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'Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes': Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity,c. 1890-c. 1940Author(s): Michael SalerReviewed work(s):Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 599-622Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3133564 .

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2/25


3/25

MICHAEL

SALER

had

already

come

under

public

criticism for

his

wholehearted

adoption

of

spiri-

tualism

in

I917,

but with his

acceptance

of

fairies

even the

spiritualists

began

to

keep

their

distance.3 In

the

'Adventure of

the

chuclde-headed

doctor',

one of

Doyle's critics had Sherlock Holmes confess to being as baffled as the

public:

'But

how,'

Holmes

asks,

'did a

sober-minded and

apparently

abstemious

doctor,

last

seen at

midnight

at the

National

Sporting

Club,

come to

be

found

at

four

a.m. on

the

Mendip

Hills,

bereft of

his wits and

professing

to

have

spent

the

night dancing

with fairies ?'4

The

wonderful

irony

of

this situation

is that at

the same

time that

Doyle

was

criticized for

claiming

that

fairies were

real,

many

of his

readers were

claiming

that

Sherlock Holmes

was real.

Indeed,

Holmes

was the

first

character

in

modern

literature to be

widely

treated as

if

he

were real and

his creator

fictitious.5

Since

his appearance in The Strandmagazine in 1891, many either believed Holmes

existed

or at

least claimed

that

they

did;

and

the interwar

period

witnessed

an

outpouring

of

articles

in

prominent

magazines,

and books from

respectable pub-

lishers,

which treated Holmes

and Watson as real

individuals,

and

that

never

mentioned

Doyle.

For

example, scholarly 'biographies'

of

both Holmes and

Watson

appeared

in

I932,

inspiring equally scholarly

reviews

and

leading

articles

debating

such

fine

points

as which

college

Holmes attended or

how

many

wives

Watson had.

Looking

back

years

later,

the author

of

the

Watson

biography

stated

he

was

'amazed at the

number of columns which editors allotted to reviews of

these two

books

'.6

He was

not alone

in his

surprise. Doyle,

who

clearly

was

willing

to

countenance

many

unusual

ideas,

nevertheless

thought

it was

'incredible how

realistic some

people

take

[this

imaginary

character]

to

be'.7

G. K.

Chesterton

observed,

'The real inference

[of

these

works]

is

that Sherlock Holmes

really

existed and that

Conan

Doyle

never existed.

If

posterity

only

reads

these

latter

books

it

will

certainly suppose

them

to

he serious.

It

will

imagine

that Sherlock

Holmes

was a man.'8

Was this

simply

a

further

peculiarity

of the

English?

One

English

reviewer

thought

so: 'Does

anything puzzle

a

foreigner

more ...

than

the enthusiasm

with

which

our learned

men ...

investigate

the character and career of two

purely

imaginary persons?'9

But the fancy that Holmes and Watson were real was an

international

phenomenon.

Americans also

published

articles

and

books

treating

Doyle's

characters

as real.

The

Saturday

Review

of

Literature

nder

Christopher

3

Daniel

Stashower,

Teller

f

tales:

lifeof

SirArthurConan

oyle New

York,

I999),

p.

356.

4

Richard

Lancelyn

Green, ed.,

The Sherlock

Holmes

letters

London,

1986),

p.

28.

5AsJacques

Barzun

noted,

this

'has

happened

in no other book

and no other

charactern

recent

times.

It's

a

phenomenon.

Jacques

Barzun,

The adventuresof SherlockHolmes: a radio

discussion',

in

Philip

A.

Shreffler,

ed.,

The

Baker

treet

eader:

ornerstone

ritings

bout

herlock

olmes

Westport,

CT,

I984), p. 25.6

S. C.

Roberts,

Adventures

ith authors

(Cambridge,

I966),

p.

228.

7

Harold

Orel,

ed.,

Sir Arthur

Conan

Doyle:

interviews

nd recollections

London,

I99I), p.

8I.

G. K.

Chesterton,

'Sherlock

Holmes

the

God',

G.K.'s

Weekly,

21

(21

Feb.

I935),

pp.

403-4.

9Roberts,

Adventures

ith

authors,

.

231.

