The Unromantic Detective

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

The Unromantic Detective is an article written by George Edgar published in The Living Age on 24 december 1910.


The Unromantic Detective

The Living Age (24 december 1910, p. 825)
The Living Age (24 december 1910, p. 826)
The Living Age (24 december 1910, p. 827)

It may be noted with tempered satisfaction that the house of Newnes has persuaded Sir A. Conan Doyle to revive that excellent hero, Sherlock Holmes, who figures with his usual gallantry to a December story. Carlyle, who once wrote and delivered a set of lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship, a book which is now published with deprecatory introductions, had not the fortune to live in these purple days of prodigal splendor. The sage of Cheyne Row therefore missed much which might have leavened his grim philosophy. As instance, he did not know, as we know, the fascinating personality of Sherlock Holmes, nor had he the privilege of watching the perfect mechanism of the detective's mind at work. Certainly, if such a privilege had occurred to Carlyle there would have been another addition to the book of lectures, and Sherlock himself might have figured as the inspiration of a paper on the hero as detective.

Now, I do not care habitually to rub the bloom off the ripened peach or blow the dust from a wine of rare vintage which has been long in the cellar. It may be held that an illusion which is pleasant and utterly harmless may be cherished, even if the belief at the back of it is palpably untrue. Thus one may believe and enjoy the knowledge that women are all angels, that marriages are made in heaven, and that long life is induced by cold baths, chemical foods, and open windows. None of these things is true, but belief in them does not amount to much, one way or another; so if people gain pleasure by them — well, what's the odds! But it is questionable whether our pleasant faith in Sherlock Holmes, his life and adventures, does not do positive harm by teaching us to expect too much of the detective. We take Sherlock, the magnificent, and, gloating over his precision and perfection, set him up as a shining ideal, and expect every plain-clothes constable to live up to it. This is scarcely fair. Give Sherlock Holmes a trifle of cigar-ash, a magnifying glass, and a dose of cocaine, and he will trace the life of the criminal from the cradle to the crime, and walk straight out of his rooms at Baker Street into the criminal's haunt, den, or apartment. Contemplation of this kind of feat, oft repeated with a monthly monotonous success, leads the admirer to believe all detectives should be as capable as Sherlock Holmes. One begins to expect the same precision and perfection from Scotland Yard as one gets from the Strand Magazine. When the promoted policeman who is a detective, and a fallible man at that, fails in his task of sleuthing crime, critics with Sherlock, the magnificently accurate, in their minds, bite their fingers in bitter jaundice and, as one man, begin to write to the papers about the latest police scandal. Believe me. it is not good enough; it is not cricket; it is not fair; and, as Sir Charles Wyndham, the evergreen criterion in the circus, does say, "It won't work, it won't work."

In the interests of the poor detective of real life, I think it is necessary to blow the cobwebs off the vessel that contains the rare vintage. One ought at least to remember that the detective of real life is a man who has only just escaped from being a policeman. Give him cigar-ash, a magnifying glass, and a dose of cocaine, and nothing will come of it beyond surcease through the doping and a dulness which is reaction. The ordinary detective cannot look at the mud on a man's trouser-ends and tell to a yard where he keeps his country house. He cannot look at the finger-prints on a bell-push and deduce the facts that the finger which last pressed the button belonged to a sea faring man, who was unvaccinated, had red hair, a green parrot, a wooden leg, and his name, Jack Johnson, tattooed on the left shoulder-blade. Sherlock Holmes could do all this with one hand tied behind his back; but then he gets a big price for performing miracles. Nor can the ordinary detective sit up all night playing the violin and solving knotty problems as he coaxes the latest sand-dance from the vibrant catgut. The ordinary detective is a man, and one step, a simple one, is enough for him at a time. Sherlock Holmes, on the contrary, is a wizard. He never lived a real life; he never solved a real crime; he never dogged a real criminal. He is just a shining ideal, so wonderful that even a slow-witted Government recognized the merit of the mere act of creation and knighted the author. One other advantage Sherlock Holmes possesses. He makes the crime explain the clues. The ordinary detective of commerce has to make the clues explain the crime.

There is a difference. Sherlock Holmes solves his problems snugly ensconced on the mat in Baker Street and wrapped up in a dressing-gown. The ordinary detective has to perform without even a carpet. l have only known one detective. He looked almost as dull as l do, but he wore a better hat. He also smelt of rum, a penetrating fluid that does not necessarily promote acute reasoning. The criminal was in the house opposite to mine; the solution lay in watching; the only place of satisfactory vigil was my garden. When he asked permission to use my garden l granted it, disliking the man. For three nights he stood there watching. It was November, and it rained the misty, soggy rain peculiar to November each night. The rain fell in a moist, misty blanket of wetness, and, catching our only tree, collected there for a spell and then dropped in big tearful splashes down the detective's neck. He must have been horribly wet for three nights, and all he saw was (1) the boy from the oil-shop delivering goods; (2) a cab which delivered a drunken man, in the dead of the night, to the unsuspected house next door; (3) the night policeman, in oilskins, trying the latches; and (4) your servant going to the last post. Nothing came of all this. The criminal, who was caught for another crime twelve months after, was arrested by an ordinary constable, with the help of a cabman, in fine weather.

That seems to be all there is in being a detective. You wait round the corner and get wet. Or perhaps you get your head punched. Not an heroic life; it lacks in charm and variety, and is not uniformly successful. Detection played in this manner has no rooms in Baker Street nor a good friend Watson. There is not even a dressing-gown, an old violin, or the dear lad Billy. The only thing the real detective shares with Sherlock Holmes is shag. There are no pistols, fireworks, or splendid moments when one points the accusing finger, calls the minions of the law, and says loudly "Arrest that man" in the melodramatic manner. The detective, after getting wet while success fully watching, usually performs unobtrusively. He taps his quarry on the shoulders. "You are Mr. Blank?" he suggests. Admitted. There is a little matter Mr. Blank may help the detective to adjust if he does not mind, and Mr. Blank says "With pleasure." They therefore step round the corner. That is the end — no curtain, no cheers, no limelight, and no hero worship. Simply and solely, all the detective gets apart from his pay is lumbago.

It is necessary the public should know these things. Reading Sherlock Holmes, they expect too much, and get irritable when sordid crime does not promptly turn to splendid romance. They should remember that the detective is a man and a brother, and not a Sherlock Holmes with a god-like manner and an insight as swift and lucid as lightning. The detective of real life eats bread and cheese and onions; lives in a little house, and nurses his own baby; enjoys the same misery as we all do when our feet are wet. Knowing this, one can then give him real credit for sticking to a doleful task under dismal conditions, and occasionally succeeding despite the most depressing odds. If one judges him on the wet-feet basis instead of in the Baker Street manner, he really does begin to loom heroically. Indeed, the finest heroism often does begin when one leaves the velvet-pile carpets behind in Baker Street and stands under the trees, a miserable man, with the water trickling on to that part of the anatomy which makes one think of all the pictures that tell a story.