“The world is full of obvious things which no one by chance ever observes.”
-Sherlock Holmes, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”
This Friday we’ll see the release of Guy Ritchie’s long-awaited Sherlock Holmes film which, as you know, will be about Holmes and his plucky sidekick Dr. Watson attempting to foil a plot to destroy all of London. This strikes me as more James Bond than Sherlock Holmes so, in anticipation of a little flak coming from our neighbors across the pond about an American actor playing Britain’s most famous detective, I took the liberty of reading the entire Sherlock Holmes catalog so I can bring you a little breakdown of who the original man was and what complaints to expect about the new movie. So here, for your information, is the most comprehensive and simplified break-down of the world’s most famous detective to be found anywhere on the internet. Enjoy!
First of all, Sherlock Holmes was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887. He’s followed along on his investigations by his friend and roommate Dr. Watson, who takes pleasure in watching Holmes work and in documenting his accomplishments. Evidently Holmes is based on a real man named Dr. Joseph Bell, who was known for drawing large conclusions from the simplest observations, and his methods are remarkably similar to those of Agatha Christie’s crack detective, Hercule Poirot.
Nothing Escapes Him...except all those old books..."
Meaning he generally will hear about a case, and discuss it with Watson, and then the client will come over and explain their hopeless situation to him, reiterating their hopes that Holmes can somehow help to shed at least a scrap of light on the subject. Typically, at about this point, Holmes will quietly mention that he has already solved the case and will furnish the details post-haste.
Ok, so here’s the problem that I see coming with the movie. Ritchie’s film is a major, big-budget production, but Doyle’s stories were never known for their action. Tension, yes, but Holmes had a severe distaste for the limelight, and rarely even took credit for solving his own cases, since the mental workout was all he was really after. His main motivation for doing detective work in the first place is to “escape from the commonplaces of existence,” not for fame or recognition. Even more troubling, Holmes generally ignored large, sensational crimes, because the bigger the crime, he believes, the simpler and less interesting the solution. This is my concern about Guy Ritchie having made a movie about Holmes stopping the destruction of London, a crime which wouldn’t have grabbed the original Holmes’ attention in the least.
Whatever the case, here are a few things that you need to know about the man:
Holmes on detective work:
“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.” (“The Red-Headed League”)
Holmes on knowledge:
“A man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.” (“The Five Orange Pips”)
A sample of Holmes’ deduction skills:
(after examining a tattered felt hat): “That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral digression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.” (“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”)
Holmes on big crimes:
“Larger crimes are simpler because the bigger the crime, the more obvious the motive.” (“A Case of Identity”)
“Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home. Hence, what appears to be an open-and-shut case more often than not is much more complicated than it looks.”
“You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.” (“The Boscombe Valley Mystery”)
Holmes’ on Love:
“All emotions, and love particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a love her would have placed himself in a false position…for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results.” (“A Scandal in Bohemia”)
“Love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgement.” (“The Sign of the Four”)
Dr. Watson describes Holmes’ knowledge:
“Philosophy, astronomy, and politics are zero. Botany, variable. Geology, profound (can identify mud stains from any region within 50 miles of London). Chemistry, eccentric. Anatomy, unsystematic. Sensational literature and crime records, unique. Violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.” (“The Five Orange Pips”)
(Incidentally, the very presence of Watson – a married doctor with no other connection to Holmes than a social friendship and no connection with his cases other than a personal interest in recording them – is a simple but necessary reflection of Holmes’ own erratic nature. Sherlock Holmes would never set himself to the tedious task of recording the intricate details of his own cases, so as a mere story-telling device Watson is necessary to provide the needed mid-case dialogue and to provide us, the readers, with someone within the story who shares our mystified point of view. Oh, and so Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, also a doctor, can put himself in all his stories…)
Holmes on drugs:
“I solved this case by sitting up all night on five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag.” (!!) (“The Man With the Twisted Lip”)
Holmes on American/British World Domination!:
“It is always a joy to meet an American, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.” (“The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”)
Holmes on Facts:
“It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which are vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of concentrated.” (“The Reigate Puzzle”)
Holmes on Crime as Entertainment:
“If I claim full justice in my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing – a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.” (“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and lot of crappy dialogue.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Bad Writing:
Holmes: “To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in it least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes celebres and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province.”
