So the next time you’re reading Doyle’s stories or one of the terrific Holmes pastiches, or watching any of the adaptations, show Watson some of the respect he’s earned. There’s been a lot of debate over the years about what the “H” in John H. Watson stands for. Given the way I’m thinking about the man now, instead of Henry or Hamish, I’d like to humbly propose that H. ought to stand for hellraiser.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leigh Perry is Toni L.P. Kelner in disguise, or maybe vice versa. As Leigh, she writes the Family Skeleton mysteries. As Toni, she’s the co-editor of New York Times best-selling anthologies with Charlaine Harris. She’s also the author of the “Where Are They Now?” mysteries and the Laura Fleming series (all available as e-books and audiobooks), and an Agatha Award winner for short fiction. Leigh/Toni lives north of Boston with her husband, their two daughters, and two guinea pigs.
A STUDY IN CONSISTENCY, by Dan Andriacco
How the First Sherlock Holmes Story Prefigured the Rest
A Study in Scarlet does not generally win, place, or show in the lists of favorite Sherlock Holmes stories. It’s not my favorite either. But I was struck in my recent re-reading the entire Canon by the extent to which this first Holmes story prefigured so much that was to follow. Most of what we love about Sherlock Holmes and his world was there in the beginning, and not just in embryonic form.
Let’s take a close look now at the story pattern and plot motifs, the character and methods of Sherlock Holmes, the personality of Dr. Watson, and the presence of various other continuing dramatis personae who make their debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet.
Ronald A. Knox’s seminal paper, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes,” lists eleven elements of the ideal Sherlock Holmes story. Those elements are:
1. a homely Baker Street scene to start, with invaluable personal touches and sometimes a demonstration by the detective or reference by either Holmes or Watson to an untold tale of Sherlock Holmes;
2. the client’s statement of the case;
3. energetic personal investigation by Holmes and Watson, often including the famous floor-walk on hands and knees;
4. refutation by Holmes of the Scotland Yard theory;
5. a few stray hints to the police, which they never adopt;
6. Holmes tells the true course of the case to Dr. Watson as he sees it, but is sometimes wrong;
7. questioning of the victim’s relatives, dependents, and others, along with visits to the Records Office, and various investigations in disguise;
8. the criminal is caught or exposed;
9. the criminal confesses;
10. Holmes describes the clues and how he followed them; and
11. the conclusion, often involving a quotation from some standard author.
By Monsignor Knox’s reckoning, only A Study in Scarlet of the stories published up to that time (1911) has all eleven of those elements. But most stories in the Canon have at least five of them, and not the same five. So we see that in A Study in Scarlet the pattern of the archetypical Holmes adventure is not only present, it is most completely realized.
There are a couple of other aspects to this inaugural outing of Holmes and Watson that, while perhaps not as typical as the elements already cited, have a distinctively Sherlockian flavor.
For starters, the roots of the crime—as in so many of the stories—lie in the distant past. In this case, that past is in America. The clearest parallel is the last Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, where the entire second half of the book—just as in A Study in Scarlet—is made up of a back story set in the United States. I count another six stories with American roots (FIVE, NOBL, YELL, DANC, REDC, THOR). But sometimes the antecedents of the mystery are in another present or former British colony—India in The Sign of Four and “The Crooked Man” and Australia in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” to cite a few obvious examples. In all, I count nineteen adventures—almost one-third of the Canon—in which the past casts a heavy shadow on current events.
One of the most common ways in which this happens is revenge. The revenge motif of A Study in Scarlet comes back again and again, and as early as The Sign of Four. Surely Jonathan Small is motivated by revenge as much as by greed. Jefferson Hope is the first of several revenge killers or would-be killers who evoke a degree of sympathy on our part, and are usually permitted to die or flee (ABBE, DEVI) or otherwise escape the long arm of the law (CROO, VEIL), or at least its severest judgment (ILLU).
Hope is also the first of many thwarted grooms in the Canon. There are at least ten engagements in the Sherlock Holmes stories that do not come to fruition because of death, scandal, or estrangement.
More important than these frequent plot themes, however, are the character and methods of Sherlock Holmes—for that is what really engages us as readers. And the Holmes whom we meet in A Study in Scarlet remains to a remarkable degree nearly unchanged 40 years later in The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. It’s almost as if a fiction writer had contrived this. In Memories and Adventures, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dr. Watson’s literary agent, writes: “To make a real character, one must sacrifice everything to consistency and remember Goldsmith’s criticism of Johnson that ‘he would make the little fishes talk like whales.’” Conan Doyle says this of Watson, but it applies to Holmes as well.
You probably recall the observation that Sherlock Holmes may not have been killed at the Reichenbach Falls, but was never the same man afterward. I suggest that a close reading of the stories shows that to be untrue. This is not to say that Holmes never changed his mind about anything. The young man who lectured Watson about keeping his brain attic uncluttered in the second chapter of A Study in Scarlet later tells Inspector Macdonald in the second chapter of The Valley of Fear that “All knowledge comes useful to the detective.” However, the essential character, methods, and Zeitgeist of Sherlock Holmes are as constant over the years as if it were always 1895—or, rather, 1881.
