The city of London in Conan
Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes
(1887-1927)
Lucinda Hekhuis
0161845
11-07-2008
Table of contents
Introduction
p. 3.
Chapter 1: Introduction to Victorian and modern life in London
p. 5.
Chapter 2: The modern city, an individual city
p. 15.
Chapter 3: The city as a character
p. 18.
Chapter 4: Introduction to Sherlock Holmes
p. 22.
Chapter 5: Sherlock Holmes, Benjamin, and the city of London
p. 25.
Chapter 6: Sherlock Holmes, and the streetscape of London
p. 35.
Conclusion
p. 46.
Bibliography
p. 48.
2
Introduction
In Victorian crime novels, the city of London is portrayed in many different
ways. In this thesis I will investigate the representation of this city in the
detective novels of Sherlock Holmes, written by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Because the stories of Sherlock Holmes were published between 1887 and
1927, I will examine the shift from Victorian London to the modern city as
portrayed in the novels of Sherlock Holmes. To quote G.K. Chesterton
from his article “A Defence of Detective Stories”: “Of this realization of a
great city itself as something wild and obvious the detective story is
certainly the Iliad”.1 The stories of Sherlock Holmes provide us with many
examples of the mystery of the big city and the problems of metropolitan
life.
The central research question I will answer is: how is the city of
London represented and what role does this play in the stories of Sherlock
Holmes? My aim is to contribute to the contemporary discussion of the
perception of the modern city, specifically of Conan Doyle.
I will also investigate if the way the modern city is portrayed in the novels
is characteristic for that period. The general point of view on the modern
city is that a fragmented environment shaped a new type of urban
consciousness and gave rise to “an interrelated concern with the
observation and understanding of the city”.2 Today’s scholars believe this
point of view to be too general and rather look at each city separately;
they believe that looking at a city rather than looking at the city in general
is the correct way to fully understand a specific modern city.3 In this
thesis I will look at the city of London as the specific modern city.
The sub question to the central research question is: how is the contrast
between the civilized Victorian London on one hand and the dark, foggy,
reprinted in Haycraft, Howard (Ed.). 1983 The Art of the Mystery Story. New
York: Carroll & Graf: p. 4.
2
Parsons, D.L. 2002 “Paris is not Rome, or Madrid: Locating the City of
Modernity”. Critical Quarterly vol 44, no. 2: p. 22.
3
Parsons: p. 17-19.
1
3
mysterious London on the other hand represented in these novels? In the
novels of Sherlock Holmes, crime takes place in this dark side of the city,
where the city itself enables the crime. The detective, who lives in the
comfortable area of Baker Street, solves the crimes and with that he
becomes the connection between those two faces of London.
4
Chapter 1: Introduction to Victorian and modern life in London
The Victorian Era, named after the period of Queen Victoria’s rule over the
British Empire, lasted from 1837 till 1901. It was one of the most
flourishing periods of the Empire, especially for the capital London. The
Victorian period brought the city a lot of prosperity, and it became the
world’s largest city. Besides the immense increase in the population of
London, the number of houses grew rapidly as well. At the beginning of
the nineteenth century a population of one million people lived in London
and that number increased to almost five million by the end of it.
According to Peter Ackroyd, “every eight minutes of every day of every
year, someone died in London; every five minutes, someone was born.”4
London also housed a high number of immigrants; by 1840 17 per cent of
London’s population were immigrants. By 1870 more Irishman were living
in London than in Dublin, and more Catholics than in Rome.5 Russians and
Poles resided in London as well, and from 1850 the Chinese were also
settling, arriving on ships. Soon London became the largest city in the
world and it maintained this position for a hundred years, up till 1925,
when New York took over this title.6
Because of this expansion of the population more houses were built.
The Building News reported at the time that “the fungus-like growth of
houses manifests itself stretching from town to suburb and village”.7
Victorian London was a permanent building site. 8 In fact, so many houses
and buildings were erected that most of the London one sees today is
“Victorian either in its fabric or its layout”.9 The destructive Victorian
building attitude had a lot of consequences that could be regretted these
days. Numerous churches were demolished to give way to new buildings,
even the ones with great historical roots such as many Wren churches.
Christopher Wren designed St. Paul’s Cathedral – one of London’s most
Ackroyd, Peter. 2001 London: The Biography. London: Vintage: p. 576.
Ackroyd: p. 576.
6
http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm
7
As quoted in Porter, Roy. 1994 London: A Social History. London: Hamish
Hamilton.: p. 306.
8
Wilson, A.N. 2005 London: A Short History. London: Phoenix: p. 74.
9
Ackroyd: p. 586.
4
5
5
visited historical buildings today – and with that knowledge in mind, the
importance and the immense loss of other Wren churches can be
understood. Another consequence of the aggressive building was the
disappearance of the so called pleasure garden, a public garden used for
recreation. These gardens were built over by houses, other buildings and
later on by railways.
Houses spread in all directions and the city became a “bricken
wilderness”10 and a labyrinth. London’s inhabitants experienced an
endlessness of streets because the city grew larger and larger. The reason
it could become a labyrinth was that for the first nine decades of the
nineteenth century, London did not have an elected body which was
responsible for its housing (or for its transport, schools or hospitals).11
Therefore a chaos of buildings could grow without any type of planning. It
was not before 1889 that the wild growth of buildings would stop due to
the introduction of the London County Council, the government body that
was elected to solve the city’s worst social problems, including the chaos
of its housing. As a result of this election the London County Council could
put a stop to the spread of London’s labyrinth and prevent it from
expanding irregularly throughout the city. Of course, London still grew
massively after 1889, but the irregular Victorian growth, which made the
city into a maze, was slowed down.
Because Victorian London was such a labyrinth, and because it was
constantly expanding, people could get lost in their own city. London
became so large that it created a secret side to itself. No one in the capital
could ever know all of London through and through and there would
always be secret places because of its constant expansion. It is said that
London could be mapped, but it could never be fully imagined or
experienced.12
One of the developments vital to the image of Victorian London was the
arrival of the railway. The first railway in London – in fact the first railway
in any capital city in the world – was built in 1836, and at the start of the
10
11
12
Ackroyd: p. 579.
Wilson: p. 80.
Ackroyd: p. 586.
6
Victorian Era in 1837 a major railway station at Euston was erected, and
many would follow. Its importance for the city was immense. London now
became the true centre of Great Britain, due to its accessibility. But there
was also a dark side to this great invention: the railway companies
needed land to build the tracks and they could not afford to buy the
properties of the rich. As a result, the houses of the poor were demolished
to make way for the railway and according to Ackroyd around 100,000
people were displaced in this process.13
One of the reasons the railway was so important for the image of
London, was because it helped to further expand the city. Already existing
suburban areas became within range of the people, but more importantly,
new living areas were created, mainly to house the poor. Hence, the city
grew larger and larger, not only with brick-built buildings, but also with
people. London had a lot of trouble coping with this massive expansion,
which showed in the high rates of poverty and homeless people. According
to Roy Porter, London had up to 40,000 street people around 1850.14 The
eminent Victorians were more shocked by criminality than by poverty,15
indicating that poverty did not impress them very much. Still, the striking
images of the poor and suffering standing in the street are the ones best
remembered today.
The railway was not the only reason that houses and people had to be
moved. Halfway the Victorian Era, one of the most important Victorian
inventions was born out of necessity: the Underground railway. London
needed fast transportation in the centre of town, but because it was
already too crowded with horse traffic any railways overground were
impossible to accomplish. The obvious solution was to build railways
underground. 16 Because the trains were still steam-powered, the tunnels
needed ventilation so it was not possible to dig deep holes. Therefore they
had to use the so-called ‘cut-and-cover’ method, which meant that a
trench was excavated and later roofed over. Due to the use of this
method, the tunnels were just below the surface so ventilation shafts
13
14
15
16
Ackroyd: p. 592.
Porter: p. 284.
Porter: p. 298.
Wilson: p. 79.
7
could be embedded into the ground. These shafts allowed steam to escape
and let fresh air into the tunnels.
Although the arrival of the Underground had a lot of advantages,
this cut-and-cover method meant that, just as with the arrival of the
railway, a lot of people lost their homes. But this time it affected the
centre as well. The first Underground-track was opened in 1863 and ran
from Paddington to Farringdon. Because of the trenches that had to be
cut, a lot of houses were demolished.
With the arrival of electricity at the end of the Victorian Era the
Underground network transformed. It was now possible to use a different
method to create the tunnels, the so called ‘deep-hole’ boring. As the
tunnel boring machines created tube-like tunnels, the name of the
Underground quickly changed into its nickname ‘the Tube’. Due to the use
of electricity there was no need for ventilation shafts anymore so the
tunnels could become deep-level. The first electric deep-level Tube ran
between the Stockwell and King William Street (now Bank and Monument)
tube stations. This line also ran through the centre, or rather, únder the
centre, but there was no need to disrupt the townscape anymore while
constructing it.
With the enormous growth and the relatively quick change of the city, a
lot of mixed feelings were brought about among the inhabitants of
London. The feeling of living in the largest growing city in the world was
sometimes one of admiration, but at the beginning of the Victorian Era
most of the time the overwhelming feeling of anxiety dominated the
people. This slowly changed into feelings of dullness and tiredness,
because this great city seemed to drain energy and to wear the people
out.17
Because the metropolis became so much larger in a short period of
time, it also became much more anonymous. It was a more public city,
but, according to Peter Ackroyd, also a less human one: “Within the
immensity of London any individual becomes insignificant and
17
Ackroyd: p. 588.
