Villainy and Physiognomy: Identifying the Dangerous Foreigner
in Sherlock Holmes
Erica Foss
Abstract
Arguably one of the most widely read collections of popular literature in the late
19th and early 20th centuries, the Sherlock Holmes stories provide vital insight into
the ideas of villainy and British identity. Focusing on what Edward Said refers to
as “the Other,” this paper examines images of villains in the Holmes oeuvre, and
their depictions as dangerous and savage influences from the East. Throughout this
particular collection of works, the villain and the foreigner are synonymous, and
the danger that they pose is entirely related to the idea of British purity. The
villains of the Holmes stories are not simple criminals. They have by and large
been influenced by the evils of the foreign. From prominent and intelligent
Englishmen who have spend time in India, to the twisted and depraved foreign men
who come to England to corrupt, the villains in these stories pose a double threat.
Not only are they a threat to an ordered society by the nature of their criminality,
but they threaten the very fabric of British identity. These criminals represent
villainy at its worst, for the real threat is not the crimes being committed, but the
influence of “the other.” Conan Doyle’s description and characterization of his
fears and the dangers of these foreigners is reinforced using his main character,
Sherlock Holmes. A hero to the English people, Sherlock Holmes epitomizes what
it means to be the quintessential Englishman. His scientific views of this villainous
“Other,” backed up by pseudoscientific reasoning, help to galvanize the insidious
nature of the foreign and provide a compelling reason for using the purity of the
British Empire to keep this danger in check.
Key Words: Sherlock Holmes, Empire, physiognomy, Britain, literature, race
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1. Conan Doyle and Empire
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first killed off his famous detective in 1893, he
thought that it would be an opportunity finally to turn his attention to more
worthwhile pursuits. Little could he have anticipated the public outrage from all
the corners of England, demanding that Sherlock Holmes be returned to them. In
London alone, twenty thousand people cancelled their subscription to The Strand
magazine in protest. Passersby wore black mourning bands on their arms. 1 The
wild success of his idiosyncratic detective, and the comparative failure of his more
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serious works of history “for the Empire,” shocked Conan Doyle. He had spent so
much effort on these writings, intending to garner support for the Empire he loved
so much, that he was understandably upset when he realized that the people of
England cared more about Sherlock Holmes than they ever would the Boer War.
There is evidence to suggest, however, that Conan Doyle inserted his concerns
about the Empire, and particularly the influence of foreigners into the Holmes
adventures; these fears largely circled around ideas of degeneracy, villainy, and
challenges to English superiority, and are inextricably bound with Conan Doyle’s
espousal of Imperial ideology. Together, they suggest that this dangerous,
villainous foreign other must be contained and controlled, through colonization if
possible, by a superior and more civilized race.
Scholars studying the relationship between popular culture and Empire in
nineteenth-century Britain have found a rich subject in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock
Holmes stories.2 Primarily, though, they have examined the character of Holmes
himself. Historians have yet to examine the subject matter of the Sherlock Holmes
collection, or analyzed the tales in the political context of empire and
pseudoscience. In the wake of the Imperial crises, it is easy to see in the Holmes
stories an almost desperate plea for English superiority and a harsh warning against
the influence of the foreign. In order to create a widespread prejudice against a
foreign Other, the British needed to appear as the superior group. For this kind of
endeavor, certain kinds of pseudoscience proved extremely useful. Taking into
consideration Conan Doyle’s own medical education and strong adherence to
popular nineteenth-century ideologies, it is unsurprising to find a strong thread of
pseudoscience appearing in the Sherlock Holmes stories. As we will see, Conan
Doyle used the language and ideas of physiognomy to warn his readers, the whole
of England, about the dangers of the foreign Other. Additionally, Conan Doyle
professed pro-Empire philosophies through the heroes in his story, while at the
same time voicing his concerns about foreign infiltration. He clearly held the
English up as a shining example of civilization and humanity, but also indicated
the fragility of this position, bewailing the fact that the English were so easily
contaminated by this negative foreign Other. The Sherlock Holmes stories imply
that there is truth to the discipline of physiognomy; the detective is often able to
identify a criminal or foreigner based on the shape of his head or his facial features.
By also including ideas of national physiognomy, Conan Doyle subtly suggests
that there are sound, unalterable biological reasons for the English race to control
the outer reaches of the world. Conan Doyle suggests that far from being a mere
annoyance, the foreign Other has the potential to leave a permanent scar on the
physical body of the English. The foreign, in Conan Doyle’s view, must be
identified and controlled, but not allowed to contaminate. The English, on the other
hand, negatively defined in relation to this Other, are to be held aloft as an ideal,
but are easily susceptible to the penetration of the foreign.
