Holmesian Derivations

You cannot play him cool and calculating and remote. It would be easier if you could pretend there was nothing there but a machine.

But you can’t.

Machines don’t do cocaine. Machines don’t have issues when their roommate and only friend in the world goes off and marries. Machines especially do not have manic bouts interspersed with periods of heavy depression.

That doesn’t quite gel with the idea of Sherlock Holmes the cool calculating machine, as he often tries to put himself off as. Remember: everybody lies. To themselves, too. What’s even worse is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not leave so much as a clue as to why the man could go from being as giddy as a schoolgirl, to a depressed and almost suicidal languor, to manic action when hard at work.

However, interesting deductions as to the source of the darkness have been made by fans of the canon. Probably the most interesting one is by Trevor Hall: at some age (it varies between just before University and at a younger and more impressionable age) his father murdered his mother because she was involved in an illicit affair.¹ Some of that deduction is based on the final published story, The Retired Colourman, which involved a case with a similar inevitable line, as well as far more depression from Holmes than usual:

“But is not all life pathetic and futile? Is not his story but a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow–misery.”

This level of nihilism has only since been seen in The Cardboard Box, which also involved a man who killed his wife and her lover.

Other tells were mostly to do with when The Retired Colourman was published (far after it had actually occurred) and possible reasons why it was left out of the introduction. More circumstantial evidence includes Holmes’s life just before The Scarlet Letter, the “origin story” of the Holmes and Watson partnership; he moped about in his room in college and avoided all contact in a manner that indicates a Victorian-style scandal (which was commonly adultery on the wife’s side, and murder by her husband of course complicates matters).

Another deduction made by Nicholas Meyer is that after the murder, his father committed suicide.² This is the most “pleasant” conclusion to draw, since the only other alternative was even more of a public scandal if he was hanged for murder.

If you consider that true, then it explains a lot of his twisted behavior indeed, from his hatred of all forms of society, to his distrust of women, to his refusal to expose to the authorities a woman who had murdered her own abusive husband (The Adventure of the Abbey Grange), and his hatred of the countryside, which is nearly anathema to being British and especially having been raised in the family of a country squire:

“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful country-side…. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”

If Holmes hadn’t been saddled with a dark and unfortunate past, and the resulting desire to punish the wicked and see justice done, he would have much preferred to be a chemist (from The Sign of Four):

“Well, have you solved it?” I asked as I entered.

“Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta.”

“No, no, the mystery!” I cried.

“Oh, that! I thought of the salt that I have been working upon.”

Holmes is a dark character; as dark and strange to the Victorians of the late 19th century as Gregory House is to the audience of the early 21st century. You pay when you write them, but you really pay through the nose if you act them. Jeremy Brett went downhill, and while he was indeed manic-depressive, lost his wife, and was ill; playing the intense character of Holmes did not help at all. I forget what other Holmes actor it was that told Brett that Holmes was nothing but an empty shell, and a part you don’t want to embrace. I wonder if any serious Holmes actor actually committed suicide; it really wouldn’t have surprised me.

And Hugh Laurie is overworked (and is currently having some private time at home).

And speaking from recent personal experience, it’s hard to write the man when you’re trying to look into his soul, rather than trying to write a rollicking adventure. There’s an abyss there that makes you no longer wonder why he got himself hooked on cocaine.

You may also like:

• Complete Sherlock Holmes BBC with Clive Merrison as Holmes
• How Sherlock Holmes Restarted My Writing
• A House, MD and Sherlock Holmes Special: Predicting House Season Five Based On the Sherlock Holmes Canon

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