Sherlock Holmes

 

We couldn't skimp on one of the most famous fictional detectives in the world, next to Hercule Poirot of course! This post was originally going to be a Folklore Friday before we realised that Sherlock Holmes has shaped an awful lot of history even though he doesn't really exist, and that was when we realised it was equally as valid to have an entire post for him.

Holmes, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is a consulting detective, a job which was also pretty much created for him. His most recognisable traits are his keen observation skills which is now a coined phrase as Holmesian Deduction, and his bluntness, not to mention his violin playing in the early hours and his drug misuse, but this last one isn't often touched on. He even claims that starving himself during a case refines the mind and helps him to think clearer, but we don't condone that.

Sherlock first surfaced in A Study in Scarlet in 1887, but he wasn't popular until his regular slot of short stories were published in The Strand Magazine in 1891. From that point onward Holmes, and Doctor Watson of course, were cemented in history as famous detectives and continued their run until 1927, three years before Doyle's death. 

When we meet the infamous detective in the first novel, it's financial difficulties that draw Holmes and Watson together. They come together to share lodgings at 221B Baker Street in London which is owned by the equally well known character Mrs Hudson.

Despite Holmes being the most famous of the pair, it is actually Watson who narrates the majority of their adventures, acting as Holmes' biographer as he accompanies his friend and colleague on his cases. They're set in Victorian and Edwardian times with the exception of one story, and continued even after Doyle's unsuccessful attempt to kill the character off. More on that later! It's noted that Holmes has been a consulting detective for 23 years and Watson accompanied him for 17 of them, Holmes even wrote one from his own perspective!

Because Watson jumps right in with his life after meeting Sherlock, we don't know much about his family or early life, just the snippets that Watson comes across while he is associated with the character. His Last Bow indicates that Sherlock was born in either 1853 or 1854 as the story is set in August of 1914 and he is noted as sixty years old. His parents have never been mentioned which of course makes the modern version of Sherlock by the BBC stand out as they introduced his parents as Benedict Cumberbatch's own, and the only immediate member of the Holmes family we are aware of is Mycroft which is his older brother. At one point, specifically in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, Sherlock claimed that his grandmother was sister to the French artist Vernet, but no more information on this was pursued. 

In terms of his clients, Holmes is as famous in his fictional world as he is in the real one, due to this he has quite the extravagant visitor from time to time to get them out of a pickle. This wasn't the case at first though. When we first meet Holmes he is consulting for Scotland Yard, but otherwise only known in strict other circles. Thanks to Watson his profile is raised and he ends up taking more of a PI persona as their home becomes their office of sorts to meet clients and less and less work is actually taken on via Scotland Yard. He has worked for royals, nobles, and even the general public outside of the police. If the case is intriguing enough for him, he will take it on either personally or alongside the police. Despite his growing popularity he declined a knighthood and often lefts the police take credit for his solved cases.

Sherlock Holmes boasts a Guinness World Record as the most portrayed human literary character in film and TV history. By the 1990s there had been over 25,000 depictions of the characters spanning from stage to screen, and of course written word which is where he began. Fame grew so far that many people have actually thought that Sherlock was a real person rather than clever fiction. Of course knowing what we know of the author, it is no surprise that the character is so believable, after all Doyle was skilled in many medical aspects and a keen sportsman as well as other hobbies. His personality shines through as Doctor Watson even if it was unintentional, Holmes could easily have been a person too.

In terms of inspiration for Holmes, it seems he was born of fragments from many other sources. Doyle lists Edgar Allan Poe's detective fiction as inspiration for forming Holmes as well as the stories of Monsieur Lecoq by Emile Gaboriau who was popular at the time of Doyle's writing of Holmes. It has been noted that Holmes' behaviour occasionally follows that of Lecoq, but as we haven't heard of the character until now we can't comment on whether we think that is true. However, the man himself said that his most famous character was based on Joseph Bell who was a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh that Doyle met in 1877 and had worked for. Bell was well known for his minute observations that grew into a larger conclusion. But Bell disputed this, writing to Doyle that he himself was Sherlock, the man still wrote an introduction for a later copy of A Study in Scarlet though. Bell may have acted as Holmes' mental inspiration, but Sir Henry Littlejohn is thought to have inspired Doyle with the link he needed between the medical profession and the detection of crime.