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2. Englishmen
In Conan Doyle’s work, subjects of the crown are often represented as
having been involved directly in the Empire and foreign lands. Whether making a
fortune in African gold or fighting against the natives in the wars of the East,
Imperially minded elite Englishmen figure prominently into many of the Sherlock
Holmes adventures. Conan Doyle suggests, according to the rule of the evils of
foreign influence, that most Englishmen exposed for too long to the foreign world,
in the Empire or in another land, become savage and evil. Perhaps the most
obvious example of this evil is manifested in the character of Dr. Grimsby Roylott
in “The Speckled Band.” After spending his early years in Calcutta, India,
practicing medicine, he took his two stepdaughters to live in his family’s old manor
house. While in India, Dr. Roylott developed a fondness for fierce “Indian
animals…and he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon, which wander freely
over the grounds and are feared by the villagers almost as much as their master.”3
Even the appearance of the doctor suggests a corruption from the east. He is
descriped as having “large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow
with the sun, and marked with every evil passion,” “deep-set, bile-shot eyes,” and a
“high, thin, fleshless nose,” which gives him the look of a bird of prey. 4 Also,
according to one of his stepdaughters, “violence of temper approaching mania” had
been “intensified by his long residence in the tropics.”5 This violence of temper
hits its pinnacle when he attempts to use a swamp adder, “the deadliest snake in
India,” to kill his stepdaughters so that he can hold on to the inheritance from their
dead mother’s estate.6 After solving the case, Holmes points out that the swamp
adder produces “a form of poison which could not possibly be discovered by any
chemical test” in England, and that only a “clever and ruthless man who had had an
Eastern training” could ever come up with such a scheme.7 It is clear to Holmes
that the nature of this man’s violence and the evil of his behavior is a direct result
of having spent an extended period of time in the East.
Described in less detail, but more important than Dr. Roylott, is the
character of Colonel Sebastian Moran. The colonel takes center stage in “The
Adventure of the Empty House.” As Holmes explains it, the Colonel was the most
trusted confidante of Professor Moriarty, the most evil and brilliant criminal brain
in London until Holmes ended his illustrious career. He was, before his downfall,
and elite member of “Her Majesty’s Indian Army, and the best heavy-game shot
that our Eastern Empire has ever produced.” Out for revenge for Moriarty’s death,
Moran sets a trap to kill Holmes. After Moran fails and is captured by Holmes, the
reader is given a glimpse of Moran’s personality. He is, “with his savage eyes and
bristling moustache…wonderfully like a tiger himself.”8 When Holmes explains
his trap, he uses the language of hunting: “I wonder that my very simple stratagem
could deceive so old a shikari…it must be very familiar to you. Have you not
tethered a young kid under a tree, lain above it with your rifle, and waited [for]
your tiger? This empty house is my tree and you are my tiger.” 9 The description of
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Moran in animalistic terms is no coincidence. There was an idea in physiognomical
thought that people who lived evil lives would begin to look less than human, and
to compare Moran to the Eastern animal he used to hunt illustrates Moran’s moral
downfall.
It appears that, as in the case of Roylott, the tropical sun and the savage
influence of the East have altered Moran’s already questionable character. Without
directly causing a scandal he “made India too hot to hold him” and when he came
back to Britain, entered into a life of criminality, becoming the “second most
dangerous man in Britain.”10 Here, too is the parallel of Eastern influence and its
dangers to the English character. Dr. Roylott and Colonel Moran exemplify this
degeneracy; both men are described as having already something within their
inherited personality that is especially susceptible to foreign influence.
3. Foreigners
While we have seen through the stories that individual British people can
be evilly influenced after spending extended time in foreign lands, the entire
country can suffer through the infiltration of foreign peoples onto British shores.
Conan Doyle makes this abundantly clear in the Holmes stories, as he represents
foreigners as thieves, murderers, and other criminal types. Surprisingly, the
distinction between colonized figures and simple foreigners is blurred, making
little difference in the way they are portrayed. Each is seen as inferior to the
English, whether savage or “gentleman.” These flaws are inevitably seen in the
physical descriptions of the character in question. The danger they pose, too, is a
danger to England’s physicality; foreigners threaten to contaminate the body of the
English, who are their physiognomical superiors. For Conan Doyle, both savage
and civilized men present a clear and present danger to the English. Their violence
and ferocity pose an immediate threat to the civility of English life, for the nation,
as well as for the individual.
