holmes is the world's most famous detective... Worsley: Oh, and here's an address with a powerful spell to it--Baker Street.

Worsley, voice-over: admired for his intellect.

Woman: You had an almost infallible detective, who offered certainty, answers.

Worsley: Adored for his skills of deduction.

Woman two: It's a little bit of a precursor to what we call forensic science.

Worsley: He originally appears in 4 novels and 56 stories, and he pretty much always solves the mystery at the heart of each one of them, but there's one huge mystery that still remains.

Why didn't Sherlock Holmes' creator Arthur Conan Doyle love him as much as the rest of us do?

Man: You can see the dilemma that he's in because he doesn't want to be stereotyped only as the writer of Sherlock Holmes.

"I think of slaying Holmes.

He takes my mind from better things."

Worsley: In this series, I'm tracking down clues and evaluating the evidence... Where is it?

Where is it?

Worsley, voice-over: to discover where creator and creation diverged.

Woman: He escaped from Conan Doyle very early.

Escaped!

Man: It just sort of blew up with Houdini just eventually saying, "I just think this guy is senile.

He's sort of bamboozled easily."

Worsley: I read my first Sherlock Holmes story when I was about 9, and what I loved about him was his compelling weirdness and the strange cases he took on, but I've come to think that the most curious case of all of them is this love-hate relationship that existed between the great detective and the man who invented him.

♪ In the world of Sherlock Holmes, nothing is as it seems, and the case of his author Arthur Conan Doyle is no exception.

He didn't create his detective in the Victorian streets of London, but instead in the coastal city of Portsmouth... [Crowd cheering] where Arthur was to be found on the football pitch... [Whistle blows] playing under a false name.

♪ Here's a match report in the "Portsmouth Evening News" from March 1886.

In goal, we have A.C. Smith.

Now, that's actually A.C. Doyle.

He was 26 years old, he was 6'1", and he weighed 210 pounds, just the sort of man to stop a ball.

Arthur Conan Doyle was in many ways a vision of middle-class propriety-- a young doctor, a keen member of the cricket and bowls clubs, but Arthur the footballer is rather mysterious.

Why was it that when he played football he disguised his real name?

Now, football didn't have the same upmarket image as some of Arthur's other hobbies.

Football was the sport of the working man, and maybe he used his false name in order to preserve his reputation as a newly established family doctor.

Now, I think that Arthur's life as a secret footballer might reveal an awful lot about who he really was.

On the one hand, he had these crowd-pleasing instincts, but at the same time, he had an enormous need to appear respectable.

[Cheering and applause] I suspect that this dual identity may provide a clue to the curious relationship between author and detective because just as his respectable life was taking shape with a small medical practice and a suitable wife called Touie, Arthur was also working on a secret ambition.

He wanted to make a living as a famous writer, and in March 1886, he put pen to paper.

Arthur was writing the first- ever Sherlock Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet," and he seems to have been seized by a writing frenzy.

He finished the whole thing in just a month.

Yes, you did hear me right.

Arthur dreamt up the whole world of London's most famous detective in just 30 days from his desk in Portsmouth.

At the beginning of "A Study in Scarlet," Dr. John Watson has just come to London, and he needs to find somewhere to live.

He's hanging out one day in the Criterion Restaurant in Piccadilly when he hears tell of a possible flatmate who's based at the St. Bartholomew's Hospital in Smithfield.

Watson decides to cross town to go and interview this guy, check him out.

How does he get there?

He takes a cab, which means that right from the very beginning London, the streets of the city, is like an extra character in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

♪ You'd have thought that Arthur knew London like the back of his hand, but again, there's some deception going on.

Arthur had grown up in Edinburgh.

He'd worked in several English cities.

He traveled abroad to the Arctic and to West Africa, but he'd only ever spent a few weeks here.

So how did Arthur build up this really believable picture of London?

We actually know the answer because he wrote a letter to his publisher in which he spilled the beans.

He explained that he'd used a post office map like this rather lovely one here.

You can see Piccadilly Circus, where Watson's journey begins, and there's Smithfield.

That's where the hospital is.

Oh, and here's an address with a powerful spell to it-- Baker Street.

We all know who lives there.

I love the idea of Arthur down in Portsmouth looking at his map, working it all out, conjuring up this whole city from a piece of paper.

I think this shows Arthur's creativity and his ingenuity, characteristics he also gave to Sherlock Holmes.