Of course we don't quite know how far these men inspired Doyle in terms of Sherlock Holmes. He is described through Watson as 'bohemian' regarding his habits and lifestyle and yet contradicts this with having a 'cat-like' love of personal cleanliness that doesn't extend to any standard of tidiness or order. This is so often why the character is styled as a well kept gentleman who lives in a room of chaos and disorder. Holmes is, and always will be, a grand contradiction. 

Outside of his personal habits and lifestyle, Sherlock Holmes has always been considered as the cold and calculating type, easily able to flip the coin and join villainy if he so wished, but his strong sense of justice prevents this. He even goes as far as breaking the law in order to right wrongs made by others. On the other hand during a case he switches and becomes animated and airs his flair for showmanship which contributes to both his ego and supressed need to impress others. It seems the colder mask of Holmes is just that. He claims to not want to muddle observations with emotion and gives off the impression that he doesn't have any, but we see his attachment to Watson grow and snippets of his claim not being true, especially when Watson is shot. This emotional attachment is more evident after Holmes explains that Watson is really his only friend as overall he avoids casual company and even during his stint at college he only made one friend.

Because of his inhuman like demeanour, Holmes avoids people as they aren't too keen on him and he on them. Naturally, because of this he was never written to find love, in fact Holmes doesn't really like women at all. He has expressed that women are never to be fully trusted which Watson finds atrocious but it seems that this thought process comes from the fact that women think so different to Holmes himself and he cannot quite understand it. He has been quotes to demean the motives of the gender and noted that their actions are like quicksand as no foundations can be build, meaning that a woman will do something which means volumes but is quite trivial to an outsider. We think this means that Holmes distrusts the female-kind because his observations can no longer be so simple, a woman can outwit him if she tried hard enough and this is where Irene Adler comes in. She is the only woman to outwit Holmes and as such he grows to admire her, his emotions towards her could even be considered as close as Holmes can get to feeling love for someone that isn't his close friend Watson. Holmes has expressed himself that he would never marry so he couldn't prove himself wrong about women, but despite his distrust of them he was still always kind and gentle with the female sex, including Mrs Hudson who adores him for this.

Now we want to touch on Holmes' drug use as the fictional detective is often a role model, but his habits are not very role model like at all! To quiet his brain when there is no stimulating cases he will dabble in legal-at-the-time drugs such as cocaine and morphine which worries Watson enormously. While Watson worked to wean Holmes from his only vice, he is well aware that Holmes' addiction is still very much alive and needing to be monitored so he doesn't relapse.

Now Sherlock is unnaturally clever, yet has opted to omit what he considers as unimportant facts in his mind so that he may focus on what he needs in his day to day life. It is mentioned during A Study in Scarlet that Holmes doesn't know that the Earth revolves around the sun and he comments to Watson that now he has heard this he will immediately try to forget it as it is irrelevant and he doesnt want it taking up space. Sherlock believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information and doesn't want to use it up with silly information, so when we first met him he was unaware of a great many things. He had no knowledge of literature or philosophy, no knowledge of astronomy, limited knowledge in politics, knew botany and geology in terms of poisons and soil but not practical knowledge for gardening. However he excelled in chemistry and sensational literature, had a decent working knowledge of anatomy, and was good with laws within the UK and selected sports. Luckily for us and Holmes, Doyle felt the need for Holmes to abandon his strict views on his mind space and during his time with Watson had him grow to see that all knowledge was valuable to him.

While Sherlock Holmes ended up extremely well educated, there are certain skills and unique forms of knowledge that he acquired and excels at. For one he is a bare knuckle fighter, boxer, and skilled with a stick and a sword. He is also a cryptanalyst which means he can read secret writing such as codes and ciphers. He also relies heavily on forensic science as his investigations rely on evidence to form a conclusion. He is most skilled in the analysis of trace evidence, but is also very good with graphology and handwriting analysis which we suppose comes from his years working with ciphers. Probably the aspect here which Holmes is most famous for is his disguises. He is well skilled within practical theatre and is able to act and disguise himself fluently. Despite the fact he struggles to be himself, Holmes manages to embody his characters flawlessly and does so frequently.

Although Sherlock doesn't see himself as a social creature, since meeting John Watson he has pushed himself further than he could before. We see this as he employs several agents which are his underdogs, but we believe that it became more than a working relationship between Holmes and his street agents. They formed a bond, there is trust between the homeless spies and Baker Street Irregulars he ends up having work for him. He treats them with respect and kindness even if we don't see it and they risk a lot for Holmes when others would have taken the money and gone.

