Solar Pons Versus the Devil's Claw

INTRODUCTION

‘Sherlock Holmes is dead. Long live, Sherlock Holmes!’ This was the cry that arose in December 1893 when the Strand Magazine shocked its readers by publishing Dr Watson’s account of ‘The Final Problem’ with its ominous frontispiece showing ‘The Death of Sherlock Holmes’. It seemed that the great detective had met his end at the Reichenbach Falls locked in the arms of his arch rival, Professor Moriarty. He had certainly disappeared, but he could never die. He returned in many different guises. John Kendrick Bangs portrayed him as the leader of the Shades in The Pursuit of the Houseboat (a sequel to an earlier book, The Houseboat on the Styx), and others followed suit. Rivals stepped into his shoes and claimed to be his direct heir. Sexton Blake, who made his debut in 1893 in the pages of the Halfpenny Marvel, took rooms on Baker Street and for well over half a century delighted readers with adventures narrated by many different hands.

Holmes himself was far from dead. The Hound of the Baskervilles burst upon the world in 1901, and in 1903 readers celebrated his Return and discovered that he had been living and working in London since 1894. He remained at 221b Baker Street until his retirement to the Sussex Downs after the turn of the century. Thereafter he could on occasion be coaxed into activity, and he made his last bow in 1914 when he came to the aid of his country at the outbreak of the First World War. The last of Dr Watson’s narratives was published in 1927. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle prepared to lay down his pen, an unlikely successor was waiting to pick it up. This was August Derleth (1909-71), a native of Sauk City in Wisconsin, who had started writing at the age of thirteen and by seventeen had won his way into the well-respected pulp magazine, Weird Tales. In 1928 he wrote to Doyle asking if there would be more stories and was told there would not. He explained how it came about in a letter to Fred Danny (one half of ‘Ellery Queen’) and again in a letter (dated 21 February 1944) to Vincent Starrett, the great Sherlockian expert: ‘I was badly bitten by the Holmes bug in my teens, and finally, when I was 19, wrote to Sir Arthur to complain that there were no new adventures of the immortal Sherlock. He made no promise to write more; so I determined to carry on the tradition as best I could.’ A note on the back of an early manuscript suggests that Doyle was not averse to the idea. The stories were to be pastiches in honour of the ‘master’, but they would not bear his name. The new detective was, in Vincent Starrett’s phrase, ‘an ectoplasmic emanation of his great prototype’. He was christened Solar Pons (the ‘bridge of light’) and was a younger and more clubbable man (having been born in 1880). He had worked in British Intelligence during the Great War and was at his peak in the 1920s. He had his own ‘Boswell’, Dr Lyndon Parker; a brother, Bancroft (similar to Holmes’s brother Mycroft) and a long-suffering landlady, Mrs Johnson. He did not live in Baker Street but at 7B Praed Street, a location which was suggested to Derleth (who had never visited London) by John Rhodes’ book, The Murders in Praed Street.

A batch of stories was soon ready for publication. ‘The Adventure of the Black Narcissus’ was the first to appear in Dragnet (February 1929), and three more followed in the same magazine. Unfortunately the magazine then ceased publication because of the dire economic situation. Two more were published in other pulp magazines (Detective Trails and Gangster Stories), but the remainder were set aside. Derleth’s ambitious plans were put on hold, but his enthusiasm was undiminished. On 4 November 1929 he wrote to Conan Doyle describing himself as ‘an intense admirer’ and asked if he might have an inscribed copy of The Sherlock Holmes Short Stories (which John Murray had just published). Doyle tore the letter in half and replied in a short note: ‘I am interested in the Psychic & General Bookshop, 2 Victoria Street, S.W. Any books ordered there I would autograph, ‘ACD.’ An order was placed and Doyle inscribed a copy on 19 December 1929. It was six months before his death.