We're first introduced to Sherlock here at St. Bart's Hospital, where he demonstrates his amazing powers of observation to Dr. Watson.

"'How are you?'

he said cordially, "gripping my hand with a strength "for which I should hardly have given him credit.

"'You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.'

"'How on earth did you know that?'

I asked in astonishment."

Arthur may have dashed off the book in a few weeks, but Sherlock leaps from the page fully formed.

Wow!

Worsley, voice-over: I'd like to understand the process of creating such a striking character, and I'm hoping crime writer Saima Mir can help me to interpret a crucial piece of evidence.

So then, I've got something here that I think you're going to like, Saima.

Let me show you this.

This is a set of notes from when Arthur Conan Doyle was first inventing the character... of Sherlock Holmes.

Wow!

There is "A Study in Scarlet," the title of the first book, and this is his handwriting.

We've got some ideas for the names of the characters.

Sherrinford Holmes.

That doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Sometimes when you write a character, the name just doesn't stick, and it doesn't work until you really get to know them, and I think the idea of Sherlock just sounds like such a hard, strong name, doesn't it, whereas Sherrinford, he doesn't sound like a safe pair of hands to me.

I wouldn't ask him to investigate anything.

Do all authors do this sort of thing?

Do you?

We do.

So I definitely sit down and jot things out, and what I love about this is that we don't get to see this from other writers.

I don't get to see what their ideas were and what they turned into.

I just get to see the finished product, so I just absolutely love this.

It's so fascinating.

And this character here in this draft is called Ormond Sacker from Afghanistan, which tells us that this was some sort of a forerunner of Dr. John Watson, who served in Afghanistan.

That's a name that's been on quite a long journey.

Doctor Watson's sort of everyman, isn't he?

Everybody can relate to him.

He's very solid.

You know what you're gonna get with a Dr. Watson.

Sherlock wouldn't work without Dr. John Watson, would he?

No, he wouldn't work, and I think you have to have sort of what's a straight man in the story to bounce ideas off against, and if he's got this very nice man as his friend, he must have some characteristics which make you warm to him.

Let's find a bit more about the setup then.

We've got "Lived at 221 B Upper Baker Street."

All the pieces are coming together here, right?

It's so interesting what stayed and what left.

A "Sleepy-eyed young man" isn't what we associate with Sherlock Holmes, but the violin definitely is.

Yes.

Somebody who stands for ages, has the discipline to practice, so I imagine that's what's being conveyed there.

He's mentioned here some other famous fictional detectives at the time.

Lecoq, he says, "was a bungler."

"Dupin was better."

What's Arthur Conan Doyle doing here?

Well, this really shows the brilliance of Arthur Conan Doyle and his ideas for his career.

This is his strategy.

He's clearly got a plan of what his story will be, where it will be in the market.

He's saying, "This is the competition, "and I write stories which are a little bit like that, "but actually Sherlock Holmes is going to be a cut above, and he's going to blow the competition out of the water."

♪ Worsley: Arthur Conan Doyle will go on to be so successful, such an institution, that sometimes it's all too easy to forget that he was a human being, and what I like about this piece of paper is the way it gives an insight into him half formed, not yet a success, taking risks.

It shows him being vulnerable.

Arthur's first priority, though, was to earn money for his family, so he needed to get Sherlock Holmes into print, but deep in the stacks of Portsmouth Library, there's evidence to suggest that finding a publisher was harder than he'd hoped.

When "A Study in Scarlet" was finished, Arthur sent it to the editor at this magazine, the "Cornhill."

This is an upmarket, sober kind of publication.

There aren't any pictures in here.

It's all about the words, and the attraction to Arthur was the other authors that they published, like Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy.

This is the sort of company that he wanted to keep, but unfortunately the editor at the "Cornhill" rejected him.

Detective stories were too lowbrow for the "Cornhill."

Poor Arthur.

Two more publishers said no before finally one accepted "A Study in Scarlet," but even then, he had to wait another whole year for it to hit the market.

And here it is.

This is an absolute treasure.

This is the very first time that Sherlock Holmes appeared in print.

This is "Beeton's Christmas Annual," which to my eyes is completely joyful.

I love the colors of it and the jazzy cover.

You get to see Sherlock Holmes, as well.

There he is illustrated with his magnifying glass, but to Arthur, the "Christmas Annual" was a bit trashy.

For the rights to this story, he got £25, a sum that he described as insulting, and he also got an actual insult from the editor thrown in, too.

They wrote and said, "Yes, we like your work, "and we'll publish it.