In that regard, Holmes is like Nero Wolfe and unlike Ellery Queen, to cite two Great Detectives of the Golden Age. Nero Wolfe and his entire W. 35th Street menagerie vary little from Fer-de-Lance to A Family Affair, a 41-year stretch. Some characters leave the series in dramatic ways and some are added, but Wolfe, Archie, and the feel of the books don’t change significantly. On the other hand, the Ellery Queen of his debut novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929), shares nothing but a name, an address, and a father with the Ellery Queen of the series finale, A Fine and Private Place (1971). Ellery evolved over the years from a Philo Vance clone to his own unique and memorable character.
In exploring the character of Holmes, let us not start with that remarkable document “Sherlock Holmes—His Limits,” drawn up by Dr. Watson in the first days of their acquaintance. We all know that it is notoriously inaccurate. I do not believe, for example, that Holmes’s knowledge of literature that enabled him to quote Goethe (SIGN) and George Sand in their original languages, cite George Meredith (BOSC), and carry a pocket Petrarch (BOSC) was a later development. Watson was simply wrong on literature and philosophy, although he got most of the rest of it right—including, for example, Holmes’s mastery of boxing and fencing which are alluded to elsewhere (GLOR).
Remember, this was at a time when Watson also wrote “I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.” Of course, Watson was wrong about that, too. In the opening pages of The Sign of Four we learn that Holmes is indeed a self-poisoner by morphine and cocaine, the famous seven percent solution. Cocaine is mentioned more often than we might think—six times explicitly (SIGN, SCAN, FIVE, TWIS, YELL, MISS) and three times by implication (DYIN, DEVI, CREE)—although we never again see Holmes actually shoot up. By the time of “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter,” Watson had weaned him from drug use, but the good doctor knew “the fiend was not dead but sleeping” and the sleep was a light one.
Dismissing Watson’s summary list,
then, let us consider Holmes when we (and Watson) first meet him in the laboratory at St. Bart’s. When Holmes utters those immortal lines, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,” Watson wants to know how he knows. Holmes, however, is much more interested in crowing about his new chemical discovery—the Sherlock Homes test for hemoglobin. After explaining the significance, his eyes fairly glittering, “he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination.”
Already here in chapter one of A Study in Scarlet we see both the chemical researches which continue at Baker Street (SIGN, MUSG, IDEN, NAVA, DANC) and the flair for the dramatic which made Holmes such a fine actor. That dramatic impulse is on display again when, to the astonishment of Watson and the Scotland Yarders, he claps the handcuffs on the cabman in the climactic scene of the novel. “Gentlemen,” he cries—again, the eyes flashing—“let me introduce you to Mr. Jonathan Hope, murderer of Enoch Drebber and of Joseph Stangerson.” In The Valley of Fear (chapter six), he explains himself by saying: “Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-staged performance.” This penchant for playing to an audience shows up throughout Holmes’s career, such as when he lifts a cover off of a plate to reveal the missing naval treaty, or when he holds up a certain small object and announces, “Gentleman, let me introduce you to the famous black pearl of the Borgias.”
Holmes is also a bit of a stage magician in these moments, pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the last minute to surprise the audience. He even draws that analogy himself when he says to Watson in chapter four of A Study in Scarlet: “You know a conjuror gets no credit once he has explained his trick, and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.” But, of course, throughout the Canon Holmes does explain and Watson, or the client, or the police official almost always says something like “How absurdly simple!”
Perhaps it would not be going too far to suggest that what we see on display both in the drama and in the need to explain one’s methods is a healthy ego. When Holmes tells us in “The Greek Interpreter” that he does not count modesty among the virtues, we are quite ready to believe him. Even though he is young, untested, and standing at the beginning of his career in A Study in Scarlet, he makes bold statements such as: “No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done.” Whether that is simply a factual statement—no modesty need apply, remember—or an exaggeration is rather beside the point. This sounds like the Holmes we know.
He even finds the state of crime to be beneath him already at that early juncture. In chapter two, he complains, “There is no crime to detect, or at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.” It’s as though he’s yearning for a worthy opponent, a master villain with whom to do battle. He makes similar comments elsewhere before the rise of Professor Moriarty (BOSC, COPP), though perhaps we remember best those complaints post-Reichenbach (NORW, BRUCE) about how dull London has become after the Professor’s demise.
A high appreciation of his own talents leads Holmes to a career-long pattern of making ironically deprecating comments to others. At the very beginning of the Lauriston Gardens Mystery (chapter three), he raises his eyebrows sardonically and tells Tobias Gregson, “With two men such as yourself and Lestrade upon the ground, there will not be much for a third party to find out.” A few pages later he declines to give the officials his view of the case, offering the sarcastic reason, “You are doing so well now that it would be a pity for anyone to interfere.”