8
unnoticed”.18 The feelings that were accompanied by this anonymity were
both positive and negative. Ackroyd describes how the feeling of being
anonymous in London overwhelmed Thomas De Quincey, and made him
experience “utter loneliness”19. Nobody regarded De Quincey and nobody
seemed to hear or see him. It was the largest city in the world, but also
the most impersonal.20 Yet for some citizens, this quality of London was a
source of fascination and sometimes a relief. In the anonymity of the city
you could easily go unnoticed. A.N. Wilson describes the rise of the hotel,
a ‘deeply Victorian institution’,21 and connects it with a positive feeling of
anonymity because now anyone could come up and stay in London
without having to know anyone. But on the other hand, some people said
that London was simply too big and that it had no soul.22
It was a striking paradox for Victorian London, because it was a city
of contradictions in many ways. Peter Ackroyd asks himself: “Is it the
heart of empire, or the heart of darkness?”,23 which illustrates the
ambiguous feeling people had at the time towards their capital. “This
monster London is really a new city”, the author Charles Pascoe wrote in
1888.24 London was a city indeed, with progressive inventions and new
intelligence, but also a monster due to its poverty and hardship. Some
people noticed the blessings of trade and commerce, others only saw the
unattractiveness and the miserable side of it all. For some, the new
transport of the city provided energy but for others, this new speed
created confusion. And of course, there was the huge opposite between
rich and poor, living together in a city already so full of contradictions.
It is impossible to deal with Victorian London without mentioning the one
aspect for which the city became notorious: the fog. Although this
phenomenon was already recorded as early as 1257, it is “commonly
believed that nineteenth-century London created the foggy darkness.”25
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Ackroyd: p. 589.
Ackroyd: p. 589.
Ackroyd: p. 588.
Wilson: p. 82.
Porter: p. 280.
Ackroyd: p. 578.
Ackroyd: p. 587.
Ackroyd: p. 431-2.
9
Reports on Victorian London speak of the fog that had “wiped London out
[like] a sponge”.26 The French historian Hippolyte Taine wrote in the
1860s about a “thick yellow fog [that] fills the air, sinks, crawls on the
very ground”.27 Most of the accounts mention yellow-coloured fog and a
sulphurous smell, which could explain that particular colour. But the fog
could also be of different colours and texture, as R. Russel, the author of
London Fogs explains in 1880:
A London fog is brown, reddish-yellow, or greenish, darkens more than a
white fog, has a smoky, or sulphurous smell, is often somewhat dryer than
a country fog, and produces, when thick, a choking sensation. Instead of
diminishing while the sun rises higher, it often increases in density, and
some of the most lowering London fogs occur about midday or late in the
afternoon. Sometimes the brown masses rise and interpose a thick curtain
at a considerable elevation between earth and sky. A white cloth spread
out on the ground rapidly turns dirty, and particles of soot attach
themselves to every exposed object.28
In the 1880s Henry James, the American writer, mentioned the fog in his
list of complaints about the London particulars: “The fogs, the smoke, the
darkness, the wet...the ugliness, the brutal size of the place...”29. He
mentions the fog, smoke and darkness as different complaints, while in
fact these three were linked. The fog was caused by the smoke and
created the darkness, even during daytime. Gas lights were turned on
throughout the day in order to create some light, both inside the houses
and outside on the streets. The thick fog was caused by the smoke of the
sea coal fires that escaped from trains, the non-electric Underground,
chimneys, factories, and so on. The whole London economy depended on
sea coal and therefore there was no possible escape from this particular
London fog during the Victorian Era.
Apart from darkness, the fog created a mysterious atmosphere in
the city. Samuel Butler, a British novelist, describes his view of a foggy St.
26
27
28
29
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1856, as quoted in Ackroyd: p. 435.
As quoted in Porter: p. 279.
As quoted on: http://vichist.blogspot.com/2006/11/london-fog.html
As quoted in Porter: p. 280.
10
Paul’s Cathedral as “a commingling of earth and some far-off mysterious
palace”.30 Due to the thick and damp fog all the sounds of the street were
muffled and people seemed to disappear like ghosts. Because of the
fading footsteps and voices like whispers the city became a world of
concealment and secrets.31 Within the fog things could happen that
nobody noticed. This aspect of Victorian London is of great importance in
recognizing the way in which the city created a scenery in which crime
could flourish. Within the darkness of the fog theft, violence and rape
could occur on an unprecedented scale.32 Fog is normally a natural
meteorological symptom, but in this case the city created its own fog and
therefore its own crime. Part of this was to blame on the absence of gas
lights in many small streets and alleys, hence covering up crimes and
disgraces in the thick fog.
Despite these negative aspects, the fog was as much a concrete
part of the Victorian metropolis as the railway or the Underground. Henry
Mayhew, an English journalist, wrote in 1849: “To behold the metropolis
without its smoke – with its thousand steeples standing out against the
clear blue sky sharp and definite in their outlines is to see London as it is
not – without its native element”.33 So, without the fog, there was no
London.
It is therefore no surprise that in nineteenth-century literature the
fog plays a significant role. Ackroyd claims it can be said that the fog is
the greatest character in nineteenth-century fiction and that the novelists
looked upon fog as people might have done upon an object.34 The London
fog also played an important role in nineteenth-century art where painters
such as Whistler and Monet saw it as London’s greatest attribute.35 In
literature, one of the greatest novels of Victorian fog is The Strange Case
of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886. The
fog also plays an important role in the Sherlock Holmes stories, which will
be discussed in great detail later in this thesis.
30
31
32
33
34
35
As quoted in Metcalf, Priscilla. 1972 Victorian London. London: Cassell: p. 168.
Ackroyd: p. 434.
Ackroyd: p. 433.
As quoted in Metcalf: p. 168.
Ackroyd: p. 434.
Ackroyd: p. 436.
11
When Queen Victoria died in 1901 it meant the end of the Victorian Era.
The period that followed is called the Edwardian period, named after King
Edward who succeeded his mother. Although King Edward died in 1910,
the Edwardian period is often extended to the beginning of World War I in
1914, and sometimes even to the end of the War, in 1918. This period is
also often called the Modern period, named after the modernisation that
took place in Britain during that period. This modernisation was the
continuation of the Victorian period, in which many changes had already
been started off. For London, the Modern period seemed a much calmer
period than the intense and chaotic Victorian Era. The inventions and
changes that occurred during the nineteenth century seemed to proceed
calmly in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Nevertheless, the Edwardian period saw many changes as well.
First of all, the growth of the houses in the city continued, primarily in the
suburbs, which caused the centre of London to maintain its Victorian style.
The population expanded as well. At the end of the Victorian Era five
million people inhabited London, by 1911 this number had risen to seven
million and by 1925 the population of London consisted of almost eight
million people.
Transportation became more coordinated at the beginning of the
Edwardian period and due to the invention of electricity it changed to a
great extent. This period is sometimes called ‘the period of mobility’,
because of the ‘electric change’ in transportation, making people more
mobile. Not only the tube, as described above, but also other means of
transportation became electrified. One of the biggest inventions was the
electric tram, created in 1901, which replaced the horse-drawn tram. In
fact, all transportation in Victorian times involved horse-drawn means and
now, due to electricity, the horses began to disappear from the streets.
But at the beginning of the introduction of electricity in transport, the
already crowded streets of London became even busier. The horse-drawn
and electric vehicles both got in each other’s way and the average speed
remained only twelve miles per hour.36 Ironically, this is still true
36
Ackroyd: p. 719.
12
nowadays, suggesting that the introduction of electricity in London’s traffic
could not help speed things up at all.
The most characteristic feature of Victorian London, the fog,
diminished as the new century proceeded. The exact reason for this
phenomenon is still unknown, but one of the guesses is that the
expansion of the city had paradoxically lowered its own levels of fog.37 The
industries and the people were now more widespread and with that, the
sources of the fog spread as well. This remarkable fact has been described
in an essay by Henry T. Bernstein, whose title indicates how extraordinary
the phenomenon really was: “The Mysterious Disappearance of Edwardian
London Fog”.38 According to Peter Ackroyd, the last real thick and heavy
fog in London was present on December 23, 1904,39 thus in the very early
years of the Modern period. After that, the fog appeared from time to
time, but it was not really noteworthy until the heavy ‘smogs’ of the early
1950s. The word ‘fog’ had at the beginning of the twentieth century
transformed into ‘smog’ – a portmanteau of the words ‘fog’ and ‘smoke’ –
and the phenomenon became notable in other cities as well. It now was
no longer a specifically London characteristic, because all over the world
large cities experienced thick smog caused by air pollution such as
exhaust gasses and industrial fumes. That one particular Victorian London
city-element slowly diminished in the Modern period, not only from sight
but also from language.
One of the most interesting differences between Victorian London and the
modern city are the feelings the people had towards life in the city and the
city itself. In the early years of the Victorian Era overwhelming feelings of
anxiety dominated, but slowly transformed into feelings of boredom. But
in the Modern period, this all changed. The city embodied a much more
energetic and young spirit, which created an atmosphere of liveliness and
activity. As Ackroyd puts it: “[I]t [was] as if the city had come alive with
the new century.”40 The heavy Victorian feelings seemed to have
Ackroyd: p. 437.
