“My advice to you, sir, is to speak the truth”: In Defense of “The Resident Patient”

“For in those cases in which Holmes has performed some tour de force of analytical reasoning, and has demonstrated the value of his peculiar methods of investigation, the facts themselves have often been so slight or so commonplace that I could not feel justified in laying them before the public. On the other hand, it has frequently happened that he has been concerned in some research where the facts have been of the most remarkable and dramatic character, but where the share which he has himself taken in determining their causes has been less pronounced than I, as his biographer, could wish.”

If you have ever been to a meeting of any of the many Sherlock Holmes scion societies, you know that these meetings tend to be rather boisterous. Rambunctious, even. Loud, to put it in even more simple terms. Members laugh and shout and argue, but it’s all in good fun, even if it is rather spirited. So, you can imagine my surprise, when attending the most recent meeting of Watson’s Tin Box, when the Gasogene opened up the discussion of “The Resident Patient” only to be met with silence. It was an awkward silence, complete with cricket sounds and forced coughing. After waiting a moment for someone, anyone, to speak, the Gasogene finally prompted: “So, I take it that none of you liked this story?”

“No,” someone finally spoke up. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“You liked it, then?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that either,” said another Tin Box member.  “I wouldn’t say I feel much about the story either way.”

And that was the problem then. How does one verbalize: meh (complete with indifferent should shrug)? Is there even a way to discuss a story that appears to inspire such little feeling? Stories that are either greatly loved or greatly hated can inspire magnificent discussion, but a narrative that inspires no feeling likewise inspires no conversation. And relatively speaking, Sherlock Holmes doesn’t really do very much in RESI to inspire any kind of traditional response. The story begins with Holmes and Watson discussing the latest news, followed by a typical Holmesian deduction of Watson’s thought -process, and then the two men take a walk around London. They return to Baker Street, and spend the majority of the story listening to Dr. Percy Trevelyan relaying his very strange story. Holmes doesn’t even meet the man at the heart of the strange tale – Mr. Blessington – until more than halfway through the narrative, and even then he refuses to help him. Blessington is then killed in the middle of the night, and the murderers are eventually lost on the steamship Norah Creina, and thus come to no justice, except perhaps that of a karmic variety. 

So where do readers find the value in a story like RESI? If the mystery itself invokes only a feeling of lukewarm indifference, then what is there to which the reader can respond? And readers do respond to RESI – the story tied for 42nd place (along with “The Engineer’s Thumb,” “The Retired Colourman,” “Shoscombe Old Place,” and “The Yellow Face”) in the 1999 poll of invested members of the Baker Street Irregulars.  If the case itself teaches the reader nothing, then the reader is learning something from somewhere else in the tale, otherwise RESI would have been relegated to the very bottom of the list with the three stories tied for 54th place: “The Three Gables,” “The Mazarin Stone,” and “The Veiled Lodger.”

There’s actually quite a bit of information to gather about Sherlock Holmes from RESI – about his talents and methods – even if they are not on display to their fullest possible extent in this story. Watson begins by sharing with the reader:

“[Sherlock Holmes] loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.”

This insight into Holmes’s character is followed by a magnificent string of deduction on the Detective’s part. The deductions are of little import to the overall scope of the narrative, but he is able to catalog Watson’s entire train of thought and is even able to accurately remind Watson of how this train of thought began when the Doctor himself was unable to remember. This exercise into fundamental Sherlockian method is followed by the two men taking a stroll around London: “For three hours we strolled about together, watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through Fleet Street and the Strand. His characteristic talk, with its keen observance of detail and subtle power of inference, held me amused and enthralled.”

And so the reader finds this particularly charming sketch of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as friends – a sliver of insight into the relationship that fuels the narratives of the Canon for so many readers. We see Holmes and Watson in a companionable, easy intimacy that comes with a long acquaintance. We see Dr. Watson charmed by his friend on the mere merit of Holmes being himself, nothing more. We see Sherlock Holmes at ease, and at his best.

I once got into a discussion with another Sherlockian about just how many of the stories in the Canon are owed to characters making extremely poor life choices, or being otherwise unable to spot glaring red flags. Obviously, RESI is one of these stories. Where would the reader be if Dr. Trevelyan had reflected for only a moment on the peculiarities of this stranger’s generous offer, and had decided to try his hand at researching nervous disorders for a bit longer? Likewise, what if Mr. Melas had said, “No, I don’t think I shall accompany you to an undisclosed location to translate for you at this late hour” (GREE)? Or if young Englishwomen had paid more cautious attention to those rumors circulating around that Baron Gruner fellow (ILLU)? Or even if Dr. Watson has said to young Stamford, “Beating the subjects in the dissecting room, you say? Oh, never mind. I’ve always imagined that I would be better off living on my own anyway” (STUD). So every story in the Canon has something to recommend to it, even if it is only a reminder of what might have been, or what never was.

oOo

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Some Thoughts on Setting: “The strange setting in which their fate was cast” (VALL)

"But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Watson... Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment, as one writes? ...Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won ease... So they still live for all that love them well: in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895.” (Vincent Starrett)

So, it is always 1895, as the Sherlockians say – indicating that time is a rather stagnant thing for those who love Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson well. That time neither moves forward, nor backward – and Holmes and Watson are perpetually seated in their chairs in front of a fire at 221B Baker Street. But in reality, the canon manages to encompass a rather broad scope of time and space. Even by examining just the original novels, the reader finds “The Country of the Saints” (STUD), “The Strange Story of Jonathan Small” (SIGN), and “Lodge 341, Vermissa” (VALL). These backwards-reaching passages allow the reader to visit Utah, India, and Pennsylvania, respectively – with each separate episode set several years, even decades, in the past from the moment of their telling. Even The Hound of the Baskervilles features a brief foray into the past – the year 1742 specifically – with the reading of the Baskerville legend.

