Mark Thomas's Blog - Posts Tagged "sherlock-holmes"
Sherlock Holmes and the classic English detective novel
In the Sherlock Holmes story, “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” Holmes is asked to find a missing person named Neville St. Clair. The man has no occupation but lives like a gentleman and has "an interest" in several companies. He goes into London each morning and returns home each evening. Apparently, Mrs. St. Claire can't be more specific about what her husband does. They breakfast together every morning, then he leaves for London, then he comes home. That’s all she knows.
I can still remember how shocked I was reading that.
My surprise was partly due to Mrs. St. Clair’s honest ignorance about a significant aspect of her husband’s life. I’d grown up hearing so many dinnertime work complaints from my own parents, I thought business-bitching, was the primary bond for newly married couples. What in the world did Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair talk about if that segment of the day was mysteriously off-limits?
Holmes’ and Watson’s placid acceptance of her ignorance was equally astounding. They considered it normal for husbands and wives to be intellectually estranged to that degree. Mrs. St. Clair doesn’t think it unhealthy. In fact, she feels a strong psychic bond with her husband, telling Holmes that she once sensed when he cut himself shaving, while he was in a different room. Not knowing anything about her husband's financial affairs, or daily activities is inconsequential.
“The Man with the Twisted Lip” is a remarkable story. It begins with Dr. Watson dragging an acquaintance from an opium den and taking him home to his worried wife. Now THAT’S a marriage I can understand, something riddled with problems and compassion. But Watson happens to meet Holmes in that opium den and readers’ attention is shifted to the strangely dysfunctional St. Clairs.
Mrs. St. Clair happened to see her husband’s face in a warehouse window when she went to London and, a second later, saw him being assaulted. Police eventually recover Mr. St. Clair’s overcoat from the Thames weighed down with pennies. They arrest a filthy beggar named Hugh Boone, assuming he murdered Mr. St. Clair then panicked, and tried to get rid of evidence by sinking the man’s coat, full of recently cadged change. They can’t find a corpse and Hugh Boone steadfastly refuses to talk.
Sherlock Holmes fans know that the great detective is remarkably uncommunicative himself. He trusts Watson with his life but never gives his friend early insight to the solution of a mystery. Here, Watson is just as gobsmacked as everyone else when Holmes washes Hugh Boone’s face and reveals that the beggar is really Neville St. Clair.
To me, “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” is a classic British mystery because it celebrates pathological reticence.
Mr. St. Clair doesn’t tell his wife what he does for a living and Mrs. St. Clair doesn’t bother to ask. Mr. St. Clair would rather be hung for murder than admit to his wife that he was making a fortune as a beggar. Holmes doesn’t tell Watson that he has solved the mystery. The police agree to cover up the whole affair if Mr. St. Clair agrees to give up his lucrative begging gig and return to his old 2-pound a week job. There’s no indication that Mrs. St. Clair will be told the true reason for her husband’s disappearance. Holmes tells Watson that they can make it back home for breakfast, if they hurry, and everything will be back to normal.
Presumably, Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair will sit across the breakfast table from each other and pass the clotted cream and rashers of bacon without mentioning double-lives, jail stays, or retrenchment because of vastly reduced income.
Here’s the most interesting byproduct of that anti-social silence: “The Man with the Twisted Lip” has spawned the stubborn urban myth that beggars are secretly rich. I’ve been told many times about a woman who takes a limousine home to her mansion in Hamilton when she’s done begging for the day in St. Catharines. I’ve also been told that mysterious criminal masterminds organize teams of beggars to blanket highway on ramps, reaping casino-like profits.
It should be easy to disprove those myths. For example, follow the rich beggar to her mansion in Hamilton and expose her. But people aren’t interested in that, they would rather use the myth as a license to insulate themselves from others. They want to live like the Neville St. Clairs, happily oblivious.
