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The War of the Baskervilles
The world's best known detective story is 100 years old this summer. And so is the dark
controversy about who actually wrote it.
By Guy Saville
11 July 2001
One hundred years ago next month, a long queue appeared outside the offices of The Strand
Magazine in London. Amid an air of feverish anticipation, people jostled – and in some cases even
paid – for places, and the line soon stretched around the block. They were there for the publishing
event of the year: the return of Sherlock Holmes in the new story, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Eight years earlier, fiction's most famous detective had fallen to his death at the Reichenbach Falls –
killed off by his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, who wanted to concentrate on more serious works. The
reading public had been devastated: there were reports of clerks going to work wearing black
mourning bands, and Conan Doyle himself received countless letters of complaint, while
shareholders in The Strand – in which Holmes's adventures usually appeared – watched their stock
nervously.
So when, in 1901, it was announced that the great detective was to return, the reaction was wildly
ebullient. The Hound was not a resurrection as such: the adventure was said to predate Holmes's
death. But public enthusiasm was no less fervent for that. So keen were readers to get on with the
tale that few seem to have noticed anunusual footnote on the front page. "This story," it read, "owes
its inception to my friend Mr Fletcher Robinson, who has helped me both with the general plot and in
the local details. ACD."
Yet today, with the exception of aficionados, no one remembers Bertram Fletcher Robinson. Indeed,
the novel is always printed with just one name on the cover and spine: that of Arthur Conan Doyle.
That is how it appears in the new Penguin Classics edition, whose publication is celebrated with a
party at the Murder One bookshop in London tonight. So what happened to Fletcher Robinson?
As the celebrations of the book's centenary gather pace (other highlights include expeditions and
enactments on Dartmoor, numerous new books on Conan Doyle, even a spoof version by Spike
Milligan), a dark suspicion overshadows them: that its creation involved literary foul play.
Initially, Conan Doyle had wanted a joint billing for Fletcher Robinson, as he made clear in a letter to
The Strand prior to publication: "[I have] one stipulation. I must do it with Fletcher Robinson, and his
name must appear with mine: he gave me the central idea and the colour, and so I feel his name
must appear." Why, then, was Fletcher Robinson not credited as co-author? To solve this mystery,
we have to examine the evidence of the book's inception, more than a century ago.
In March 1901, Conan Doyle and Fletcher Robinson, a young journalist with the Daily Express, had
taken a golfing holiday to Cromer, on the Norfolk coast. They had not been there many days when
their golf was interrupted by a storm from the North Sea. The two men retired to the sitting room of
the Royal Links Hotel and began to talk. Perhaps stirred on by the gloomy atmosphere outside, their
conversation eventually turned to the myths of Norfolk; and Fletcher Robinson told Conan Doyle
about a phantom dog – called Black Shuck – said to haunt the local countryside. Black Shuck was a
terrifying creature: as big as a calf, and with eyes that bled fire. Anyone unfortunate enough to meet
this apparition was sure to die.
Conan Doyle, whose lifelong aversion to dogs was matched by his growing interest in the spiritual
world, was inspired by this legend. As night fell, the two men began plotting a novel together on the
subject.
If there were any doubts about this being a collaborative affair, they were dispelled by Conan Doyle
himself, who in a letter to his mother wrote: "Fletcher Robinson came here [Cromer] with me and we
are going to do a small book together. A real creeper!" That "real creeper" was to become The Hound
of the Baskervilles.
Having established a subject and a plot, the book-to-be now needed a location. At Robinson's
invitation, Conan Doyle travelled to his home in the West of England, on the edge of Dartmoor. With
its primordial landscape, rocky tors and creeping mists, the moor seemed the perfect setting.
To guide them around it the pair called on the services of one Harry Baskerville, Robinson's
coachman. The actual origin of the name Baskerville is one of literature's greatest mysteries. Harry
Baskerville always claimed he was the eponymous inspiration; indeed, his most prized possession
was a first edition of the novel, signed by Fletcher Robinson with the inscription "With apologies for
using the name". Not your name, one can hear Sherlock Holmes pointing out: the name. Poor Harry's
claim is further blighted by the fact that Conan Doyle had already written half the book before
venturing to Dartmoor and meeting the coachman.
Sir Christopher Frayling, rector of the Royal College of Art and an expert on crime fiction (who edited
the Penguin Classics edition of The Hound), believes there are several other candidates for the real
Baskervilles. "One of the most likely are the Baskervilles of Clyro Court on the border between
England and Wales," he says. "For generations these Baskervilles had been intermarrying with their
neighbours, the Vaughans. And here the plot most definitely thickens – because the Vaughans had a
family legend about a huge, black dog."
Two other pieces of evidence support the Vaughan-Baskerville theory. First, Herbert Greenhough
Smith, editor of The Strand, always contended that "Conan Doyle was introduced to the tradition of
the fiery hound in a Welsh guide book". More compellingly, the novelist himself had been a guest at
Clyro Court in 1897.