It's just what we're after-- cheap fiction."

"Beeton's Christmas Annual" was mass market.

For just a shilling, you got a whole novel and as a bonus two plays.

Clearly, this wasn't a massive money spinner for Arthur, but would it deliver him the literary fame he sought instead?

When "A Study in Scarlet" came out in November 1887, things didn't look promising.

There weren't even many reviews.

Hello.

Have you got the "Graphic"?

Ah.

Ooh.

I have.

My last one.

Worsley, voice-over: And of those, not many were positive.

Thank you very much.

♪ Oh, dear.

The "Graphic" are not very enthusiastic.

They say, "It's not at all a bad imitation "of a detective story, "but it will please those who have not read the great originals."

That's work by Edgar Allan Poe, for example.

You can imagine Arthur was a bit cast down by that, but on the other hand, though, the "Glasgow Herald" are much keener, and they really like the character of Sherlock Holmes.

They talk about his "preternatural sagacity," I like that, and they say, "He's a wonderful man "is Sherlock Holmes.

"One gets so wonderfully interested in his cleverness."

I, too, love that cleverness, and I suspect the roots of it lie in Arthur's own days as a medical student in Edinburgh.

Arthur studied at the University of Edinburgh's Medical School.

Now, this place was right at the cutting edge of Victorian science.

It was Edinburgh medics who pioneered the use of chloroform.

They used antiseptic in surgery.

The place had a culture of experimentation and of observation.

Arthur's attention was caught by one particular tutor, a man called Joseph Bell.

And I think I'll let Arthur himself tell you more about him.

He would look at the patient.

He would hardly allow the patient to open his mouth, but he would make his diagnosis of the disease and also very often of the patient's nationality and occupation and other points entirely by his power of observation.

Worsley: Joseph Bell was part surgeon, part showman, dazzling students with his deductions, cutting a dramatic figure with his tall frame and hawk-like nose.

Arthur was inspired.

Doyle: So naturally I thought to myself, "Well, if a scientific man like Bell was to come "into the detective business, "he wouldn't do these things by chance.

He'd get the thing by building it up scientifically."

Worsley: There's no mistaking the link between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur was being super strategic here.

He took his charismatic tutor and all of those deductions to create this entirely new kind of detective.

That's why Sherlock Holmes is genius.

He's just distinctive.

In "A Study in Scarlet," Holmes observes tiny details at a murder scene-- cigar ash, spots of blood, a sour smell on the dead man's lips-- which allow him to expose a tale of poison and betrayal.

I want to ask Sherlock's modern-day equivalent, forensic anthropologist Sue Black, if his techniques have stood the test of time.

Black: We can tell a little bit about your age, if you don't mind me saying.

Worsley, voice-over: And she's subjecting my hands to a very Sherlockian examination.

You see that little patch of pigmented skin?

So that's an age spot.

So that's a little piece of punctate pigmentation that we used to call liver spots that start to develop and become more prominent as you get older, as well, but they're totally unique as to where they occur, so nobody else will have them in the same pattern or in the same shape as you do, so that makes it useful when I want to compare images.

Sue, you make a bit of a speciality of hands, is that right?

I do.

A lot of the casework that I do with police involves images of hands, and these images of hands are often found on cameras, on people's computers.

It's amazing the number of times a photograph is found that has the back of a hand involved in it.

People forget that you're just as identifiable from the back of your hand as you are from your face.

So if my databases could go into the millions, I suspect we would get fairly close to DNA in terms of probability because I do think the human hand is unique.

Wow.

So it's like fingerprints but on steroids.

On steroids.

Wow!

Now, Sherlock Holmes wrote a book about deducing people's occupations from their hands.

He did.

Would you be happy to read out that passage from "A Study in Scarlet"?

I would indeed.

Yes.

So what it says is "By a man's fingernails, "by his coat sleeve, by his boots, "by his trouser knees, "by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, "by each of these things, a man's calling is plainly revealed."

Do you see any similarities between what you're doing today with your database of hands and what Sherlock Holmes did?

Yes.

We had a case of an unidentified individual, and what we could see were lots of little pock marks all over his skin, and the suggestion from us was, well, maybe he was involved in welding and these were little sparks and little burn marks on the skin from welding.

So sometimes what you see can tell you what somebody is or tell you what they aren't.

This is a very Sherlockian view of the world.

It is a bit, isn't it?

His world view is observation, deduction, and knowledge.

