Considering the fact that a man named Sherlock Holmes never existed, collecting any facts about him looks, on the one hand, nonsense. However, thanks to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with great attention to detail in his works, and a large army of fans of the great detective who unearthed and analyzed these details, it is possible to compose not only a portrait, but also an almost accurate biography of Sherlock Holmes.
According to Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Holmes is the only literary character to enter the popular life. True, Chesterton made a reservation “since the time of Dickens,” but time has just shown that there is no need for it. Billions of people know about Sherlock Holmes, while Dickens's characters have become part of literary history.
Conan Doyle wrote about Holmes for exactly 40 years: the first book was published in 1887, the last in 1927. It should be noted that the writer was not very fond of his hero. He considered himself the author of serious novels on historical themes, and began writing about Holmes in order to earn extra money in the then popular detective genre. Conan Doyle was not even embarrassed by the fact that thanks to Holmes he became the highest paid writer in the world - Holmes died in a duel with the king of the underworld, Professor Moriarty. A flurry of indignation from readers, and very high-ranking ones, hit so hard that the writer gave up and resurrected Sherlock Holmes. Of course, to the delight of numerous readers and then viewers. Films based on stories about Sherlock Holmes are as popular as books.
Conan Doyle can't get rid of Sherlock Holmes
1. Enthusiasts managed to get only crumbs from the biography of Sherlock Holmes before meeting Dr. Watson. The date of birth is often attributed to 1853 or 1854, referring to the fact that in 1914, when the story "His Farewell Bow" takes place, Holmes looked 60 years old. With the filing of the New York club of his admirers, who ordered an astrological study, Holmes began to consider January 6 as his birthday. Then they pulled in confirmation from the literature. On January 7, one of the researchers unearthed, in the story "Valley of Horror", Holmes got up from the table without touching his breakfast. The researcher decided that the piece was not going down the detective's throat due to the hangover after yesterday's celebration. True, one might just as well assume that Holmes was Russian, or at least Orthodox, and celebrated Christmas at night. Finally, the famous Sherlock scholar William Bering-Gould discovered that Holmes quoted only Shakespeare's Twelfth Night twice, which is the night of January 5-6.
2. Based on the actual dates calculated by the fans of Conan Doyle's work, the first thing Sherlock Holmes should do is to consider the case described in the story "Gloria Scott". However, in it, Holmes, in fact, only deciphered the note, without conducting any investigation. It was still in his being a student, that is, it happened around 1873 - 1874. The very first real case, from beginning to end, uncovered by Holmes, is described in the "Rite of the House of Mesgraves" and dates back to 1878 (although it is mentioned that the detective had a couple of cases on the account).
3. It may well be that Conan Doyle's cruelty towards Holmes was motivated only by a desire to increase his fees. It is known that the first time he announced his intention to kill the detective after writing the sixth story (it was “The Man with the Split Lip”). The Strand magazine, which ran the Sherlock Holmes series, instantly raised the fee per story from £ 35 to £ 50. Dr. Watson's military pension was £ 100 a year, so the money was good. The second time this simple trick worked after the release of the story "Copper beeches". This time Holm's life was saved with a sum of 1,000 pounds for 12 stories, or more than 83 pounds per story. The 12th story was "The Last Case of Holmes," during which the detective went to the bottom of the Reichenbach Falls. But as soon as an energetic and discerning hero was needed for a major work about a dog harassing the inhabitants of an ancient castle, Holmes was immediately resurrected.
4. The prototype of Sherlock Holmes, at least in the ability to observe and draw conclusions, is considered, as you know, the famous English physician Joseph Bell, for whom Arthur Conan Doyle once worked as a registrar. Serious, completely devoid of any manifestations of emotions, Bell often guessed the occupation, place of residence and even the patient's diagnosis before he had time to open his mouth, which shocked not only the patients, but also the students who watched the process. The impression was enhanced by the teaching style of that time. While delivering lectures, the teachers did not seek contact with the audience - who understood, well done, and those who did not understand need to look for another field. In practical classes, the professors were not looking for any feedback either, they simply explained what they were doing and why. Therefore, the interview with the patient, during which Bell easily informed that he had served as a sergeant in the colonial forces in Barbados and had recently lost his wife, gave the impression of a concert act.
5. Mycroft Holmes is Holmes's only directly mentioned relative. Once the detective casually recalls that his parents were small landowners, and his mother was related to the artist Horace Verne. Mycroft appears in four stories. Holmes first presents him as a serious government official, and already in the twentieth century it turns out that Mycroft is almost deciding the fate of the British Empire.