Bernstein, Henry T. 1975 “The Mysterious Disappearance of Edwardian London
Fog”. London Journal vol 1: 189-206.
39
Ackroyd: p. 437.
40
Ackroyd: p. 721.
37
38
13
disappeared and people enjoyed life more than before. The whole city was
full of life. The different means of transportation that were introduced in
the Victorian period had caused confusion then, but now the city moved
forward and enjoyed the speed of life, literally.
Of course, there were always people who would keep dwelling on
the negative aspects of the big city. London became even busier and
noisier during the Edwardian period, and the City, a borough in the centre
of London, housed more hotels and banks than ever before. According to
Arthur Conan Doyle, central London became “a great cesspit into which all
the loungers of the Empire are irresistibly drained”.41 This negative
attitude towards the modern sides of the city could have contributed to
the development of the stories of Sherlock Holmes, in which London’s
Victorian aspects are glorified.
41
Porter: p. 323.
14
Chapter 2: The modern city, an individual city
The Modern period as discussed above has through the years been
examined and investigated by many different scholars. The three most
important thinkers on urban modernity are Charles Baudelaire (18211867), Georg Simmel (1858-1918) and Walter Benjamin (1892-1940).
Baudelaire was interested in the social forms of modernity, while Simmel
investigated the effects of modern experience on the mind of the
individual. The German philosopher Benjamin on the other hand examined
both the mythology and the historical sociology of a city. He wrote about
city life, urban architecture and metropolitan experience. In his studies,
Benjamin was mainly concerned with “the grotesque character of the city
and the dehumanizing tendencies of metropolitan daily life”. He attempted
to give voice to the character of both individual and collective experiences
within the urban setting. Benjamin was an “urbanite” and a
“metropolitan”42 whose feelings towards the modern city were dual: the
city gave him feelings of both hope and despair, of both love and hate.
Despite these paradoxical feelings, the exposure of the delusion of the
urban environment was the basis for Benjamin’s fascination with the
modern city.43
In the essay “Paris is not Rome, or Madrid: locating the city of modernity”,
published in 2002, Deborah L. Parsons discusses temporary perspectives
on the modern city. She describes the different types of commonplaces
which still rule among scholars nowadays. One of those is the idea that
“the fragmented and defamiliarised environment of the modern city
shaped both a new type of urban consciousness, and an interrelated
concern with the observation and understanding of the city”.44 Parsons
believes this point of view to be too general, because it undermines the
individualistic character of a specific city.
All quotes from Gilloch, Graeme. 1996 Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin
and the City. Cambridge: Polity Press: p. 1.
43
Gilloch: p. 1-5.
44
Parsons: p. 22.
42
15
She asks herself what it means to study the city of modernity and what
kind of city the scholars mean when they talk about the modern city. Until
now, the general way to examine a modern city was to neglect its
specifically historical context and to look at the city more generally. Even
in 1984, scholars tended “to view the modern city in monolithic terms, as
if Boston, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles were one and the
same place”.45 But now, “[a] growing alertness to the heterogeneity of
global modernity [...] is [...] revitalising the field of modernist studies”.46
Parsons argues that “any individual city is partly composed from its
specific history of traditions, customs, representations and selfidentifications.”47 Consequently, for today’s scholars it is important to look
at each city separately and looking at a city rather than looking at the city
in general is the correct way to fully understand a specific modern city.
Although I fully agree with that, in my opinion Parsons takes it a bridge
too far when she claims that, when examining urban modernity, you
should dismiss all your preconceptions and theoretical frameworks, along
with the knowledge of ‘typical terms of modernity’ such as ‘the culture of
everyday life’, ‘the crowd’, ‘the prostitute’ and ‘the flâneur’48 – terms used
by Baudelaire, Simmel and Benjamin. I think it could be useful to use
these concepts when describing urban modernity. But I also think it is
very important to recognize that every city is different and unique, and
that, just like Parsons claims, it would be “fallacious to suggest either that
[...] changes [within a city] took place simultaneously, or that they
followed the same pattern of emergence across Western society.”49
One of the reasons why I think it is very important to investigate every
modern city as an individual city, is because every city has its own unique
qualities and role in history. In the case of London that is certainly true. It
had a very special and unique status in the world because it was, for
almost a hundred years, the largest city in the world. To quote Peter
As quoted in Lehan, Richard. 1984 “Book review” [Untitled]. Modern Philology
vol 82, no. 2: p: 232.
46
Parsons: p. 18-19.
47
Parsons: p. 19.
48
Parsons: p. 19.
49
Parsons: p. 19.
45
16
Ackroyd: “London had become known as the greatest city on the earth,
the capital of empire, the centre of international trade and finance, a vast
world market into which the world poured.”50 In his essay “Recent work in
Victorian Urban Studies”, Richard L. Stein describes what made London a
typical modern city: “...its placement at the center of the increasingly
textualized global economy of finance and information”.51
It was the largest city in the world, and as a result of that it became
one of the first cities ever forced to deal with the burdens of “metropolitan
problems” – or, to use a term frequently used in Dutch, “grootstedelijke
problematiek”. Consequently, London can be considered ahead of other
metropolitans around the world.
It may be clear that because of its magnitude and early
development, London had a very unique position in the world. Another
reason why London was so unique in comparison with a lot of other cities,
is described by A.N. Wilson: “The contrast between Paris and London – or
between London and many of the major European capitals [...] – is very
marked. Wretched as the plight was of the London poor, it remained an
aspirant city, one in which those in the gutter aspired to rise.”52 Despite
their poverty, the poor still had dreams and, most important, hopes for a
better life. Here, Wilson talks about the Victorian Age, but the poor’s
optimistic attitude towards the future continued in the following period,
where everybody seemed to sense the optimism of a new century.
Evidently, two completely different cities cannot be treated as if they are
the same. Each city has to be studied in its own, proper light, and I shall
therefore investigate London’s urban modernity, taking into account its
historical context. Benjamin’s theories will be applied to this analysis as it
will prove valuable in investigating the transition from the Victorian to the
modern city.
Ackroyd: p. 573.
Stein, Richard. L. “Recent Work in Victorian Urban Studies”. Victorian Studies
vol 45, no 2: p. 327.
52
Wilson: p. 76.
50
51
17
Chapter 3: The city as a character
The last word of the title of this chapter is ‘character’. This word implies
an active role, and I do believe that a city itself can be active through
history and that it is capable of causing certain things to happen. This is
especially true for a city like London, and this shows the individuality of
the city. I believe London has been capable of changing the course of its
own history and that it has influenced its inhabitants.
The use of the word ‘character’ also implies that London has certain
human features. Peter Ackroyd has named his all-embracing and very
high-valued book London: The Biography. The word ‘biography’ is
generally used to describe an account of a person’s life, not the history of
a city. In his introduction, which is called “The city as body”, Ackroyd
explains his vision on London as “half of stone and half of flesh”.53 The city
contains, according to Ackroyd, multiple human body parts such as veins,
represented by the byways of the city, and lungs, represented by its
parks,54 hence, the title “Biography”. Just like a human body, London
could not cope with the fact that it grew fat during the Victorian Era when
all its veins got blocked. The city did not look after its people as well as
before, and more and more people lost their homes and were forced to
live on the streets. It became a very unhealthy city.
Not only Peter Ackroyd but also other writers have ascribed human
characteristics to the city of London. Daniel Defoe had, already in the
eigthteenth century, described London as a great body which “circulates
all, exports all, and at last pays for all”,55 and with that description he
portrayed the city as a “living and suffering being”.56 I think that portrait
is a wrong one. Of course, London has had to endure many difficulties. It
suffered fires many times, of which the Great Fire of 1666 is considered
the greatest, and it has suffered horrible diseases such as the plague, of
which the Great Plague of 1665-1666 was the last major outbreak. But to
portray London merely as a suffering being gives a wrong and short53
54
55
56
Ackroyd: p. 2.
Ackroyd: p. 1.
As quoted in Ackroyd: p. 1.
Ackroyd: p. 206.
18
sighted image. After the Great Fire the plague did not return to the
capital, and it looks as if the city had taken care of its own problems by
destroying not only itself, but more importantly the disease’s source. This
is a great example of the city providing its own cares and needs. Despite
all the ordeals – according to Ackroyd the city was “perpetually doomed”57
– London kept standing. It certainly was not a weak city.
Another and perhaps most important reason why I claim that
London has been capable of influencing its own history, is because the city
has been capable of enabling its own crime. Because of the growth of the
city and the expansion of the population the crime rate increased during
the Victorian Era. As mentioned earlier, the fog and the darkness made
sure crime could flourish as never before. The world’s most famous
murderer Jack the Ripper operated mostly in dark alleys where, because
of the fog and bad lighting, nobody noticed him. At the end of the
Victorian Era, as we have seen, most of the streets were illuminated by
gas lights, which were turned on even during the day in order to spread
some light in the darkness caused by the fog. However, there were still
many streets and alleys that had no lighting at all and although it was
claimed that by 1841 “the metropolis now burn[ed] gas in every square,
street, alley, lane, passage, and court”, even at the end of the Victorian
period, this was still not the case.58 It was also claimed that “half the work
of prevention of crime was accomplished”59 because of gas lighting. But,
as explained earlier, crime still flourished in the darkness without people
noticing it. London created its own fog and its own darkness and therefore
its own crime. Every part of the city participated in the crime: the fog,
caused by fumes, the darkness, caused by fog and the lack of gas lights,
and the topographical situation, because the city had too many dark and
isolated alleys.