He keeps his scrapbooks full of information, and he also publishes books of his own, like what types of cigar ash come from what types of cigar.

That's definitely taking it to the science side of things, but he was never really tried and tested, was he?

So at the end of the day, he would lay forth what all of the information in front of him meant, and usually what would happen is somebody would say, "Yeah, you're absolutely right."

So at no point was he challenged in what he said.

We would be challenged in court.

"How do you know this?

What's the statistics?

"Did you do this accurately?

Could there have been a mistake?"

And you really do get the cross-examination.

Sherlock Holmes never had that, and I wonder if he did go into court, how he would have stood up against it.

Are there some things that Sherlock Holmes did that you can get behind as a forensic scientist today?

Oh, unquestionably.

Of course you can because what he was seeing was he was seeing connections between things, and he was seeing the patterns between those connections, and that sort of deductive process is exactly what we follow today.

So much of what we do is pattern matching and pattern recognition, and he was doing that just as we do it now.

So it's a bit of a precursor to what we call forensic science.

[Bell tolls] ♪ Arthur Conan Doyle was clearly on to something by identifying this new way of thinking amongst late Victorian scientists, a way of thinking that involved data sets and spotting patterns, which would go on to become a really big part of crime detection today.

Sherlock's methods may have been pioneering, but in 1889, almost two years after his first appearance, his future was still in doubt.

Arthur wasn't exactly fending off deals from publishers, so he focused his ambitions on other writing.

Then in August, he received an intriguing invitation to have dinner with an American publisher here at the Langham Hotel.

Oh, yeah.

Very good.

Thank you.

Perfect.

It was a proper literary occasion.

This publisher had invited not only Arthur but also a real MP, who'd wrote articles, and another young author called Oscar Wilde.

Now, in the heat of the moment--heh-- possibly under the influence of the atmosphere, the publisher now got Arthur and Oscar Wilde both to sign contracts for new books.

He didn't even care what the books were going to be about.

As a result of this, Arthur got his first-ever novel advance.

He was given £100 cash up front.

The book Oscar Wilde chose to write was "The Picture of Dorian Gray," and a few days later, Arthur wrote to the publisher to say what he had decided to do.

"You said you wanted a spicy title.

"I shall give Sherlock Holmes of 'A Study in Scarlet' "something else to unravel.

"I noticed that everyone who's read that book wants to know more of that young man," and the spicy title that Arthur proposed was "The Sign of the Six."

It would become "The Sign of the Four," generally known as "The Sign of Four."

This was Arthur's big chance.

He knew he had to grab his readers from the first word.

The opening scene in "The Sign of Four," it's really shocking to read today.

"Sherlock Holmes took his bottle "from the corner of the mantelpiece "and his hypodermic syringe from its neat Morocco case.

"With his long, white, nervous fingers, "he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirt cuff."

He's about to inject himself with cocaine.

Today, I'm thinking, "Sherlock, don't do it," but I wonder how people reading this in the 1890s might have reacted and whether it might have been different.

I'm hoping that Dr. Douglas Small can explain.

Worsley: Douglas, what on earth is going on in this really shocking scene?

It does feel quite shocking, doesn't it?

I mean, I guess to us now, it feels a really counterintuitive way to begin a story about the most famous of modern detectives, but one thing that's important to keep in mind is that cocaine is completely legal during this period.

There's no legal restrictions on who can buy it, who can use it, and I think what's going on here is that this is a way of introducing Holmes to us as someone who is absolutely obsessed with the world of work, particularly his work, the solving of cases.

It's also quite important for what it sort of suggests or would have suggested to a Victorian reader because cocaine at this time is still a relatively new drug, and it's thought of as being a very high-tech drug.

So what he's doing then-- drugs aren't cool, kids, but in the 1890s, they are?

To an extent, they are, yes.

I mean, it's a way in some ways of framing Holmes from the outset as someone who's very modern.

He takes them as a way of keeping this incredible, supercharged, almost kind of machine-like brain of his operating at peak efficiency and at peak interest when he doesn't have some kind of terrible mystery to solve.

So as soon as a case comes along, he's cold turkey, he doesn't need the cocaine anymore.

Absolutely.

Switches off instantly.

When did cocaine start to be used medically?

So it starts to be used around about 1884, when a Viennese eye surgeon called Karl Koller discovers that it can be used as the first effective local anesthetic.

A couple little drops of cocaine in the eye, and that makes it numb, and this is a really transformative discovery.

