12 (p. 382) General Gordon: It’s difficult to follow Holmes’s reasoning without knowing how the British public felt about General Charles (“Chinese”) Gordon (1833-1885), so called because he helped put down the Taiping rebellion in 1863 and 1864. Years later, when a charismatic Sudanese leader claiming to be the Mahdi (the Muslim Messiah) raised a rebellion against British and Egyptian rule, Gordon was sent to suppress the uprising. He was besieged at Khartoum, called for reinforcements that never came, and was slaughtered when the city fell. Public outrage over lack of support for him forced the fall of the government. As an old soldier, Watson would naturally feel indignation at Gordon’s betrayal.
13 (p. 382) Henry Ward Beecher: Beecher (1813-1887) was a Congregationalist minister and orator who became influential in the United States before the Civil War. His trip to England in 1863 to persuade the English of the moral right of the Union cause was initially met with hostility, but he won over many audiences with his eloquence. Watson, as a fair-minded man, a believer in progress, would have been sympathetic to Beecher’s antislavery message.
14 (p. 389) purchased his own Stradivarius ... for fifty- five shillings: Antonio Stradivari (c.1644-1737), a pupil of violin maker Nicolò Amati, made violins, violas, and cellos in Cremona, Italy. The two were pre-eminent in making Cremona synonymous with great stringed instruments. A Stradivarius violin at the time cost about 200 times more than Holmes paid for it at the expense of the unknowing pawnbroker.
15 (p. 416) the most jealously guarded of all government secrets: Dry humor obviously runs in the family. The most jealously guarded of all government secrets is something Mycroft assumes everyone has heard of. Exactly what sort of irony this implies is open to debate.
16 (p. 430) Polyphonic Motets of Lassus: Orlando Lassus (1532-1594; there are lots of versions of both his names, but this one is the most common) composed more than 500 motets, musical compositions for two to twelve voices based on sacred texts and sung without accompaniment. Holmes’s achievement is the more impressive when one learns that these motets can’t be meaningfully recreated by other instruments. To study them Holmes had to “hear” them, to paraphrase Hamlet, with his mind’s ear.
17 (p. 483) Duke of York’s steps: The first-born son of the English monarch inherits the title prince of Wales; the second-born son is the duke of York. The steps mentioned are a series carved in granite on the Island of Herm commemorating Frederick, the second son of George III.
18 (p. 533) Negretto Sylvius: An Italian word for “black” and the Latin for “woods” together make the name literally “Blackwoods,” which was the name of a magazine that was a competitor of the Strand. Blackwood’s once rejected one of Conan Doyle’s early works. This, plus the too-cute-by-half address of “Moorside” for a black man, suggests to me that an editor at the Strand had a large hand in this story. Conan Doyle didn’t need any revenge after forty years of prosperity. It is more likely a relative newcomer to the magazine, feeling a rivalry with Blackwood‘s, thought this in-joke would be oh so funny.
19 (p. 539) the long-drawn, wailing notes of that most haunting of tunes: No one who knows this piece could possibly characterize it this way; although it’s a fine piece, it’s neither wailing nor haunting, and if a musical piece had legal rights, it would sue for defamation for being la beled a “tune.” It’s another reason to suspect the authenticity of the story. Conan Doyle mentions many composers throughout the stories, but this is the only specific piece cited, and therefore the only one characterized.
20 (p. 553) belle dame sans merci: This French phrase means “beautiful woman without pity”; originally the title of a poem by French poet Alain Chartier (c.1385-1433), it is better known from a poem of the same name by John Keats (1795-1821).
21 (p. 567) a queen in English history: Eleanor of Castile (c.1245-1290), wife of King Edward I (1239-1307), was reputed to have sucked poison from her husband’s arm; the story is most likely apocryphal.
22 (p. 617) surds and conic sections: Surds are sums of numbers at least one of which contains an irrational root of another number—for example, the sum of the square root of two and the square root of three. A conic section is the two-dimensional area obtained when a plane intersects a cone.
23 (p. 639) in the days of the Regency: The Regency was the period between 1811 and 1820, when the prince of Wales, later George IV, was appointed regent to rule England because of the insanity of his father, George III.
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of these enduring works.
Comments
RONALD A. KNOX
Any studies in Sherlock Holmes must be, first and foremost, studies in Dr. Watson....