The connection between London and murder was made a long time
before the Victorian period, but due to the ‘perfect’ Victorian
circumstances as described above, crime rates increased enormously. It is
that particular quality that made Arthur Conan Doyle choose London as
57
58
59
Ackroyd: p. 201.
Ackroyd: p. 437.
Both as quoted in Porter: p. 300.
19
the home base for the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.
Conan Doyle was born and raised in Edinburgh, and lived in Portsmouth
when he wrote the first Sherlock Holmes novels. It was only in 1891, four
years after the publication of his first novel A Study in Scarlet, that he
moved to the capital himself. In those first novels the attentive reader will
notice that many streetnames used by Conan Doyle to describe certain
London areas are actually Edinburgh’s. One example is ‘Duncan Street,
Houndsditch’,60 where the name Duncan Street is taken from an
Edinburgh street known to Conan Doyle61, and Houndsditch taken from a
real street in London, located in the City. Another example is ‘Mayfield
Place, Peckham’,62 where again Peckham is an actual existing place in
London – a suburb of the city – whereas Mayfield Place is in Edinburgh.
The reason for Conan Doyle not to choose Edinburgh as the main
location in the Sherlock Holmes novels despite the fact that he knew the
city of Edinburgh much better than the city of London, might partly be
explained in Irving S. Saposnik’s essay “The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde”. Saposnik describes how Stevenson needed a setting for his story
where the Victorian division in men and society could really come alive.
This setting was vital because the morality of the story lay at the centre of
the Victorian world and therefore location would be the most important
detail. Saposnik explains that many critics have pointed out that this
morality was actually more of a Scottish feature than an English one.
Hence, the more suitable setting would have been Edinburgh. However,
according to Saposnik, “they fail to recognize that only London could serve
as the locus classicus of Victorian behavior. An enigma composed of
multiple layers of being, its confines held virtually all classes of society
conducting what were essentially independent lives.”63 Not only the
Victorian conduct but also the fact that the city of London itself was “a
macrocosm of the necessary fragmentation”64 meant that the capital
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2006 Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories. Ware:
Wordsworth Editions: A Study in Scarlet: p. 40.
61
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2001 A Study in Scarlet. London: Penguin Books: p. 139,
notes by Ed Glinert.
62
The Complete Stories: A Study in Scarlet: p. 40.
63
Saposnik, Irving S. 1971 “The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. Studies in
English Literature, 1500-1900 vol 11, no. 4: p. 717.
64
Saposnik: p. 718.
60
20
served as a perfect setting for Stevenson to present his themes. Just like
Stevenson, Conan Doyle did not choose Edinburgh as the location for his
novels because London was the only place where the centre of the
normative Victorian world represented itself.
Not only did Conan Doyle use London as a geographical place, he
also used it as a symbolic centre of the British Victorian world. London
was both “the emporium of crime and the palladium of Christianity. It
[was] in fact, the great arena of conflict between the powers of darkness
and the ministry of heaven.”65 This description of London is similar to the
London as outlined in the Holmes novels. With the dark, criminal side on
the one hand and the civil world and safe haven of Baker Street on the
other, Sherlock Holmes could serve as the perfect connection between
those two worlds, as will be demonstrated below.
Rev. William Tuckniss in the introduction to Mayhew’s London Labour and the
London poor as quoted in Saposnik: p. 718.
65
21
Chapter 4: Introduction to Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes novels were published
in London between 1887 and 1927. He wrote four novels and 56 short
stories. His first two novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four were
published in respectively Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887 and
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890. After that, he wrote 23 short
stories, all published in The Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1893. The
first twelve stories appeared in book form in 1892 as The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes and the other eleven stories were published in 1893
under the title The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The last story from that
collection, titled “The Final Problem”, is particularly important because it is
the story in which Conan Doyle puts an end to the life of Sherlock Holmes.
He felt that he did not get enough credit for his other stories – it may
come as a surprise that he indeed wrote other stories – and he allowed
Holmes’ arch-enemy Professor Moriarty to throw the detective into the
Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Conan Doyle did not take great pride in
his famous creation, as can be concluded from the introduction to his
autobiography in which he speaks of his achievements in life but does not
say a word about the detective.66 In the preface to his last collection of
stories he explains: “[Sherlock Holmes] may perhaps have stood a little in
the way of the recognition of my more serious literary work.”67 Therefore,
he intended “The final problem” to be his last story about Holmes, but
heavy and sometimes angry reaction from his readers made him decide to
publish one more novel, probably his most famous one today, The Hound
of the Baskervilles. It was published in The Strand in 1901 and in book
form in 1902.
The truth is that Sherlock Holmes kept dominating Conan Doyle’s
life. After The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was set before Holmes’
death in Switzerland, the public was still not satisfied because a
posthumous Holmes did not live up to their expectations. They wanted a
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2001 The Sign of Four. London: Penguin Books. As stated
in the introduction by Peter Ackroyd: p. vii.
67
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2007 His Last Bow & The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
London: Penguin Books: p. 248-9.
66
22
detective who could solve crimes at the present day. Hence, Conan Doyle
decided to resurrect Sherlock Holmes and this resulted in another
collection of stories The Return of Sherlock Holmes, published in The
Strand between 1903 and 1904 and in book form in 1905. After that, the
author published two more story collections, called His Last Bow,
published between 1908 and 1913, and in book form in 1917, and The
Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, published between 1921 and 1927, and in
book form in 1927. With the death of Conan Doyle in 1930, the original
written life of Sherlock Holmes had finally come to an end. But the legend
of the world’s most famous detective never ended.
Sherlock Holmes is known all over the world as a Victorian detective. This
is partly because of the time setting of the novels and stories, as most of
them take place during the Victorian Era. The stories cover a period from
around 1875 – “The ‘Gloria Scott’” published in The Memoirs of Sherlock
Holmes – up to 1907, with one final case during the First World War set in
1914 – “His Last Bow”, which appeared in the similarly named collection
of 1917. So although many stories were written in the Modern period,
Conan Doyle still placed his detective at the crossing of both times.
Another important reason why Holmes is remembered as Victorian,
is because of the scene setting. In the novels and stories the London
streets are portrayed as particularly Victorian, with gas lights on every
corner and fog swirling down the streets. Horse traffic dominated the
scenes, especially cabs pulled by horses. Sherlock Holmes used the cab as
main transportation, he only traveled by tube once. In fact, the image of
Sherlock Holmes in a cab is so familiar that the London Transport Museum
mentions the detective in its description of the Hansom Cab.68 The
hansom, a fast type of cab with no luggage space, is the type of cab
Holmes mainly used. The fact that this Victorian cab is associated with
Holmes in the Transport Museum shows that he is perceived today as a
Victorian detective.
The exact description is: “Forder Hansom Cab - The improved design was in
general use by 1891 when Sherlock Holmes took his first fictional cab ride
through the London fog.” – London Transport Museum, Convent Garden Piazza,
London.
68
23
Two other aspects that connect the Victorian city with the famous
detective, are the frequent mentioning of the fog and the use of gas
lights. Although the first interior use of electric light occurred in 1887,69
Sherlock Holmes kept using gas lights all his life. The fog, a typically
Victorian phenomenon, plays a very important role in the novels and
stories and may serve as another reason why the detective will always be
remembered as Victorian.
Despite the fact that Sherlock Holmes is seen as a Victorian
individual, many stories were written and published in the Modern period.
Thirty-three of the short stories and one or two of the novels – that
depends on The Hound of the Baskervilles which was published in 1901
and 1902 but probably written some years before that – were written
after the Victorian period. I believe that because of this fact Sherlock
Holmes should not be seen as just a Victorian character, but also as partly
modern. I am convinced that Conan Doyle, who moved to London in 1891,
became influenced by the city in which he lived and by the tendency
towards a more modern life. Traces of modern life, as well as hints at
urban modernisation in London, can be found in the Sherlock Holmes
stories and novels. To investigate these theories I will examine the
Sherlock Holmes stories and novels closely and focus mainly on the ones
that are situated in London.
69
Ackroyd: p. 718.
24
Chapter 5: Sherlock Holmes, Benjamin, and the city of London
Earlier I have mentioned the German philosopher Walter Benjamin as one
of the most important thinkers on urban modernity. His view on the
modern city has shaped the way we look at the modern city today. I will
make use of parts of his theory to examine the modern elements as
present in the stories of Sherlock Holmes, but I will keep in mind the
individuality of the city of London.
In his work, Benjamin focused on the modern individual and his or
her experience. One thing he was particularly interested in was the
function of the crowd in modern life and the effect it had on the individual.
For him, the characteristic feature of the modern metropolitan experience
was the ‘encounter with the crowd, the reaction of the individual to the
great assemblage of strangers.’70 According to Benjamin, the Modern
period created the first confrontation of the individual with strangers. The
emotions that followed such an experience were ‘fear, revulsion, and
horror’71. These feelings can be compared to the feelings London
inhabitants had when they had to deal with the anonymity of the rapidly
expanding city. London always had a large number of crowds in
comparison with other great cities, but, according to Peter Ackroyd, the
attitude of the crowd changed in the nineteenth century. It became
increasingly impersonalised.72
Ackroyd notices that there are two types of London crowd people.
