The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (5 page)

The story was first published in February 1890 as
The Sign of the Four
, but the title was later shortened to the one Conan Doyle preferred,
The Sign of Four
. Conan Doyle once again split the story into two parts, but the structure of this division is more subtle than the one used in
A Study in Scarlet
. First, the history that led up to this crime is broken into two shorter parts instead of one long one, but more important, Conan Doyle allows Thaddeus Sholto and Jonathan Small, rather than a third-person omniscient narrator, to relate these flashbacks. This not only keeps a tighter focus on the action of the story, but also avoids the clearly artificial quality a third-person narrator introduces. After all, these stories are said to be the reminiscences of John H. Watson. In order to seem real, they can’t start recounting things that Watson couldn’t possibly have heard. In this respect,
The Sign of Four
is an improvement on
A Study in Scarlet
.

The way this story treats its murderer is also more subtle. In
A Study in Scarlet
Jefferson Hope had been driven to his acts of vengeance by what amounted to the rape and murder of his sweetheart and the murder of her guardian. Because we get to witness the coldheartedness of the men who commit these crimes, their deaths are not near our consciences. As famed Texas trial lawyer Richard “Racehorse” Haines once said in a television interview, he was able to win acquittals for clients who had committed murder by convincing juries that “some folks just need killin’.” Hope is not made to suffer any punishment for his crimes; he dies “with a placid smile upon his face, as though he had been able in his dying moments to look back upon a useful life, and on work well done” (p. 93). This is clearly an authorial reward for following the dictates of his heart.

Jonathan Small is more problematic. Although his story makes us feel more sympathy for him than for his victims, the circumstances of the killings in which he was involved don’t grant him the same kind of easy absolution Conan Doyle gives to Jefferson Hope. Our response to Small is more complex, because his case has more of the tangled web of good and evil that characterizes most human enterprises than does the revenge of Jefferson Hope.

While each of the murders Small commits contains some mitigating factor, each also contains a damning one as well. His first killing is forced upon him when his Indian companions make him an offer he can’t refuse. He must either kill or be killed. Yet when the time comes to fulfill this devil’s bargain, he takes some relish in it. When he sees the merchant Achmet escaping from his three cohorts, Small says, “My heart softened to him, but again the thought of his treasure turned me hard and bitter” (p. 175). Later when he escapes from prison, Small kills one of the prison guards. That man “had never missed a chance of insulting and injuring” Small, but killing him was petty vindication. Small plays no part in the deaths of Captain Morstan or Major Sholto, the two men who betrayed him, but he says he would willingly have shown them the door to eternity, if he had only had the chance. Small also played no direct part in the death of Bartholomew Sholto, but because Sholto died during the assault on his stronghold planned and executed by Small, he bears some responsibility for that death, too. In short, Small is neither completely vindicated for his crimes nor completely damned. While he’s a man more sinned against than sinning, he isn’t given any sort of pardon. Watson’s reaction to him is our surest guide to what Conan Doyle felt was Small’s moral standing: “For myself, I confess that I had now conceived the utmost horror of the man not only for this cold-blooded business in which he had been concerned but even more for the somewhat flippant and careless way in which he narrated it” (p. 175). The last we hear of him, he’s off to jail.

On a cheerier note,
The Sign of Four
contains what I think is the most impressive of all Holmes’s displays of logic, the series of deductions about Watson’s watch. The scene is a sideshow, of course, as it plays no part in the case to follow, but like many scenes in the coming stories, it dazzles us with its brilliance while establishing another link between Holmes and Watson. It also manifests some subtle traits possessed by each man. Watson reveals his emotional side here. He is upset because he has concluded that Holmes has been snooping into his family background. A gentleman wouldn’t make such inquiries. Holmes, of course, has done no such thing, but we can’t help but think, after we get to know Holmes better, that had doing so helped him solve some crime, he wouldn’t have hesitated. Watson believes in the conventional Victorian code of conduct. He is shocked at even the suggestion that his friend could disregard it. By the end of their adventures, he will have been so influenced by Holmes that he’ll throw smoke-rockets into apartments, break into houses, attempt to steal private documents, and even let murderers go.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
could be subtitled
and the Education of Dr. John H. Watson.

