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Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous character, Sherlock Holmes, is a man of contradictions. Incredibly bright, he is a master detective- but as soon as he runs out of work, he goes running for morphine and cocaine, the only cure for his restless mind. However, Sherlock does not only swing the pendulum of his attention between addiction and mysteries- he is also deeply enamored by the arts, as the violin features heavily in his leisure time. Using the works included in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Selected Stories , Sherlock’s non-detective actions, such as his drug use and hobbies, will be explored with the hopes of discovering how Doyle’s experience or bias regarding various methods of spending free-time is displayed- as well as how the opinion of Sherlock’s lifestyle as held by his normal friend reflects Doyle’s opinion of the detective story.
A fantastic way to delve into Sherlock’s lifestyle is to first approach the living-space of the man, as described by friend and roommate John Watson. As described in The Musgrave Ritual ( 1893 ), John is surprised by the fact that “although in his methods of thought he was the nearest and most methodical of mankind... he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction”, describing the tobacco shoved in a shoe and the unopened mail stuck to the mantelpiece by a knife [1]. He further attests that their chambers are cluttered with “chemicals and of criminal relics, which had a way of.. turning up in the butter-dish” as well as months-high piles of unsorted manuscripts in every corner of the room [2]. What this indicates to the reader is that Sherlock is unable to get organized. As for why, John refers to the fact that “the outburst of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats... were followed by reactions of lethargy, during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving, save from the sofa to the table” [3]. This description of Sherlock seems to split the man into two, with the boundless energy of the great detective a nearly separate person from the one who uses his living room wall as the perfect place for target practice and can barely muster the ability to move, despite the way the mess and disrespect for their living space may affect John, the fellow-lodger who is moved to distraction.
In order to understand Sherlock, one must turn to his own explanation in another story, and unravel the implications of it. During The Sign of the Four ( 1890 ), John, who has lived with Sherlock for several years, is concerned by the triplicate daily doses of cocaine and morphine Sherlock has been using for the past several months. When John reprimands, Sherlock replies:
“My mind”, he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants, but I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession...” [4].
This, by Sherlock’s own admission, seems to indicate that he is unable to simply enjoy his down-time between cases. Instead, it appears that he needs tough problems to solve, and that without them, daily life is monotonous and dull. This urge is so desperate that Sherlock chose to become an “unofficial consulting detective”, as he calls himself, in order to access puzzles worthy of his mental calibur. This, combined with the description of lethargy when not engaged in mystery, points to a level of mental distress so astute that even the manuscripts of his own cases go unsorted for months on end, and even going outside for shooting practice appears beyond his capabilities. This is a rather cynical depiction of the detective as a character by Doyle. He is indicating that there are downsides to the concept of the fictional detective, and that the type of lifestyle it creates is entirely at-odds with the expectations of a normal man.
An interesting indication of how quickly Sherlock can change from active detective to weary creature is shown near the end of The Sign of the Four . At this point in the story, the whole mystery is wrapped up- Tonga dead, Small arrested, and John happily engaged to Mary Morstan. In fact, Sherlock has just denounced the whole concept of love when the following exchange occurs, beginning with John observing:
“...But you look weary.”
“Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week.”
“Strange,” said I, “how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.”
“Yes,” he answered, “there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe: [nature, alas, made only one being out of you although there was material for a good man and a rogue]” [5].
The observation by John that his friend has alternating bouts of laziness and vigour, followed by Sherlock’s use of a quote that refers to a being made of too much material, adds credence to the pathological dimension of Sherlock’s changing states. Sherlock is unable to fight off the exhaustion once the job is complete. When John remarks that it is unfair that Sherlock did all the work while Inspector Althelney Jones took credit and John acquired a fiance, Sherlock retorts “for me... there still remains the cocaine-bottle,” and the last image in the story is that of his hand reaching for the stimulant [6]. With that, the story has come full circle- just as the opening describes Sherlock taking bottle and giving himself an injection, the ending implies he is about to do so once more. Now that the mystery has concluded, he is compelled to escape into a drug-addled state of mind. After all, when John asked at the beginning whether Sherlock had any work, the reply was “None. Hence the cocaine. I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for? ...what is the use of having powers, doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?”, revealing how deep his despair is when lacking a mystery [7]. It is this heavy price that Doyle attaches to Sherlock’s genius that hints how deep the author’s dislike for detective stories ran, and thus how peculiar a detective must be when not actively investigating a mystery.
