Canon re-read: The Final Problem
Feb. 26th, 2021 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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victorian221bWe're halfway through the canon! Thanks so much to luthienberen for pitching the idea of a re-read! It's such fun and keeps the comm going.
There's a lot of interesting stuff regarding this particular story, so it's going to be a rather long post with lots of quotes. Buckle up.
Everyone knows that after Holmes had become tremendously popular, Doyle grew so fed up with him that he tried to kill him off. I was surprised to find out, however, that ACD was thinking about doing away with Holmes as early as November 1891, i.e. only some six months after skyrocketing to fame and money through the Strand Magazine! SCAN was published in July 1891, and here's what Doyle writes to his mother on November 11, 1891:
“I have done five of the Sherlock Holmes stories of the new Series. They are 1. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle 2. The Adventure of the Speckled Band 3. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor 4. The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb 5. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet. I think that they are up to the standard of the first series, & the twelve ought to make a rather good book of the sort. I think of slaying Holmes in the sixth & winding him up for good & all. He takes my mind from better things.” (—Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters)
Such a weird decision, isn't it? Numerous authors dream of coming up with something that would sell, and you just don't turn away from your goldmine once you've struck it. Before Holmes Doyle was struggling financially and was fairly unknown. Only half a year after the breakthrough he decides that he's done with Holmes. That speaks of Doyle's ambition, but it seems like he was a bit too sure of himself.
Thankfully, in 1891 his mother managed to talk him out of it, and during the next couple of years Doyle did another dozen before winding it all up in December 1893. What a Christmas present to his readers.
Here's a lengthy fragment from a documentary book called Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle by Daniel Stashower which gives an insight into Doyle's creative process and how he finally did what he was planning to do:
luthienberen for pitching the idea of a re-read! It's such fun and keeps the comm going.There's a lot of interesting stuff regarding this particular story, so it's going to be a rather long post with lots of quotes. Buckle up.
Everyone knows that after Holmes had become tremendously popular, Doyle grew so fed up with him that he tried to kill him off. I was surprised to find out, however, that ACD was thinking about doing away with Holmes as early as November 1891, i.e. only some six months after skyrocketing to fame and money through the Strand Magazine! SCAN was published in July 1891, and here's what Doyle writes to his mother on November 11, 1891:
“I have done five of the Sherlock Holmes stories of the new Series. They are 1. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle 2. The Adventure of the Speckled Band 3. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor 4. The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb 5. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet. I think that they are up to the standard of the first series, & the twelve ought to make a rather good book of the sort. I think of slaying Holmes in the sixth & winding him up for good & all. He takes my mind from better things.” (—Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters)
Such a weird decision, isn't it? Numerous authors dream of coming up with something that would sell, and you just don't turn away from your goldmine once you've struck it. Before Holmes Doyle was struggling financially and was fairly unknown. Only half a year after the breakthrough he decides that he's done with Holmes. That speaks of Doyle's ambition, but it seems like he was a bit too sure of himself.
Thankfully, in 1891 his mother managed to talk him out of it, and during the next couple of years Doyle did another dozen before winding it all up in December 1893. What a Christmas present to his readers.
Here's a lengthy fragment from a documentary book called Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle by Daniel Stashower which gives an insight into Doyle's creative process and how he finally did what he was planning to do:
“Conan Doyle discussed his plans with any number of friends and colleagues, most of whom tried to talk him out of it. “I sat with him on the seashore at Aldeburgh when he decided to kill Sherlock Holmes,” James Barrie wrote, though in all likelihood Conan Doyle had long since made up his mind. The chief difficulty lay in finding an appropriately dramatic way of doing the deed. “A man like that mustn’t die of a pin-prick or influenza,” Conan Doyle explained to Frederic Villiers, a journalist and artist. “His end must be violent and intensely dramatic.” [...]
