The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 

 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
The Man With the Twisted Lip

“I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.”

Annotated by Rod Mollise

I
sa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the Theological College of St. George’s, was much addicted to opium. The habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some foolish freak when he was at college; for having read De Quincey’s description of his dreams and sensations, he had drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects. He found, as so many more have done, that the practice is easier to attain than to get rid of, and for many years he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of mingled horror and pity to his friends and relatives. I can see him now, with yellow, pasty face, drooping lids, and pin-point pupils, all huddled in a chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble man.
One night—it was in June, ‘89--there came a ring to my bell, about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. I sat up in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment.
“A patient!” said she. “You’ll have to go out.”
I groaned, for I was newly come back from a weary day.
We heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps upon the linoleum. Our own door flew open, and a lady, clad in some dark-coloured stuff, with a black veil, entered the room.
“You will excuse my calling so late,” she began, and then, suddenly losing her self-control, she ran forward, threw her arms about my wife’s neck, and sobbed upon her shoulder. “Oh, I’m in such trouble!” she cried; “I do so want a little help.”
“Why,” said my wife, pulling up her veil, “it is Kate Whitney. How you startled me, Kate! I had not an idea who you were when you came in.”
“I didn’t know what to do, so I came straight to you.” That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house.
“It was very sweet of you to come. Now, you must have some wine and water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or should you rather that I sent James off to bed?”
“Oh, no, no! I want the doctor’s advice and help, too. It’s about Isa. He has not been home for two days. I am so frightened about him!”
It was not the first time that she had spoken to us of her husband’s trouble, to me as a doctor, to my wife as an old friend and school companion. We soothed and comforted her by such words as we could find. Did she know where her husband was? Was it possible that we could bring him back to her?
It seems that it was. She had the surest information that of late he had, when the fit was on him, made use of an opium den in the farthest east of the City. Hitherto his orgies had always been confined to one day, and he had come back, twitching and shattered, in the evening. But now the spell had been upon him eight-and-forty hours, and he lay there, doubtless among the dregs of the docks, breathing in the poison or sleeping off the effects. There he was to be found, she was sure of it, at the Bar of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane. But what was she to do? How could she, a young and timid woman, make her way into such a place and pluck her husband out from among the ruffians who surrounded him?
There was the case, and of course there was but one way out of it. Might I not escort her to this place? And then, as a second thought, why should she come at all? I was Isa Whitney’s medical adviser, and as such I had influence over him. I could manage it better if I were alone. I promised her on my word that I would send him home in a cab within two hours if he were indeed at the address which she had given me. And so in ten minutes I had left my armchair and cheery sitting-room behind me, and was speeding eastward in a hansom on a strange errand, as it seemed to me at the time, though the future only could show how strange it was to be.
But there was no great difficulty in the first stage of my adventure. Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge. Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search. Ordering my cab to wait, I passed down the steps, worn hollow in the centre by the ceaseless tread of drunken feet; and by the light of a flickering oil-lamp above the door I found the latch and made my way into a long, low room, thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the forecastle of an emigrant ship.
Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, now faint, as the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes. The most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation coming in gushes, and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour. At the farther end was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside which on a three-legged wooden stool there sat a tall, thin old man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon his knees, staring into the fire.
As I entered, a sallow Malay attendant had hurried up with a pipe for me and a supply of the drug, beckoning me to an empty berth.
“Thank you. I have not come to stay,” said I. “There is a friend of mine here, Mr. Isa Whitney, and I wish to speak with him.”
There was a movement and an exclamation from my right, and peering through the gloom, I saw Whitney, pale, haggard, and unkempt, staring out at me.
“My God! It’s Watson,” said he. He was in a pitiable state of reaction, with every nerve in a twitter. “I say, Watson, what o’clock is it?”
“Nearly eleven.”
“Of what day?”
“Of Friday, June 19th.”
“Good heavens! I thought it was Wednesday. It is Wednesday. What d’you want to frighten a chap for?” He sank his face onto his arms and began to sob in a high treble key.
“I tell you that it is Friday, man. Your wife has been waiting this two days for you. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“So I am. But you’ve got mixed, Watson, for I have only been here a few hours, three pipes, four pipes—I forget how many. But I’ll go home with you. I wouldn’t frighten Kate—poor little Kate. Give me your hand! Have you a cab?”
“Yes, I have one waiting.”
“Then I shall go in it. But I must owe something. Find what I owe, Watson. I am all off colour. I can do nothing for myself.”
I walked down the narrow passage between the double row of sleepers, holding my breath to keep out the vile, stupefying fumes of the drug, and looking about for the manager. As I passed the tall man who sat by the brazier I felt a sudden pluck at my skirt, and a low voice whispered, “Walk past me, and then look back at me.” The words fell quite distinctly upon my ear. I glanced down. They could only have come from the old man at my side, and yet he sat now as absorbed as ever, very thin, very wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down from between his knees, as though it had dropped in sheer lassitude from his fingers. I took two steps forward and looked back. It took all my self-control to prevent me from breaking out into a cry of astonishment. He had turned his back so that none could see him but I. His form had filled out, his wrinkles were gone, the dull eyes had regained their fire, and there, sitting by the fire and grinning at my surprise, was none other than Sherlock Holmes. He made a slight motion to me to approach him, and instantly, as he turned his face half round to the company once more, subsided into a doddering, loose-lipped senility.
“Holmes!” I whispered, “what on earth are you doing in this den?”
“As low as you can,” he answered; “I have excellent ears. If you would have the great kindness to get rid of that sottish friend of yours I should be exceedingly glad to have a little talk with you.”
“I have a cab outside.”
“Then pray send him home in it. You may safely trust him, for he appears to be too limp to get into any mischief. I should recommend you also to send a note by the cabman to your wife to say that you have thrown in your lot with me. If you will wait outside, I shall be with you in five minutes.”
It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes’ requests, for they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet air of mastery. I felt, however, that when Whitney was once confined in the cab my mission was practically accomplished; and for the rest, I could not wish anything better than to be associated with my friend in one of those singular adventures which were the normal condition of his existence. In a few minutes I had written my note, paid Whitney’s bill, led him out to the cab, and seen him driven through the darkness. In a very short time a decrepit figure had emerged from the opium den, and I was walking down the street with Sherlock Holmes. For two streets he shuffled along with a bent back and an uncertain foot. Then, glancing quickly round, he straightened himself out and burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
“I suppose, Watson,” said he, “that you imagine that I have added opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views.”
“I was certainly surprised to find you there.”
“But not more so than I to find you.”
“I came to find a friend.”
“And I to find an enemy.”
“An enemy?”
“Yes; one of my natural enemies, or, shall I say, my natural prey. Briefly, Watson, I am in the midst of a very remarkable inquiry, and I have hoped to find a clue in the incoherent ramblings of these sots, as I have done before now. Had I been recognised in that den my life would not have been worth an hour’s purchase; for I have used it before now for my own purposes, and the rascally Lascar who runs it has sworn to have vengeance upon me. There is a trap-door at the back of that building, near the corner of Paul’s Wharf, which could tell some strange tales of what has passed through it upon the moonless nights.”
“What! You do not mean bodies?”
“Ay, bodies, Watson. We should be rich men if we had 1000 pounds for every poor devil who has been done to death in that den. It is the vilest murder-trap on the whole riverside, and I fear that Neville St. Clair has entered it never to leave it more. But our trap should be here.” He put his two forefingers between his teeth and whistled shrilly—a signal which was answered by a similar whistle from the distance, followed shortly by the rattle of wheels and the clink of horses’ hoofs.
“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”
“If I can be of use.”
“Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.”
“The Cedars?”
“Yes; that is Mr. St. Clair’s house. I am staying there while I conduct the inquiry.”
“Where is it, then?”
“Near Lee, in Kent. We have a seven-mile drive before us.”
“But I am all in the dark.”
“Of course you are. You’ll know all about it presently. Jump up here. All right, John; we shall not need you. Here’s half a crown. Look out for me to-morrow, about eleven. Give her her head. So long, then!”He flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through the endless succession of sombre and deserted streets, which widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us. Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of the clouds. Holmes drove in silence, with his head sunk upon his breast, and the air of a man who is lost in thought, while I sat beside him, curious to learn what this new quest might be which seemed to tax his powers so sorely, and yet afraid to break in upon the current of his thoughts. We had driven several miles, and were beginning to get to the fringe of the belt of suburban villas, when he shook himself, shrugged his shoulders, and lit up his pipe with the air of a man who has satisfied himself that he is acting for the best.
“You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,” said he. “It makes you quite invaluable as a companion. ‘Pon my word, it is a great thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant. I was wondering what I should say to this dear little woman to-night when she meets me at the door.”
“You forget that I know nothing about it.”
“I shall just have time to tell you the facts of the case before we get to Lee. It seems absurdly simple, and yet, somehow I can get nothing to go upon. There’s plenty of thread, no doubt, but I can’t get the end of it into my hand. Now, I’ll state the case clearly and concisely to you, Watson, and maybe you can see a spark where all is dark to me.”
“Proceed, then.”
“Some years ago—to be definite, in May, 1884--there came to Lee a gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name, who appeared to have plenty of money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very nicely, and lived generally in good style. By degrees he made friends in the neighbourhood, and in 1887 he married the daughter of a local brewer, by whom he now has two children. He had no occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5:14 from Cannon Street every night. Mr. St. Clair is now thirty-seven years of age, is a man of temperate habits, a good husband, a very affectionate father, and a man who is popular with all who know him. I may add that his whole debts at the present moment, as far as we have been able to ascertain, amount to 88 pounds 10s., while he has 220 pounds standing to his credit in the Capital and Counties Bank. There is no reason, therefore, to think that money troubles have been weighing upon his mind.
“Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town rather earlier than usual, remarking before he started that he had two important commissions to perform, and that he would bring his little boy home a box of bricks. Now, by the merest chance, his wife received a telegram upon this same Monday, very shortly after his departure, to the effect that a small parcel of considerable value which she had been expecting was waiting for her at the offices of the Aberdeen Shipping Company. Now, if you are well up in your London, you will know that the office of the company is in Fresno Street, which branches out of Upper Swandam Lane, where you found me to-night. Mrs. St. Clair had her lunch, started for the City, did some shopping, proceeded to the company’s office, got her packet, and found herself at exactly 4:35 walking through Swandam Lane on her way back to the station. Have you followed me so far?”
“It is very clear.”
“If you remember, Monday was an exceedingly hot day, and Mrs. St. Clair walked slowly, glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab, as she did not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself. While she was walking in this way down Swandam Lane, she suddenly heard an ejaculation or cry, and was struck cold to see her husband looking down at her and, as it seemed to her, beckoning to her from a second-floor window. The window was open, and she distinctly saw his face, which she describes as being terribly agitated. He waved his hands frantically to her, and then vanished from the window so suddenly that it seemed to her that he had been plucked back by some irresistible force from behind. One singular point which struck her quick feminine eye was that although he wore some dark coat, such as he had started to town in, he had on neither collar nor necktie.
“Convinced that something was amiss with him, she rushed down the steps—for the house was none other than the opium den in which you found me to-night—and running through the front room she attempted to ascend the stairs which led to the first floor. At the foot of the stairs, however, she met this Lascar scoundrel of whom I have spoken, who thrust her back and, aided by a Dane, who acts as assistant there, pushed her out into the street. Filled with the most maddening doubts and fears, she rushed down the lane and, by rare good-fortune, met in Fresno Street a number of constables with an inspector, all on their way to their beat. The inspector and two men accompanied her back, and in spite of the continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their way to the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been seen. There was no sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that floor there was no one to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who, it seems, made his home there. Both he and the Lascar stoutly swore that no one else had been in the front room during the afternoon. So determined was their denial that the inspector was staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs. St. Clair had been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell a cascade of children’s bricks. It was the toy which he had promised to bring home.
“This discovery, and the evident confusion which the cripple showed, made the inspector realise that the matter was serious. The rooms were carefully examined, and results all pointed to an abominable crime. The front room was plainly furnished as a sitting-room and led into a small bedroom, which looked out upon the back of one of the wharves. Between the wharf and the bedroom window is a narrow strip, which is dry at low tide but is covered at high tide with at least four and a half feet of water. The bedroom window was a broad one and opened from below. On examination traces of blood were to be seen upon the windowsill, and several scattered drops were visible upon the wooden floor of the bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the front room were all the clothes of Mr. Neville St. Clair, with the exception of his coat. His boots, his socks, his hat, and his watch—all were there. There were no signs of violence upon any of these garments, and there were no other traces of Mr. Neville St. Clair. Out of the window he must apparently have gone for no other exit could be discovered, and the ominous bloodstains upon the sill gave little promise that he could save himself by swimming, for the tide was at its very highest at the moment of the tragedy.
“And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately implicated in the matter. The Lascar was known to be a man of the vilest antecedents, but as, by Mrs. St. Clair’s story, he was known to have been at the foot of the stair within a very few seconds of her husband’s appearance at the window, he could hardly have been more than an accessory to the crime. His defence was one of absolute ignorance, and he protested that he had no knowledge as to the doings of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and that he could not account in any way for the presence of the missing gentleman’s clothes.
“So much for the Lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was certainly the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. Clair. His name is Hugh Boone, and his hideous face is one which is familiar to every man who goes much to the City. He is a professional beggar, though in order to avoid the police regulations he pretends to a small trade in wax vestas. Some little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the left-hand side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in the wall. Here it is that this creature takes his daily seat, cross-legged with his tiny stock of matches on his lap, and as he is a piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends into the greasy leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him. I have watched the fellow more than once before ever I thought of making his professional acquaintance, and I have been surprised at the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by. This is the man whom we now learn to have been the lodger at the opium den, and to have been the last man to see the gentleman of whom we are in quest.”
“But a cripple!” said I. “What could he have done single-handed against a man in the prime of life?”
“He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp; but in other respects he appears to be a powerful and well-nurtured man. Surely your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that weakness in one limb is often compensated for by exceptional strength in the others.”
“Pray continue your narrative.”
“Mrs. St. Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the window, and she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her presence could be of no help to them in their investigations. Inspector Barton, who had charge of the case, made a very careful examination of the premises, but without finding anything which threw any light upon the matter. One mistake had been made in not arresting Boone instantly, as he was allowed some few minutes during which he might have communicated with his friend the Lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he was seized and searched, without anything being found which could incriminate him. There were, it is true, some blood-stains upon his right shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his ring-finger, which had been cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from there, adding that he had been to the window not long before, and that the stains which had been observed there came doubtless from the same source. He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr. Neville St. Clair and swore that the presence of the clothes in his room was as much a mystery to him as to the police. As to Mrs. St. Clair’s assertion that she had actually seen her husband at the window, he declared that she must have been either mad or dreaming. He was removed, loudly protesting, to the police-station, while the inspector remained upon the premises in the hope that the ebbing tide might afford some fresh clue.
“And it did, though they hardly found upon the mud-bank what they had feared to find. It was Neville St. Clair’s coat, and not Neville St. Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded. And what do you think they found in the pockets?”
“I cannot imagine.”
“No, I don’t think you would guess. Every pocket stuffed with pennies and half-pennies--421 pennies and 270 half-pennies. It was no wonder that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a human body is a different matter. There is a fierce eddy between the wharf and the house. It seemed likely enough that the weighted coat had remained when the stripped body had been sucked away into the river.”