So very quickly it starts to be used for almost anything you can imagine.

It's interesting that it happens in eye surgery because we know that in his medical life Arthur Conan Doyle is really interested in the eye.

He'll go on to study it.

In fact, he'll go to Vienna, where cocaine gets "invented."

He actually goes to the very same hospital where Karl Koller made this discovery.

Yeah.

And what did the readers and reviewers make of this whole business of the drug taking?

It's difficult to know what readers made of it.

Certainly reviewers were mostly quite positive about it.

Oh!

When it's mentioned in early reviews of "Sign of Four," it's used as an indication that this is a story about a fascinating new character, so it's received fairly positively at first.

And when do people start to think of cocaine in this kind of way that we do today as something dangerous and bad?

So actually, quite quickly, you start to see people kind of going, "Hang on.

We may have been a little bit too enthusiastic about this."

You start to see a lot of articles appearing being a little bit critical of Doyle's representation of cocaine.

Oh.

People start to kind of go, "Is it really appropriate "for such a famous character as Sherlock Holmes "to be using these drugs in the kind of cavalier way that he is?"

How does Arthur Conan Doyle deal with that?

So the way he deals with this is that he essentially starts a paragraph into the beginning of one of the new set of short stories that he's writing, where he has Watson say that Holmes at some point in the past was addicted to cocaine but that Watson has weaned him off of it, and this is very much a way of just sort of like boxing that issue up and shipping it out as effectively and quickly as possible.

Worsley: Arthur had thrown every crowd-pleasing attraction at "The Sign of Four"-- drugs, treasure, even a romance for Dr. Watson-- but when it came out in the U.S. and Britain in 1890, it still wasn't a hit.

Two books down, and much to Arthur's frustration, the brilliant Sherlock had yet to break through.

Time for new tactics.

When Arthur was 32, there came the big turning point in his life.

He gave up his not very good doctor's practice in Portsmouth, and he moved to London.

[Hoofbeats] There, he rented doctor's consulting rooms quite near to Baker Street, actually, but you get the sense that his heart wasn't really in his day job anymore because at the same time, he got himself a literary agent, and not just any old literary agent.

He got A.P.

Watt, the man who'd kind of invented the job of literary agent just 10 years before.

This was the man who would take Arthur and Sherlock Holmes into the stratosphere.

Arthur ditched the idea of novels and instead pitched 6 short stories, each starring Sherlock Holmes, and A.P.

Watt took the idea to a brand-new magazine printed with state-of-the-art technology, "The Strand."

Would this finally give Arthur the fame and fortune he craved?

Dr. Jonathan Cranfield has the answers.

Can you tell me a bit about this "Strand Magazine"?

So "The Strand Magazine" is launched in January 1891, and it immediately establishes a very wide readership of over 300,000, and it's a magazine that's pitched very much at a middle-class readership, which is a really wide readership in the period because lots more people have been educated and are literate.

What sorts of other stuff was in here?

Well, when it was first published, it contained a lot of continental fiction, translated from the French and from the Russian, but very quickly, the editors realized that the readers wanted British fiction by British writers, and so that's why when A.P.

Watt sends the stories to "The Strand," that's why they hit gold dust.

So magazines like this were looking for short stories?

Yes.

The classic "Strand" short story has to be 7,000 words.

More or less, you can read it in the time it takes to travel on a commuting train journey.

So the first two Sherlock Holmeses had been novels, but now he's had this idea of short stories.

What's the significance of that?

Well, Conan Doyle didn't invent the idea of the series of linked short stories, but he's the person who popularizes it and the person with whom it becomes most associated.

The linked series of short stories that establishes the character in the public's minds and which feeds it regularly to it.

So it's exactly what a magazine editor wants.

Exactly.

So, Jon, let's have a look at one of the Sherlock Holmes stories in print in "The Strand."

Here's one.

You can see the first story.

The first one, "A Scandal in Bohemia."

That's the one with the sexy lady.

It is indeed.

Worsley: In the story, the King of Bohemia, cunningly disguised, hires Sherlock to retrieve a compromising photograph from his former mistress Irene Adler.

She's the only woman who ever outwits Sherlock.

Tell me about these wonderful pictures that appeared in "The Strand Magazine."

Well, the Sherlock Holmes stories became really famous in part because of the illustrations provided by Sidney Paget, which became hugely popular not just in the stories themselves but also as objects that readers could buy for themselves in print form.

So this is a classic image, isn't it?

