Some Thoughts on Setting: The Tranquil English Home

“As we drove away I stole a glance back, and I still seem to see that little group on the step – the two graceful, clinging figures, the half-opened door, the hall-light shining through stained glass, the barometer, and the bright stair-rods. It was soothing to catch even that passing glimpse of a tranquil English home in the midst of the wild, dark business which had absorbed us.” (SIGN)

221B Baker Street was not a tranquil English home. Life with Sherlock Holmes was not tranquil. The world with Sherlock Holmes in it was not tranquil. An existence punctuated by indoor pistol practice, unpredictable and uncontrollable chemical experiments, and an assorted cast of unsavory characters arriving at irregular hours was not a tranquil one. But there were moments of tranquility. For instance, the conclusion of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” in which the reader finds Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson enjoying a peaceful, seasonal meal together. The passage in The Sign of Four in which Holmes lulls a tense and exhausted Watson to sleep with his violin. Or even the opening lines of “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” in which the reader finds that Inspector Lestrade has acquired the habit of dropping in at Baker Street of an evening, just to chat. But, by and large, the Baker Street flat was a rambunctious residence.

But that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that all other canonical residences were tranquil ones, either. An address off of Baker Street did not guarantee a peaceful life. The eponymous residence of “The Copper Beeches,” for all its efforts at the appearance of normalcy, turned out to be – for Miss Violet Hunter especially – as dark and dangerous a residence as any alley of ill-repute in London. The Trevor residence in Donnithorpe, seen in “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, is certainly more than peaceful enough in the beginning. As Sherlock Holmes said, “…he would be a fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month there,” but unfortunately the “old-fashioned, widespread, oak-beamed brick” dwelling quickly becomes the site of high drama, when the elder Trevor’s previous transgressions follow him home. And of course, in “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” no number of ivy-covered walls or pillared front facades can conceal the dark business that took place inside – the monstrous cruelty of Sir Eustace Brackenstall and his violent end.

Nevertheless, in “The Crooked Man,” Sherlock Holmes arrives at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Watson, seeking sanctuary. The Watsons have only been married a few months, and the hour is late – Watson informs the reader that his wife had already gone to bed – but there is no question that Sherlock Holmes would be welcome, that his hat can fill the vacant peg on the hatstand. So, if a tranquil English home doesn’t necessarily mean “anywhere outside of Baker Street,” then what was Dr. Watson longing after as he gazes back at the Forrester residence in The Sign of Four? Was it necessarily the tranquility? Was it the sense of stability? Was it the woman standing on the doorstep (you know, the one he would eventually marry)? Or was it something else, some more intangible quality, something that perhaps escaped even Watson’s implicit understanding?

It’s worth noting that, in the passage from SIGN, Watson is neither coming from nor returning to the flat at Baker Street. He is coming from Pondicherry Lodge – returning Miss Mary Morstan to the home where she currently resides as a governess – and their evening has been long and dark, punctuated by theft, murder, and the revelation of secrets horrible and long-harbored. After leaving Miss Morstan with the Forresters, Watson does not immediately return to Pondicherry Lodge, but instead embarks on an errand for Sherlock Holmes, and goes to Pinchin Lane. It is an unlovely place. As Watson says, “Pinchin Lane was a row of shabby, two-storied brick houses in the lower quarter of Lambeth. I had to knock for some time at No. 3 before I could make any impression.” He is then subjected to a variety of abuse at the hands of the resident, Mr. Sherman, before mentioning Sherlock Holmes and thus gaining entrance, and Sherman’s deference. The interior of No. 3 Pinchin Lane is no better than the exterior: “In the uncertain, shadowy light I could see dimly that there were glancing, glimmering eyes peeping down at us from every cranny and corner. Even the rafters above our heads were lined by solemn fowls, who lazily shifted their weight from one leg to the other as our voices disturbed their slumbers.”

