Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy

by Josef Steiff

  ● It cannot radically contradict the rest of the canon. While the accepted canon is not free from contradiction, anything that is wildly out of line is clearly not a candidate. The play The Angels of Darkness, mentioned above, does this in many ways, most notably with its treatment of Watson.

  ● It should be prose fiction. Several collections also include essays by Doyle about Holmes, but as these are treated as interesting insights from the creator, and not as canonical tales (since, most obviously, they aren’t tales).

  With these basic ground rules in effect, we can discuss several apocryphal texts and hopefully come to a conclusion about whether they deserve a place in the canon. As stated above, not every collection agrees on what the apocryphal texts are, but even in those collections, the editors admit several of the texts would not pass muster. Instead, the editors include them in the collection as historical curiosities or for entertainment value. The Angels of Darkness, for example, would never seriously be considered for canonicity. Likewise, the story “The Case of the Man Who Was Wanted” was written by Arthur Whitaker, who sent a copy to Doyle suggesting the two collaborate on a tale. Instead, Doyle paid Whitaker ten pounds for the rights to the story idea, but then never did anything with it. The short comic play “The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes” is almost certainly written by the actor William Gillette, and therefore also fails in consideration. Several other collected apocryphal texts fail similar tests.

  That said, a few texts do exist that seem, at the very least, borderline canon. Let us consider them one at a time, and the go where the evidence leads us.

  Canon Fodder

  There are the two tales that appear in French editions and are often considered the two apocryphal stories with the best case for being canon (several critics have jokingly called them “canon-fodder”): “The Man with the Watches” and “The Lost Special.” They each deal with a seemingly impossible event (a man with thirteen watches in his pockets is found dead in a railway carriage he couldn’t have possibly entered; in the second tale, a specially commissioned train vanishes with no indication of how it vanished or where it has gone). Sherlock Holmes is not consulted during these tales, and in both cases a confession well after the fact reveals how the events actually happened. However, in both tales an unidentified letter writer offers potential solutions.

  In the first tale, he is identified as “a well known criminal investigator” and in the second as “an amateur reasoner of some celebrity.” These identifications have caused many scholars to argue these are clearly meant to be Holmes. The letters use similar language and reasoning as Holmes, including the phrase “when the impossible has been eliminated the residuum, however improbable, must contain the truth.”

  In both cases, however, there are problems with this identification. One is that the tales take place during the time Holmes was in hiding, after faking his death at the hands of Moriarty. It seems unlikely Holmes would reveal his survival to the world at large through highly speculative letters to the press, especially on cases where he was unable to see the evidence firsthand (such a tactic seems more akin to Poe’s Dupin, someone Holmes did not admire). Additionally, the “well known reasoner” is spectacularly wrong in both cases. These details have led some to argue that perhaps the reference is to Watson or maybe Mycroft. It would seem unlikely that it was Mycroft, as he is just as unlikely to get it wrong as Sherlock, but there is, perhaps, a case for Watson, who is known for attempting to reason like Holmes and failing at it. However, calling Watson “a well known criminal investigator” seems somewhat unusual.

  These tales were written during the time Doyle had “killed off” Holmes, and so he may have been working out some issues. Perhaps they were a sort of “Take That!” or an affectionate bit of gentle jabbing at the detective. In any case, Holmes was still “dead” at that point, making it even more unlikely the detective was meant to be Holmes, rather than a tribute or passing reference.

  Bizarre Lack of Adventure

  Edinburgh University asked Doyle (and several other prominent authors) to write a short tale for a newsletter that would be sold to raise funds for expanding athletic facilities. While not a mystery, “The Field Bazaar” does read like the beginning of many of the canonical short stories, with Watson and Holmes at breakfast, Holmes making brilliant deductions that baffle Watson, and then Holmes explaining how he made those deductions to an impressed Watson.

  Though nearly every editor refers to this as a “parody,” there appears to be very little parody about it. It is humorous, but very little distinguishes it from the opening of many other Holmes tales. Its most unique features are its brevity and that it does not immediately lead into an adventure of some sort.

  Tricky Man

  Perhaps the most unusual of all the tales, “How Watson Learned the Trick” was a very brief story written for a miniature book to be placed in the library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. It was also published in a collection (The Book of the Queen’s Dolls’ House Library) along with several other books from that library, as many authors of the day contributed very short stories for the project.

  This short tale deals with Watson attempting to show Holmes that he has mastered deduction and failing miserably. Also referred to by many as a “parody,” I see little reason to label it as such. While short, it would fit right in place at the beginning of any tale. Not only that, as many others have noted, the tale provides a clue as to Sherlock Holmes’s birthplace (or at least his hometown).

