Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (13 page)

The notion that literary characters are confined inside the books they inhabit is a dangerous illusion. Holmes’s persecution
of his own creator demonstrates that their autonomy allows them at certain times to pass into our world, free to remain harmoniously
in our company or to profoundly disturb our existence.

In this sense, it is the relationship of writer and reader with the literary character, more than the terrifying dog that
supposedly haunts the Devon moors, that provides the truly fantastic dimension of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. It would be wrong to say that this book’s magnetism comes from its text alone; the text is only the center of a complex
of mysterious phenomena in which all those who dare approach will find themselves caught.

* On this little-known second life of Conan Doyle’s, read Patrick Avrane,
Sherlock Holmes & Cie.: Détectives freudiens
, Paris: Audibert, 2005.

* See the novel
The Golem
by Gustav Meyrink.

IV
The Holmes Complex

WE SHOULD TAKE seriously, then—much more seriously than have previous literary theorists—the bonds that are created between
writers and readers and the characters they bring to life. Everything leads us to think that these characters, drawing strength
from the passionate feelings we bring to them, are at times able to free themselves from our control and pursue their own
initiatives, traveling between worlds and carrying out unpredictable actions within the world in which they have chosen to
take up residence.

The intensity of readers’ reactions to Holmes’s death, like the intensity of the conflict between the writer and his detective,
begs for explanation. How shall we account for the pathological relationship that can develop between these inhabitants of
the real world and the inhabitant of a fictional world, that collision within the intermediate space each reader constructs
between himself and the work?

I propose to call this a “Holmes complex”: the passionate relationship leading some creators or some readers to give life
to fictional characters and then to form bonds of love or destruction with them. The thousands of readers who felt abandoned
by their hero in 1893 suffered from this complex to varying degrees; Conan Doyle himself suffered from it, and was eventually
rendered incapable as he was of maintaining peaceful relations with the detective he had created.

Based on the inability to separate reality from fiction, the Holmes complex has the effect of inciting fictional creations
toward autonomy, by breathing an energy into them that they may use to travel between worlds or pursue their own agendas.

The fact that the Holmes complex presents a pathological dimension and can lead to forms of madness should not make us forget
that it also constitutes a remarkable force for creating and comprehending literary works. As a victim of that complex, Conan
Doyle could fuel his plots with the hatred he felt for his detective, inspiring any number of inventive dangers for his hero
to face.

And it is because the author of these lines is not himself immune to such a complex that he is able, perhaps better than other
readers, to reconstruct the murderer’s secret thoughts—thoughts that he would be less able to reveal if this murderer didn’t
happen to exercise an obscure form of fascination over him, within the intermediate world where they may meet.

The Hound of the Baskervilles
is thick with symptoms of the Holmes complex; page after page bears the traces of the conflict that set Conan Doyle against
his character and of the hatred that grew in him till he reached the point of deciding to put Holmes to death. This murder
fails at first in “The Final Problem,” since the writer is forced to revive him. But it is followed by new attempts, this
time symbolic, in the case in which Holmes is resurrected.

The conditions of the publication of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
help illustrate the intensity of the conflict between Conan Doyle and his creation. The writer hesitated to bring his detective
back to life until the very last minute, and finally assented to place him in the novel—from which he had considered excluding
Holmes—only if the publisher agreed to double his royalties.
⁸⁴

But he doesn’t welcome the detective’s return with a glad heart, and his reluctance transforms the novel into a vast
compromise formation
, in the Freudian sense of the term. Compromise in that the text expresses at once, in a self-contradictory way, Conan Doyle’s
deadly hatred for Holmes and, under the pressure of guilt, the fear of giving in to murder.

It is difficult not to be struck by Holmes’s absence throughout most of the book. After receiving Dr. Mortimer at his flat,
in the company of the faithful Dr. Watson, and then meeting Henry Baskerville, Holmes disappears completely from the story
and lets his friend conduct the investigation in his place. This delegation of power is unequalled in all the other sixty
cases, and it is hard not to see this erasure of the hero as the equivalent of a second execution. And even though Sherlock
Holmes does reappear at the end of the story, his presence only multiplies the mistakes and inaccuracies until the reader
is led to wonder if this succession of blunders shouldn’t be chalked up to a creator’s ambivalence toward a character that
utterly exasperated him.