6. The legendary address 221B, Baker Street, did not appear by accident. Conan Doyle knew that there was no house with that number on Baker Street - the numbering in his years ended at # 85. But then the street was extended. In 1934, several buildings with numbers from 215 to 229 were bought by the financial and construction company Abbey National. She had to introduce a special position as a person to sort out bags of letters to Sherlock Holmes. Only in 1990, when the Holmes Museum was opened, they registered a company with “221B” in the name and hung the corresponding sign on house No. 239. A few years later, the numbering of houses on Baker Street was officially changed, and now the numbers on the plate correspond to the true number of "Holmes House", which houses the museum.
Baker Street
7. Of the 60 works about Sherlock Holmes, only two are narrated from the person of the detective himself, and two more from the third person. All other stories and novellas are narrated by Dr. Watson. Yes, it is really more correct to call him "Watson", but this is how the tradition developed. Fortunately, at least Holmes and his chronicler do not live with Mrs. Hudson, but they could.
8. Holmes and Watson met in January 1881. They continued to maintain a relationship until at least 1923. In the story "The Man on All Fours" it is mentioned that they communicated, although not too closely, in 1923.
9. According to Dr. Watson's first impression, Holmes has no knowledge of literature and philosophy. However, later Holmes often quotes and paraphrases excerpts from literary works. At the same time, he is not limited to English writers and poets, but quotes Goethe, Seneca, Henry Thoreau's diary and even Flaubert's letter to Georges Sand. As for the most frequently cited Shakespeare, Russian translators simply did not notice many unquoted quotations, so accurately they enter the fabric of the narrative. Holmes's erudition in literature is emphasized by his active quotations from the Bible. And he himself wrote a monograph on the composer of the Renaissance.
10. By occupation Holmes often has to communicate with the police. There are 18 of them on the pages of Conan Doyle's works about the detective: 4 inspectors and 14 constables. The most famous of these is, of course, Inspector Lestrade. For the Russian reader and viewer, the impression of Lestrade is formed by the image of Borislav Brondukov from television films. Lestrade Broodukova is a narrow-minded, but very proud and arrogant police officer with great conceit. Conan Doyle, on the other hand, describes Lestrade without any comic. Sometimes they have friction with Holmes, but for the sake of the interests of the case, Lestrade always gives in. And his subordinate Stanley Hopkins considers himself to be Holmes' student. In addition, in at least two stories, clients come to the detective on a direct recommendation from the police, and in the story “The Silver” the police inspector and the victim come to Holmes together.
11. Holmes developed his own system for the classification and storage of newspaper reports, manuscripts and files. After the death of his friend, Watson wrote that he could easily find materials on the person of interest. The problem was that the compilation of such an archive took time, and usually it was brought into a more or less acceptable order only after a general cleaning of the house. The rest of the time, both Holmes's room and their common living room with Watson were littered with unassembled papers lying in complete disarray.
12. Despite the fact that Sherlock Holmes knew that there are things that money cannot buy, he did not miss the opportunity to take a good fee if the client could afford to pay it. He received a considerable amount "for expenses" from the rabbit of Bohemia, although he hardly had to spend money on the investigation against Irene Adler. Holmes got not only a weighty wallet, but also a gold snuffbox. And the 6 thousand pounds received for the search for the duke's son in the "Case at the Boarding School" was generally an exorbitant amount - the Prime Minister received less. Other accounts mention that a job with a few pounds a week was considered fine. Small shopkeeper Jabez Wilson of the Union of Redheads was ready to rewrite the Encyclopedia Britannica for £ 4 a week. But, despite the large fees, Holmes did not strive for wealth. Repeatedly he even took up interesting things for free.
“Union of redheads”. Final scene
13. Holmes's attitude towards women is well characterized by the word “calm”. Sometimes he is presented as almost a misogynist, but this is far from the case. He is polite to all women, able to appreciate female beauty and is always ready to help a woman in trouble. Conan Doyle describes Holmes almost exclusively in the course of the investigation, so he does not give any details about the detective's time outside of him. The only exception was “Scandal in Bohemia,” where Sherlock Holmes is scattered in praise of Irene Adler out of the context of the investigation. And the detective genre in those years did not imply that the heroes would put beauties to bed on almost every page. This time came much later, after the Second World War.