Now Doyle grew to hate Holmes, he had grown bored of him and wanted to pursue other projects but the popularity of the character made it impossible. He mentioned the idea of killing him off first to his mother who was horrified, but years later he did just that and he thought that was the end of it. So in 1891 he killed Holmes in an epic final battle with Moriarty. What he didn't expect was the public outcry for what he had done. 20,000 readers cancelled their subscription to The Strand Magazine in protest, not to mention the hate mail that the magazine and Doyle himself received. He withstood this for 8 years before he caved and wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles which he carefully set prior to the characters death to still give himself an out and this allowed him to stand his ground. However in 1903 Doyle gave in to public demand and published The Empty House which brought Sherlock Holmes back to life. This period in the Sherlock Holmes timeline even has a name, The Great Hiatus, and Doyle churned out new stories until 1927 sporadically. He did have Sherlock retire peacefully to Sussex as a beekeeper in His Last Bow which is much better than killing the character off and also allowed him to return to him when he needed to.

In the wider scope of the world, Sherlock Holmes was so impactful that he even had an electric train named after him. In 1920 the London Metropolitan Railway deployed twenty electric locos and bestowed them with famous names as their form of honour. Holmes was the only fictional character to be included in this. On top of that streets have been renamed for the character, and Watson, and Holmes even has a London Pub in his name which we've been to! We didn't get to explore the exhibition though so will 100% have to go back! There is also the Sherlock Holmes Museum situated at 221B Baker Street which didn't actually exist when Holmes was first written but we will explore that in another post as the location and museum deserve a post on their own! Holmes also has several statues around the world, had postage stamps dedicated to him, not to mention tons of other honours. He even has some fan clubs which evolved into actual societies!

Doyle managed to reshape crime novels through Holmes. From that point onward there was a new formula to follow, the character could have an arch nemesis and could be overly important. He changed the detective forever. This also meant that people took Sherlock Holmes and adapted him which means that since the original stories ended there have been loads of adaption from various other authors involving the character and even some of the others. The first one was My Evening with Sherlock Holmes by J. M. Barrie who was a close friend of Doyle. We've come across some more modern ones by Anthony Horowitz told from Moriarty's point of view, and there are even some books out there regarding Sherlock Holmes' wife, by Laurie R. King, which was never canon nor intended by Doyle.

We want to circle back to physical forms now. In 1899 Doyle and William Gillette brought together the Sherlock Holmes play which is what introduced the calabash pipe. Gillette played Holmes over 1,300 times and he even made a film under the same name in the early 1900s. H. A. Saintsbury then took over the role for a tour of the play before staying on for Doyle's stage adaptation of The Adventure of the Speckled Band. Saintsbury himself played Holmes over 1,000 times.

Holmes' first on screen appearance was in the 1900 Sherlock Holmes Baffled. Eille Norwood played Holmes in 47 silent films between 1921 and 1923 and Doyle spoke highly of these films. The Return of Sherlock Holmes then came out in 1929 and was the first movie with sound. Basil Rathbone then played Holmes 14 times between 1939 and 1946 for America's produced version and he also took on the role in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which was a radio show.

In 1984 Jeremy Brett took on the character for the TV show between 1894 and 1994. He also took on the stage version for the run in 1988/89. 2009 brought the Guy Richie adaptation with Robert Downey Jr and then he returned to the role in 2011. Meanwhile 2010 brought the BBC version, Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch playing a modern version of the character. Two years later America had another go and brought out Elementary with Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock alongside a gender-swapped Watson. Miller then became the actor to have portrayed Sherlock the most on screen. 2015 brought the film Mr. Holmes with Ian McKellen playing the retired Sherlock. But we have to admit we much prefer Brett and Cumberbatch in the role!

We, and by that we mean primarily Ren who jumped at the chance to delve into the history of this character, have massively enjoyed learning about Sherlock Holmes. Ren has been a fan since she was little as the Rathbone versions were often on TV in her youth, and while she found the books quite hard going (I read them when I was 11, it was a bit much for a child), she looks forward to trying again now that she's getting on for 30. We love Sherlock Holmes in most forms and dive into the movies and TV shows where we can, we look forward to going back to the pub and the museum on Baker Street as Ren has been before, and we look forward to bringing back Lauren's Literary Corner of the Internet which will feature her return to the Holmes stories but will have to wait until we have moved into our new house! Stay tuned.