Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,
Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.
I'm your host,
Benjamin Boster,
And today's episode is about Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle.
Referring to himself as a consulting detective in his stories,
Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation,
Deduction,
Forensic science,
And logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic,
Which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients,
Including Scotland Yard.
The character Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print in 1887's A Study in Scarlet.
His popularity became widespread with a first series of short stories in The Strand magazine,
Beginning with A Scandal in Bohemia in 1891.
Additional tales appeared from then until 1927,
Eventually totaling four novels and 56 short stories.
All but one are set in the Victorian or Edwardian eras between 1880 and 1914.
Most are narrated by the character of Holmes' friend and biographer,
Dr.
John H.
Watson,
Who usually accompanies Holmes during his investigations,
And often shares quarters with him at the address of 221B Baker Street,
London,
Where many of the stories begin.
Though not the first fictional detective,
Sherlock Holmes is arguably the best known.
By the 1990s,
Over 25,
000 stage adaptations,
Films,
Television productions,
And publications had featured the detective,
And Guinness World Records lists him as the most portrayed human literary character in film and television history.
Holmes' popularity and fame are such that many have believed him to be not a fictional character but an actual person.
Many literary and fan societies have been founded on this pretense.
Avid readers of the Holmes stories helped create the modern practice of fandom,
With the Sherlock Holmes fandom being one of the first cohesive fan communities in the world.
The character and stories have had a profound and lasting effect on mystery writing and popular culture as a whole,
With the original tales,
As well as thousands written by authors other than Conan Doyle,
Being adapted into stage and radio plays,
Television,
Films,
Video games,
And other media for over 100 years.
Edgar Allan Poe's C.
Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the forerunner of the modern detective story in English fiction,
And served as the prototype for many later characters,
Including Holmes.
Conan Doyle once wrote,
Each of Poe's detective stories is a route from which a whole literature is developed.
Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?
Similarly,
The stories of Emile Gabeliot's Monsieur Lecoq were extremely popular at the time Conan Doyle began writing Holmes,
And Holmes' speech and behavior sometimes follow those of Lecoq.
Doyle has his main characters discuss these literary antecedents near the beginning of the study in Scarlet,
Which is said soon after Watson is first introduced to Holmes.
Watson attempts to compliment Holmes by comparing him to Dupin,
To which Holmes replies that he found Dupin to be a very inferior fellow,
And Lecoq to be a miserable bungler.
Conan Doyle repeatedly said that Holmes was inspired by the real-life figure of Joseph Bell,
A surgeon at the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh,
Whom Conan Doyle met in 1877 and had worked for as a clerk.
Like Holmes,
Bell was noted for drawing broad conclusions from minute observations.
However,
He later wrote to Conan Doyle,
You are yourself Sherlock Holmes,
And well you know it.
Sir Henry Littlejohn,
Chair of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh Medical School,
Is also cited as an inspiration for Holmes.
Littlejohn,
Who was also a police surgeon and medical officer of health in Edinburgh,
Provided Conan Doyle with a link between medical investigation and the detection of crime.
Other possible inspirations have been proposed,
Though never acknowledged by Doyle,
Such as Maximilien Hollère,
By a French author Henri Cauvin.
In this 1871 novel,
16 years before the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes,
Henri Cauvin imagined a depressed,
Antisocial,
Opium-smoking polymath detective.
Operating in Paris.
It is not known if Conan Doyle read the novel,
But he was fluent in French.
Details of Sherlock Holmes' life and Conan Doyle's stories are scarce and often vague.
Nevertheless,
Mentions of his early life and extended family paint a loose biographical picture of the detective.
A statement of Holmes' age in His Last Bow places his year of birth at 1853 to 1854.
The story,
Set in August 1914,
Describes him as 60 years of age.
His parents are not mentioned,
Although Holmes mentions that his ancestors were country squires.
In The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter,
He claims that his grandmother was sister to the French artist Vernet,
Without clarifying whether this was Claude Joseph,
Carl,
Or Horace Vernet.
Holmes' brother Mycroft,
Seven years his senior,
Is a government official.
Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of human database for all aspects of government policy.
Sherlock describes his brother as the more intelligent of the two,
But notes that Mycroft lacks any interest in physical investigation,
Preferring to spend his time at the Diogenes Club.
Holmes says that he first developed his methods of deduction as an undergraduate.
His earliest cases,
Which he pursued as an amateur,
Came from his fellow university students.