John’s marital life, and thus his status as our more traditional British male character, temporarily pulls him away from Sherlock, as he describes his return to Baker Street in A Scandal in Bohemia ( 1891 ). John admits in the opening of the story that his marital life and medical practice had caused them to drift apart, but that he knew what Sherlock was up to, “buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature” [8]. It is clear that, despite the passing months between tales, part of Sherlock’s life is still wholly entangled with the use of cocaine when not deep in a mystery. Doyle has established that the drug use is a consistent flaw in his detective, his mis-management of free-time and general lethargy inseparable from the manic fervor later on display. This is confirmed by the meeting with the king of Bohemia:
...Holmes, settling himself down in his armchair, and closing his eyes.
Our visitor glanced with some apparent surprise at the languid, lounging figure of the man who had been no doubt depicted to him as the most incisive reasoner, and most energetic agent in Europe. Holmes slowly reopened his eyes, and looked impatiently at his gigantic client.
“If your Majesty would condescend to state your case,” he remarked, “I should be better able to advise you.” [9].
John’s description of Sherlock as languid- a word that can refer to both relaxation and fatigue- has special significance here. Sherlock is meeting with a very important client, and it is clear he knows exactly how important, referring to the man as Majesty, rather than the false title he gave. However, the fact that the client has yet to actually state the facts of the case means Sherlock cannot bring himself to appear more energetic, having yet to move into the mindset of the detective and the wellspring of famous energy that the king expected to be shown.
Another depiction of the exhaustion that plagues Sherlock between cases can be found near the ending of The Red-Headed League (1891). In this section of the story, Sherlock has just laid out his solution to the mystery, causing John to express admiration for his friend’s amazing reasoning. This causes Sherlock to reply with a yawn that “it saved me from ennui... Alas, I already feel it closing in upon me! My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so”, brushing off John’s compliments [10]. This shows, again, just how swiftly the change can overtake Sherlock. He has barely finished explaining the way he cracked the case when he finds himself fighting a yawn. Doyle is depicting Sherlock as being caught in a vicious cycle, in which the boundless energy he seems to express, the nights without sleeping, the fervor of cracking a case, all serve to overwhelm him so thoroughly that when the case passes, his body falls into such exhaustion that he believes only the stimulation of cocaine or a new mystery can make him bounce back. One could draw parallels between Sherlock and Doyle himself, as Doyle was trapped in a cycle of writing Sherlock stories, despite the tedious nature of writing something he found so tiring.
A particular point of interest is Sherlock’s fondness of writing monographs, and how their importance can be tied to Doyle’s own fondness for writing more factual works. If solving mysteries is Sherlock’s profession, then the writing of these monographs falls into the category of his hobbies. The clearest examples of this begins with monographs referenced in The Sign of the Four. Sherlock is proudly showing John monographs, and describes two of them as follows:
“Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impressions. Here, to, is a curious little work upon the influence of a trade upon the form of the hand, with lithotypes of the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers, and diamond polishers. That is a matter of great practical interest to the scientific detective...” [11].