“But I understand that all the other clothes were found in the room. Would the body be dressed in a coat alone?”
“No, sir, but the facts might be met speciously enough. Suppose that this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the window, there is no human eye which could have seen the deed. What would he do then? It would of course instantly strike him that he must get rid of the tell-tale garments. He would seize the coat, then, and be in the act of throwing it out, when it would occur to him that it would swim and not sink. He has little time, for he has heard the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard from his Lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure of the coat’s sinking. He throws it out, and would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the window when the police appeared.”
“It certainly sounds feasible.”
“Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a better. Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the station, but it could not be shown that there had ever before been anything against him. He had for years been known as a professional beggar, but his life appeared to have been a very quiet and innocent one. There the matter stands at present, and the questions which have to be solved—what Neville St. Clair was doing in the opium den, what happened to him when there, where is he now, and what Hugh Boone had to do with his disappearance—are all as far from a solution as ever. I confess that I cannot recall any case within my experience which looked at the first glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties.”
While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great town until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and we rattled along with a country hedge upon either side of us. Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.
“We are on the outskirts of Lee,” said my companion. “We have touched on three English counties in our short drive, starting in Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. See that light among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside that lamp sits a woman whose anxious ears have already, I have little doubt, caught the clink of our horse’s feet.”
“But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?” I asked.
“Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here. Mrs. St. Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal, and you may rest assured that she will have nothing but a welcome for my friend and colleague. I hate to meet her, Watson, when I have no news of her husband. Here we are. Whoa, there, whoa!”
We had pulled up in front of a large villa which stood within its own grounds. A stable-boy had run out to the horse’s head, and springing down, I followed Holmes up the small, winding gravel-drive which led to the house. As we approached, the door flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing question.
“Well?” she cried, “well?” And then, seeing that there were two of us, she gave a cry of hope which sank into a groan as she saw that my companion shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
“No good news?”
“None.”
“No bad?”
“No.”
“Thank God for that. But come in. You must be weary, for you have had a long day.”
“This is my friend, Dr. Watson. He has been of most vital use to me in several of my cases, and a lucky chance has made it possible for me to bring him out and associate him with this investigation.”
“I am delighted to see you,” said she, pressing my hand warmly. “You will, I am sure, forgive anything that may be wanting in our arrangements, when you consider the blow which has come so suddenly upon us.”
“My dear madam,” said I, “I am an old campaigner, and if I were not I can very well see that no apology is needed. If I can be of any assistance, either to you or to my friend here, I shall be indeed happy.”
“Now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said the lady as we entered a well-lit dining-room, upon the table of which a cold supper had been laid out, “I should very much like to ask you one or two plain questions, to which I beg that you will give a plain answer.”
“Certainly, madam.”
“Do not trouble about my feelings. I am not hysterical, nor given to fainting. I simply wish to hear your real, real opinion.”
“Upon what point?”
“In your heart of hearts, do you think that Neville is alive?”
Sherlock Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by the question. “Frankly, now!” she repeated, standing upon the rug and looking keenly down at him as he leaned back in a basket-chair.
“Frankly, then, madam, I do not.”
“You think that he is dead?”
“I do.”
“Murdered?”
“I don’t say that. Perhaps.”
“And on what day did he meet his death?”
“On Monday.”
“Then perhaps, Mr. Holmes, you will be good enough to explain how it is that I have received a letter from him to-day.”
Sherlock Holmes sprang out of his chair as if he had been galvanised.
“What!” he roared.
“Yes, to-day.” She stood smiling, holding up a little slip of paper in the air.
“May I see it?”
“Certainly.”
He snatched it from her in his eagerness, and smoothing it out upon the table he drew over the lamp and examined it intently. I had left my chair and was gazing at it over his shoulder. The envelope was a very coarse one and was stamped with the Gravesend postmark and with the date of that very day, or rather of the day before, for it was considerably after midnight.
“Coarse writing,” murmured Holmes. “Surely this is not your husband’s writing, madam.”
“No, but the enclosure is.”
“I perceive also that whoever addressed the envelope had to go and inquire as to the address.”
“How can you tell that?”
“The name, you see, is in perfectly black ink, which has dried itself. The rest is of the greyish colour, which shows that blotting-paper has been used. If it had been written straight off, and then blotted, none would be of a deep black shade. This man has written the name, and there has then been a pause before he wrote the address, which can only mean that he was not familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles. Let us now see the letter. Ha! there has been an enclosure here!”
“Yes, there was a ring. His signet-ring.”
“And you are sure that this is your husband’s hand?”
“One of his hands.”
“One?”
“His hand when he wrote hurriedly. It is very unlike his usual writing, and yet I know it well.”
“’Dearest do not be frightened. All will come well. There is a huge error which it may take some little time to rectify. Wait in patience.—NEVILLE.’ Written in pencil upon the fly-leaf of a book, octavo size, no water-mark. Hum! Posted to-day in Gravesend by a man with a dirty thumb. Ha! And the flap has been gummed, if I am not very much in error, by a person who had been chewing tobacco. And you have no doubt that it is your husband’s hand, madam?”
“None. Neville wrote those words.”
“And they were posted to-day at Gravesend. Well, Mrs. St. Clair, the clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the danger is over.”
“But he must be alive, Mr. Holmes.”
“Unless this is a clever forgery to put us on the wrong scent. The ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from him.”
“No, no; it is, it is his very own writing!”
“Very well. It may, however, have been written on Monday and only posted to-day.”
“That is possible.”
“If so, much may have happened between.”
“Oh, you must not discourage me, Mr. Holmes. I know that all is well with him. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I should know if evil came upon him. On the very day that I saw him last he cut himself in the bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room rushed upstairs instantly with the utmost certainty that something had happened. Do you think that I would respond to such a trifle and yet be ignorant of his death?”
“I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. And in this letter you certainly have a very strong piece of evidence to corroborate your view. But if your husband is alive and able to write letters, why should he remain away from you?”
“I cannot imagine. It is unthinkable.”
“And on Monday he made no remarks before leaving you?”
“No.”
“And you were surprised to see him in Swandam Lane?”
“Very much so.”
“Was the window open?”
“Yes.”
“Then he might have called to you?”
“He might.”
“He only, as I understand, gave an inarticulate cry?”
“Yes.”
“A call for help, you thought?”
“Yes. He waved his hands.”
“But it might have been a cry of surprise. Astonishment at the unexpected sight of you might cause him to throw up his hands?”
“It is possible.”
“And you thought he was pulled back?”
“He disappeared so suddenly.”
“He might have leaped back. You did not see anyone else in the room?”
“No, but this horrible man confessed to having been there, and the Lascar was at the foot of the stairs.”
“Quite so. Your husband, as far as you could see, had his ordinary clothes on?”
“But without his collar or tie. I distinctly saw his bare throat.”
“Had he ever spoken of Swandam Lane?”
“Never.”
“Had he ever showed any signs of having taken opium?”
“Never.”
“Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about which I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little supper and then retire, for we may have a very busy day to-morrow.”
A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night.
“Awake, Watson?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Game for a morning drive?”
“Certainly.”
“Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out.” He chuckled to himself as he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed a different man to the sombre thinker of the previous night.
As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly finished when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was putting in the horse.
“I want to test a little theory of mine,” said he, pulling on his boots. “I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the key of the affair now.”
“And where is it?” I asked, smiling.
“In the bathroom,” he answered. “Oh, yes, I am not joking,” he continued, seeing my look of incredulity. “I have just been there, and I have taken it out, and I have got it in this Gladstone bag. Come on, my boy, and we shall see whether it will not fit the lock.”
We made our way downstairs as quietly as possible, and out into the bright morning sunshine. In the road stood our horse and trap, with the half-clad stable-boy waiting at the head. We both sprang in, and away we dashed down the London Road. A few country carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as some city in a dream.
“It has been in some points a singular case,” said Holmes, flicking the horse on into a gallop. “I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”
In town the earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily from their windows as we drove through the streets of the Surrey side. Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the river, and dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the right and found ourselves in Bow Street. Sherlock Holmes was well known to the force, and the two constables at the door saluted him. One of them held the horse’s head while the other led us in.
“Who is on duty?” asked Holmes.
“Inspector Bradstreet, sir.”
“Ah, Bradstreet, how are you?” A tall, stout official had come down the stone-flagged passage, in a peaked cap and frogged jacket. “I wish to have a quiet word with you, Bradstreet.” “Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Step into my room here.” It was a small, office-like room, with a huge ledger upon the table, and a telephone projecting from the wall. The inspector sat down at his desk.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?”
“I called about that beggarman, Boone—the one who was charged with being concerned in the disappearance of Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee.”
“Yes. He was brought up and remanded for further inquiries.”
“So I heard. You have him here?”
“In the cells.”
“Is he quiet?”
“Oh, he gives no trouble. But he is a dirty scoundrel.”
“Dirty?”
“Yes, it is all we can do to make him wash his hands, and his face is as black as a tinker’s. Well, when once his case has been settled, he will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you saw him, you would agree with me that he needed it.”
“I should like to see him very much.”
“Would you? That is easily done. Come this way. You can leave your bag.”
“No, I think that I’ll take it.”
“Very good. Come this way, if you please.” He led us down a passage, opened a barred door, passed down a winding stair, and brought us to a whitewashed corridor with a line of doors on each side.
“The third on the right is his,” said the inspector. “Here it is!” He quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the door and glanced through.
“He is asleep,” said he. “You can see him very well.”
We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up one side of the upper lip, so that three teeth were exposed in a perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright red hair grew low over his eyes and forehead.
“He’s a beauty, isn’t he?” said the inspector.
“He certainly needs a wash,” remarked Holmes. “I had an idea that he might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me.” He opened the Gladstone bag as he spoke, and took out, to my astonishment, a very large bath-sponge.
“He! he! You are a funny one,” chuckled the inspector.
“Now, if you will have the great goodness to open that door very quietly, we will soon make him cut a much more respectable figure.”
“Well, I don’t know why not,” said the inspector. “He doesn’t look a credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?” He slipped his key into the lock, and we all very quietly entered the cell. The sleeper half turned, and then settled down once more into a deep slumber. Holmes stooped to the water-jug, moistened his sponge, and then rubbed it twice vigorously across and down the prisoner’s face.
“Let me introduce you,” he shouted, “to Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee, in the county of Kent.”
Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The man’s face peeled off under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the coarse brown tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face! A twitch brought away the tangled red hair, and there, sitting up in his bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and smooth-skinned, rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy bewilderment. Then suddenly realising the exposure, he broke into a scream and threw himself down with his face to the pillow.
“Great heavens!” cried the inspector, “it is, indeed, the missing man. I know him from the photograph.”
The prisoner turned with the reckless air of a man who abandons himself to his destiny. “Be it so,” said he. “And pray what am I charged with?”
“With making away with Mr. Neville St.—Oh, come, you can’t be charged with that unless they make a case of attempted suicide of it,” said the inspector with a grin. “Well, I have been twenty-seven years in the force, but this really takes the cake.”
“If I am Mr. Neville St. Clair, then it is obvious that no crime has been committed, and that, therefore, I am illegally detained.”
“No crime, but a very great error has been committed,” said Holmes. “You would have done better to have trusted you wife.”
“It was not the wife; it was the children,” groaned the prisoner. “God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God! What an exposure! What can I do?”
Sherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him kindly on the shoulder.
“If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up,” said he, “of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand, if you convince the police authorities that there is no possible case against you, I do not know that there is any reason that the details should find their way into the papers. Inspector Bradstreet would, I am sure, make notes upon anything which you might tell us and submit it to the proper authorities. The case would then never go into court at all.”
“God bless you!” cried the prisoner passionately. “I would have endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable secret as a family blot to my children.
“You are the first who have ever heard my story. My father was a schoolmaster in Chesterfield, where I received an excellent education. I travelled in my youth, took to the stage, and finally became a reporter on an evening paper in London. One day my editor wished to have a series of articles upon begging in the metropolis, and I volunteered to supply them. There was the point from which all my adventures started. It was only by trying begging as an amateur that I could get the facts upon which to base my articles. When an actor I had, of course, learned all the secrets of making up, and had been famous in the green-room for my skill. I took advantage now of my attainments. I painted my face, and to make myself as pitiable as possible I made a good scar and fixed one side of my lip in a twist by the aid of a small slip of flesh-coloured. Then with a red head of hair, and an appropriate dress, I took my station in the business part of the city, ostensibly as a match-seller but really as a beggar. For seven hours I plied my trade, and when I returned home in the evening I found to my surprise that I had received no less than 26s. 4d.
“I wrote my articles and thought little more of the matter until, some time later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ served upon me for 25 pounds. I was at my wit’s end where to get the money, but a sudden idea came to me. I begged a fortnight’s grace from the creditor, asked for a holiday from my employers, and spent the time in begging in the City under my disguise. In ten days I had the money and had paid the debt.
“Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous work at 2 pounds a week when I knew that I could earn as much in a day by smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on the ground, and sitting still. It was a long fight between my pride and the money, but the dollars won at last, and I threw up reporting and sat day after day in the corner which I had first chosen, inspiring pity by my ghastly face and filling my pockets with coppers. Only one man knew my secret. He was the keeper of a low den in which I used to lodge in Swandam Lane, where I could every morning emerge as a squalid beggar and in the evenings transform myself into a well-dressed man about town. This fellow, a Lascar, was well paid by me for his rooms, so that I knew that my secret was safe in his possession.
“Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of money. I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn 700 pounds a year—which is less than my average takings—but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City. All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take 2 pounds.
“As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country, and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my real occupation. My dear wife knew that I had business in the City. She little knew what.
“Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my room above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw, to my horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the street, with her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of surprise, threw up my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my confidant, the Lascar, entreated him to prevent anyone from coming up to me. I heard her voice downstairs, but I knew that she could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off my clothes, pulled on those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and wig. Even a wife’s eyes could not pierce so complete a disguise. But then it occurred to me that there might be a search in the room, and that the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of the window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes would have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of constables up the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather, I confess, to my relief, that instead of being identified as Mr. Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his murderer.
“I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I was determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and hence my preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would be terribly anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the Lascar at a moment when no constable was watching me, together with a hurried scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to fear.”
“That note only reached her yesterday,” said Holmes.
“Good God! What a week she must have spent!”
“The police have watched this Lascar,” said Inspector Bradstreet, “and I can quite understand that he might find it difficult to post a letter unobserved. Probably he handed it to some sailor customer of his, who forgot all about it for some days.”
“That was it,” said Holmes, nodding approvingly; “I have no doubt of it. But have you never been prosecuted for begging?”
“Many times; but what was a fine to me?”
“It must stop here, however,” said Bradstreet. “If the police are to hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone.”
“I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take.”
“In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps may be taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out. I am sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for having cleared the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your results.”
“I reached this one,” said my friend, “by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.”