  At Play

  Sherlock Holmes: A Drama in Four Acts contains many items of interest to Holmes fans, including the first recorded use of “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Though it contains several new scenes and borrows heavily from the short stories, it is clear that actor William Gillette made many revisions and changes. However, the play ran for over thirty years, so it was a clear success.

  The Stonor Case is a theatrical version of “The Speckled Band,” but differs in many key areas. The Crown Diamond is similar to “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” but as with The Stonor Case, it differs in many key areas. It seems that the general consensus is that The Crown Diamond came first, and this helps explains why this tale has a third-person narration. However, the short story is solidly canonical, whereas the play is not. And while some of the short stories and novels accepted into the canon have some disagreements and discontinuities, the plays, if accepted, would create too many problems because they radically contradict the tales they are based on.

  Interlude

  If it were up to me (and, of course, it isn’t), I would reject most of the above tales, even the ones found in French editions of the complete works. It seems quite clear that “The Man with the Watches” and “The Lost Special” do not concern Holmes. The various plays contradict too many other well-established canonical tales, and are best looked at as adaptations or alternate universes.

  The two that I feel most likely belong in the canon are “How Watson Learned the Trick” and “The Field Bazaar.” They fulfill nearly all the criteria—they are fiction, they were written by Doyle, they were published for public consumption during his lifetime (even if in a very limited way in both cases), they concern Holmes, nothing in them contradicts other strictly canonical tales, and they even provide informative background information on Holmes and Watson. The largest complaints against them are that they are “parodies” or that they are not strictly mysteries. While they’re humorous, there is no clear evidence Doyle meant them to be parodies; instead they read more like anecdotes or snapshots from the life of Holmes and Watson–pleasant interludes in between cases that shed light on their relationship and histories. And while they are slight and short, each one does involve some deduction.

  But the Contradictions! What about the Contradictions?

  Many different versions of Holmes exist, and in some sense, they all have their own canons. The Basil Rathbone films (and radio series) can be said to be their own canon, though one clearly built on “The C
anon.” The various cartoons, movies, TV shows, comics, and whatnot can all be said to be separate canons, though clearly subservient to the original canon created by Doyle. None could even be considered as important as the original, but often they can flavor how we interpret the original tales (witness the debates over the recent movies, as discussed above). When they contradict the original canon, there’s no need to worry.

  But—how to deal with contradictions in the official canon? The canon of Sherlock Holmes, with or without the additions I have argued for, is not entirely self-consistent either. Many, many trees have died in attempts by Sherlockian scholars to explain away or harmonize these problems. Perhaps the most common one is the list of things in A Study in Scarlet that Watson claims Holmes does not know, including politics, literature, and philosophy. However, later tales show Holmes very knowledgeable about these fields.

  As for how to deal with them, I generally leave that to those more knowledgeable on the issues. However, I do have a few, final suggestions. As far as religious canons go, many believers either find ways to harmonize the contradictions, deny there are any, or admit they are still working on it.

  A similar approach applies to Sherlock Holmes. The most common approach is to harmonize the contradictions, usually by coming up with fancy and convoluted explanations. Another common tactic is to argue that there are no contradictions at all, but that perhaps Watson (or Doyle) changed a name or date to protect the innocent or made a mistake when transcribing the details of the case. The third approach is to admit the contradictions are there, but to act as though further research will reveal the truth.

  So, to use the example above, perhaps Holmes was playing some game with Watson upon their initial acquaintance, Watson was jumping to conclusions based on incomplete knowledge about someone he just met, or that some other reason exists for the apparent contradiction.

  If you want to join in on the study of Sherlock Holmes (or even just argue on Internet chat boards), feel free to add your own contributions on how to deal with any potential problems. But in order to do that, of course, we need a canon to argue over in the first place.

  I THINK YOU MIGHT WANT A LITTLE UNOFFICIAL HELP

  Chapter 12

  How Marriage Changed Sherlock Holmes

  Amy Kind

  “But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.”

  —Sherlock Holmes on the occasion of Watson’s engagement in The Sign of the Four

  “You do realize how potentially disastrous this whole thing is?” he said. “I am old and set in my ways. I will give you little affection and a great deal of irritation, though heaven knows you’re aware of how difficult I can be.”

  —Sherlock Holmes proposing to Mary Russell in A Monstrous Regiment of Women

  As a young man, Sherlock Holmes was a confirmed bachelor. But most readers of Conan Doyle probably don’t realize that later in Holmes’s life, after he had retired to his Sussex cottage, he met and married a precocious young woman named Mary Russell. Or at least this is how Sherlock Holmes’s later years have recently been imagined (Conan Doyle aficionados might here insist: re-imagined) in a series of books by the author Laurie R. King.1

  Though she’s young and untutored in the art of detection when she first meets Holmes, Russell’s intellect is a match for his own. We might naturally think of her as a female version of Holmes—or, perhaps, as a female version of Holmes who is not only of the twentieth century but also a serious scholar of theology. Both Russell and Holmes realize that they are kindred spirits from almost the moment they meet. As Russell herself describes it, Holmes “towered over me in experience, but never did his abilities of observation and analysis awe me as they did Watson. My own eyes and mind functioned in precisely the same way. It was familiar territory” (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, p. xxi).

