Even
people who have never read the Sherlock Holmes stories often know something
about his character. If nothing else, they will associate the
line, “Elementary, my dear Watson,” with him, although the literary Holmes
never actually put these words together – only his film counterparts say them. Although Conan Doyle named Holmes for one of
his favorite authors, Oliver Wendell Holmes, he imagined Dr. Joseph Bell’s
appearance for his hero: around six feet tall, with a thin “razor-like” face, a
large nose, like a hawk, and small, sharp eyes.
Interestingly, Conan Doyle said the pictures of Holmes usually depict
him as handsomer than he imagined him himself.
Holmes wears dressing gowns inside and a cape with a deerstalker hat
outside, and he usually appears with a pipe or a magnifying glass in his hand.
Entirely unemotional, Holmes remains aloof, coolly
rational, and arrogant. He is often
irritable and he possesses several idiosyncrasies that try the patience of even
his longsuffering best friend, Watson.
He clutters his rooms with paperwork from his cases and paraphernalia
from his numerous scientific experiments.
Watson complains that he keeps his cigars in the coalscuttle, his
tobacco in one of his slippers, and his unanswered letters transfixed to the
mantle with a jackknife. He can play the
violin well when he wishes to, but Holmes more often scrapes annoyingly and
tunelessly on the strings. He uses the
walls of his home for target practice.
Moody and plagued by boredom when no case demands his attention, he
injects a 7% solution of cocaine, a habit that his concerned friend finally
helps him break.
Holmes possesses exceptional gifts and an encyclopedic
knowledge of some areas, but remains willingly ignorant of many others,
declaring he would rather not clutter his mind with facts that cannot help him
solve his cases, even whether or not the earth travels around the sun. He is respectful and polite to women, but he
insists he would never let himself fall in love and marry, as Watson does. In some ways Holmes resembles a Romantic
hero, standing apart from society and even breaking its laws on occasion to
obtain the clues he desires. He will
even allow a proven criminal to go free, insisting that he is not, after all, a
policeman. Holmes also can give the
impression that his motives for solving his cases have less to do with combating
crime or doing good than with amusing himself or impressing others.
In “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” when he finds what he
supposes is the dead body of
his client, he cries out in
rage and grief – at the black mark now on his reputation: “In order to have my
case well rounded and complete,” he exclaims to Watson, “ I have thrown away
the life of my client. It is the
greatest blow which has befallen me in my career.” Interestingly, when Joseph Bell learned of
his former student’s claim that he was the great detective’s inspiration, he
admitted to only a slight resemblance, writing back to Doyle, “You are yourself
Sherlock Holmes.” Conan Doyle
confessed, “…A man cannot spin a character out of his own inner consciousness
and make it really life-like unless he has some possibilities of that character
within him – which is a dangerous admission for one who has drawn so many
villains as I.”
In appearance at least, Conan Doyle seemed to share more
with Dr. John Watson, whom he named after a friend, Dr. James Elmwood Watson,
than he did with Holmes. Like Doyle,
Watson is a large, athletic man, wearing a bushy mustache. Like Doyle, Watson studied medicine at
Edinburgh University, and he served his country during wartime also. He loves sports and has an eye for an
attractive lady, and like Doyle, he marries more than once. Watson is as even-tempered and genial as
Holmes is moody and aloof. Their
temperaments make them opposites, but the most striking contrast between Holmes
and Watson comes when they work together on a case. Watson consistently fails when he tries to
use his friend’s methods of deduction, and he often complains about how foolish
Holmes makes him feel. In “The Hound of
the Baskervilles” Holmes tells Watson, “It may be that you are not yourself
luminous, but you are a conductor of light.
Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of
stimulating it.” Yet Watson recognizes
that for all his friend’s arrogance, Holmes needs him, and not just to record
his history.
In “The Adventure of the Creeping Man” Watson notes, “He
was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of
them. As an institution I was like the
violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others
perhaps less excusable. When it was a
case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place
some reliance, my role was obvious. But
apart from this I had uses. I was a
whetstone for his mind. I stimulated
him. He liked to think aloud in my
presence. …If I irritated him by a
certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to
make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly
and swiftly. Such was my humble role in
our alliance.” Watson clearly foils
Holmes; he is certainly less brilliant, less able, less confident. But he might be more human, as Doyle himself
suggested.
