Lucy Worsley's Holmes vs. Doyle

It's interesting to me that Arthur always presented himself as this muscular, sporty, self-confident kind of a bloke, but underneath that, I think he really cared what people thought of him.

There'd always been this conflict in him between success and respect, and now he'd earned his money, what he seemed to really want was to be taken seriously.

Arthur was beginning to see Sherlock as a roadblock to respectability, but what could he do about it?

Arthur's step-great-grandson Richard Pooley has some fascinating evidence.

Richard, I want to understand more of Arthur's difficult feelings about Sherlock Holmes.

He was very conflicted.

He realized and his mother kept reminding him that this is where he made his money.

I mean, he wanted to be considered as a very serious writer.

Do you think that this story here, Richard, "The Man with the Twisted Lip," do we get some sort of insight, do you think, into Arthur's conflicted feelings about Sherlock Holmes?

Very much so, you see.

Essentially, Holmes discovers that what has happened is that this man, who looks very respectable and apparently goes into the City of London every day and has a respectable job, finds out that actually by begging he can make far more money, so that's what he does, and I think there is something about that which shows how-- yes, how Doyle felt, that by writing Sherlock Holmes stories he somehow was like begging.

He made a lot of money, but it's not what he really wanted to do.

So sad really because actually it was brilliant.

What's the role of his mother in this then?

Because she was really keen on sort of highbrow historical literature, wasn't she?

She was.

Yet at the same time, she liked Sherlock Holmes.

She did because two reasons, I think.

One, it was going to make him-- and that meant her and her family-- a lot of money because he was-- he was the really almost at that stage key provider of money.

The other thing is, I think she recognized in his Sherlock Holmes writing what he himself couldn't see.

Something really special.

Something--which it is.

It was new.

It was fresh.

The dialogue is so good.

It's witty, it's clever, and you look at the dialogue in a lot of his historical novels, it's clunky, it's terrible, but I think that's the other reason-- she saw that it was special.

Yeah.