Yes, yes, yes.

Tell me what's going on here.

Well, this is the famous deerstalker, and so there you can see the classic Holmes image of them traveling by train.

Yes.

Certain details of Holmes' outfit come from the stories themselves, but they're elaborated upon by Paget.

The pipe is mentioned, but the hat is a Paget original.

So we've got a magazine that's on fire here.

Does this mean a big payday for Arthur?

Oh, absolutely.

This is all of his dreams come true, and so they offer him ultimately £50 for each story, irrespective of length, so, yes, he's in the money.

What could you buy with £50 at the time?

Well, £50 would be-- could be the yearly rent on a fine suburban home like the one that Conan Doyle moved his family to in 1891.

Gosh!

Year's rent on his house from one short story.

He's rolling!

Ha ha!

Yes.

That's fabulous for him.

So at this moment, everything comes together.

We've got the magazine, the literary agent, Holmes in short story form, and it's golden, isn't it?

Well, absolutely.

and as you can see here, this is a section called "Portraits of Celebrities At Different Times of Their Lives," and if we skip past Bismarck, you'll see that included amongst the celebrities for the first time is Conan Doyle himself.

Oh!

Arthur's here.

And so he's made the transition from unknown author to celebrity in his own right.

Next to Bismarck.

He's made it!

♪ Worsley: The success of the first 6 stories in "The Strand" brought Arthur financial security, and in 1891, he closed his medical practice.

With half a million readers a month now devouring Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur was becoming one of the most popular writers in Britain.

Now he set his sights upon membership of the literary establishment.

Arthur really embraced being rich and famous.

He absolutely loved it, not least because he could do even more of his favorite thing, which was joining clubs like this one, the fancy Reform Club in Pall Mall.

Just a couple of years before this, he'd been a penniless provincial doctor, and now he was able to swill port with powerful men-- no women, of course-- like other authors and politicians.

It was great.

♪ Worsley, voice-over: Arthur had become the sort of man who featured in photo stories about his lovely life... Worsley: Look at his poor wife having to pose on the tricycle.

Worsley, voice-over: complete with through the keyhole glimpses of his home.

He'd worked hard to earn a nice house and achieve a sense of belonging, and I suspect this need for security had its roots in his childhood.

Arthur was the eldest boy among 9 children.

His father Charles Doyle was a clerk and a talented artist, but he was also addicted to alcohol.

Arthur's mother Mary held everything together, but life was a struggle.

This experience had made Arthur acutely aware of money and respectability... and there was something else he was hiding.

There was, in fact, a dark secret about Charles Doyle that had been kept from the world.

Nobody knew this, but for the last 6 years, he'd been an inmate in a mental hospital.

These are the records from the hospital.

The cause of his problem was drink.

He is described as suicidal and dangerous.

He's been "weak-minded and nervous from his youth, "and from his own account, took refuge in alcoholism very early to give him courage."

Oh.

That's heartbreaking.

Now, these are unbelievably precious things, Charles Doyle's notebooks, because he went on drawing while he was in the Sunnyside Mental Hospital.

Here he is with his beard wrapped up very cleverly in the letters of his own name, and these images are so--ha-- quirky and striking.

Here are some fairies riding on a huge otter.

Wonderful, quirky fantasy scenes.

From this, I think I might be starting to get a glimmer of insight into what was driving Arthur relentlessly on in his career.

In his memoirs, he talks about the tragedy of his father's-- here it is--"unfulfilled powers and underdeveloped gifts."

Arthur wasn't going to make that mistake.

He was going to maximize his own gifts.

He was going to overcome this shame in his background and do something worthwhile.

♪ In the character of Sherlock, Arthur had found a way to use his talents to make his mark.

By the end of 1891, he was working on his 12th short story, and this fictional world was starting to take on a life of its own.

Readers had begun to believe that Sherlock was more than just a creation of Arthur's brilliant imagination.

People really got behind this concept that it was all real.

Look at this.

Sherlock Holmes even started getting fan mail like this particular letter that was sent care of Arthur Conan Doyle, but it's to Sherlock Holmes.

"I greatly admire your skill in every way," and he asks for Sherlock's autograph.

Not Arthur's autograph, Sherlock's autograph.

I can imagine that this would be intensely annoying to Arthur.

He's not even given the credit for inventing Sherlock Holmes because so many people believe that Sherlock Holmes is real.

♪ Arthur complained about the endless letters he got from eccentric fans.

