Some stories were translated or home-made, but whether the authors were Russian or foreign, the action was always abroad. But very soon Russian authors began to display a new method of ‘borrowing’ someone else’s hero. They ‘sent off’ the great Baker Street detective (or was it his ‘double?’) to far-away Russia! What could be simpler! Now Sherlock Holmes speaks Russian fluently and conducts his investigations in different corners of Russia!
It all began on 19 January 1908, when the Petersburg newspaper Stock Exchange News began to publish Sherlock Holmes in Petersburg by an anonymous author. This was followed by three more Holmes’ stories. Their success was to come when they were reprinted as a supplement to Stock Exchange News, being part of the magazine Ogoniok. The first issue (of 23 March) contained Sherlock Holmes in Moscow. The introduction read, in part, ‘The manuscript arrived under somewhat mysterious circumstances. “I am sending Sherlock Holmes in Moscow, a narrative of his Moscow adventures, by registered post”, read the unsigned telegram.’ A later issue carried an indignant letter from Sherlock Holmes to the editorial board of Ogoniok. In it, he demanded that the anonymous author must be stopped. The success of the hoax was palpable. There even arose a case, Sherlock Holmes vs. the Magazine Ogoniok, which many readers accepted as genuine. But S. Propper, the publisher of the magazine, achieved his aim. The popularity of the magazine grew. It also set a precedent. Now it became permissible to ‘transplant’ Sherlock Holmes to Russia and for his services to be commissioned by Russian clients. And so it went on and on….
The poor devil from Baker Street, against his will, covered the length and breadth of Russia! Russian authors ‘despatched’ him to Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Baku, Simbirsk, Penza, Novorossiisk, Tomsk, to small provincial towns and even the villages of the vast Russian empire. But, unlike the penny dreadfuls, these nearly always carried the author’s name, sometimes only a pseudonym. And another distinction, now these were not short stories but longer works, novels and even plays. The literary level of these creations was not high, but there were some examples of quality. One example of the latter was Sherlock Holmes in Penza, in the April–May, 1908 issue of Penza News. Another example was From the Memoirs of a Resident of Petersburg, about Sherlock Holmes, containing The Three Emeralds of Countess V.-D., by someone called N. Mihailovitch. This deals with the unknown circumstances following the epic struggle between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, when Holmes disappeared over the waterfall. Mihailovitch tells us, for most of that time, Holmes was in Russia, where he lived as William Mitchell. The plot deals with the mysterious murder which took place in Petersburg. The story was not without a curious addition. It includes the presence of the daughter of Arsene Lupin! This sort of thing did happen frequently enough when the character of one detective novel could become simultaneously Sherlock Holmes and Nat Pinkerton and Nick Carter and Arsene Lupin.
There were many stories of a ‘Russian’ Sherlock Holmes. Presented in this volume are two by P. Orlovetz. From his surname we might surmise that he came from the city or region of Oriol. He was a prolific writer, author of novels and novellas, short stories and children’s stories. Little is known of him.
But the most popular and most prolific was P. Nikitin, whose stories are presented in this volume. His span of literary activity was very short, from 19 July 1908 (the publication of the first collection, The Latest Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Russia. From the Notebooks of the Great Detective), till 30 May 1909 (when the last collection came out, On the Track of Criminals. The Adventures of the Resurrected Sherlock Holmes in Russia). In less than a year altogether, P. Nikitin published four collections. In the intervals between their publication, the entire cycle appeared (on the analogy of penny dreadfuls in separate small booklets but in a much more attractive format) in two series, The Latest Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Russia, and The Resurrected Sherlock Holmes in Russia. All in all, Nikitin published twenty-one stories.
P. Nikitin may have been the most prolific and interesting of the authors of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, but, sad to say, we know absolutely nothing about him. Who was he? Where did he spring from?’ What does the initial ‘P’ stand for? Peter, Paul, Policarp? Not one writers’ reference work, not a single encyclopedia, nowhere is his name to be found. We don’t even know whether Nikitin is his real name or a pseudonym.
Time has not preserved either any information about him, or his books. The Russian National Library in St Petersburg, Russia’s major library, has only one set of his stories. How gratifying, therefore, that the name of this deserving but forgotten writer now returns before the reading public, and so much more gratifying that it is to the readers of that country whose great representative he extolled and which he probably never visited. But now, a century later, he returns there by way of his works, returns to invite ‘his’ hero’s fellow countrymen and all English readers everywhere to that distant and mysterious Russia which, once upon a time, took to its heart that great recluse from Baker Street.
George Piliev
Moscow
George Piliev is an author, editor, bibliographer and historian of the mystery genre.
1. THE BROTHERS’ GOLD MINE
P. Orlovetz
I
This incident, illustrating the extraordinary perceptiveness of Sherlock Holmes, took place some ten years before the Russo-Japanese War, so disastrous for Russia.
Having visited all the major centres of European Russia, Sherlock Holmes decided to visit Russia’s possessions in Asia, which he had wanted to see for so long. I must confess that for me, Siberia represented an especially interesting part of the world. Legends and the most incredible stories were rife in England about it.
Hence, it was not surprising that, no sooner had Holmes mentioned his desire to travel there, not only did I joyfully agree to accompany him, but in every possible way urged our departure. I was afraid he might change his mind or become occupied by fresh cases which were offered from all sides in Russia.
Sherlock Holmes certainly understood what I was trying to do and scoffed good-naturedly at my impatience. Nonetheless, this impatience worked on him. And so, he turned down several lucrative but not very interesting cases, purchased the necessaries for a prolonged trip, and laid preparations for it. When at last the Siberian train left the station at Moscow, I breathed joyfully, now that my long-held wish was to come about.
The Volga River flashed by, the steppes of the Ufim province lay behind, for several hours we took in the splendid views of the Ural Mountains and then the train swept into the Siberian vastness.
Despite our expectations, we did not encounter polar bears anywhere, nor wild natives of whom French tourists wrote that they devoured not only each other but even their own children. It turned out to be like any other land mass, except that it was slovenly, muddled, sparsely inhabited, in places covered by impenetrable coniferous forests known as the taiga, which knew no boundaries and stretched as far as the Arctic Ocean.
But what surprised us most of all was the Siberian peasantry. Not only were they not downtrodden like the peasants of central Russia, they were richer and certainly more sure of themselves.
As regards education, Siberians were well ahead of their fellow citizens in the provinces of central Russia. Holmes’s explanation was that, for several centuries, the Russian authorities had settled exiled elements here. A mixture of political exiles, criminals and Cossacks (resettled here in his time by the then governor-general, Count Muravieff-Amursky) had created a very special population.