Holmes flourished in a particular place and time: in
the late Victorian and Edwardian era and in London. Mistakenly we
believe it was a felicitous time in which to live. Indeed it was
but for a chosen, fortunate few; for the educated, the upper classes
but not for a majority of those living in London at that period.
Oliver Bleeck in The Highbinders (1974) wrote that he wanted the
London of clopping hansom cabs, pea soup fogs and Sherlock Holmes
rather than the London of bad drainage, mass poverty and a thirty-two-year
life expectancy.
Sherlock Holmes was a typical man of his time and class. He reflected
the inclinations and virtues and some of the prejudices that one
would expect. He was loyal to
family, to friends, to his country, to the Queen and to himself. He respected
law and order; he sought justice for all and he believed in education even
for the lower classes. He recognized the boon for himself and for
society in the
rise in scientific knowledge and methods. He was a man of action; a man who
always and without procrastination responded to the call of duty.
In his career he had
a track record of success, which certainly endears him to Americans and Australians.
He was what we all admire, a winner. He created a new profession, which employed
the scientific method known as the laboratory method. This coupled with his
great natural abilities made him not only the first but also the
best possible private
consulting detective. An American Sherlockian lawyer wrote: ‘No man lives
or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent
to the detection of crime as Mr. Sherlock Holmes.’
Yes, a feeling of pleasing nostalgia enters into our blind acceptance
of the Holmesian world. And nostalgia is not an unacceptable
emotion. We do often
these days need an escape from a world filled with war, revolution, atomic
threats,
abuses of authority and venality on the part of so many political, religious
and business leaders. We observe ad nauseam shocking and scandalous events
relating to sex, drugs and human relations. We observe an educational system,
which strives
to teach moneymaking skills at the expense of elevating the mind and spirit.
All this leads me to believe that a principal reason so many admire the character
Sherlock Holmes is that it helps fill a void; we need a leader. Holmes is
an exemplar: he succeeds and does not disappoint.
Further there is mental stimulation and much pure pleasure to be
found in the Watsonian Canon, the sixty Holmes stories. They
are mostly cleverly contrived
plots with many memorable characters and written in a lucid, straightforward
style which cannot fail to enthral and entertain.
From the days of the cave man, storytelling has been an important,
respected and needed skill. It seems to fill a natural human
intellectual need. But in
our time there appears to be a trend away from simple storytelling. One literary
critic said recently that only in American Westerns and science fiction do
we find a good story.
And what a memorable, absorbing and quotable style of writing Doyle
employed. He created settings and characters that are in many
instances as unforgettable
as those penned by Charles Dickens. Graham Green wrote when speaking of Doyle’s
descriptive gift in the Holmesian case histories, ‘They are real writing
from which we all can draw a lesson.’ |
