Nothing Surprising In The Fact

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 28, 4 December 1950, Page 7

Nothing Surprising In The Fact

There is nothing surprising m the fact that the father of an engineer in the new Doric was the original “M’Andrew” in Kipling’s “M’Andrew’s Hymn.” The passage of time has revealed that many famous book B characters had their counterpart in reality. Even Mother Hubbard who went to the cupboard really existed. Her name was Mrs Hubbard, housekeeper to the brother-in-law of the authoress of the verse, Sarah Catherine by name. Research admittedly fails to indicate whether the dog lived up to its nursery rhyme antics, but he went to that cupboard in 1804. There is, moreover, reason to believe that there was a real Mother Goose. As for Dr Watson, of Sherlock Holmes fame, there was most certainly a real Dr Watson. He used to live in Chicago, and under the name of Dr Henry Watson he grew up with Conan Doyle in Scotland. In fact Dr Watson, the real, said in 1932, “It was when we were at Edinburgh University together that Conan Doyle first got his idea for his Sherlock Holmes stories. He was 17 and I was 12.” As for Holmes himself, Conan Doyle admitted in his autobiography that Dr Bell was the inspiration for the immortal Holmes. Conan Doyle changed the name to Sherlock Holmes after an English cricket player. He appeared for the first time in print inauspiciously in “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” in 1887. It was an American editor who discovered him there and ordered more Sherlock Holmes stories, thus putting this detective on his way to immortality. It is probable that there is some counterpart to every character in fiction, however faint the likeness. Baroness d’Orczy wrote regarding the Scarlet Pimpernel, “Don’t let anyone doubt the fact that you are real, even though it is I and not history who have put your life on record. I am only the medium which you have happened to choose to make your personality known to the world.” Anyway this colourful character was born 'on the platform of the Temple underground station, London, on a foggy day in November. It was an inauspicious beginning.