Do you think this is going to have future
consequences? Nah, probably not.

Pastiche and especially film and television adaptations seem to make easy work of time and setting in terms of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures. The Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone famously transported the Great Detective and Dr. Watson out of Victorian England, and into a variety of plots centered largely on war propaganda and jingoist sentiment – and based only very tenuously on the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Only two of Rathbone’s Holmes films were set in the nineteenth century: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939). Author Barry Grant, on the other hand, defrosts and revives the Great Detective after nearly a century of being frozen in an Alpine glacier in his two novels, The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes and the Shakespeare Letter. And in a similar plot device, Holmes is transported even farther into the future in the animated series, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, where he is paired with a semi-robotic Watson and a female Lestrade.

So how does Holmes survive all these shifts through time and space (sometimes “space,” in a very literal, astronomical sense)? The Rathbone-Universal Pictures films opened with an explanatory title card: “Sherlock Holmes, the immortal character of fiction created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is ageless, invincible and unchanging. In solving significant problems of the present day he remains as ever the supreme master of deductive reasoning.” Surely the BBC’s series, “Sherlock,” with its modern Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson equipped with smartphones and Wifi, has more than proven that a fully contemporary adaptation can be done and done well. However, there is a distinct difference between Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock using video chat with Martin Freeman’s John Watson – or even Basil Rathbone’s Great Detective and Nigel Bruce’s Dr. Watson traveling via airplane – and a Sherlock Holmes who has been forcibly transported to another century, set against of the backdrop of a digital Big Ben and trying to interact with a cyborg. Are we speaking merely to the issue of success or failure in concept and execution?

But Holmes’s body of knowledge and unique strengths were based as much on his knowledge of his time and place as it was upon anything else. So, to forcibly transplant him into another era – via frozen glacier or ill-timed temporal vortex – is to severely weaken him. Cumberbatch and Rathbone’s versions of Sherlock Holmes are certainly not creatures of 1895 in the way of Jeremy Brett’s Great Detective, but they are creatures of their time and place. Because if nothing else, Sherlock Holmes must be comfortable in his own world in the same way that he is comfortable in his own skin. He must know it in the same way that he knows varieties of tobacco ash, or bicycle tires, or the typefaces of various newspapers. To put him in a world in which he fights to understand basic concepts, tools and interactions, is to cripple the Great Detective in a very fundamental way – to see Sherlock Holmes struggle with the world around him would compromise the authenticity of his observations and the authority of his conclusions. A nineteenth century London would be quite alien to both the Rathbone and Cumberbatch versions of Sherlock Holmes, but their own worlds and spheres of existence were not.

All right, someone is going to have to bring me
up to speed here. The "CliffsNotes" version is fine.

There may be no one who has spoken more on the topic of setting – time, place and context – in the canon than the Sherlockian Vincent Starrett. He is, of course, the composer of the iconic poem “221B,” and the gorgeous lines that captured the imagery that so embodied the world of the canonical Sherlock Holmes. But canonical setting is more than just romantic gaslight and cobblestone streets, even for Starrett: "How often have I myself, in other years, climbed those seventeen steps that lead upward to the famous rooms and listened for the voices of their most famous occupants. Sometimes I have been almost certain that I heard them. And the old house in Baker Street still stands for all who remember it. It will stand as long as the cold London fog rolls in with the winter and mischief is planned and thwarted and books are written and read." What he speaks of is being able to recognize Holmes and Watson on sight – of the characteristics of time and setting that make them instantly identifiable – of their being when they should no longer be.

In 2009, the animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold aired an episode entitled, “The Trials of the Demon,” in which Batman is summoned by Sherlock Holmes into the past to solve a series of inexplicable crimes. Upon first meeting, Holmes is able to accurately deduce Batman’s identity through a series of (humorous) observations. Then with apparently only one observation, Batman is able to likewise deduce Sherlock Holmes’s identity. That observation? “The hat,” Batman says, to which Sherlock Holmes self-consciously adjusts his deerstalker. At the end of the episode, as they say their farewells, Holmes asks Batman to reveal how he really knew his identity. Batman smirks at this question, and finally answers before vanishing:

“Everyone knows who you are. You’re the world’s greatest detective.”

"All right, 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and then
we'll know who has the silliest outfit."

oOo

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“But no heroes, returning from a forlorn hope…” (VALL): The Nature of Heroism in the Sherlock Holmes Canon

“It is simple enough as you explain it,” I said, smiling. “You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin.  I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories” (A Study in Scarlet, Chapter Two).

Sherlock Holmes: “Don't make people into heroes, John.  Heroes don't exist and if they did I wouldn't be one of them.” (SHERLOCK, “The Great Game,” 2010)

In his recent graphic novel, Moriarty: The Dark Chamber, writer Daniel Corey re-envisions the world of Sherlock Holmes – a world in which, for all outward appearances, Professor Moriarty had defeated the Great Detective at Reichenbach Falls.  The world of The Dark Chamber is one in which Sherlock Holmes has been dead for over two decades, and Moriarty is living in relative seclusion, seemingly unable to match the excitement of the days when he clashed with his greatest adversary.  However, this Moriarty is no gloating victor – looming malevolently from the center of his criminal spider’s web, and mocking those who remain of Holmes’s confederates.  And so, I was rather surprised to find there were some who took issue with the graphic novel, and with the idea of Professor Moriarty as a “heroic figure.”  You see, I didn’t find Corey’s Moriarty heroic at all, instead I found him rather sad and tired, even if the artwork rendered him less reptilian than I had come to expect from the Napoleon of Crime.

