2.4. A Style for the Strand’s Crime Fiction?
Created through the illustrator’s understating of Doyle’s detective fiction and the awareness of the Strand’s censorship, the peculiarly clean and moderate representations in Paget’s Holmesian drawings seem more like a natural outcome instead of a style of deliberate contrivance. This singular illustrative style is not used exclusively for the Strand’s Sherlock Holmes narratives, though. Shortly afterwards the adventures of Sherlock Holme came to an end in the late winter of 1893, the Strand published a series of detective stories written by the well-know realistic novelist Arthur Morrison (1863-1945) in hope of filling in the gap left by Doyle’s popular sleuth. Appearing from March to September in 1894, a total of seven short stories featuring the investigator Martin Hewitt were later collected and released as Martin Hewitt, Investigator in the same year.78 Not only does the two literary works are frequently compared by critics, both were illustrated by Paget in an almost identical way.79 Asides from the characters’ signature physical traits, there is in fact
77 Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, p. 12. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.”
78 In the following two years Arthur Morrison published two more series featuring Martin Hewitt as the protagonist in the Windsor Magazine: Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (1895) and Adventures of Martin Hewitt (1896).
79 Pittard, “From Sensation to the Strand,” p. 111–112. Despite the evident similarities between the two works, Pittard urges that it is also important not to ignore their essential differences in character as well as the two writers’ distinctive approaches to unfold a story of crime.
not much difference between the two works’ illustrating strategies, only that the later group tends to have scenes portrayed in a closer distance (fig. 56, 57).
It is also not a coincidence that, when it comes to detective stories and mysteries, other contemporary illustrators who collaborated with the Strand seem to hold a preference for a style akin to Paget’s. Works by Alfred Pearse (1855-1933), for instance, his illustrations for L.T. Meade’s scientific detective narratives Stories from the Diary of a Doctor (1893-1895) share quite a few stylistic characteristics with story and thus initiate the magazine’s symbolic relationship to the said genre.81
Grant Allen continued to supply the Strand with stories of various genres until his last day of death. In addition to “Jerry Stokes,” which was assigned to Pearse for illustration, the Canadian novelist had provided two more crime stories during the high times of Doyle’s first two Sherlock Holmes series: “The Conscientious Burglar”
in June 1892, with drawings also by Alfred Pearse; “The Great Ruby Robbery” in the following October, and the task was taken over by Sidney Paget this time. A quick browsing through the first two stories Pearse had illustrated shows a gradual stylistic assimilation with the other illustrator in this case. While in “Jerry Stokes” Pearse
80 Best known for her contribution for children and teenage girl novels, L.T. Meade (pseudonym for Elizabeth Thomasina Toulmin-Smith 1854-1914) collaborated with physicians Clifford Halifax and Robert Eustace in several series of detective fiction, and due to such partnership her detective
narratives usually involve medical themes and relate to developments in contemporary medical science.
A collection of twenty-four mysteries in total, Stories from the Diary of a Doctor features the female detective Florence Cusack with crimes either committed or solved through medical-related means. Her later work of detective fiction with Robert Eustace, The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings, was
illustrated with Sidney Paget in the Strand from January to October 1898. For more biographical information about Meade, see Andrew Maunder, The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story, New York: Infobase, 2007, p. 283.
81 Pittard, “Cheap, Healthful Literature: The Strand Magazine, Fictions of Crime, and Purified Reading Communities, Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction, p. 77. “The first issue featured an article on ‘A Night with the Thames Police,’ while in the second number, Grant Allen contributed the Strand’s first detective story, ‘Jerry Stokes,’ inaugurating what would become the Strand’s symbolic relationship with that genre.”; for a brief summary of Grant Allen’s detective fiction, see Pittard, “From Sensation to the Strand,” pp. 112–114.
adopts two separate illustrative methods — one that resembles Paget’s (fig. 59), and the other that is more akin to pencil sketches (fig. 60), only the former method remains in his drawings for “The Conscientious Burglar,” which was published during the same time when Doyle wrapped up his first series of Adventures with “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.”
Although the Strand was aimed particularly at men, it was started off as a family magazine for the mass market, and the periodical still features stories of other genres in spite of its strong tie with crime fiction.82 While in each issue tales like children stories and romances coexist with crime stories, the previous kinds clearly hold their own preferences over specific styles and follow different sets of illustrative principles.