 

Source: https://skywatch.brainiac.com/holmes/annoTWIS.doc

Web site to visit: https://skywatch.brainiac.com

Author of the text: indicated on the source document of the above text

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous creation of the Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Since Holmes’s first literary appearance in 1887, he has become the archetype of the amateur private detective. Although Sherlock Holmes is not the first private detective who entered the world of fiction, the fame he reached after his literary birth dwarfed his fictional predecessors and started his way to eternity. In the last 125 years, he has kept an eye on his Britain in the original stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as well as in a vast number of pastiches and adaptations. Along with his faithful companion Dr. Watson, they have repeatedly appeared in all kinds of literature, movies and TV programmes. While some of the adaptations keep the detective in his original environment of Victorian London, others have moved the detective in place and time and employed his scientific methods in different social or political contexts. 
            The aim of this thesis is to introduce the original work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring Sherlock Holmes and offer a comparative analysis of Doyle’s texts and the recent BBC TV series Sherlock. The latter was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis in 2010 and updates the famous detective for the modern era of the twenty-first century. The first part of the thesis, consisting of chapters The Roots of Detective Fiction and Sherlock Holmes, has an introductory character. The second part, which includes chapters A Study in Symbols and The Rise and Fall of Sherlock Holmes, brings an analysis of selected works and tries to decipher the main messages that the authors convey as well as the social and political subtext carried in both Doyle’s writing and Sherlock.
            The Chapter The Roots of Detective Fiction, captures the ‘pre-Holmes period’ of the genre. Its aim is to introduce the history of modern detective fiction, its pioneers such Edgar Allan Poe, Emilie Gaboriau, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins and their works which served as an inspiration to Doyle when he created his eccentric detective. Apart from the cultural survey of Doyle’s predecessors, it introduces the social and political conditions of the Victorian Era that powered the popularity of the new genre. 
            The following chapter titled Sherlock Holmes starts with the introduction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his life and work. Furthermore, it introduces the basic premises of the Sherlock Holmes stories. It answers questions as to why Doyle created a science-minded and rationally thinking detective and suggests which literary and real life models served him as inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes. It mentions fictional detectives such as Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin or Emilie Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq as well as figures such as Dr. Joseph Bell and Oscar Wilde. The chapter also does not forget to introduce other essential characters of Sherlock Holmes stories such as Dr. Watson, Ms. Hudson and Professor Moriarty. Lastly, it brings a short overview of some of the most notable TV and film adaptations. 
            The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the comparative analysis. Its first chapter A Study in Symbols deals with Doyle’s premier novel of the original canon, A Study in Scarlet, and the opening episode of Sherlock called A Study in Pink. It analyses the social, cultural and political backgrounds of both stories. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes to tackle issues such as social injustice, insufficient methods of the official police force and, most importantly, to carry a message of the superiority of science and rationality over the traditional religious beliefs. Sherlock tackles social issues of modern society such as acceptance of homosexuality and gender equality. It also brings new views on science and technology by showing both the good and bad of the technological era.
            The second part of the analysis is called The Rise and Fall of Sherlock Holmes. It deals with Doyle’s story The Final Problem and the closing episode of the second season of Sherlock titled Reichenbach Fall. The chapter looks closely at the characters of Professor Moriarty and Jim Moriarty as they symbolize dangers and threats related to the respective societies. The main significance of the two stories, however, lies in the fact that they bring, at least temporarily, the detectives’ missions to an end. While Sherlock Holmes could not escape the hatred of its own creator, Sherlock kills himself to save his beloved.  The thesis tries to analyse how the circumstances of their deaths reflect the overall messages of both Doyle’s text and the Sherlock series.
            The strong focus of chapters A Study in Symbols and The Rise and Fall of Sherlock Holmes is also put on Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock’s personalities and the nature of their relationships with Dr. Watson and John respectively. I deliberately chose to analyse the opening stories of both Doyle’s canon and Sherlock series as they define the two main characters and their relationships. Stories The Final Problem and Reichenbach Fall were selected as they close important chapters of the lives of both Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock. The thesis aims to prove that while Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing celebrates reason over faith, Sherlock searches for a balance between rationality and humanity. It also examines how Doyle’s texts and Sherlock reflect societies in which both Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock live in.
            In the thesis, I rely heavily on the original texts written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the TV series Sherlock. These are stated as primary sources. The abbreviations used when citing Doyle’s books and Sherlock episodes are listed in the appendix of this thesis. Apart from the primary sources, the thesis benefits from information found in resources such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica or sections of The Biography Channel Website dedicated to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his work. The arguments in the comparative analysis are supported mainly by selected essays from compilations Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations and Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series. All other secondary sources which are not mentioned here are listed in chapter Works Cited.

 

2. The Roots of Detective Fiction

2.1. Introduction      
The modern detective story as a narrative genre emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century. While its birth might be a subject of both academic and public discourses, there is one date that stands head and shoulders above others. It is April 1841, when Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), an American short-story writer poet and critic, introduced his fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin to the world of literature in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The character featured in two other stories, The Purloined Letter (1845) and The Mystery of Marie Roget (1845), and became a prototype for many to follow including Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Émile Gaboriau and, eventually, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose original work and its adaptations are the primary focus of this thesis. This chapter looks at the roots of modern detective fiction and aims to analyze the pre-Holmes period of the genre from literary and social perspectives.

2.2 The Birth of the New Genre
Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the detective story as “type of popular literature in which a crime is introduced and investigated and the culprit is revealed.” Furthermore, it lists five traditional elements of the genre:
1. The seemingly perfect crime            
2. The wrongly accused suspect at whom circumstantial evidence points
3. The bungling of dim witted police
4. The greater power of observation and superior mind of the detective
5. The startling and unexpected denouement, in which the detective reveals how the identity of the culprit was ascertained (“detective story”).
These ‘rules’ were firmly set by Poe in his three stories, for which he is usually regarded as the inventor of the modern detective fiction, yet even he had precursors of his own. Towery argues that “seeds of the genre are to found as far back as ancient times”, as the fascination by crime and mystery is as old as humankind. The literary origins of the genre are compiled in The Omnibus of Crime (1929) by Dorothy L. Sayers. The list includes a number of apocryphal books of the Bible, names such as Voltaire, Robert Greene or William Goldwin as well as the periodical The Newgate Calendar – the annals of crime published through the eighteenth and nineteenth century in Great Britain. More importantly, there were a couple of modern detective stories published before 1841, namely Das Fraulein von Scuderi (1819) by E.T.A. Hoffman, The Secret Cell (1837) and The Cork Leg (1838) by William Edwin Burton. These, however, enjoyed almost no readership at the time of their creation compared to some 5000 subscribers to Graham’s Magazine by the time The Murders in the Rue Morgue was first published on its pages.
The common feature of all detective stories is the element of mystery. As a word, mystery refers to the unknown or the unanswered. As a literary theme, it is strongly associated with the genre that predated the modern detective fiction, the Gothic Novel. The gothic novels also referred to as Gothic romance or Gothic horror novels often employed mysterious elements - dark and gloomy settings such as medieval castles and ruins, underground passages, long-hidden family secrets or the supernatural in their plots. If Poe has the credit for inventing the detective story, then Horace Walpole (1717-1797) earned his for starting the vogue for the Gothic Novel by writing The Castle of Otranto (1764). In the heyday of the genre, by the turn of the nineteenth century, he was followed by authors such as Ann Radcliffe (Mysteries of Udolpho, Italian), Matthew Gregory Lewis (The Monk) or Melmoth the Wanderer (Frankenstein).
Later in the nineteenth century, Poe extracted the elements of mystery from the gothic novel and made them a core theme of his stories. Rollyson argues that in Poe’s detective stories “the mystery goes from being only one of the elements in a story to being the central purpose of the story.” Thus crime, the symbol of the unknown or the unanswered, became the centre of the plot. Inspired by The Memoirs of Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), a French venturesome criminalist and the founder of the first official detective bureau, and Voltaire’s Zadig (1748) Poe created, as Panek calls it, “a grouchy, condescending, misanthropist genius” (7). C. Auguste Dupin, an amateur detective, speaks to a reader through a less intelligent, in this case unnamed acquaintance, who serves as a perfect foil to the brilliance of the mastermind detective. “In this story (The Murders in the Rue Morgue), then, can be seen the prototypes for future pairings of detectives and companions, of which the most famous include Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings, and Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin” (Rollyson)
            Soon after the publishing of Poe’s short stories, the detective story grew into novel length, and then, metaphorically speaking, took off to the races. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) carefully entered the world of detective fiction with Bleak House (1853), a novel featuring Inspector Bucket solving a murder case. Dickens’ another detective story, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) ended unfinished owing to the author’s sudden death. The increasing demand for such stories was answered by Dickens’ friend, admirer and occasional collaborator, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889). His The Moonstone (1868) is considered one of the first English detective stories and several features of the book became conventions of the genre. “The reader has all the clues before the crime is solved, yet the solution comes as a complete surprise. Several different people are plausibly suspected of theft. The plot is complicated and features red herrings, false alibis, suspicious behaviour, and thrilling scenes.” (“The Moonstone”)
Detective fiction was also booming outside of the British Isles. The French novelist Emile Gaboriau (1832 -1873) laid groundwork for a scientific minded sleuth with great observation skills by creating his Monsieur Lecoq who featured in L’Affaire Lerouge (1866), Le Crime de Orcival (1867), Le Dossier no.113 (1867), Les Esclaves des Paris (1868) and Monsieur Lecoq (1868). Lecoq was, similar to Poe’s Dupin, inspired by Eugène François Vidocq and became one of the main acknowledged influences on Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.  Unlike Dupin, however, Lecoq was no private detective, but an employee of La Sûreté Nationale (founded by Vidocq in 1812), the original title for The French National Police.
The popularity of detective stories flourished gradually throughout the nineteenth century hand in hand with both increasing literacy and improving accessibility of texts. The most notable characters such as Poe’s eccentric Auguste Dupin, Dickens’ Inspector Bucket, Collins’s methodical Sergeant Cuff or Gaboriau’s deductive Monsieur Lecoq set the cornerstone of the trend that was shortly to become established as a literary genre of its own.

