Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (4 page)

Lest he seem impossibly superior, Holmes is given some counterbalancing weaknesses. He is wrong from time to time, though usually about something trifling. He is inclined to be critical of the people around him, including Watson, when they haven’t met what seems like some impossibly high standard. Some could see this trait as one of his strengths, though, since he holds himself to the same standard. More important, he is what we would call today a manic-depressive. He comes alive only when on the trail of crime, but not just any crime. It must have some special feature that baffles ordinary mortals. When no crime worthy of his skills is currently afoot, he lapses into listlessness, requiring cocaine for stimulation. Cocaine was not illegal at the time; these were the 1880s and 1890s, the time of bohemians in the European capitals, the absinthe drinkers of Degas, and the drug-induced estheticism of the fin-de-siècle. Though not illicit this dependency is clearly a character flaw.

The sum of all his qualities makes Sherlock Holmes seem like a real person. This sense of his reality sets these stories apart from other literature, and from the very beginning the illusion of his existence was powerful. On October 29,1892, an article called “The Real Sherlock Holmes” by “Our Special Correspondent” appeared in the
National
Observer. It quoted Sherlock Holmes complaining about the way Conan Doyle had plagiarized Dr. Watson. Holmes also expressed indignation at Conan Doyle’s misrepresentations of some of his cases. He didn’t make any of those little mistakes Conan Doyle ascribes to him. The
Strand Magazine,
which published all the short stories, received letters wanting to know if Holmes were a real person. The magazine cagily replied that it had not made his personal acquaintance but would certainly call upon him if ever it needed a mystery investigated.

Even after it was well known that Holmes was a fictional creation, a curious phenomenon developed that has no other parallel in literature. It has become a good-humored convention for Holmes scholars to treat the stories as historical events and the protagonists as real figures. Conan Doyle is often referred to as the literary agent for Dr. John H. Watson. Several biographies have been written about Holmes, and the current residents of Baker Street still get mail addressed to him. In October 2002 the Royal Society of Chemistry in Britain awarded an Honorary Fellowship to Sherlock Holmes, its first fictional inductee, on the hundredth anniversary of his coming out of retirement to solve the case of
The Hound of the Baskervilles.

In addition to his own characteristics, Holmes is popular for other reasons. The plots and the atmospheres of the stories deserve no small credit for creating the Holmes appeal. Conan Doyle’s skill in vividly describing London has made countless readers feel they know the city. The inclusion of so many accurate details from daily life in the city—from train stations and schedules, concert series, real-life performers, streets and buildings they passed every day—gave contemporaneous readers a sense they might be reading an account from the newspapers. The inclusion of many real historical characters strengthens the sense that we are reading a personal memoir. The stories were also initially popular because of the novelty of the scientific method used by Holmes in solving his mysteries, something we can’t help but take for granted now.

Holmes profits enormously by having his exploits narrated by an admirer. Nearly as well known but much less appreciated, the good Dr. Watson provides not only a contrast as the Everyman to Holmes’s Superman, he also perfectly embodies the British man in the street. Conan Doyle himself has often been thought the model for Holmes’s friend and chronicler. Like Watson, Conan Doyle was a doctor. Also like Watson, who we learn was a rugby player in his youth, Conan Doyle was an avid footballer. He was also a boxer, cricket player, and golfer. He was an all-round sportsman, and like other sportsmen, then and now, he had an uncomplicated attitude toward the world. Conan Doyle was like Watson in another way that’s scarcely believable except for the testimony of people who knew him. He was apparently as little likely to deduce something about you as Watson was. Hesketh Pearson reports a conversation Conan Doyle had with Hugh Kingsmill: “‘ Arnold Lunn is a son of Sir Henry Lunn, is he not?’ asked Conan Doyle. ‘Yes.’ ‘And you are a brother of Arnold Lunn?’ ‘Yes.’ (After a minute’s pause for reflection) ‘Then you also are a son of Sir Henry Lunn?’ ”Yes“‘
(Conan Doyle: His Life and Art,
pp. 183-184). The obvious difference between Conan Doyle and Watson is that Watson did not have the capacity to invent a character like Sherlock Holmes. Generations of readers have been grateful that Arthur Conan Doyle did, and that he used that capacity to enrich our imaginations by creating a hero who reassures us that even the most baffling mysteries can be solved by reason, and who challenges us to use our powers of observation.

