第 51 页

The truth comes out

He tells them that, about a week earlier, Lady Beatrice had died of dropsy. As a result, he faced losing the house, the stables, and all the horses—including Shoscombe Prince—just weeks before the hoped-for Derby win that would pay off all his debts, because the entire

made reporting every birth and death a legal requirement. There were growing concerns, though, that it was too easy to get away with murder, especially by poison, and that inquests were far too costly a way to look into suspicious deaths. So in 1887 a new Coroners Act made it the coroner’s role to discover the medical causes of any sudden, violent, or unnatural death. Lady Beatrice’s sudden death could therefore well have come within the new coroner’s remit.

It was my duty to bring the facts to light, and there I must leave it. As to the morality or decency of your conduct, it is not for me to express an opinion.

Sherlock Holmes

Shoscombe estate, including the racehorse, was actually hers, and would therefore revert to her late husband’s brother when her death was known. In desperation, Sir Robert had decided to conceal her death until the race had been run.

To make room for her body in the old coffin, he and his servant, Mr. Norlett, the maid’s husband, first had to remove the mummified body of an ancestor, and burn it in the furnace. “There was no indignity or irreverence,” he claims. He then explains that Norlett—“a small, rat-faced man with a disagreeably furtive face,” and once an actor—agreed to impersonate Lady Beatrice. They gave away her spaniel because it kept yapping at the old well-house where they initially hid her body.

When Holmes calls his conduct “inexcusable,” Sir Robert retorts, “It is easy to preach. Perhaps you would have felt differently if you had been in my position.” Holmes— a man who on previous occasions has let killers walk free when he felt their actions were justified— is clearly not persuaded, and declares it a matter for the police.

THE ADVENTURE OF SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE 291

As Holmes discovers, the reality of Sir Robert’s life at Shoscombe Old Place is very different from how it first appears. The master of a large estate and owner of a prize-winning racehorse, he is, in fact, in grave danger of losing everything.

Sir Robert Norberton resides in a grand country estate in Berkshire.

Sir Robert is deep in debt and threatened by bankruptcy.

Lady Beatrice is dead and Sir Robert must conceal her death until after the Derby. He lives with his elderly, invalid sister, Lady Beatrice Falder, to whom he is devoted.

The facade

His racehorse, Shoscombe Prince, is due to win his master £80,000 in bets in the Derby.

Sir Robert buries his sister’s body in the vacated coffin, swathed in a sheet.

The reality

To hide her body, Sir Robert removes and burns the

mummified remains

of an ancestor.

In Watson’s words, the Shoscombe Old Place case ends “upon a happier note than Sir Robert’s actions deserved.” Given that the crime turns out to be so minor, the police take a lenient view and largely overlook it, simply rapping Sir Robert on the knuckles for failing to register the death of his sister immediately. Also, remarkably, Sir Robert’s creditors agree to wait until after the race to be paid. And finally, Sir Robert’s horse, Shoscombe Prince, wins the Derby, netting his owner £80,000 in bets, which allows Sir Robert to clear all of his debts and set himself up for life.

A career ends

Watson’s description of the events in the crypt is unusually dramatic, reading like something from a horror story. He describes the appalling sight of Lady Beatrice’s corpse, and the terrifying figure of the giant Sir Robert, in such Gothic detail that we are led to believe something appalling is going to happen. Instead, minutes later they are all sitting comfortably as Sir Robert tells a mundane story about a delay in reporting the death of an old invalid.

In “Shoscombe Old Place,” Holmes uncovers not some terrible murder or dark cruelty, but instead a foolish and highly distasteful fraud perpetrated by a desperate, slightly unpleasant landowner— a fraud that the man in question also gets away with. It is something of an anticlimactic end to Holmes’s career, and perhaps this is just what Conan Doyle intended. Watson begins the story with the remark, “He is one of those men who have overshot their true generation,” and refers at the finish of the tale to “a career which has now outlived its shadows and promises to end in an honoured old age.” In each instance he is talking about Sir Robert, but the descriptions could equally well apply to Holmes himself. ■

THE WO

SHERLO

HOLMES

RLD OF

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294 THE WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

T

he world of Sherlock Holmes, like the character himself, is a unique blend of popular myth and reality. In this final chapter, the detective and his era are explored from a range of perspectives, setting the context in which Conan Doyle lived, and also explaining the historical and social changes that influenced not only his life and those of his readers, but also that of his most famous creation. The enduring legacy of Holmes is also explored, in all its varied forms.