2.3. Social Context   
            Despite its indubitable American and French roots (Poe and Gaboriau), the genre of detective fiction entrenched in the Great Britain and, thanks to authors like Dickens, Collins and, most importantly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, become characteristically British. Its development is, therefore, strongly connected to social conditions before and during the Victorian Age (1837–1901). The changing nature of society in the late eighteenth century changed, inevitably, the nature of crime too. “The industrial revolution brought about not only the growth of the city (by 1851, over half of the population of Britain was located in urban areas), but also an economy which was beginning to set more value by its portable property than land. The theft of property thus became a real threat, especially in an environment where thousands of people were living in close proximity” (Pittard). Consequently, the Metropolitan Police of London – the first professional force in England was established in 1829. By the time of its foundation, however, it did not have a detective department. It was not until 1842 when “a few well-publicised failures to detect crime in the early 1840’s and an attempt on the life of the young Queen Victoria in May 1842, provoked harsh public criticism of police performance, and fostered a recognition in the police leadership that crime investigation required special skills, experience and a professional approach, which the common policeman lacked” (Makov 169), that the first permanent cadre of plainclothes crime-fighters, later known as Scotland Yard, was founded.         
Soon after the profession of detective came into being, detectives of all kinds began to enter the world of literary fiction. Speaking of detectives, Makov points out that in the fiction of the nineteenth century, the term detective had a rather broad meaning: “In addition to persons who enforced the law as employees of the police, the texts featured numerous private detectives – either self employed or employees of a private agency.” The latter category also includes those “who undertook the task of detection not as livelihood, but by accident, for altruistic reasons, as a hobby or as a way to advance their own private interests” (165).  While during the 1850s and 1860s, many public servants were made into heroes in texts – mainly due to the contribution of Dickens and Collins – later in the nineteenth century, they were to give way to private sleuths, who were assigned much greater and superior role as guardian of justice. As Pittard puts it, crime fiction emphasizes “the role of the official detective as the employee of whoever wanted the mystery solved rather than the independent restorer of order.”       
Apart from the novelty of the detective work and the ingenious skills of writers, it was also the intense public debate on law and judicial practices that took place in Great Britain of the nineteenth century that fuelled a boom of the arising phenomenon. Insufficient access to counsel before the Prisoners' Counsel Act of 1836, the misuse of capital punishment during the ‘bloody code’ period, the lack of direct or circumstantial evidence – forensic science was at its infancy back then – led to significant “flaws of judicial processes” (Panek 3). At the time when the above mentioned topics become the order of the day, Dickens hit the bull’s eye with his abolitionist approach to capital punishment, as did Gaboriau and later Doyle with their evidence and science-minded detectives.

 

3. Sherlock Holmes

3.1. Mr. Sherlock Holmes
            “I’ve found it! I’ve found it, I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin and by nothing else”, with these words of delight over the “most practical medico-legal discovery for years” (SS 10), Sherlock Holmes enters the world of fiction. A moment later, he is showing “his little peculiarity” to his newly acquired companion, Dr. John H. Watson. The year is 1881 and the two are about to move into a suite at No. 221, Baker Street. The book is called A Study in Scarlet and Sherlock Holmes is ready to set off on his journey “across Victorian landscapes of yellow-fogged, gas-lit London, dashing hansom cabs and England’s wild, Gothic countryside.” (Ellis 41). In the period between 1881 and 1914, Holmes was fighting crime of all sorts in fifty six stories and four novels written by his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Thus the “most perfect reasoning and observing machine” (Doyle, TASH 2) with a soft spot for science, violins and cocaine became an icon of world literature. “Come, Watson, come!” he cried. The game is afoot.” (Doyle, TRSH 423)

3.2. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
            Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930), Scottish writer and physician, was born on May 22, 1859 in Edinburg to a wealthy Irish Catholic family. Since his childhood, Doyle got exposed to a wide range of literature owing to his mother’s passion for books and her gift of storytelling. Doyle acknowledged her influence upon his future work in his own biography: "In my early childhood, as far as I can remember anything at all, the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life." (“Sherlock Holmes online”)
After graduating from Stonyhurst College, the young Doyle decided to follow a medical career and entered the University of Edinburgh. It was during his studies in Edinburgh when Doyle, driven by the changes in society, formed his opinion on science and its progressive ideas.”He was part of the new generation that mostly ignored the theological implication on their work and lifestyle and instead relied on empiricism and expertise that defied the old conventions” (Isokoski 2). This worldview is running through Doyle’s work like the scarlet thread of murder through the colourless skein of life of his most famous character.
While still at school, he wrote his first story The Mystery of the Sasassa Valley (1879). The story, which was strongly influenced by his favourite authors at the time, Edgar Allan Poe and Bret Harte, was published Chamber's Journal in Edinburgh. It was followed by The American’s Tale (1879), published in London Society.  A few years later, as a married man, he moved down to Portsmouth and opened his own medical practice. It secured him a comfortable income, but as ambitious as he was, Doyle often suffered from boredom when not occupied with patients. To kill the boredom and satisfy his craving for recognition as an author, he took up writing again; “During the next years, the young man divided his time between trying to be a good doctor and struggling to become a recognized author” (“Sherlock Holmes online”)
All his hard penning efforts came to fruition in 1887 when, after rejection by three other publishers, Beeton’s Christmas Annual published his novel A Study in Scarlet, in which Doyle’s most famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, first appeared. The birth of the character brought him fame. On the other hand, however, it prefigured a dichotomy that accompanied Doyle for all his life as he felt that the character was taking him away from more serious forms of writing to which he wanted to devote his career. “There was Sherlock Holmes, who very quickly became world famous, in stories its author considered at best "commercial" and there were a number of serious historical novels, poems and plays, based upon which Conan Doyle expected to be recognized as a serious author.” (“Sherlock Holmes online”)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a well educated man of many interests. Except for the 56 stories and four novels featuring Sherlock Holmes, he utilized his talents and the medical background in novels such as The Firm of Girdlestone (1890), The Stark Munro Letters (1895) or Round the Red Lamp (1894). Historical fiction was enriched by “his tale of 14th-century chivalry, The White Company (1891), and its companion piece, Sir Nigel (1906)” (“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”). His involvement in the second Boer War (1899 – 1902), where he voluntarily served as a doctor, swung his attention towards military writing. It resulted in The Great Boer War (1900), The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 6 vol. (1916–20) and The Crime of the Congo (1909). His later work was dedicated to his support of spiritualism. The Biography channel explains that: “Back at the University of Edinburgh, Doyle became increasingly invested in Spiritualism or "Psychic religion," a belief system that he would later attempt to spread through a series of his written works”. These included Case for Spirit Photography (1922), Pheneas Speaks (1927) and a two-volume The History of Spiritualism (1926). Despite Doyle’s various contributions to both fictional and non-fictional literary genres, he is best known for what he called “lower stratum of literary achievement” (Ellis 45) - “creation of the detective Sherlock Holmes—one of the most vivid and enduring characters in English fiction.” (“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”)

3.3. The World’s Only Consulting Detective
            Sherringford was the detective’s names in Doyle’s first drafts before he changed it to the name of Irish origin, Sherlock. Why Doyle used this name has been a subject of discussions as he never revealed his motivations. According to Sherlock Holmes Society of London, “his first name may have come from Alfred Sherlock, a prominent violinist of his time.” Adams disagrees and suggests that the name was not necessarily borne by a real life model. She points out that Doyle thought that Sherringford was too formal a name and “scribbled some other names on a sheet of notepaper as he thought it over. Finally, he decided on Sherlock. Sherlock was the name for a man of action, of bravado, of mystery” (32). The surname allegedly came from an American jurist and fellow doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, whom Conan Doyle deeply admired.
As to his profession, Holmes’s very own description goes as follows: “Well, I have a trade on my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I’m a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of government detectives and lots of private ones, when these fellows are at fault, they come to me” (Doyle, ASIS 32). Holmes was, perhaps, the only consulting one, but clearly nor the first neither the only private detective in fiction. Doyle openly acknowledged that his character was loosely based on Dupin and Lecoq. Paying a tribute to them and showing Holmes’s superiority at the same time, he referred to them in A Study in Scarlet as “a very inferior fellow” and "a miserable bungler," (35) respectively.
In addition to his fictional forerunners, Holmes and his methods drew on real life figures too. His deductive methods, which he developed into the Science of Deduction, were inspired by those of Dr. Bell of University of Edinburg, under whom Doyle studied medicine:
He would look at the patient, he would hardly allow the patient to open his          mouth, but he would make his diagnosis of the disease, and also very often of    the patient's nationality and occupation and other points, entirely by his power of         observation. So naturally I thought to myself, well, if a scientific man like Bell          is to come into the detective business, he wouldn't do the thing by chance--          he'd get the thing by building it up, scientifically (“Arthur Conan Doyle           Biography”).
Doyle took Bell’s methods to an almost absurd degree and endowed his Holmes with the great intelligence and the gift of superb perceptiveness.
It was mainly the employment of science that distinguished Holmes from other fictional detectives. Instead of stumbling on his results by chance or luck like other detectives did, he would make use of scientific methods, forensics and logic. The second half of the nineteenth century met the raise of Scientific Rationalism after Charles Darwin (1809 – 1892) challenged the theory of Creationism in his On the Origin of Species (1859) by “suggesting that the mysteries of the physical world could be explained by science” (“The Era of Sherlock Holmes“).Holmes, who put reason above all other things, was a perfect bearer of Darwin’s legacy. Rosemary Jann of Masterpiece Theatre believes that “Through the character of Holmes, Doyle brilliantly popularized the century's confidence in the uniform operation of scientific laws that allowed the trained observer to deduce causes from effects." As a master of reasoning and a true pioneer of forensics, Holmes, simply put, employs science to get beyond the mystery.
While Doyle made no secret of the scientific part of Sherlock Holmes being inspired by Dr. Bell, he never quite revealed his muses as to the eccentric features of the detective. Holmes’s occasional drug abuse, uncertain sexuality or a strong aesthetic sense did not clearly come out of thin air. Doyle’s autobiography offers one parallelism when he refers to his chronic alcoholic father as a “dreamy aesthetic figure” (Ellis 43). Apart from Doyle’s father, the second, much more notable real life model for the character of Holmes was that of Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900). Doyle and Wilde were friends and admirers of each other’s work. Ellis points out that: “the two writers got on like a house on fire” (43). Although never admitted, both physical and personal features of Wilde can be traced throughout the stories including Holmes himself.                    
Josef Steiff argues that “Holmes’s super powers of deduction are comparable to and perhaps not so different from Wilde’s poetic sense” (191).  He goes on and offers a link between Doyle’s and Wilde criticism of the society: “Wilde stuck up his nose at bourgeois English society the way Holmes belittles the same people for being philistines, and both made critics eat their words” (191).  While Steiff’s arguments are more of a philosophical nature, there are other, more easily noticeable glimpses of Wilde’s influence on Doyle’s writing. For example, Holmes’s physical appearance as described in A Study in Scarlet goes as follows: “In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision” Such description fits, not likely as a coincidence, Wilde at the time. Holmes’s ‘aversion to women’ and his peculiar relationship with Watson leave the question of the detective’s sexuality open and the chances are he may be, just like Wilde, homosexual.
In 1903, three years after Wilde’s death, Doyle ‘resurrected’ Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Empty House where Holmes tries to fool his assassins by having a wax image of himself – his own second image, which is a clear reference to Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). Furthermore, he introduced “The second most dangerous man in London” and the Irish “wild beast” (Doyle, TRSH 34) Colonel Sebastian Moran, whose name and initials “S.M” resembles those of Sebastian Melmoth – the name the Wilde used as a pseudonym after the release from prison in 1898.
Dupin’s eccentricity, Dr. Bell’s deductive methods and science mindedness, Wilde’s glamour and, above all, the great deal of intelligence – all put into a melting pot and employed to fight crime makes Holmes who he is – an eccentric genius with penetrating mind and eyes and ears that do not miss any detail, the world’s only consulting detective.

