I don't watch Eastenders. For all I know, Lucy Beale's murder was the most complicated saga since Ken Dodd's tax return. But just imagine what would have happened if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had been made to sit through complaints that the Sherlock Holmes stories were too complicated to solve:
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Sir--
Is one alone in thinking that these magazine serials, featuring one Holmes, S.--and companion, Watson, M.D.--are much too vulgar for publication? One refers, of course, to 'The Speckled Band', that caricature of a story that was excreted about your pages Tuesday last.
Sir--the problem was this: last week, Mr Doyle suggested--perhaps rather too deliberately!--in the penultimate part of this godforsaken yarn, that one Mrs Hudson of Baker Street had been "knocked up"! What is this to imply, pray, if not that which one did infer: that said Mrs Hudson was the murderer in a desperate crime of passion? One suspects quite strongly that one would do the same, if one were to be knocked up rudely in the night in a similar fashion. Rather, one then placed several guineas to that very effect. Imagine one's surprise upon reading the concluding part, this week--having to reach for the remnants of one's mistress' laudanum and other things--when that turned out not to be so. It is perfectly inexcusable and so forth!
If a writer of such a disposition as Mr Doyle--deigning himself, as he does, to titillating your refined readership with the inconsequential reverie of magazine morsels--is to be taken seriously, alongside, say, the late Mr Dickens, then he absolutely must start giving the game away long before the end of his stories. And, indeed, one would know. Having expended considerable strength in imbibing the finest works of Mr Dickens, one often found oneself wishing that the sweet mercy proffered by the ending of the story would come about much sooner than it all too often did--notwithstanding the inevitable corollary, thereupon, of recourse to an altogether different sort of imbibing at the supposed climax of many of his books.
Furthermore, Mr Doyle must control his urges! He must limit the number of suspects, to a smattering of easily-identifiable villainous types, such as that delightfully-garish gentleman in a theatre performance one went to see recently--one forgets the name, but it was a piece by Mssrs Gilbert and Sullivan about a Japanese emperor somewhere or other. What would be the matter with employing, for the denouement of Mr Doyle's story, a knave such as he, leaving the poor reader in no doubt as to the identity of the murderer before the crime has even been committed? No precious guineas would thence need be wasted on trifling speculation and the stories would scarcely need to run into their second week!
Yes, Sir--Mr Doyle has much to learn indeed! Rest assured that one could go on.
Please see to it that he ceases forthwith to take such liberties as these--and that he desists at once from visiting such hideous vulgarities upon the readership of your fine publication as that with which he has defiled your press most latterly! Else it is quite likely that this appalled reader will be faced with no choice but to set about the complete works of the uncomplicated Irish fellow, Mr Bernard Shaw, and of Mr Tolstoy, the fine scribe of easily-resolved, everyday Russian matters.
Yours, in eternal confusion,
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By The Imperial Orange, originally written on 21st February 2015