But it got me thinking about the heroes of the Sherlock Holmes canon, and who they really are.  Beginning at the beginning, there’s the Great Detective himself, of course, and as the original definition of “hero” typically only applied to the demigods of Greek myth, than this use of the term might be more appropriate than it even initially appears to be.  After all, Steven Moffat, creator of the television show, SHERLOCK, said: “…Sherlock Holmes is a man who aspires to be a god.”  Certainly, throughout the course of the stories, Sherlock Holmes sometimes acts in ways that could be classified as less-than-heroic, if not flat-out illegal.  He disguised himself as a member of the clergy, participated in numerous instances of breaking and entering, and even contrived an engagement to a housemaid in order to obtain information – just to name a few.  Taken out of context, any one of those acts would be enough to make a lesser fictional character seem less than honorable, less than likeable.  But readers continue to stand behind Sherlock Holmes because he always obeys the spirit of the law, if not the letter of it.  As the Detective says in “The Adventure of the Three Gables,” “I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.”

And of course, we can’t forget Dr. Watson, who more than aptly fulfills the later “heroic” definitions of self-sacrifice, martial courage, and moral excellence.  Watson is a soldier, injured in the service of his country, and so it’s more than fair to say that his sense of self-sacrifice is beyond reproach.  Moreover, throughout the canon, Watson repeatedly demonstrates a uniquely honed sense of morality and honor.  Occasionally, he requires a little convincing, and even prodding to get onboard with some of the Detective’s schemes.  In “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” Watson meets Holmes at Goldini’s Restaurant, having brought along the parcel of housebreaking tools that Holmes requested.  After being informed of the plan, and a few moments of trying to convince Holmes to use somewhat more legal channels, Watson still expresses his misgivings: “I don’t like it, Holmes.”

Holmes almost seems taken aback by his friend’s reticence and he lobbies hard for Watson’s presence: “My dear fellow, you shall keep watch in the street.  I’ll do the criminal part.  It’s not a time to stick at trifles.  Think of Mycroft’s note, of the Admiralty, the Cabinet, the exalted person who waits for news.  We are bound to go.”  Of course, the Doctor would never willingly leave his friend to walk into danger alone, and it is this courage that prevents Watson’s heroic characteristics from crossing the line into boring and two-dimensional.  He is a man that is familiar with danger and ambiguous legalities, even wielding a chair as a weapon in “Charles Augustus Milverton.”  But his heroism is rooted in his ability to see where the boundaries are, and decide for himself when he can and should cross them. 


“I knew you would not shrink at the last,” said he, and for a moment I saw something
in his eyes which was nearer to tenderness than I had ever seen.
(via bookishadventures.tumblr.com)

And finally, what of Professor Moriarty?  Could it really be said that there is even anything, remotely heroic about the Napoleon of Crime?  I certainly would not go so far as to say that Sherlock Holmes should have looked to Moriarty in a pinch, but the argument could made that there is something rather protective about the man, which is certainly part and parcel with being a heroic figure.  In “The Norwood Builder,” the Detective says, “From the point of view of the criminal expert, London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.”  The Professor’s mere existence certainly protected Sherlock Holmes from his own sense of boredom, and his relentless and sometimes dangerous pursuit of more and more interesting work.  Furthermore, Moriarty had a very clear sense of his own boundaries, of what was his, and how to protect it.  As the Professor tells Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem”:

“You crossed my path on the fourth of January.  On the twenty-third you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty.  The situation is becoming an impossible one.”

Like Dr. Watson, Professor Moriarty has a clearly defined set of boundaries and limitations that he works very hard to protect.  They might not be respectable boundaries, or even legal ones, but they are set nonetheless and all his efforts are directed towards them.  Such a single-minded focus could possibly be viewed as heroic.  Most readers view Sherlock Holmes’s single-mindedness in much that fashion.

In the short story, “Be Good or Begone,” by Stan Trybulski, Sherlock Holmes has an innocent man savagely beaten by a corrupt police inspector simply because, “…I didn’t like his face.”  Now, Trybulski’s Sherlock Holmes contains more than a few elements of a golden age detective, and often seems less like the Victorian gentleman with which most readers are familiar.  Indeed, in the story, Holmes engages in a litany of strange behavior, from heroin use to vegetarianism, but none of it strikes a discordant note quite like the unprovoked beating of the innocent man.  If perfectly spotless behavior and a constant respect for the confines of the law are what truly define a hero, then Sherlock Holmes wasn’t one.  But instead, readers know what they can expect from Sherlock Holmes – and Dr. Watson and Professor Moriarty, for that matter.  We know what lines they will and will not cross.  We know where they stand, and that’s why we feel that we can stand beside them.

oOo

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“Give me problems, give me work” (SIGN): The Nature of Work in the Sherlock Holmes Canon

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” (Steve Jobs)

Sherlock Holmes’s universe—the mental spaces that he occupied—was famously narrow.  If a piece of information wasn't in some way relevant to whatever case or mystery he was pursuing at the moment, then it wasn’t relevant at all.  In A Study in Scarlet, when Dr. Watson takes the Detective to task for not knowing that the Earth revolves around the sun, the Detective snaps: “What the deuce is it to me?  …you say that we go round the sun.  If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”  The 2010 BBC series, “Sherlock,” featured a variation on the line, with the title character saying: “Oh hell, what does [the solar system] matter?  So we go round the sun.  If we went round the moon or round and round the garden like a teddy bear it wouldn't make any difference.  All that matters to me is the work.  Without it my brain rots.”