3.4. The Sidekick and the Others
            Sherlock Holmes stories also include noteworthy premises other than the eccentric detective. Whether Sherlock Holmes finds his way around the gloomy streets of yellow fogged, gas lit late Victorian London, meditates or kills boredom at Baker Street 221 or chases criminals over the continent, he never seems to be alone. This subchapter aims to introduce the others who are characteristic of the original canon. Namely, it is Holmes’s faithful and arguably only friend, Dr. Watson, the Baker Street landlady Mrs. Hudson,  the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty, detective’s elder brother Mycroft and “the woman” Irene Adler.
Dr. John H. Watson enjoyed the privilege of being Holmes’s Boswell without whom he would be lost as he complimented him in A Scandal in Bohemia by comparing his devoted assistant to James Boswell (1740-1795), the famous Scottish biographer and diarist. All but four stories of the canon are told from Watson’s first person perspective. Similarly to Dupin’s anonymous companion, Dr. John Watson takes readers through the adventures and let them admire Sherlock Holmes’s brilliance as it towers over his own ordinariness, which readers can identify with. Toadvine explains that: “He (Watson) serves as a foil to Holmes: the ordinary man against the brilliant, emotionally-detached analytical machine that Holmes can sometimes be” (58).
John H. Watson is a bearer of an ordinary and plain English name. Except for the undisclosed full middle name, it does not leave much space for speculation. Dorothy Sayers suggests that “the H stands for “Hamish”, the Scottish version of James” (Doyle, S 98). This theory is evidence based as Watson’s first wife Mary calls him James instead of John in The Man with the Twisted Lip. Watson is a proper Englishman, an Afghan war veteran, a military type who is gravitated to London after his involuntary withdrawal from the war scene following the strike of a “Jezail bullet” (Doyle, ASIS 7). There, after being introduced by the never-to-be-seen again Stamford, Holmes gets his friend, biographer and narrator: “someone close to Sherlock who could tell of his exploits and triumphs. A sort of comrade and friend, but an ordinary man and foil for this genius Sherlock.” (Adams)
While Holmes brought, unarguably, a formidable intellect to his work, Watson’s intellectual level is rather debatable. Despite his reputation of being, euphemistically put, slightly dim-witted, which was gained mostly from later adaptations rather than Doyle’s original work, Watson seems to deserve better than that. After all, he, same as his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, holds a degree of Doctor of Medicine and he is an exceptionally good writer, whose work never goes out of print. Prof. John Radford, psychologist and Holmes scholar defends Watson’s image by suggesting that given his education, medical and writing skills, his IQ would probably score around 130. He says that “The fact that Watson than appeared stupid compared to Holmes clearly puts Holmes considerably higher than 130” (“Arthur Conan Doyle Biography”). Adams explains the nature of this literary pairing: “Both were clever in their own ways. Where one was the innovator-experimental, daring, bold, self-absorbed and moody--the other was careful, cautious, solidly stable, predictable, and retiring. Together, they were the perfect team, two halves of a whole.” Watson simply carried the burden of escalating Holmes’s brilliance at the expense of his own.   
Besides his intimate acquaintance with Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes is strongly associated with 212B Baker Street, the London address he lives at. The place is inseparably connected with Mrs. Hudson who serves not only as Holmes’s landlady, but also as a gatekeeper of his rooms towards which many people gravitate in their search of justice. In The Adventure of the Dying Detective, Dr. Watson describes her feeling towards Watson: “The landlady stood in the deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem”. Not only does she tolerate “the constant parade of humanity in and out of her house” (Doyle, S 118), but also she goes as far as putting her own life at risk for Holmes in The Adventure of the Empty House. Thus, she plays an essential role in the stories.
With two exceptions, very little is known about Holmes’s family. In The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, readers learn that his grandmother was a sister of Vernet, the French artist (although not specified whether it is Claude Joseph or Antonie Charles Horace) and, more importantly, that Holmes has an elder brother. Mycroft Holmes only appears in four stories. As an exalted governmental official, he is claimed to be “the most indispensable man in the country” (Doyle, HLB 142). He lacks ambition and energy, but possesses the peculiar faculties of observation and deduction in a larger degree than Sherlock Holmes himself. Through the character of Mycroft Holmes Doyle asserts that such abilities are, at least to some extent, hereditary.  As such, he supports the Victorian scientific view of genetics and heredity that was shaped mainly by Sir Francis Galton (1822 – 1911), the British anthropologist and eugenicist, and his Hereditary Genius (1869).
Given the nature of his mission, Sherlock Holmes enjoyed the gratitude of those to whom he helped as well as the hatred of those who opposed him. The two most notably figures of the latter group are Irene Adler and Holmes’s formidable opponent Professor James Moriarty. The former appears in one and only short story, A Scandal in Bohemia, yet she is the most iconic female character in the canon nonetheless. Irene Adler is an adventuress, which is a euphemism of the time for a sexually liberated woman, and an early feministic figure. By outsmarting Holmes at the end of the story, she proves him wrong in his assumption that women are not capable of rational thinking to the same degree as men. For Holmes, “she eclipses and predominate the whole of her sex” (Doyle 25, TASH ). Quite ironically, for having the mind of a man, she is titled the woman.
In 1893, Doyle grew tired of his most famous creation. With his mind set on more serious forms of writing, he decided to kill Homes off. Loosely inspired by Minister D of Poe’s The Purloined Letter, Doyle introduced his powerful narrative device - Professor James Moriarty. This very gothic figure, “an abstract thinker” with “a brain of the first order” (Doyle, TMSH 415) is, as Holmes believes, behind every major crime in London, yet no one has ever heard of him. He is nothing less than a Holmes’s intellectual equal, negative image. To make a literary reference, if Holmes swapped his seven percent solution of cocaine for Dr. Jekyll’s potion, his polar twin would certainly come in a form of Professor Moriarty. Holmes and Moriarty are both highly intelligent, entirely fascinated by crime, either of working on the other side of the force. The ostensible death of Sherlock Holmes following his climactic fight with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem temporarily ended his canonical life and resulted in a new phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes outside of Doyle’s original stories.
3.5. The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes
            The invention of the motion picture camera dates back to 1888. Only a decade after the invention, Sherlock Holmes made his first screen appearance in a thirty-second long silent movie Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900). Since then, over 200 TV films and movies have seen a wide range of incarnations of the character with more than 70 actors lending their faces to the detective.  These numbers make Holmes “the most popular motion picture detective of all time” (McCaw 20). This subchapter focuses on introduction of the most notable Holmes interpretations starring Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Basil Rathbone played Holmes beside Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson in 14 movies between 1939 -1946. The series features stories such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) which are set in the Victorian period and follow, quite faithfully, the original canon. In stories like Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) or Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943), Holmes is confronted with the political evil of the time and carries out the anti-fascist message. McCaw states that: “This series of propaganda films implied the universal timelessness of Holmes as quasi-superhero” (20). This way, Holmes’s myth was taken from its original environment and employed in the new political and historical context.
Another quintessential incarnation of Holmes came in 1985 with Jeremy Brett who starred as the famous detective in Granada TV series. Alongside Dr. Watson played by David Burke and Edward Hardwicke respectively, Brett’s Holmes appeared in all 41 stories of the series of which their authors think as “the most faithful accurate adaptation of Sherlock Holmes ever brought to screen” (Doyle, S 278). The audacious attempt to adapt all 60 stories of the original canon ended Brett’s untimely death in 1995. Jeremy Brett’s portrayal of Holmes still remains very popular and, as Graham concludes, is the touchstone all subsequent versions of the character are measured against (29).
The first decade of the twenty first century offered numerous Holmes adaptations with two attracting the majority of the press attention. Guy Ritchie’s blockbuster Sherlock Holmes (2009) and its sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) find the odd couple, played by Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, in the late Victorian era, but update Sherlock Holmes as an action hero. Downey’s Holmes is always at the ready for physical combat, yet surrounds himself with a discourse of nostalgia which makes him “a complex hybrid of the high-tech and the traditional” (Veveris 46).  The commercial success of Guy Ritchie’s first movie was answered by the BBC production and its TV Series Sherlock starring Benedict Cumbertbatch as Sherlock and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson. This time, authors set Holmes in the digital era of the twenty first century. The series started with a three 90-minute episodes in 2010. The second series followed in 2012. A comparative analysis of the BBC TV series Sherlock and the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are the subject of the second part of this work.

 

4. A Study in Symbols

4.1 History Repeats Itself
            Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his first novel featuring Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet in 1887. The story is set in Victorian London of 1881 and begins with a return of John H. Watson, M.D, from the second Anglo-Afghan War. Being fairly limited by his low income of an army veteran and his poor medical state, Dr. Watson quickly finds himself forced to leave the metropolis or to change his hotel asylum for some more affordable quarters.  After making acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes, he chooses the latter option and the two shortly become involved in solving mysterious murder case which prefigures their strong literary relationship.   
In 2010, more than 120 years after Sherlock Holmes’s debut, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss introduce their TV series Sherlock produced by the BBC. The first episode of the series, which is, as stated in the opening credits, based on works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, bears the title A Study in Pink. In this contemporary adaptation, John Watson, who is played by Martin Freeman, returns from the War in Afghanistan that followed the terrorist attacks on metropolitan areas on New York and Washington in September 2001. Suffering from his war wounds, he is just as lost as his Victorian counterpart. Yet once again, his meaningless existence turns into a long chain of adventures when meeting a modern incarnation of the consulting detective Sherlock played by Benedict Cumberbatch.        
The next two subchapters offer an analysis of both A Study in Scarlet and A Study in Pink with the primary focus on their social and political context. This part of the thesis searches for important symbols in the two works. The face of London, the nature of crime, the Holmes-Watson relationship or the role of science and rationality reflect the state of societies at given moments in time and carry important messages that the authors of the two works tried to convey.