If you are reading these stories for the first time or renewing your acquaintance with them after decades of fond but faded memories, I urge you, as other editors of these stories have urged their readers before me, to proceed directly to the sitting room at 221B Baker Street, where you may test your detective powers against the Master’s. Come back to the following essay after you’ve finished. We’ll have much to talk about.

—Kyle Freeman

When in 1893 Sherlock Holmes tumbled to his apparent death over the falls at Reichenbach in Switzerland, locked in the embrace of the sinister Professor Moriarty, readers all over the world were stunned and saddened. Letters poured in to Arthur Conan Doyle and to his publisher, the
Strand Magazine,
urging the revival of the beloved detective. Conan Doyle was adamant that he wouldn’t do it. “I couldn’t revive him if I would, at least not for years,” he wrote to a friend, “for I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards
pâté-de-foiegras,
of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day” (Baring-Gould,
The Annotated Sherlock Holmes,
vol. 1, p. 16; see “For Further Reading”). Then seven years later, after a young friend told him a legend from Dartmoor about a supernatural hound, Conan Doyle relented by writing
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
He was careful, however, to make it a reminiscence, not a resurrection, of his famous consulting detective. The story was set in 1889, two years before the Swiss misadventure. The resumption of writing about his most famous creation must have set into motion something in Conan Doyle’s soul, for in an interview quoted in the
Harper’s Weekly
issue of August 31, 1901, the month
The Hound
was first serialized, one can see his resolve starting to weaken. “I know that my friend Dr. Watson is a most trustworthy man, and I gave the utmost credit to his story of the dreadful affair in Switzerland. He may have been mistaken, of course. It may not have been Mr. Holmes who fell from the ledge at all, or the whole affair might be the result of hallucination.” It wasn’t long before Conan Doyle decided—perhaps after a wistful look at his bank balance—that the enforced absence of his sleuth had gone on for too long. In 1903 he called on his friend Dr. Watson once more for another series of stories about his colleague, and in October 1903 the
Strand
published “The Adventure of the Empty House.” There it was revealed, almost plausibly, that only Moriarty had gone over the falls at Reichenbach. Thus readers learned to their delight that they would be treated to many more adventures of the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes.

A series of twelve more stories followed, ending with “The Adventure of the Second Stain,” the last published in the December 1904 issue of the
Strand Magazine.
In quick order the series was published as a book by George Newnes of London in 1905, under the title
The Return of Sher
lock Holmes, with sixteen illustrations by Sidney Paget, the great illustrator whose drawings for the first Strand stories had done so much to establish the popular image of Holmes. The new stories appeared to take up just where the old ones left off. Holmes and Watson resumed their cozy relationship; Holmes continued to solve mysteries that baffled Watson, Scotland Yard, and the reader; and the world of 221B Baker Street seemed as solid and unchanging as ever.

It seems that way only until one examines the stories more carefully. A closer reading reveals subtle but significant changes in Holmes. The first one we might notice is Holmes’s willingness to take the law into his own hands. In one of the early Sherlock Holmes stories, “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” we recall that Holmes did not divulge the name of John Turner as the man responsible for the death of his neighbor, Mr. McCarthy, when Holmes learned that McCarthy was a blackmailer and that Turner didn’t have long to live. Technically it’s a crime to conceal such evidence, but in view of the circumstances few would quarrel with Holmes’s decision. But before his resurrection, such behavior by Holmes was unique to that story, and we might note that he merely withheld information he had deduced himself—passive misbehavior at worst. In his defense we might also recall that in the case of “The Greek Interpreter” in the second series of stories, Holmes insisted on getting a warrant to search the premises of kidnappers.