Take children stories for example, normally occupying each issue’s last or later section, tales for children hardly ever use any realistic watercolour drawings like those of Paget’s works. Heavily depending on the picture’s linear quality, they seem to hold a strong favour for a more polished style with fine, delicate lines to create a visual world apart from reality (fig. 61).
An even more persuasive comparison between Paget’s crime fiction illustrations and his drawings for other short fiction published in the Strand, such as the gothic tale
“The Rosemonde” (fig. 62) or the slightly sad romance “The Storm” (fig. 63), may further prove that different illustrative styles are preferred in stories of different literary genres.83 Highly dramatic with either bold composition or romantic atmosphere, Paget’s illustrations for these stories are nothing like those for stories of crimes, for there is heartache, sorrow, fear , love, and hatred — all these strong emotions shall be conveyed through the image, hence no need of restraint or reservation. All these considered, it is very likely that, at least in the case of the Strand Magazine, the particular style used by Paget in the Sherlock Holmes stories is
82 Times, 14 January 1898, 2. The Strand Magazine’s market interest is clearly shown in its advertisement: “Your children, Sir, will keep quiet for hours if you take home a copy of the Strand Magazine. It is full of pictures, and its pages may be turned over again and again with profit. Your wife, too, will like the Strand Magazine because of its well-chosen, attractive stories; and you yourself will be interested in it, if you are jaded with the heavy, sparsely illustrated, and uninteresting stuff that some other magazines offer to their readers. The aim of the Strand is to be light, up-to-date,
entertaining, well illustrated, and educative, and the enormous success of this sixpenny magazine shows that its aim is popular and true.” Cited by Pittard, “Cheap, Healthful Literature: The Strand Magazine, Fictions of Crime, and Purified Reading Communities, Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction, p. 67.
83 Julian Sermet, “The Rosemonde,” in: Strand Magazine 8, no. 47, 1984, pp. 451–454; Armand Silverstre, “The Storm,” in: Strand Magazine 9, no. 51, 1895, pp. 258–264.
a visual language specifically adopted by the illustrators collaborating with the magazine for crime fiction, chiefly in detective narratives. The moral boundary set within the periodical’s untold censorship seems to vary from genre to genre. As long as the story does not trespass into the territory of crime fiction, sensational elements seems fine to be allowed into both its textual content and visual representation.
Another reason of the Strand’s different treatment for the Sherlock Holmes stories and those of other kinds is probably that, the world within crime fiction, especially the one established under the pen of Doyle, is an ambivalent world layered with realistic and fictional details. Fabricating materials taken from the crime coverage of the day with his own fictive plots and characters, through each Adventure Doyle eventually created a fictional reality too real for many avid readers to believe these stories to be mere fiction.84 They were thoroughly absorbed into the world of Sherlock Holmes, and despite the author’s praise of rationality between lines, some even became so ironically obsessive that Doyle started to receive letters addressed to Holmes in 221B Baker street to either report crimes or ask for help in solving personal problems.85
If with only the power of the words the series was able to charm its readers from telling the difference between fiction and reality, it is then no wonder that the Strand would consider a more emotionally detached approach to present the Sherlock Holmes stories. Under the premise of “healthful literature,” the work’s visualisation is likely to become a dangerous realm. The comparisons with pennyfuls and tabloid reports on crime show that the Strand clearly wished to distinguish its crime fiction from other contemporary crime-related publications by taking a direction opposite to sensationalism, and Sidney Paget’s visual representations agree with such anti-sensational policy. Yet Sherlock Holmes was not alone, for other crime stories in the Strand, particularly those detective mysteries, also seem to pick up the same visual language.
84 Pierre Nordon, Conan Doyle, London: John Murray, 1966, p. 236. Cited by Kooistra, “Quotation,” p.
60. 85 Michael Saler, “‘Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes’: Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity, c. 1890 - c. 1940,” in: The Historical Journal 46, no. 3, 2003, pp. 599–622, see pp. 609–
610.
Chapter Three
Entering the World of Sherlock Holmes
His very person and appearance was such to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination.86
A Study in Scarlet