4.2. Light in the darkness
            The reign of Queen Victoria spanned nearly 75 years from 1837 – 1901. During the period, British Empire grew to rule more than 450 million people around the world. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the Victorian era as “the full flower of the British Empire” (“British Empire”). The overseas colonies such as India and parts of Africa rapidly expanded, which led to a significant growth of inter-imperial trade. This growth, together with the Industrial revolution, brought Britain an economic prosperity and allowed the formation of the new middle class. On the other hand, it widened the divide between the rich and poor. Also, the flourishing trade opened routes to Great Britain which resulted in an enormous growth of population. Linda Rulson of Standord University states that: “London grew at a great rate from one million people to six in the space of a century”. These changes deepened Britain’s social problems such as homelessness, poverty or drug abuse which, inevitably, led to a surge in crime. The flawed justice system of the time and outdated methods of the official force could not sufficiently stand up to these new threads. Therefore, the British society looked up to science and technology from a desire to protect their values.           
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was well aware of such desires when he brought his Sherlock Holmes to life in 1887. A Study in Scarlet is worth analysis as it touches the subject of employment of scientific methods where the police work fails, social injustice or the new threats to British sovereignty.  Thetitle of the book refers to the blood on the crime scene where the body of Enoch J. Grebber is found. In a broader sense, it presents the colour of blood, the symbol of crime, as a dominant theme of Holmes’s mission: “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.” (Doyle, ASIS71) Thus, in the opening story of the canon, Doyle defines Holmes’s main duty as well as the world he lives in.          
Despite the fact that he was occasionally lured to the countryside or even outside of the British Isles, Holmes’s main ‘battlefield’ was the streets of London. The metropolis was a heart of the British Empire, the economic centre and a great kaleidoscope of people and cultures. In A Study in Scarlet, readers learn about London before they have a chance to meet the central character of the story. Dr. Watson describes the city in his opening monologue as “the great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained” (8). Later in the book, he brings an account of its rather dark appearance: “It was a foggy, cloudy morning, and a dun-coloured veil hung over the house-tops, looking like the reflection of mud-coloured streets beneath” (43). The complexity and social diversity of late-Victorian London are pointedly characterized by Linda Rulson: “London could be a place of disturbing contrasts, a cosmopolitan city where the middle class drank tea in comfortable drawing rooms while epidemics of typhoid and cholera ravaged the squalid, overpopulated East End” (“Discovering Sherlock Holmes”). Doyle’s depiction of London gives the city a greater role. It becomes more of a character than a mere location. When making a remark on the horror of the crime scene, Dr. Watson likens the city to a human body when saying that: “I have seen death in many forms, but never has it appeared to me in a more fearsome aspect than in that dark grimy apartment, which looked out upon one of the main arteries of suburban London” (Doyle, ASIS 48). He compares the rush of London streets to a blood stream in a human body and thus suggests its vulnerability. With such a lively place, many of Doyle’s readers who were familiar with real images of crime and social inequality could easily identify.
The real identifier, however, comes with another character. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the majority of Doyle’s readership recruited from the newly formed literary middle-class. Since Sherlock Holmes hardly fit any late-Victorian social norm, Doyle needed a voice in the story to which the readers could relate. And here comes Dr. Watson.  Throughout the whole book, he is called by his professional title which marks his education and strengthens his middle class status.  His military past suggests bravery, which is endorsed in a scene when Dr. Watson follows, without any hesitancy, Holmes’s advice and load his “old service revolver” (Doyle, ASIS77), and his appraisal of family values, which fully develops further in the canon, make him a strong moral authority and a bearer of Victorian values. As such, he is a perfect agent for Doyle’s message.
More importantly, he symbolises the uncertainty of the British society. Scott-Zechlin remarks that: “Watson himself is just as lost and disillusioned as any of his fellow countrymen at the turn of the century” (57). He comes back from war and the metropolis does not treat him well. With “neither kith nor kin in England” (Doyle, ASIS 8), he lives his comfortless life with no one to turn to. Watson’s situation is an analogy to the state of British society at the time. A wider acceptance of Darwin’s evolutionary theory was weakening the dominance of religion and people were, just like Watson, looking for a new restorer of order to turn to. “The great question became whether God or Nature was in charge; and if faith in God was no longer able to make sense of Nature’s disorder, then what could replace it?” (Scott-Zechlin 57). An answer to such questions was science and rationality. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is a messenger of the new concept and leads Watson and his Britain out of the turmoil.
Holmes’s observational skills, scientific mindset and pure rationalism are an important theme of the novel. Characteristically, his very first appearance finds him in a chemical laboratory of the St. Bartholomew's Hospital right after his discovery of “an infallible test for blood stains” (Doyle, ASIS 15). Holmes describes his test as superior to the methods in place which are, according to him, “clumsy and uncertain” (Doyle, ASIS 16). Watson appreciates the test from a chemical point of view, but fails to see any practical utilization of it. His doubts are quickly shattered by Holmes’s explanation of the test’s significance in a crime investigation as he points out that: “had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes” (Doyle, ASIS 16). Given the fact that branches of Forensics medicine such as blood stain pattern analysis or forensics toxicology arose in the second half of the nineteenth century (“forensic medicine”), Holmes is a fictional pioneer of such methods and encouraged their wider employment on practical fields. Watson, who is, as described above, a doctor of medicine and a strong moral authority, helped ‘legalize’ these ideas for the Victorian audience.
The crucial tools of Holmes’s trade are his outstanding observational and deductive faculties or, as he calls it, the Science of Deduction. Watson learns of the method through a monograph written by Holmes called “The Book of Life”. Initially, he finds it a “remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity” (Doyle, ASIS 30), but his scepticism about the method turns into a profound and genuine admiration as he sees Holmes putting the theory into practice. The real use of his methods is presented while investigated a Brixton murder of Enoch Drebber which becomes a centre plot of the book. By a detailed examination of the crime scene and its surroundings, focusing on all available traces such as footprints, appearance of the dead body or the ubiquitous presence of blood stains, Holmes is able to prove that the deceased arrived at the scene “as friendly as possible - arm in arm” (Doyle, ASIS 63) with a companion to fall victim to a deadly poison. His evidence-based and scientific conclusions are in sharp contrast to the groundless theory built by Inspector Tobias Gregson of Scotland Yard that implies that the victim’s death was a result of “a blow from the stick in the stomach” (Doyle, ASIS 100) after which the murderer dragged the motionless body of Drebber to the place where it was later discovered. Thus, Doyle offers a direct confrontation of Holmes’s rational judgment with an irrational and rather random assumption of the official police force. By endowing Holmes with almost inhuman abilities, Doyle is allowed to cast a shadow over the outdated crime investigation methods of the Scotland Yard.  Scott-Zechlin asserts that: “his (Holmes’s) incredible rational mind entitles him to openly criticize the police in a way no average citizen ever would” (58). Not only does Holmes’s scientific approach bring the right man to justice, but it also saves the wrongly accused Lieutenant Arthur Charpentier from a death penalty.
The background of the Enoch Drebber’s murder case takes readers to the North American continent. In the second part of the book titled The Country of the Saints,Doyle tells a story of love and revenge closely connected to a religious group of Mormons. Jefferson Hope, an American silver explorer and a ranchman, dedicates his life to revenge of deaths of his beloved Lucy Ferrier and her father John who paid their lives for turning backs to the Mormon religion. Doyle depicts Mormons as oppressive villains and thus points out the danger of organized religious groups. More importantly, however, he signifies that the Brixton murder is only a tip of the iceberg while the roots of the evil come from a culture that is unknown to British citizens. Christopher Routledge states that: “Victorian readers living in many of Britain’s large cities were afraid of street crime, drunkenness, and seemingly random acts of violence, much of which was blamed on ‘foreigners’”. By extending the story beyond the Brixton murder, Doyle emphasizes the greater dangers arriving on Britain’s shores.
These dangers and threats coming from cultures and places alien to British citizens are also embodied in a use of poison as a murder weapon. The one that kills Enoch Drebber was “extracted from some South American arrow” (Doyle, ASIS 214). This theme re-appears in Doyle’s later Sherlock Holmes stories. It, for example, takes a form of a swamp adder, “the deadliest snake in India” (Doyle, TASH 67) causing terror in Stoke Moran in The Adventure of the Speckled Band or the deadly substance of the Devil’s foot root, an “ordeal poison used by the medicine-men in certain districts of West Africa” (Doyle, TADF 53), which is responsible for several seemingly mysterious deaths in The Adventure of The Devil’s Foot.
Thanks to addressing new threads and fears that the British society of the late nineteenth century struggled to face, Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet is much more than “just” a detective story. It introduces Sherlock Holmes, a man about town who guards the changing metropolis and lightens its dark and foggy streets.

4.3. Scarlet Turns Pink
            Mark Gattis and Steven Moffat revived the famous detective in A Study in Pink which opens the first season of Sherlock TV series. The plot of the episode is loosely based on Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, but it also makes several allusions to other stories of Doyle’s original canon. The first scene introduces John Watson as a damaged young man suffering from nightmares following his duties in the War in Afghanistan. Up to this point, it clearly resembles its literary model, but the opening credits that follow manifest that Sherlock has moved in time. Viewers are exposed to images of London’s traditional landmarks such as Big Ben, Westminster or the Thames, but also the iconic 30 St Mary Axe skyscraper known informally as “the Gherkin”, London Eye or lights and screen of Piccadilly Circus. This, accompanied by heavy traffic, evokes an atmosphere of a modern, technology-driven city - London of the twenty-first century. The wind of time carried away the ‘Victorian fog’ with its dangers, but the ‘new’ London is not as safe and spotless as it might seem. The authors update the stories of Sherlock Holmes in an entertaining manner, but do not neglect to address topical social and political issues of the modern society.
The title of the episode derives from Doyle’s writing, but the ‘colour adjustment’ implies that Sherlock reincarnates to protect different values than his Victorian model. The colour pink, being a symbol of homosexuality, refers to the ambiguous relationship between Sherlock and John. Even though John occasionally dates women and Sherlock considers himself “married to his work” (ASIP), the possibility of the two being in a gay relationship is suggested throughout the whole series. In the scene where Sherlock explains his train of thoughts as to how he has come to a conclusion about John family’s ‘skeleton in the cupboard’ after a short examination of his mobile phone, he gets all things right except for the fact that “Harry’s short for Harriet” (ASIP)  - John’s homosexual sister. The line is an allusion to Sherlock Holmes’s analysis of Dr. Watson’s watch from The Sign of Four by Conan Doyle. By altering the sex of John’s sibling and her sexual orientation, the authors present London of the twenty-first century as a heterogeneous place and support the British society’s increasing acceptance of homosexuality. Sherlock reacts to the flaw in his analysis by saying that: “There is always something” (ASIP) suggesting the idea of the ever-changing world he lives in. Anne Kustritz and Melanie E.S. Kohnen argue that: “people like Harriet defy even increasingly heterogeneous social norms and thus upset Sherlock’s carefully crafted idea of the world around him” (86).
In addition to the above mentioned acceptance of diverse sexual preferences, the series touches an issue of gender equality. The most shining example of that is a character of Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock and John no longer receive the hotel-like treatment as their Doyle’s predecessors used to enjoy as she becomes an owner of their Baker Street shelter. It frees her of any house-keeping obligations that were so characteristic of her original character. “I'm your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper” (ASIP), says she in a very convincing manner when the two move in, setting stern rules of their domicile.  The authors also introduce ‘non-canonical’ characters such as Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan or a pathologist Molly Harper, both occupying positions that were strictly male in Doyle’s time. Thus, the female sex in Sherlock is not completely eclipsed and predominated by Irene Adler.
The reflection of the modern society is also noticeable in depiction of Sherlock’s vices. The drugs bust in Baker Street reminds viewers of his weakness for ‘stimulant substances’ and Sherlock’s initial reaction hints that the suspicions are well founded. The very next moment, however, he claims that: “I am clean, I don’t even smoke” (ASIP), showing his arm covered in nicotine patches. A three pipe problem of The Red Headed League becomes a three patch problem in A Study in Pink as it is “impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London these days” (ASIP)  referring to a smoking ban in England that came into force in 2007.  In this respect, the authors redefine Sherlock as a role model for his audience. On the other hand, the detective without his characteristic pipe symbolizes the reduction of civil liberties that comes as a drawback to restrictions such as the above mentioned ban.
Speaking of Sherlock and his vices, the series strongly accentuates his personality. In a sense, the “high functioning sociopath” (ASIP), as he calls himself, perfectly fits Doyle’s concept of the “the most perfect reasoning and observing machine” (Doyle, TASH 2). His great deductive and observational skills combine with a practical use of the latest modern technology such as smartphones and laptops. In contrast, he is completely lacking any social skills when interacting with people. Not surprisingly, Scotland Yard police officers call him “freak” or a “psychopath” (ASIP) as his strictly utilitarian approach to people does not necessarily make him a likeable character. Scott Zechling points out that, given Sherlock’s personality flaws, his massive intellect is “the only worthwhile thing about him”(60). Sherlock shows his anti-social behaviour shortly after his entrance into the series, when he cruelly disregards obvious hints of Molly Hooper’s affections. Later he introduces a skull as ‘his friend’ and his peculiarity peaks when he does not comprehend why a mother would still be upset about her daughter’s death when “that was ages ago” (ASIP). He has inherited the genuine fascination by crime from his Doyle’s predecessor, yet he seems to miss his sense for right and wrong. When told about the fourth suicide, he bursts with excitement: “Brilliant! Yes, four serial suicides and now a note. Oh, it's Christmas. Mrs Hudson, I'll be late” (ASIP), showing absolutely no respect to the victims. The authors of Sherlock emphasise that the detective’s incredible scientific rationality comes at the expense of his social skills. In other words, Sherlock is ‘too clever’ to live a ‘normal’ life.
The more Sherlock struggles with human interaction, the more he needs his Watson. John is the embodiment of professional skills, loyalty and bravery. As such, he lives up to the “strong moral principle” (ASIP) of Doyle’s model.  He also happens to be a “very good doctor” (ASIP), who struggles to find a job. Thus, he can be seen as a symbol of the recent economy crisis and its side effects. Toadvine asserts that: “Given 21st century concerns of a difficult economy and returning from a war zone, John represents economic and emotional instability familiar to many in the audience” (55). Nevertheless, John’s role goes much further than simply being a stand-in and identifier for the audience. His new mission is to socialize Sherlock and restrain the absolute dominance of rationality in his behaviour. On one hand, he deeply admires Sherlock’s scientific mindset, but on the other, he suggests that there is more to life than chasing villains using his intellectual powers. His efforts are obvious, for example, in the following conversation during which John puts ‘real life’ against Sherlock’s ‘scientific universe.’
JW: In real life. There are no arch-enemies in real life. Doesn’t happen.
SH: Doesn’t it? Sounds a bit dull.
JW: So who did I meet?
SH: What do real people have, then, in their “real lives”?
JW: Friends? Or people they know, people they like, people they don’t like…     Girlfriends, boyfriends.
SH: Yeah, well, as I was saying, dull.
John somewhat refuses the inferior role in the relationship as he guides Sherlock through the labyrinth of social interactions just as Sherlock guides him through the streets of the metropolis. Inspector Lestrade, too, clearly calls for a ‘more human’ Sherlock when he remarks that: “Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and I think one day, if we’re very, very lucky, he might even be a good one” (ASIP).  By underlining Sherlock’s personality traits, mainly his social incompetence, the series proposes an idea that a pure reliance upon rationality and science might not be an impeccable concept after all.
A Study in Pink also shows the double-edged sword of the ever-present use of technology. It portrays Sherlock as a digital-native who express his intelligence by an enormously effective and extensive utilization of the latest technological advances. His main aid is, undoubtedly, a smartphone.  Quite symbolically, Sherlock enters the series through a text message. Just after Inspector Lestrade claims that: “We are all as safe as we want to be” (ASIP), during a press conference related to a series of suicides in London, all participants received a text stating just “Wrong” (ASIP). This opening message presents Sherlock as a superior guardian of London as well as it shows his considerable skills in a use of smartphones and modern technologies in general. Later in the story, he employs his smartphone while examining the crime scene. By filtering and gathering available data, he arrives at conclusions so different from those of the Metropolitan Police officers. The absence of a mobile phone on the body helps Sherlock to figure out that apparent suicides are actually murders. Thanks to recovering the victim’s email account password, he is able to track the missing phone, of which he believes to be in the murderer’s possession. Again, the official force fails to see these links as Anderson, a member of the forensic team, remarks that: “So we can read her e-mails. So what?” to which Sherlock answers:” We can do much more than just read her e-mails. It’s a smartphone, it’s got GPS, which means if you lose it, you can locate it online. She’s leading us directly to the man who killed her” (ASIP). At the end of the story, John’s intervention saves Sherlock’s life. It is only thanks to the ability to track the stolen phone that John can locate Sherlock’s whereabouts when he drives off with the murderer. In this regard, such use of modern technology helps solve crime and saves lives. On the other hand, it brings up a concern about its impact on civil liberties as it clearly shows that technology allow us to track people’s movement.
The thin line between technology being a good servant and a bad master is even more apparent in the scene when Mycroft Holmes watches John’s movement with a help of CCTV security cameras, demonstrating that ‘anything’ can happen when the cameras ‘are not watching’. He also upgrades the surveillance status of John and Sherlock as he is concerned about their safety. Showing cameras as ‘eyes of justice’ watching over London advocates the use of technology in crime prevention and investigation. At the same time, however, the man in control of the surveillance is described as: “the British government, when he’s not too busy being the British Secret Service, or the CIA on a freelance basis” (ASIP). On top of that, Mycroft happens to be Sherlock’s ‘big brother’. Such allusions suggest that a prophecy of a nation under an omnipresent governmental surveillance from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) is being fulfilled.
Just as Doyle’s premier novel of the canon, A Study in Pink stretches beyond a simple crime story. It opens a dialogue about equality, importance of humanity as well as impact of technology on mankind. It meets Sherlock’s pure rationality at its best while at the same time it questions the importance of its absolute dominance.
       