So, what was Watson really seeing in that passage from SIGN, what were the particular items that drew his eye? The first thing he mentions is Miss Morstan and Mrs. Forrester on the doorstep – “the two graceful, clinging figures.” Mary Morstan didn’t just arrive at the place where she lived; she was welcomed home by Mrs. Forrester: “…it gave me joy to see how tenderly her arm stole round the other’s waist and how motherly was the voice in which she greeted her. She was clearly no mere paid dependant but an honoured friend.” And hasn’t Watson received similarly warm welcomes from Sherlock Holmes? In “The Naval Treaty,” the Doctor is informed, “You come at a crisis, Watson” and “I will be at your service in an instant... You will find tobacco in the Persian slipper.” In “The Adventure of the Empty House,” Holmes tells his friend: “So it was, my dear Watson, that at two o’clock to-day I found myself in my old armchair in my own old room, and only wishing that I could have seen my old friend Watson in the other chair which he has so often adorned.” It’s really very simple. What more can one want from a home than to just to know that you are welcome, and that all the comforts are at your disposal?  

And speaking of those comforts, that is the second thing that draws Watson’s eye in the passage from SIGN: “the half-opened door, the hall-light shining through stained glass, the barometer, and the bright stair-rods.” These items are all meant to be indicators of home – things that are comforting and familiar. So, how are these articles any different that the tobacco in the toe-end of a Persian slipper (or the cigars in the coal-scuttle, for that matter), correspondence eternally fixed under a jack-knife, or the bullet-marks in the wall. In “The Adventure of the Creeping Man,” Watson practically equates himself with these items: “As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable.” If bullet-marks and jack-knifes are perhaps less graceful than “hall-light shining through stained glass,” does that make them any less effective as objects of comfort? They are still indicators of home, no matter what kind of home that might be.

Perhaps what Dr. Watson was longing for in that passage from SIGN was not necessarily a different type of home. Is it possible that he just wanted to go home – no matter where that home was, or what it might be? It had already been a long night, with the promise of it being even longer, and maybe all he wanted to do was feel welcomed, and surround himself with the items that comforted him (and most likely sleep, of all ridiculous notions). This is, after all, what Watson does for Holmes when the man arrives on his doorstep, on that long dark night in CROO. He welcomes him in, offers him a familiar creature comfort (in the form of his tobacco pouch), and shares his company with a man that knew his habits even better than himself. The tranquil English home might be, after all, not a necessarily a place, but a place of being.  

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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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.

Some Thoughts on Setting: The Diogenes Club

“There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows.  Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals.  It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town.  No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one.  Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion” (“The Greek Interpreter”).

Of all the characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon, I’m probably the most partial to Mycroft Holmes.   I think it has something to do with being an older sibling myself; often corralling a younger sister who seems to loathe all civilized society with her “whole bohemian soul,” and occasionally seems intent upon upsetting our mother whenever possible.  Whatever the reason, I find myself drawn to the stories prominently featuring Sherlock Holmes’s older brother, and to the bizarre gentlemen’s club with which he is so inexorably connected.  The club’s strangeness, in both rule and atmosphere, only serves to augment Mycroft Holmes’s own personal eccentricities, and therefore the oddities of his famous brother (if only by association), by keeping all elements contained within a hermetic atmosphere.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to separate Mycroft Holmes from the Diogenes Club, which he co-founded.  It is a club for men who enjoy peace and quiet, and who eschew social interactions.  It is a society for men who find the company of other men superfluous, and would rather live their lives without distraction and with little human contact.  Members can even be expelled from the club for speaking, which sounds quite marvelous to those of us eternally in search of silence, never seeming to find it.  Even the local library always seems to have one occupant who believes that his earphones are enough to block out the noise of his iPod, when they most certainly are not. 

But according to Leslie Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, the Diogenes Club and its litany of peculiar demands was not, in reality, all that strange, given time and place:

“As bizarre as the Diogenes’s practices might seem, such an attitude was de rigueur at most London clubs, where bachelors and married men alike could both relax and cultivate an air of exclusivity and high social rank…That the Diogenes had a designated Stranger’s Room seems similar to the Athenaeum’s policy of relegating its members’ friends to a small room near the club entrance” (641-2).

