Tibet and Holmes’s sojourn there are the subjects of special study. T. S. Blakeney’s “Disjecta Membra” considers the likely path of Holmes’s entry into Tibet. In “ ‘A High-at-us,’ ” Ron Carlson proposes that Holmes used his visit to negotiate with the head Lama to grow a certain “ ‘highly’ relaxing product” that was to have been marketed by Moriarty. Similarly, Patrick E. Drazen maintains, in his article “The Greater Vehicle: Holmes in Tibet,” that Holmes spent two years in Tibet pursuing Tibetan Buddhism to rid himself of the cocaine habit.
In another flight of fancy, Robert S. Chambers, in “The Journey to a Lost Horizon,” suggests that Holmes discovered “Shangri-La,” first described in a fictionalized narrative by James Hilton. A similar suggestion is made by Dana Martin Batory, in “Hiatus in Paradise.” Batory’s essay theorises that Holmes and the Norwegian explorer Sigerson journeyed to Tibet to investigate the disappearance of strange cargo caravans in the Himalayas. Both found themselves “guests” at the lamasery of Shangri-La. Sigerson was never allowed to leave. Holmes was sent back into the world to finish his work.
In a fascinating piece entitled “A Norwegian Named Sigerson,” Hans-Uno Bengtsson recounts how, when the thirteenth Dalai Lama came of age in 1895, Demo Rinpoche, the retired regent, plotted an assassination, using as his instrument a pair of cursed slippers. The plot was discovered through some remarkable detective work by the Dalai Lama. Bengtsson proposes that Holmes must have had an audience with the Dalai Lama, in which Holmes gave instruction in the art of detection.
Other aspects of the trip as reported by Holmes are examined. Ed Moorman, in “A Short But Interesting Visit,” explains why Holmes would have visited Khartoum on behalf of the Foreign Office to see the Khalifa and how his visit affected England’s involvement in world affairs well into the twentieth century.
The study of coal-tar derivatives mentioned by Holmes draws special attention. Carol Whitlam, in “Researching the Coal-Tar Derivatives,” speculates on the compounds Holmes may have researched in Montpellier in 1894. In “Double ‘L’—Why in the Empty House?,” Donald A. Redmond considers why Holmes conducted his coal-tar research in Montpellier (France), not Montpelier (Vermont), as spelled by Watson. However, Raymond L. Holly (“A Laboratory at Montpelier”) suggests that Holmes may have conducted his research in coal-tar derivatives at Montpelier in England. Brad Keefauver, in “So You Think Coal-Tar Derivatives Are Boring? Not So!,” speculates that Holmes, who had considerable knowledge of perfumes, may have been researching synthetic perfumes derived from coal tar. Richard M. Caplan comes to a different conclusion in “Why Coal-Tar Derivatives at Montpellier?,” where he suggests that Holmes’s research focused on the prospect of identifying and tracing for forensic purposes the origins of aniline dyes and inks.
No Deposit, No Return
There is a distinct school of thought that the Great Hiatus never happened. The leading proponent is Walter P. Armstrong, Jr., in “The Truth About Sherlock Holmes.” Succinctly, Armstrong argues, “Holmes did not return. He did not return because he had never been away. . . . Not only was Holmes in London, but he was living in the same house with Watson all the time. Watson has deceived us. But we cannot blame him, for the deception was necessary in order to trap the wily members of the Moriarty gang who remained.”
Richard Lancelyn Green follows along the lines of Armstrong in “On Tour with Sigerson,” arguing that the only logical place where Holmes could have gone into hiding and, at the same time, maintain contact with the criminal world was in London. He returned to live at 221B, venturing forth in disguise, and only Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, and Lestrade were in his confidence.
Anthony Boucher, in “Was the Later Holmes an Imposter?,” also concludes that because of numerous inconsistencies in Holmes and Watson’s accounts of the events at the falls (see, for example, “The Darkening Sky,” an appendix to “The Empty House”), Holmes must not have taken the reported journey and did, in fact, fall over the cliff at the Reichenbach. The man who in 1894 returned to London was, according to Boucher, in reality Holmes’s cousin Sherrinford. This hypothesis is rejected by Jay Finley Christ, in “The Later Holmes An Imposter: A Sequel,” who demonstrates in detail that Holmes’s and Watson’s accounts of the events at the Reichenbach are logically consistent. Boucher offers a reply in verse in “Ballade of the Later Holmes,” which concludes:
Christ and you others gathered here
Both Holmes sprang from Vernet’s seed.
