Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, received thousands, if not tens
of thousands of pleas for help in solving unsolved crimes, righting wrongs, and
setting justice right. The pleas came from all over the world, from people who
believed he could help. Often the pleas were written directly to Sherlock
Holmes – a testament to the power that a fictional character could hold over
the imagination.
Grieving
for his recently deceased wife, grieving more for the guilt he carried for
having been in love with another woman for the decade leading to his wife’s
death (she suffered from consumption or tuberculosis), he opens the mail one
morning to find a plea from a man named George Edjali, a barrister, born in
England of a Parsee father (native of Bombay) and a Scottish mother. Edjali had
been arrested, tried and convicted of mutilating horses and cows in rural
Staffordshire, where his father was an Anglican vicar.
Doyle
immediately sees the miscarriage of justice. Perhaps because of the guilt he
was carrying, perhaps because of the need to break away from the depression he
has experiencing, perhaps because of the outrage he felt at what had happened
to Edjali, Doyle does not give the letter to his secretary to send a polite
dismissal. He accepts the request. And because he does, British justice will ultimately
change.
This
is a true story. In 2006, novelist, essayist, translator and art critic Julian Barnes wrote a phenomenally
well-researched novel of what happened, entitled Arthur
& George. Earlier this year, ITV broadcast a three-part series in Britain based
on the book, staring Martin Clunes (“Doc Martin”) as Doyle and Arsher Ali as
George. The series recently aired in the U.S. as well.
The
book is a wonder. And it’s also a wonder that the TV series could extract the
story it did from the novel.
Barnes
tells the stories of the two men from childhood forward, because so much of
what their entwined story becomes originated in their childhoods. And he tells
it in the present tense, which adds an immediacy and a dramatic effect to the
narrative. He gets inside the heads of both of his leading characters,
something a television program couldn’t succeed as well as doing and so didn’t
try. But the program does succeed at telling the story, focusing on the mystery
of what actually happened.
 |
| Julian Barnes |
Edjali,
the barrister, has an almost childlike faith in British justice, a faith that
survives his arrest and imprisonment experience, but just barely. Doyle, the
writer whose involvement would lead rather quickly to a review and
investigation by the British Home Office, is less taken with British justice,
and fully understands how it could go off the rails, with biased police
investigators desperate to find the culprit and an incompetent trial judge. (Because
of this case, Britain would create a court of appeals.)
Barnes
has written numerous novels, collections of essays and short stories, and art
criticism. He received the Man Booker Prize in
2011 for his novel The
Sense of an Ending, only one of his many prizes and recognitions
What
is clear from Barnes’ account of Doyle and Edjali is that Doyle needed Edjali
as much as Edjali needed Doyle. They would not become lifelong friends,
although Doyle did invite him to the wedding to his second wife. But their need
of each other at the coinciding time of their lives was mutual and, ultimately,
beneficial.
The
story of Arthur & George is
fascinating. How Julian Barnes tells that story is equally fascinating.
Top photograph: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edjali at the time Doyle investigated his case.
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