 So, if the Diogenes Club is not that far removed from the norm as far as Victorian gentlemen’s clubs are concerned, than what is it about the place that is so compelling?  The Diogenes Club is only mentioned directly in two Sherlock Holmes stories—“The Greek Interpreter” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans”—but as with so many Sherlockian things (like Irene Adler, the iconic Deerstalker and pipe, and the Giant Rat from last week’s post), it has taken on a life on its own, beyond the confines of the text.  The answers seem to lie within, not only the boundaries of the club itself, but within what the Holmes brothers make of it.

In “The Greek Interpreter,” Mycroft convinces his brother to sit with him in the bow-window of the Stranger’s Room, within moments of Sherlock and Dr. Watson’s arrival at the club.  “To anyone who wishes to study mankind this is the spot,” [says] Mycroft. “Look at the magnificent types!  Look at these two men who are coming towards us, for example.”  What follows is a brilliant example of Holmesian deduction, as Sherlock and Mycroft bat back and forth a series of logical inferences, regarding a non-commissioned officer who had just happened to wander into their viewing.

bookishadventures.tumblr.com

Their combined inferences are undoubtedly correct, and Mycroft famously notices a few details that his younger brother does not (“Children, my dear boy, children…The fact that he has a picture-book under his arm shows that there is another child to be thought of.”).  However, throughout their observations, the Holmes brothers are kept separate from the rest of the world by the walls and glass of the Diogenes Club.  The Granada Television adaptation of GREE even goes so far as to perch Mycroft and Sherlock on tall stools as they look out of the window, down upon the man who is unaware of their peculiar scrutiny.  There is a distinction and a physical separation between the Holmes brothers and the rest of the world—almost as if the Diogenes Club were preserving them, keeping them under glass.

But even when Mycroft Holmes is on his own, the Diogenes Club still works to create a sense of separateness and otherness.  In “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” Sherlock marvels at the telegram announcing his brother’s imminent arrival at 221B Baker Street.  He explains to Watson: “It is as if you met a tram-car coming down a country lane.  Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them.  His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club, Whitehall—that is his cycle.  Once, and only once, he has been here.  What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?”  And he says later, “A planet might as well leave its orbit.”

In short, Mycroft Holmes does not go places, as other people do.  He does not run errands, or take walks in the park, or even jump into a hansom cab to visit his only (for the purposes of the canon, Mr. Baring-Gould) brother.  He is not like Sherlock; he is not known anywhere and everywhere.  Therefore, the places that Mycroft chooses to honor with his presence are significant.  When a man divides his time equally amongst work, lodgings, and club—and nowhere else if he can manage it—the mere act of having a club at all says a great deal about the space.  Mycroft gives the Diogenes Club a sense of exclusivity merely by occupying it.  And if Mycroft also chooses to keep himself separate from the rest of humanity, then the Diogenes Club is the place to do so—a place where no one will question Mycroft Holmes, his actions, or his work because they are not allowed, or even maybe because they simply do not care.  At the Diogenes Club, he is free to be Mycroft Holmes, with all the weight of what that statement implies, more than in any other location in London.

I’ve spoken elsewhere on the relationship between Mycroft Holmes and his younger brother, about their inherent god-like qualities and how Mycroft serves to highlight Sherlock’s service to the rest of us lesser mortals, how Mycroft makes the reader grateful that Sherlock chose our human problems and everything that might entail.  The Diogenes Club merely serves to highlight Mycroft in a similar fashion, emphasizing his own particular abilities and attitudes.  The idea of the Diogenes Club will probably always appeal to the socially awkward and misanthropic among us, those who would rather observe the world behind a glass partition than interact with it.  And also to those who are just looking for five minutes of quiet to finish a blog post, away from the sounds of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.  But I wouldn’t know anything about that.

oOo

Now you can join the Diogenes Club!  Join a body of fans from across the globe in providing live commentary on the immense catalog of Sherlock Holmes films and television series.  The club is available online and on Twitter.  Join the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag: #221B.  

And just a reminder that a new blog contest will begin on June 27, so check back here for more details!