The Pons stories remained in limbo until 1943 when Derleth offered one to Fred Danny (of ‘Ellery Queen’ fame) for inclusion in The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944). It was so well received that Derleth decided to revise some of the earlier stories and to work on new ones. Twelve were collected in 1945 as In Re: Sherlock Holmes — a work. The book was published at Arkham House (which Derleth and Donald Wandrei had founded in 1939), but it had its own distinctive imprint: ‘Mycroft and Moran’. It was followed by further volumes which mirrored the Sherlock Holmes canon in their titles and in the number of cases within them: The Memoirs (1951), The Return (1958), Some Reminiscences (1961), and The Casebook (1965). Other important ‘Pontine’ publications include a novel, Mr Fairlie’s Final Journey (1968), The Chronicles of Solar Pons (1973), and a collection of previously unpublished work, The Final Adventures of Solar Pons (1998).

The stories have a touch of burlesque. Pons, as one critic said, is ‘a clever impersonator, with a twinkle in his eye’. He is not Sherlock Holmes, but his mentor suffuses his every action. The stories stand apart and have their own internal logic. Derleth’s greatest concern was that his knowledge of England and of the English rhythms of speech was often inadequate. A number of English authors with whom he corresponded were called in to correct errors which might otherwise have crept into the later stories. They pointed out, for example, that Pons should be described as living ‘in’ Praed Street rather than ‘on’ it; that Ascot had no definite article (unlike the Derby) because it was a place rather than a race, and that the head of Devon police would be a Chief Constable, not a High Commissioner (which is the name given to the ambassadors of the member states in the British Commonwealth).

Basil Copper was among those with whom Derleth corresponded towards the end of his life. He was embarking on a literary career and had written asking if Arkham House would be interested in publishing his work. Derleth responded at once in a warm and friendly manner, and a bond developed between them.

After Derleth’s death, Copper fulfilled Derleth’s long-held desire for an omnibus edition. He corrected the slips which had arisen through Derleth’s lack of familiarity with English usage and terminology and The Solar Pons Omnibus appeared in 1982. By then Copper was also the author of a series of sequels which were written with the blessing of James Turner (the new acting manager of Arkham House). The second series consisted of six volumes of stories and one novel. The first four had a slightly chequered history as they were published in paperback by a New York company, Pinnacle, who made textural changes which destroyed much of the 1920s atmosphere. They were The Dossier of Solar Pons, The Further Adventures, The Secret Files, and Some Uncollected Cases, and they appeared in 1979 and 1980. The Exploits and The Recollections followed in 1993 and 1995, published in attractive editions by Fedogan and Bremer of Minneapolis. The last in the series is the present volume, The Devil’s Claw.

It is perhaps the finest of them all for it combines the qualities for which Basil Copper is famous — a cleverly- constructed plot, worthy of the author of the Mike Faraday thrillers, and touches of gothic horror, worthy of the author of Necropolis. There are echoes of Wilkie Collins, Sheridan le Fanu, M.R. James, and of Doyle and Derleth. The crypt where the crime takes place recalls the one which Holmes visits in ‘The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place’ and the legend of the Devil’s Claw bears comparison with that if the Hound of the Baskervilles. The story also recalls Derleth’s account of ‘The Devil’s Footprints’ — which he based on the mysterious footprints in the snow discovered in Devon in 1855.

The Devil’s Claw offers a bizarre and compelling problem for Solar Pons. What is the explanation behind the mysterious affair at Chalcroft Manor? Are the wet claw marks round the corpse of Simon Hardcastle those of the devil? Pons and Parker are at hand to unravel the threads. Vincent Starrett said that the Solar Pons stories are ‘the only substitutes for Sherlock Holmes that satisfy’, and he added: ‘I recommend them to nostalgic Holmesians as stories that come as close to the great originals as perhaps it is possible to come’. Basil Copper is the equal of August Derleth and both are worthy heirs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Richard Lancelyn Green

London, 2004