“Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary”

P.G. Wodehouse – Psmith, Journalist

As part of my research into Holmes literature, I have frequently come across pastiches of the character as well as more humorous parodies that have been written since Doyle’s time. Rather than trying to dissect the various elements that make up the parodies and what makes them successful or not, I figured I’d link to some stories with a bit of a sales pitch for each. There have been some very notable writers who have written parodies or humorous stories using the character over the years, including J.M. Barrie, who wrote The Adventure of the Two Collaborators after writing a play with Doyle. Spike Milligan also wrote a novella based on the Hound of the Baskervilles, though the humour has aged more poorly than earlier attempts that poke fun at the character of Holmes.

My personal favourite is P.G. Wodehouse. As a reader of his Jeeves stories, I was met with his characteristic humour in the short poems and prose he wrote on Holmes (by reader I mean listener, having listened to Stephen Fry read both the Jeeves and Blandings collections in much the same way I have listened to his reading of the Sherlock Holmes canon). Wodehouse wrote two adventures of Dr. Wotsing and Burdock Rose, The Strange Disappearance of Mr. Buxton-Smythe and, my personal favourite, The Adventure of the Split Infinitive, where the roles of Holmes and Watson are almost reversed, with Wotsing solving the crimes in a similar method to Holmes in the original stories. While the character of Holmes was “dead” between The Final Problem and Empty House, his rumoured resurrection led Wodehouse to write a poem entitled Back to His Native Strand, where he takes the view of the average reader of The Strand, proclaiming “[i]t seems he wasn’t hurt at all / By tumbling down the waterfall. / That sort of thing is fun to Sherlock”. Sherlock’s demise was also referenced in the great Dudley Jones, Bore-Hunter, which was published before Empty House, as Wuddus recalls a case of a great bore that met his match with Dudley Jones, who out-bores his opponent rather than matching wits like the original Holmes.

I have re-read these short stories a few times over the course of my recent research into adaptations and continuations of the character of Holmes. While I probably won’t consider further research into parodies and pastiches of the character, they are also fun reads to look at how authors other than Doyle perceive the impact that Holmes and his reputation have on the literary world.