Sherlock Holmes had clearly defined, carefully cultivated priorities.  In “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” he says: “I play the game for the game’s own sake.”  He worked neither for money nor for public acclaim, and was openly antagonistic towards Watson’s literary efforts on his behalf, even though the Doctor’s stories must have certainly brought a tremendous number of clients to the door of 221B Baker Street.  Holmes also does not care if the police or other parties receive the credit for solving the case, as the long as the case is solved.  In “The Naval Treaty,” Holmes says to an unreasonably vexed police inspector: “On the contrary…out of my last fifty-three cases my name has only appeared in four, and the police have had all the credit in forty-nine.  I don’t blame you for not knowing this, for you are young and inexperienced, but if you wish to get on in your new duties you will work with me and not against me.”  Sherlock Holmes understood his priorities, and likewise, he knew how to cultivate them in others.

On the other hand, John Watson is a medical man, a surgeon, by trade.  Though that character detail is often easy to forget given the amount of time that he spends running beside, and chasing after, Sherlock Holmes.  He abandons his medical practice frequently—sometimes with his wife’s encouragement—and with little notice, foisting his patients onto an unsuspecting colleague—whom must certainly have benefited from the constant influx of business.  Truly, it appears that Watson spent most of his time as the Great Detective’s biographer and partner, but he must have found some spare moments to be the doctor that he trained to be.  In “The Creeping Man,” the reader finds that Watson cannot get away and follow Holmes as easily as he used to do: “Monday morning found us on our way to the famous university town–an easy effort on the part of Holmes, who had no roots to pull up, but one which involved frantic planning and hurrying on my part, as my practice was by this time not inconsiderable."

Dr. John Watson seen here in "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb,"
offering some practical advice to a patient
whose thumb is missing...brandy, naturally. 

How and when Watson found the time to build up a medical practice is beside the point, because he did find it.  Additionally, no matter how difficult it eventually became for Watson to get away and follow Holmes, he does manage to get away.  Even after the Great Hiatus, during which time Watson would have had three years to cultivate his own practice, and again establish himself as the doctor he was trained to be, he is quick to sell his business, move back to Baker Street, and throw his lot back in with Sherlock Holmes once again:

“At the time of which I speak, Holmes had been back for some months, and I at his request had sold my practice and returned to share the old quarters in Baker Street.  A young doctor, named Verner, had purchased my small Kensington practice, and given with astonishingly little demur the highest price that I ventured to ask–an incident which only explained itself some years later, when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes, and that it was my friend who had really found the money” (NORW).

So, for all that Dr. Watson judged his friend for not knowing that the Earth revolved around the sun (“But the Solar System!” [STUD]) simply because it was irrelevant to his work, Sherlock Holmes does not judge his friend for abandoning his prosperous practice to pursue a man who has inexplicably begun imitating a monkey.  Possibly because he was encouraging the behavior, as he does by having a relative purchase Watson’s practice, but also he knows that Watson’s priorities are the same as his own, and he has no issues with making sure that they remain so.

At the recent annual formal dinner hosted by Watson’s Tin Box, author Lyndsay Faye quoted John le Carré and said: “No one writes of Sherlock Holmes without love.”  I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of work lately, Sherlockian work in particular—the why and how of why Sherlockians do what they do.  And I wonder if the Great Detective and Doctor Watson provided their readers with an example of how to pattern and organize their priorities, to remind the reader of why they read.

  

Sherlock Holmes “[worked] as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic” (SPEC).  And Dr. Watson had a vocation that he occasionally fell back upon, but had no issues with abandoning it when it was no longer what he wanted.  When Sherlock Holmes reappeared in Dr. Watson’s life—whole and alive—the Doctor knew without question where he wanted to be.  The canon is filled with examples of working for the love of the work, of people who loved what they did.  And I think they would be disappointed if their devotees behaved any differently, if we found ourselves writing of Sherlock Holmes without joy, enthusiasm, or love.

oOo

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“I had neither kith nor kin in England” (STUD): The Family Relationship in the Sherlock Holmes Canon (Part One)

“The date of the watch is nearly fifty years back, and the initials are as old as the watch: so it was made for the last generation.  Jewellery usually descends to the eldest son, and he is most likely to have the same name as the father.  Your father has, if I remember right, been dead many years.  It has, therefore, been in the hands of your eldest brother…He was a man of untidy habits–very untidy and careless.  He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died.  That is all I can gather.” (“The Sign of Four,” Chapter One)

The Sherlock Holmes stories are filled with lonely, unmoored people.  People without family, or with only distant relations.  People who seem to neither need any close relationships, or are unable to maintain them.  Dr. Watson, after all, introduces himself to the reader in A Study in Scarlet as man without any family or close relations, and that is why upon returning from the Afghan War he “was therefore as free as air.”  But for a man who claimed to be “free,” and all the lighthearted imaginings that may invoke, he is quick to throw in his lot with a complete stranger, a man who admits from the outset that he is not the best of companions: “Let me see–what are my other shortcomings?  I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end.  You must not think I am sulky when I do that.  Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right.  What have you to confess now?  It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together” (STUD).

Sherlock Holmes analyzes Dr. Watson's elder brother's watch in The Sign of Four.

