Holmes and His Illustrators

43 6. Holmes and His Illustrators Walter Klinefelter. SHERLOCK HOLMES IN PORTRAIT AND PROFILE. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse U P, 1963. $5.50. How closely does an artist follow the written details of an author's story when illustrating it for magazine or book publication? What is the evolution of the pictorial representation of a fictitious character? Who was responsible for the present image of Sherlock Holmes? Mr. Klinefelter examines these questions in his iconographical analysis of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Admittedly Mr. Klinefelter's book is a specialized study for Holmes fans, but it does investigate problems of illustration and bibliography which provide considerable information about the publication of Doyle's work. A pleasing feature for devotees of Holmes is that more than 60 illustrations of the Great Detective are included. The present image of the Great Detective is that of the tall, hawk-nosed sleuth, smoking a curved pipe and wearing a deerstalker hat. However, the first illustration depicting Holmes by D. H. Friston in BEETON'S CHRISTMAS ANNUAL for 1887 showed him with luxuriant sideburns, a voluminous greatcoat fitted with an enormous cape, and a hat that looked'Y-a the r like the sort of hybrid piece of headgear that might be expected to eventuate from an illicit union" of a billycock and a fireman's helmet. Mr. Klinefelter continues with a discussion of minor and major Holmes illustrators, including Charles Doyle's sketches which were better suited to a humor magazine like PUNCH or FUN than as illustrations to the sacred canon of detection. One of the most successful illustrators in THE STRAND MAGAZINE was Sidney Paget, who contributed much to the delineation of Holmes as the eagle-eyed, hawk-nosed figure. But the man who perfected that image was the American artist Frederic Dorr Steele who illustrated the stories for THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES in COLLIER'S beginning with the September 26, 1903, issue. Steele was perhaps influenced by the stage characterization which had been presented by William Gillette. Steele's color drawings for the covers of COLLIER'S have never been surpassed in Sherlocklian illustration. Like all good Baker Street Irregulars, Mr. Klinefelter writes from the basic assumptions that Sherlock Holmes was a real person, that John Watson wrote the Holmes stories, and that one A. C. Doyle was a lowly literary agent who peddled Watson's stories to publishers. Vincent Starrett is right when he says in his "Introduction" to this book: "Surely the highest tribute to the historicity of Sherlock Holmes is the impressive volume of writings devoted to his private life no less than to his public career; essays in fantastic scholarship, solemn tonguein -cheek fooling in the fields of textual criticism and imaginary biography. Surely the whole phenomenon is one of the most delightful chapters of literary chronicle." Purdue University ESL ...