There is an apocryphal story that people actually wore mourning arm-bands. There is a true story that there was an uproar in the media, people were speculating whether Holmes was really dead, exchanging their theories, and even writing their own versions of events. Basically that was the emergence of fandom as we know it. How cool is that?
Now to The Final Problem itself. When it comes to inconsistencies, this story is a champion. It seems like Doyle was in such a hurry to get rid of Holmes that he didn't bother to work out the plot carefully. He just slapped up something quickly and sent it to be printed. Some ten years later, when he resurrected Holmes, again he didn't bother to go through what he had written before (how typical of him!). As a result there is a treasure trove for headcanons, possible explanations, etc. etc.
—In the opening paragraph Watson states that he writes this account two years after the events: "It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill." However, in EMPT Holmes says, "In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer."
—James Moriarty. "Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother" (FINA) vs. "But, then, if I remember aright, you had not heard the name of Professor James Moriarty, who had one of the great brains of the century."
In FINA Watson has never heard of Moriarty, whereas in VALL, which is set before FINA, Watson knows who Moriarty is.
Many scholars point out that Holmes and Moriarty are mirrors. In the play The Secret of Sherlock Holmes by Jeremy Paul, which was performed by Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, Holmes is Moriarty. There are really many parallels and similarities between the two.
• "But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms." (Holmes, GREE)
• "He loved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime." (Holmes, CARD)
"He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them." (Moriarty, FINA)
• "They are all people who are in trouble about something, and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee.” (Holmes, STUD)
"He does little himself. He only plans. [...] Is there a crime to be done, [...]—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out." (Moriarty, FINA)
• "In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller." (Holmes, STUD)
"He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head." (Moriarty, FINA)
A side note: exactly what diabolical hereditary tendencies did Moriarty have? Are there many criminals in his family? Tell us more, ACD!
—“Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week to the Continent.” Why does Mary being away make it easier to whisk Watson away? Meaning, Holmes doesn't have to deal with her displeasure? Imagine a note she gets when she returns home: "Left for the Continent with Holmes. Hope you don't mind. Bye."
—Sussex foreshadowing? "Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches." "Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible."
So Holmes is saying that he is financially secure and can afford to leave for the country. Since ACD was killing him off, apparently he didn't have plans for Holmes retiring in Sussex. Or did he?
—Vere Street. "as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses, and was shattered to fragments at my feet"
I wonder if mentioning of Vere Street is accidental or not. Vere Street was known for a gay scandal in 1810, when a group of men was arrested at a molly house and tried for sodomy. Is it queer coding? Is it subconscious queer coding? Why, ACD?
Trying to kill one's oponent with a brick doesn't look like a terribly clever scheme. Then we are to believe that Holmes called the police and showed the brick to them, demaning to investigate. Seriously?
—General weirdness of Holmes's plans. The precautions he advises Watson to take: hailing a random cab and giving the driver a slip of paper with the address... Why not ask Mycroft to deliver Watson from point A to point B without all this commotion?
"We should get the big fish, but the smaller would dart right and left out of the net." Why exactly is it unacceptable? That would have been much better than vice versa, which happaned in actuality.
Holmes was hoping that London police would arrest Moriarty after he provided them with the necessary data. But how would the London police arrest Moriarty if Moriarty was a-chasing Holmes accross Europe?
—"Tell Inspector Patterson that the papers which he needs to convict the gang are in pigeonhole M." Wait, but didn't you give all information to the police already? Why inspector Patterson? Are you cross with Lestrade and Gregson for missing Moriarty? So many questions!
And finally, as one of Holmes scholars pointed out, why did Holmes need to flee at all? Knowing London as the back of his hand and having numerous bolt-holes, he could have lived in disguise, and no one would have been able to find him. My headcanon is that Holmes was worrying not for his own, but for Watson's safety, that's why he took Watson away to the Continent.