What matters which? The truth is clear:
A master did return indeed.
A different imposter is suggested by Stefan Ernstson, in “The Counterfeit Sherlock Holmes Unmasked,” who concludes that the Master’s sister replaced Holmes.
An even more spectacular suggestion is that of Harry Halén, set forth in “Sherlock Holmes Venäjällä” [“Sherlock Holmes in Russia”]:
The author’s main thesis is that the vanishing trick of the century was performed by Holmes in 1891–1893 and after. In Tibet he underwent a “tantric materialization ritual” that resulted in Sherlock Holmes II, a live copy of the detective—a phantom body with almost all the intellectual and physical faculties of the original. In the company of his newly-born identical brother, the real Holmes, in the guise of a tobacco merchant named Anaxagoras Gurr, arrived in Russia at the invitation of Anton Chekhov. The two Holmeses parted in Riga: the phantom Holmes returned to London and the real Holmes began working in Russia, first in the Baltic provinces. Halén cites several Estonian-language titles of books telling about Holmes’s exploits. These books belong to the apocryphal literature on Holmes.74
Similarly, Robert Keller, in “Sherlock Holmes: A Spectra?,” proposes that Holmes did indeed die in the fall at Reichenbach and then returned in a spiritual, resurrected form. His later adventures were actually those of “the world’s first consulting ghost.”
A Different Journey
A third school of writers constructs entirely different itineraries for the Great Hiatus. Anders Fage-Pedersen, in A Case of Identity, demonstrates that Holmes and Dr. Nikola, a mystical doctor who travelled in Tibet during the Hiatus, are the same person.
A love affair is a common theme. Benjamin Grosbayne, in “Sherlock Holmes’s Honeymoon,” concludes that he married Irene Adler, became a distinguished operatic conductor and toured the musical centres of the world with his wife. Martin J. King (“Holmes in Hoboken?”) sees Holmes slipping off to Hoboken, New Jersey, and identifies the Meyers Hotel there as the location of Holmes’s tryst with Irene Adler, resulting in the birth of their son, Nero Wolfe. Stanley McComas, in “Lhove at Lhassa,” presents evidence that Holmes and Irene Adler (divorced from Godfrey Norton) were married in Florence and then spent the next three years travelling about Asia.
More farfetched is the work of Alastair Martin, in “Finding the Better Half,” which identifies Moriarty as the widow of Count Dracula whom Holmes encountered at the Reichenbach, wed, and spent three years with during the Great Hiatus. An even greater leap is taken by James Nelson, in “Sherlock and the Sherpas,” who proposes that in Tibet Holmes met and mated with the Abominable Snow-woman. According to Ronald B. DeWaal’s The Universal Sherlock Holmes, “This takes the prize for the most fanciful of all Sherlockian conjectures!”
Several writers conclude that Holmes was involved with the Lizzie Borden case, which occurred in 1892. Edgar W. Smith’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Great Hiatus” seems to have been the first. Allen Robertson’s “Baker Street, Beecher and Borden” expands on the connection, while in Jon Borden Sisson’s “Dr. Handy’s Wild-Eyed Man,” a document purportedly written in 1892 by Dr. Benjamin Handy of Fall River, Massachusetts, describes Holmes’s acquaintance with Lizzie Borden and his investigation of the murders of her father and stepmother. Handy concludes that Holmes may have committed the murders himself, and the article further suggests that Holmes had an affair with Lizzie.
The Russians are a common theme in the “Sherlock Holmes, Secret Agent” line of theories.
T. Frederick Foss, in “The Missing Years,” argues that Holmes did not spend two years in Tibet posing as a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson, but, instead, assisted his country by ferreting out information on Russian intrigues in India. He expands this argument in “But That Is Another Story,” contending that the Indian Government reluctantly agreed to his presence there, but arranged for Kipling’s policeman, Strickland, to keep an eye on him.
The eminent writer Poul Anderson, in “Sherlock Holmes, Explorer,” suggests that Holmes’s travels during the Hiatus were a working out of a lifelong wish to be an explorer, although his activities in Tibet also involved counteracting the machinations of the Russian agent Dorijev. See also Manly Wade Wellman’s “Scoundrels in Bohemia,” suggesting far-flung espionage activities.
There was spying to be done in Persia as well, contends William P. Collins, in “It Is Time That I Should Turn to Other Memories: Sherlock Holmes and Persia, 1893.” Collins’s evidence strongly suggests that Holmes indeed spent at least two months in Persia, where he observed the activities of the Russians; assessed the effects of the activities of Siyyid Jamálu’d-Dín “al-Afqhání” and Mírzá Malkam Khán on British interests; and made a number of recommendations on British policy to Her Majesty’s representatives.
