And of course the Mire is a perfect visualization of sin, not as a single instance but as a chosen pattern. No wonder Stapleton is one of the few who imagines he has found a safe way to negotiate his way across it to the other side and the prizes it holds. “And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive,” he boasts. Should we be surprised that in the end it is the terrible means of his destruction? He is sucked down into it in a hideous death. We do not see him die, but we do see moor ponies wander in and be consumed, which is peculiarly distressing.
When Watson first sees the mire he is misled, like all of us. “It would be a rare place for a gallop,” he says. To him, the bright green spots seem to be more fertile than the rest. Stapleton tells him, “A false step yonder means death to man or beast.”
And on the moor lie the ruins of the dwellings of our ancient ancestors to which reference is made by Dr. Mortimer, obviously harking forward to the tragic figure of the convict, Selden: “There was thrust out an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides.” There is always the suggestion of dangerous primal instincts within us, something of the past that can recur, atavistic, destructive, and uncontrolled. But after his fearful death on the moor, there is momentary compassion for him. His sister mourns him, remembering only the child he used to be.
Again, Holmes is the warrior of reason, the future who can conquer the past.
There is at least one other figure both literal and drawn from dreams, and that is the darkly beautiful Beryl Stapleton. We are not sure whether she is good or evil, victim or participant in the scheme. She deceives, but does she do so intentionally? She is intensely sexual, and poor Sir Henry is deeply smitten, but that is as Stapleton intended. She is used, but we are not sure with what willingness, as perhaps are many of our appetites.
Whether all these parallels were intentional hardly matters. Possibly Conan Doyle drew them from his own instinct rather than from deliberate thought, which might well make them truer. The fact remains that the story and its telling ring chords within us to the degree where a hundred years after its publication we are still enthralled. We still read, listen, make films of it. And what a gift to the visual artist the moor is with its beauty and terror and hidden menace, its patterns of light and darkness.
It is interesting that Hound postdates Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), where good and evil inhabit the same body, but have ascendancy at different times, and the curse-ridden families of Edgar Allan Poe, as in “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), and has benefited from a flavor of each.
Many of us who write other books, other series, still love to try to add to the Holmes canon. We wish to draw him with our own particular slant, give him new adventures, exercise his brilliant intellect, his deductive reason, and his foibles of character. But have we the courage to make him dance and laugh and wring Watson’s hand, or for that matter live alone in a derelict stone hut, but of course with bread and a clean collar—and apparently adequate means to be perfectly shaved?
There is some interest in the degree of assistance or inspiration that Conan Doyle’s friend, Robinson, gave him for this story. Conan Doyle was generous in his attribution to begin with, and then for various very practical reasons his generosity grew less and less. However Robinson’s coachman was named Harry Baskerville, and in Daniel Stashower’s Edgar-winning biography of Conan Doyle, Teller of Tales, the story is given in detail. It includes the passage: “He presented Harry Baskerville with an inscribed copy of the COOK—‘with apologies for using the name.’ ” Which proves that I am not the only one whose words do not always appear exactly as I had intended!
I hope these words deepen your appreciation for and pleasure in one of the most lasting adventures of the immortal Sherlock Holmes.
—Anne Perry
Selected Bibliography
OTHER WORKS BY CONAN DOYLE FEATURING
SHERLOCK HOLMES
A Study in Scarlet, 1887
The Sign of Four, 1890
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1893
The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905
The Valley of Fear, 1914-15
His Last Bow, 1917
The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes, 1927
The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes. Ed. Richard Lancelyn Green. London: Penguin, 1983.
BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM
Baring-Gould, William S. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective. London: C. N. Potter, 1962.
—, ed. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. London: John Murray, 1968.
Booth, Martin. The Doctor and the Detective: A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Thomas Dunne, 2000.
Brown, Ivor. Conan Doyle: A Biography of the Creator of Sherlock Holmes. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972.
Costello, Peter. The Real World of Sherlock Holmes: The True Crimes Investigated by Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991.
Cox, Don Richard. Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985.
Dakin, D. Martin. A Sherlock Holmes Commentary. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1972.
Doyle, Adrian Conan. The True Conan Doyle. London: John Murray, 1945.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My Memories and Adventures. London: Darby, 1983.
Edwards, Owen Dudley. The Quest for Sherlock Holmes. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1983.
Hall, Trevor H. Sherlock Holmes: Ten Literary Studies. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969.
—. Sherlock Holmes and His Creator. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.
Hardwick, Michael. The Complete Guide to Sherlock Holmes. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.
Harrison, Michael. The World of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Dutton, 1975.
Higham, Charles. The Adventures of Conan Doyle: The Life of the Creator of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Norton, 1976.
Orel, Harold, ed. Critical Essays on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.
—. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Interviews and Recollections. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.
Pearsall, Ronald. Conan Doyle: A Biographical Solution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977.
Stashower, Daniel. The Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Henry Holt, 1999.
Tracy, Jack. The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana. New York: Doubleday, 1977.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
(Series: Sherlock Holmes # 5)
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