Sherlockholmitos (review 1932) - Revision history

TCDE-Team at 16:02, 2 May 2026

2026-05-02T16:02:42Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:02, 2 May 2026
Line 17:		Line 17:
	But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.		But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.

	The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler ~~in the Civil Service~~ <ref>~~the phrase~~ "butler ~~in the Civil Service~~" is a misprint instead of "brother in the Civil Service." (~~mentioned~~ in [[Sherlockholmitos (letter Green)]], 3 november 1932).</ref>, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("[[Silver Blaze]]"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.		The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler <ref>The word "butler" is a misprint instead of "brother in the Civil Service." (amended in [[Sherlockholmitos (letter Green)]], 3 november 1932).</ref> in the Civil Service , a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("[[Silver Blaze]]"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.

	So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.		So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.

TCDE-Team at 16:01, 2 May 2026

2026-05-02T16:01:29Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:01, 2 May 2026
Line 17:		Line 17:
	But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.		But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.

	The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler in the Civil Service, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("[[Silver Blaze]]"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.		The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler in the Civil Service <ref>the phrase "butler in the Civil Service" is a misprint instead of "brother in the Civil Service." (mentioned in [[Sherlockholmitos (letter Green)]], 3 november 1932).</ref>, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("[[Silver Blaze]]"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.

	So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.		So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.
Line 27:		Line 27:


			----
			<references />
	{{footer_periodicals}}		{{footer_periodicals}}

TCDE-Team at 15:59, 2 May 2026

2026-05-02T15:59:41Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 17:59, 2 May 2026
Line 17:		Line 17:
	But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.		But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.

	The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler ~~[sic!]~~ in the Civil Service, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("[[Silver Blaze]]"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.		The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler in the Civil Service, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("[[Silver Blaze]]"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.

	So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.		So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.

TCDE-Team at 15:22, 2 May 2026

2026-05-02T15:22:04Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 17:22, 2 May 2026
Line 5:		Line 5:
	[[File:the-times-1932-10-27-tls-p782-sherlockholmitos.jpg\|thumb\|250px\|right\|[[The Times]] ''Literary Supplement'' (27 october 1932, p. 782)]]		[[File:the-times-1932-10-27-tls-p782-sherlockholmitos.jpg\|thumb\|250px\|right\|[[The Times]] ''Literary Supplement'' (27 october 1932, p. 782)]]

	: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DOCTOR WASTON. A Chronology of their Adventures. By H. W. Bell. (Constable. 15s. net.)		* SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DOCTOR WASTON. A Chronology of their Adventures. By H. W. Bell. (Constable. 15s. net.)
	: SHERLOCK HOLMES: FACT OR FICTION. By THOMAS S. BLAKENEY. (Murray. 2s. 6d. net.)		* SHERLOCK HOLMES: FACT OR FICTION. By THOMAS S. BLAKENEY. (Murray. 2s. 6d. net.)
	: DOCTOR WATSON. By S. C. ROBERTS. (Faber and Faber. 1s. net)		* DOCTOR WATSON. By S. C. ROBERTS. (Faber and Faber. 1s. net)

	The discovery of the Mendelian principle is the glory of an abbé; and to another abbé, Fr. Ronald Knox, belongs the glory of founding (as long ago as 1911) that important branch of scientific studies for which South America has coined the needed word Sherlockholmitos. Last year saw the publication of the first full-length biography of [[Dr. Watson]]; and now we receive simultaneously two works of profound scholarship — Mr. H. W. Bell's painstaking chronology of all the cases, nearly 130 in number, in which Mr. [[Sherlock Holmes]] is recorded to have been involved (a book which, among other sensational theories, argues that [[Dr. Watson]] made three marriages); and Mr. Thomas Blakeney's more general study, comprising a less detailed chronology, a review of Sherlockholmitos literature, a character-sketch of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Holmes]] and an analysis of his relations with Scotland Yard. To both these writers, as to [[Dr. Watson]]'s biographer, Mr. S. C. Roberts, who first publicly demonstrated that he had married twice, our debt remains incalculable.		The discovery of the Mendelian principle is the glory of an abbé; and to another abbé, Fr. Ronald Knox, belongs the glory of founding (as long ago as 1911) that important branch of scientific studies for which South America has coined the needed word Sherlockholmitos. Last year saw the publication of the first full-length biography of [[Dr. Watson]]; and now we receive simultaneously two works of profound scholarship — Mr. H. W. Bell's painstaking chronology of all the cases, nearly 130 in number, in which Mr. [[Sherlock Holmes]] is recorded to have been involved (a book which, among other sensational theories, argues that [[Dr. Watson]] made three marriages); and Mr. Thomas Blakeney's more general study, comprising a less detailed chronology, a review of Sherlockholmitos literature, a character-sketch of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Holmes]] and an analysis of his relations with Scotland Yard. To both these writers, as to [[Dr. Watson]]'s biographer, Mr. S. C. Roberts, who first publicly demonstrated that he had married twice, our debt remains incalculable.