The first of these, referring to footsteps, is a particularly potent one, as it appears to be one of the instances in which his hobby can be put to practical use during the course of a case, a nod to Doyle’s appreciation for writings of substance. During this case, the footprints of two men are discovered inside the room of Bartholomew Sholto, who has been killed with a poisoned dart. By examining the first set of footprints, Sherlock is able to ascertain that they belong to Johnathan Small, who has “his right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away upon the inner side. His left boot has a coarse, square-toed sole, with an iron band round the heel” [12]. This in itself is mildly intriguing, but it is his ability to identify the second man that is impressive. Sherlock knows that the second man used the poison darts, as his footprints are visible on the roof where more ammunition had been dropped. The feet are bare, small, and the toes are spread wide apart. Knowing that Small’s companions were Indian, John hazarded a guess that this person is one of them. Sherlock refutes this by explaining that “the Hindoo proper has long and thin feet, the sandal-wearing Mohammedan has the great toe well separated from the others, because the thong is commonly passed between” [13]. Sherlock is able to infer, with the help of the darts- which could only come from a blowgun- that the second man must be a South American. Upon looking up the Andaman Islands, where Small was incarcerated, he finds a description of the aborigines, whose feet are remarkably small, and are known to wield poison darts. These references to monographs point to the thing that makes Sherlock such a great detective, his ability to not only compile information, but have an intimate understanding of what matters. In this case, both he and John are aware Small has Indian friends, but it is his knowledge of the tracing of footsteps that allows him to remove the bias of Indians as “savage” and assumed to be barefoot, and to consider whether their feet match the shape and size of the footprints he found.
Sherlock, years later, would make a simple observation during The Red-Headed League which indicates that his monograph referring to trade and the hands was not an offhand addition by Doyle, but meant to display Sherlock’s accumulated knowledge that allows him to make observations on the fly. In The Red-Headed League , Sherlock remarks to John that their client, Jabez Wilson, has obviously done manual labor, resulting in this exchange:
“How did you know, for example, that I did manual labour? It’s true as gospel, and I began as a ship’s carpenter.”
“Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more developed” [13].
If this story is taken out of the context of the collection, or rather, the larger body of canon, then the detail of the hands seems trivial. Of course, readers would say, it is no surprise that Sherlock would notice a difference in hand size and extrapolate a reasoning for it. However, knowing that a few years before, Sherlock had proudly displayed a piece of his writing where he extensively focused on how trade affects the hand, and specifically indicates that this monograph is of interest to the scientific detective, indicates that Doyle laid specific groundwork for the significance of Sherlock’s hobby of writing monographs. Readers can thus understand that the knowledge of hands, rather than being something Sherlock picked up in the course of his detective work, was instead gathered by intense study and careful observation, such that he was able to complete writing on the subject. Sherlock is, after all, a scientific detective- though studying hands and feet is not the only bit of science he enjoys spending time dedicated to.
Once Sherlock is on a case, his lethargy seems to be cured, but if there is a lull in the case, he is forced to turn to a scientific hobby to fill his time- namely, chemistry. There are several excellent examples of this throughout the years, proving that Sherlock’s fascination with chemistry is longstanding, perhaps more so than his drug use. The first of these involves, once again, the serialized novel The Sign of the Four . The work’s length gives room for ample discussion- such as the occurrence after Sherlock has sent his Irregulars and the police to search for Small and Tonga, finding himself unable to sleep as “this infernal problem is consuming me” [15]. John describes his friend’s mood as follows:
On my return I found Holmes dejected and somewhat morose. He would hardly reply to my questions, and busied himself all the evening in an abstruse chemical analysis which involved much heating of retorts and distilling of vapours, ending at last in a smell which fairly drove me out of the apartment. Up to the small hours of the morning I could hear the clinking of his test-tubes which told me that he was still engaged in his malodorous experiment [16].
The implications of this experiment, or rather, the conducting of it during the night, point back to an earlier comment- that of Sherlock’s energy when he is on a case. At this point in the story, there isn't anything he can do. Everyone is searching for Small and Tonga, and the smartest move would be to get some rest so that when news comes, he can be at his best. In fact, sleep is exactly what John is aiming for, though the fact that he can hear the clinking in the small hours would indicate Sherlock is making that difficult for him. Now that Sherlock’s near-manic state necessary for detective work is in place, waiting is unbearable, and sleep is impossible. Without a lead to chase, Sherlock reaches for his chemistry equipment and sets up an obscure experiment that is time consuming and laborious. It appears that having a complicated chemistry experiment to attend to is the best way to satiate his energy, a possible nod to Doyle’s own experience as a medical student. However, that is not to say the chemistry is a full-blown distraction, as the next morning, Sherlock awakens John to give vague allusions of an idea, “I am off down the river, Watson... I have been turning it over in my mind, and I can see only one way out of it”, presumably something he was able to formulate during his night of heating and distillation [17]. This shows that his use of chemistry isn't to take a break from the case at all, even though it is at a stand still- instead, he forces himself to stay in work-mode, and after shifting his focus to a different type of problem, he is able to gather his thoughts and force a path forward. This is a subtle reversal of Doyle’s own experience, as he wrote some of these stories while waiting for patients to enter his medical practice.