Really? Did Holmes really talk like that? Did anyone ever talk like that? I don’t think even Shakespeare complicated his everyday language to this extent. Prose and dialogue are very different things, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was certainly prone to overdo the revision process, resulting in dialogue that isn’t remotely believable. Doyle is, however, astonishingly skilled at providing descriptions of appearance and behavior, which is one of the things that makes his writing so good:
“As he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had to make her own way in the world.” (“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”)
“I have never met so utterly spoiled and so ill-natured a little creature. He is small for his age, with a head which is quite disproportionately large. His whole life appears to be spent in an alternation between savage fits of passion and gloomy intervals of sulking. Giving pain to any creature weaker than himself seems to be his one idea of amusement, and he shows remarkable talent in planning the capture of mice, little birds, and insects.”
(“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”)
Holmes on Public Education:
“What do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis an deduction!”
Holmes on Watson:
“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.” (“The Hound of the Baskervilles”)
Holmes on True Crime:
“The days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding schools.” “(The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Favorite Word:
Believe it or not, it isn’t ‘elementary,’ it’s ‘singular.’ Seriously, it’s everywhere.
Holmes on Imagination:
“It is the scientific use of the imagination to balance probabilities and choose the most likely.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on Accidental Racism:
“There was a portrait within of a man strikingly handsome and intelligent-looking, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent.” Oops.
(the previously mentioned man’s white wife, describing their child): “It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine…” Double oops. (“Silver Blaze”)
Watson on Holmes’ Methods:
“Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will.”
Holmes on what he really meant about Watson:
“When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.”
Holmes on Accomplishments:
“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe you have done.” (“A Study in Scarlet”)
Watson on Holmes on Exercise:
“Holmes never exercised for its own sake, but was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen. He looked upon aimless bodily exertion as a waste of energy.” (“Silver Blaze”)
Watson on Evil:
“Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”
Holmes on his Secretive Nature:
“I’m afraid I rather give myself away when I explain. Results without causes are much more impressive.” (“The Stock Broker’s Clerk”)
“You know a conjuror gets no credit when once he has explained his trick, and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.” (“A Study in Scarlet”)
Holmes on the Power of Disguise:
“My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings.
It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.”
Watson on Holmes’ faults:
One of Sherlock Holmes’ defects – if, indeed, one may call it a defect – was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfillment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances.” (“The Hound of the Baskervilles”)
Holmes on Cocaine:
“I suppose it’s influence is physically a bad one. I find it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.” (“The Sign of the Four”)
Watson’s Explanation for Holmes on Cocaine:
“Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting.” (“Silver Blaze”)
Holmes on His Job:
“When others can’t solve a case, the matter is laid before me. I examine the data, as an expert, and provide a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward.”
Holmes on Watson’s Writing of his Cases:
“Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”
Watson on Holmes’ Manic Depression:
“He was bright, eager, and in excellent spirits, — a mood which in his case alternated with fits of the blackest depression.”
Holmes on Over Compensation:
“The chief proof of man’s greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.”
Holmes on Women:
“Women are never to be entirely trusted, — not the best of them.”
Holmes on his own Manic Depression…and on more cocaine:
Holmes bursts of unstoppable energy and dedication are interspersed with sometimes weeks of laziness and loafing. He takes no credit, but as he says at the end of this story, “For me, there is always the cocaine bottle…”
Holmes on the whole point of it all:
“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.” (“A Study in Scarlet”)
Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes will be released into theaters on Christmas Day, 2009. Enjoy!
There are few things quite so clichéd and irritating to me as to say something like “Sherlock Holmes for a new generation,” but that’s pretty much what’s going on here. There has been so much bickering and moaning about inconsistencies with the time period of Victorian London and discrepancies in the characters that it’s almost like a whole demographic set out with the goal of hating the thing. 
Right. Such a crime wouldn’t spark the least bit of interest in Holmes, who shunned large crimes with their obvious motives for smaller but much more interesting and challenging crimes that might provide for a more efficient cognitive workout. Were he aware of this characteristic of Holmes’, Mr. Travers might well have been even more offended when Blackwood tells him, “You and I are bound together on a journey that will twist the very fabric of nature.” What does that even mean?
Most importantly, there’s a crucial scene where the movie comes dangerously close to making a drastic mistake concerning their relationship with each other, and I assure you, the correct choice was made.