600


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4/25

'CLAP

IF

YOU BELIEVE'

Morley's editorship

in the

I930s

and

1940s

published

many pieces

asserting

the

reality

of the

characters;

and even a

mystery

novel

of

1940,

Anthony

Boucher's

The

case

of

theBakerStreet

Irregulars,

ould not

resist

injecting

a note of

realism

into

the fictional

proceedings:

the dedication read 'All characters

portrayed

or

referred

to

in

this

novel

are

fictitious,

with the

exception

of Sherlock

Holmes,

to

whom this book is

dedicated.'10

Today

we have

little trouble

pretending

that

fantastic

characters

exist,

as

Star

Trek

fandom

or

concordances

to The

lord

of

the

rings

prove.

But Sherlock

Holmes

was

the first fictional

creation that adults

openly

embraced

as

'real'

while

delib-

erately minimizing

or

ignoring

its

creator,

and this fetishization

of Holmes

has

continued

for over a

century.

There were other

fictional characters

preceding

Holmes who evoked

considerable

public

interest,

of course:

Richardson's

Pamela,

Goethe's Werther, and Dickens's Little Nell immediately come to mind. But the

Holmes

cult was

significantly

different

from

the

sporadic

fads for

these other

characters.

Many

readers identified

directly

with

Pamela, Werther,

and Little

Nell,

all

of

whom were

noted

for

their

passionate

sensibilities,

which

encouraged

sentimental

identification; Holmes,

on

the

other

hand,

is

a

distinctly

fantastic

creation who

provides

little room for the

affective release these other

characters

elicited. And

Holmes's fantastic

nature,

his

apparent

divorce

from

the

concerns

of

the mundane

world,

is

not

the

only

notable difference

between

him

and these

popular precursors.

The

cult

of

Holmes focuses

not

just

on

a

singular

character,

but on

his entire

world: fans of the 'canon'

obsess

about

every

detail

of the

fictional

universe

Doyle

created,

mentally

inhabiting

this

'geography

of

the

im-

agination'

in

a

way

that was never

true for

the

partisans

of earlier

characters.

(The

desire to

envisage

this

fictional

world as

autonomously

'real' is

such

that

many

readers,

particularly

the

self-professed

Sherlockians,

self-consciously

ignore

the existence of

its

creator;

meetings

of the

'Baker

Street

Irregulars',

for

example,

deliberately

avoid

mentioning Doyle.

Richardson,

on the

other

hand,

was often

invoked

in

the

discussions

and

satires

stemming

from

Pamela,

ust

as

Goethe

and

Dickens were

inextricably

linked with

their

popular

creations.

These links

tended

to

preclude

the

characters from

being

mistaken

as

real,

whereas

there

were

many

readers who

thought

Sherlock Holmes

actually

existed,

as will be discussed

below.)

And

the

Holmesian

phenomenon

has

continued for

over a

century,

far

longer

than

the

intermittent

eighteenth-century

vogues

for

Pamela,

let

alone

the

more

restricted

generational

enthusiasms

for

Werther,

Little

Nell,

and

others."

Sherlockian

devotion is

thus a

departure

from

preceding public

infatuations

with fictional

characters,

and a

template

for

succeeding public

infatuations for

the

10

Green, ed.,

The

Sherlock

Holmes

letters,

p.

40.

1

For an

analysis

of

the

eighteenth-century

Pamela

'craze',

seeJames

Grantham

Turner,

'Novel

panic: picture

and

performance

in

the

reception

of

Richardson's

Pamela', Representations,8 (1994),

pp.

70-96;

T.

C.

Duncan

Eaves

and Ben

D.

Kimpel,

Samuel

Richardson:a

biography Oxford,

I97I),

pp.

II9-53.

For an

interesting exploration

of

the

vogue

for the

late

Victorian

comic-strip

character

Alley

Sloper,

see

Peter

Bailey, 'Ally

Sloper's

half-holiday:

comic art in

the

I88o's',

in

Peter

Bailey,

Popular

cultureand

performance

n

the

Victorian

ity

(Cambridge, I998),

pp.

47-79.

6oi




5/25

MICHAEL

SALER

characters

and

worlds

ofJ.