This calls to mind a wonderfully snarky exchange with Lestrade during the Boscombe Valley Mystery. “I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies,” says the official detective. “You are right,” responds Holmes, “you do find it very hard to tackle the facts.” Years later, welcomed back to London by Lestrade after the Great Hiatus, Holmes says, “But you handled the Molesy Mystery with less than your usual—that’s to say, you handled it fairly well (EMPT).”
Regrettably, this attitude of condescension is not reserved solely for the official police. At times it is extended to the faithful Watson as well—especially in the later stories. My favorite sardonic line directed against the good doctor comes in “The Adventure of the Three Students,” wherein Holmes says, “Watson, I have always done you an injustice. There are others.” In somewhat the same mean spirit, at the beginning of The Valley of Fear, Watson says, “I am inclined to think–” and Holmes interrupts him with “I should certainly do so.”
In A Study in Scarlet, the relationship between Holmes and Watson is just getting started. Watson is not yet one of the few people to whom Holmes ever applies the term “friend,” along with Victor Trevor and—surprisingly “friend Lestrade.” And how does young Holmes treat the near-stranger Watson in these early days? Pretty much the same way he treats him for the next forty years. In chapter three, for example, Holmes explains how he deduced—induced, really—that the man who delivered a letter from Tobias Gregson was a retired sergeant of marines. That provokes this exchange:
“Wonderful!” I ejaculated.
“Commonplace,” said Holmes, though I thought from his expression that he was pleased at my evident surprise and admiration.
It is not until “A Scandal in Bohemia” that Holmes says “I am lost without my Boswell,” but A Study in Scarlet already shows us how much the actor needs an audience and adulation. Watson, of course, is always there to provide it, as in the very next chapter of A Study in Scarlet when he exclaims, “You amaze me, Holmes!” A computer would have a nervous breakdown trying to calculate the number of times similar dialogue is repeated in the other fifty-nine stories. (In “The Adventure of the Crooked Man,” you will recall, Holmes’s response to “Wonderful!” is the famous “Elementary.”)
When Holmes takes delivery of that letter from Tobias Gregson mentioned a moment ago, he does a curious thing which he does again and again throughout the Canon: He asks Watson to read it to him out loud. (See SCAN, IDEN, STOC, NORW, CARD.) Was Sherlock Holmes illiterate? One scholar thought so, but there are ample instances of Holmes reading on his own. Think of all the newspapers he studied while briefing himself on the case of Silver Blaze, for example. Also, on numerous occasions Holmes consults the clippings in his commonplace books. And in The Valley of Fear he looks up words in Whitaker’s Almanac all by himself. No, I think we can assume that Sherlock Holmes could read, but chose not to. He’d rather have Watson do it for him.
Another habit of Holmes which started in A Study in Scarlet was asking Watson to bring a gun, which he does in chapter five as they await the person who answered Holmes’s advert. “Put your pistol in your pocket,” he says. Why doesn’t he put a pistol in his own pocket? We know that Holmes has one because he uses it to shoot a patriotic V.R. on the wall of the sitting room (MUSG). He even carries it on a case once in a while (GREE, BERY, FINA, SOLI). But in many stories (REDH, SPEC, SIXN, EMPT, 3GAR, THOR, BRUC) he asks Watson to bring his revolver—presumably that famous Eley’s No. 2.
I think it’s clear that Holmes quickly learned to lean on Watson for everything from reading to gun-toting. We might even say that he takes advantage of him. No wonder Rex Stout theorized that “Watson Was a Woman,” and actually Mrs. Sherlock Holmes. Of course we know that Stout’s charming speculation cannot be true because Holmes late in his career accuses the doctor of being selfish by deserting him for a wife (BLAN). The nerve of that Watson!
Just as Holmes’s character changes little over the years, so do his investigative techniques. With one major exception, they are all on display in A Study in Scarlet.
The basic Holmes approach of observation and induction—which he always inaccurately called deduction—is laid out in his article “The Book of Life:” “By a man’s finger-nails, [Holmes writes] by his c
oat sleeve, by his boot, by his trouser knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his shirt-cuffs—by each of these a man’s calling is plainly revealed.” No, Watson, that is not “ineffable twaddle!” It would be tedious to go through the Canon citing later examples in which Holmes draws conclusions from each of these, but one need go no further than “The Adventure of the Red-headed League” to recall what Holmes was able to tell about Jabez Wilson—and about his assistant with the worn trouser knees. In later stories Holmes will say that nothing is so important as trifles (TWIS) and that his method is founded on the observance of trifles (BOSC).
Equally central to the Holmes method is the process of elimination. Holmes does not yet say, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth.” That wording appears in The Sign of Four and later tales (BERY, BRUC, BLAN). But the process is used here and in every story in which Holmes actually does detective work. In describing his conclusion that Enoch Drebber had been forcibly administered poison, Holmes says, “By the method of exclusion I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis would meet the facts.” Isn’t that what he does all the time?
Another important notion is that the idea that the “the most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious,” as he says in chapter seven of part one of A Study in Scarlet. The same concept is approached from another viewpoint in “The Adventure of the Red-headed League” and other stories (HOUN, REDH), where he says the more bizarre or outré a case is, the easier it is to solve.
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 15 Page 3
