Dr. Joe Bell

Model for Sherlock HolmesBy Ely Liebow

Popular Press

Copyright © 2007 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87972-197-8

Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................ixForeword..........................................................................................................................xivAfghanistan Perceived: Being the Birth of a Model Detective.......................................................................1I Heir the Bells or The Sign of the Four..........................................................................................11The Prior-y School: Not So Elementary.............................................................................................18Edinburgh University and the Royal Infirmary-A Study in Scarlet...................................................................33"Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche"-In Pursuit of a Career; A Wife; A Hospital; a Brace of Birds.............................41Here's to the Women: Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale, Sophia Jex-Blake, the Nurses, the Medical Hopefuls.....................79"Bell the Busybody"-Editor, Mourner, Master Surgeon, Master Teacher, Forensic Expert For The Crown................................106Dr. Watson, Meet Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Bell, Meet Arthur Conan Doyle...............................................................125Impediments to Early Retirement, Or The Game's Still Afoot: Another Job, Another Book, Jack The Ripper............................150"I Read About You Everywhere": Joe Bell, Model for Sherlock Holmes................................................................172The Valley Afar: The Yellow-Leaf Days of a Religious Grandfather..................................................................192"Stand With Me Here on the Terrace": The Open Road, Open Graves, Old Memories.....................................................210Coda: Will the Real Model Rest Easy...............................................................................................222Notes.............................................................................................................................235Bibliography......................................................................................................................242Index.............................................................................................................................247

Chapter One

Afghanistan Perceived: Being the Birth of a Model Detective

It was a raw November morning, 1878, and the lambent blue flames of the gas lamps cast a reassuring light.

"I really don't think you should keep the chap waiting. I believe he's at the door now and frightfully cold." The speaker, thin and wiry, was leaning back in his chair, finger tips pressed together, and his aquiline profile danced in shadow on the wall. Again he urged his medical friend and assistant to hurry. "Observe him closely, though, for he looked most singular dancing outside just now from one foot to the other."

His colleague, grunting and chuckling to himself, went to the door and admitted a bluff, husky man, with wind-chapped cheeks. The man fiddled with an old dusty cap and his face was etched with worry.

"You know my method," said the speaker. "Bring him over here to the front of-the room and let us look at him."

"Good mornin', Sir," said the stranger, with a thick brogue.

"Good morning to you, my good man," said the wiry one, as his keen grey eyes took inventory of all his features. Again he turned to his assistant, moved a syringe from the edge of the table to a shelf, and said, "Well ... what troubles this fellow, eh?"

"How in the world ... sorry ... I mean he looks worried, but they all seem to do that. His face looks chapped, but without a history or without hearing from him, what is there to see?"

"Ah, but you do see. Yes indeed you see, we all see, but often you do not observe." Then turning to the worried stranger: "Your back-it's your back. How it must ache, but carrying a heavy hod of bricks won't improve it."

The stranger, a hod carrier indeed, stepped back as if from a blow, and then asked in a quizzical, canny manner, "I'm not saying ye're wrang, but wha' tell't ye I was a bricklayer to trade?"

Sherlock Holmes interrogating a client? No. The scene was the clinical surgery ampitheatre at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The grey-eyed man with the "Look of Eagles" was Dr. Joseph Bell, an extra-legal instructor of clinical surgery. His uncanny diagnostic skills were so great that the students had never seen him make a mistake after that all-searching glance. In the third row, next to J.W. Beggs and A.L. Curor, Arthur Conan Doyle, entranced by yet another of Dr. Bell's uncanny performances, furiously took notes!

Without Sherlock Holmes few indeed would ever have heard of Joseph Bell; without Dr. Joseph Bell, there would be no Sherlock Holmes as we know him. Oh, what a thing is irony.

Arthur Conan Doyle, to stretch irony to its limits, wanted to be remembered as a serious writer-the author of Micah Clarke and The White Company, but if he had never penned the first Sherlock Holmes story, he might not be remembered today; if he had not seen "the face of my old mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell," as he tried his hand at his first detective story, he would have had a totally different detective.

Although Joe Bell, as he was affectionately known to his students and to all of Edinburgh, is inextricably associated with Conan Doyle, his life is nearly as well known to students of medical history and the history of nursing as is Doyle's to every detective fiction aficionado. And like Danny Kaye's movie that begins in the middle for those who come in in the middle, we begin the private life of this dedicated soul in the middle.

The year is 1886 and Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle is a struggling young doctor in a modest home with a prepossessing title: Bush Villa in Southsea. He had been married less than a year, was making less than 300 a year, and his first novel, The Firm of Girdlestone, was being rejected by editor after editor.

Ever the Romantic and perennially the lover of adventure, the young doctor turned to a form that he had correctly analyzed in greater depth and detail than any critic of the day, the detective story. Like his fellow Scotsman, Boswell, Doyle was an inveterate journal-keeper, and from the age of eight he let us know that he was an insatiable reader, spending lunch money on the works of Mayne Reid, Sir Walter Scott, Dickens and Macaulay. Later he became fascinated with his countryman Stevenson, with Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and the Frenchman Emile Gaboriau.

When he finally wrote his first line of detective fiction, the image of Joe Bell at the university flashed upon his inward mind, but Doyle forgot little and was not a waster. In creating perhaps the most famous literary character of all time he did not completely forget Dickens and Collins; he owed much to Poe and Gaboriau; he even learned from the French master-criminal-turned-detective, Vidocq; but most of all he had learned directly from a deductive master, a demon of diagnosis-Dr. Joseph Bell, F.R.C.S.E., M.D. J.P. (Midlothian), D.L. (Edinburgh), etc.

In his autobiography, Sir Arthur himself tells of how it all began.

I felt now that I was capable of something fresher and crisper and more workmanlike. Gaboriau had rather attracted me by a neat dovetailing of his plots, and Poe's masterful detective, M. Dupin, had from boyhood been one of my heroes. But could I bring an addition of my own? I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, and his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer an exact science. I would try if I could get this effect. It was surely possible in real life, so why should I not make it plausible in fiction? It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it-such examples as Bell gave us every day in the wards.

For the latter-day pundits who would not take Sir Arthur at his word, and insisted that he himself was the model for Holmes, nothing in a sense could be further from the truth, for that view really overlooks the ingenuity that went into Conan Doyle's thinking. It was Dr. Bell who suggested Holmes' most dazzling and satisfying trademarks: the lightning deduction tossed off in apparent insouciance ("You've been to Afghanistan, I perceive," or "Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else"). Doyle did not, however, forget the others.

He had spent his early years in vigorous exercise and vigorous reading. He had read not only Poe, Gaboriau, and Collins, but he digested them. Holmes tells Watson almost as soon as he informs him he is the world's only Consulting Detective, that "in my opinion Dupin was a very inferior fellow" and that "Lecoq," Gaboriau's detective, "was a miserable bungler." Doyle learned much from these two gentlemen, and resented remarks by those who could not separate his proud spokesman, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, from his creator. The esthetic problem, in fact, keeping the creator from his creation(s), bothered him so much that he penned an admirable poem on the subject:

Sure there are times when one cries with acidity "Where are the limits of human stupidity?"

Here is a critic who says as a platitude That I am guilty because "in gratitude Sherlock, the sleuth-hound, with motives ulterior, Sneers at Poe's Dupin as very 'inferior'." Have you not learned, my esteemed commentator, That the created is not the creator?

As the creator I've praised to satiety Poe's Mosieur Dupin, his skill and variety, And have admitted that in my detective work I owe to my model a deal of selective work. But is it not on the verge of inanity To put down to me my creation's crude vanity? He, the created, would scoff and would sneer, Where I, the creator, would bow and revere. So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle. The doll and its maker are never identical.

From Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue Doyle got his first-person storyteller. He saw the value of a faithful, silent companion-amanuensis. Poe's unnamed narrator was also no brighter than the average reader. On the other hand, Poe's M. Dupin was all forehead, all thought; he was eccentric; he read his companion's thoughts; he laughed at the bungling methods of the police. It is also likely that the retrieval of Irene Adler's picture in "A Scandal in Bohemia" owes much to Poe's celebrated "Purloined Letter."

Unfortunately Gaboriau is not nearly as well known or read as Poe, and Lecoq, far from being a "miserable bungler," is a rather attractive, ambitious young policeman, one of the Surete's finest. He is accidentally handed his Watson, his foil, a former cavalry officer with the delightful Gallic name of Father Absinthe. Like Watson, Father Absinthe undergoes a complete metamorphosis-from sceptic-bungler to faithful admirer, listening-post, protector.

At times Holmes' and Lecoq's language, actions and ruminations are so similar as to be frightening. We are hard pressed to remember which came first. Passages from Gaboriau's masterpiece Monsieur Lecoq have more of London's yellow fog that swirled past the ghostly gas lamps than the champagne-charged air of Paris:

'What is it?' inquired Father Absinthe. 'What do you see?'

'Come and look for yourself, see there!' cried Lecoq.

The old man bent down, and his surprise was so great that he almost dropped the lantern. 'Oh!' said he in a stifled voice, 'a man's footprints!'

'Exactly. And this fellow wore the finest boots. See that imprint, how clear, how neat it is!'

Worthy Father Absinthe was scratching his ear furiously, his usual method of quickening his rather slow wits. 'But it seems to me,' he ventured to say at last, 'that this individual was not coming from this ill-fated hovel.'

'Of course not; the direction of the foot tells you that. No, he was going away, he was coming here.... He was standing on tiptoe with outstretched neck and listening ears, when, on reaching this spot, he heard some noise, fear seized him and he fled.'

The veteran would have given something if he could have found some objection to offer; but unfortunately he could find none. 'Upon my word!' he exclaimed, 'yours is a droll way of proceeding. You are only a conscript; I am a veteran in the service ... but never have I seen-'

'Nonsense,' interrupted Lecoq, 'you will see much more. For example ... study the man's footprints, and you, who are very sharp, will see at once that he deviated from a straight course. He was in such a doubt that he was obliged to search for the gate with his hand stretched out before him-and his fingers have left their imprint on the thin covering of snow that lies upon the upper railing of the fence.'

The dialog sounds like a replay of Holmes' first great explanation to Watson at No. 3 Lauriston Gardens in A Study in Scarlet. Consider Lecoq's next move. Everything is present but the deerstalker and the pipe.

Quick in his motions, and understanding how to maneuvre the lantern in according with his wishes, the young police agent explored the surroundings in a very short space of time. A bloodhound in pursuit of his prey would have been less alert, less discerning, less agile. He came and went, now turning, now pausing, now retreating, now hurrying on again without any apparent reason; he scrutinized, he questioned every surrounding object; the ground, the logs of wood, the blocks of stone, in a word, nothing escaped his glance. For a moment he would remain standing, then fall upon his knees, and at times lie flat upon his stomach with his face so near the ground that his breath must have melted the snow. He had drawn a tape-line from his pocket, and using it with a carpenter's dexterity, he measured, measured, and measured.

And all his movements were accompanied with the wild gestures of a madman, interspersed with oaths or short laughs, with exclamations or disappointment or delight. After a quarter of an hour of this strange exercise, he turned to Father Absinthe, placed the lantern on a stone, wiped his hands with his pocket-handkerchief, and said: 'Now I know everything!'

Following this, the young Frenchman, hoping to preserve the suspect's footprints, shouts to Father Absinthe:

'Make haste: get me a dish-a plate-anything ... and bring me some water; gather together all the boards and old boxes you can find lying about.'

While his companion was obeying him, Lecoq armed himself with a fragment of one of the broken bottles, and began scraping away furiously at the plastered wall that separated the two rooms.

His mind disconcerted at first by the imminence of this unexpected catastrophe, a fall of rain, had now regained its equilibrium. He had reflected, he had thought of a way by which failure might possibly be averted-and he hoped for ultimate success. When he had accumulated some seven or eight handfuls of fine plaster dust, he mixed one-half with a little water so as to form a thin paste, leaving the rest untouched on the side of the plate.

'Now, papa,' said he, "come and hold the light for me."

When in the garden, the young man sought for the deepest and most distinct of the footprints, knelt beside it, and began his experiment, trembling with anxiety. He first sprinkled upon the impression a fine coating of dry plaster, and then upon this coating, with infinite care, he poured his liquid solution drop by drop.

What luck! the experiment was successful! The plaster united in a homogeneous mass, forming a perfect model of the impression. Thus, after an hour's labor, Lecoq possessed half a dozen of these casts, which might, perhaps, be a little wanting in clearness of outline, but which were quite perfect enough to be used as evidence.

Later, hot on the trail of another suspect, Lecoq tells his awe-struck, elder companion, after Father Absinthe says the suspect will recognize Lecoq, "No, sir, he wouldn't, for I should disguise myself. A detective who can't equal the most skillful actor in the matter of make-up is no better than an ordinary policeman. I have only practised at it for a twelvemonth, but I can easily make myself look old or young, dark or light, or assume the manner of a man of the world, or of some frightful ruffian of the barrieres."

Finally, and not to belabor the comparison too much, M. Lecoq goes with Absinthe to get advice from Moriarty's opposite number, a retired Napoleon of Detectives, one M. Tabaret, called "Pere Tirauclair" or "Father Bring-to-Light" by the police themselves. The aging oracle advises him:

'You see, my boys, everything has degenerated in these days. The race of great criminals is dying out-those who've succeeded the old stock are like counterfeit coins. There's scarcely anything left outside a crowd of low offenders who are not worth the shoe leather expended in pursuing them. It is enough to disgust a detective, upon my word. No more trouble, emotion, anxiety, or excitement. When a crime is committed nowadays, the criminal is in jail the next morning, you've only to take the omnibus, and go to the culprit's house and arrest him. He's always found, the more the pity.... You are surprised because you know nothing of contemporary history. If you don't wish to remain all your life a common detective, like your friend Gevrol [substitute Lestrade] you must read, and make yourself familiar with all the leading events of the century.'

Doyle obviously absorbed much of M. Lecoq, but that eager young detective forms only a few of the sinews of the great detective himself. On the matter of disguise, for instance, we know that Sir Arthur was fascinated by the real-life adventures of that rogue-of-rogues, that criminal-turned-detective, that Gallic Jonathan Wild, Francois Eugene Vidocq. Actually Holmes' entrances and exits in disguise are far more reminiscent of Vidocq (1775-1857) than of Lecoq, and Doyle was undoubtedly aware that Vidocq was one of the models for M. Dupin.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Dr. Joe Bellby Ely Liebow Copyright © 2007 by The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Excerpted by permission.
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