The reader learns in the above passage from The Sign of Four that Watson’s father and older brother have both died, and there is no mention of any other relations.  While it is true that Watson tells his reader in STUD that he “had neither kith nor kin in England [emphasis mine],” and therefore opens the door to speculation that he had relations in other nations, he never mentions them, and they never visit.  And whether the reader believes that the good Doctor was married once, twice, or six times as Brad Keefauver maintains (see the recent posting about Miss Mary Morstan), the sad fact is that none of the many Mrs. Watsons was a permanent, or even a long-term fixture in the Doctor’s life.  There is also no mention of any “little Watsons,” and as Dr. Watson was quick to return to his rooms at Baker Street in between his marriages, there is some evidence that Watson remained childless.  Baker Street, and his life with Sherlock Holmes, remained one of the few constant fixtures in his life; however often he found himself untethered from its moorings.

Sherlock looks like he's afraid Mycroft is about to tell an embarrassing family story. 
Mycroft looks like he's wondering where his dinner is. (bookishadventures.tumblr.com)

Sherlock Holmes’s isolation is legendary, of course.  Even bringing up the subject seems to confirm Christopher Morley’s admonishment to Sherlockian writers: “Never has so much been written by so many for so few."  Holmes is reticent, and close-fisted with his personal details.  And nowhere in the canon is this better exemplified than in “The Greek Interpreter.”  As Watson says:

“During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life.  This reticence upon his part had increased the somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me, until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as deficient in human sympathy as he was preeminent in intelligence.  His aversion to women and his disinclination to form new friendships were both typical of his unemotional character, but not more so than his complete suppression of every reference to his own people.  I had come to believe that he was an orphan with no relatives living; but one day, to my very great surprise, he began to talk to me about his brother.”

If the traditional chronology is to be believed, then the events of GREE took place in 1888, and Holmes and Watson had been sharing their rooms at Baker Street for over seven years.  Seven years without a word about a close relation, a brother, living in the same city!  It beggars belief.  Indeed, Gavin Brend of My Dear Holmes: Studies in Sherlock, posits the theory that the events of GREE took place within the first few years of Holmes and Watson’s acquaintance (58-62), which seems more likely if still a curious oversight.  Furthermore, if William Baring-Gould is to be believed, Holmes was quiet on the subject of more than just one older brother!  The famous Sherlockian scholar put forth the theories that there was a third, older Holmes brother, Sherrinford; that his parents were named Siger (the inspiration for Holmes’s alias during the “Great Hiatus”) and Violet; and that Sherlock Holmes was the father Rex Stout's detective character Nero Wolfe (the result of an affair with Irene Adler in Montenegro).  Despite the fact that Holmes’s family relationships are apparently more prodigious than Watson’s, they are no more substantial.  More is made of Mycroft’s character—and the Holmes brothers’ relationship—in pastiches or on screen, than ever was truly made of it in the canon; in fact, Mycroft only appears in just two of the original stories: “The Greek Interpreter,” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” and is just briefly mentioned in “The Final Problem,” and “The Empty House.” 

And finally, what of Mrs. Hudson, the famous matriarchal figure of Baker Street?  She is a “Mrs.,” but no “Mr.” Hudson ever appears (although fans of BBC’s “Sherlock” know what might have happened to her missing spouse).  Neither do there appear to be any Hudson children.  Her tenants are often troublesome, and she seems to go through agonies to care for them: cooking, cleaning, sending telegrams, shepherding clients (at all hours of the day and night), tending to bullet holes in her walls.  Oh, and not to forget: the task of preserving the flat while one of her residents was presumably dead for three years.  Watson does say that Holmes’s “… [rent] payments were princely.  I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him” (DYIN), but it still seems quite a lot for one landlady to tolerate, “princely” rent payments or no.

In fact, according to Christopher Redmond, author of the Sherlock Holmes Handbook (2nd Edition), Mrs. Hudson’s unusual devotion to her tenants—particularly Holmes—is worth noting.  “Certainly the kind of devotion seen in ‘The Empty House,’ in which she repeatedly crawls to Holmes’s wax bust ‘on my knees’ and in danger of her life to adjust its position, suggests something more than the usual relationship between tenant and landlady” (54).  In the pastiche, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds, Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Wellman theorize that Mrs. Hudson’s devotion to Sherlock Holmes stems from another source entirely, as well as find a neat solution for the “three Hudsons” that appear in the canon: Blackmailer Hudson of “The Gloria Scott,” Morse Hudson of “The Six Napoleons,” and Mrs. Hudson of Baker Street, of course.

Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes in 2010.  Not pictured, their longsuffering mother.

So, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Mrs. Hudson form a neat little family unit at Baker Street, for all that it is flexible and changeable, for all its strangeness and peculiarity.  Dr. Watson needed somewhere to return to—after the war, after his marriages.  Sherlock Holmes needed to be allowed to remain in the middle distance—to create his legendary separation and isolation.  And Mrs. Hudson needed a place to tend to—and perhaps even residents that needed tending.  They work rather neatly together as a unit, perhaps better than most.

oOo

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On the Observation of Nothing: “Silver Blaze,” “The Six Napoleons,” and “The Second Stain”

“No, no: I never guess.  It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculty.”  (“The Sign of Four,” Chapter One)

At “A Scintillation of Scions IV” this past Saturday, Vincent Wright, of the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, spoke on the subject of the “Initially Seen, But Not Observed.”  Specifically, Wright presented on the subject of Alfred Garth Jones, a man whose name was totally unfamiliar to most people in the audience—but whose work was instantly recognizable.  Jones was the illustrator of the famous cover of the first hardback edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles, in 1902.  It is a book that many Sherlockians own, in some form, or have at least seen many times over.  But of those many times, how many readers had given a single thought to the cover art of HOUN, its origins, or its artist?  But sometimes all it takes is for one person, like Vincent Wright, to really look at something—the commonplace, the unremarkable, and the routine—and to see the unanswered question lying beneath; to make a logical inference based upon the knowledge of some bit of information—no matter how elusive that information may be—without leaping ahead while there are still gaps in information.  Some of Sherlock Holmes’s most striking deductions came by looking at nothing, but observing the absence of something crucial, rather than seeing only a dearth of clues.