Some Thoughts on Setting: St. Bartholomew’s Hospital

“St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, known popularly as ‘Barts’ or ‘Bart’s,’ was founded in 1123 by—legend has it—Rahere, a jester at Henry I’s court.  Having taken ill in Rome, Rahere prayed on the banks of Tiber, on the island of St. Bartholomew, that he might recover in time to die on his native soil.  St. Bartholomew appeared to him a vision, commanding him to return to London and build a church and a hospital in his name.  By 1896, the hospital had grown to 678 beds, treating some 6,500 in-patients and 16,000 out-patients annually.”

—From “A Study in Scarlet,” page 16, in “The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes,” edited by Leslie Klinger

All great heroes have an origin story.  They cannot exist in a vacuum; their journeys must have a starting point.  And Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are no exception.  Most readers know the story of Holmes and Watson’s first meeting, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle presents to us in A Study in Scarlet.  And more recently, some talented writers have been revisiting and rewriting that source material, in the form of the comic book: “Sherlock Holmes: Year One,” which re-imagines Watson as a twenty-something police surgeon (sans mustache, but still an ex-soldier), who meets a likewise youthful Sherlock Holmes for the first time at (naturally) a crime scene.  This adaptation includes some new, intriguing back-story for the Great Detective, and Holmes and Watson’s youthfulness lends new color and spirit to their adventures.

But Holmes and Watson didn’t meet at a crime scene.  They met at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College on January 1, 1881.  The story is as a familiar as an old coat: Dr. Watson, newly returned from Afghanistan, injured and ill, finds himself living beyond his means in a London hotel; he meets “young Stamford,” an old acquaintance, at the Criterion Bar, where the Doctor tells him about his need for affordable lodgings; Stamford, surprisingly, has met another fellow that very day in need of a roommate, and he takes Dr. Watson to the chemical laboratories at St. Bart’s to meet him.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

But St. Bart’s is an important location, perhaps one of the most important in the canon—outside of 221B Baker Street.  By having the two men meet at the hospital, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle says quite a bit, intentionally or not.  He certainly could have shoehorned them into a meeting at a restaurant, a park, or even one of their current lodgings; but instead, we have “young Stamford,” who leads Watson to Holmes, like Virgil leading Dante to Beatrice.  By having Holmes and Watson meet for the first time at St. Bart’s, we not only get a glimpse of the men that they will become, but also the men that they might have been, and, most importantly, the men they already are.

Stamford has no idea what Sherlock Holmes does in the chemical labs, or even what his course of study might be, but he takes Dr. Watson to see this odd fellow anyway.  According to the Doctor:

“This was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work” (STUD).

Alone, and bent over his work—these are our first impressions of Sherlock Holmes, and the ones that will color our interpretations of him eternally.  Impressions that are further enforced by his first spoken words: “I’ve found it! I’ve found it!”  In this instance, he is speaking of his hemoglobin test, but we see many variations on this moment throughout the canon—the moment of realization and discovery unique unto Sherlock Holmes—which he marks in various ways, ranging from unsettling laughter to dramatic disclosures.  From his first appearance, before his first word, the reader knows Sherlock Holmes to be a man driven by the pursuit of knowledge, and consumed by his work.  Although Watson seems to believe that Holmes is addressing Stamford as he describes his new discovery, there is the underlying implication that, at the moment, Holmes would have told anyone and anything about his breakthrough—a Bunsen burner, the cleaning lady, a particularly nice chair.  The solitary chemist of St. Bart’s is clearly in search of an audience.

Seeing Sherlock Holmes in the setting of St. Bart’s is also a reminder of the man he might have been.  Stamford describes him as “a first-class chemist,” and Holmes’s hemoglobin discovery seems to verify this assertion.  [Note: Of course, a Sherlock Holmes story is nothing without debate and disagreement.  See, for instance, Remsen Ten Eyck Schenk’s article “Baker Street Fables,” in which he argues that Holmes’s discovery must have been invalid, or it would still have been used today.]  It is not so difficult to imagine Sherlock Holmes as a chemist—the profession would have certainly provided him with enough pretty little problems and complex scientific puzzles to keep his brain occupied for the rest of his days.  But it would have been sedentary, solitary work.  What need does a chemist have of an audience, or of a chase?  So Sherlock Holmes is no mere chemist then, which he already knows when Stamford and his companion walk through the door.