There is one type, which gets confused by the chaos and cannot cope with
the quick movement, and there is the other type, which feels satisfied in
this stream of life and time.73 Among this last type there were people who
could benefit from the crowd, as they could use it as a safe place to hide.
It provided comfort due to its anonymity created by people that were
similar. People who could profit from that fact were for example criminals,
as they could vanish into the mass. For this reason Benjamin, rightly it
70
71
72
73
Gilloch: p. 139.
Benjamin, as quoted in Gilloch: p. 140.
Ackroyd: p. 393.
Ackroyd: p. 395.
25
turned out, marked the detective story as a genre with a great future.74
The rise of the crowd gave rise to an extra difficulty in the work of the
detective, but at the same time made it more exciting. Instead of the
detective being able to distinguish the criminal from the rest, the villain
could vanish into the crowd and disappear without a trace. Normally, the
detective already had to look for the smallest traces to find him, but now
the search became even more difficult.
The crowd is mentioned a large number of times in the Sherlock Holmes
stories. In the novel The Sign of Four, Watson’s feelings become one with
the crowd as his future wife – whom he has at that moment just met –
disappeared from his sight, “in the sombre crowd”.75 Here Watson himself
feels sombre and he projects his greyness onto the people on the street. A
moment later, when Holmes and Watson drive through the city in a cab,
once again the crowd is portrayed through the eyes of Watson as a pitiful
pack of people: “There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghostlike in
the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of
light”.76 Now, the crowd is seen as frightening and spooky. It appeared as
though Watson did not think much of the crowd, which is supported by an
event in the short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” where Sherlock Holmes
gets attacked by members of the crowd when he tries to protect a lady,
Irene Adler, from getting hurt: “[B]ut, just as [Holmes] reached her, he
gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood running freely down
his face.”77 This fragment shows that the crowd can be very dangerous.
As mentioned earlier, the crowd could have different functions.
Besides being dangerous, it could also serve as a safe hiding place where
a criminal could vanish without the detective able to catch him. This
happens for instance in The Sign of Four, where Sherlock Holmes chases a
villain with a hunting dog to catch the smell of creosote, which the villain
Benjamin himself was a big fan of crime and detective novels, and in his short
piece “Kriminalromane, auf Reisen” he gave a list of novels he liked to read. In
this list he also mentioned the Sherlock Holmes novels. This is fully described in:
Salzani, Carlo. 2007 “The City as Crime Scene: Walter Benjamin and the Traces
of the Detective”. New German Critique vol 34, no. 100: 165-187.
75
The Complete Stories: p. 105.
76
The Complete Stories: p. 107.
77
The Complete Stories: p. 443.
74
26
carries with him. Unfortunately, the criminal is able to disappear into the
crowds where a lot of other traces of creosote can be found. In the story
“The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax”, Holmes searches for two
criminals and the innocent Lady Carfax, but “[a]mid the crowded millions
of London the three persons [he] sought were as completely obliterated
as if they had never lived.”78
Walter Benjamin was highly interested in the effect the crowd had
on the individual. To Watson, the crowd was mainly gloomy and
depressing. For Sherlock Holmes, the crowd sometimes proved a difficult
opponent but one he had learned to work with. Not only could a crowd
serve as a perfect hiding place for criminals, it could just as well be of use
for a detective. “The masses”, Benjamin writes, “efface all traces of the
individual”.79 Holmes likes to disguise himself and can, in that way, very
easily hide among all the other people in the crowd. For instance, in the
story “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”, he disguises himself as “a
workman looking for a job” and even “an old woman”.80 He is so talented
at disguising himself that even Watson does not recognize him in “The
Empty House”, the story in which Holmes suddenly comes to life again.
Holmes blends in with the crowd very well, disguised as an old man, and
even his best friend and partner in crime is not able to identify him. Georg
Simmel wrote: “[T]he metropolitan type [takes] naturally on a thousand
individual modifications”81 and this perfectly applies to Sherlock Holmes
and his disguises.
Holmes does not only benefit from the crowd’s safety, at times he
also benefits from the crowd in other ways. In “The Final Problem”
Professor Moriarty chases the detective with intentions to harm him. This
chase leads into Victoria Station, where Holmes and Watson jump on a
train that Moriarty also hopes to catch. Fortunately, “[t]he train already
begun to move as Holmes spoke. Glancing back [Watson] saw a tall man
pushing his way furiously through the crowd and waving his hand as if he
78
79
80
81
His Last Bow: p. 172-3.
As quoted in Salzani: p. 172.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: p. 313.
As quoted in Gilloch: p. 144.
27
desired to have the train stopped. It was too late, however...”.82 In the
short story “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman” it is Watson who
manages to lose the criminal in the London crowd when he is followed by
him: “I saw him once more at London Bridge, and then I lost him in the
crowd. But I am convinced that he was following me.”83
It may be clear that Sherlock Holmes felt very comfortable among a
flock of strangers, and although the crowd sometimes could get in his
way, he did not fear the streets and would always go out to investigate his
mysteries. Of course it must be said that the crowd Benjamin talks about
is the modern type of crowd, a new phenomenon, which arose during the
Modern period. The London crowd on the other hand already existed
during the Victorian period. However, as I have explained before, the city
of London was ahead of its time and the Victorian city was more
developed than other cities. London’s individuality as described by
Benjamin is actually quite similar to the world Sherlock Holmes and
Watson inhibit.
Another remark that can be made about Benjamin’s theory, is that
his description of the modern individual as someone who fears the crowds,
cannot be applied to Sherlock Holmes. According to Benjamin, the
individual may even experience some shock when facing a crowd but for
Sherlock Holmes the feeling that dominated was certainly not one of
shock or fear. His feelings were dual. When chasing a criminal or solving a
crime he felt excited and alive. But without his most favourite activities,
he pined away from the longing for adventure. At the beginning of the
story “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”, before anything exciting
happens, the detective sighs: “But is not all life pathetic and futile? [...]
We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow.
Or worse than a shadow – misery.”84 The same emotions can be found in
the novel The Sign of Four, where Sherlock Holmes explicitly states that
he “cannot live without brainwork.” He continues: “What else is there to
live for? [...] Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world?”85 The
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2007 The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. London: Penguin
Books: p. 296.
83
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: p. 533.
84
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: p. 527.
85
Both quotes: The Complete Stories: p. 102.
82
28
only thing left for Holmes to pass the time is the use of cocaine. This was
not illegal at the time, but it still might have come as a shock to the
readers, just as it did for Watson. At the beginning of The Sign of Four,
Conan Doyle introduces this cocaine addiction for the first time. Holmes
gives the explanation for his habit in that same story, when Watson asks
him if he has any “professional enquiry on foot at present”: “None. Hence
the cocaine.”86 At the end of the novel, when the adventure is over and
the criminal caught, Watson asks him what Holmes will do, now that the
crime is solved. Holmes replies: “For me [...] there still remains the
cocaine bottle.”87 This novel is not the only story in which the cocaine
addiction of Sherlock Holmes is mentioned. On many different occasions,
Conan Doyle refers to the detective’s need in times of boredom,
“alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition”88. Without
the excitement of crime, Holmes was nothing more than a person who
needed stimulating drugs to cope with the dullness of life, a feeling that
dominated the end of the Victorian period. For Holmes it meant there was
no real life without crime.
As I have remarked above, Benjamin has marked the detective story as
the new modern genre, and not only because the crowd formed a perfect
décor. Benjamin wrote: “[T]he detective story [...] does not glorify the
criminal, though it does glorify his adversaries and, above all, the huntinggrounds where they pursue him.”89 This certainly can be said of the
stories of Sherlock Holmes, in which the ‘adversary’, the detective, is
highly glorified, not only by Watson but also by the people who hire him
and almost the entire London police force, including some high officials at
Scotland Yard. The ‘hunting-ground’ Benjamin talks about is the city of
London, where Sherlock Holmes tracks down criminals. This city hunting
field forms the centre of the stories, not only because Sherlock Holmes
himself lives in London, but also because many times he has to chase the
villains around town and once even on the river Thames.90 According to
86
87
88
89
90
Both quotes: The Complete Stories: p. 102.
The Complete Stories: p. 174.
The Complete Stories: “A Scandal in Bohemia”: p. 429.
As quoted in Gilloch: p. 141.
This magnificent chase can be found in The Sign of Four.
29
Benjamin, the city can transform into a “place of danger, of intrepid and
daring figures, of heroic exploits and deeds of magnificent infamy [...] in
order to avoid the tedium of the homogeneous crowd.”91 This is also the
case in the Holmes novels, where the city sometimes can be dangerous
and magnificent at the same time.
With the rise of the urban crowd in the modern city, the individual
perspective came to an end. The crowd could erase all the traces of the
individual and he could lose himself within the great mass. However, in
the detective story the individual still plays a very important part.
According to Benjamin, in the detective story the individual is enthroned
as a hero, because only the individual could solve the crime within the
hostile city environment.92 This is certainly true regarding Sherlock
Holmes. He is the only individual who is able to solve certain crimes and is
repeatedly asked by the London police force, Scotland Yard and even the
British government to help unravel certain mysteries. Holmes is a typical
individualist. He prefers being alone, and although he shared his
‘headquarters’ in Baker Street with Watson for a couple of years, he is
usually not very considerate with his roommate. Sometimes he is up all
night, or he “lie[s] upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a
word or moving a muscle from morning to night.”93 He is also very much
on his own, he actually “loath[s] every form of society”94 and can stay for
weeks on end in his lodgings in Baker Street.
