Rohase Piercy's Blog - Posts Tagged "winterolympics"
The Mystery of Sherlock Holmes' Fitness Regime
Well, the Winter Olympics are in full swing and once again our TV screens are dominated by images of athletes in their prime, running, bounding, leaping and gliding with what appears to be effortless speed and grace towards Olympian glory. I admire them, of course; I take my hat off to the lot of them! As someone whose exercise routine consists of a daily walk with an elderly dog and a weekly Pilates class specially modified for ladies over fifty-five with dodgy backs, I can only shake my head in wonder at the gusto with which these muscled-up young things embrace seemingly inpossible physical challenges.
No, I'm not the sporty type; my energy supply is easily exhausted, and I'm all over the shop on anything less than nine hours' sleep. I'm with Sherlock Holmes – the original, decadent, pre-Rathbone version - who regularly spends days at a time in bed and likes to lounge on the couch in his dressing-gown in the middle of the afternoon. Mental rather than physical exercise is our forte …
… but hang on a minute; whilst proof-reading My Dearest Holmes - Thirtieth Anniversary Edition, I was struck for the first time by the discrepancy between Holmes' account – lifted straight from the Canon- of his struggle with Moriarty on the brink of the Reichenbach Falls, and his ennui-prone, cocaine-addicted lifestyle. He claims not only to have used a Japanese system of wrestling called 'baristu' (a mis-spelling of 'bartitsu'?) to defeat his opponent, but also to have run, on awaking from a spell of unconsciousness, ten miles over the mountains to safety. Did he do this under the influence of cocaine, or desperation? Was his defeat of Moriarty a stroke of luck?
In A Study in Scarlet, Watson famously makes a list entitled 'Sherlock Holmes – His Limits', in which he describes his new flatmate as being 'an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman'. (Singlestick, also known as cudgels, was yet another martial art). However as the stories develop, quite when he gets to practise and maintain these demanding skills remains something of a mystery. When does Sherlock Holmes ever visit a gymnasium? Could it be during the long walks which, according to Watson, take him into the 'lowest portions of the city'? Both Watson's description and Sydney Paget's original drawings show Holmes as tall, thin, pale and gaunt – hardly a muscle to be seen. Yes, he has a fierce energy when engaged upon a case – Watson does, on occasion, remind us that he alone knows the full extent of the energy which slumbers beneath his companion's listless facade – but by the time they re-encounter one another in The Adventure of the Empty House, Holmes has 'a dead-white tinge to his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not been a healthy one' – a reference to the continuing hold of his cocaine habit. If Holmes did once possess the pugilistic skills of which his Boswell boasts in the first flush of admiration, they must surely have been in pretty poor shape by that time.
As I've mentioned before, twentieth-century depictions of Holmes on film (pre Jeremy Brett) did like to present him as fit, healthy, rugged and generally rather more masculine than he is in the original stories; no doubt Watson's list was instrumental in giving them licence to do so. But for myself, I'll always regard the more athletic side of Sherlock Holmes as an example of the 'romanticism' which he accuses his Boswell of indulging in his accounts of their adventures; a romanticism from which he himself was far from immune, if his description of what happened at the Reichenbach Falls is anything to go by ...
No, I'm not the sporty type; my energy supply is easily exhausted, and I'm all over the shop on anything less than nine hours' sleep. I'm with Sherlock Holmes – the original, decadent, pre-Rathbone version - who regularly spends days at a time in bed and likes to lounge on the couch in his dressing-gown in the middle of the afternoon. Mental rather than physical exercise is our forte …
… but hang on a minute; whilst proof-reading My Dearest Holmes - Thirtieth Anniversary Edition, I was struck for the first time by the discrepancy between Holmes' account – lifted straight from the Canon- of his struggle with Moriarty on the brink of the Reichenbach Falls, and his ennui-prone, cocaine-addicted lifestyle. He claims not only to have used a Japanese system of wrestling called 'baristu' (a mis-spelling of 'bartitsu'?) to defeat his opponent, but also to have run, on awaking from a spell of unconsciousness, ten miles over the mountains to safety. Did he do this under the influence of cocaine, or desperation? Was his defeat of Moriarty a stroke of luck?
In A Study in Scarlet, Watson famously makes a list entitled 'Sherlock Holmes – His Limits', in which he describes his new flatmate as being 'an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman'. (Singlestick, also known as cudgels, was yet another martial art). However as the stories develop, quite when he gets to practise and maintain these demanding skills remains something of a mystery. When does Sherlock Holmes ever visit a gymnasium? Could it be during the long walks which, according to Watson, take him into the 'lowest portions of the city'? Both Watson's description and Sydney Paget's original drawings show Holmes as tall, thin, pale and gaunt – hardly a muscle to be seen. Yes, he has a fierce energy when engaged upon a case – Watson does, on occasion, remind us that he alone knows the full extent of the energy which slumbers beneath his companion's listless facade – but by the time they re-encounter one another in The Adventure of the Empty House, Holmes has 'a dead-white tinge to his aquiline face which told me that his life recently had not been a healthy one' – a reference to the continuing hold of his cocaine habit. If Holmes did once possess the pugilistic skills of which his Boswell boasts in the first flush of admiration, they must surely have been in pretty poor shape by that time.
As I've mentioned before, twentieth-century depictions of Holmes on film (pre Jeremy Brett) did like to present him as fit, healthy, rugged and generally rather more masculine than he is in the original stories; no doubt Watson's list was instrumental in giving them licence to do so. But for myself, I'll always regard the more athletic side of Sherlock Holmes as an example of the 'romanticism' which he accuses his Boswell of indulging in his accounts of their adventures; a romanticism from which he himself was far from immune, if his description of what happened at the Reichenbach Falls is anything to go by ...