As a result of the popularity these novels enjoyed, Conan Doyle decided to write shorter tales that could be published in a literary magazine. He first penned “A Scandal in Bohemia” in April 1891, sending it to his agent to shop it around to the magazines. The
Strand
, a new publication, accepted it without fanfare, but when Conan Doyle’s agent sent them two more stories, “The Red-headed League” and “A Case of Identity,” the magazine’s editors, realizing they had something special, asked Conan Doyle for more. After he submitted “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” Conan Doyle asked for an increase in the price the magazine paid him for the stories, from £25 to £35 per story. The grateful editors immediately agreed, so Conan Doyle wrote the fifth and sixth stories, “The Five Orange Pips” and “The Man with the Twisted Lip.”

Conan Doyle conceived of his six stories as a series, to be run in sequence. Serialized works in the past had been chapters from a single continuous work, either a novel or a long story. But Conan Doyle felt that serializing long stories in magazines was a mistake, because a reader who missed one issue would lose interest. He saw that if he made each story independent, “while each retained a connecting link with the one before and the one that was to come by means of its leading characters,” it didn’t matter if a reader missed an episode or two. “In this respect, I was a revolutionist, and I think I may fairly lay claim to the credit of being the inaugurator of a system which has since been worked by others with no little success” (
Tit-Bits
, December 15, 1900).

The first
Strand
stories were published in 1891. It took Conan Doyle about a week to write each one. You may have noticed that “The Red-headed League,” published second, mentions a character who appears in “A Case of Identity,” which was published third. They were written in reverse order, but through either some slipup at the magazine or a calculation that “The Red-headed League” was the stronger story and the fledgling magazine needed a hit as soon as possible, they were published out of order. The first few stories were a smashing success, and the editors begged Conan Doyle for another set of six in October 1891. Already tiring of his detective, Conan Doyle refused. In a letter to his mother he wrote that he was not inclined to continue the series, but as a lark would ask the publisher for £50 per story, however long or short he wanted to make them, and see what they would say to that. To his surprise the
Strand
agreed in a flash.

While writing the next six stories, Conan Doyle wrote in a letter to his mother on November 11, 1891, “I think of slaying Holmes in the sixth & winding him up for good & all. He takes my mind from better things.” Madame Conan Doyle urged him not to do anything so silly. She even sent a suggestion for the plot of a new Holmes story. Dutiful son that he was, Conan Doyle modified her plot suggestion into “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” and let his creation live to detect another day.

The Holmes juggernaut got an important boost from the policy of the
Strand
to include illustrations with all its stories. To illustrate the Holmes stories, the editor chose Sidney Paget (1860-1908), probably by mistake; the editor had actually wanted his brother, Walter, who was already famous for illustrations in
The Illustrated London News
. Sidney, however, rose to the challenge. He based his drawings of Holmes on the features of his brother, Walter. He also included a couple of things not mentioned in the stories that nonetheless have come to be emblematic of the great detective. In his drawings for “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” and again in “Silver Blaze,” Paget drew Holmes wearing a deerstalker cap and a traveling cape. In fact, these items don’t exist in the stories; Paget added them because he himself liked to wear them. His drawings were very popular. They defined the image the English public associated with the name Sherlock Holmes. Later Ellie Norwood, who first portrayed Holmes in film, was popular to some degree because he resembled the Paget drawings.

Another feature strongly associated with Holmes that isn’t in the books is from America. The pipe with the long, curved stem that many of us think of as always drooping from Holmes’s jaw was unknown in England before the turn of the century. It first appeared because the American actor William Gillette, who made a career of playing Holmes on the American stage and then later in seven films, couldn’t keep a straight pipe in his mouth when he talked. He had better luck with a curved stem, so it was substituted for the kind Conan Doyle had described. Gillette’s films were popular, and his likeness was the one used by the American illustrator Frederic Steele for the Holmes stories published in
Collier’s Magazine
, so the image stuck.

