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.)

First of all a welcome to the newest (and nicest ) member of Entmoot

Wow, I never thought of this before, but it's deffinately true. Hmm, I'll say more later, I think I'll have to skim over my copy of the Complete Sherlock Holmes first.

I've thought that before, although in a different light. I always thought the secondary characters, appearing and leaving, never to be seen again save by cryptic references reminiscent of Watson's recording style.

You`ve defintiely got something here, mhomer4. I`m currently re-reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes and the parallel with Aragorn is fairly striking. I must confess I`ve never thought of it before, but there is definitely some mileage in this one.

Slightly off subject, but I just saw the most fassinating Bio of Conan Doyle on PBS last night. Check your local listings to see if it's on, cause it's really worth watching.