  Laurie King herself offers similar reflections in her essay “Mary Russell’s World.” Thinking of the mind like an engine, free of gender and nurture considerations, King suggests that Russell and Holmes are “two people whose basic mental mechanism is identical. What they do with it, however, is where the interest lies.”

  The partnership between Holmes and Russell—first a purely professional pairing, and then a domestic one as well—changes them both in many ways. Holmes, a man who’s fiercely independent and used to being completely unencumbered, must approach his work differently once Russell comes into his life. And in many ways, both the love between them and their marriage change not only the way that Holmes looks at his work but also the way that he looks at himself.

  And, of course, the way that we look at him as well. Sherlock Holmes, a married man? The man who, according to Watson at least, would be as disturbed to find himself having a strong emotion as he would be to find dirt in one of his sensitive measuring instruments? One would be forgiven, at this point, for wondering whether a married Holmes would still be Holmes at all.

  The Woman (or The Girl?)

  It’s not at all surprising that a man of Holmes’s temperament—a man who so craves mental stimulation that he turns to cocaine and morphine during the lull between cases to escape the dull routine of day-to-day existence—would be unsatisfied with the slow pace of life in retirement.

  When Watson confronts the great detective about his drug use, Holmes explains that his mind “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation” (The Sign of the Four, p. 92).

  What’s perhaps more surprising is that he would also mind the solitude. We see glimmers of his loneliness as early as 1907: “My house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the estate all to ourselves” (“The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”). These sentiments had presumably only deepened by the spring of 1915 when he first bumps into the fifteen-year old Russell while he’s out observing bees on the Sussex Downs. Actually, their initial meeting is more accurately described as Russell bumping into Holmes. Walking along with her nose in a book, she nearly steps right on him.

  Even for those untrained in the science of deduction, the mention of Russell’s age might naturally give rise to immediate concern. Wasn’t Sherlock Holmes already practically middleaged when he took up residence with Watson in Baker Street in the early 1880s? That’s certainly how the Strand illustrations portray him. So isn’t he well into his seventies by the time he meets Russell? When he and Russell marry in 1921—after she reaches the age of majority—isn’t he easily old enough to be her grandfather?

  Upon meeting Russell, Holmes is able to deduce all manner of things about the teenage girl before him: that she was raised in southwestern London though her father hails from Northern California; that her parents were killed in an accident sometime the previous fall, an accident that has left her scarred both mentally and physically; that she now lives with a tight-fisted and unsympathetic relative; and that she reads and writes Hebrew. Displaying a sharpness of mind that instantly endears her to the great detective, Russell is able to match him at his own game of observation and deduction. Though many facts about Holmes had previously been disclosed in Watson’s published case files, she’s able to tell that he no longer smokes cigarettes though he still frequently uses a pipe, that he’s kept up with the violin, that he’s unconcerned about bee stings, and that he hasn’t entirely given up his former life. When she then guesses him to be in his early fifties, he tells her that he’s fifty-four (and, unsurprisingly, admonishes her for guessing).

  Leslie S. Klinger, who has published numerous scholarly articles and books on Sherlockiana, has compiled a comprehensive chronology (“Major Events”) of key occurrences in Holmes’s life that puts his birth in 1854. This would make him sixty-one at the time he meets Russell. Laurie King discuss
es her own scientific deduction of Holmes’s age in “A Holmes Chronology.”

  Holmes also provides Russell with an easy explanation for the discrepancy between his actual age and the earlier Strand illustrations, an inconsistency Russell herself comments upon. Since a youthful detective would not have inspired confidence in readers, Conan Doyle and the editorial staff at the Strand sought to make him appear more dignified by exaggerating his age. So we should not be concerned that Holmes was already a doddering old man when beginning his association with Russell, though the thirty-nine-year age difference between the two might still give us considerable pause. It gives Holmes himself pause. After Russell finishes her incisive characterization of him, he cryptically murmurs: “Twenty years ago . . . Even ten. But here? Now?” (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, p. 26).

  Indeed, not only does love often find us when we least expect it, but it also finds the people of whom we’d least expect it—even someone who has long seemed incapable of love. In Watson’s assessment, emotion and passion were distractions incompatible with the cold precision of Holmes’s mind, and thus “as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position” (“A Scandal in Bohemia”). Of course, Watson makes this claim long before Russell comes into Holmes’s life. The doctor might have been right that there is but one woman for Holmes, but he was surely wrong about who the woman really is.