TCDE-Team: TCDE-Team moved page Sherlockholmitos to Sherlockholmitos (review 1932) without leaving a redirect

2026-05-02T14:35:57Z

TCDE-Team moved page Sherlockholmitos to Sherlockholmitos (review 1932) without leaving a redirect

← Older revision	Revision as of 16:35, 2 May 2026
(No difference)

TCDE-Team at 13:00, 2 May 2026

2026-05-02T13:00:03Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:00, 2 May 2026
Line 17:		Line 17:
	But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.		But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson\|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL\|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.

	The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler [sic!] in the Civil Service, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("Silver Blaze"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.		The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty\|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson\|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN\|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson\|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler [sic!] in the Civil Service, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes\|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("[[Silver Blaze]]"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.

	So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.		So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson\|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes\|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes\|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.

TCDE-Team: Created page with "''Sherlockholmitos'' is a review written by David Leslie Murray published in The Times (Literary Supplement) on 27 october 1932. == Sherlockholmitos == [[The Times ''Literary Supplement'' (27 october 1932, p. 782)]] : SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DOCTOR WASTON. A Chronology of their Adventures. By H. W. Bell. (Constable. 15s. net.) : SHERLOCK HOLMES: FACT OR FICTION. By THOMAS S. BLAKENEY. (M..."

2026-05-02T12:59:37Z

Created page with "''Sherlockholmitos'' is a review written by David Leslie Murray published in The Times (Literary Supplement) on 27 october 1932. == Sherlockholmitos == thumb|250px|right|[[The Times ''Literary Supplement'' (27 october 1932, p. 782)]] : SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DOCTOR WASTON. A Chronology of their Adventures. By H. W. Bell. (Constable. 15s. net.) : SHERLOCK HOLMES: FACT OR FICTION. By THOMAS S. BLAKENEY. (M..."

New page

''Sherlockholmitos'' is a review written by [[David Leslie Murray]] published in [[The Times]] (Literary Supplement) on 27 october 1932.

== Sherlockholmitos ==
[[File:the-times-1932-10-27-tls-p782-sherlockholmitos.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[The Times]] ''Literary Supplement'' (27 october 1932, p. 782)]]

: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DOCTOR WASTON. A Chronology of their Adventures. By H. W. Bell. (Constable. 15s. net.)
: SHERLOCK HOLMES: FACT OR FICTION. By THOMAS S. BLAKENEY. (Murray. 2s. 6d. net.)
: DOCTOR WATSON. By S. C. ROBERTS. (Faber and Faber. 1s. net)

The discovery of the Mendelian principle is the glory of an abbé; and to another abbé, Fr. Ronald Knox, belongs the glory of founding (as long ago as 1911) that important branch of scientific studies for which South America has coined the needed word Sherlockholmitos. Last year saw the publication of the first full-length biography of [[Dr. Watson]]; and now we receive simultaneously two works of profound scholarship — Mr. H. W. Bell's painstaking chronology of all the cases, nearly 130 in number, in which Mr. [[Sherlock Holmes]] is recorded to have been involved (a book which, among other sensational theories, argues that [[Dr. Watson]] made three marriages); and Mr. Thomas Blakeney's more general study, comprising a less detailed chronology, a review of Sherlockholmitos literature, a character-sketch of [[Sherlock Holmes|Mr. Holmes]] and an analysis of his relations with Scotland Yard. To both these writers, as to [[Dr. Watson]]'s biographer, Mr. S. C. Roberts, who first publicly demonstrated that he had married twice, our debt remains incalculable.