R. R.

Tolkien,

Star

Trek,

Star

Wars,

and

so on:

as

the

New

Tork

Times

reported

recently,

'today

there are

hundreds

of

thousands,

perhaps

millions of

people,

whose

grasp

of

the

history,

politics

and

mythological

traditions of purely imaginary places could

surely

qualify

them for an advanced

degree'.12

The

popular

fascination

with

Holmes

commences this

widespread

embrace of

fictional

and

often

fantastic

worlds

during

the

past

century.

The

question

is,

why

Holmes?

There

are

several

answers to

this

question,

but

the most

important

has to

do

with the

climate

of

cultural

pessimism

among

intellectuals

during

the

waning

decades of

the

nineteenth

century

and

early

decades of

the

twentieth. This

particular

stance

towards

modernity

was

famously

captured

by

Max

Weber's

discussion of the

'disenchantment of

the

world',

which he

believed

was

the

consequence of capitalist instrumental rationality and the growth of the bureau-

cratic

state.

Many

at the turn of

the

century

mourned the

apparent

absence of

communal

beliefs

and

higher

ideals in an

age

that

seemed

dominated

by posi-

tivism and

materialism,

and turned

to

alternative

sources of

spiritual

sustenance.

These

ranged

from

the

nostalgic

medievalism of

the arts and

crafts

movement,

to a

fascination with

non-Christian

beliefs

and

non-Western

art,

to

attempts

to

reconcile

science and

religion

through

spiritualism,

occultism,

and

psychical

research.

However,

these and other

efforts to

escape

from the 'iron

cage

of

rationality'

that

Weber

imputed

to the modern

West were

uneasy compromises

between the

past

and the

present

that left

many

unsatisfied.

'Modernity'

was

widely

associated

with

progress

towards the rational and

away

from the

supernatural,

and

efforts

by

believers to

impart

the veneer of

scientific

respectability

to

the

supernatural

were

frequently greeted

with

scepticism

if

not

outright

disdain

by contemporary

commentators. Thus

psychical

research and

spiritualism,

both

nineteenth-

century

efforts at

finding

a via media

between science and

religion,

tended

to

be

marginalized by

established science at the turn of the

century.

Several of the

prominent

scientists

in

the

Society

for

Psychical

Research who

supported spiri-

tualism,

such as Sir

William

Crookes,

Sir

W.

F.

Barrett,

and Oliver

Lodge,

were

viewed by most of their professional peers as credulous believers who tried to

legitimate

their faith with scientific rhetoric but without

compelling

scientific

evidence

-

just

as

Doyle's

belief

in

fairies

was

to be

viewed.l3

And while

the

efflorescence

of

spiritualism

at the

popular

level

in

Britain

during

and

immedi-

ately

after the Great

War

was an understandable

emotive reaction to

the

tremendous losses suffered

by

many,

it too

was

often

represented

as a 'traditional'

12

A.

O.

Scott,

'A

hunger

for

fantasy,

an

empire

to

feed

it',

New

fork Times

(I6June 2002),

Section

2,

p.

26.

13

Janet Oppenheim,

The

other

world:

spiritualism

and

psychical

research in

England,

I850-I9I4

(Cambridge, i985),

pp.

338-97;

Pamela

Thurschwell,

Literature,

echnology

nd

magical

hinking,

88o-I920

(Cambridge,

2001),

p.

15.

602




6/25

'CLAP

IF

YOU

BELIEVE'

rather

than

'modern'

phenomenon

(using

the

binary oppositions

common

to the

period)

and one that

was

diminishing by

the

I930s.14

This is not

to

deny

that the

late nineteenth

and

early

twentieth

centuries

wit-

nessed

significant

attempts

to reconcile the traditional and the modern in Britain

and

America,

but

only

to

emphasize

the

ambivalent

and contested

nature of these

efforts.15

Among

elites

in

Europe,

a more

categorical

association between

mod-

ernity

and disenchantment

had

a

long

history,

extending

back to

the seventeenth

century;16

despite acknowledging

the

advantages

of

modernity, by

thefin-de-siecle

the

discourse

had become

tinged

with

pessimism.

Adherents

of

positivism,

materialism,

and scientific

as well as

literary

naturalism often

presented

a bleak

picture

of human

existence,

governed by

bestial

instincts that were themselves

reducible

to mere chemical

and

physical processes.