All this does little to help Fletcher Robinson's case as co-author of The Hound. If the canine of the
novel is indeed the hound of the Vaughan-Baskervilles, and not Black Shuck of Norfolk, then perhaps
Conan Doyle's assertion that Fletcher Robinson had given him "the central idea" was merely a
gesture of friendship.
The Fletcher Robinson family home – Park Hill House – was on the edge of the moor in a small
village called Ipplepen, and it was from here that the two friends began a research trip. Back then, the
house would have stood alone in the rolling Devonshire farmland. Today it is situated almost on top of
the A381, opposite a petrol station. The building itself, long since sold by the Fletcher Robinsons, is
now divided up into six flats, with a new roof and freshly painted white walls. There is nothing to
indicate its association with one of literature's greatest detective novels.
Some 15 miles to the west of Ipplepen, through a maze of narrow lanes, lies Princetown. It was here
that, having spent eight days at Park Hill House, Conan Doyle and Fletcher Robinson continued their
research trip, taking up residence in Princetown's Rowe Duchy Hotel. The hotel has long since
closed, but the building is still there and today houses a tourist centre and exhibition about the history
of Dartmoor. Watching over this is a life-size model of Sherlock Holmes and behind him a cardboard
cut-out of the building's most famous guest, Conan Doyle. There is no sign of Fletcher Robinson.
From Princetown, the two continued their explorations of the moor, taking in locations such as the
Neolithic circle at Grimspound, which Fletcher Robinson described as "one of the loneliest spots in
Great Britain", and Fox Tor Mire, setting of the climactic scenes of The Hound.
On a bright summer's day, blue skies and warm sunshine stand in marked contrast to the book's
sinister descriptions, let alone the gloomy, fog-bound images of countless movie adaptations.
Nevertheless, even with the sun shining, Dartmoor has a desolate quality, even if today the only
horror is foot-and-mouth.
It was in Princetown that much of the book was written. Only one chapter of the original manuscript –
Chapter 7 – survives. It is entirely in Conan Doyle's hand.
In an interview shortly before his death in 1960, the coachman Harry Baskerville claimed to have
seen Fletcher Robinson write whole chunks of the novel. However, according to Heather Owen of the
Sherlock Holmes Society: "There's no evidence to corroborate Harry Baskerville's story. Besides, it's
unrealistic to expect a coachman to go lurking around his master's study. The truth is, there's no way
he could have ever known."
The initial excitement of August 1901 continued throughout the entire serialisation of The Hound of
the Baskervilles. During this time The Strand's circulation increased by a staggering 120,000 copies.
The final instalment was published in April 1902.
Meanwhile, the story developed a momentum of its own. At its conception, The Hound had not
featured Sherlock Holmes. But, as the story developed, so too did the need for a larger-than-life
character to solve the mystery. As Conan Doyle put it: "Why should I invent such a character when I
already had one in the form of Sherlock Holmes?"
Fletcher Robinson's literary fate was sealed. With Holmes now in charge, Conan Doyle took over the
writing completely, reneging on his earlier stipulation that the book be published under both names.
Still, for every £100 that Conan Doyle received per 1,000 words, Fletcher Robinson got £30; that, and
the footnote crediting his contribution.
In later editions, however, Conan Doyle's acknowledgement of collaboration became a passing thank
you for "suggesting the idea"; later still, Fletcher Robinson's involvement was reduced to a mere
"chance remark" that had inspired Sherlock Holmes's creator to pick up his pen once more. Just to
make sure there would be no misunderstandings on the point, Conan Doyle added: "I can vouch that
the plot and every word of the actual narrative were my own."
Despite this, Frayling does not feel Fletcher Robinson was cheated. "I don't believe that he actually
wrote a single word of the book. He suggested the hound, as Conan Doyle was the first to admit. But
that was all. The truth is that Fletcher Robinson was a third-rate writer."
Not everyone agrees with this assessment. One theory has it that Fletcher Robinson's untimely death
– in 1907, at the age of 36, allegedly from typhoid – was in fact caused deliberately by Conan Doyle,
a qualified doctor, who poisoned him with laudanum, which has similar symptoms. But the author of
this eccentric hypothesis, a writer called Rodger Garrick-Steele, has yet to publish the book in which
he expounds it.
Heather Owen, meanwhile, remains convinced that the creation of The Hound was entirely above
board. "I don't feel that Fletcher Robinson's involvement has been underestimated. He received both
thanks and royalties, which were all that were required in the circumstances."
Yet that is not quite the end of the story. Just three months before that holiday in Cromer, a story by
Mrs LT Meade had appeared in The Strand. Entitled "Followed", it was about a huge, black
Tasmanian snake, thought to be supernatural but not. The finale of the story sees the serpent
chasing a girl across Salisbury Plain, before it is finally shot. Conan Doyle may well have read this
story, which may well have fired his imagination.
It's an appropriately unexpected twist to the tangled tale of The Hound. But it is not as satisfying as
Conan Doyle's fiction, in which all loose ends were generally tied up. All that we can be certain of is
that, in future, the book will continue to be hounded by controversy.