Sherlock Holmes was not only an individual detective, he also
thought he was very unique. In A Study in Scarlet Holmes tells Watson for
the first time about his occupation: “Well, I have a trade of my own. I
suppose I am the only one in the world. I’m a consulting detective.”95 In
The Sign of Four he is even more sure that there is no other detective like
him: “That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather
created it, for I am the only one in the world.”96 Holmes does not like
being compared to others, because when Watson says: “You remind me of
91
92
93
94
95
96
Gilloch: p. 141.
Gilloch: p. 142.
The Complete Stories:
The Complete Stories:
The Complete Stories:
The Complete Stories:
A Study in Scarlet: p. 19.
A scandal in Bohemia: p. 429.
p. 23.
p. 98.
30
Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin”, Holmes’ answer is: “[I]n my opinion, Dupin was
a very inferior fellow.” Watson tries again and says: “Have you read
Gaboriau’s works? [...] Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?”,
but Holmes answers angrily: “Lecoq was a miserable bungler”.97 According
to Esme Miskimmin, who investigated the transition from the Victorian to
the Golden Age of detective fiction – the time between both World Wars –
Sherlock Holmes deliberately set himself apart from society in order to be
a solitary observer. The symbolic fact that he lived ‘above’ the city in his
apartment on Baker Street – his address is 221b Baker Street, which,
because of the ‘b’, implies that his rooms were above streetlevel – makes
him even more of an outsider and a segregated individual.98 He sat high
up in his symbolic tower and was an outsider in London society.
The modern villain is the last element I will discuss analysing the modern
elements of the city in the stories of Sherlock Holmes. According to
Benjamin, in the modern detective story, “the focus of attention was [...]
the aristocratic villain, the gentleman criminal who [...] seeks the
challenge and excitement of crime for its own sake, not merely for
pecuniary benefit.”99 Graeme Gilloch, author of the book Myth and
Metropolis – Walter Benjamin and the City, points out that a good
example of such an ‘aristocratic villain’ can be found in Professor Moriarty,
Holmes’ arch-enemy. I would like to examine this character and other
‘gentleman criminals’ more closely.
Moriarty’s name is mentioned in seven of the Holmes narratives; six
short stories: “The Final Problem”, “The Empty House”, “The Norwood
Builder”, “The Missing Three-Quarter”, “His Last Bow”, “The Adventure of
the Illustrious Client”, and the novel The Valley of Fear. Although he
physically appears in only two of those stories, he is Holmes’ most famous
opponent. This is probably related to the fact that he is the one who
‘killed’ Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, and with the fact that
there are no other criminals who make a second or a third appearance in
the novels. Moriarty is also considered to be the only villain who can
All quotes from The Complete Stories: A Study in Scarlet: p. 24.
Miskimmin, Esme. 2008 “Crossing the ‘Shadow Frontier’: The Criminal
Underworld in Detective Fiction from the Victorians to the Golden Age”: p. 2-3.
99
Gilloch: p. 141.
97
98
31
match Holmes’ intellectual powers and intelligence. This may serve as yet
another reason why he, like Holmes, appears immortal. However,
Moriarty, unlike Holmes, did actually die that afternoon on the 3rd of May
1891. In the story “The Final Problem” Holmes describes Moriarty as a
man with a forehead that “domes out in a white curve”100. This large head
was seen as a sign of intellect during Conan Doyle’s time. Sherlock
Holmes himself has a very large forehead, just like his brother Mycroft,
who is also considered very bright. Because of this intellect, Holmes
considers Moriarty to be very dangerous. In The Valley of Fear he is
introduced as the highest member of a criminal gang, which he rules with
an iron grip. After his death, Holmes sighs “From the point of view of the
criminal expert, [...] London has become a singularly uninteresting city
since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.”101 Here, Holmes
admits that Moriarty was the only one who could really challenge his
intellectual qualities.
The Professor is not a normal criminal, but much more dangerous
than that, as Sherlock Holmes explains to Watson: “[I]n calling Moriarty a
criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law – and there lies the
glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer
of every devilry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which
might have made or marred the destiny of nations – that’s the man!”102
Moriarty for sure is a aristocratic villain, for he is “a man of good birth and
excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical
faculty”.103 He is the master of the “higher criminal world of London”, the
“Napoleon of crime”.104 It is certain that Moriarty seeks ‘the challenge and
excitement of crime for its own sake’, as Benjamin claims the modern
villain does, because in “The Final Problem” he starts a personal vendetta
against Holmes. He does not get any ‘pecuniary benefit’ out of it, but
simply wants revenge for the fact that Holmes has broken up his gang.
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 1998 The Best of Sherlock Holmes. Ware: Wordsworth
Classics: p. 219.
101
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2008 The Return of Sherlock Holmes. London: Penguin
Books: “The Norwood builder”: p. 30.
102
The Best of Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear: p. 308.
103
The Best of Sherlock Holmes: “The Final Problem”: p. 217.
104
The Best of Sherlock Holmes: “The Final Problem”: p. 217 + 218.
100
32
Besides Moriarty, there are some other aristocratic villains in the stories of
Sherlock Holmes. There is “[t]he second most dangerous man in London”,
Colonel Sebastian Moran, who went to Eton and Oxford and spent most of
his time in the military. To Watson, it is “astonishing” that Moran’s career
is that of an “honourable soldier”.105 He is of good descent, his father was
once the British Minister to Persia. When Moriarty is killed by Holmes,
Moran seeks revenge and tries to kill the detective.
Another ‘gentleman criminal’ can be found in the story “Charles
Augustus Milverton”, where Milverton is described by Holmes as “[t]he
worst man in London. [...] I’ve had to do with fifty murderers in my
career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have
for this fellow.” Milverton’s favourite activity is to blackmail people with a
secret from their past. He is “the king of all the blackmailers”. He enjoys
his work, because “with a smiling face and a heart of marble, he will
squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry.”106 The only problem
is that he cannot be arrested, because his work is not illegal. Milverton is
definitely a gentleman criminal, just like Professor Moriarty and Colonel
Moran, but with the only difference that besides the fact that he gets
excited from the blackmailing itself, he also enjoys the other benefit of the
crime: the incoming money.
It may be clear that Sherlock Holmes has dealt with some
upperclass criminals, people who enjoy being a criminal because of the
excitement and challenge of crime. This can be compared to the motives
Holmes himself has for being a detective: “I play the game for the game’s
own sake”.107 Actually, he has the same urge the villains have, as Watson
explains in the story “Black Peter”:
Holmes [...] lived for his art's sake, and [...] I have seldom known him
claim any large reward for his inestimable services. So unworldly was he
[...] that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where
the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote
weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client
105
106
107
The Return of Sherlock Holmes: “The Empty House”: p. 26.
All quotes from The Return of Sherlock Holmes: p. 194-5.
His last bow: The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans: p. 108.
33
whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which
appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity.108
It is shown that Sherlock Holmes has the same mentality as the villains,
as both look at their activities from the same perspective.
108
The Return of Sherlock Holmes: p. 166.
34
Chapter 6: Sherlock Holmes, and the streetscape of London
In this next chapter I will investigate the contrast between the civilized
London on one hand and the dark and mysterious London on the other
hand. As I have said before, I believe that London is capable of enabling
and maybe even creating its own crime. In the real Victorian world the
crime rate went up due to the fog and the darkness. In the novels and
stories of Sherlock Holmes this is also the case. The fog, created by the
city, plays an important part in most of the stories and is portrayed as a
very negative aspect of the city. When Holmes and Watson have to leave
the city in order to solve a crime on the countryside, Watson cries “with all
the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street”.109 He
seems very delighted that he is liberated from the fumes of the city.
Sherlock Holmes also gets affected by the fog. His feelings towards
the world are connected with the density and amount of fog on the
streets, as is described very well in The Sign of Four when he says:
“Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable
world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the
dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and
material?”110 The atmosphere created by the fog is one of darkness and
depression. Another example of such an atmosphere can be found in the
short story “The Copper Beeches”, where Holmes and Watson sit around
the fire in the old room at Baker Street: “A thick fog rolled down between
the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like
dark, shapeless blurs, through the heavy yellow wreaths.”111 Here, the
city of London is seen as a very depressing site because of these fogs.
There is however no story where the fog plays such an significant
role as “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans”, set in London. This
story is set in November 1885 which was, according to Peter Ackroyd, the
worst decade and especially the worst month for fogs.112 Throughout the
109
110
111
112
The Best of Sherlock Holmes: “The Copper Beeches”: p. 129.
The Complete Stories: p. 102.
The Best of Sherlock Holmes: p. 122.
Ackroyd: p. 432.
35
whole story the fog is so thick that “one could not see three yards”.113
Watson doubts that it was ever possible to “see the loom of the opposite
houses”114 from their windows in Baker Street during those days. In fact,
the fog was so thick that taking a cab was useless, for they could not
drive any faster than a pedestrian could walk and it could be dangerous to
drive.