The Sherlock Holmes story, “Silver Blaze,” contains one of the Great Detective’s most famous and oft-quoted deductions.  Having learned all he can from the stables at King’s Pyland, Holmes and company are preparing to move on to the next location.  When asked if he has observed anything crucial, Holmes merely remarks cryptically that he would like to draw their attention:

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

What Holmes is referring to, of course, is that fact that the guard dog did not bark when the intruder entered the stable to steal the racehorse, Silver Blaze.  The absence of this activity indicated that whoever had come in must have been familiar to the canine, and did not arouse suspicion.  The villain, John Straker, was the lead trainer and someone who was seen every day around the stables, and the dog would have felt no fear of him, and thus no need to bark.  Rather than looking at a silent guard dog and seeing no clue, Sherlock Holmes observed an absent behavior, which in and of itself turned out to be one of the case’s most crucial clues.  In another instance, Holmes would rely upon the absence of a conclusion in one mystery, in order to find the correct solution to another.

One of the more interesting features of “The Six Napoleons” is the fact that Holmes had already worked the case once before.  As he tells Lestrade and Watson, “You will remember, Lestrade, the sensation caused by the disappearance of this valuable jewel, and the vain efforts of the London police to recover it.  I was myself consulted upon the case, but I was unable to throw any light upon it.”  If Sherlock Holmes seems to be positively blasé about this supposedly less than successful investigation, it is not because he has finally brought the case to an end.  It is not to say that he previously worked the case without success, but instead that he worked the case without conclusion.  However, Sherlock Holmes being Sherlock Holmes, the Detective knew that the absence of a solution in one instance did not preclude the existence of one entirely. 

Not pictured: The "I'm not following this" expression
on Lestrade's and Watson's faces.

Holmes refers to his detective work in SIXN as “a connected chain of inductive reasoning,” and Inspector Lestrade calls the case “workmanlike.”  They are both correct, of course, but the item of note is that observing a missing element was a crucial step in the deductive process.  Marking the missing conclusion from his previous case, Sherlock Holmes knew that a satisfactory solution—and by association, the missing pearl of the Borgias—must exist somewhere.  Simply labeling a case without a solution as unsolvable would not do, and regarding an elusive object as lost forever—simply for the crime of being elusive—would not stand either.

In “The Second Stain,” upon opening his despatch-box to find the missing diplomatic letter safely within its depths, Trelawney Hope exclaims, “Thank you!  Thank you!  What a weight from my heart.  But this is inconceivable–impossible.  Mr. Holmes, you are a wizard, a sorcerer!  How did you know it was there?”  To which Sherlock Holmes replies, “Because I knew it was nowhere else.”

This statement, of course, is not precisely true.  Holmes is, in fact, shielding Hope’s wife, who is the one who had initially stolen, and then secreted away the important document.  Holmes did not know the letter was in the despatch-box—in fact, the Detective placed it there himself to complete his ruse—but he did know that Lady Hope was in possession of the letter, simply because there was nowhere else it could be.  Following his train of deductions, Sherlock Holmes finds himself at the home of the murdered spy, Eduardo Lucas.  Sending Inspector Lestrade out the room, Holmes immediately begins to search for what he knows must be present:

“He tore the drugget from the floor, and in an instant was down on his hands and knees clawing at each of the squares of wood beneath it.  One turned sideways as he dug his nails into the edge of it.  It hinged back like the lid of a box.  A small black cavity opened beneath it.  Holmes plunged his eager hand into it and drew it out with a bitter snarl of anger and disappointment.  It was empty.”

Empty.  But what of the Great Detective’s deductions, his logical inferences?  Although he is for a moment stymied, it does not take Holmes long to realize that the absence of the document from the place he imagined it to be—the place he knew it to be—was the key indicator in another solution entirely.

Remarking on the absence of activity or behavior is not the same as a guess.  A guess indicates a lack of knowledge and the need to move ahead without some crucial piece of information.  With a lucky jump, a guess can sometimes get one over the gaps in the deductive bridge, but can just as easily leave you plunging into the abyss of blunder and falsehoods.  In SILV, SIXN, and SECO, what Sherlock Holmes is doing is observing nothing, and discovering the various ways in which the nothing is itself, a clue.  As Holmes says in SILV: “See the value of imagination…It is the one quality which Gregory lacks.  We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified.  Let us proceed.”

oOo

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Some Thoughts on Setting: The Bar of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane

“Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge.  Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search” (TWIS).

The beginning of “The Man with the Twisted Lip” finds Dr. Watson comfortably ensconced in his cozy armchair, in his cheerful sitting-room, with his wife contentedly doing needlework by his side.  It is the very picture of domesticity and marital harmony, and it appears that Watson has finally acquired that “tranquil English home” that he seemed to desire so very much in The Sign of Four.  But his pleasant and peaceful existence is soon abruptly disturbed, and for once, it is not even Sherlock Holmes’s fault.  Dr. Watson soon finds himself at the Bar of Gold, an opium den, on Upper Swandam Lane, in search of Isa Whitney, the husband of one of Mrs. Watson’s old school friends.  While there, the Doctor finds both Isa Whitney and Sherlock Holmes, and is plunged into an entirely new mystery.