He began to turn his irritation towards Sherlock himself, resenting his detective's mass market appeal.

♪ What Arthur really wanted now was the attention of more discerning readers.

His real passion was for historical novels, the sort he'd read with his mother as a child, the sort that he considered to be a cut above detective stories, and in 1891, just as Sherlock was making his debut in "The Strand," another story by Arthur was being serialized in a more upmarket periodical.

It was a serious novel called "The White Company."

The story begins at Beauly Abbey.

Arthur came here to research this novel.

He did loads of work because he wanted to create what he thought was an accurate picture of life here in the 14th century.

I can see why this place inspired him.

♪ This is the start of the story.

"The great bell of Beauly was ringing."

[Bell rings] "Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell."

[Bell rings] Wow!

Now, that's the best-known line in the book, and I think that could be because lots of people today don't actually get any further than that.

♪ "The White Company" is about a young man--Alleyne-- who leaves his schooling at this abbey to go out into the world.

He falls in love and fights as an archer in France in the Hundred Years' War.

This is a very Victorian version of the medieval, complete with very archaic language.

I think it's fair to say that Arthur always found this novel much more convincing than his readers did.

He described it as the most ambitious and satisfying thing that he'd ever done, so he's a bit disappointed when reviewers called it just an ordinary boys' adventure story and didn't notice all of this in-depth historical research.

I'm getting the impression that Arthur thought that the more you worked at something, the better it must be, so perhaps Sherlock, who came so quickly to him, seemed to him to be too easy.

Here's something Arthur had to say in his memoirs later on.

"I believe that if I had never touched Holmes, "who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would be a more commanding one."

I find that really sad and frustrating, and I also don't believe it's true.

Arthur's problem was that he wasn't the only person to think that Sherlock Holmes was a bit beneath him.

This is a fan letter from Robert Louis Stevenson, the person that Arthur basically really wanted to be, a widely respected historical novelist.

Stevenson says, "Yes, Sherlock is ingenious, interesting, "just the class of literature that I like when I have the toothache."

Now, that's a backhanded compliment.

Arthur wrote back, "I'd rather you knew me by my 'White Company,'" and sent him a copy.

It's interesting to me that Arthur always presented himself as this muscular, sporty, self-confident kind of a bloke, but underneath that, I think he really cared what people thought of him.

There'd always been this conflict in him between success and respect, and now he'd earned his money, what he seemed to really want was to be taken seriously.

Arthur was beginning to see Sherlock as a roadblock to respectability, but what could he do about it?

Arthur's step-great-grandson Richard Pooley has some fascinating evidence.

Richard, I want to understand more of Arthur's difficult feelings about Sherlock Holmes.

He was very conflicted.

He realized and his mother kept reminding him that this is where he made his money.

I mean, he wanted to be considered as a very serious writer.

Do you think that this story here, Richard, "The Man with the Twisted Lip," do we get some sort of insight, do you think, into Arthur's conflicted feelings about Sherlock Holmes?

Very much so, you see.

Essentially, Holmes discovers that what has happened is that this man, who looks very respectable and apparently goes into the City of London every day and has a respectable job, finds out that actually by begging he can make far more money, so that's what he does, and I think there is something about that which shows how-- yes, how Doyle felt, that by writing Sherlock Holmes stories he somehow was like begging.

He made a lot of money, but it's not what he really wanted to do.

So sad really because actually it was brilliant.

What's the role of his mother in this then?

Because she was really keen on sort of highbrow historical literature, wasn't she?

She was.

Yet at the same time, she liked Sherlock Holmes.

She did because two reasons, I think.

One, it was going to make him-- and that meant her and her family-- a lot of money because he was-- he was the really almost at that stage key provider of money.

The other thing is, I think she recognized in his Sherlock Holmes writing what he himself couldn't see.

Something really special.

Something--which it is.

It was new.

It was fresh.

The dialogue is so good.

It's witty, it's clever, and you look at the dialogue in a lot of his historical novels, it's clunky, it's terrible, but I think that's the other reason-- she saw that it was special.

Yeah.

Richard, it's just thrilling that you've brought along these actual letters written in the hand of Arthur Conan Doyle.

You can see from this letter it's November the 11th, 1891.

He starts it "Dearest Ma'am."

Ma'am.

Is that what he called her?

That's what he called her all his letters.

He wrote from the age of 8 till she died in, what was it, 1920.

He wrote almost every week, and she to him.

It's quite extraordinary.