A meeting with a classmate's father led him to adopt detection as a profession.
In the first tale of Sherlock Holmes,
A Study in Scarlet,
Financial difficulties lead Holmes and Dr.
Watson to share rooms together at 221B Baker Street,
London.
Their residence is maintained by their landlady,
Mrs.
Hudson.
Holmes works as a detective for 23 years,
With Watson assisting him for 17 of those years.
Most of the stories are frame narratives,
Written from Watson's point of view,
As summaries of the detective's most interesting cases.
Holmes frequently calls Watson's records of Holmes' cases sensational and populist.
Suggesting that they fail to accurately and objectively report the science of his craft.
Detection is or ought to be an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.
You have attempted to tinge it,
A Study in Scarlet,
With romanticism,
Which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.
Some facts should be suppressed,
Or at least a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them.
The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes by which I succeeded in unraveling it.
Nevertheless,
When Holmes recorded a case himself,
He was forced to concede that he could more easily understand the need to write it in a manner that would appeal to the public,
Rather than his intention to focus on his own technical skill.
Holmes' friendship with Watson is his most significant relationship.
When Watson is injured by a bullet,
Although the wound turns out to be quite superficial,
Watson is moved by Holmes' reaction.
It is worth a wound,
It was worth many wounds,
To know the depths of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask.
The clear,
Hard eyes were dimmed for a moment,
And the firm lips were shaking.
For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.
All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.
After confirming Watson's assessment of the wound,
Holmes makes it clear to their opponent that the man would not have left the room alive,
If he genuinely had killed Watson.
Holmes' clients vary from the most powerful monarchs and governments of Europe,
To wealthy aristocrats and industrialists,
To impoverished pawnbrokers and governesses.
He is known only in select professional circles at the beginning of the first story,
But is already collaborating with Scotland Yard.
However,
His continued work and the publication of Watson's stories raise Holmes' profile,
And he rapidly becomes well-known as a detective.
So many clients ask for his help instead of,
Or in addition to,
That of the police,
That Watson writes,
By 1887,
Europe was ringing with his name,
And by 1895,
Holmes has an immense practice.
Police outside London ask Holmes for assistance if he is nearby.
A British Prime Minister and the King of Bohemia visit 221B Baker Street in person to request Holmes' assistance.
The President of France awards him the Legion of Honor for capturing an assassin.
The King of Scandinavia is a client,
And he aids the Vatican at least twice.
The detective acts on behalf of the British government in matters of national security several times,
And declines a knighthood for service which may perhaps someday be described.
However,
He does not actively seek fame and is usually content to let the police take public credit for his work.
The first set of Holmes' stories was published between 1887 and 1893.
Conan Doyle killed off Holmes in a final battle with the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty in The Final Problem,
Published 1893 but set in 1891,
As Conan Doyle felt that my literary energies should be directed too much into one channel.
However,
The reaction of the public surprised him very much.
Distressed readers wrote anguished letters to The Strand Magazine,
Which suffered a terrible blow when 20,
000 people cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine in protest.
Conan Doyle himself received many protest letters,
And one lady even began her letter with,
You brute.
Legend has it that Londoners were so distraught upon hearing the news of Holmes' death that they wore black armbands in mourning,
Though there is no known contemporaneous source for this.
The earliest known reference to such events comes from 1949.
However,
The recorded public reaction to Holmes' death was unlike anything previously seen for fictional events.
After resisting public pressure for eight years,
Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles,
Serialized in 1901-02,
With an implicit setting before Holmes' death.
In 1903,
Conan Doyle wrote The Adventure of the Empty House,
Set in 1894,
Holmes reappears explaining to a stunned Watson that he had faked his death to fool his enemies.
Following The Adventure of the Empty House,
Conan Doyle would sporadically write new Holmes stories until 1927.
Holmes' aficionados refer to the period from 1891-1894 between his disappearance and presumed death in The Final Problem and his reappearance in The Adventure of the Empty House as The Great Hiatus.
The earliest known use of this expression dates to 1946.
In His Last Bow,
The reader is told that Holmes has retired to a small farm on the Sussex Downs and taken up beekeeping as his primary occupation.
The move is not dated precisely,
But can be presumed to be no later than 1904,
Since it is referred to retrospectively in The Adventure of the Second Stain,
First published that year.
The story features Holmes and Watson coming out of retirement to aid the British war effort.
Only one other adventure,
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane,
Takes place during the detective's retirement.
Watson describes Holmes as bohemian in his habits and lifestyle,
Said to have a cat-like love of personal cleanliness.
At the same time,
Holmes is an eccentric,
With no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness and good order.
Watson describes him as,
In his personal habits,
One of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow lodger to distraction.
He keeps his cigars in the coal scuttle,
His tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper,
And his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jackknife into the very center of his wooden mantelpiece.
He had a horror of destroying documents.
Thus,
Month after month,
His papers accumulated until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript,
Which were on no account to be burned,
And which could not be put away,
Save by their owner.
While Holmes is characterized as dispassionate and cold,
He can be animated and excited during an investigation.
He has a flair for showmanship,
Often keeping his methods and evidence hidden until the last possible moment so as to impress observers.
Holmes is willing to break the law as a means for righting a wrong.
Contending that there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch,
And which therefore to some extent justify private revenge.
His companion condones the detective's willingness to do this on behalf of a client,
Lying to the police,
Concealing evidence or breaking into houses,
When he also feels it morally justifiable.
Except for that of Watson,
Holmes avoids casual company.
In The Glorious God,
He tells the doctor that during two years at college,
He made only one friend.
I was never a very sociable fellow,
Watson,
And never mixed much with the men of my year.
The detective goes without food at times of intense intellectual activity,
Believing that the faculties become refined when you starve them.
At times,
Holmes relaxes with music,
Either playing the violin or enjoying the works of composers such as Wagner and Pablo de Sarasate.
Holmes is known to charge clients for his expenses and claim any reward offered for a problem's solution,
Such as in The Adventure of the Speckled Band,
The Red-Headed League,
And The Adventure of the Barrel Coronet.
The detective states at one point that my professional charges are upon a fixed scale.
I do not vary them,
Save when I remit them altogether.
In this context,
A client is offering to double his fee,
And it is implied that wealthy clients habitually pay Holmes more than his standard rate.
Holmes earns a £6,
000 fee at a time where annual expenses for a rising young professional were in the area of £500.
However,
Watson notes that Holmes would refuse to help even the wealthy and powerful if their cases did not interest him.
As Conan Doyle wrote to Joseph Bell,
Holmes is as inhuman as a babbage's calculating machine,
And just about as likely to fall in love.
Holmes says of himself that he is not a whole-souled admirer of womankind,
And that he finds the motives of women inscrutable.
How can you build on such quicksand?
Their most trivial actions may mean volumes.
In The Sign of Four,
He says,
Women are never to be entirely trusted,
Not the best of them,
A feeling Watson notes as an atrocious sentiment.
In The Adventure of the Lion's Mane,
Holmes writes,
Women have seldom been an attraction to me,
For my brain has always governed my heart.
At the end of The Sign of Four,
Holmes states that love is an emotional thing,
And whatever is emotional is opposed to that true,
Cold reason which I place above all things.
I should never marry myself,
Lest I bias my judgment.
Ultimately,
Holmes claims outright that I have never loved.
But,
While Watson says that the detective has an aversion to women,
He also notes Holmes as having a peculiarly ingratiating way with them.
Watson notes that their housekeeper,
Mrs.
Hudson,
Is fond of Holmes because of his remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women.
He disliked and distrusted the sex,
But he was always a chivalrous opponent.
In The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,
The detective becomes engaged under false pretenses in order to obtain information about a case,
Abandoning the woman once he has the information he requires.
Irene Adler is a retired American opera singer and actress who appears in A Scandal in Bohemia.
Although this is her only appearance,
She is one of only a handful of people who bests Holmes in A Battle of Wits,
And the only woman.
For this reason,
Adler is the frequent subject of prestige writing.
The beginning of the story describes the high regard in which Holmes holds her.
To Sherlock Holmes,
She is always the woman.
I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.
In his eyes,
She eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.
It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler,
And yet there was but one woman to him,
And that woman was the late Irene Adler,
Of dubious and questionable memory.
Five years before the story's events,
Adler had a brief liaison with crown prince of Bohemia,
Wilhelm von Holmstein.
As the story opens,
The prince is engaged to another.
Fearful that the marriage would be called off if his fiancée's family learns of this past impropriety,
Holmstein hires Holmes to regain a photograph of Adler and himself.
Adler slips away before Holmes can succeed.
Her memory is kept alive by the photograph of Adler that Holmes received for his part in the case.
Shortly after meeting Holmes in the first story,
A study in Scarlet,
Generally assumed to be 1881,
Though the exact date is not given,
Watson assesses the detective's abilities.
1.
Knowledge of literature.
Nill.
2.
Knowledge of philosophy.
Nill.
3.
Knowledge of astronomy.
Nill.
4.
Knowledge of politics.
Feeble.
5.
Knowledge of bodiny.
Variable.
Well up in belladonna,
Opium,
And poisons,
Generally.
Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6.
Knowledge of geology.
Practical,
But limited.
Tells at a glance different soils from each other.
After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers,
And told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7.
Knowledge of chemistry.
Profound.
8.
Knowledge of anatomy.
Accurate,
But unsystematic.
9.
Knowledge of sensational literature.
Immense.
He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in this entry.
10.
Plays the violin well.
11.
Is an expert single stick player,
Boxer,
And swordsman.
12.
Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
In A Study in Scarlet,
Holmes claims to be unaware that the earth revolves around the sun,
Since such information is irrelevant to his work.
After hearing that fact from Watson,
He says he will immediately try to forget it.
The detective believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage,
And learning useless things reduces one's ability to learn useful things.
The later stories move away from this notion.
In The Valley of Fear,
He says,
All knowledge comes useful to the detective.
And in The Adventure of the Lion's Mane,
The detective calls himself an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.
Looking back on the development of the character in 1912,
Conan Doyle wrote that,
In the first one,
The Study in Scarlet,
Holmes was a mere calculated machine.
But I had to make him more of an educated human being as I went on with him.
Despite Holmes's supposed ignorance of politics,
In A Scandal in Bohemia,
He immediately recognizes the importance of the mind.
The true identity of the disguised Count von Kramm.
At the end of A Study in Scarlet,
Holmes demonstrates a knowledge of Latin.
The detective cites Hafez,
Goethe,
As well as a letter from Gustav Flaubert to George Sand in the original French.
In The Hound of the Baskervilles,
The detective recognizes works by Gottfried Neller and Joshua Reynolds.
Watson won't allow that I know anything of art,
But that is mere jealousy since her views upon the subject differ.
In The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans,
Watson says that Holmes lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the polyphonic motets of Lassus,
Considered the last word on the subject,
Which must have been the result of an intensive and very specialized musicological study with no obvious application to the solution of criminal mysteries.
Holmes is a cryptanalyst,
Telling Watson that I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject,
In which I analyze 160 separate ciphers.
Holmes also demonstrates a knowledge of psychology in A Scandal in Bohemia,
Luring Irene Adler into betraying where she hid a photograph based on the premise that a woman will rush to save her most valued possession from a fire.
Another example is in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,
Where Holmes obtains information from a salesman with a wager.
When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the pinken protruding out of his pocket,
You can always draw him by a bet.
I dare say that if I had put one hundred pounds down in front of him,
That man would not have given me such complete information as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a wager.
Maria Konnikova points out in an interview with D.
J.
Grothy that Holmes practices what is now called mindfulness,
Concentrating on one thing at a time and almost never multitasks.
She adds that in this he predates the science showing how helpful this is to the brain.
Holmes observes the dress and attitude of his clients and suspects,
Noting skin marks such as tattoos,
Contamination such as ink stains or clay on boots,
Emotional state,
And physical condition,
In order to deduce their origins in recent history.
The style and state of wear of a person's clothes and personal items are also commonly relied on.
In the stories,
Holmes is seen applying his method to items such as walking sticks,
Pipes,
And hats.
For example,
In A Scandal in Bohemia,
Holmes infers that Watson had got wet lately and had a most clumsy and careless servant girl.
When Watson asks how Holmes knows this,
The detective answers,
It is simplicity itself.
My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe,
Just where the firelight strikes it,
The leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts.
Obviously,
They have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped around the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it.
Hence,
You see my double deduction,
That you had been out in vile weather and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London Slavey.
In the first Holmes story,
A Study in Scarlet,
Dr.
Watson compares Holmes to C.
Auguste Dupin,
Edgar Allan Poe's fictional detective,
Who employed a similar methodology.
Alluding to an episode in The Murderers in the Rue Morgue,
When Dupin determines what his friend is thinking despite their having walked together in silence for a quarter of an hour,
Holmes remarks,
That trick of his breaking in on his friend's thoughts with an apropos remark is really very showy and superficial.