The Bar of Gold is a vile establishment, in an even viler neighborhood, but it serves its purpose as a setting, in that it creates very clear and clean contrast amongst the story’s various locales.  According to Rosemary Jann, author of “In the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Detecting the Social Order,”  the “…pervasive pattern of Holmes and Watson departing from the snug comforts of their Baker Street rooms to invade the dark and stormy world outside symbolizes the vulnerability of middle-class domesticity that so often lies submerged in these plots.”  Surely no place can be as “dark and stormy” as that which Dr. Watson describes:

“Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer.  Out of the black shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, now faint, as the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes.  The most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation coming in gushes, and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour.”

In The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie Klinger notes that there is actually no “Upper Swandam Lane,” and that a variety of Sherlockian scholars have been unable to decide upon a substitute location (162).  Furthermore, the “Bar of Gold” was likely a disguised name for various similar locations throughout London and remarks that several notable writers included comparable opium dens in their works:  “J. Hall Richardson’s ‘Ratcliff Highway and the Opium Dens of To-Day,’ which appeared in Cassell’s Saturday Journal of January 17, 1891, described a ‘Mahogany Bar’ among other dockside haunts of ‘wilt Lascars.’  In Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), the opium den was named The Wheel of Fortune” (161).

Whether or not the opium den of TWIS is an actual site or no, if something dreadful and immoral were to take place—if someone were to do something dreadful and immoral—then the Bar of Gold is certainly the place for it to occur.  And if something astonishing, or revelatory bordering on miraculous were to transpire—then what better place than a cheerful English sitting-room, or country villa, or even a well-lit prison cell at Bow Street (with some water, soap, and a large bath sponge, for goodness sake)?

After encountering the Detective at the Bar of Gold, Watson puts Isa Whitney in a cab and sets off with Holmes for The Cedars, which is the St. Clair family villa, near Lee, in Kent.  Dr. Watson has already had two surprises this evening—the startling appearance of Kate Whitney at his doorstep and finding Sherlock Holmes crouched in the corner of the Bar of Gold—and he will be subjected to several more before the case is concluded.  As they drive, Sherlock Holmes provides Watson with the details of Neville St. Clair’s disappearance—how the man was last seen in the upper window of the Bar of Gold, and that it appears the respectable gentleman was brutally murdered by a filthy beggar named Hugh Boone, who claims residence at the ghastly opium den. 

The scene at The Cedars—“a large villa which stood within its own grounds”—by contrast is remarkably charming and hospitable.  Mrs. St. Clair shows them into “…a well-lit dining-room, upon the table of which a cold supper had been laid out…,” and it is in this convivial atmosphere that Mrs. St. Clair makes the next astonishing revelation of the evening: she has received, just that day, a letter from her missing husband, and man that Sherlock Holmes has just told her was likely dead.  After retiring to the double-bedded room provided by Mrs. St. Clair, Watson’s paints one of the more lasting pictures of Sherlock Holmes:

“He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from the sofa and armchairs.  With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him.  In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features.”

Holmes seems quite comfortable, even satisfied, if not exactly relaxed in his surroundings.  Eventually Watson drops off to sleep and is awoken by Holmes’s cry of sudden realization: “[Sherlock Holmes] chuckled to himself as he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed a different man to the sombre thinker of the previous night.”  After a night of quiet reflection on his homemade settee, Holmes now has the key to the whole mystery, which he has stolen from the St. Clair’s bathroom, in his Gladstone bag.

Upon arriving at Bow Street, Holmes and Watson are taken to Hugh Boone’s cell by Inspector Bradstreet.  There is no direct description of Boone’s cell—and logically it is probably not an extremely cheerful place—but it seems to be well-lit since Bradstreet says: “You can see him very well.”  The situation seems to lighten further when Holmes reveals the cleaning implements he has brought with him.  It is well-known what happens next: the Detective takes the soap and sponge to Hugh Boone’s face and scrubs away the beggar’s façade to reveal the face of Neville St. Clair underneath.  It is the last great, astonishing revelation of the case.  As Bradstreet says, “Well, I have been twenty-seven years in the force, but this really takes the cake.”

On the surface, the differences between the Bar of Gold in Upper Swandam Lane, and the other more hospitable locations in TWIS, are really so obvious as to seemingly defy any lengthy discussion.  However, it is what happens at each of these locations and the frequency with which they occur that is really the crux of the matter.  Indeed, rather than seeming to be foul for the sake of being foul, it is the very nature of the Bar of Gold that promotes that behavior at the other settings: Dr. Watson’s residence, The Cedars, and the Bow Street cells.  It highlights the more astonishing revelations; illuminating and making them appear nearly miraculous in detail: Kate Whitney’s arrival, Sherlock Holmes appearing in the opium den, Mrs. St. Clair’s receipt of a dead man’s letter, and the face of that dead man appearing beneath the face of a vagrant.  And for its part, the Bar of Gold is a reminder of just how dark things can appear, and how desperately a little light and wonder is sometimes needed.

oOo

Sources:

Jann, Rosemary. “In the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Detecting the Social Order.”  New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995.

Klinger, Leslie. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (Volume 1).  W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

“You like this weather?” (CHAS): Using the Weather as an Indicator in the Stories of Sherlock Holmes

“It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November…Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows.  It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man’s handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields.  I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street.  The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement.  A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end” (GOLD).

When it comes to setting a scene in a Sherlock Holmes story, needless to say, there are a lot of elements at work.  First, there is the tenor of the case itself: is it murder, blackmail, or robbery? Or is Sherlock Holmes tirelessly tracking down the origins of a mysterious Christmas goose with a valuable gemstone in its crop?  Also, consideration must be given to the physical location of the story: are Holmes and the Doctor at Baker Street?  Or Cornwall?  Or is it the middle of the night on the moors?  And what about the Great Detective’s mood: is he ill, and on holiday?  Lounging about his sitting room like a giant cat?  Or is he already in disguise and crouched in the corner of an opium den? 