I remember The New York Times trying to dispel the rich beggar myth in the late 90s by following a man they considered the most aggressive panhandler in the city's subway system and tracking his receipts. They discovered that he maxed out at about thirty dollars, enough for a couple of crack rocks and a Happy Meal. New York City’s MOST aggressive beggar was working well below the poverty line.
But the myth still hangs tough. People desperately resist knowledge in case it forces them to care about others.
In British detective fiction, toxic family secrecy is the favorite defense mechanism. In an earlier blog, I mentioned the classic MALICE AFORETHOUGHT where Dr. Bickleigh secretly hates his wife, and Mrs. Bickleigh secretly tracks his extra-marital affairs. In THE MOONSTONE, hailed as the first detective novel, the entire mystery hangs on a fiancée’s refusal to divulge that she saw her future husband stealing a jewel. In this case, Franklin Blake is unaware that he is the thief because he recently quit smoking and sleepwalks after taking laudanum to ease his withdrawal pains. He can’t understand his fiancée’s silence, and she won’t explain it.
But Sherlock Holmes stories are the gold standard of dysfunctional marriages.
The St. Clair’s are my favorite example, but the Feguson’s in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire,” are a close second. Mr. Ferguson married a Peruvian second wife, so there are cultural and linguistic barriers to honest communication in addition to the usual British reserve. Mr. Ferguson catches his wife sucking blood from their infant son’s neck, and she refuses to explain her behavior. Of course, Mrs. Ferguson isn’t really a vampire. She sucks poison from the baby’s neck after her evil stepson, Jack, stabs him with a poison dart. Mrs. Ferguson would rather die than reveal the truth, all in the name of love. She knows her husband loves Jack, and learning his son’s true character would be painful.
In Sherlock Holmes stories “love” rarely co-exists with honesty. In a way, it shouldn’t matter if two people are happy deceiving each other like the St. Clairs. But the behavioral pattern has broader negative consequences, sort of like the “rich beggar” urban myth.
If marital secrecy is normalized, then so is abuse. In “The Solitary Cyclist,” Violet Smith is abducted, gagged and forcibly married to a criminal who only wants her inheritance. Luckily, the marriage is performed by a defrocked priest, otherwise Violet would be legally yoked to the criminal Woodley forever, and their breakfast conversations would be even more stilted than that of the St. Clairs.
It’s no wonder Holmes never married.
I can still remember how shocked I was reading that.
My surprise was partly due to Mrs. St. Clair’s honest ignorance about a significant aspect of her husband’s life. I’d grown up hearing so many dinnertime work complaints from my own parents, I thought business-bitching, was the primary bond for newly married couples. What in the world did Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair talk about if that segment of the day was mysteriously off-limits?
Holmes’ and Watson’s placid acceptance of her ignorance was equally astounding. They considered it normal for husbands and wives to be intellectually estranged to that degree. Mrs. St. Clair doesn’t think it unhealthy. In fact, she feels a strong psychic bond with her husband, telling Holmes that she once sensed when he cut himself shaving, while he was in a different room. Not knowing anything about her husband's financial affairs, or daily activities is inconsequential.
“The Man with the Twisted Lip” is a remarkable story. It begins with Dr. Watson dragging an acquaintance from an opium den and taking him home to his worried wife. Now THAT’S a marriage I can understand, something riddled with problems and compassion. But Watson happens to meet Holmes in that opium den and readers’ attention is shifted to the strangely dysfunctional St. Clairs.
Mrs. St. Clair happened to see her husband’s face in a warehouse window when she went to London and, a second later, saw him being assaulted. Police eventually recover Mr. St. Clair’s overcoat from the Thames weighed down with pennies. They arrest a filthy beggar named Hugh Boone, assuming he murdered Mr. St. Clair then panicked, and tried to get rid of evidence by sinking the man’s coat, full of recently cadged change. They can’t find a corpse and Hugh Boone steadfastly refuses to talk.
Sherlock Holmes fans know that the great detective is remarkably uncommunicative himself. He trusts Watson with his life but never gives his friend early insight to the solution of a mystery. Here, Watson is just as gobsmacked as everyone else when Holmes washes Hugh Boone’s face and reveals that the beggar is really Neville St. Clair.