The most obvious danger to come from foreigners is manifested in the
character of the savage. The savage man cannot understand, and therefore does not
belong in, civilized English life. The character of Tonga in The Sign of Four
represents this villainy well. Tonga hails from the Andaman Islands, and according
to a description of the islands’ inhabitants, found in a scientific pamphlet that
Holmes reads to Watson, the indigenous peoples
may perhaps claim the distinction of being the smallest
race upon this earth…They are a fierce, morose, and
intractable people…naturally hideous, having large,
misshapen heads, small fierce eyes, and distorted
features…So intractable and fierce they are, that all the
efforts of the British officials have failed to win them
over in any degree. They have always been a terror to
shipwrecked crews, braining the survivors with stone-
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headed clubs or shooting them with their poisoned
arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by a
cannibal feast.11
This description, fascinating to Holmes, indicates several things. First, Holmes
cites this fictitious reference as the “very latest authority” on India and notes its
very thorough and scientific research. Part of this thorough research seems to
include an affinity for the study of physiognomy. Once again, Conan Doyle takes
great advantage of this popular “science.” Because the Andaman people are
described as naturally hideous with distorted features, it follows then, according to
the practice of physiognomy, that these people will be murderous and savage.
Tonga, indeed, is the worst of villains. He kills mercilessly for the love of killing
without a conscious thought of the meaning of his actions. Conan Doyle is able to
condemn the foreign native while at the same time praising English scholarship for
its advancements in “scientific” study.
Another savage of note in the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre is the nameless
character who appears in the “Adventure of Wisteria Lodge.” The savage in this
story is described as grotesque, known only as “a half-breed,” a “huge and hideous
mulatto, with yellowish features of a pronounced Negroid type” whom someone
had picked up in his travels. 12 This savage is not directly guilty of any heinous
crime; however, he is complicit in an attempted murder, and has to flee his
residence for fear of being found. When Holmes and Watson enter the home, they
find a most grotesque display in the kitchen, consisting of dead, charred animals
and a bucket of blood. Though this scene bears no importance to the case, Conan
Doyle includes it in his dialogue between the men, and uses it as an end point for
the story. When Watson brings it up again after the conclusion of the case, Holmes
explains that the creature had been a “savage from the back woods of San Pedro”
and that the items were a part of, as Holmes calls it, “his fetish.”13 Further
questioning on Watson’s part makes Holmes reveal that the savage had been an
avid participant in the voodoo religions. Holmes uses this character as a vivid
example to Watson of the epitome of what is truly “grotesque.” Conan Doyle
implies throughout this story that most foreigners, whether savage or not, are in
fact grotesque. Their behavior and way of life are inappropriate to the ways of the
English and are thus out of place within an English society, and this separation
shows up on their bodies. Twisted and deformed, the savage villain is a harsh
reminder of what could happen to the English body if the foreign is allowed to
penetrate English society.
Of course, foreign men who are not described as savage still have a
negative impact on English people and their society. The first short story Conan
Doyle wrote, in 1891, features the hereditary King of Bohemia, who hires Holmes
to retrieve a compromising photograph and thus avoid a scandal. His description,
as Watson narrates it, is almost unbelievable. The King is a tall, impressive, and
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very wealthy figure, and Watson notes that his “dress was rich with a richness,
which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste;” indeed, his entire
appearance suggests something of “barbaric opulence.”14 The photograph in
question pictures a lovely Englishwoman, though not of noble birth, and the King
mentions his regret that the lady is not in his class. In the end, though Holmes
retrieves the picture and the scandal is avoided, he makes the judgement that the
barbaric foreign King is in a very different, and decidedly lower, class than the
beautiful and elegant young English lady.15 In this story as in others, when class
lines are crossed with nationality, Conan Doyle glorifies the English, no matter
how poor or common. But even more than this, Conan Doyle is once again
emphasizing the superiority of the English, and placing it in juxtaposition with an
elite “barbarian” who lacks the character and grace of the gentle Englishwoman.
