For the Love of Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is among the most recognized and loved fictional characters ever, rightly so. For me, he is a hero, revealing the human potential to find truth by knowing how to look for it.

First Contact

Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Holmes story in 1887, the novel A Study in Scarlet. Nearly one hundred years later, I found that book in the library as a teenager. I knew of the Holmes character—the iconic detective with the odd hat, pipe, and magnifying glass—but this was my first contact with the content.

I remember the specific passage, from early in the book, when the revelation hit.

As he is introduced to his future sidekick, Dr. Watson, Holmes remarks, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

“How on earth did you know that?” Watson responds.

Later, Holmes explains:

I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, “Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.” The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.

For me, the revelation was about human potential. Holmes had conjured a fact seemingly out of nowhere. But when explained, there was no magic, only observation and reason. That was much more interesting to teenage me than superheroes who could fly and do other things humans couldn’t do. Holmes was showing what humans could do, with the right mindset and discipline.

The Prepared Mind

In a recollection to Watson in “The Musgrave Ritual,” Holmes says:

When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient.

In A Study in Scarlet, Watson refines the point, noting that Holmes’ “ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.” Per Watson’s inventory:

1. Knowledge of Literature.—Nil.
2. Philosophy.—Nil.
3. Astronomy.—Nil.
4. Politics.—Feeble.
5. Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Geology.—Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Chemistry.—Profound.
8. Anatomy.—Accurate, but unsystematic.
9. Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Holmes characterizes his self-education as vocational:

Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.

Supplementing the knowledge in his “brain-attic,” Holmes also maintains numerous scrapbooks of indexed information he has collected. In the first Holmes short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Watson explains:

For many years he had adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish information. In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.

And in the novel The Sign of the Four, Holmes mentions his own “small works”:

Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one “Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.” In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird’s-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato.

A physician by training, Arthur Conan Doyle was writing in the era of Louis Pasteur, who famously said in 1854: “In the fields of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.” Holmes is always accumulating knowledge that increases his chances in “the art of detection.”

Seeing versus Observing

When on a case, others’ inattention to detail is Holmes’ opportunity. “It is my business to know things,” he tells a prospective client in the story “A Case of Identity.” “Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?”

In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes further makes the point to Watson:

“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”

“Frequently.”

“How often?”

“Well, some hundreds of times.”

“Then how many are there?”

“How many? I don’t know.”

“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”

At a crime scene, Holmes is always getting down on the ground with his magnifying glass. He baffles Watson and frustrates the awaiting police officers with his insistence on inspecting the most unlikely objects. These efforts often pay off, as particular minutiae later prove decisive.

And for a further twist, there is the classic Holmes moment from the story “Silver Blaze,” when a police inspector asks Holmes, “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

From this, we today have the phrase “the dog that didn’t bark.” It refers to circumstances when the absence of something expected is itself a meaningful observation.

The Ability to Know

So much of Holmes is about the human ability to discover what is true but hidden. Maybe it’s hidden on purpose, or maybe it’s a connection—among things, events, or people—that’s hiding in plain sight, if one knows how to look.

In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Watson says, “This is indeed a mystery. What do you imagine that it means?”

Holmes replies, “I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Today, we call this confirmation bias. Multiple stories turn on Holmes’ discipline against it. While the police see evidence that confirms the obvious, Holmes looks for what’s missing or anomalous.

Singular?

Through Watson’s narration, Doyle sometimes characterizes Holmes as “singular” or “a machine.” But in “The Greek Interpreter,” we learn that Holmes has a brother, Mycroft, who is more gifted in observation than Holmes yet who lacks the “ambition and energy” to fully use it. This tells us that much of whatever makes Holmes unique comes from his efforts, not his genes. In turn, this tells us that although we may never attain Holmes-level abilities, we can make worthwhile efforts to follow his example.

And unlike the magician who withholds how the trick is done, Holmes is constantly explaining his methods. Much of the reward in a Holmes story is hearing his explanation, only to realize that it was all understandable in retrospect.

Although Holmes endures for other reasons—his many quirks, his repartee with Watson, the environs of gaslit foggy London—I’ll always come back to Holmes for his demonstrations of what can be known when one is smarter about knowing. In this, he is timeless.

Where to Start

The copyright on Holmes stories has expired, so they are free on the web. The complete Sherlock Holmes has careful reproductions of the original texts. A good place to start is “A Scandal in Bohemia,” a roughly 30-minute read. Although it came after the first two novels, it is the first Holmes short story, so Doyle felt obliged to re-introduce several of the key Holmesian elements. The plot lacks the intricacies of other Holmes classics, but it is nevertheless “quite a pretty little problem”—and one of the rare cases in which Holmes meets his match.

If you like that, keep going with the stories, in order. Some of the early ones are among the most well-regarded. Don’t attempt the novels until you’ve read the stories. And with the novels, go for The Hound of the Baskervilles first. The other novels spend substantial time away from Holmes and Watson, which may or may not be welcome.

Finally, if you want to go all-in, I strongly recommend the Audible audiobook Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection. It’s 70 hours of Holmes, read by the British writer, actor, and polymath Stephen Fry, a longstanding Holmes devotee. The verve and joy of his performance is, as The New York Times put it, “beyond praise.”