Disenchantment was

pro-

nounced in the writings of cultural pessimists ranging from Arthur Schopenhauer

at the onset of

the

nineteenth

century

to Max

Nordau,

author of

Degeneration,

t

the

century's

end.

Perhaps proving

that

you

can never

get

too much of a

bad

thing,

the discourse continued

into the

new

century

in

the

writings

of

Toynbee,

Spengler,

Freud,

and

many

others.

The character of Sherlock

Holmes, however,

represented

and celebrated

the central tenets of

modernity

adumbrated

at

the time

-

not

just

rationalism and

secularism,

but also

urbanism and

consumerism. The stories made these tenets

magical

without

introducing magic:

Holmes demonstrated

how the modern

world could be re-enchanted

through

means

entirely

consistent with

modernity.

Because Holmes

represented

the

values of

modernity

in

ways

that addressed the

criticisms of the

cultural

pessimists,

he

spoke

to the

dissatisfactions and

hopes

of

adults as well as

to the

imaginations

of children. Like

many

of his

readers,

Holmes

yearned

for

enchantment,

confessing

to

his 'love of all that is

bizarre and

outside

the conventions and

humdrum routine of

everyday

life'. But

Holmes was also

able to

gratify

his

sense

of

wonder

by

embracing modernity,

rather than

turning

nostalgically

to

the

past:

'for

strange

effects and

extraordinary

combinations we

14

AsJay

Winterhas

argued,

The Great

War,

the most

"modern" of

wars,

triggered

an

avalanche

of

the

"unmodern". One

salient

aspect

of

this

apparent

contradiction s

the wartime

growth

in

spiritualism.'

Jay

Winter,

Sites

of

memory,

ites

of mourning:

he

GreatWar in

European

ultural

history

(Cambridge, 1998),

p.

54.

Terms

like 'tradition'

and

'modernity'

are

complex

and not

necessarily

mutually

exclusive;

there were

significant

efforts

to reconcile

the two

by

intellectuals n

the

nine-

teenth and

twentiethcenturies.

See Robert

Alter,

Necessasy

ngels:

raditionnd

modernity

n

Kafka,

Benjamin,

and Scholem

(Cambridge,

MA,

I99I);

Peter

J.

Bowler,

Reconciling

cience

nd

religion:he

debaten

early-

twentieth-century

ritain

(Chicago,

2002);

Bruno

Latour,

Wehave ever

een

modern,

rans.

Catherine

Porter

(Cambridge,

MA,

I993).

But this

line of

thought,

arguably,

was not

the

dominant one in

Europe

during

hefin-de-siecle:

ontemporaries

ended to

see

modernity

and

traditionas

opposing

one

another.

SeeJ.

W.

Burrow,

The

crisis

of

reason:

European hought,848-19i4 (New Haven,

2000),

pp.

112-13.

15 Michael

Saler,

The

avant-garde

n

interwar

ngland:

medievalmodernism'

nd

theLondon

nderground

(New

York,

I999).

16

LorraineDaston

and

Katherine

Park,

Wonders

nd he

order

f

nature:

i50-I750

(Cambridge,

MA,

I998).

603




7/25

MICHAEL

SALER

must

go

to life

itself,

which

is

always

far

more

daring

than

any

effort of

the

imagination'

17

Sherlock Holmes

became

a

modern icon

partly

because

he

utilized reason in a

manner magical and adventurous, rather than in the purely instrumental fashion

that

many

contemporaries

feared was the

stultifying

characteristic

of the

age.18

He

expanded

the definition of

rationality beyond

a

narrow,

means-ends

instru-

mentalism to

include the

imagination

-

he

calls

his

procedure

'the scientific

use of

the

imagination'9-

resulting

in a

more

capacious

concept

that

can

be

termed

'animistic

reason' because it

imbues its

objects

with

meaning.

It

was

through

his

animistic

reason that

Holmes the

private

detective bested

professional

detectives

on

cases,

as he himself admitted.

(In

one case he

confides to Watson that

'Inspector

Gregory,

to

whom

the

case has been

committed,

is an

extremely

competent

officer. Were he but gifted with imagination he might rise to great heights in his

profession.')20

Holmes

solved

cases

by relating

seemingly

discrete facts to a more

encompassing

and

meaningful configuration,

whose

integuments

were derived

from a combination of

rigorous

observation,

precise logic,

and

lively imagination.

The

professional investigators

whom Holmes

trumps

in

these cases tend to be

unimaginative

positivists

who

miss

everything

that is not

presented directly

before

their

senses,

or

are

unable

to

interpret creatively

those facts that are:

'Is there

any point

to which

you

would wish to draw

my

attention?'

'To the curious

incident of the

dog

in

the

night-time.'

'The dog did nothing in the night-time.'

'That

was the curious

incident',

remarked Sherlock Holmes.21

17

Arthur

Conan

Doyle,

The complete

herlockHolmes

(New

York,

I992),

p.

I76.

18

While

many

nineteenth-century

writers

feared that

positivism

excluded

the

imagination

as

a

legitimate

source of

knowledge,

a closer

reading

of the

positivists

themselves reveals that several were

less

antagonistic

towards

art and the

imagination

than

their

contemporaries

gave

them credit for. See

Peter Allen

Dale,

In

pursuit

of

a

scientific

ulture:

cience,art,

and

society

n the

Victorian

age (Madison,

WI,

1989);

Jonathan

Smith,

Fact and

feeling:

Baconian

science and the

nineteenth-centuy

iterary

imagination

(Madison,

WI,

1994).

And

the turn towards

idealism

in late Victorian

intellectual culture

also

gave

wider

sway

to

the

imagination

than was to be

found

among

the scientific naturalists

and

materialists;

see

Bowler,

Reconciling,pp.

i8-I9.

Nevertheless,

the

dominant

discourse

of mid- to

late nineteenth-

century positivists,

materialists,

scientific

naturalists,

and

cultural

pessimists

associated Western

mod-

ernity

with

a

narrow

form

of

rationality

inimical to wider sources

of

meaning,

and this

pervasive

association

of

modernity

with disenchantment

continued

to

be

perpetuated

among

intellectuals

in

Europe

and America

through

the twentieth

century:

'To be

a

member

of

a

modern

elite is

to

regard

wonder

and wonders

with studied

indifference;

enlightenment

is still in

part

defined

as

the anti-

marvelous.'

Daston

and

Park, Wonders,

p.

368.

In

recent

years,

however,

a number of scholars have

attempted

to redress this

discourse

by

demonstrating

ways

in

which

modernity

can be

reconciled

with

enchantment.

SeeJane

Bennett,

The

enchantment

f

modern

ife:

attachments,

rossings,

nd ethics

(NewJersey,

2001); Kelly

Besecke,

'Speaking

of

meaning

in

modernity:

reflexive

spirituality

as a cultural

resource',

Sociology f Religion,

62

(2001), pp.

365-8i;

James

Cook,

The arts

of deception:

laying

withfraud

in

the

age

of

Barnum

(Cambridge,

MA,

2001);

Simon

During,

Modern enchantments:

he cultural

power

of

secular

magic

(Cambridge,

MA,

2002);

Edward

A.

Tiryakian,

'Dialectics

of

modernity:

reenchantment

and

de-

differentiation

as

counterprocesses',

in Hans

Haferkamp

and

NeilJ.

Smelser,

eds.,

Social

change

and

modernity

Berkeley,

CA,

I992),

pp.

78-93.

19

Doyle,

The

complete

herlock

Holmes,

p.

687.

20

Ibid.,

pp. 338-9.

21

Ibid.,

p.

347.

604




8/25

'CLAP

IF YOIU

BE,IEVE

Holmes's

dramatic

use of

animistic

reason

was

the mass culture

exemplification

of a

complex

of ideas that circulated

as

part

of the

fin-de-siecle

revolt

against

the

dominant

discourses of

positivism,

materialism,

and scientific

naturalism.

In

creating

Holmes,

Doyle

had been influenced

by

earlier

writers,

such as

Edgar

Allan Poe

andJules Verne,

whose tales

linked the

processes

of

ratiocination

with

an

imaginative

sense

of

wonder,

and

many

of

Doyle's

contemporaries

-

figures

as

diverse as Friedrich

Nietzsche,

Henri

Bergson,

Oscar

Wilde,

Ernst

Mach,

Henri

Poincare,

and William

James

-

were

among

those

who

maintained

that

reason

and the

imagination

were

inextricable.22

By insisting

on the

integration

of

reason and the

imagination,

these thinkers

-

and

popular

icons such as

Holmes

-

gainsaid

the

fashionable cultural

pessimism

of the

period

and

made it

possible

to

see

modernity

and enchantment as

compatible

rather than

antagonistic.