A suitable method came to hand on a trip to Switzerland the following year. [...] It is fairly certain, however, that Conan Doyle brought Louisa to Switzerland in August of 1893 (just as Jane Annie was breathing her last) so that he could give a series of lectures in Lucerne. From there, they traveled on to the Rifel Alp Hotel in Zermatt, where Conan Doyle fell into conversation with a pair of English clerics, Silas K. Hocking and Edward F. Benson, who also happened to be novelists. Anxious to see some of the local scenery, the three men hired a guide to help them climb a section of the nearby Findelen glacier. Their ascent was slow, as they had to follow in a line as the guide chopped steps into the ice with an ax, and soon enough the three writers began talking shop. [...]
“We reached at length a wide crevasse,” Hocking continued, “and stood for some time on the brink looking down into its bluey-green depths. ‘If you are determined on making an end of Holmes,’ I said, ‘why not bring him out to Switzerland and drop him down a crevasse? It would save funeral expenses.’”
Conan Doyle seems to have found the suggestion amusing. He laughed “in his hearty way,” Hocking recalled, and said, “Not a bad idea.”
Apparently the notion set Conan Doyle’s mind turning. At another stage of the journey, when the Conan Doyles stopped in Meiringen, the intrepid hiker went out to see the famous Reichenbach Falls. Then as now, Reichenbach was a popular tourist destination—a “necessary and illuminating point of interest,” according to a guidebook of the day. Here, Conan Doyle decided, was a place that would make a “worthy tomb for poor Sherlock, even if I buried my banking account along with him.”
“The Final Problem” appeared in the December 1893 edition of The Strand, and readers lost no time in making their displeasure known. “I was amazed,” Conan Doyle admitted, “at the concern expressed by the public.” The author had good reason to feel amazed, as much of this concern took the form of outright hostility. Angry letters poured in—“You Brute!” one of them began—and a popular anecdote of the time has Conan Doyle on the receiving end of a blow from an irate reader’s handbag. At the offices of The Strand, where Greenhough Smith had quite literally pleaded for the detective’s life, shareholders braced for the repercussions of what George Newnes called the “dreadful event.” For Newnes and Smith, the initial dismay turned to genuine alarm as twenty thousand people canceled their subscriptions. Only eighteen months had elapsed since “A Scandal in Bohemia,” but already the fate of the magazine had become entwined with that of Sherlock Holmes.”
Now to The Final Problem itself. When it comes to inconsistencies, this story is a champion. It seems like Doyle was in such a hurry to get rid of Holmes that he didn't bother to work out the plot carefully. He just slapped up something quickly and sent it to be printed. Some ten years later, when he resurrected Holmes, again he didn't bother to go through what he had written before (how typical of him!). As a result there is a treasure trove for headcanons, possible explanations, etc. etc.
—In the opening paragraph Watson states that he writes this account two years after the events: "It was my intention to have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill." However, in EMPT Holmes says, "In your picturesque account of the matter, which I read with great interest some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer."
—James Moriarty. "Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother" (FINA) vs. "But, then, if I remember aright, you had not heard the name of Professor James Moriarty, who had one of the great brains of the century."
In FINA Watson has never heard of Moriarty, whereas in VALL, which is set before FINA, Watson knows who Moriarty is.
Many scholars point out that Holmes and Moriarty are mirrors. In the play The Secret of Sherlock Holmes by Jeremy Paul, which was performed by Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, Holmes is Moriarty. There are really many parallels and similarities between the two.
• "But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms." (Holmes, GREE)
"But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers." (Moriarty, FINA)
"He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them." (Moriarty, FINA)
• "They are all people who are in trouble about something, and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee.” (Holmes, STUD)
"He does little himself. He only plans. [...] Is there a crime to be done, [...]—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out." (Moriarty, FINA)
• "In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller." (Holmes, STUD)
"He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head." (Moriarty, FINA)
A side note: exactly what diabolical hereditary tendencies did Moriarty have? Are there many criminals in his family? Tell us more, ACD!