Nevertheless,
Holmes later performs the same trick on Watson in The Cardboard Box and The Adventure of the Dancing Men.
Though the stories always refer to Holmes's intellectual detection method as deduction,
Holmes primarily relies on abduction,
Inferring an explanation for observed details.
From a drop of water,
He writes,
A logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.
However,
Holmes does employ deductive reasoning as well.
The detective's guiding principle,
As he says in The Sign of Four,
Is when you have eliminated the impossible,
Whatever remains,
However improbable,
Must be the truth.
Holmes follows Sir Isaac Newton's rule of hypotheses non fingo,
For instance,
Commenting in A Scandal in Bohemia,
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Insensibly,
One begins to twist facts to suit theories,
Instead of theories to suit facts.
Despite Holmes's remarkable reasoning abilities,
Conan Doyle still paints him as fallible in this regard,
This being a central theme of The Yellow Face.
Though Holmes is famed for his reasoning capabilities,
His investigative technique relies heavily on the acquisition of hard evidence.
Many of the techniques he employs in the stories were the time in their infancy.
The detective is particularly skilled in the analysis of trace evidence and other physical evidence,
Including latent prints such as footprints,
Hoof prints,
And shoe and tire impressions,
To identify actions at a crime scene,
Using tobacco ashes and cigarette butts to identify criminals,
Utilizing handwriting analysis and graphology,
Comparing typewritten letters to expose a fraud,
Using gunpowder residue to expose two murderers,
And analyzing small pieces of human remains to expose two murderers.
Because of the small scale of much of his evidence,
The detective often uses a magnifying glass at the scene and an optical microscope at his Bakerstreet lodgings.
He uses analytical chemistry for blood residue analysis and toxicology to detect poisons.
Holmes's home chemistry laboratory is mentioned in the Naval Treaty.
Ballistics feature in the adventure of the Empty House,
When spent bullets are recovered to be matched with a suspected murder weapon,
A practice which became regular police procedure only some 15 years after the story was published.
Laura J.
Snyder has examined Holmes's methods in the context of mid-to-late 19th century criminology,
Demonstrating that while sometimes in advance of what official investigative departments were formally using at the time,
They were based upon existing methods and techniques.
For example,
Fingerprints were proposed to be distinct in Conan Doyle's day,
And while Holmes used a thumbprint to solve a crime in the adventure of the Norwood Builder,
Generally held to be set in 1895,
The story was published in 1903,
Two years after Scotland Yard's Fingerprint Bureau opened.
Though the effect of the Holmes stories on the development of forensic science has thus often been overstated,
Holmes inspired future generations of forensic scientists to think scientifically and analytically.
Holmes displays a strong aptitude for acting in disguise.
In several stories,
The Sign of Four,
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,
The Man with a Twisted Lip,
The Adventure of the Empty House,
And A Scandal in Bohemia,
Together evidence undercover he uses disguises so convincing that Watson fails to recognize him.
In others,
The Adventure of the Dying Detective and A Scandal in Bohemia,
Holmes feigns injury or illness to incriminate the guilty.
In the latter story,
Watson says the stage lost a fine actor when Holmes became a specialist in crime.
Guy Minkowski has said of Holmes that his ability to change his appearance to blend into any situation helped him personify the idea of the English eccentric chameleon in a way that prefigured the likes of David Bowie.
Until Watson's arrival at Baker Street,
Holmes largely worked alone,
Only occasionally employing agents from the city's underclass.
These agents included a variety of informants,
Such as Langdell Pike,
A human book of reference upon all matters of social scandal,
And Shinwell Johnson,
Who acted as Holmes' agent in the huge criminal underworld of London.
The best known of Holmes' agents are a group of street children he called the Baker Street Irregulars.
Holmes and Watson often carry pistols with them to confront criminals,
In Watson's case his old service weapon,
Probably a Mark III Adams revolver,
Issued to British troops during the 1870s.
Holmes and Watson shoot the eponymous hound in The Hound of the Baskervilles,
And in The Adventure of the Empty House,
Watson pistol-whips Colonel Sebastian Moron.
In The Problem of Thor Bridge,
Holmes uses Watson's revolver to solve the case through an experiment.
As a gentleman,
Holmes often carries a stick or cane.
He is described by Watson as an expert at single stick,
And uses his cane thrice as a weapon.
In a study in Scarlet,
Watson describes Holmes as an expert swordsman,
And in The Glory of Scott,
The detective says he practiced fencing while at university.