5. The Rise and Fall of Sherlock Holmes

5.1. The Final Problem
In 1893, only six years after Sherlock’s ‘scarlet debut’ in The Strand, Dr. Watson breaks bad news to the growing fandom of Sherlock Holmes. “It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. (Doyle, TMSH 409). In the story aptly called The Final Problem, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson runs through the old continent before the former meets his destiny at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became tired of his famous creation. Therefore, he gave Sherlock Holmes his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, and closed the first chapter of his fruitful mission.
Mark Gattis and Steven Moffat bring their Sherlock on the edge of St. Bartholomew’s hospital roof at the end of Sherlock second season’s final episode called Reichenbach Fall. After making his last phone call to John, he throws himself into a street to solve his final problem. John bursts into tears as he mumbles that: “Sher..., my best friend ... Sherlock Holmes ...is dead” (RF). While Doyle’s Holmes met his end for the sake of his creator’s higher writing aspirations, Sherlock’s supposed suicide is an ultimate sacrifice in a bid to save his beloved. This time, however, the authors assure their audience that Sherlock has not said his last word yet. 
The following two subchapters analyze The Final Problem and Reichenbach Fall from the cultural and social perspective. They examine the characters of Professor Moriarty and Jim Moriarty, their roles in the stories and the dangers that these two characters define. Furthermore, this part of the thesis looks into the reasons and the aftermath of the detectives’ falls and tries to identify the symbolism of their apparent deaths.

5.2 Sherlock Holmes is Dead
In the context of the nineteenth-century literary world, Sherlock Holmes became Doyle’s Frankenstein, a monster that turns upon its creator. Holmes’s growing fame completely dwarfed Doyle’s other literary efforts. With this in mind, he wrote The Final Problem. Despite it being a short story, it is one of a significant importance. While Doyle was writing stories of Holmes between 1887 and 1927, spanning Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian eras, his famous detective is closely associated only with the former. Symbolically, The Final Problem is the last story featuring Sherlock Holmes that Doyle actually wrote in Victorian Era as the revival of the detective in The Adventure of the Empty House came in 1902, one year after Queen Victoria’s death. Doyle’s fictional Victorian London became clearly a better and safer place after Holmes’s last challenge, but the views of the author were not shared by many of the audience. The aftermath of the character’s withdrawal perfectly accounts for the popularity that Sherlock Holmes enjoyed at the time. “Popular outcry against the demise of Holmes was great; men wore black mourning bands, the British royal family was distraught, and more than 20,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions to the popular Strand Magazine, in which Holmes regularly appeared” (“Sherlock Holmes”). The huge public outcry the story caused is by no means the only reason of its prominence. The Final Problem also introduces the ultimate villain of Doyle’s work. Professor Moriarty, Holmes’s main antagonist, is a character that has become an indivisible feature of the original canon and its followers.  
In two novels and twenty two short stories written prior to The Final Problem, Holmes has dealt with a vast number of villains, none of which has come anywhere near to match his mental powers – with a single exception of Irene Adler - let alone to kill him. That is when Professor Moriarty enters the scene. Doyle’s Moriarty is a mathematical genius, “a man of good birth and excellent education” that combines with “hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind” (Doyle, TMSH 414). By assigning the nature of Moriarty’s evil mind to heredity, Doyle underlines his support of the new scientific approach to genetics. Professor’s devilish personality fits perfectly with Holmes’s remark from The Greek Interpreter when he says that:” Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest form” (Doyle, TMSH 306).  
Professor Moriarty is more of a gothic, mysterious ghost that appears only in three out of fifty six stories, yet the character was built on solid grounds. Besides the influence of Poe, as previously mentioned in subchapter The Sidekick and the Others, he has his real-life predecessor. Adam Worth (1844 -1902), a German-American criminal, was so notorious for his crime activities that he earned a nickname “Napoleon of the Criminal World” (Doyle S, 131). Not coincidentally, Conan Doyle nicknamed Professor Moriarty “The Napoleon of Crime” (Doyle, TMSH 415), indirectly admitting the inspiration. Steven Doyle describes Worth’s criminal career as follows: “He became the leader of a gang of pickpockets, which led to even more organized crime, including robberies and burglaries” (Doyle S, 131). It is the idea of organized syndicates of crime that Moriarty embodies in Doyle’s stories. Holmes describes him as a “spider in a centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them” (Doyle, TMSH 415). Reflections of Worth’s crime can be also traced in other places in the canon. The scenario of the Boston Bank robbery of 1869, for which Worth used an underground tunnel, is quite faithfully copied in Doyle’s The Adventure of The red Headed League (1891).         
Professor Moriarty, however, represents more than just Holmes’s arch enemy and his main antagonist. Although he is not mentioned in the canon until The Final Problem, Watson (and readers) quickly learns about his rather omnipresent involvement in all forms of crime in London. “Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, a house to be rifled, man to be removed – the word is passed to the Professor” (Doyle, TMSH 414). As such, Moriarty becomes a symbol of a greater evil, the central power behind the crime that Sherlock Holmes wholeheartedly fights against. To strengthen Holmes’s position as a protector of British values, Doyle gave evil an Irish name. In a broad sense, the Holmes and Moriarty’s relationship reflects the cultural, political and religious tension between Great Britain and their Irish neighbours.  
Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty are referred to as “the foremost champion of the law” and “the most dangerous criminal” (Doyle, TMSH 442) respectively. They are two intellectual equals, with dissimilar moral qualities or, as Steven Doyle argues: “Whereas Holmes brings peace and safety to the world, Moriarty fills it with terror and tragedy” (129). The existence of one requires the existence of the other. When Holmes talks about Moriarty in The Final Problem, he explains that: “If I could beat that man, if you I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life” (Doyle, TMSH 413).  Thus suggesting that if the world is rid of Professor Moriarty and the evil he defines, there is no need for Holmes’s guidance anymore. By killing the two together at the Reichenbach Falls, Doyle makes sure that Holmes does not die by the hand of an inferior enemy as well as that London without Professor Moriarty will not suffer from Holmes’s permanent absence.
The augur of Holmes’s forthcoming redundancy is also apparent in the nature of his relationship with Dr. Watson. No longer is the latter the lonesome and confused gentleman who sought protection in A Study in Scarlet. Over the course of ten years since the two met, Dr. Watson left Baker Street to become a married man running his own medical practice. As he states in the beginning of The Final Problem: “the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified” (Doyle, TMSH 410). Their constant companionship is reduced to a few cases a year. The vanishing need for Holmes’s presence in Dr. Watson’s life is a sign of his weakening importance for society. Two years after the Reichenbach Falls incident, Dr. Watson writes his reminiscence to clear Holmes’s name and disregard what he calls “an absolute perversion of the facts” (Doyle, TMSH 410), published in the public press. In the text he conveys the message of Holmes’s legacy: “I (Holmes) have not lived wholly in vain, the air of London is the sweeter for my presence” (Doyle, TMSH 434), summarizing Holmes duty as a guardian of London and its citizens. In The Final Problem, Doyle brings Holmes’s mission to a sudden and, perhaps, premature end. At the bottom of the Reichenbach Falls, the world loses its biggest threat as well as “the best and the wisest man” (Doyle, TMSH 442), whom Watson has ever known.

5.3. Long Live Sherlock
            The closing episode of the second series of Sherlock starts off with John’s appointment with his therapist. Full of emotions, he can hardly find words to express his sadness over the loss of his companion. After the opening credits, authors take viewers back in time to account for what preceded John’s grief. Reichenbach Fall finds Sherlock in the limelight and shows him as a celebrity attracting attention of the tabloid press. Yet “every fairytale needs a good old-fashioned villain” (RF) and Sherlock’s ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ come to an end with a return of his nemesis. The title of the episode makes an obvious allusion to the place where Doyle temporarily ended the canonical life of Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem, but the circumstances of Sherlock’s fall differ substantially from those in the original text.
Unlike Doyle’s Professor Moriarty, who surfaces out of nowhere to terminate Holmes’s mission, his contemporary counterpart enjoys a wider attention as he plays a significant role throughout the whole series. In order to have a closer look on the character, it makes sense to take a brief trip back to the very first episode. At the end of A Study in Pink, Moriarty is vaguely introduced as a fan of Sherlock and a sponsor of serial killings. The following episode, The Blind Banker, suggests that he is a brain of a secret international organization of smugglers and only the final scene of The Great Game gives the name its bearer.
His enigmatic appearance throughout the first series leaves space for imagination as he is referred to as “more than a man” or “an organisation” (ASIP) while there is “never any real contact, just messages, whispers” (TGG).  In fact, Jim Moriarty, who is played by a well-known Irish actor Andrew Scott, turns out to be a young, well dressed man with a genius mind and strong sense of aesthetics. His character combines the ruthlessness of Professor Moriarty and the decadent genius of Holmes. Ellen Burton Harrington argues that: “While Conan Doyle’s Holmes is a recognizably decadent figure, Sherlock’s Moriarty seems to resemble the fin de siècle aesthete more than Sherlock” (71). Through the Wildean depiction of Moriarty who thinks of crime as a form of art, the authors revive the aesthetic spirit of the original texts and subscribe to the view of Thomas De Quincey from his essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts that: “Like Aeschylus or Milton in poetry, like Michelangelo in painting, he (the great murderer) has carried his art to a point of colossal sublimity” (12).
Apart from Holmes’s aestheticism, Jim Moriarty also borrows his mastery of disguise. This allows him to drag Sherlock into his deadly game and yet put back their direct confrontation. In A Study in Pink, he wins Sherlock’s attention with a help from Jeff Hope, later in The Great Game, he seduces Molly Harper to make a first direct contact as Jim who “works in IT upstairs” (TGG). Ultimately, he speaks to Sherlock through voices of innocent suicide bombers. Images of these bombers in the streets of London resemble recent fears of terrorist attacks and allow authors to update Moriarty as a new a symbol of terror.  The last scene of The Great Game shows John covered in explosives which, to paraphrase Harrington, suggests that John brings his wartime experience back to London (71).  Just as Doyle’s Moriarty, the character of Jim gets another dimension and serves as embodiment of a greater evil and fears that the audience recognize and relate to.
The climax of Jim Moriarty’s plot comes in Reichenbach Fall when he attacks the very heart of Britain. He consecutively breaks into the “the three of most secure places in the country” (RF), the Tower of London, the Bank of England, and Pentonville Prison. The scene that shows “Irish born Moriarty – of no fixed abode” (RF), sitting on the throne, wearing the crown implies that the terror Jim Moriarty represents poses a threat to the fundamental values of Britishness. Sherlock is once again ready to restore the order, but the surprising twist in the following trial sets Jim Moriarty free and clears his path to bring imminent discredit upon Sherlock.
The press dubs Sherlock the ‘Reichenbach hero’ after his recovery of Turner’s masterpiece The Falls of Reichenbach. It also points out that he is “frequently seen in a company of bachelor John Watson” (RF). While Sherlock’s tabloid nickname gives a nod to the settings of Doyle’s original story, his connection with “confirmed bachelor” (RF), keeps the idea of the two being gay alive. The involvement of media in the final battle between Sherlock and Jim Moriarty is not a completely new theme as Doyle’s Dr. Watson wrote his reminiscence of the events that led to Holmes’s death at the Reichenbach Falls ‘only’ to rectify Holmes’s reputation damaged by a newspaper article. In Sherlock, however, the media takes even a greater role as they are directly responsible for Sherlock’ rise in fame while at the same time, they serve as a main device in Jim Moriarty’s plan for Sherlock’s fall. Kitty Riley, an investigative journalist, offers Sherlock her help in exchange for an exclusive interview: “There's all sorts of gossip in the press about you. Sooner or later, you're going to need someone on your side, someone to set the record straight” (RF).  The “all sorts of gossip”, sustain the undertone of Sherlock’s possible homosexuality. Furthermore, it shows the great power of media. As Jim Moriarty puts it: “I read it in the paper so it must be true. I love newspapers”, Sherlock presents media as powerful opinion and influence makers.
Apart from the above mentioned themes that contribute to the overall message of the series, the strong focus of Reichenbach Fall is also on Sherlock’s personality. The more public attention Sherlock receives the more social interactions he gets involved in. This allows authors to expose both his intellectual powers and complete lack of social skills to the full extent. Sherlock seems to be trapped in his almost autistic rationality as his constant displaying of an extraordinary cleverness lets him down when dealing with people around him. It stars with seemingly small things as Sherlock cold-heartedly turns down gifts from grateful clients and it ends with his being put in jail for contempt of court during the ‘Moriarty case’.  Sherlock’s words from The Great Game that he would be lost without his blogger fulfil as John actively continues with his socializing mission. He is always there to smooth over Sherlock’s social blunders and offer his guidance. The dynamics between the two are nicely captured in the following conversation that comes prior to Sherlock’s arrest:
Watson: Remember what they told you. Don't try to be clever.
Sherlock: I know.
Watson: and please just keep it simple and brief.
Sherlock: I'm confident a star witness at a trial should come across as intelligent.
Watson: Intelligent, fine. Let's give smartass a wide berth.
Sherlock: I'll just be myself.
Watson: Are you listening to me? (RF)
John’s voice becomes a call for ordinariness and his consistent and devoted presence distinguishes Sherlock from Jim Moriarty who lacks faith in humanity whatsoever. Moriarty is a bearer of the Victorian view that science and rationality as new metaphysics cannot coexist with faith while Sherlock with John on his side walks on the edge of restoring the balance between the two. Scott Zechlin assert that: “Sherlock has John Watson there to keep him human, with the doctor’s presence preventing him from turning into a similarly omnipotent figure, completely isolated from all human kindness” (63). In this respect, Sherlock’s final problem becomes a dilemma whether to stay alive and solve his biggest case or ‘die’ and protect those who cared about him. By choosing the latter option during the final roof scene, Sherlock exposes his weakness – faith in John – and decides to leave the world as a good man rather than live as a great one.  He leaves the world just as he entered it, through a mobile phone. Sherlock make his last phone call to John: “This phone call – it’s, it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they – leave a note?” (RF) before he jumps off the St. Bartholomew hospital’s roof.   
This time, there are no black armbands and people in the streets as the authors of Sherlock reveal that the detective only faked his suicide while John tells his last word to Sherlock at his grave: “I didn’t even think you were human, but let me tell you this: you were the best man, and the most human ... human being that I’ve ever known” (RF). Sherlock’s assumed death in Reichenbach Fall clearly does not terminate his mission as a saviour, but completes John’s duty of shaping the new Sherlock.