But the difficulties experienced by these scholars in establishing a consistent chronology of the "cases" force us to ask whether the preliminary textual problems have been adequately explored. Is the "[[The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes|Case-book]]" more than a palpable late forgery — and on the case-book alone "[[Dr. Watson|Watson]]'s" alleged second as well as third marriage exclusively depends. "[[His Last Bow]]" is highly suspect, though it incorporates a leaf from the original Codex Maritimus A, 1891-1893 ["[[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes|Adventures]]" and "[[The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes|Memoirs]]"], and one story at least, "[[The Bruce-Partington Plans]]," recommends itself on internal evidence, apart from the curious blunder whereby the name of a street, Cadogan Place, W., has been made into the name of a man "Cadogan West." "[[The Return of Sherlock Holmes]]" (Codex Maritimus B, 1903-1904) is a complicated riddle containing such "doublets" as "[[The Six Napoleons]]," duplicating "[[The Blue Carbuncle]]," and "[[The Second Stain]]," duplicating "[[The Naval Treaty]]." Yet "[[The Golden Pince-Nez]]" may well be the first form of a story in C.M.a.

Seeing that the (so-called) "[[STUD|Study in Scarlet]]," the "[[SIGN|Sign of Four]]" and "[[The Hound of the Baskervilles]]" have never had serious doubts thrown on their authenticity, we have with them and the contents of C.M.''a'' a homogeneous Redaction of the [[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]] Saga. But this only opens the way to "higher critical" problems of peculiarly baffling sort. Let us take up that document which we never handle without the thrilling feeling of being near the primal sources of inspiration, that "Reprint from the Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D., late of the Army Medical Department," which opens the (so-called) "[[STUD|Study in Scarlet]]." Here we have a plain, straightforward narrative that imposes itself by its inherent naturalness and credibility. Yet into the midst of this tale of sordid gang-warfare — inappropriately entitled by some later hand "[[A Study in Scarlet]]," though the central murder is bloodless and bloodstains play no serious part in tracking down the perpetrator — there is pitchforked, without attempt at connexion, a romantic narrative of love and vengeance in primitive Utah. We perceive at once that U. comes from another source, the author of which we will call A., denoting not an "American" but an "Americanizer," for we do not think that he a was a genuine Transatlantic writer. The (so-called) "[[STUD|Study in Scarlet]]" appeared in 1887; in 1885 had appeared Stevenson's "Dynamiter." There, in the "Story of the Destroying Angel," we find a remarkable similarity to U. In both there is the opening with the rescue of a girl in the great alkali desert, and she has actually in both the same name "[[Lucy Ferrier|Lucy]]." In both there is the settlement in of the travellers in Salt Lake City, their falling under the suspicion of the terrible Mormon hierarchy, the flight, the pursuit by the "Destroying" (U. calls them "Avenging") Angels, the murder of the father. The differences (it is axiomatic in higher criticism) do but accentuate the resemblances (and vice versa). U. is a skilful adaptation of elements in "D.A." A. is also the author of the Vermissa episode in "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (which is, again, nothing but a retelling of the historic exposure of the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania by a Pinkerton agent); and A., yet once more, appears to be responsible for the [[K.K.K.|Ku Klux Klan]] tale, "[[The Five Orange Pips]]" in C.M.a. That this tale is a manipulation is shown by the fact that its opening (storm scene) is but a slightly varied repetition of the opening of "[[The Golden Pince-Nez]]"; while it is incredible that "[[Sherlock Holmes]]" or the rawest plain-clothes policeman should have allowed Mr. Openshaw to go out unguarded to his doom on a night of black tempest just because it was too much bother for "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]" to change his slippers and dressing-gown.

But the problem of A. leads us straight into the heart of the great [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]] myth. Briefly there is no way in which the alleged activities of [[Professor Moriarty]] can be fitted into any conceivable chronology of the cases of "[[Sherlock Holmes]]." In "[[The Valley of Fear]]" (a case that cannot be, on the evidence of the learned works before us, dated later than 1890), [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]] figures as the arch-criminal organizer well know to "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]" and "[[Dr. Watson|Watson]]"; yet in "[[The Final Problem]]" (1891) "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]" discloses his name to "[[Dr. Watson|Watson]]" as a surprise, and "[[Dr. Watson|Watson]]" has never heard of him. "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]," moreover, claims to have known of [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]]'s activities "for years past": yet he has never once mentioned him in all the range of cases filling C.M.''a''. [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]] is clearly a myth, and may proceed from A., since the prosperous and respectable organizer of a network of gangs is an American type of criminal. [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]] is always victorious whenever he appears. At the end of "[[VALL|The Valley]]" he defies "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]" by bumping off Douglas-Edwards after all; in "[[The Final Problem]]" he hunts "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]" like a wounded hare out of England, escapes arrest and (as we cannot doubt was the original version of the tale) flings him into the Reichenbach Falls before escaping — why should "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]" seek to escape? — up the cliff into Tibet, presumably to organize brigandage and kidnapping in the Far East.

