“It was a wild, tempestuous night, toward the close of November.”
—The Adventure of the Golden Pinz-Nez by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Such opening lines whet the imagination, stir the soul. This is the time of year when I take down my copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes and turn directly to my favorite of the four novels and 57 short stories featuring the world’s first and foremost scientific detective, The Hound of the Baskervilles. The story, set in the moors of England’s West Country, seems to fit most appropriately into the month of November, a chilly, damp, gray time of year, given to mists, fogs and drizzle. Those of us accustomed to such a climate find it exhilarating. It seems as if Sherlock Holmes does as well.
Even the titles of the many tales draw in the reader, piquing one’s curiosity, titles like “The Adventure of the Empty House,” “The Five Orange Pipe,” “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” “The Solitary Cyclist,” “The Sussex Vampire.”
Sherlock Holmes first appeared in the full-length novel A Study in Scarlet in 1887. Even today, his eccentricities remain a part of our culture, although they are often in error. As an example, he is often portrayed wearing a deerstalker cap. He only wore such headgear in one of the stories. He is also portrayed smoking a huge clay pipe, whereas he generally smoked a briar pipe or one made of cherry wood. As for his peculiarities, they have become legend. His habit of strumming away on his violin while lost in some reverie whenever he had no case to absorb his enthusiasms, chemical experiments, the initials “VR,” referring to Queen Victoria, spelled out in bullet holes on the wall at 221B Baker Street in London. It is well known that he kept his pipe tobacco stuffed into a Persian slipper tacked to the mantel. Sadly, when not absorbed in a case, he once became addicted to cocaine, a habit that caused his boon companion, Dr. Watson, no end of anxiety.
Holmes became an immediate literary success, even though Arthur Conan Doyle, his creator, did not regard the adventures of his creation as his best writing. At one point, tiring of Holmes, Doyle killed him off, causing him to plunge to his death in a Swiss waterfall while battling the evil Dr. Moriarity. Doyle wanted to focus more upon his historical writings, like The White Company, tales of science fiction like The Lost World, a prehistoric Neverland populated by dinosaurs somewhere in the Venezuelan highlands. There was such an outcry among Holmes’s many fans that Doyle was compelled to resurrect the famous detective in another collection of stories entitled “The Return of Sherlock Holmes.”
I first became a fan of Holmes back in high school in the 1950s, when I, a quietly rebellious underachiever, came across the story of one of Holmes’s most famous cases, that of “The Red Headed League.” I became fascinated with Holmes, the quintessential Victorian gentleman with all of his oddities. About the same time, one summer night I sat through the old black and white version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, featuring Basil Rathbone as Holmes, on late night TV. I was hooked and remain so to this day.
In one of life’s great ironies—many lives are filled with them—I was to spend over thirty years as a teacher in the very building from which I barely graduated back in 1960. One day, while browsing in the high school library, I came upon a hardback volume of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and saw that I had checked it out in 1957, when I was 15 years old. So, my fondness for Holmes goes back to at least that young and impressionable age.
As with Huck Finn, I don’t believe that any film version of the Hound or the other mysteries quite captures the mood, the dark and dank atmosphere of Nineteenth Century London or of the numerous rural settings. Neither do I believe that anyone has portrayed Holmes better than Rathbone.
Photos of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Holmes, reveals a bluff and hearty Victorian gentleman, the real-life version of Holmes’s great friend Dr. John Watson. Doyle lived a life of adventure himself. Always athletic, he once served on a whaling vessel. It was Doyle who took up skiing and popularized the sport in Switzerland. It had previously been a Norwegian pastime. As a British army doctor, Doyle served in the Boer War in South Africa. He was an accomplished historian, war correspondent and novelist. Late in life, he became interested in spiritualism and began to attend séances, seemingly in stark contradiction to the purely rational and scientific-minded Holmes.
Nigel Bruce may have made a fine Dr. John Watson if British and U.S. movie producers had not insisted upon portraying him as a befuddled buffoon, when he was everything but. Watson had served in the Afghan War, where he received a severe wound, the location of which has often been debated by Holmesian scholars. In those days, every cowboy movie hero required a half-witted sidekick, so the producers decided that Watson should fit that profile. Give the viewing public what it expects, whether it is accurate or not.
When Doyle first hung out his physician’s shingle, he had few patients. To fill in his idle hours, he created Holmes and began to devise crimes for such a great mind to solve. Thus the character of Sherlock Holmes came to life. The personality of Holmes was patterned after a Dr. Joseph Bell of Edinburgh who deeply impressed the young Conan Doyle with his unique, often startling, insights and diagnoses. Holmes was named after U.S. philosopher and Supreme Court justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Apparently, the name Sherlock was adopted from an Inspector William Sherlock, a London police detective.
To those of us who make up the ever-loyal population of Holmes admirers, the complete volume of the stories are referred to as the canon. We like to believe that Holmes still lives, even though he would be close to 180 years old by now. When he retired from his detective work, he faded into the county of Kent where he still lives out his days as a beekeeper. There is even a publication that appears regularly, the Baker Street Journal, in which fellow believers discuss and debate such vital matters as what species of snake the Speckled Band was, the location of Watson’s war wounds, and other important issues. Many subscribers are physicians. Holmes appeals to those of a logical mindset.
Many commentators have attempted to make much of Holmes’s relationship with Irene Adler, his wily opponent in the story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” They miss the mark. Holmes was the quintessential bachelor, never hinting at any romantic relationship. Rather, he was fascinated by Adler, one of the few rivals who ever succeeded in outwitting him. She was nothing more than that, a character in only one of the stories. He was equally impressed by the master criminal Moriarity and by Mr. Stapleton, who nearly outdid him in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Holmes was most fascinated by any dueling of minds.
I have, sticking between the pages of my own copy of the canon, a letter dated March 22, 1974, and signed by a Miss L. Whitson, secretary to Sherlock Holmes, directing me to the nearest chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars, fellow fanatical devotees of Holmes. For those of you who ever venture to London, visit The Sherlock Holmes, a pub that houses a museum portraying Holmes’s apartment at 221B Baker Street, cluttered with artifacts and memorabilia from his many successful cases. Since I have only been in the UK for a few hours while waiting for a flight to take me on to Tel Aviv many years ago and have no expectation of ever visiting The Sherlock Holmes Pub, think of me if you ever do.
All very tongue in cheek of course. No! Not for any Sherlock Holmes devotee! We believe it all! It’s true! Holmes lives! Be that as it may, on a cold, damp winter night, toss a log on the fire, light one’s pipe, and lose yourself in the many adventures of the world’s greatest detective Sherlock Holmes. Even though the world of Sherlock Holmes is populated by every sort of murderer and schemer, it seems somehow a more secure world than the one we find ourselves in today. An illusion of course, but a most comfortable one.
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My enthusiasms include fly fishing, natural history and wilderness backpacking. In 1996, I published privately a memoir, Trails of Laughter/ Trails of Tears, featuring my wilderness adventures and misadventures.I serve when needed as a Licensed Eucharistic Minister in the Episcopal Church.
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