There are about 1,000 letters that have survived.

He lists the 5 stories that he's just written.

"I have done 5 of the Sherlock Holmes stories "of the new series.

"I think that they are up to the standard "of the first series, "and the 12 ought to make a rather good book of the sort."

Ha!

"I think of slaying Holmes in the sixth "and winding him up for good and all.

He takes my mind from better things."

Wow!

He's thinking about slaying Holmes.

Slaying Holmes.

Yeah.

He doesn't actually do that for another, what is it, two years?

What inducements did he have to keep Holmes alive for two years after he said he was going to kill him then?

"The Strand Magazine," publishers, everybody was offering him money, and that was the inducement, and his mother saying, "Don't throw this away.

"This is working.

You know, you're now famous."

Am I right that Arthur's mother helped him out with the plots?

Absolutely.

If you look at this letter here, January the 6th, 1892, you see here-- "During the holidays."

"During the holidays, I finished "my last Sherlock Holmes tale, "'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,' in which I used your lock of hair."

This is Arthur telling his-- saying to his mum, "Thank you for the idea.

I can use this."

Exactly.

"And now, a long farewell to Sherlock.

He still lives, however, thanks to your entreaties."

So that means that he hasn't killed Sherlock, as he had hoped to do, because his mother begged him not to.

That's right.

I think we should all say thank you to Arthur's mum.

Ha!

We owe a huge debt to her for inspiring him to write all this, but also, yes, to keep him going.

Worsley: After Arthur's ma'am saved Sherlock, "The Strand" requested 12 more stories.

Arthur tried to put them off by asking for an enormous fee, £1,000, but they paid up.

He wasn't happy.

Doyle: I've written a good deal more about him than I ever intended to do, but my hand has been rather forced by kind friends who continually wanted to know more, and so it is that this monstrous growth has come out out of what was really a comparatively small seed.

♪ Worsley: By 1893, Arthur was determined to get rid of "this monstrous growth" once and for all.

[Thunder] In August, he and his wife traveled to Switzerland.

As a famous doctor turned writer, Arthur had been invited to address a meeting of people interested in healthy lifestyles for young men, but his detective was never far from his thoughts.

By the time Arthur arrived in Switzerland, he'd reached a crisis with Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes had to die.

This time, no amount of money or pleading from fans was going to change Arthur's mind.

I think he believed this was the only way to preserve his own reputation as a serious writer, and Mr. Holmes had to die memorably.

Worsley, voice-over: While out on a bracing hike, Arthur was taken to a local beauty spot.

The old Baedeker guidebook says that the path goes "down the gorge, through a wood, across the meadow, "past the hut, and then you get "to the best place to see the upper fall with its beautiful jets."

Can't wait.

[Water flowing] I can certainly hear a waterfall.

It's so loud.

Where is it?

Where is it?

Worsley, voice-over: The Reichenbach Falls would become the climactic setting for the 24th Sherlock Holmes short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem."

Worsley: And here it is.

This is the perfect place for Arthur to do in Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur makes the most of the drama of the location.

He talks about how fearful it is.

There's the torrent swollen by the melting snow that plunges into a tremendous abyss.

Wow!

♪ Arthur created a criminal mastermind specially for this tale-- Professor Moriarty.

Sherlock is on the verge of bringing Moriarty and his gang to justice when he realizes his own life is in danger.

He goes on the run with Watson, ending up in Switzerland.

In the story, Holmes and Watson both arrived by the waterfall before Watson was lured away.

When Dr. Watson got back, he discovered a note from Holmes saying good-bye and a whole load of footprints right at the edge.

Clearly, Holmes and Moriarty had been fighting and had fallen to their deaths.

Oh, cripes.

I'm not going anywhere near the edge.

Arthur gave the story every ounce of finality he could muster.

He wrote, "There deep down in that dreadful cauldron "of swirling water and seething foam "will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation."

♪ When the story came out in December 1893, Arthur wrote just two words in his diary-- "Killed Holmes."

Arthur was relieved, but readers were distraught.

♪ After the deed was done, Arthur told friends and colleagues that he felt it "wasn't murder "but justifiable homicide in self-defense since," he said, "if I had not killed him, he would certainly have killed me."

Ha!

It was almost exactly 6 years since Sherlock had appeared in print, and Arthur was only 34.

He probably thought that everybody would now forget about Sherlock Holmes.

He was wrong about that.

♪ "Lucy Worsley's Holmes vs Doyle" is available on PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video ♪