Similarly, John P. and Susan M. Thornton, in “The Adventure of the Elusive Boundary Line: An Account of the Master’s Encounter with Destiny in Central Asia,” argue that “Holmes was not the casual wanderer that he made himself out to be, but the Foreign Office’s master agent who masterminded much of the Empire’s success in Central Asia at the turn of the century. In character with his adventures as described in the Canon, he provided the stepping-stones for many others to rise to fame while he remained in the shadows.”
Another “secret agent” suggestion is that of Raymond L. Holly, in “Europeans in Lhasa in 1891.” He points out that H. Rider Haggard attributes his tales She and Ayesha to one Ludwig Horace Holly, who claims to have been in Tibet with his adopted son in 1891. They were saved from execution by a friendly Chinese official, who, Raymond Holly suggests, in reality was Holmes in disguise, working as a secret operative for Her Majesty’s government.
Other activities are proposed as well. Alan Olding, head of the Sherlock Holmes Society of Australia, suggests (in “Holmes in Terra Australis Incognita—Incognito”) that Holmes gained his knowledge of the Australian criminal class by spending part of his Hiatus in Australia. Bob Reyom, in “The Great Hiatus, or Locked in the Music Room Without My Cello,” hypothesises that the hiatus was spent studying the motets of Orlando di Lasso, while Dana Martin Batory (“Tut, Tut, Sherlock!”) examines the possibility that the mysterious Egyptian “detective” Abu Tabah (of Sax Rohmer’s Tales of Secret Egypt (1918)) was in actuality Sherlock Holmes, who spent part of his Great Hiatus in Egypt disrupting the hashish trade on behalf of the British government.
On a musical note, Gordon R. Speck’s article, “ ‘. . . And a Week Later I Was in Florence,’ ” considers that Holmes may have spent the first weeks and the final weeks of the Great Hiatus in Cremona collecting samples from the Stradivari workshop and in Montpellier analysing them.
According to Tomas Gejrot (“Was Sherlock Holmes a Patient of Sigmund Freud’s?”), Holmes spent his Hiatus in Vienna being treated for his addiction to cocaine. Of course, this view was taken to the extreme in Nicholas Meyer’s novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, who recorded not only that Freud cured Holmes of his addiction (by elucidating that the villainous Moriarty was but a projection of Holmes’s mind, based on Holmes’s childhood discovery that his mother had committed adultery with his tutor Professor Moriarty) but that Freud and Holmes together solved a mystery and rescued a beautiful woman.
“Infinite possibilities” here!
BARITSU
BARTITSU, as it was properly spelled, was a Japanese style of self-defence introduced by E. W. Barton-Wright (1860–1951) in an article published in the March and April 1899 issues of Pearson’s magazine. Barton-Wright had lived in Japan for three years; during that time, he studied with a sensei to learn the art of jujitsu (or jujutsu), a weaponless method of self-defence, developed by samurais, that was once meant to complement swordsmanship. Known as “the gentle art,” jujitsu emphasises temporarily yielding to the moves of one’s attacker and then, in turn, controlling them—crippling or even killing the opponent—by the use of various holds, blows, and throws.
Upon his return to England, Barton-Wright opened his own martial arts school and published “The New Art of Self-Defence,” which couched his methods in utterly practical terms: headings included “How to Put a Troublesome Man Out of the Room” and “One of Many Ways of Defending Yourself, When a Man Strikes at Your Face with His Right Fist.” What he called “Bartitsu”—a combination of “Barton” and “jujitsu”—was essentially jujitsu with some elements of boxing and wrestling thrown in. Barton-Wright’s boasts of invincibility were met with both enthusiasm and scepticism. Nonetheless, his new method created a small sensation, and he is usually credited with having brought jujitsu (which later spawned judo, karate, and aikido) to England, even bringing experts over from Japan to aid him in his teaching and exhibition endeavours.