Additionally, by meeting at St. Bart’s, the reader is reminded that Watson is, first and foremost, a doctor.  St. Bart’s is his alma mater.  Watson remained a doctor all of his life, although his practice was frequently neglected for long intervals while he ran after London’s only consulting detective.  A meeting at St. Bart’s reminds us of the ordinary life he could have chosen, with normal hours and a peaceful, quiet house—no strange violin concertos in the middle of the night, no unannounced visits from sinister guests.  As he says in The Sign of Four, “…a tranquil English home in the midst of the wild, dark business which had absorbed us;” a peaceful home would be a natural, reasonable desire for a man who had been ill, a man who be so long away from familiar country.  But then Sherlock Holmes says to him, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,” and suddenly St. Bart’s fades away into the background, to the place it should be relegated, in the past. 

Because St. Bart’s is Dr. Watson’s past, not his present or his future.  He hasn’t been a student in a very long time, and he’ll always be a doctor, but more recently he has been a soldier.  War is what he currently knows, and perhaps that is why London is so alien to him, why he is so antagonistic in his description of the city: “…London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained” (STUD).

The Doctor is so intensely angry at London; it’s as if it has disappointed him in some way or offended him personally.  “Most people blunder around this city and all they see are streets and shops and cars.  But when you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield,” a recent incarnation of Mycroft Holmes says about his younger brother.  Before Watson met Sherlock Holmes, he had lost the battlefield.  But he gets it back.  Dr. Watson actually makes a very neat little journey in those few paragraphs: he is lead by an old acquaintance to a place from his past, to meet a man who reminds him of who is presently, but is also offering him an extraordinary future.

In 2010, the BBC adaptation “Sherlock” re-imagined the first meeting between Holmes and Watson in a 21st century setting.  Holmes and Watson still meet at St. Bart’s, in the labs; Watson still weary from the battlefield, and Holmes bent over a beaker with a pipette in his hand.  Stamford is still the corner—a smirking, knowing guide—perhaps wondering if he’s done the Doctor a terrible disservice.  There is far more electronic buzzing and digital beeping than there would have been in 1881.  Holmes asks for the use of a mobile phone, and then says to the Doctor, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”  But he’s still able to read Watson from the way he carries himself, the color of his skin, and the state of his possessions (a smartphone, rather than a pocket watch).  Holmes is still mind-bogglingly observant and Watson is still unerringly loyal and long-suffering (now there are body parts in the refrigerator and not cigars in the coal-scuttle).  They are still Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.  And their story still began in the shadow of St. Bart’s.

oOo

Thank you to everyone who entered the recent blog contest, and for sharing your reasons why you read Sherlock Holmes.  Congratulations to Jenny Teo, who was the winner of the “Better Holmes & Gardens Prize Package,” which included a copy of The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, by Paul D. Gilbert, and a copy of the soundtrack to Granada Television’s “Sherlock Holmes” series, starring Jeremy Brett, David Burke, and Edward Hardwicke, with music by Patrick Gowers.

Check back here on April 25 for a new contest and prizes.

Some Thoughts on Setting: All Roads Lead to Baker Street

"There it was, a sign above a shop that said 221B BAKER STREET. My mouth hung open. I looked around at the ordinary street and the white-painted buildings, looking clean in the morning rain. Where were the fog, the streetlights, the gray atmosphere? The horses pulling carriages, bringing troubled clients to Watson and Holmes? I had to admit I had been impressed with Big Ben and all, but for a kid who had devoured the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this was really something. I was on Baker Street, driving by the rooms of Holmes and Watson! I sort of wished it were all in black and white and gray, like in the movies." (“Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery,” James R. Benn)

As most of you are probably aware, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” ran two Sherlock Holmes-themed episodes—“Elementary, Dear Data” and “Ship in a Bottle”—which featured the android Lieutenant Commander Data, and Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge, as Holmes and Watson, respectively.  Both episodes pit the pair against a computer replication of Professor Moriarty (played by Daniel Davis), while in a “holodeck” simulation of Victorian London and the world of Sherlock Holmes.

