CYCLIC MYSTERIES

Parallel Tracks in the Detective Fiction of L. Frank Baum and Arthur Conan Doyle

by Richard R. Rutter

Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 35, no. 3 (Winter 1991), pgs. 2–3

Citations

Chicago 17th ed.:

Rutter, Richard R. “Cyclic Mysteries: Parallel Tracks in the Detective Fiction of L. Frank Baum and Arthur Conan Doyle.” Baum Bugle 35, no. 3 (1991): 2–3.

MLA 9th ed.:

Rutter, Richard R. “Cyclic Mysteries: Parallel Tracks in the Detective Fiction of L. Frank Baum and Arthur Conan Doyle.” The Baum Bugle, vol. 35, no. 3, 1991, pp. 2–3.

(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with illustrations that have not been reproduced here. However, typographical errors have been left in place to accurately reflect the printed version.)

 

Similarities in the lives of authors L. Frank Baum and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and in the literary worlds they created have been examined by scholars interested in both the magical world of Oz and the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes and his companion, Dr. John H. Watson.[1] 

Certainly, Baum is known most widely through his fantasies for children, rather than for his detective fiction. Although Baum’s contributions to the latter genre were limited, Douglas Greene has observed that one of Baum’s favorite plot devices was to introduce a mystery which would then be solved by the hero or heroine. Beginning with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) in which readers are treated to the mystery of the Wizard’s identity and the powers of the Silver Shoes, Baum returned to a mystery theme for several of the Oz sequels.

With the disclosure of Tip’s real identity in the final chapters of The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), readers are treated to the unraveling of an important Oz mystery. Under threat of death, the witch, Mombi, reveals that she transformed Ozma, the lost daughter of former ruler of the Emerald City, into the boy Tip.

The discovery of the hiding place of the royal family of Ev is a challenge faced by Dorothy and her companions in Ozma of Oz (1907). Although they learn that the family has been sold into slavery to the Nome King, there is much mystery to be solved before the Evians can be released. Billina discovers the answer to the puzzle of the transformed ornaments and rescues not only the Evians and the Ozians, but Ozma and Dorothy’s friends as well. The Nome King’s magic had also concealed the Tin Woodman, and his whereabouts remained for the final mystery to be solved. Billina was once again the heroine as she carefully deduced that Nick Chopper’s transformation was a toy tin whistle in the form of a pig.

The mystery of just how Queen Coo-ee-oh was able to raise and lower the sunken island stymied Glinda, Dorothy, and the Wizard in Glinda of Oz (1920). In an exercise in deduction similar to that which Sherlock Holmes employed so successfully, Dorothy correctly identified the three magic words as being the three syllables of the queen’s name.

The Lost Princess of Oz (1917) offers another example of the mystery tone of several of the volumes in the Oz canon. When the Wizard opened the golden peach pit to release Ozma, the lost princess, he solved only one of the mysteries which faced Dorothy and her friends. They searched throughout the adventure and were eventually successful in discovering the whereabouts of a host of vanished magical instruments, including the Magic Belt and Magic Picture.

Baum wrote adult fiction and a few pieces of non-fiction in addition to his better known children’s literature. Writing at the same time as Doyle, Baum was undoubtedly aware of the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. Proof of that awareness was revealed to Oz fans with the publication, nearly half a century after Baum’s death, of the scenario of The King of Gee-Whiz, a play written in 1905 by Baum and Emerson Hough.[2] The closing scene in this whimsical theatrical farce finds a vanished missionary springing from a cannibal pot to announce that he is, in reality, Sherlock Holmes, returning after a prolonged absence. In October 1903, in a story called “The Adventure of the Empty House,” patient readers in Great Britain and the United States had been rewarded with the surprising resurrection of the Great Detective almost ten years after his supposed death.

Quite probably, Baum had Doyle’s master detective in mind when he included a “Mr. Sherlock” among the characters in his novel Tamawaca Folks[3] written in 1907 under the pseudonym “John Estes Cooke.”

Baum was apparently quite a fan of detective mystery stories, as evidenced by his use of the name “Anna Doyle Oppenheim” in his Aunt Jane’s Nieces at Millville(1908), one of the titles in a juvenile series written under the pseudonym, “Edith Van Dyne.” Douglas Greene has called attention to this being a composite of the names of three mystery writers: Anna Katherine Green, A. Conan Doyle, and E. Phillips Oppenheim. Baum has one of the nieces, Louise Merrick, reflect that, “detective stories are only useful in teaching us to observe the evidences of crime.” Surely, Sherlock Holmes would have been pleased by this conclusion.