Another example of Sherlock’s foray into chemistry when the case is lacking in excitement is present in A Case of Identity ( 1891 ). This is the story of Mary Sutherland and the cruel trick played by her step-father, who dons a disguise to court her as Hosmer Angel, hoping to break her heart and keep her single forever. This case is, admittedly, a rather simple one- both men are sallow-skinned, and Angel only appears when the step-father is away. As such, when John returns to see if the mystery is solved, he finds Sherlock:
Alone, however, half asleep... A formidable array of bottles and test-tubes, with the pungent cleanly smell of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his day in the chemical work which was so dear to him.
“Well, have you solved it?” I asked as I entered.
“Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta.”
“No, no, the mystery! I cried.
“Oh, that! I thought of the salt that I have been working upon. There was never any mystery in the matter, though, as I said yesterday, some of the details are of interest” [18].
The case of this story is a bit different from that of the one above. This time, instead of needing to turn to chemistry to satiate his energy because the case is at a lull, he needed so little time to solve the mystery that he spent most of the day working on a chemistry problem instead. The story has a hint of Doyle’s resentment for creating the analytical detective, as writing mysteries of a worthy enough caliber for Sherlock was as laborious as a full length novel. But the core idea remains the same, that once his detective appetites have been stirred, only deeply intellectual pursuits like those of chemistry can be a suitable substitute for a good mystery.
The third and final reference to chemistry is found in The Dancing Men (1903), one of the stories in the collection occurring after Doyle attempted to kill off Sherlock, and thus set a good couple years after the previous cases. In this story, John begins the chronicle by informing the reader that “Holmes had been seated for some hours in silence, with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product” [19]. At first glance, this could mean next to nothing- until Sherlock tosses “a sheet of paper upon the table, and turned once more to his chemical analysis. I looked with amazement at the absurd hieroglyphics upon the paper”, a movement that reveals just how important his experiment really is [20]. As it turns out, Sherlock has been contacted by Hilton Cubitt to solve the mystery of these hieroglyphics, sending the images ahead but electing to explain the full story in person. Thus, Sherlock, his detective energy awakening, is forced to wait to unpack the bizarre clue until Cubitt can arrive. As stated above, Sherlock is not fond of waiting, and instead elected to wile away the hours with chemistry, barely able to look away from the experiment long enough to show John the clue. This snippet of the story builds upon the picture of Sherlock the detective, a man who, once stimulated by the promise of a mystery, needs complex chemistry to fill his excitement if the case has nothing new to build on, was too simple for his abilities, or has yet to provide him with enough information to begin his process at all. Doyle has created a character who is very particular about the kinds of hobbies he has, both during and between his cases.
The description of Sherlock’s lethargy between cases, as described by John in The Musgrave Ritual , mentions that the man does almost nothing- but playing the violin is an exception. The specific interest in the violin is something of note here, as this is a purely artistic hobby, not falling into the same category of mental stimulation which chemistry must serve. The first real example of Sherlock’s enjoyment of the violin comes from The Sign of the Four , shortly after the discovery of Tonga’s ethnic background, and thus, his fighting prowess. Sherlock notes that his friend looks exhausted, tells him to lay down, and then:
He took up his violin from the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air- his own, no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face, and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floating peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound, until I found myself in dreamland [21].
The description of Sherlock playing a lullaby of his own creation to help his friend sleep is quite poignant. It displays a side of Sherlock that is rarely on display, that of his kind-hearted nature and emotional intelligence. For all that he swears off romance and avoids the dangers of emotion to his analytical mind, he is still a good friend. When he takes up the violin for John, it is his earnest expression that is remembered before John falls asleep. It is important to note that Sherlock is not using the violin for his own pleasure- it is only a few hours later that he is pacing like a caged animal and doing noxious experiments deep into the night. Rather, he has taken up his instrument in service to his friend, to ensure that John, who lacks the uncanny ability to draw on ceaseless energy during a case, has a chance to rest and replenish while they await news. Doyle is placing John’s experience with Sherlock’s two hobbies in opposition, the chemistry being distracting and noxious while the violin is peaceful and melodious. If John is the normal everyman, his fond memory of Sherlock and violin points to Doyle elevating music in import.
This exact use of the violin as a form of relaxation for John is in stark contrast to the treatment of violin music a few years later, during the events of The Red-Headed League . At this point in the story, Sherlock and John have spent the past few hours doing leg-work for the case, traveling around the city to gather clues, before Sherlock announces “we’ve done our work, so it’s time we had some play... off to violin-land, where all is sweetness, and delicacy, and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums”, adopting a bit of a different attitude towards his case than previously displayed [22]. The specific word choice here is important, that Sherlock describes their client as vexing them. Instead of taking joy from Wilson’s mystery, Sherlock is able to find himself in need of a reprieve, and actually seeks out an non-academic distraction from the action, another nod to Doyle’s own vexation for the conundrums he was forced to dream up for his stories. In fact, as described below, Sherlock seems to intentionally switch out of detective mode to enjoy the performance:
...wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternatively asserted itself and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his arm-chair amid his improvisations [23].
The way John describes Sherlock’s duality in this passage is in apparent contradiction with earlier portrayals. In this passage, the non-detective mode is given much less of a negative connotation- John considers Sherlock to be at his most formidable after spending a significant amount of time relaxing in his living room and making up tunes on the violin. This places Sherlock’s earlier remark regarding Wilson vexing him in a new light. Perhaps, precisely because this is a strange and baffling case, Sherlock feels the need to use a few hours of sweetness and harmony in order to bolster his detective prowess. This passage further shows the softer side of Sherlock, describing gentle smiles and dreamy eyes. It is in these moments that we see how the more emotive aspects of his personality, usually in the periphery and reserved for comforting distressed young maidens, can be on full display as he enjoys the music, taking a few hours to relax with his friend. It is also important to note that Sherlock does not wander into the music hall by accident. Rather, he plans his day around the fact that “Sarsate plays at the St James’s Hall this afternoon,” asking Watson if his patients could spare him because the music on the programme “is introspective, and I want to introspect” [24]. This comment indicates that Sherlock chose to listen to this performance because of its value to his particular dual nature, knowing that listening to Sarsate will help him work through the particulars of the case, allowing him to take the evidence gathered while traversing the city before attending the performance and percolate on what it means. In this sense, readers can view his dual nature as complementary halves of a whole, and that perhaps the poetic and contemplative mood is just as critical to solving the case as his exactness and astuteness. It certainly points to Doyle holding the hobby of listening to music in high esteem, as a positive use of Sherlock’s free-time.
There is no succinct way to explain Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, a character of dual nature, a contradiction of himself. Without a mystery to solve, he falls into a lethargy, forced to take artificial stimulants to soothe the ache of everyday life’s banality, upsetting John Watson, a character more representative of normality. During a case, Sherlock’s “small works” are sometimes critical in noticing the little details that make or break a case, a nod to Doyle’s preference for more factual writing. If a case hits a lull, risking a dearth of new clues for Sherlock to pour through, he must turn to the intellectually engaging pursuit of chemistry in order to properly stimulate his brain, a twist on the fact that the mentally rigorous creation of these mysteries was meant to occur only in the lull of Doyle’s medical practice. However, Sherlock does not only value the detectiving half of his dual nature. In fact, he is often at his most powerful after taking the time to relax and play his violin. This indicates that Doyle holds hobbies associated with music in high regard, and the shift in focus from stimulants to music presents readers with a healthier version of the detective, with Doyle’s depiction of the artistic part of Sherlock’s nature as important to the character’s success as a consulting detective. In summation, Doyle’s choices of hobbies for his titular character, and the way they are viewed through the lens of his less eccentric narrator, are both a reflection of Doyle’s opinion of what constitutes a good use of free-time, as well as being influenced by Doyle’s mixed emotions regarding his creation.