It seems as if Conan Doyle never really accepted the resurrection
^*
of his hero; forced by his publisher and his public to bring Holmes back to life, he did so only reluctantly, taking care
to restrict him to the most limited and least glorious place possible.

But it’s not enough for Conan Doyle to try to bar Sherlock Holmes from the book and then to withdraw him from the investigation;
he also lets his hatred for him show through in the very way he portrays him, by continually (and curiously) associating him
with the forces of evil.

This accusation runs throughout the book, working on two levels. The first association of Holmes with evil forces occurs when
the confused Watson glimpses the mysterious silhouette on the moor, describing it in unsettling terms:

And it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning
to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor
stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background,
I saw the figure of a man upon the tor. Do not think that it was a delusion, Holmes. I assure you that I have never in my
life seen anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs
a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite
which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place.
⁸⁵

Although the idea that it could be the criminal doesn’t yet occur to Watson, the way Holmes is described (“the very spirit
of that terrible place”) links him with the evil forces he is in the process of fighting.

This suspicion directed at the person who will henceforth be called “the man upon the tor” is intensified in the second passage,
where Watson mentions the existence of the unknown man and advances the theory that he must be the same mysterious character
who was shadowing Henry Baskerville in London:

A stranger then is still dogging us, just as a stranger had dogged us in London. We have never shaken him off. If I could
lay my hands upon that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one purpose I
must now devote all my energies.
⁸⁶

The linkage between Holmes and the forces of evil is restated in other terms by Watson in a later scene. Here, having reached
the abandoned hut in which the man on the tor hides out, he discovers a note with these words: “Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe
Tracey.”

For a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not
Sir Henry, who was being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent—the boy, perhaps—upon
my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed
and repeated. Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy,
holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes.
⁸⁷

In short, even though the ambiguity is removed by the discovery of the unknown man’s true identity,Watson’s perplexity causes
the detective to be serially associated with a whole set of pejorative characterizations. These, we can suppose, unconsciously
express the writer’s innermost feelings.

Holmes’s arrival in the hut obviously brings an end to Watson’s questions about the occupant’s intentions (“Was he our malignant
enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel?”
⁸⁸
), but it is not enough to completely dissipate the aura of evil clinging to the detective.

This will appear in another form with the confusion, not this time of the detective with the murderer, but of the detective
with the hound. Curiously, the text several times suggests that though the detective and the hound are supposed to be adversaries,
they in fact resemble each other in various ways.

The comparison between a detective-story sleuth and a hound predates Conan Doyle’s work. It is suggested in the books of one
of the writers who inspired him, Émile Gaboriau. This comparison does not aim to diminish or caricature the detective, but
rests on a network of implicit metaphors for tracking and hunting, metaphors that tend to liken the policeman’s activity to
that of a bloodhound.

It also stems, more simply, from the nature of the clues being sought, both in Gaboriau and in Conan Doyle. To find the subtle
or minute clue, it is often necessary for the detective to bend or crouch down. Clues can also be of an olfactory order. Gathering
them, the detective must assume physical postures in which he is liable to resemble a dog.

This comparison of the detective with a hound is repeated throughout the Sherlock Holmes stories. It appears as early as
A Study in Scarlet
, the first of the detective’s adventures penned by Watson, who discovers his character and paints his first portrait:

As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted
noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face. So engrossed was
he with his occupation that he appeared to have forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to himself under his breath
the whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, groans, whistles, and little cries suggestive of encouragement
and of hope. As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and
forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent.
^*
89

In “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” commenting on a change in his friend’s physiognomy, Watson notes:

His eager face still wore that expression of intense and high-strung energy, which showed me that some novel and suggestive
circumstance had opened up a stimulating line of thought. See the foxhound with hanging ears and drooping tail as it lolls
about the kennels, and compare it with the same hound as, with gleaming eyes and straining muscles, it runs upon a breast-high
scent—such was the change in Holmes since the morning. He was a different man from the limp and lounging figure in the mouse-coloured
dressing-gown who had prowled so restlessly only a few hours before round the fog-girt room.
⁹⁰