(no subject)
Offered mostly because I want to use the words "tentacle" and "Arthur Conan Doyle" in the same post. :D
"To An Undiscerning Critic"
'Sure there are times when one cries with acidity,
'Where are the limits of human stupidity?'
Here is a critic who says as a platitude
That I am guilty because 'in gratitude
Sherlock, the sleuth-hound, with motives ulterior,
Sneers at Poe's Dupin as "very inferior"."
Have you not learned, my esteemed communicator,
That the created is not the creator?
As the creator I've praised to satiety
Poe's Monsieur Dupin, his skill and variety,
And have admitted that in my detective work
I owe to my model a deal of selective work.
But is it not on the verge of inanity
To put down to me my creation's crude vanity?
He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,
Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.
So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:
The doll and its maker are never identical.'
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912
Included in a pamphlet containing a speech given by ACD in 1921 in the Balmoral Ballroom at the Trocadero (not important, just really fun to say) celebrating the Stoll Film Company for putting a movie version of Sherlock Holmes onscreen. This quote probably continues to be apt:
"If my little creation of Sherlock Holmes has survived longer perhaps than it deserved, I consider that it is very largely due to those gentlemen, who have, apart from myself, associated themselves with him."
He goes on to say that the names Sherlock and Mycroft came from some cricketers of his acquaintance.
Fascinating stuff comes from trolling the shelves of the library for which one works :)
"To An Undiscerning Critic"
'Sure there are times when one cries with acidity,
'Where are the limits of human stupidity?'
Here is a critic who says as a platitude
That I am guilty because 'in gratitude
Sherlock, the sleuth-hound, with motives ulterior,
Sneers at Poe's Dupin as "very inferior"."
Have you not learned, my esteemed communicator,
That the created is not the creator?
As the creator I've praised to satiety
Poe's Monsieur Dupin, his skill and variety,
And have admitted that in my detective work
I owe to my model a deal of selective work.
But is it not on the verge of inanity
To put down to me my creation's crude vanity?
He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,
Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.
So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:
The doll and its maker are never identical.'
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912
Included in a pamphlet containing a speech given by ACD in 1921 in the Balmoral Ballroom at the Trocadero (not important, just really fun to say) celebrating the Stoll Film Company for putting a movie version of Sherlock Holmes onscreen. This quote probably continues to be apt:
"If my little creation of Sherlock Holmes has survived longer perhaps than it deserved, I consider that it is very largely due to those gentlemen, who have, apart from myself, associated themselves with him."
He goes on to say that the names Sherlock and Mycroft came from some cricketers of his acquaintance.
Fascinating stuff comes from trolling the shelves of the library for which one works :)