The impossibility of fitting [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]] into any rational scheme of Sherlockholmitos has driven one commentator to the desperate device of identifying [[Professor Moriarty|Moriarty]] with [[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]: Mr. Blakeney deals faithfully with this hypothesis in an appendix. And yet it may contain a grain of truth, as we will try to show. When we are reading the "Reminiscences of [[John H. Watson]], M.D.," we get a straightforward picture both of the Doctor and of [[Sherlock Holmes|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]]. [[John H. Watson|John Watson]] is a retired Army man of sedentary and incurably bachelor habits, with a bullet wound disabling his shoulder. [[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]] is a medico-chemical student, turned private consulting-detective, with an exclusive and absorbing interest in his work. His knowledge of literature and philosophy is nil, and he resents being told elementary facts of astronomy as a useless burdening of his mind. As his dangerous profession requires, he is an athlete in fine training. When we turn to the "[[SIGN|Sign of Four]]" and its sequels what do we meet with? First, a certain [[John H. Watson|James Watson]] with an injury to his leg; then a "[[Sherlock Holmes]]," who is a dope-fiend, a gourmet always giving expensive little suppers, a literary aesthete readily quoting Hafiz, Horace, Petrarch, Goethe, Flaubert, and a student of medieval manuscripts. This personage has a highly placed butler [sic!] in the Civil Service, a certain [[Mycroft Holmes|Mr. Mycroft]] (to whom the Redactor has tacked on the surname "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]"; but [[Mycroft Holmes|Mycroft]] is no first-name for a Christian). This "[[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]]" is apparently a shady kind of secret agent, and if we could accept "[[His Last Bow]]" as containing a historical substratum we might think his real name, if not [[Mycroft Holmes|Mycroft]], was "Altamont." (But that may have been one of his many aliases.) His companion can have no connexion with the excellent [[Dr. Watson|Dr. John Watson]]. Limpfoot Jim is clearly a hired gunman always in attendance of "Altamont," with a revolver always in his pocket. The attempts of R. to assign to him a medical practice which he never attends to are farcical. Limpfoot Jim, we should conjecture, was married once and (characteristically) to the presumed heiress of the Agra treasure. Disappointed in his rapacious hopes, there is but too much reason to fear that he did her to death within a few years of the wedding. If this be thought too terrible for belief consider the criminal record of "Altamont" himself. In the pay of the scandalous King of Bohemia, he tried to steal from the wronged Irene Adler a valuable photograph, while Limpfoot flung a smoke-bomb into her house. To preserve the blemished reputation of a society beauty he and Limpfoot broke into the house of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton, rifled his safe of important documents and put him "on the spot." (Their own account of a mysterious woman of high rank entering and shooting him as a blackmailer is too flimsy to be examined.) Further, "Altamont" made illicit betting gains by running a disguised race-horse ("Silver Blaze"); he blackmailed — if C.M.b is authentic — the Duke of Holdernesse to the tune of £6,000 (or, it may have been, £12,000) as the price of his silence over the Duke's position as accessory to the murder of the school master Heidegger; and, unless we assume that he was an imbecile, he can have had none but a criminal motive for hurrying the stockbroker's clerk off to Birmingham when he must have known that the robbery was to take place at Mawson's, in London, on that very day.

So cunningly, nevertheless, has R. interwoven the exploits of "Altamont" and "Limpfoot Jim" into the honest chronicles of [[Dr. Watson|Dr. John Watson]] and [[Sherlock Holmes|Mr. Sherlock Holmes]] that, except for the "Reminiscences," we may doubt of we have a single uncontaminated case of the real [[Sherlock Holmes]]. (Even into the "Reminiscences" a forged passage representing [[Sherlock Holmes|Holmes]] as a purchaser of rare first edition has been interpolated.) Enough has been said to show the complexity of Sherlockholmitos. It is now for research to continue to pierce the labyrinth.

{{footer_periodicals}}