While “The Empty House” was published four years after the Pearson’s article appeared, Holmes’s use of “baritsu” in grappling with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls predated the Barton-Wright system by eight years. How to explain the incongruity? In “The Mystery of Baritsu: A Sidelight Upon Sherlock Holmes’s Accomplishments,” Ralph Judson puts forth the theory that Holmes had actually studied jujitsu and that Watson, having read the Pearson’s article by the time he heard Holmes’s account, confused the two terms (confused them so much, in fact, that he dropped the “t” in “bartitsu” to make the word sound more like “jujitsu”). Since Judson calculates that it takes seven years or so to master a defensive art completely, he puts the beginning of Holmes’s jujitsu training at around 1883 or 1884. In slipping through Moriarty’s grasp, Judson imagines, Holmes must have dropped to one knee, “gripped with one hand Moriarty’s heel, which was closer to the abyss, and lifting the heel and with it the foot, diagonally, away from himself, he [must have] pushed hard, at the same time, with his other hand, into the groin of the captured leg, applying terrific leverage. This caused Moriarty to lose completely his balance and gave him no time to clutch at his opponent.”
In their fascinating work Some Knowledge of Baritsu: An Investigation of the Japanese System of Wrestling Used by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Hirayama Yuichi and John Hall take a contrary view, concluding that the Master was not proficient in jujitsu at all. In previous cases, when confronted with the prospect of physical combat, Holmes displayed little to no skill. “This is indicated,” they write, “by his inability to cope with the two assailants in the middle of his career in ‘The Reigate Puzzle’ (1887), and by his defeat at the hands of Gruner’s hired villains towards the end of Holmes’s career in ‘The Illustrious Client.’ . . . [E]ither Holmes learned his skills from a less than masterly teacher, or . . . Holmes did study with a master, but for too short a time to learn the technique properly.”
THE DARKENING SKY
ANTHONY BOUCHER, the esteemed mystery critic and author, proposes, in his essay “Was the Later Holmes an Imposter?,” that there are serious problems in reconciling the time intervals described by Holmes and Watson regarding the trips to the Reichenbach Falls with Watson’s statements in “The Final Problem” and Holmes’s explanation in “The Empty House.” Based on Watson’s statements, Boucher constructs the following timetable:
Time Event
2 P.M. (“afternoon”) Holmes and Watson depart from Meiringen
4 P.M. (“two hours” on Watson’s second trip; assume the same on the first, which may have been more leisurely) Holmes and Watson arrive at falls
4:15 P.M. (estimated) Conversation with messenger, Watson departs for Meiringen
5:15 P.M. (“over an hour to come down”) Watson arrives back at Meiring
en, discovers fraud
7:15 P.M. (“two more had passed”) Watson hurries back to Falls
At this point, Boucher asserts that Watson returned to Meiringen to fetch the “experts” and travelled back to the falls. He allows another three hours for this return. By the time the experts left, then, it would be well after 10:30 P.M. It is very puzzling, he concludes, that Holmes should describe the sky at such an hour as “darkening.” Sunset must have occurred more than two hours earlier, and Holmes couldn’t possibly have seen Moran’s head.
But Karl Baedeker’s Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol: Handbook for Travellers states that it is only a quarter hour to the lower falls from the Hotel Reichenbach in Meiringen and three-quarters of an hour to the upper falls. A. Carson Simpson, in Sherlock Holmes’s Wanderjahre (Fanget An!), excuses Watson’s error as a result of his stress: “[L]earning of Moriarty’s deception when he reached Meiringen, his apprehensions were aroused and his anxiety made minutes seem like hours. . . . A simple arithmetical calculation will demonstrate that the various trips to and fro could easily be made, with ample margins between trips, before sunset at 7:10 P.M.”
Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler also concludes that the timing suggested by Watson’s statements is misleading. “There is not the slightest indication that Watson made the upward journey [to the Fall] three times. . . . Watson told Steiler that he suspected foul play, and Steiler surely fetched the police and sent them up after Watson without delay, so that they probably arrived at the Fall shortly after Watson.” Under this assumption, the “experts” could have completed their investigation as early as 6:30 P.M., well before sunset. Even if another hour or so is added to the timetable, twilight would have accounted for Holmes’s vision of Moran. The same conclusion is reached by Jay Finley Christ in his essay “The Later Holmes An Imposter: A Sequel”: “Nowhere in The Final Problem or in The Empty House is there the slightest suggestion or basis for an assumption that Watson made three trips to the fall, nor that he brought experts ‘later.’75 On the contrary, there is in The Empty House a clear statement to the effect that Watson was accompanied by several persons when he returned to the fall after having been lured away.” Actually, in “The Empty House,” Holmes describes “you . . . and all your following” investigating the circumstances of his “death,” and it does seem odd that if Watson made two return trips to the falls, Holmes did not mention them.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books) Page 4
