During the progress of this novel, and while everyone was guessing at its plot, THE BOOKMAN published some ingenious solutions contributed by excited readers, of whom i was one. They were all far astray. Mr. Arthur Bartlett Maurice told me that they were read by Dr. Doyle, who intimated that they were worthy of Gregson and Lestrade. In this story, Paget presented Holmes and Watson in their best-tailored moments. Look at them in their glossy toppers, hot on the trail of the mysterious man in the hansom cab. The people, the omnibus, and the background of the Quadrant of Regent Street make it redolent of London, and full of the spirit of these tales. Two years later, in 1903, Holmes's loyal followers were given satisfaction with a full explanation of his supposed death, and an account of where he had been and what he had been doing.
On both sides of the ocean he re-appeared in the series called The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and in America, in Collier's Weekly, with the most interesting decorations of all time. Old Sherlockians will always be fond of the Paget drawings, but they must admit that the pictures made for this new series, by Frederic Dorr Steele, were not only satisfactory as portraits, but extremely attractive in detail. The features of Holmes as drawn by Mr. Steele were clearly done under the William Gillette influence. Since 1899 Mr. Gillette had been playing Holmes, and to thousands of playgoers he had become the perfect embodiment of the detective. They had never seen any other representation, and could not imagine one. The Steele pictures had in their turn an influence on the stage, or upon the screen, for it seems probable that the enormous number of properties assembled for the Baker Street scene in John Barrymore's film play (1922) originated in Mr. Steele's fascinating pictures of Holmes's rooms and their accessories. Mr. Steele was the first illustrator to suggest that Dr. Watson was a simple Simon: he gave the Doctor an extremely blonde moustache, and a good-natured face which verges on silliness. It was Mr. Arthur I. Keller, in the American edition of The Valley of Fear (1915), who dealt the cruelest blow at Watson. From merely the innocent Johnny of Mr. Steele's drawings, Watson emerges in Mr. Keller's picture as boobus Britannicus. The Valley of Fear had been illustrated in the Strand by Frank Wiles; it is a story of the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania, and is one of the lesser items of Sherlockiana. When the stories in The Return were published as a book in America, Mr. C. R. Macauley drew a few pictures of Holmes. One of these, a curiously feathery person, with some resemblance to William Gillette, is reproduced here. Paget continued his pictures in the Strand until his death in 1908; four or five different artists followed him in his work on the Holmes stories, which went on, often at long intervals, for about seventeen years more. H. M. Brock is probably the best known of these illustrators, although he seems to have worked on one story only. The last of the Strand illustrators was Howard Elcock, who drew some vigorous pictures. He followed the Paget tradition as to Holmes's face. Altogether, even in this incomplete record,I have found the names of fifteen artists who have drawn Sherlock Holmes. The stories afterwards collected in His Last Bow (1917) and The Case Book ofSherlock Holmes (1927) came out in various periodicals, illustrated by different artists. "It is with a heavy heart", as Dr. Watson said in beginning The Final Problem, that i record my opinion that in these stories the old fire was flickering; although, as in The Bruce-Partington Plans, it sometimes blazed up with the warmth of the early days. It was chiefly in the stories contained in The Case Book that Dr. Doyle made the contradictory statements, and committed himself to the anachronisms about his two heroes, which have given Father Ronald Knox, Mr. S. C. Roberts, and other serio-comic investigators the basis for their amusing monographs on the early life of Dr. Watson, his mysterious second marriage, and other esoteric matters. Mentioning William Gillette's early appearance on the stage as Holmes (revived in 1929) recalls that, in England, H. A. Saintsbury played Sherlock over 1400 times. Other English actors, chiefly in the cinema, who have impersonated Holmes include Eille Norwood, whose Hound of the Baskervilles was given here in 1922; Clive Brook; Arthur Wontner, whose screen play was one of the best; Raymond Massey; and Dennis Neilson-Terry. Mr. Massey brought Holmes up-to-date and gave him an office with stenographers, dictaphones, radio, and typewriters. This was much like showing Washington crossing the Delaware in an airplane— very pleasing to those who love to shatter tradition into bits. John Barrymore's film (1922) was based on the Gillette stage play and had a remarkable cast which included Roland Young as Dr. Watson; Gustav von Seyffertitz as Professor Moriarty; William Powell as Forman Wells; and Louis Wolheim as Craigin.