In the more serious story of the “Illustrious Client,” a Scandinavian lord
by the name of Baron Gruner enters into quiet English life. He has made his
fortune in South African gold, and is to be married to an English noblewoman. The
flaw of this foreign man, however, is that he is a hardened womanizer and
murderer, the equivalent of a male black widow. While Watson describes him as
an attractive man that women could easily fall for, he is also “swarthy, almost
Oriental, with large, dark, languorous eyes,” and has a “straight, thin-lipped
mouth…a murderer’s mouth…a cruel hard gash in the face, compressed,
inexorable, and terrible.”16 This cruel killer, identifiable by his foreign (albeit
pleasing) features and “murderer’s mouth,” is described as the worst combination
of foreign villains. Not only is he already a mad foreigner who styles himself a
gentleman, but his time spent in the East has made its dangerous stamp on his face
and his character. In many stories, Holmes’s (and by extension Conan Doyle’s)
disdain for foreigners is directed at the most commonplace ruffians of foreign
extraction. A “rascally lascar” of the “vilest antecedents” and Malay owner of a
seedy opium den near the London docks are the subject of many scathing remarks
by Holmes.17 A photograph of an Italian man, “alert, sharp-featured” and
“simian…with thick eyebrows and a very peculiar projection of the lower part of
the face, like the muzzle of a baboon” ultimately leads to the capture of a murderer
and the recovery of a valuable jewel.18 No matter how large a role foreigners play
in the Holmes adventures, Conan Doyle invariably represents them as rotten
scoundrels who threaten the otherwise idyllic and peaceful existence of the British.
4. Conclusion
Throughout Conan Doyle’s work there are physiognomical
representations of foreign peoples and objects. Whether or not they take a leading
role in the story, they have acted as an influence on English life in some way. In
the Holmes oeuvre, Conan Doyle made his own national prejudices abundantly
clear. Through the use of pseudoscience, Conan Doyle describes a national body
that must be kept pure from outside influence. He describes his fears in terms of
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physiognomy, both national and individual. Foreigners are a danger that must be
isolated and controlled; the English are a superior but struggling group who must
maintain their hold on world power at any cost. Savages and other foreign men are
portrayed as an immediate threat to the national body of Englishmen, and too much
time spent abroad has the potential to ruin the Englishman by tainting his
personality with “oriental” influence. To make this point, Conan Doyle used the
pseudo-scientific study of physiognomy as well as degeneracy theory to
distinguish the foreign from the English, and the villains from the heroes. These
ideas, as well as the method which Conan Doyle utilized, were especially
important during the period in which he wrote. Fears about the collapse of power
and Empire, combined with the domestic concerns about the health of the nation
were strong in the collective English mind.
Notes
1
One of the biggest challenges in writing a piece of this type is proving influence. It is vital to point out, therefore, that Conan Doyle
had a wide readership, ranging from the lower-working classes to the upper-middle classes, and these are the people who
would have been exposed to Conan Doyle’s philosophies. We can infer, due to the immense popularity of the Sherlock
Holmes collection, especially among those who lacked access to other political material, that thousands of English citizens
may have internalized the views represented in the stories. See also….
2
Academics such as Caroline Reitz have specifically examined the ways in which Conan Doyle’s stories can be related to
the Empire. In her work, Detecting the Nation, Reitz argues that the character of Sherlock Holmes was able to garner
support for the Empire because of his admirable character, portrayed as the pinnacle of “English-ness.” She likens stories of
English detectives to the spy stories of the colonies, stating that in both cases, the men in these stories exist to do the
Queen’s bidding, and are admirable to the public not only for their great minds, but their great patriotism. She argues that
Conan Doyle may have reinvigorated a weakening ideology in the creation of the perfect Englishman. By blending English
identity with the mystery, romance, and power of the British Empire, Conan Doyle presented a detective who, unlike many
of his predecessors, was a hero to be admired for his English characteristics, which now included his dedication to Queen
and country. See Caroline Retiz, Detecting the Nation (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2004).
3
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Doubleday, 1988), 260.
4
Ibid, 264.
5
Ibid, 260.
6
Ibid, 272.
7
Ibid, 273.
8
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Empty House,” The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Doubleday, 1988), 492.
9
Ibid, 492.
10
Ibid, 494.
11
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Doubleday, 1988), 128.
12
Ibid, 880.
13
Ibid, 887.
14
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Doubleday, 1988), 164.
15
Ibid, 170.
16
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Illustrious Client,” The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Doubleday, 1988), 996.
17
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Man With the Twisted Lip,” The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Doubleday, 1988), 232, 235.
18
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” The Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Doubleday, 1988), 586.
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Erica Foss is a Doctoral Candidate at Boston College, where she specializes in 19th century British History, and is interested
in cultural identity and representation. Her current research deals with perceptions of the Metropolitan Police in London
from its inception until World War II.