JRRT and Conan Doyle

06-03-2000, 08:45 AM

A very new arrival ‘at your service’.

Has anyone ever noticed the links between LoTR and the Sherlock Holmes stories? One of the most striking is in Gandalf's letter to Frodo: ‘His [Butterbur's] memory is like a lumber-room; things wanted always buried’. Compare Holmes: ‘A fool takes in all the lumber . . . so that the knowledge which might be useful to him . . . is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.’
Gandalf himself is often rather like Holmes: secretive, impatient of lesser minds, full of a hidden strength, and in lighter moments showing something of a teasing instinct for the dramatic. And of course he loves his pipe; in the guard-room in Moria, Pippin's last glimpse of him echoes Watson's of Holmes settling down to an ounce of shag in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’.

There is a good deal of Holmes in Aragorn too, with his long legs, his mastery of disguise, his love of music and old lore, his wide travels, his immense endurance and self-denial when they are called for and his readiness to lapse into indolence (and smoke) when they are not. Searching for Gandalf's traces on Weathertop and grumbling at the hobbits' intrusive footprints, he sounds exactly like Holmes sniping at the police.

Just a thought . . .

(Ye! utuvienyes! Now I see how one gets to be an Enting.)

06-03-2000, 08:45 AM	#1
Khazad Yehudi Guest Posts: n/a	JRRT and Conan Doyle A very new arrival ‘at your service’. Has anyone ever noticed the links between LoTR and the Sherlock Holmes stories? One of the most striking is in Gandalf's letter to Frodo: ‘His [Butterbur's] memory is like a lumber-room; things wanted always buried’. Compare Holmes: ‘A fool takes in all the lumber . . . so that the knowledge which might be useful to him . . . is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.’ Gandalf himself is often rather like Holmes: secretive, impatient of lesser minds, full of a hidden strength, and in lighter moments showing something of a teasing instinct for the dramatic. And of course he loves his pipe; in the guard-room in Moria, Pippin's last glimpse of him echoes Watson's of Holmes settling down to an ounce of shag in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’. There is a good deal of Holmes in Aragorn too, with his long legs, his mastery of disguise, his love of music and old lore, his wide travels, his immense endurance and self-denial when they are called for and his readiness to lapse into indolence (and smoke) when they are not. Searching for Gandalf's traces on Weathertop and grumbling at the hobbits' intrusive footprints, he sounds exactly like Holmes sniping at the police. Just a thought . . . (Ye! utuvienyes! Now I see how one gets to be an Enting.)