Satire: the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Once again, and for a final time, we return to the English Detective School of Urban Philosophy ¹. This blog (part of the CCI Big Thinkers series) introduces us to the profundities of this school and its three leading protagonists. After a blog about Monsieur Hercule Poirot (the urban positivist), and one about Miss Jane Marple (the urban sceptic), we focus here on Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is associated with all that is foggy and urban, but a philosopher who in practice is more urban-ambivalent, reconciling the Poirovian and Marpalian extremes.
Mr Holmes is best known to us through his biographer Dr John Watson². Most scholars proclaim the UK television series, Sherlock (1984-1994), starring Jeremy Brett, as the definitive edition of his collected philosophical works.
In A Study in Scarlet (1887), Watson describes Holmes as gaunt and good at science:
“In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression and air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals…..”
In a famous list compiled by Watson early in their acquaintance, he lists Holmes areas of knowledge: literature, philosophy, astronomy were ascribed as ‘nil’; politics as ‘feeble’; botany ‘variable’; geology ‘practical but limited’; chemistry ‘profound’; anatomy ‘accurate but unsystematic’; and sensational literature as ‘immense’. In addition, Holmes plays the violin well, is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman, and has a good practical knowledge of English law.
Holmes is a philosopher of the careful, deliberate, and practical, as Holmes explains his idiosyncratic base of knowledge in A Study in Scarlet (1887):
“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things….the skillful workman…..will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work….It is of the highest importance therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out useful ones.”
The iconic image of Sherlock Holmes, sees him in gas-lighted, fog-bound, crime-ridden London, catching a hansom cab from his lodgings at 221B Baker Street to investigate a puzzle, mystery, or murder. The lure of urban crime was a potent one to Holmes. In The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (1893),
“neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime.”
The attractions of London to Holmes are evident. In The Adventure of the Resident Patient (1893) Holmes urged Watson to a “ramble through London” and “For three hours we strolled about together, watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through Fleet Street and the Strand. Holmes’ characteristic talk, with its keen observance of detail and subtle power of inference, held me amused and enthralled.”
An immediate, and easy conclusion would be to suppose that Holmes allies himself with the urban positivism of Hercule Poirot rather than to the urban skepticism of Miss Marple. Not so fast! A closer inspection of the canon shows that Holmes is much less concerned with the rural and urban distinction. The thin and gaunt frame of Holmes, is driven by the activity of his mind and he doesn’t care whether that mental stimulation originates from the rural or the urban. In The Sign of the Four (1890) Holmes notes,
“I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.”
And in The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (1908) he explains,
“My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed for ever from the criminal world.”
Holmes is ambivalent about where that mental impulse originates. In The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane (1926), after Holmes’ retirement to the English countryside, he confirms an equal enjoyment of the rural:
“when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amidst the gloom of London.”
In His Last Bow (1926), Holmes proves adept at finding mental stimulation in remote rural areas, through the hobby of bee keeping:
“I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.”
There was nothing inherent in the urban London criminal to commit those clever and stimulating crimes which energize Holmes. In The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (1908) this is depressingly evident:
“The London criminal is certainly a dull fellow,’ said he, in the querulous voice of the sportsman whose game has failed him.”
Recall the striking contrast with the other key exponents of the English Detective School of Urban Philosophy. For Hercule Poirot, cities offered the opportunity for mixing and mingling over private dinners, exhibitions, theatre, and restaurants. Recall in After the Funeral (1953), where Poirot and company, dined off a Sole Veronique, followed by Escalope de Veau Milanaise, and finished with Poire Flambe with ice cream. Recall also the sad culinary contrast with the village world of Miss Marple. In Murder at the Vicarage (1930) dinner constituted a “singularly moist and unpleasant dumplings” and a “partially cooked rice pudding”. The statistical evidence did seem to support the Poirovian emphasis on the importance of food and entertainment in urban centers. Cities with more restaurants (New York) and live performance theatres (Paris) grew more rapidly in the twenty years after 1980.
When necessary, Holmes can and does dabble in the urban world of epicurean consumption and gossip. In The Sign of Four (1908),
“Our meal was a merry one. Holmes could talk exceedingly well when he chose, and that night he did choose. He appeared to be in a state of nervous exaltation. I have never known him so brilliant. He spoke on a quick succession of subjects – on miracle plays, on medieval pottery, on Stradivarius violins, on the Buddhism of Ceylon, and on the war-ships of the future – handling each as though he had made a special study of it. His bright humour marked the reaction from his black depression of the preceding days.”
Good food or bad food, glamorous dinner company or mundane village repast, more often Holmes found the gossipy trivialities of social occasions a cloying bore. In A Scandal in Bohemia (1891),
“Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.”