When beginning a story from the Sherlock Holmes canon, there are many ways to tell just what kind of story the reader is going to get, but by simply by looking out of Baker Street’s bow window, or stepping out onto the street, another clear indicator can be gauged.  Will the story be violent and gruesome?  Focus on the cold and dark places of the human heart?  Or will it be about political conspiracy, with complexities so intricate that they are often confused and muddled?  Oftentimes, the weather sets the scene as much as the locale or Holmes’s disposition, and it provides clear clues to the reader, allowing them to prepare for Sherlock Holmes’s next client, perhaps before he or she even arrives at his door.

“The Five Orange Pips”:

“It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had set in with exceptional violence.  All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage.  As evening drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.”

Along with Hilton Cubitt from the “The Dancing Men,” John Openshaw, the client from “The Five Orange Pips,” holds the unfortunate distinction of being one of only two clients to be murdered after consulting Sherlock Holmes about his problem.  Openshaw’s arrival in the midst of such a violent storm certainly seems to foreshadow his brutal and futile end.  Openshaw’s family history is also fairly wicked, with its origins in the American Civil War and the Klu Klux Klan.  Openshaw’s uncle, Elias, and father, Joseph, likewise meet violent ends.  Joseph, for example, had been found at the bottom of a chalk pit with his skull shattered, while his son was tossed into the water to drown near Waterloo Bridge.  Perhaps most unjustly, Joseph and John Openshaw’s deaths were entirely dependent upon the actions of Elias—actions that they were neither aware of, or in a position to prevent.

When Openshaw first arrives at Baker Street, he says, “I fear that I have brought some traces of the storm and rain into your snug chamber,” and it is appears that he was correct, if only posthumously.  Openshaw’s death rattles Sherlock Holmes more than Dr. Watson has ever seen.  He takes the young man’s murder personally—a blow to his not inconsiderable pride—and the Detective’s quest for vengeance is as relentless as any “equinoctial gale.”

“The Abbey Grange”:

“It was on a bitterly cold night and frosty morning, towards the end of the winter of ’97, that I was awakened by a tugging at my shoulder…Ten minutes later we were both in a cab, and rattling through the silent streets on our way to Charing Cross Station.  The first faint winter’s dawn was beginning to appear…Holmes nestled in silence into his heavy coat, and I was glad to do the same, for the air was most bitter…”

The frosty morning that begins Holmes and Watson’s adventure to the Abbey Grange complements vividly the icy relationship that they encounter there.  To say that the marriage between Sir Eustace Brackenstall and his wife, Lady Mary Brackenstall, was unhappy would be a dramatic understatement.  Lady Brackenstall spares nothing in describing her late husband: “…Sir Eustace was a confirmed drunkard.  To be with such a man for an hour is unpleasant.  Can you imagine what it means for a sensitive and high-spirited woman to be tied to him for day and night?  It is a sacrilege, a crime, a villainy to hold that such a marriage is binding.”  It is immediately clear that Lady Brackenstall feels no warm sentiment for her late husband; indeed, her opinion of him is as cold as his corpse.

What’s more, the bitterly cold atmosphere of ABBE provides excellent contrast to the fiery and passionate relationship between Mary and Captain Jack Crocker.  There is nothing that Crocker will not do for Mary, even face trial himself as long as she is allowed to go free. “When I think of getting her into trouble,” says Crocker, “I who would give my life just to bring one smile to her dear face, it’s that that turns my soul into water.”  Perhaps Mary Brackenstall’s hot Australian blood and the Captain’s ardent temperament are better suited outside of England’s terribly cold environment.

“The Bruce-Partington Plans”:

“In the third week of November, in the year 1895, a dense yellow fog settled down upon London.  From the Monday to the Thursday I doubt whether it was ever possible from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses…after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the window-panes…”

In My Dear Holmes: Studies in Sherlock, Gavin Brend inevitably brings his discussion of BRUC around to the greasy, yellow fog that encroaches on 221B’s windows: “…the survivor is the greasy, brown, swirling fog of The Bruce-Partington Plans.  This is partly due to Watson’s masterful description, but even more it is due to the fact that we, the English, love and cherish our fogs beyond all things on earth” (136).  And what a fog this is, in BRUC.  This is no wispy fog, no tenuous thing of ethereal gray.  This is a serious fog, and Mycroft Holmes has brought his brother a serious problem—one of national import, with international consequences.

But at first, the Great Detective seems mystified: “But if this is true, then the case is at an end.  On the one hand, the traitor is dead.  On the other, the plans of the Bruce-Partington submarine are presumably already on the Continent.  What is there for us to do?”  Of course Sherlock Holmes is never content to rest upon his laurels, and in reality he is eager to set off on the hunt—but neither is his pathway clear.  When the most likely suspect, Cadogan West, is ruled out, Holmes must set off in fresh pursuit of a criminal that he cannot quite see through the miasma of circumstances, evidence, and deductions.

~~~

There are a variety of ways in which stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon are marked, indicators that allow the reader to know what sort of story to expect before the case even properly begins.  The reader can look for Sherlock Holmes crouched over a tin box of his former cases, or gregariously offering to introduce Watson to his brother, or even stabbing at a dead pig with a harpoon.  But if the client arrives at Baker Street with snow dusting his coat, or the wind chasing him up the seventeen steps—he may not have to speak a single word, for the reader to anticipate what mysteries might come next.

oOo

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