In
The Return
such niceties are almost scornfully dismissed. Holmes aggressively pursues his own justice, actively breaking the law on several occasions and coming close to morally censurable conduct on several others. We first see this change in “The Adventure of the Priory School,” where we learn that the murder of a German teacher named Heidegger and the kidnapping of the son of the Duke of Holdernesse were part of a plot by the duke’s illegitimate son. It’s clear that the son, acting as the duke’s secretary, and the duke himself were complicit in aiding the killer’s escape. Holmes, claiming he is a poor man, agrees to keep silent about the whole nasty business in exchange for a huge check from his lordship. This is rather shocking. Unlike the previous case in Boscombe Valley, where we feel some sympathy for the wronged man, who will die soon anyway, we have no extenuating circumstances here. In fact, we have a prime example of the high-handedness of aristocracy in covering up its dirty family business at the cost of other people’s lives. Holmes’s acceptance of an enormous check could be seen as a bribe. When we compare this with his acid-toned retort in “The Problem of Thor Bridge,”—“ ‘My professional charges are upon a fixed scale,’ said Holmes coldly. ‘I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether’”—it looks as if Holmes has sold out here.

Those are likely to be fighting words to many Holmes fans. If you’re one of them, consider some further evidence before reaching for your brass knuckles. After he solves the mystery in “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” which, by the by, reprises the jewel-hidden-inside-another-object trick found in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” Holmes tells Watson to put the stolen jewel they have just recovered, “the famous black pearl of the Borgias,” in his own safe rather than return it to the authorities. Since Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard is standing right there, one would think there could be no better time to settle accounts. Holmes appears to think he has the right to stolen property just because he found it. This finders-keepers attitude would be, of course, antithetical to the law. What can Holmes be thinking?

Then there is the troubling case of “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” In that story Holmes abandons the moral code he followed in previous stories. First, while spying on Milverton, Holmes pledges to marry Milverton’s housemaid in order to get information out of her about her boss. When Watson reacts with shock to this admission, Holmes nonchalantly replies, “You can’t help it, my dear Watson.” Then before he and Watson break into Milverton’s house (no talk of a search warrant here!), Holmes tells Watson that they will “take no articles save those which are used for an illegal purpose.” Later, however, when he empties the contents of Milverton’s safe into the fire, he doesn’t stop to examine which papers are for such purposes and which are not. Most serious of all, he stays Watson’s hand when a wronged woman pulls a pistol on the blackmailer and shoots him; then Holmes refuses to cooperate with the police in finding her. Milverton may have been what Holmes calls him, “the worst man in London,” but blackmail is not a hanging crime. Holmes admits that Milverton got “the best of the first exchanges” between them, then vows, “but my self-respect and my reputation are concerned to fight it to a finish.” Holmes seems to act out of revenge for his wounded pride, the law be damned.

Finally, in “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange” Holmes takes it upon himself to be judge and jury for Captain Croker. (“Hold on!” you may object: “Holmes quite explicitly makes Watson the jury.” True enough, but Holmes knew with certainty what Watson’s judgment would be, and thus only pretends to let him decide Croker’s fate.) Here we again sympathize with his judgment, as Croker is an admirable fellow in every way. The man he kills, Sir Eustace Brackenstall, is not only a drunken brute, but his implied sexual mistreatment of his refined wife is more than enough to convince us that the world is a better place without him. (We might note here another case of corrupt aristocracy, a common element of the entire Saga.) The speed and assurance with which Holmes takes upon himself this authority, even enlisting Watson’s conscious intercession, is the noteworthy point of this story. He is coming more and more to feel and act like an embodiment of Justice itself.

What can be the cause of this change in Holmes? It stems in part from Conan Doyle’s exasperation with the English legal system. Because people assumed that the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories was every bit as clever as his fictional creation, Conan Doyle often received requests to solve mysteries or to set straight the course of justice gone awry. A prominent example, although it occurred in 1906, after the publication of
The Return,
illustrates the kind of thing that frustrated him. George Edalji, the son of an Indian minister, was convicted of killing farm animals on evidence that was obviously trumped up. His main crime seemed to be that he was Indian at a time when there was much anti-Indian sentiment in England. Conan Doyle took up his case, collected evidence overlooked by the investigators, interviewed witnesses not called at trial, and for years made speeches, wrote articles, and badgered officials to set the poor bloke free. He did the same a few years later for another man framed for murder, Oscar Slater. In each case it took nearly twenty years before either man got any justice from the legal system. Holmes reflects his creator’s impatience with letting an obviously flawed human institution decide crucial questions when it’s clear to any intelligent person what the outcome should be.