The perennial bachelor Hercule Poirot enjoyed the high-society urban life for the opportunity of admiring glamour and conversing with beautiful heiresses and actresses. In Death on the Nile (1937) the principal female antagonist, Linnet Ridgeway enters the opening chapter boasting “golden hair and straight autocratic features – a girl with a lovely shape.” Unsurprisingly, the males in her vicinity “stared” with “slightly open mouths”. The perennial spinster Miss Marple finds a certain vicarious pleasure in being shocked when London intrudes into the peaceful rural world of St Mary Mead. In The Body in the Library (1942), “People come down from London and from the studios – you remember last July? Shouting and singing – the most terrible noise – everyone very drunk”. Salacious romance is even found in the rural: “several week-ends lately, he’s brought down a young woman with him – a platinum blonde.”
Not so Holmes. There were no temptations of the marital, glamorous or romantic for him. In The Sign of the Four (1908) Watson observes that Miss Mary Morstan is a “very attractive woman”. After Holmes replies “I did not observe”, Watson berates his companion “You really are an automaton – a calculating machine…..There is something positively inhuman in you at times.” Holmes then reminds Watson of his theory of the mind being an empty attic that needs stocking carefully: “The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money.”
Mr. Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple shared in their philosophy the importance of the external (‘knowledge spillovers’ as per the lexicon of those gloomy economists), of engagement, of dinners (Hercule) and of gossipy observation (Marple). There is certainly good empirical evidence for the importance of just such types of external engagement or knowledge spillovers. One study of Chinese cities shows how university researchers in second-tier cities enjoyed a productivity boost after being connected to first-tier cities, and their more renowned universities, by high-speed trains. Another study of New York, found that among 1,000 advertising agencies in southern Manhattan, productivity benefits existed for firms located with 750 meters of each other. There is ample evidence in the Sherlockian canon for how the urban empowers criminal learning through external engagement. In The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1892),
“Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity every possible combination of events can be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre.”
In its entirety, the Sherlockian canon is urban ambivalent and doesn’t favor either the urban Poirovian or rural Marpalian extremes. The rural world offers its own distinct advantages and stimulants to criminal activity. Where the urban world offers opportunity, temptation, and volume of crime, the relative isolation of the rural, offers seclusion and less fear of discovery for the criminally inclined. In The Adventure of the Copper Beeches (1902), Holmes muses to Watson,
“You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation, and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin that does the smiling and beautiful country-side.”
We may debate the relative stimulants to crime given by the urban and the rural world, but one thing is not in doubt. Unlike Monsieur Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, and perhaps the general criminal fraternity, Holmes draws his sustenance from inside. After investigating the scene of a crime and interviewing key witnesses, Holmes invariably turns inward to contemplate the dastardly affair. In The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) Watson observes knowingly,
“I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed up every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential”.
For Holmes, the urban world is not a stimulant to conversation, interactions, and knowledge spillovers. In The Red Headed League (1891), Holmes utilizes the opportunity of urban culture to turn inwards, to think, not to discuss:
“I observe that there is a good of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective and I want to introspect.”
In The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot (1910), set in rural Cornwall, the rural world offers its own advantages to help Holmes turn inwards:
“Let us walk together along the cliffs together and search for flint arrows. We are more likely to find them than clues to this problem. To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces. The sea-air, sunshine, and patience, Watson – all else will come.”
This urban philosophy lends itself to a foggy fatalism. For many scholars, when we think of Sherlock Holmes we think of a dastardly crime in fog-bound London. The swirling fog is the dark, dangerous, and incomprehensible mystery that is later penetrated and cleared by the genius insights of Holmes. Holmes himself does not see fog as being a stimulant to intriguing crime but to rather epitomize the dull depression of a mind that is not being exercised. When the fog sets in during The Sign of Four (1908), Holmes is not enervated:
“Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the streets and drifts across the uncolored houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them? Crime is commonplace, existence is commonplace, and no qualities save those which are commonplace have any function upon earth.”
It is perhaps a surprise that the most fog-infused of his adventures takes place among the isolated moors of Dartmoor in rural Devonshire. In The Hound of the Baskerville’s (1902) Holmes faces the greatest fog of his detecting career:
“over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction, and banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low, but thick and well defined, The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads of distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface.”
Our three-part series comes to this fog-bound end, but we offer a fog that stimulates rather than obscures philosophical debate. The English Detective School of Urban Philosophy has been criticized as offering its devotees a confusing all-you-can-eat buffet rather than carefully curated and coherent big ideas. I would disagree. The school sets up big questions about the relative merits of the urban and the rural, and the conditions under which each can contribute to a more profitable economy and a richly engaging society. From the Poirovian and Marpalian extremes we draw a case for the urban and rural respectively, from the Sherlockian we draw an ambivalence about urban and rural, and an emphasis on the importance of the internal. The school doesn’t set up its own thesis and await a critical engagement from another school, the school is a self-contained debate that stimulates discussion and thinking.
¹ Unlike Sherlock Holmes who resumed his detective work, several years after supposedly being killed off in The Adventure of the Final Problem (1893).
² Please do note, I have provided references from the Holmesian canon, in the form of quotes or other facts, but not hyperlinks. The works of his biographer Dr John Watson are available in many, many different editions globally. For the scholarly purists among you, I used collected works published in the UK by Chancellor Press in 1985. I provide original UK publication dates for each book or short story noted here.
