第 8 页

In fine form

As in Conan Doyle’s previous novel, The Sign of Four is dotted with inconsistencies and minor errors. Contributing factors to this were the haste with which Conan Doyle wrote it, and his loathing of looking back at previous writings to crosscheck facts and details. For example, Watson’s war wound migrates from his shoulder to his leg, and Watson now has an elder brother where before he had no living relatives. Of more concern is Conan Doyle’s questionable depiction of the indigenous Andaman islander, Tonga, who he portrays as a bestial “savage.” In an article in The Quarterly Review, 1904, Andrew Lang observed: “The [indigenous] Andamese are cruelly libelled [in The Sign of Four], and have neither malignant qualities, nor heads like mops, nor weapons.” It may be that Conan Doyle deliberately ignored the facts and made Tonga repulsive so that the reader is not distressed when “the savage” meets his demise. Yet inaccurate portrayals of “savages” were commonplace in the Victorian era, so in his portrayal of Tonga, Conan Doyle was very much a man of his times.

Overall, however, both Conan Doyle and his finest creation are on sparkling form in The Sign of Four. Holmes rattles off the names of streets as the four-wheeler taking him, Watson, and Mary to meet Thaddeus itself rattles through the night, demonstrating his intimate knowledge of London: “Rochester ❯❯

A penal colony was first established on Great Andaman Island in 1789. The British built a new prison after the Indian Mutiny to house their captives; here, prisoners take meals on the beach.

54 THE EARLY ADVENTURES

Row. Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side…” When they all arrive at Pondicherry Lodge, the ancestral family home of the Sholtos, Holmes once again behaves like a “trained bloodhound,” launching himself into a frenzied forensic investigation of the murder scene with the same gusto that he showed in A Study in Scarlet. Watson notes: “He whipped out his lens and a tape measure, and hurried about the room on his knees, measuring, comparing, examining…” Through his deductive brilliance Holmes makes a complete fool of Scotland Yard’s Athelney Jones, just as he did Gregson and Lestrade in the earlier tale, and manages to leave his partner Watson typically dumbfounded.

The villain’s character

The Sign of Four also has a more memorable, complex villain than the bland, one-dimensional Hope of A Study in Scarlet. With his wild eyes and wooden leg—the result of a crocodile attack—Small was largely inspired by Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson’s

I never guess. It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculty.

Sherlock Holmes

Treasure Island (1883). In Conan Doyle’s essay “Through the Magic Door” (1907), he wrote of Stevenson: “…he is the inventor of what may be called the mutilated villain,” and he “has used the effect so often, and with such telling results, that he may be said to have made it his own. To say nothing of Hyde… there is the horrid blind Pew, Black Dog with two fingers missing, Long John Silver with his one leg.”

Small wrestles with his conscience throughout The Sign of Four, which makes him a sympathetic character. What happens to him in the end is not clear. At worst he faces the gallows, the Victorians’ preferred method of execution, and at best “digging drains at Dartmoor,” as he puts it, presaging the looming presence of Princetown Prison in the later story The Hound of the Baskervilles.

A classic tale

Two images in particular remain long in memory after reading this tale. First, the description of the victim at the murder scene— Bartholomew’s “ghastly, inscrutable smile,” and the way that “not only his features, but all his limbs were twisted and turned in the most fantastic fashion.” Second is Conan Doyle’s extraordinarily atmospheric, almost Dickensian, evocation of Victorian London. “Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light, which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement,” notes Watson in a particularly memorable passage. At the time, London was a thriving port, the hub of a great worldwide empire, and Conan Doyle’s busy riverside scenes are full of atmosphere. “Somewhere in the dark ooze at the bottom

Tower of London

2 Tower Bridge 4 Blackwall Tunnel

West India

1 Westminster Wharf Jacobson’s Yard Docks

Isle of Dogs

3 Greenwich

THE SIGN OF FOUR 55

of the Thames lie the bones of that strange visitor to our shores,” says Watson, as he recalls Tonga’s dramatic demise.