 

6. Conclusion

            Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the character of Sherlock Holmes in 1887 after a decade of his efforts to build a career as a writer. The first Sherlock Holmes novel called A Study in Scarlet eventually met with a huge success and resulted in Doyle writing another three novels and 56 short stories featuring the consulting detective. Holmes’s canonical life is divided into two main parts. The first one, which this thesis focuses on, ended in 1893 when Doyle killed Holmes off in The Final Problem in order to step out of Holmes’s shadow and pursue his higher literary ambitions.
By creating Sherlock Holmes, Doyle entered the genre of modern detective story that emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century with stories of Edgar Allan Poe and its followers such as Emile Gaboriau, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and others.  The novelty that Doyle brought to the genre came with the scientific mind of his detective. Holmes’s reliance of science and rationality was a celebration of newly formed concepts that introduced science as the new metaphysics replacing the traditional religion beliefs of Creationism. Doyle, who was a great supporter of these new ideas, used Holmes as a bearer of the message that science is capable of explaining mysteries of our world.
Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet reflects the state of the British society at the turn of the century tackling issues such as flaws in justice system, social injustice and the insufficiency of the official police force stressing out their outdated investigation methods and a complete reliance upon groundless assumptions rather than reason and science. As a detective story, it introduces new dangers and threats that came as a side effect of the increasing immigration into Britain. Sherlock Holmes steps in as a detective who is able to bring order to this period of change.        
The spirit of the changing face of the British is captured by setting the novel as well as the majority of other Sherlock Holmes stories to its very heart, the streets of London.  Doyle lets Holmes speak to readers through the voice of Dr. Watson who represents the Victorian moral authority and gaps the bridge between the readers and progressive ideas and views embodied in the character of Sherlock Holmes. Watson’s return from the war in the British colonies symbolizes the arrival of the unknown cultures and the dangers they represent at the shores of Great Britain.
The novel prefigures Holmes’s mission as a new restorer of order and the last instance of justice. In A Study in Scarlet and the stories that followed, Sherlock Holmes keeps guard over the metropolis bringing its villain to justice. His message of superiority of science and rationality paves the way for the era of technology that was knocking on Britain’s door. While Sherlock Holmes was able to offer a mental shelter to Dr. Watson and his fellow countrymen, he could not, eventually, escape a threat posed by his own creator.
The end of the famous detective comes in The Final Problem. To do away with Holmes, Doyle creates his evil twin Professor Moriarty, the dark side of the world that Sherlock Holmes lightens with his presence. The death of the two symbolizes the end of the turmoil in which the British society was thrown at the time of Holmes’s literary birth. On the one hand, The Final Problem closed one chapter of Holmes’s life. On the other hand, it catapulted him into eternal stardom thanks to numerous adaptations and pastiches that followed.            
The BBC TV Series Sherlock updates Doyle’s characters for the twenty-first century. Although the series makes allusions and references to the original texts rather than strictly follow their plots, it manages to maintain the social and political subtext that is characteristic of Doyle’s writing. Sherlock as depicted by Gattis and Moffat has evolved with the world around him. He leaves the Victorian metropolis with its problems behind to enter the modern London to face up to the new threats and dangers.  The new social norms of the society allow authors to develop and play with the idea of Sherlock and John being homosexual. Thus, the ambiguity of the characters becomes one of the major themes to the whole series. It also reflects the modern views on gender equality and the role of women in society.  Thanks to the gender diversity of characters, Sherlock is no longer ‘men’s world’ only. Although they appear to be completely new themes, they, in fact, mirror the social injustice that Doyle accentuated in the canon.
Just as Dr. Watson in A Study in Scarlet, John in Sherlock symbolically brings the terror to London as he returns from the war campaign. The ideas of hijacking airplanes or images of suicide bombers in the streets of London disturbingly titillate the current audience as it enlivens the deep-seated fears of terrorist attacks that have become a constant threat for Britain of the twenty-first century. Sherlock updates the dangers as well as the greater power behind them and promote the character of Moriarty from a mere narrative device to the essential component of the series. While Doyle created James Moriarty to kill Holmes, Sherlock’s Jim Moriarty and his ceaseless presence in the stories play an important role in shaping the character of the detective.
Sherlock himself remains faithful to Doyle’s Holmes as he combines the scientific and rational mind and the use of the most modern technology. However, it is mainly through this character how the authors of Sherlock suggest that the absolute reliance on science, so much advocated for in Doyle’s work, seems to be reaching a dead end. This thesis argues that while Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created his Holmes to offer guidance on the road to the era of technology, Sherlock shows us where the blind faith in science and technology may lead to. The message is conveyed not only by showing Sherlock as a social outcast but also by presenting the double edge sword of technology. The pure rationality kills humanity and while the omnipresent use of technology contributes greatly to the quality of people’s lives and their safety, it also jeopardizes their rights to privacy. It also points out that the concepts of greater good such as smoking bans or the camera system surveillance come with downsides as they reduce civil liberties.
A Study in Scarlet depicts the beginning of Holmes’s journey during which he shapes the world around him. His journey comes to an end in The Final Problem in which he dies as the wisest man who sacrifices himself for a better world. A Study in Pink commences the process of shaping a new Sherlock that leads to his revival in Reichenbach Fall in which Sherlock gets reborn as the most human being. In this respect, Doyle’s Holmes was born to create a better world while the authors of Sherlock use the character of the consulting detective to create a better man.

7. Works Cited

7.1. Primary Sources
“A Study in Pink.” Sherlock: Season one.  Writ. Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis. BBC   Worldwide, 2010. DVD. (ASIP)
Doyle, Arthur C.  A Study in Scarlet. The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Tales of          Terror and Mystery. The Complete Works Collection, 2012. Kindle ebook         file. (ASIS)
---. His Last Bow. [Auckland, N.Z.]: Floating Press, 2009. eBook Academic Collection   (EBSCOhost). Web. 17 Oct. 2013. (HLB)
---. The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot. The Complete Works Collection, 2012. Kindle    ebook file. (TADF)
---. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Complete Works Collection, 2012. Kindle ebook file. (TASH)
---. The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes. [Auckland, N.Z.]: Floating Press, 2009. eBook     Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 17 Oct. 2013. (TMSH)
---. The Return Of Sherlock Holmes. [Auckland]: Floating Press, 2010. eBook Academic            Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 17 Oct. 2013. (TRSH)
“The Blind Banker.” Sherlock: Season one.  Writ. Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis. BBC             Worldwide, 2010. DVD. (TBB)
“The Great Game.”  Sherlock: Season one.  Writ. Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis. BBC Worldwide, 2010. DVD. (TGG)
“The Reichenbach Fall.” Sherlock: Season two. Writ. Stephen Thomson. BBC    Worldwide, 2012. DVD. (RF)

7.2. Secondary Sources
Adams, Cynthia. "Chapter Four: The Birth Of Sherlock Holmes." Mysterious Case Of    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1999): 32. Literary Reference Center. Web. 26 July            2013.
“Arthur Conan Doyle Biography.” Bio. True Story Web. 26 Jul. 2013      
"British Empire." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic             Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 06 Oct. 2013.
De Quincey, Thomas. On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts : And Other       Writings. [Auckland]: Floating Press, 2012. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost).        Web. 26 Oct. 2013.
"detective story." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic            Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 26 Jul. 2013.    
Doyle, Steven, and David A. Crowder. Sherlock Holmes For Dummies. Hoboken, NJ:    Wiley,             2010. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 30 Sept. 2013.
Ellis, Sian. "In the Trail of Sherlock Holmes." British Heritage 34.2 (2013): 28-  33.Academic Search Alumni Edition. Web. 26 July 2013.
"forensic medicine." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online          Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
Graham, Anissa M., and Jennifer C. Garlen. "Sex And The Single Sleuth." Sherlock       Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations. 24-34. Jefferson, NC:          McFarland, 2012. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 28 Sept. 2013.
Harrington, Ellen Burton. "Terror, Nostalgia, And The Pursuit Of Sherlock Holmes In    Sherlock." Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series. 70-84.          Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 26            Oct. 2013.
McCaw, Neil. Adapting Detective Fiction: Crime, Englishness And The TV Detectives. London: Continuum, 2011. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 28 Sept.         2013.
Panek, LeRoy Lad. Before Sherlock Holmes : How Magazines And Newspapers Invented The Detective Story. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., Publishers,       2011. Discovery eBooks. Web. 23 July. 2013.
Pittard, Christopher. Victorian Detective Fiction: An Introduction. Crimeculture, 2003. Web. 23 July, 2013.
Rollyson, Carl E. Critical Survey Of Mystery And Detective Fiction. Pasadena, Calif:     Salem Press, 2008. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 26 July      2013.
Scott-Zechlin, Ariana. "'But It's The Solar System!' Reconciling Science And Faith         Through Astronomy." Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC        Series. 56-69. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. MLA International           Bibliography. Web. 9 Oct. 2013.
Shpayer-Makov, Haia. "Revisiting The Detective Figure In Late Victorian And   Edwardian Fiction: A View From The Perspective Of Police History." Law,      Crime & History 1.2   (2011): 165. Associates Programs Source Plus. Web. 26             July 2013.
“Sherlock Holmes." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online           Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
“Sherlock Holmes Online.” The Official Web Site of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle            Literary Estate. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate. Web. 15 Nov 2013.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 26 Jul. 2013.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Web. 26 Jul. 2013
Toadvine, April. "The Watson Effect: Civilizing The Sociopath." Sherlock Holmes for   the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations. 48-64. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 15 June 2013.
„The Era of Sherlock Holmes.“ Masterpiece Theatre. Web 20 June 2013.
"The Moonstone." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
Verevis, Constantine, and Kathleen Loock. Film Remakes, Adaptations And Fan             Productions: Remake/Remodel. [Basingstoke]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.eBook           Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 29 Sept. 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix: List of Abbreviations

ASIP………………… “A Study in Pink”
ASIS………………… “A Study in Scarlet”
HLB…………………. “His Last Bow”
RF…………………… “Reichenbach Fall”
TADF………………... “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”
TASH………………... “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”
TGG…………………. “The Great Game”
TMSH……………….. “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”
TRSH…………………“The Return of Sherlock Holmes”

 

 

Resume – English

            This paper aims to offer an introduction to Sherlock Holmes, the most famous creation of the Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and to bring a comparative analysis of Doyle’s original texts and TV series Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock and Martin Freeman as John Watson.
The first part of the thesis presents a cultural survey of Doyle’s predecessors as it looks into the history of modern detective fiction and the social conditions that powered the development of the genre during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it continues with an overview of the life and work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The rest of the first part is dedicated to the character of Sherlock Holmes, the basic premises of the Holmes stories, other essential characters and the most notable TV and film adaptations.
The second part of the thesis offers a comparative analysis of Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet and The Final Problem and Sherlock episodes A Study in Pink and Reichenbach Fall. The main focus is put on social and political subtexts in both Doyle’s stories and the Sherlock series. The thesis analyses and compares views on rationality and progressive ideas of science carried in the works in question. It also examines how Doyle’s texts and Sherlock reflect societies in which both Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock live.

Source: https://is.muni.cz/th/384202/ff_b/Sherlock_and_Sherlock_Holmes_A_Comparative_Analysis.doc

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes