Sometime in 1885 or 1886,Arthur Conan Doyle was doodling(信手乱涂)on a sheet of paper. Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin, he had the idea for a "consulting detective", who would also use "the Rules of Evidence" to catch his man. But what would he be called? "Ormond Sacker"? "Sherrinford Holmes"?
Had he settled on either of these alternatives, the modern-day fan clubs would be able to look closely through their magnifying glasses(放大镜) at that historic piece of paper at an exhibition opening at the Museum of London on Friday.
Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die is the first major show for the great detective since a Holmes display graced the Festival of Britain in 195. It's a winningly silly title: there are an unlimited number of men who never lived and will never die, and a very large number of fictional creations of whom the same could also be said. But you can see what they are getting at.
It is likely that the show should take place at the Museum of London. Holmes occupied perhaps London's most famous imaginary address—221B Baker Street—and Dr. Watson wrote that his "knowledge of the byways of London was extraordinary". In the form of his "Baker Street Irregulars", he even employed a street-level spy-network o the homeless. London is often described as another character in the stories.
But, as historian David Cannadine points out in a fine, questioning essay in a new book accompanying the exhibition, Holmes's London is actually only sketchily imagined in the stories. Conan Doyle grew up in Edinburgh, was educated in Lancashire and Austria, and lived in central London for less than a year before moving first to South Norwood, then in short order to Hindhead in Surrey and later to Sussex. To move Holmes around the capital, Conan Doyle used contemporary books of street maps and the London Post Office Directory. And he made all sorts of mistakes.
Also, before fan-fiction as we think of it now got under way, the Holmes stories led to a strange academic version of fan-fiction: Holmesians, taking a scholarly interest in the texts almost on the assumption that Holmes and Watson were real historical characters.
It should be noted that Conan Doyle himself didn't sweat the details. Everything from the location of Watson's old war wound to his marital situation and the address of his consulting room was distinctly patchy(东拼西凑的).
Holmes is, or might as well be, a magician. In this respect, the modern BBC TV adaptations—whose leaps of tricks I've seen complained about -- are in keeping with Conan Doyle's originals.
He's not the product, not any more, of a single author. And he's never going to be on the reader's level—nor that of his friend Dr. Watson. Conan Doyle's consulting detective is, made by the imaginations of others, a sort of god. And like all the best gods, he is— as the new exhibition's title indicates—both imaginary and everlasting.