I was largely unfamiliar with Star Trek (and all things related) when I first saw Data and Geordi ensconced in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street.  I will readily admit that I had no idea what a holodeck was, though my husband was more than happy to oblige me in explaining (it’s so rare that our interests collide, after all). My imagination was immediately peaked by the concept, and before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “If I could find a computer program that could recreate Baker Street for me, I would never leave.”  My husband looked equal parts embarrassed, concerned, and affectionately amused.

To be perfectly clear, it’s not that I imagine myself sitting in 221B across from Holmes and Watson, engaged in some kind of clever conversation, as if I could manage it.  Heaven forbid.  Those who know me, and are familiar with my tendency to babble when intimidated, would find the notion both amusing and horrifying.  It’s more to the point that there is something satisfying about a place that does not change, no matter how much time passes.  Of course, it's comforting, but it's also beyond that—it’s about knowledge, a sense of time and place, and a sense of purpose.  It’s like having your own private joke, or well-kept secret, knowing how to get someplace that most other people do not. 

Baker Street creates an anchor point for the reader—a beacon in the turbulent harbor of crime and mystery.  In a manner of speaking, people in trouble flock to Baker Street “like birds to a light-house (TWIS).”  Not every story may start there, or end there, but eventually all roads will lead to Baker Street, and when they do, the effect is almost immediately equalizing. 

For instance, in the passage above, when Billy Boyle arrives in London, fresh from the United States and officers’ training school, to assist his “Uncle Ike” in the war effort, he is lost and confused, and a little bit heartsick, even if the Boston detective won’t admit it to himself.  But he sees Baker Street, and he is instantly grounded.  He knows this place.  He knows how it has been and how it should be, and most importantly, what it represents, and that is reassuring.  It’s a crucial moment for Lieutenant Boyle, and you can also hear the sound of Billy practically anchoring himself to 221B.  He knows nothing else about London—the city itself is barely recognizable due to the Blitz—but he knows Baker Street. 

Ask any Sherlockian, and they will be able to tell you where Holmes keeps his unread mail (under the jackknife, attached to the mantelpiece), where he hides his tobacco (in the Persian slipper), which chair is his (the one to the right of the fireplace), along with countless other details about the architecture of Baker Street.  Detailed replicas of this famous address can be found at the Sherlock Holmes Museum and the Sherlock Holmes Pub, in London. 

And it’s those details that fascinate, right?  Basil Rathbone’s wartime-era Baker Street remains Victorian in its interior details, even as the world around him changes violently (as one perceptive reader pointed out a few weeks back).  And Benedict Cumberbatch’s 21st century living room has some distinctly turn-of-the-century touches (the wallpaper and carpets, for instance), while the furniture is most definitely ‘80s (though in this instance I mean more 1980s, than 1880s).  Even Basil, the Great Mouse Detective, had his own personal 221 (and one half) Baker Street (a residence in the cellar of 221B).

Sherlock Holmes was obviously quite attached to Baker Street, and in “The Dying Detective,” Watson tells us: “…his [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.”  Holmes resides almost exclusively at Baker Street (barring a three year hiatus) from 1881 until he retires to Sussex Downs in 1903.  At a certain point, he was a man of, if not unlimited, but at least substantial means.  He could have purchased his own home at any point, but didn’t.  He chose to stay, and rent, a moderately-sized flat.  It’s curious.  It makes you wonder.




www.sherlockian.net

Baker Street is, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary building on an ordinary street.  But there’s a soul to the place.  221B Baker Street is a character in the stories just like either Holmes or Watson.  We know just as much about it.  From the bullet-scarred walls, to the flight of seventeen steps that lead up to the flat, it has all been as carefully documented and debated as the location of Watson’s war wound.  Potential floor plans have been studied and theorized over in the same way as the possible names of Holmes’s parents (I favor “Siger” and “Violet” for a preference).  If Holmes and Watson are alive, then so is Baker Street.  It lives and breathes as much as anything else in the canon.  Likewise, it can never die.  We need to know that all roads still lead back to Baker Street, even if the scenery changes over the years.

oOo

Need a little mood music?  May I make a suggestion?