Item 39: Arthur Conan Doyle (ca. 1900)

The year 1897 saw Beerbohm tangling repeatedly with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) in an arch, yet heated, exchange in London’s The Saturday Review. “Doctor Conan Doyle,” as Beerbohm pointedly called him, emphasizing his expertise in medicine rather than in cultural history, had published Rodney Stone (1896), a mystery set during the early nineteenth century that contained a portrayal of a Regency dandy. Beerbohm, who was committed to dandyism and had studied earlier models of it carefully, called out a series of inaccuracies in the novel, but Arthur Conan Doyle would not admit error. Neither writer got the last word in print, but Beerbohm did have it by later caricaturing the creator of Sherlock Holmes as an anti-dandy—a disheveled mess.

Private collection of James B. Sitrick