In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, was published after a long period of rejections. The detective finally made his debut that November in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual – the story narrated as always by his faithful assistant Dr John Watson.
Long before any mention of the deerstalker, pipe or magnifying glass, Watson informed us of Holmes’s love of his violin:
That he could play [violin] pieces, and difficult pieces, I knew well, because at my request he has played me some of Mendelssohn’s Lieder, and other favourites.
When left to himself, however, he