To me, “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” is a classic British mystery because it celebrates pathological reticence.
Mr. St. Clair doesn’t tell his wife what he does for a living and Mrs. St. Clair doesn’t bother to ask. Mr. St. Clair would rather be hung for murder than admit to his wife that he was making a fortune as a beggar. Holmes doesn’t tell Watson that he has solved the mystery. The police agree to cover up the whole affair if Mr. St. Clair agrees to give up his lucrative begging gig and return to his old 2-pound a week job. There’s no indication that Mrs. St. Clair will be told the true reason for her husband’s disappearance. Holmes tells Watson that they can make it back home for breakfast, if they hurry, and everything will be back to normal.
Presumably, Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair will sit across the breakfast table from each other and pass the clotted cream and rashers of bacon without mentioning double-lives, jail stays, or retrenchment because of vastly reduced income.
Here’s the most interesting byproduct of that anti-social silence: “The Man with the Twisted Lip” has spawned the stubborn urban myth that beggars are secretly rich. I’ve been told many times about a woman who takes a limousine home to her mansion in Hamilton when she’s done begging for the day in St. Catharines. I’ve also been told that mysterious criminal masterminds organize teams of beggars to blanket highway on ramps, reaping casino-like profits.
It should be easy to disprove those myths. For example, follow the rich beggar to her mansion in Hamilton and expose her. But people aren’t interested in that, they would rather use the myth as a license to insulate themselves from others. They want to live like the Neville St. Clairs, happily oblivious.
I remember The New York Times trying to dispel the rich beggar myth in the late 90s by following a man they considered the most aggressive panhandler in the city's subway system and tracking his receipts. They discovered that he maxed out at about thirty dollars, enough for a couple of crack rocks and a Happy Meal. New York City’s MOST aggressive beggar was working well below the poverty line.
But the myth still hangs tough. People desperately resist knowledge in case it forces them to care about others.
In British detective fiction, toxic family secrecy is the favorite defense mechanism. In an earlier blog, I mentioned the classic MALICE AFORETHOUGHT where Dr. Bickleigh secretly hates his wife, and Mrs. Bickleigh secretly tracks his extra-marital affairs. In THE MOONSTONE, hailed as the first detective novel, the entire mystery hangs on a fiancée’s refusal to divulge that she saw her future husband stealing a jewel. In this case, Franklin Blake is unaware that he is the thief because he recently quit smoking and sleepwalks after taking laudanum to ease his withdrawal pains. He can’t understand his fiancée’s silence, and she won’t explain it.
But Sherlock Holmes stories are the gold standard of dysfunctional marriages.
The St. Clair’s are my favorite example, but the Feguson’s in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire,” are a close second. Mr. Ferguson married a Peruvian second wife, so there are cultural and linguistic barriers to honest communication in addition to the usual British reserve. Mr. Ferguson catches his wife sucking blood from their infant son’s neck, and she refuses to explain her behavior. Of course, Mrs. Ferguson isn’t really a vampire. She sucks poison from the baby’s neck after her evil stepson, Jack, stabs him with a poison dart. Mrs. Ferguson would rather die than reveal the truth, all in the name of love. She knows her husband loves Jack, and learning his son’s true character would be painful.
In Sherlock Holmes stories “love” rarely co-exists with honesty. In a way, it shouldn’t matter if two people are happy deceiving each other like the St. Clairs. But the behavioral pattern has broader negative consequences, sort of like the “rich beggar” urban myth.
If marital secrecy is normalized, then so is abuse. In “The Solitary Cyclist,” Violet Smith is abducted, gagged and forcibly married to a criminal who only wants her inheritance. Luckily, the marriage is performed by a defrocked priest, otherwise Violet would be legally yoked to the criminal Woodley forever, and their breakfast conversations would be even more stilted than that of the St. Clairs.
It’s no wonder Holmes never married.