—“Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should come away with me for a week to the Continent.” Why does Mary being away make it easier to whisk Watson away? Meaning, Holmes doesn't have to deal with her displeasure? Imagine a note she gets when she returns home: "Left for the Continent with Holmes. Hope you don't mind. Bye."
—Sussex foreshadowing? "Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches." "Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible."
So Holmes is saying that he is financially secure and can afford to leave for the country. Since ACD was killing him off, apparently he didn't have plans for Holmes retiring in Sussex. Or did he?
—Vere Street. "as I walked down Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of the houses, and was shattered to fragments at my feet"
I wonder if mentioning of Vere Street is accidental or not. Vere Street was known for a gay scandal in 1810, when a group of men was arrested at a molly house and tried for sodomy. Is it queer coding? Is it subconscious queer coding? Why, ACD?
Trying to kill one's oponent with a brick doesn't look like a terribly clever scheme. Then we are to believe that Holmes called the police and showed the brick to them, demaning to investigate. Seriously?
—General weirdness of Holmes's plans. The precautions he advises Watson to take: hailing a random cab and giving the driver a slip of paper with the address... Why not ask Mycroft to deliver Watson from point A to point B without all this commotion?
"We should get the big fish, but the smaller would dart right and left out of the net." Why exactly is it unacceptable? That would have been much better than vice versa, which happaned in actuality.
Holmes was hoping that London police would arrest Moriarty after he provided them with the necessary data. But how would the London police arrest Moriarty if Moriarty was a-chasing Holmes accross Europe?
—"Tell Inspector Patterson that the papers which he needs to convict the gang are in pigeonhole M." Wait, but didn't you give all information to the police already? Why inspector Patterson? Are you cross with Lestrade and Gregson for missing Moriarty? So many questions!
And finally, as one of Holmes scholars pointed out, why did Holmes need to flee at all? Knowing London as the back of his hand and having numerous bolt-holes, he could have lived in disguise, and no one would have been able to find him. My headcanon is that Holmes was worrying not for his own, but for Watson's safety, that's why he took Watson away to the Continent.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-01 09:49 pm (UTC)*high-fives you!* I love that headcanon, and that's how I tend to imagine it, too. I was so happy when the second Ritchie movie seemed to make that its canon, with Holmes sending a message to Watson quickly to let him know he'd survived, a message it was likely only Watson would understand :) I've never seen any other adaptation go that route, but to me it's so emotionally satisfying to think that they shared that secret and that trust.
Yes, Holmes's human flaws can add layers to his character -- in some ways he was ahead of his time, but in other ways he wasn't. In some ways a clear thinker, but in other ways swayed by personal considerations. There is realism in that. Regarding his theories of heredity, this issue is even addressed a little bit in the text! I genuinely enjoy the moment in the very next story, "The Empty House," when Watson quietly pushes back against him on these misguided ideas. Holmes describes Moran in much the same way he did Moriarty:
"I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family."
And Watson, with greater medical experience and more common sense, gives a very diplomatic rebuttal: "It is surely rather fanciful." I love that! Watson's so polite, but he's still basically saying no, Holmes, you're mistaken. And Holmes promptly abandons the idea: "Well, I don’t insist upon it. Whatever the cause, Colonel Moran began to go wrong."
It's a nice little back-and-forth between them that shows just how in flux thinking about hereditary traits was at that time and also gives Watson an opportunity to be the voice of reason, and one of the few people whom Holmes listens to without argument. I appreciate that :)
no subject
Date: 2021-03-02 04:44 am (UTC)Looking forward to Ritchie 3, very curious where they would take the storyline.
And yes, Watson balances Holmes in so many ways. It's only natural that he is the voice of reason, and a rather shrewd one, especially considering the time period. Another example of it is that he is against drug abuse, while Freud was singing the praises of cocaine as a miracle remedy.