14. Arthur Conan Doyle was certainly a talented writer, but not a god. And he did not have the Internet at hand to check certain facts. By the way, modern writers have the Internet, and does that really improve their creations? From time to time the writer made mistakes of fact, and sometimes he repeated the errors of the science of that time. The snake, deaf by nature, crawling on the whistle in the "Colorful Ribbon", has become a textbook example. Like the vast majority of European writers, Conan Doyle could not resist a blunder when he mentioned Russia. Holmes, of course, did not sit under the spreading cranberries with a bottle of vodka and a bear. He was just summoned to Odessa in connection with Trepov's murder. There was no murder of the mayor (mayor) of St. Petersburg Trepov, there was an attempted murder committed by Vera Zasulich. The jury acquitted the terrorist, and her colleagues correctly interpreted this signal and terrorist attacks swept across Russia, including attacks on government officials in Odessa. There was a lot of noise all over Europe, but only Conan Doyle could connect it all in one sentence.
15. Smoking plays a very important role both in the life of Sherlock Holmes and in the plots of works about him. In 60 novels about the detective, he smoked 48 pipes. Two went to Dr. Watson, another five were smoked by other characters. Nobody smokes anything in only 4 stories. Holmes smokes almost exclusively a pipe, and he has a lot of pipes. Mycroft Holmes sniffs tobacco, and only killers like Dr. Grimsby Roylott from The Motley Ribbon smoke cigars in the stories. Holmes even wrote a study on 140 varieties of tobacco and their ashes. He assesses affairs in the number of pipes that must be smoked in the process of thinking. Moreover, in the process of work, he smokes the cheapest and strongest varieties of tobacco. When William Gillette in the theater and Basil Redbone in the movies began to portray Holmes smoking a long curved pipe, smokers immediately noticed an inaccuracy - in a long pipe the tobacco cools and cleans, so there is no point in smoking its strong varieties. But it was convenient for the actors to speak with a long pipe - it's called "bent" - in their teeth. And such a tube entered the standard surroundings of the detective.
16. Holmes knew more than tobacco varieties, fingerprints and typographic fonts. In one of the stories, he somewhat dismissively mentions that he is the author of a trifling work in which 160 ciphers are analyzed. In the mention of ciphers, the influence of Edgar Poe is obvious, whose hero deciphered the message using frequency analysis of the use of letters. This is exactly what Holmes does when he unravels the cipher in The Dancing Men. However, he characterizes this cipher as one of the simplest. Quite quickly, the detective understands the encrypted message in "Gloria Scott" - you only need to read every third word from an absolutely incomprehensible, at first glance, message.
17. The artist Sidney Paget and the actor and playwright William Gillette have made a huge contribution to the creation of the familiar visual image of Sherlock Holmes. The first drew a thin, muscular figure in a two-visor cap, the second complemented the image with a cloak with a cape and the exclamation "Elementary, author!" The story, more like a bike, says that Gillette, going to the first meeting with Conan Doyle, dressed as he thought Holmes looked. Armed with a magnifying glass, he showed the writer a pantomime "Holmes at the Crime Scene". Conan Doyle was so amazed at the coincidence of Gillette's appearance with his ideas about Holmes that he even allowed the actor who was writing a play for the theater to marry Holmes. In a joint play by Conan Doyle and Gillette, the detective marries a lady like Irene Adler. True, for the sake of goodness she was named Alice Faulkner. She was not an adventurer, but a lady of the noble class and avenged her sister.
18. The image of Holmes, created by Conan Doyle and Sidney Paget, was so strong that the prim English even forgave the blatant absurdity: the cap with two visors was a headdress intended exclusively for hunting. In the city, such caps were not worn - it was bad taste.
19. Cinematic and television incarnations of Sherlock Holmes are worthy of a large separate material. More than 200 films are dedicated to the detective - the Guinness Book record. More than 70 actors have embodied the image of Sherlock Holmes on the screen. However, it is impossible to consider the “literary” Holmes and his “cinematic” brother as a whole. Already from the first film adaptations, Holmes began to live his own life, separate from the works of Conan Doyle. Of course, some external attributes have always been preserved - a pipe, a cap, the faithful Watson nearby. But even in the films with Basil Rathbone, filmed in the middle of the twentieth century, the place and time of action, and the plot, and the characters are changing. Sherlock Holmes has turned into some kind of franchise: observe several conditions, and your hero, even on Mars, can be called Sherlock Holmes. The main thing is to remember the pipe from time to time.The success of the latest adaptations, in which Holmes was played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Lee Miller, showed that the film Holmes and the literary Holmes became completely different characters. Once upon a time, American writer Rex Stout wrote a comic essay in which, based on the texts of Conan Doyle, he proved that Watson was a woman. It turned out that you can not only joke about this, but also make films.
20. The last case of Sherlock Holmes according to the reconstructed actual chronology is described in the story “His farewell bow”. It takes place in the summer of 1914, although it is indicated that the investigation began two years ago. The Sherlock Holmes Archive, published much later, describes the detective's early investigations.