These brutal conditions were the perfect cover for someone with
criminal intents. At the beginning of the story, Sherlock Holmes reflects on
the existence of the fog, and makes a remark which underlines my theory
that the city fog is capable of enabling crime:
‘The London criminal is certainly a dull fellow,’ said he in the querulous
voice of the sportsman whose game has failed him. ‘Look out of this
window, Watson. See how the figures loom up, are dimly seen, and then
blend once more into the cloud-bank. The thief or the murderer could
roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he
pounces, and then evident only to his victim.’115
Without a doubt crime can occur in the city on a large scale because of
the fog. Nobody is able to see the criminal, except the victim himself. This
makes London a very dangerous place to be in times of fog. He even
worries for his own life:
‘Suppose that I were Brooks or Woodhouse, or any of the fifty men who
have good reason for taking my life, how long could I survive against my
own pursuit? A summons, a bogus appointment, and all would be over. It
is well they don't have days of fog in the Latin countries – the countries of
assassination.’116
In the story of the Bruce-Partington Plans the fog, and with that, the city
allows the crime to happen. In this story, a man is found dead on the
tracks of the Underground. The man, Arthur Cadogan West, had
mysteriously left his girlfriend out on the streets the night before he died.
113
114
115
116
His
His
His
His
Last
Last
Last
Last
Bow:
Bow:
Bow:
Bow:
p.
p.
p.
p.
136.
100.
100-1.
101.
36
It turns out that Cadogan West had stolen some very important papers of
the government, which he wanted to sell. The reason that he was able to
steal those papers without getting caught, was, of course, the fog. There
was a watchman present in the building, but “[h]e saw nothing that
evening. Of course, the fog was very thick.”117
The body of the murdered man was found on the Underground
tracks but there were no witnesses to the crime, because “[t]here was a
thick fog, and nothing could be seen.”118 One passenger who passed the
scene of the crime thought he heard a heavy thud but, once again,
“[t]here was dense fog, however, and nothing could be seen.”119 Here, the
fog is a perfect cover for the crime, because no one could see what
happened that night.
At the end of the story it turns out that Arthur Cadogan West has
not, as they first presume, been murdered on the Underground, but that
his dead body was placed on top of the train and later fell off the carriage
once it was under the ground. As described earlier, the first Underground
tracks were steam-powered and therefore needed ventilation holes. The
murderer of Cadogan West had the misfortune to live next to one of those
ventilation shafts, but in this case he could use it for his own benefit. He
could throw the body on to a passing train in order to cover up the murder
that took place in his own house. This was very easy, as he explains to
Sherlock Holmes at the end of the story, because “[the fog] was so thick
that nothing could be seen, and we had no difficulty in lowering West’s
body on to the train.”120 Once again, it is because of the fog that crime
can take place. If it had not been so foggy that night, someone might
have seen the murderer dispose the body and he could have been caught
red-handed. Of course, Sherlock Holmes is able to catch the criminal
despite of the fog but without him, the crime would still be unsolved and
covered up by the city.
However, not only does the real criminal get help from the fog in
times of need, it is also Sherlock Holmes who gets cover from the mist. In
the same story, Holmes plans to break into the house of the murderer in
117
118
119
120
His
His
His
His
Last
Last
Last
Last
Bow:
Bow:
Bow:
Bow:
p.
p.
p.
p.
120.
110.
112-3.
136-7.
37
order to receive some evidence of the crime. Although this is, of course,
illegal, the detective believes this is allowed to get justice done. On his
way to Caulfield Gardens, the criminal’s -fictional- address, Holmes and
Watson get cover from the fog on their journey: “The fog still hung about
and screened us with its friendly shade.”121 It is shown here that the fog
protects the criminal, or in this case, the detective who wants to commit a
crime in the eyes of the law. The fog always seems to sympathise with the
villains of the story and whenever a criminal act has to take place, the fog
appears as cover.
Another reason why London can be seen as the enabler of crime, can be
found in the topographical situation of the city. As mentioned before,
during the Victorian Era London became a labyrinth due to the expansion
of the houses. The city grew larger and larger without any type of
planning and people got lost in their own city. According to Peter Ackroyd,
the city “[could] not be conceived in its entirety but [could] be
experienced only as a wilderness of alleys and passages, courts and
thoroughfares, in which even the most experienced citizen [might have
lost] the way”.122 Because of this city labyrinth, villains and criminals
could easily hide and get away from the police or other pursuers. In the
stories of Sherlock Holmes this is also the case. More than once Watson
describes how they wander through the city, “through an endless
labyrinth of gas-lit streets”.123 It seems as if the city, with all its streets
and alleys formed as one big labyrinth, sometimes deliberately works
against them when Holmes and Watson are chasing someone.
In the short story “The Blue Carbuncle”, a man followed by the
police is able to get away because he vanishes “amid the labyrinth of
small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road”.124 Because
of the impenetrability of the city, the police cannot catch him. When
searching for the villains in The Sign of Four, Holmes finds out that the
criminals have taken a boat in order to get away. Watson suggests that
they also get a vessel and try to find them on the river Thames, but
121
122
123
124
His Last Bow: p. 129.
Ackroyd: p. 2.
The Complete Stories: “The Red-headed League”: p. 463.
The Complete Stories: p. 542.
38
Holmes answers: “My dear fellow, it would be a colossal task. [The boat]
may have touched at any wharf on either side of the stream between here
and Greenwich. Below the bridge there is a perfect labyrinth of landingplaces for miles. It would take you days and days to exhaust them, if you
set about it alone.”125 Here, the criminals get ahead of the detective,
because of the city’s maze of landing-places in the river. The
topographical situation of the city makes it difficult for the detective to
catch the villains.
In most of the stories, the city creates confusion because people
get lost in the maze of the metropolis. But even though the most
experienced citizens will lose their way in the wilderness of alleys and
thoroughfares, Sherlock Holmes never gets confused by the labyrinth: he
knows the city by heart. He has visited all areas of London, not only the
rich and wealthy, but also “the lowest portions of the city”.126 Holmes
explains to Watson in “The Red-headed League”: “It is a hobby of mine to
have an exact knowledge of London.”127 And his knowledge is
phenomenal: “There is Mortimer's, the tobacconist, the little newspaper
shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian
Restaurant and McFarlane's carriage-building depot.”128
Holmes also knows every street in the city. When Watson and the
detective get driven in a cab through foggy London in The Sign of Four,
Watson tries to keep up and remember where they are, but he fails: “At
first I had some idea as to the direction in which we were driving; but
soon, what with our pace, the fog, and my own limited knowledge of
London, I lost my bearings, and knew nothing, save that we seemed to be
going a very long way.” Watson gets tricked by the city, but Holmes is not
so easily fooled:
[He] was never at fault, however, and he muttered the names as the cab
rattled through squares and in and out by tortuous by-streets. ‘Rochester
Row,’ said he. ‘Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the Vauxhall
Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side, apparently. Yes. I
125
126
127
128
The
The
The
The
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Stories:
Stories:
Stories:
Stories:
p. 137.
A Study in Scarlet: p. 19.
p. 460-1.
p. 461.
39
thought so. Now we are on the bridge. You can catch glimpses of the
river.’
A moment later, they are dashing through “a labyrinth of streets upon the
other side” of the river, a less fashionable region of London. But once
again, Holmes knows his city: “‘Wandsworth Road,’ [says Holmes]. ‘Priory
Road. Larkhall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Coldharbour
Lane’”.129 Here, the novel shows that the city does not have any secrets
for Sherlock Holmes. Watson may get fooled, but the great detective does
not. He dominates the city, just like he dominates the crime.
The Sign of Four is not the only novel where the streets are
mentioned by name. The names of the different streets, railway stations
and other notable places Holmes and Watson pass, are mentioned
specifically in all the novels and short stories, without exception. There
seems to be much emphasis on the specific locations Holmes and Watson
visit. I believe that this shows Holmes’ knowledge of the city and with that
the power he possesses to master it. The city does not have any secrets
for the detective and because of that, he is able to unravel all the
mysteries the city produces.
In the stories of Sherlock Holmes, the city of London is a character and
has a very active role. The city interferes constantly with the story and
places itself dominantly in the novels. It wants to be in constant spotlight
and it is clear that London has a big influence on the stories. It might be
said that the stories are urban detective stories and Sherlock Holmes is an
urban detective. His playground is the city that he knows by heart. He
recognizes the danger of such a large metropolis but approaches it with
respect. As Ackroyd states: “[W]e must regard it as a human shape with
its own laws of life”,130 and that is exactly what Holmes does. Ackroyd
“truly believe[s] that there are certain people to whom or through whom
the territory, the place [...] speaks”,131 and Sherlock Holmes is one of
those people. He is able to master the city, and despite of the loneliness
129
130
131
All quotes from The Complete Stories: p. 108.
Ackroyd: p. 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ackroyd
40
that surrounds him, he becomes the only person in the city the people can
trust and rely on. More than once his clients come to him because they
know they can depend on him, and no one else. Sherlock Holmes
becomes the connection between the civilized London on the one hand
and the dark, criminal and mysterious London on the other hand.
The detective himself lives in the comfortable area of Baker Street,
and although his address, number 221b is fictitious, the street is not. The
area around Baker Street is a very respectable and civilized one. However,
Holmes is not only familiar with the respectable areas of London, he also
knows the lowest portions of the city, as stated above. One of the stories
where this is best shown is the short story “The Man with the Twisted Lip”.
In this story Watson searches for an old friend, who presumably resides in
“an opium den in the farthest east of the City”, in the Bar of Gold in Upper
Swandam Lane, which is a “vile alley”.132 In this bar, Watson not only
finds his old acquaintance but he also comes across Sherlock Holmes, who
is there in search of one of his enemies. He is disguised as an old man,
“very thin, very wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down
from between his knees”,133 which shows that he knows how to survive in
this London underworld. Holmes describes the opium den as “the vilest
murder-trap on the whole riverside”134 and it is clear that he knows the
darkest places of the city.