Unlike A Study in Scarlet, this tale was widely reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic. London’s Morning Post commented rather

Barking 5 Level

6 7

Plumstead marshes

pompously, “Mr. Conan Doyle has done better work… still, as a specimen of purely detective fiction, the tale has its merits.” The Daily Republican in Pennsylvania expressed a more general view when it stated, “…[Holmes’s] marvellous ingenuity in solving a

A police launch with “two burly police-inspectors” took Holmes, Watson, and Jones downriver in pursuit of the Aurora.

1 Westminster Wharf: Holmes and Watson pick up the police boat.

2 Tower Bridge: The police boat waits for Aurora to emerge from Jacobson’s Yard.

3 Greenwich: Holmes is 300 paces behind the Aurora as they pass through here.

4 Blackwall Tunnel: Holmes is closing in; they are only 250 paces behind the Aurora.

5 Barking Level: The gap closes to a boat-length; Holmes sees Tonga on deck.

6 River bank: Chase ends; Tonga is shot.

7 Plumstead Marshes: Small is captured.

The Thames was a hive of activity in the 19th century, its banks lined with ships, as can be seen in this painting of Tower Bridge from Cherry Garden Pier by Charles Edward Dixon (1872–1934).

seemingly insoluble mystery is portrayed with so graphic a pen that Conan Doyle must take rank as a leader in the line of such writers as Poe and Gaboriau. The Sign of Four is bound to become a classic.” However, by the time these reviews appeared, Conan Doyle had once again let Holmes slip from his mind, and was hard at work on one of his now long-forgotten historical romances.

Today The Sign of Four is indeed considered a classic. A 70-year-old Graham Greene wrote in the introduction to a 1974 edition of the book, “The Sign of Four… I read first at the age of ten and have never forgotten… the dark night in Pondicherry Lodge, Norwood, has never faded from my memory.” ■

YOU SEE

BUT YOU DO

NOT OBSERVE

A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA (1891)

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: July 1891 US: August 1891 (also as “Woman’s Wit” and “The King’s Sweetheart”)

COLLECTION

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892

CHARACTERS

Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein

King of Bohemia.

Irene Adler American opera singer, and King Wilhelm’s former mistress.

Godfrey Norton British lawyer who marries Irene.

T

he first of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories to be published in The Strand Magazine, “A Scandal in Bohemia” is the tale that introduces the beautiful Irene Adler—the most talked-about minor character in the Holmes canon after Moriarty.

Even in the story, Irene appears directly only briefly, yet a world of scholarship and speculation has built up around her. Many screen adaptations have developed her in their own ways: in the US series Elementary (p.339), Moriarty is Irene Adler in disguise, and in the BBC’s series Sherlock (p.339), she is a high-class dominatrix who greets Holmes while naked.

A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA 57

Deep under cover in one of the convincing disguises he adopts when gathering evidence, Holmes (Jeremy Brett) finds himself accidentally caught up in Irene Adler’s wedding ceremony.

Holmes and women

In the very first sentence of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Watson tells the reader that “to Sherlock Holmes she [Irene Adler] is always the woman,” with “the” italicized to ensure the significance is clear. However, he then quickly stresses that “it was not that he [Holmes] felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler.” In fact, the whole idea of love is “abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.”

And yet Conan Doyle has planted the irresistible hint that Holmes, emotionally cold and misogynistic, might have found his true love. It is a testament to Conan Doyle’s brilliant realization of his creation that readers wish so much for the apparently emotionless detective to find his mate. Watson implies that Holmes has rejected the love of women in order to keep his mind focused on the rational work of detection, turning himself into a noble and almost tragic figure. It is no wonder that some literary commentators have likened the detective’s behavior to that of the

In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.

Dr. Watson

courtly knights of the Middle Ages, who desisted from sensuality in order to uphold their chivalric ideals. However, Holmes is a far more psychologically complex figure than any medieval hero.

Holmes the bohemian

Since his marriage and move away from 221B Baker Street, Watson has seen little of his former companion. However, he is aware that Holmes spends a lot of time in his lodgings, interspersing bouts of work with regular drug binges—alternating weekly “between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.” It seems that the detective needs a suitable outlet for his overactive brain when he is without a case to occupy his mind.