A question not previously addressed is whether the immensely popular and successful British writer was acquainted with his literary American counterpart. Doyle was apparently bothered that the success of his Holmes stories exceeded that of his quite commendable efforts with historical fiction and serious historical works. Yet, in 1903, he returned Holmes and Watson to eagerly waiting fans in order to reap the financial rewards that his forays into detective fiction consistently provided.

Every author of works of fiction is constantly attuned to ideas for new plots. Indeed, Doyle often discussed the real-life origins of many of his characters and story lines. Certainly, a writer of detective mysteries might reasonably review the work of others in the field and it would be difficult for him not to pick up a few ideas that might serve in developing his own plots.

In 1989, readers of The Baum Bugle, thanks to a long-running series of the little-known works of L. Frank Baum, were introduced to a short story, “The Loveridge Burglary.”[4] This entertaining bit of detective fiction (originally published in 1900) has as its hero, one Detective Briggs. He is depicted as having, despite his lack of formidable reputation, the same highly trained skills of observation that are so much a part of the personage of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of London.

An Oz enthusiast who is a Sherlockian as well could not have escaped being taken aback upon reading the following passage from Baum’s “The Loveridge Burglary.”

 

“Have you found anything?” she asked. “A clue, ma’am!” “What is it?” He drew a magnifying glass from his pocket and held it over the indentation made by the wheel. She peered through it a moment and then said, “I don’t see anything.” “The rear wheel of the bicycle has been punctured,” explained Mr. Briggs, “and was mended by a T-shaped rubber patch.” “Can you see it?” “I can see the impression of the patch very easily.” “Let me look again,” demanded Mollie. “Oh, yes! I can see it quite plainly now. But how do you know it was the rear wheel?” “Because had it been the forward one, the mark of the patch would have been covered by the wheel that followed it.” “Oh, I see. But is this discovery of any value?” “Yes, indeed. Find the man who has the T-shaped patch on the rear of his bicycle and you have the burglar.”

 

Should you question the validity of Detective Briggs’ deductions based upon his observations, you join a generation of Sherlockian scholars who have brought into question Sherlock Holmes’s conclusions drawn from similar evidence, as related in “The Adventure of the Priory School.”[5] Although Holmes was confronting the more serious crime of murder, and Detective Briggs was participating in the investigation of what proved to be only a staged burglary, the similarity of the passages is quite remarkable.

 

“A bicycle certainly, but not the bicycle,” said he. “I am familiar with forty-two different impressions left by tyres. This, as you perceive, is a Dunlop, with a patch upon the outer cover. Heidegger’s tyres were Palmer’s, leaving longitudinal stripes. Aveling, the mathematical master, was sure upon the point. Therefore, it is not Heidegger’s track. “The boy’s, then?” “Possibly, if we could prove a bicycle to have been in his possession. But this we have utterly failed to do. This track, as you perceive, was made by a rider who was going from the direction of the school.” “Or towards it?” “No, no my dear Watson. The more deeply sunk impression is, of course, the hind wheel, upon which the weight rests. You perceive several places where it has passed across and obliterated the more shallow mark of the front one. It was undoubtedly heading away from the school. It may or may not be connected with our inquiries, but we will follow it backwards before we go any farther.”

 

It is appropriate to note that the examination of bicycle tracks has been utilized from time to time by a number of other fictional detectives.

“The Adventure of the Priory School” first appeared in Collier’s Magazine for January 30, 1904, more than three years after the first publication of Baum’s short story. An exercise in speculation could, I am sure, develop many entertaining explanations for the origin of these passages from the pens of two beloved authors. I prefer to allow the evidence to rest as merely an interesting case of parallels.

 

NOTES

[1] Boucher, Anthony. “An Aborted Avatar,” The Baker Street Journal, Vol. IX No. 3 (New Series), 1959 and Rutter, Richard R. “Doyle—the Oz connection,” Shadows of the Gnomon, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Private Printing) July 1981.

[2] Baum, L. Frank. “The King of Gee-Whiz,” The Musical Fantasies of L. Frank Baum with Three Unpublished Scenarios. Chicago: The Wizard Press, 1958.

[3] (Baum, L. Frank.) Tamawaca Folks: A Summer comedy by John Estes Cooke. Macatawa, Michigan: The Tamawaca Press, 1907, p. 172.

[4] Baum, L. Frank. “The Loveridge Burglary.” Short Stores, January 1900. (Reprinted in The Baum Bugle, Winter 1989)

[5] Doyle, Arthur C. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, John Murray, Ltd. London, 1980.

 

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