Before there was the astute detective Sherlock Holmes and his capable compatriot Watson, there was the opinionated Everyman John Smith. In 1883, when he was just twenty-three, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Narrative of John Smith while he was living in Portsmouth and struggling to establish himself as both a doctor and a writer. He had already succeeded in having a number of short stories published in leading magazines of the day, such as Blackwood’s, All the Year Round, London Society, and the Boy’s Own Paper—but as was the accepted practice of literary journals of the time, his stories had been published anonymously. Thus, Conan Doyle knew that in order to truly establish his name as a writer, he would have to write a novel. That novel—the first he ever ever wrote and only now published published for the first time —is The Narrative of John Smith.
Many of the themes and stylistic tropes of his later writing, including his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet—published in 1887—can 1887—can be clearly seen. More a series of ruminations than a traditional novel, The Narrative of John Smith is of considerable biographical biographical importance and provides an exceptional window into the mind of the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Through John Smith, a fifty-year-old man confined confined to his room by an attack of gout, Conan Doyle sets down his thoughts and opinions on a range of subjects— including literature, science, religion, war, and education—with no detectable insecurity or diffidence. His writing is full of bravado.
Though unfinished, The Narrative of John Smith stands as a fascinating fascinating record of the early work of a man on his way to being one of the best-known authors in the world. This book will be welcomed with enthusiasm by the numerous Conan Doyle devotees.
Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel, written in 1883 and lost in the mail on its way to the publisher (the uncompleted text we have was rewritten from memory), The Narrative of John Smith was first published in 2010 by the British Library, which acquired the manuscript in 2004. The edition was edited and introduced by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Rachel Foss, who provide a very good background essay and a series of explanatory annotations to show how ideas, concepts and even specific turns of phrase
first deployed here find their way into Conan Doyle's later, better-known writings.
The narrative itself is less than exciting; a middle-aged man, confined to his room for a week by gout, engages in a series of ruminations and descriptions: he provides a minute tour of his room and its furnishings, muses on the neighbors across the street and those who share his building, and discourses (mostly with himself, but occasionally with his visiting doctor) on all manner of topics. Not a whole lot happens, and the fragmentary nature of the rewritten text prevents much narrative flow from getting underway. Not to mention, of course, the fact that the novel remains unfinished.
But, there are diamonds in this rough: the style that those of us who enjoy Conan Doyle's stories know and love shines through in more than a few places. Some of those I noted particularly:
- describing the lot of a young writer: "The articles which I sent forth came back to me at times with a rapidity and accuracy which spoke well for our postal arrangements. If they had been paper boomerangs they could not have returned more infallibly to their unhappy dispatcher" (p. 29)
- on books: "There should be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Books. I hate to see the poor patient things knocked about and disfigured. A book is a mummifed soul embalmed in morocco leather and printer's ink instead of cerecloths and unguents. It is the concentrated essence of a man. Poor Horatius Flaccus has turned to an impalpable power by this time, but there is his very sprit stuck like a fly in amber, in that brown-backed volume in the corner. A line of books should make a man subdued and reverent. If he cannot learn to treat them with becoming decency he should be forced" (p. 19)
- a tour round his flat: "And then the knick-knacks! Those are the things which give the individuality to a room - the flotsam and jetsam which a man picks up carelessly at first, but which soon drift into his heart. If it conduces
to comfort to have these little keepsakes of the past before one's eyes, then what matter how inelegant they may chance to be!" (p. 17)
Certainly worth reading for the insight it offers into the author's early style. But make sure to read the notes as you go along; they're a key part of the work, and the editors have done a fine job with them.