Myth, reality, and reason

The setting of late-Victorian London (pp.296–99) is central to Holmes’s world, and is often thought of as a labyrinth of foggy backstreets in the notorious East End. However, this popular image is an inaccurate one. Conan Doyle’s London had grand new buildings, fashionable shopping areas, broad gaslit thoroughfares, and affluent new suburbs. It was also at the heart of a communications revolution, with grand railroad termini, like Paddington and King’s Cross, a national telegraph system, and a thriving popular press.

Holmes’s London was one of contrasts. While steaming locomotives poured in and out of the great stations, and underground trains ferried commuters below the city’s streets, wealthier citizens still traveled around the center by horse-drawn hansom cabs. Despite the wealth of the empire, the city was a place of crushing poverty, although this was never made apparent in Conan Doyle’s canon.

Difference and tradition

London’s population had increased from one to six million over the course of the 19th century. This influx of people, ideas, wealth, and cultures created a melting pot of complexity and social change (pp.300–05). The sheer scale of the city, the largest in the world at that time, generated fears of a lawless underclass, mainly squashed into

[London] is the biggest aggregation of human life—the most complete compendium of the world.

Henry James

Novelist (1843–1916)

the overcrowded eastern districts. In spite of this, Holmes’s cases feature characters mainly from the mid- to upper echelons of society, mirroring Conan Doyle’s audience. Conan Doyle drew on social tensions and prevalent racial, gender, and class stereotypes in order to add fear, excitement, and zest to his tales. For all of Holmes’s “bohemian” sensibilities, Baker Street is painted as a white, male, middle-class world that would sometimes seem bigoted by today’s standards. Foreigners are criminals, and women are mainly victims or innocent pawns in the stories.

Crime and detection

Holmes was, metaphorically, the progeny of two men, having been inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s character C. Auguste Dupin, and Conan Doyle’s former professor Joseph Bell. Both of these forebears excelled in the science of deductive reasoning, or ratiocination, which became the very heart of Holmes’s science of detection (pp.306–09). The term’s history is explored, from its roots in Greek philosophy, through to the Enlightenment ideals of the 17th century, and on to the importance of Charles Darwin’s theories in his On the Origin of Species (1859).

INTRODUCTION 295

Ratiocination was central to the burgeoning science of crime deduction (pp.310–15), which Conan Doyle reflected in the canon, as the concepts of forensics and criminology became established terms. Holmes’s own contributions to the realm of forensic science, with his monographs on tobacco ash, typewriters, tattoos, and many other subjects, can be seen as part of a wider, pioneering spirit in the development of crime fighting.

The taste for crime

The success of Holmes compared to Conan Doyle’s other characters can partly be attributed to the changing society. The growth of cities and increasing class divisions had led to a fear of crime and a hunger for justice, which the popular press, including the “penny dreadfuls,” was more than happy to encourage. Just as the science of crime solving was growing at this time, so too was crime fiction (pp.316–23). The roots of the genre can be traced back to writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and even Charles Dickens, as well as to contemporaries of Conan Doyle, including G. K. Chesterton and E. W. Hornung. The 20th century saw the rise of hard-boiled detective fiction, and the dominance of female crime writers such as Agatha Christie,

P.D. James, and Ruth Rendell. Today, crime fiction (notably Scandinavian) is as popular as ever, and many of today’s authors have taken inspiration from Holmes’s legacy.

Fame and legacy

An important aspect of Holmes is how popular the character and his adventures were, and how quickly they captured the public’s imagination. Conan Doyle’s first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887), may initially have gone unnoticed when first published, but his short stories, serialized by The Strand Magazine, created the phenomenon that endures to this day, with fan clubs and societies around the world (pp.324–27).

Just as Holmes inspired many literary interpretations, he was also an early star of stage and screen (pp.328–35). Many great actors have played the role of Sherlock Holmes, including Eille Norwood, Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

A selection of Holmes’s most important depictions is provided (pp.336–39)—from his early stage appearance in William Gillette’s 1899 play, Sherlock Holmes, to the latest movie release, Mr. Holmes (2015), starring Sir Ian McKellan.