In several cases,
The Case of Identity,
The Red-Headed League,
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,
Holmes wields a writing crop,
Described in the latter story as his favorite weapon.
The detective is described or demonstrated as possessing above-average physical strength.
In The Yellow Face,
Holmes' chronicler says,
Few men were capable of greater muscular effort.
In The Adventure of the Speckled Band,
Dr.
Roylott demonstrates his strength by bending a fire poker in half.
Watson describes Holmes as laughing and saying,
If he had remained,
I might have shown him that my grip was not much more feeble than his own.
As he spoke,
He picked up the steel poker,
And with a sudden effort,
Straightened it out again.
Holmes is an adept bare-knuckle fighter.
The Glory of Scott mentions at Holmes' Boxwell University.
In The Sign of Thor,
He introduces himself to McMurdo,
A prizefighter,
As the amateur who fought three rounds with you at Allison's room,
On the night of your benefit four years back.
McMurdo remembers,
Oh,
You're one that has wasted your gifts you have.
You might have aimed high if you had joined the fancy.
In The Yellow Face,
Watson says,
He was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen.
In The Solitary Cyclist,
Holmes visits a country pub to make inquiries regarding a certain Mr.
Woodley,
Which results in violence.
Mr.
Woodley,
Holmes tells Watson,
Had been drinking his beer in the taproom,
And had heard the whole conversation.
Who was I?
What did I want?
What did I mean by asking questions?
He had a fine flow of language,
And his adjectives were very vigorous.
He ended a string of abuse by a vicious backhander,
Which I failed to entirely avoid.
The next few minutes were delicious.
It was a straight left against a slogging ruffian.
I emerged as you see.
Mr.
Woodley went home in a cart.
Another character subsequently refers to Mr.
Woodley as looking much disfigured as a result of his encounter with Holmes.
In The Adventure of the Empty House,
Holmes tells Watson that he used a Japanese martial art known as Baritsu to fling Moriarty to his death in the Reichenbach Falls.
Baritsu is a Conan Doyle's version of Baritsu,
Which combines jiu-jitsu,
With boxing and cane fencing.
The first two Sherlock Holmes stories,
The novels A Study in Scarlet,
1887,
And The Sign of the Four,
1890,
Were moderately well received.
But Holmes first became very popular early in 1891,
When the first six short stories featuring the character were published in The Strand magazine.
Holmes became widely known in Britain and America.
The character was so well known that in 1893,
When Arthur Conan Doyle killed Holmes in the short story The Final Problem,
The strongly negative response from readers was unlike any previous public reaction to a fictional event.
The Strand reportedly lost more than 20,
000 subscribers as a result of Holmes' death.
Public pressure eventually contributed to Conan Doyle writing another Holmes story in 1901,
And resurrecting the character in a story published in 1903.
In Japan,
Sherlock Holmes and Alice from Alice's Adventure in Wonderland became immensely popular in the country in the 1890s,
As it was opening up to the West.
And they are cited as two British fictional Victorians who left an enormous creative and cultural legacy there.
Many fans of Sherlock Holmes have written letters to Holmes' address,
221B Baker Street.
Though the address 221B Baker Street did not exist when the stories were first published,
Letters began arriving to the large Abbey National Building,
Which first encompassed that address almost as soon as it was built in 1932.
Fans continue to send letters to Sherlock Holmes.
These letters are now delivered to the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
Some of the people who have sent letters to 221B Baker Street believe Holmes is real.
Members of the general public have also believed Holmes actually existed.
In a 2008 survey of British teenagers,
58% of respondents believed that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.
Scholarly discussion of Holmes has occasionally been written,
Usually facetiously,
From the perspective of Holmes and Dr.
Watson having existed.
An example of this is the critical essays Studies in Sherlock Holmes by the author and essayist Dorothy L.
Sayers in her 1946 non-fiction collection Unpopular Opinions,
Including an article examining Watson's signature,
Which was allegedly visible in some original Strand illustrations.
The Sherlock Holmes stories continue to be widely read.
Holmes's continuing popularity has led to many reimaginings of the character in adaptations.
Guinness World Record,
Which awarded Sherlock Holmes the title for Most Portrayed Literary Human Character in Film and TV in 2012,
Released a statement saying that the title reflects his enduring appeal and demonstrate that his detective talents are as compelling today as they were 125 years ago.