If the sophists have been borrowed from the Platonic dialogue, one element at least has been borrowed from Greek drama. Gaboriau has no Watson. The confident Lacoq is an old soldier, preternaturally stupid, inconceivable inefficient. Watson provides what the Holmes drama needs—a Chorus. He represents the solid, orthodox, respectable view of the world in general; his drabness is accentuated by contrast with the limelight which beats upon the central figure. He remains stable amid the eddy and flux of circumstance.—from Blue Book (1912)
—from Blue Book (1912)
A. A. MILNE
There used to be a song which affirmed (how truly, I do not know) that every nice girl loved a sailor. I am prepared to state, though I do not propose to make a song about it, that every nice man loves a detective story.
This week I have been reading the last adventures of Sherlock Holmes—I mean really the last adventures, ending with his triumph over the German spy in 1914. Having saved the Empire, Holmes returned to his farm on the Sussex downs, and there, for all I mind, he may stay. I have no great affection for the twentieth-century Holmes. But I will give the warmest welcome to as many adventures of the Baker Street Holmes as Watson likes to reconstruct for us. There is no reason why the supply of these should ever give out....
The best of writing a detective story [must be] that you can always make the lucky shots come off. In no other form of fiction, I imagine, does the author feel so certainly that he is the captain of the ship. If he wants it so, he has it so. Is the solution going to be too easy? Then he puts in an unexpected footprint in the geranium bed, or a strange face at the window, and makes it more difficult. Is the reader being kept too much in the dark? Then a conversation overheard in the library will make it easier for him. The author’s only trouble is that he can never be certain whether his plot is too obscure or too obvious. He knows himself that the governess is guilty, and, in consequence, she can hardly raise her eyebrows without seeming to him to give the whole thing away.
—from If I May (1920)
T. S. ELIOT
Sherlock Holmes reminds us always of the pleasant externals of nineteenth-century London.
—from Criterion (April 1929)
RAYMOND CHANDLER
The detective story for a variety of reasons can seldom be promoted. It is usually about murder and hence lacks the element of uplift. Murder, which is a frustration of the individual and hence a frustration of the race, may, and in fact has, a good deal of sociological implication. But it has been going on too long for it to be news. If the mystery novel is at all realistic (which it very seldom is) it is written in a certain spirit of detachment; otherwise nobody but a psychopath would want to write it or read it.
—from The Art of the Mystery Story, edited by Howard Haycraft (1946)
Questions
1. Do you agree with K
yle Freeman’s argument in the Introduction that the Holmes stories in which Watson is not the narrator suffer for his absence?
2. Is there a sign in Holmes or Watson of what we would now call an “unconscious” at work?
3. Holmes’s fits of melancholy or boredom, his resort to opium and strong tobacco, his lack of a need for female companionship, his skill as a boxer and fencer—are these just so many disparate traits, or do they add up to parts of a coherent personality? Is the absence of love or sex or romance in Holmes’s life the flip side of his skill as a detective, as, for example, exceptional skill with computers is alleged to go along with a nerdy personality?
4. “From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagra without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it.” So wrote Sherlock Holmes himself (in A Study in Scarlet). Do the stories bear this out? Is either the life observed or Holmes’s method of solving crimes consistent with the idea that they are part of a great logical chain?
5. What does the reader get from detective fiction that he doesn’t get from the other popular genres?
FOR FURTHER READING
Other Works by Arthur Conan Doyle
Fiction
The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. London: George Newnes, 1896. Among the most popular books Doyle ever wrote, this is an account of an officer in Napoleon’s army who could be a precursor to Inspector Clouseau, the bumbling Peter Sellers character.
The Land of Mist. London: Hutchinson, 1926. Those interested in Doyle’s thoughts about spiritualism will want to read this novel.
The Lost World. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912. Still in print and the subject of more than one film, this novel featuring dinosaurs of all stripes is likely to remain Doyle’s most popular work after the Holmes stories.
Micah Clarke. London: Longmans, Green, 1889. This non-Holmesian work was Doyle’s first historical novel, and one for which Oscar Wilde expressed enthusiasm.
The Stark Munro Letters. London: Longmans, Green, 1895. This autobiographical novel is worth reading if only for the bizarre but fascinating account it gives of Doyle’s friend and betrayer, George Budd, fictionalized as Cullingworth.
Nonfiction
The History of Spiritualism. London: Cassell, 1926. Reflecting Doyle’s most passionate concern, this book is more revealing than his autobiography.
Memories and Adventures. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924; second edition, London: John Murray, 1930. This autobiography gives a surface account of the many colorful adventures Doyle lived but does not invite the reader into the workshop of his soul.
Through the Magic Door. London: Smith, Elder, 1907. This justification of the Western classics describes the books in Doyle’s personal library and what they have meant to him; it contains some very fine writing.
Biography
Lellenberg, Jon L., ed. The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Thirteen Biographers in Search of a Life. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. A good biography with an introduction by Doyle’s daugh ter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle.