There are also countless and varied literary appropriations of Holmes (pp.340–43), from the early parodies, through to the sustained creation of the canon’s many “untold cases,” along with complete reimaginings and the current trend for “fan fiction”.

Conan Doyle also wrote many novels and stories beyond the Holmes canon (pp.344–45). Here, his penchant for historical fiction, religious and political commentary, and spiritualist speculation—the “better things” that led him to temporarily kill off his most famous creation—is clearly demonstrated. Yet Holmes still remains his most enduring creation; a man who, in the words of writer Vincent Starrett, “Never lived and so can never die.” ■

Sherlock Holmes is a real character who is above reality; a person living in a distinct place and at a distinct period.

Richard Lancelyn Green

Author and Critic (1953–2004)

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO

A RAMBLE THROUGH

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or many modern readers, the stories of Sherlock Holmes seem to provide a quintessential fictional depiction of Victorian Britain. The detective dresses as a late 19th-century English gentleman; he travels in horse-drawn hansom cabs through streets illuminated by gaslight; and his clients are often (but not always) moneyed members of the Victorian middle class, whose prosperity and status had increased as a result of industrialization and the expansion of Britain’s imperial power. However, this is only half the story.

The London Fog

LONDON?

THE VICTORIAN WORLD

Holmes in context

It is misleading to classify Holmes and his creator as only “Victorians”: while many of the stories are set in the 1880s and 1890s—toward the end of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837– 1901)—over half were written in the early 20th century, and are imbued with a more modern perspective.

Conan Doyle was born in 1859 and died in 1930, so 42 years of his life were spent as one of Queen Victoria’s subjects, during a period of great innovation, expansion, and rapid change. He also lived through the Edwardian era, World War I,

Conan Doyle’s descriptions of the notorious fogs that afflicted London during the 19th century are not as frequent or as florid as those of Charles Dickens or Robert Louis Stevenson, but when Watson remarks in “The Five Orange Pips” (pp.74–9) that “the sun was shining with a subdued brightness through the dim veil which hangs over the great city,” perhaps he is implying that their presence is a given. The thick, yellowish-brown “pea soupers” were a toxic combination of pollution from heavy industry, meteorological peculiarities, and

and much of the interwar period, and witnessed a number of seismic cultural, economic, political, and technological developments, many of which make an appearance in the stories. As a result, Holmes and Watson’s “Victorian” world is very different from the one portrayed in other novels of the era, such as Dickens’s classic tale A Christmas Carol, published almost 50 years earlier in 1843. Holmes’s own Christmas outing, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (pp.82–3), is set in a far more cosmopolitan London than that of Dickens’s day.

thousands of coal fires, and they posed a health hazard for many Londoners. At their worst, they caused a huge number of deaths; most of the victims were those with respiratory problems, the very young, and the elderly. However, a more commonplace nuisance was the floating smuts of soot, which soiled clothes and soft furnishings alike. When, in “The Norwood Builder” (pp.168– 69), John McFarlane dresses in a “light summer overcoat” on a blisteringly hot day, he is most likely attempting to protect his clothes from the dirt in the air.

THE VICTORIAN WORLD 297

Conan Doyle’s life coincided with the zenith of the British Empire during the reign of Victoria (pictured), and Holmes represents, and offers an alternative to, Victorian and imperial values.

By the time Conan Doyle was born, many of the events and individuals that have come to characterize the Victorian age were already old news: the Great Exhibition of 1851 had come and gone, the Crimean War (1853–1856) was over, and the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), who had revolutionized the way in which trade and travel were conducted, was nearing death.

From a literary perspective, Conan Doyle’s birth date was closer to that of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896) and Ernest Hemingway (1899), two of the most influential American novelists of the early 20th century, than it was to that of Alfred Tennyson (1809), Elizabeth Gaskell (1810), and Charles Dickens (1812), three giants of Victorian writing; and the last Holmes story was published in 1927—almost 90 years after Victoria came to the throne.

[Holmes] began his adventures in the very heart of the later Victorian era, carried it through the all-too-short reign of Edward, and has managed to hold his own little niche even in these feverish days.