At the level of mass culture, this effort took on momentum with the increasing

popularity

of

detective fiction

in

the wake

of Holmes.

It

was aided

by

the

estab-

lishment of'science

fiction'

as

a

defined

literary genre

in

1926,

when

Hugo

Gernsback

published

Amazing

Stories

in

America,

the

first

magazine

devoted

entirely

to

what

he

initially

termed

'scientifiction'.23

An

early

contributor

to

Amazing

Stories

highlighted

the role

that

Gernsback intended

this new

genre

to

play

in

breaking

down

the

seeming

antagonism

between

reason and

imagination,

modernity

and

enchantment:

'Scientifiction

is the

product

of the

human

imagin-

ation,

guided

by

the

suggestion

of

science.

It takes

the

basis of

science,

considers

all the

clues

that

science

has to

offer,

and then

adds a

thing

that is

alien

to

science

-

imagination.

24

While

writers like

Poe

and

Verne and

the

later

genres

of

detective

and

science

fiction

celebrated

the

romance

of

reason,

providing

an

antidote to

the

narrower

construal

of

rationality

so

pervasive

at

the

time,

it

was

arguably

Holmes

who made

this

romance

most

explicit

and

attractive

to a

mass

reading

public

in

sixty

narratives

published

over

the

course of

four

decades.

These

tales

made

analysis

an

adventure,

quotidian

facts

an

infinite

source

of

wonder:

'Depend

upon

it,'

insists

Holmes,

'there

is

nothing

so

unnatural

as

the

commonplace.'25

When

Watson

suggests

that

Holmes's

analytical

methods

are

the

most

exciting

aspects

of

the

stories he

narrates,

Holmes

demurs:

'Pshaw,

my

dear fellow, what do the

public,

the

great

unobservant

public,

who could

hardly

tell a

weaver

by

his

tooth or

a

compositor

by

his

left

thumb,

care

about

the

finer

shades

of

analysis

and

deduction

26

Perhaps

this

was

true

before

Holmes

came

into

their

lives. But it

was his

example

that

helped

thousands of

readers to

perceive

the

romance of

reason,

ranging

from

elites

disillusioned

with the

instrumentalized,

means-ends

form of

cognition

that

seemed to

embody

the

spirit

of

the

age,

to

22

For

a

discussionof

intellectualswho

tried to

fuse

the 'two

cultures'

of

science

and

art,

see

Wolf

Lepenies,

Between

iterature

nd

science:he

rise

of

sociology

Cambridge,I988).

23

The

phrase

'science

fiction'

and

the

first

magazine

devoted

to it were established n America

by

the

Luxembourg

immigrant

Gernback.

Amazing

Stories

was

established

in

I926

to

publish

'scientifiction';

Gernsback

modified

the

ungainlyphrase

to

'science

fiction'

in

I929.

24

Jack

Williamson,

'Scientifiction,

searchlight

of

science',

Amazing

Stories

Quarterly,

I

(1928),

P. 435.

25

Doyle,

The

complete

herlock

Holmes,

p.

191.

26

Ibid.,

p.

317.

605




9/25

MICHAEL

SALER

ordinary

readers

who

might

not

have

associated

reason with

disenchantment-

but

probably

did not

associate

it

with

enchantment,

either. After

encountering

Holmes,

many

of them did.

Indeed, numerous fans of the great detective emulated his own methods

by

bringing

their

intellects

and

imaginations

to bear on

Doyle's

stories,

scrutinizing

every

particular

as if

Holmes

himself was a

mystery

that

had been

presented

to

them to solve.

Some

actually

believed that

Holmes

existed- 'naive

believers'-

but most were 'ironic

believers',

who were not

so much

willingly

suspending

their disbelief

in

a fictional

character as

willingly

believing

in him

with the

double-

minded

awareness that

they

were

engaged

in

pretence.