Although this story’s title ostensibly refers to a potential scandal for the King of Bohemia, the first mention of Bohemia is in relation to Holmes, when Watson tells the reader that the detective “loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul.” The term “bohemian” was in vogue at the time (see box, p.61), and referred to free-spirited individuals who led an unconventional lifestyle and rejected social norms. However, love and passion were also at the heart of the bohemian ideal— emotions that are anathema to Holmes. In calling this story “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Watson is perhaps hinting that the real scandal may lie not within King Wilhelm’s Bohemia but within Holmes, in a rare moment when a woman is able to capture both his respect and his admiration.

Holmes at work

After his lengthy, slightly wistful introduction, Watson sets the story in motion. He is standing in the street below the Baker Street rooms. He looks up to the window and spots Holmes: “his tall, spare figure pass[ing] twice in a dark silhouette against the blind.” Holmes is remote and above the normal world, as he must inevitably be, but Watson can tell from his energetic pacing and alert posture ❯❯

58 THE EARLY ADVENTURES

that he is at work again: “He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem.” Watson has already mentioned Holmes’s indulgence in narcotics, and he stresses it a second time in order to portray the great detective as a dramatic, romantic figure who switches between light and dark— his career illuminated as if by flashes of lightning in the night.

Eager to reconnect with his friend, Watson makes his way up to the rooms. Holmes is as cool and incisive as ever, noting several things with unnerving accuracy: the amount of weight Watson has gained since they last met; that he has gone back into practice as a doctor; that he has been out in the rain a lot recently; and that he has an incompetent serving girl. When Watson, astonished, asks how he does it, the detective explains his method by demonstrating that it all depends on observation. Watson sees things, he says, but he does not observe. Ordinary people fail to notice life’s minutiae, which is why Watson has no idea of the number of steps on the stairs up to 221B, but Holmes can tell him it is 17.

A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so incourteous to his verbs.

Sherlock Holmes

Such sharp observations are central to Holmes’s method, and today this is still considered the principal skill of a detective. However, as Holmes points out, a detective also needs to understand exactly what he is seeing, as he demonstrates when he goes on to show the doctor an anonymous note that he has just received. Watson can deduce only that the writer is wealthy, whereas Holmes can also reveal that he is a native German speaker (as only the German language would construct sentences with the verb falling at the end) and that the notepaper comes from the German kingdom

Irene Adler

Critics are divided in their analysis of Irene Adler (portrayed here by Lara Pulver). Some say she reflects the emergence of a new kind of young woman in the late 1800s: smart, self-confident, and assertive, a phenomenon some scholars now call “first wave” feminism. Not all would join the suffragettes’ campaign for votes for women, but these daughters of the middle class were beginning to believe in their right and ability to control their own lives. Increasingly, girls chose to go to the new women’s

of Bohemia. Furthermore, when his client arrives a few moments later, giving a false name and with his face hidden behind a mask, Holmes realizes immediately that this large, flamboyantly dressed man is in fact Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein—the King of Bohemia.

The King and the diva

Holmes quickly makes his attitude toward royalty plain by adopting a curt, businesslike manner, aware that to anyone but the self-centered King, his disdain would be apparent. The King reveals that when he was Crown Prince he had a romantic liaison with a young American opera singer named Irene Adler, and was careless enough to have his photograph taken with her, thus leaving evidence of their affair. Recently, he has become engaged to a Scandinavian princess, and he is afraid that if her principled family were to be made aware of his past indiscretion, they will oppose the match. Irene has threatened to make the photograph public when the engagement is announced in a few days’ time, presumably, the King says, because she does not want him to marry another woman,

universities—significantly, Irene comes from America, where women’s education was further advanced than in Europe—and then to enter the workplace as teachers, doctors, and office clerks. However, others claim Irene represents a patriarchal Victorian view that only the most exceptional woman could match Holmes’s intellect on his own ground. After her brief triumph, she must slip back into the shadows of marriage. Still others view her as a male fantasy figure, giving men the salacious illusion of submission.

Disguise is an ongoing theme in this story, and despite Holmes’s usual mastery in the art of disguise, it is only Irene Adler who is completely successful in concealing her identity.

A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA 59