Nordon, Pierre. Conan Doyle: A Biography. Translated from the French by Frances Partridge. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. A 707 biography written at a time when access to private, unpublished material was not legally restricted.
Pearson, Hesketh. Conan Doyle: His Life and Art. New York: Taplinger, 1977. Brief, but highly entertaining.
Stashower, Daniel. Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Henry Holt, 1999. A big, handsome volume that takes advantage of all the previously collected material.
Criticism
Baring-Gould, William S., ed. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Four Novels and the Fifty-six Short Stories Complete. With an introduction, notes, and bibliography by Baring-Gould. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1968. If exact and minute detail is what you’re after, you will find it to your heart’s content in this massive two-volume edition. Baring-Gould and a host of subeditors combed every piece of published material about the stories and did some research of their own in compiling details about when and where every story was published, identifications of all the real people and places in the canon, speculations about the models for some of the fictional ones, historical information, opinions from doctors about Watson’s medical pronouncements, comparisons of things like weather, phases of the moon, and train schedules in the stories to the historical ones—no, there was no 9:13 train that night, but there was one at 9:15—and attempts to establish the internal dates of all the stories.
Dakin, D. Martin. A Sherlock Holmes Commentary. Newton Abbot, UK: David and Charles, 1972. Packed full of rewarding material.
Green, Richard Lancelyn, ed. The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes. Har mondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1983. Contains all of Doyle’s writings about Sherlock Holmes, as well as comments of others such as J. M. Barrie.
—. The Sherlock Holmes Letters. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986. Republishes a collection of letters from readers about the stories.
Hardwick, Michael. The Complete Guide to Sherlock Holmes. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Solves many mysteries and satisfies many curiosities.
Shreffler, P. A. The Baker Street Reader: Cornerstone Writings about Sherlock Holmes. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. A collection of essays.
Other Works Cited in the General Introduction
Doyle, Arthur Conan. Arthur Conan Doyle: Letters to the Press. Edited by John Michael Gibson and Richard Lancelyn Green. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986.
Hoving, Thomas. Tutankhamun: The Untold Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.
Other Works Cited in the Introduction to Volume II
Conan Doyle, Arthur. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Long Stories. London: John Murray, 1929.
De Waal, Ronald Burt. The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Classified and Annotated List of Materials Relating to Their Lives and Adventures. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974.
Hollyer, Cameron. “Author to Editor: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Correspondence with H. Greenhough Smith.” A.C.D.: The Journal of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society 3 (1992), pp. 11-34.
Howlett, Michael Anthony. “The Impersonators: Sherlock Holmes on Stage and Screen.” In Beyond Baker Street: A Sherlockian Anthology, edited and annotated by Michael Harrison. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.
a The order of the stories in book form and in this collection are not the same as the original publication order.
b The death of Mary Marston Watson, his wife.
c Holmes refers to Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (act 2, scene 2): “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale I Her infinite variety.”
d Misquote from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (act 2, scene 3): “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”
e Hindu term for a hunter.
f As silent as if made out of wax.
g Another name for the North Sea.
h Counter to honesty; crossing the bounds of legality.
i Tavernkeeper.
j Knight of the Garter; member of the most exclusive Order in Britain.
k Privy Councillor; an appointed member to a mostly ceremonial council that advises the sovereign.
l A chandler is a dealer in a specified merchandise.
m Write the name of a bank across the check so Holmes could deposit it.
n Predetermined order of succession to the estate.
o Perhaps, then, his initials are not a coincidence.
p Reference to Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I (act 2, scene 4): “Nay, that’s past praying for.”
q Type of apple.
r Carriage drawn by two horses, here the chestnuts of the next line.
s He sleeps so excessively he can’t be awakened.
t Heavy curtain hung across a doorway.
u Greek goddess of wisdom, usually spelled Athena.
v Top part of a wall.
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w Short riding whip.
x Illustrious Italian Renaissance family whose members included popes and poisoners.
y Was officially a representative for the school for a sports event.
z Suffered gambling losses at the racetrack.
aa Eyeglasses that fit on the bridge of the nose.
ab Parchment or vellum that has been written upon more than once.
ac Chair mounted on wheels for invalids; first used at Bath, noted for its medicinal springs.
ad Watson refers to the chase in The Sign of Four.
ae Distracted from present concerns; absentminded.
af The phrase “time of trouble” or “times of trouble” is found more than a dozen times in the Bible—for example, Psalms 9:9, 10:1, 27:5, 37:39, and 41:1.
ag Hit with a battle-ax having a hammer face opposite the blade.
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