Holmes’ own house in Baker Street is portrayed as a “safe domestic
enclosure”135 where both Holmes and Watson are protected from the
dangerous criminal world outside. From this safe headquarter Holmes
investigates the crime in London, of course with the knowledge that he is
always able to return to Baker Street. It functions as a safe haven in the
stories to which Holmes and Watson are always able to retreat. It forms a
neutral place between the two worlds Holmes lives in, the civilized and the
criminal London. Even the colours of Baker Street are neutral, as Watson
describes in “A Case of Identity”: a “dull neutral-tinted London street”.136
132
133
134
135
136
Both quotes from: The Complete Stories: p. 522.
The Complete Stories: p. 524.
The Complete Stories: p. 525.
Iain Sinclair in the introduction to A Study in Scarlet: p. xii.
The Complete Stories: p. 470.
41
Almost all the adventures start and end at the lodgings in Baker Street,
where all is safe and quiet. They usually return to their home during the
stories once or twice, and it is mostly there that Sherlock Holmes comes
up with the solution of the case. It is there where Holmes connects the
two cities of London: the civilized world of Baker Street and the criminal
underworld.
As stated before, Sherlock Holmes is always considered a Victorian
detective because he lived in a Victorian world. According to Irving S.
Saposnik, “most of the [Victorian] story’s action is physically internalized
behind four walls”. He admits that most of the late Victorian literature is
set in cities, but claims that “it grows increasingly internal” and that “the
action of those novels takes place within interior settings.”137 This does
not seem to apply to the Sherlock Holmes stories, because there most of
the action takes place outside, in the city. Although Baker Street is used
as a safe retreat, the actual adventure is situated outside of the house.
Thus, the stories of Sherlock Holmes are no typical Victorian literature.
According to Graeme Gilloch, in his work “Benjamin focuses on the
shifting relationship between interior and exterior spaces, public and
private life.”138 This is the case in the Holmes stories as well, where there
is also a shifting relationship between the interior and exterior. The
interior, the comfortable house at Baker Street, is the safe place where
Holmes has his own private life. In the exterior spaces, the streets in the
city of London, Holmes is at his best. There, he can live his public life, he
can be a detective and he does not need cocaine to cope with the dullness
of the interior life. The arousal of chasing villains and the excitement of
disguising himself give him energy. Sherlock Holmes comes to life with
the help of the city.
The first stories of Sherlock Holmes were written at a time when the crime
in London was at its peak. Jack the Ripper dominated the city since his
first murder in 1888 and the people were scared. In this age of crime they
needed a man who could rescue them and solve it all. In Sherlock
137
138
All quotes from Saposnik: p. 725.
Gilloch: p. 8.
42
Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography it is suggested by Nick Rennison
that Holmes actually helped the police with the cases of Jack the Ripper.
Of course, this can never have happened, but the idea of a detective
brave enough to face even the most horrible murderer of the London
history might have given people some comfort.
Sherlock Holmes is familiar with the criminal underworld and gives
the inhabitants of London what they need: a master of their city and a
creator of order in the chaos. Although London itself enables part of the
crime, the city paradoxically gives Sherlock Holmes the energy he needs
to conquer the crime and to control the city. While other people
understand that “it is wise to bow down before the immensity”139 of the
city, Holmes attempts to control the vicious wilderness and he manages to
bring some balance in the chaos.
In his book Myth & Metropolis Graeme Gilloch explains Benjamin’s
vision on the modern city: “For Benjamin, the great cities of modern
European culture were both beautiful and bestial, a source of exhilaration
and hope on the one hand and of revulsion and despair on the other. The
city for Benjamin was magnetic: it attracted and repelled him in the same
moment.”140 For Sherlock Holmes, this is also the case. The city of London
gives him the source of exhilaration he needs in order to survive, but at
the same time he knew it was a terrible place to live in. To him, London
was “the city [...] where the wonderful and the terrible existed
simultaneously”.141 So actually, Holmes and Benjamin share their views on
the modern city. They both are attracted by the excitement and the
adventure, but the city carries also a negative atmosphere along with it.
Holmes admits that he often yearned for a soothing life in nature, in
contrast with a city life, during “the long years spent amid the gloom of
London”.142 After the case of “The Adventure of the Creeping Man”,
Holmes decides that he is going to live the life in nature he dreamed
about and moves to Sussex to become a beekeeper. The exact date of his
departure is not known, however his last city adventure takes place in
Ackroyd: p. 3.
Gilloch: p. 1.
141
Louise Hoffman, as quoted in Gilloch: p. 185.
142
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”: p.
462.
139
140
43
September of 1903 and his first (and only) one in Sussex in 1907. In this
last story, it becomes clear that Holmes has lived there for a while, and it
can therefore be concluded that he moved to his farm somewhere
between 1903 and 1906.
I have tried to explain above that Sherlock Holmes is a Victorian detective
with modern features, who is able to master the city. The detective has an
active role in the stories as he really changes the face of the city. He is
able to lift the veils of the fog and with that he pierces through the
impenetrability of the city.143 He masters the fog, he masters the
labyrinth, he masters the crime: he masters the city.
However, there comes a time when even the urban detective
abandons his career to live on a farm on the countryside. So although he
was able to master the city, it seems as if the city has overpowered
Sherlock Holmes in the end. It is very interesting to look at the time
frame here. Holmes leaves London around the year 1903, which is at the
beginning of the Modern period. This last city adventure, “The Adventure
of the Creeping Man”, was published in Conan Doyle’s last collection of
stories, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes in 1927. It seems as if the
city’s modernisation had forced Conan Doyle to drive Sherlock Holmes out
of London. The urban detective, who mastered the city during the
Victorian period, is forced to leave his hometown. I believe that the city’s
modernisation during the Edwardian period can be blamed for this. In a
world without horse-drawn transportation, fog and gas lights, a world with
electricity and motor cars, Sherlock Holmes was not able to live. As I have
stated before, Arthur Conan Doyle had a very negative attitude towards
the modern sides of London, which he called the “great cesspit”. This
mentality could have contributed to the fact that he created a detective
who could not handle the modern life. Conan Doyle moved Sherlock
Holmes to the countryside, away from the city.
David Stuart Davies, who wrote the introduction to the collection
The Best of Sherlock Holmes, says: “The world of the twentieth century
was one from which so many of the accoutrements of the Holmes
143
introduction by Peter Ackroyd in The Sign of Four: p. viii.
44
adventures [...] were disappearing”.144 That is certainly true, and I claim
that the loss of these accoutrements was the detective’s motive to leave
the city, and with that, the work he loved. Sherlock Holmes could not be
killed off by Conan Doyle, but in the end he is defeated by the modern
city.
144
introduction by David Stuart Davies in The Best of Sherlock Holmes: p. XI.
45
Conclusion
In this thesis I have answered my central research question: how is the
city of London represented and what role does this play in the stories of
Sherlock Holmes? Holmes is generally seen as a typically Victorian
detective but I claim that his world is one that is in transition. Therefore, I
have investigated the way the city of London is portrayed in the novels
and short stories of Sherlock Holmes. I have examined the shift from the
Victorian to the modern city, and I have compared the modern elements I
found in these stories with urban modernisation as described by Walter
Benjamin.
In his work, Benjamin focused on the modern individual and his or
her experiences in the modern city. One of the features of the modern city
mentioned by him is the crowd. This crowd can cause fear and shock, but
also satisfaction because of the anonymity provided by people who were
the same as you. Sherlock Holmes benefits from the crowd in many ways.
He is challenged by the fact the villain can disappear in a large group of
people, but he still manages to find the criminal.
Another modern element described by Benjamin is the fact that in
the modern detective story the hunting-grounds are highly glorified. In
the stories of Sherlock Holmes, this is also the case. The city of London,
Holmes’ hunting-ground, forms the centre of attention in the stories.
The last modern element Benjamin mentioned in his work is the
modern villain. This aristocratic criminal can also be found in the Sherlock
Holmes stories, in the characters of Sebastian Moran, Charles Augustus
Milverton and especially in Professor Moriarty.
In order to answer my sub research question, I have examined the
contrast between the two worlds in the city of London as portrayed in the
stories of Sherlock Holmes. I have discovered that the city is indeed
capable of enabling its own crime, with help from the fog, the crowds and
the topographical situation of the city. However, the famous detective
manages to master the crime because he is able to master the city. He is
46
gifted with the talent to work around this fog, these crowds and the
labyrinths of the city.
Sherlock Holmes is an urban detective and the city of London does
not have any secrets for him. He knows all the street names and
neighbourhoods, both rich and poor. This makes him the connection
between the civilized London on the one hand, and the criminal and dark
London on the other hand. Baker Street functions as a safe haven and as
a neutral place between these two London worlds.
However, although Sherlock Holmes is able to master the fog, the
labyrinth, the crime, and with that, the city, Conan Doyle lets him retreat
to the countryside around the year 1903. I believe this is caused by the
London’s transformation to a modern city where Holmes was not able to
live anymore. So although the stories of Sherlock Holmes have many
modern features, as I have discussed above, in the end, the world’s most
famous detective gets defeated by the modern city.
47
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