The passage bears repeating in full.

Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.

“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”

It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth 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 (p. 580).

This is the closest Holmes ever comes to expressing love for another human being. It’s all the more touching because he has been so aloof from ordinary human passions for most of his life. When we imagine him in his retirement, in proud isolation on Sussex Downs, tending his bees, creatures who are the very emblem of passionless, mechanical activity, do we not feel, mixed with our admiration, a hint of sorrow that his life has been largely untouched by love, that his remarkable personality never found its soul mate? Of course looking at the imagined life of a fictional character this way is clearly out of bounds for ordinary literary criticism. There’s always been something special about Sherlock Holmes, however, that has inspired this sort of speculation into his unwritten life. Early on, admiring readers and critics adopted the convention that Holmes was a real person, who never died. Naturally this is tongue in cheek, as we know that Holmes never really lived, and if he had, he’d be 150 years old now, a bit long for even his iron constitution to hold out. But in another sense, those admirers are right: Sherlock Holmes is still alive, and always will be as long as human affairs have mysteries at their center, and readers feel the impulse to identify with heroes who are braver, bolder, and more clever than they are.

 

 

Kyle Freeman, a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast for many years, earned two graduate degrees in English literature from Columbia University, where his major was twentieth-century British literature. He has seen almost all the Holmes movies of the last sixty years, as well as the television series with Jeremy Brett. Now working as a computer consultant, he constantly puts into practice Sherlock Holmes’s famous statement “Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

A NOTE ON CONVEYANCES

During the course of their adventures, Holmes and Watson travel in a number of different vehicles. During the period of the stories, London had more than 8,000 horse-drawn carriages of many types. These are the ones that appear most often:

 

Landau: This heavy, four-wheeled carriage accommodated four people, who sat on facing seats; the coachman drove four horses from a raised front seat. The top of the carriage was in two sections that could be folded down or removed, and the bottom was cut away at the ends so that the door was the lowest point on the body. The landau was popular in England starting in the eighteenth century.

 

Hansom: The driver sat above and behind the closed carriage of this light, two-wheeled vehicle and spoke through a trapdoor to passengers, who entered from the front through a folding door and perched on a seat for two positioned above the axle. The hansom was in wide use as a public cab.

 

Brougham: This light four-wheeled carriage was usually drawn by one horse. The low, closed body appeared cut away in front, though there were many variations in the basic design. Inside was a two-passenger seat; a third passenger could ride up front with the driver.

 

Trap: This two-wheeled carriage on springs was drawn by one horse.

 

Dog-cart: Called a dog-cart because its back seat could be converted into a compartment for carrying a dog, this two-wheeled horse cart had two seats placed back to back.

 

The generic term cab can refer to any of the above, but it mainly describes two-wheelers. A four-wheeled, two-horse vehicle is more likely to be called a coach. Generally, four-wheeled carriages offered a smoother ride, with more privacy, while a dog-cart or trap offered the greatest speed. When the game was afoot, though, the first vehicle that presented itself often had to do.

To travel to places outside London, Holmes and Watson take the train. Waterloo, Charing Cross, Paddington, Victoria, London Bridge, Woolwich, Aldersgate, Gloucester Road, Blackheath, High Street, King’s Cross, Euston, and Metropolitan are all railway stations in London. Sometimes speakers drop the word “station”; when a character says she arrived at Waterloo or Victoria, she means the railway station. The names of railway stations outside London are generally the name of the town where the train stops.

THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE

It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation, but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all the facts. Only now, at the end of nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing links which make up the whole of that remarkable chain. The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life. Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. Let me say to that public, which has shown some interest in those glimpses which I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a very remarkable man, that they are not to blame me if I have not shared my knowledge with them, for I should have considered it my first duty to do so, had I not been barred by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the third of last month.

It can be imagined that my close intimacy with Sherlock Holmes had interested me deeply in crime, and that after his disappearance I never failed to read with care the various problems which came before the public.