 

While this essay cannot discuss every story in this volume, it will examine the details of a few that present some interesting features about Holmes, Watson,
the
woman,
the
villain, and Conan Doyle as a writer. There’s no better place to begin than with the first short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia.” After the sensationally gruesome murders of the first two novels, it may come as a surprise that Conan Doyle began his series of short stories with one that not only has no murder, but no crime at all, not even a mystery. It sets a problem for Holmes to solve: how to get the photograph of Irene Adler and the king of Bohemia out of the lady’s possession. The story makes little sense when closely examined. The king wants the return of a photograph from Irene Adler that he thinks will compromise his forthcoming marriage, while Ms. Adler, who is about to get married herself, would only compromise herself if she showed it to anyone. Had Holmes not been called into the case, the outcome would have been exactly as it transpired anyway.

One wonders what was the point of the story? Could it have been to put aside any suspicions that Holmes is homosexual? We’re told he always refers to Irene Adler as “
the
woman,” with the implication that he couldn’t be satisfied with any other woman after his encounter with her. But if we look closely at what attracted him to her, we note some surprising things. First, though Holmes, like all the men around Irene, can’t be immune to her beauty, he is far more taken by the qualities of mind and spirit she displays during his attempt to trick her. She has managed to keep this photograph hidden so well that the king’s agents couldn’t find it when they twice searched her lodgings nor when they waylaid her while she was traveling. So in hiding it she obviously showed considerable imagination. Next, when Holmes tries to frighten her with false fire, she realizes immediately that it must be a trick and that the only person who could have pulled off such a scheme was Mr. Sherlock Holmes, about whom she had been warned. So she also has a large capacity for quick, logical reasoning. Then she disguises herself so that she may follow Holmes and be assured that the wounded parson in her apartment was indeed the dangerous detective. Her remark to him as he enters his building, “Good night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” is both flirtatious and challenging. None of her plans called for her to take this chance. In fact it’s against her self-interest to give him any inkling that she’s discovered his identity. Holmes might have recognized her, realized she knew of his involvement, and escalated his efforts to retrieve this photo. But sometimes a person’s need for self-expression overrides a narrowly conceived self-interest. Irene’s act announces to Holmes, once he discovers later that it was her voice, that she is just as good at disguises as he is, and just as capable of dramatic gestures.

When we put all these qualities together—imagination, logical thinking, a penchant for disguises and self-revealing dramatic gestures—who do they remind us of? Holmes himself, of course. The woman who for him becomes “
the
woman” is, in fact, a female version of himself. While most people are attracted by someone who has the qualities they themselves are missing, making a kind of wholeness through their union, Holmes is moved only by a reflection of his own image. This shows an egotism of no mean scope. But, after all, isn’t that larger-than-life quality what we admire in heroes in the first place?

While we’re noticing deeper self-revealing aspects of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” we might note another instance, on page 187: “All emotions, and that one [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 lover he would have placed himself in a false position.” Whatever one may think is the purpose of human life, to be a calculating machine, unmoved by love, is surely not it. This avowal therefore cuts two ways: While it is no doubt intended to Holmes’s credit, at the same time it reduces him. Of course, it isn’t strictly true. Holmes shows emotion in many stories. His judgment about people is tempered by a knowledge of human passions and desires that can only come from introspection. You can’t recognize how these feelings work in other people unless you have understood how they work in you. And in one of the late stories, “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs,” when Holmes fears Watson may be mortally wounded, we see an emotional outburst from him that betrays his deep affection, one might even say his love, for Watson, a contradiction of this early shallow assessment. By the end of their nearly forty-year association, Watson had humanized Holmes more than Holmes had made Watson scientific.