Since

the

Enlightenment,

belief

in

imaginary

beings

had been

relegated

to an

immature

stage

of

devel-

opment,

one more suited

to

children,

the

lower

classes,

or

'primitives'

than

to

bourgeois adults. But thefin-de-siecle ecognition that perceived reality was to some

extent an

imaginative

construct,

and

that reason itself was

beholden

to

imagin-

ative

insights

and

desires,

made

indulgence

in

the

imagination

more

permissible:

one

could

actively

believe,

albeit

ironically,

in

fictions,

rather than

merely

sus-

pending

one's

disbelief

in

accordance with

Coleridge's

formulation.

By emulating

Holmes's

deployment

of animistic

reason,

adults could immerse themselves

in

imaginary

worlds without

relinquishing

their

practical

reason:

they

could

'believe'

in Holmes in an 'enchanted'

yet

still rational

way.

The

Times noted

in

i932

that the authors who

treated Holmes and

Watson

as real

did

so

with

the

greatest

sobriety,

but

that

this was

'only

their fun the

single-minded

fun

of

spiritually young

Sherlockians at

play'.27

'Play'

was

precisely

what

many

cultural

pessimists

thought

had been driven out

of the modern world

by

the ineluctable advance

of an

impoverished

instrumental

reason.

Johan Huizinga,

in

his classic

survey

of the role of

play

in

the creation

of

civilization,

Homo ludens

(I938),

ended on

a morose note: 'More and more

the sad

conclusion forces

itself

upon

us

that the

play-element

in culture has

been

on the

wane ever

since the

eighteenth century.

'28

But the

widespread

'belief'

in

Sherlock

Holmes

is a

telling

illustration

that

precisely

the

opposite

situation existed

in

Western

culture at

the

very

time

Huizinga

was

writing.

With the wider

accept-

ance of the interrelations between reason and imagination in everyday life, as well

as

the extension

of leisure

and

the

spectacularization

of culture in the forms of

mass

literature,

films,

and

radio,

individuals were

both

encouraged

and enabled

to

play

without

relinquishing

their

grip

on

reality.29

The double-minded

con-

sciousness

of

the 'ironic

imagination'

accompanied

these intellectual

and social

changes;

rational

adults

could

immerse

themselves

in

imaginary

worlds of mass

culture

without

mistaking

these worlds for

reality

because between

thefin-de-siecle

and the

interwar

period

these adults

had

become

highly

conscious

of the artifices

that

comprise

human

subjectivity

and

'reality'

itself.

27

Green, ed.,

The

Sherlock

Holmes

letters,

p.

35.

28

Johan Huizinga,

Homo

ludens

(1938;

London,

I970),

p.

233.

29

James

E.

Combs,

Play

world:

the

emergence

f

the new

ludic

age (Westport,

CT,

2000).

606




10/25

'CLAP

IF YOU

BELIEVE0

Thus a

widespread

form of modern

rationality

has become the animistic

reason

employed

by

Sherlock

Holmes,

and

a

prevailing

form of the modern

imagination

is

the

ironic

imagination

deployed

by

many

of his devotees.

Together

they

con-

tribute to a

particular

form that enchantment takes in the modern

period.

The

conceptual

intertwining

of reason

and

imagination

in the twentieth

century yields

modern,

secular

enchantments

that

replace

the

supernatural

enchantments

of

the

premodern

period:

as Richard

Rorty argues,

the

progressive

disenchantment

of

the world

through

science

'force[s]

us to the conclusion that

the

human

imagination

is the

only

source

of enchantment'.30

Modern enchantments

are

enjoyed

as constructs

in

which

one

can

become

immersed but not

submerged.

Rationalist

scepticism

is held

in

abeyance,

yet complete

belief

is undercut

by

an ironic

awareness

that

one is

holding scepticism

at

bay.

Cultural

pessimists

have

frequently criticized mass culture as a form of false consciousness or dismissed

it as

a

pernicious

escape

from

reality.

While both

of these

positions

can have

a

measure of

truth,

depending

on the situations

they

discuss,

neither

takes into

account

the

buffering

roles

of

animistic reason

and the

ironic

imagination,

which

inhibit

complete

acceptance

or

acquiescence

into

any particular

cultural

con-

struct.

This rational

and ironic

stance

distinguishes

modern enchantment

from

earlier

forms

of enchantment:

the

distinction,

as we shall

now

see,

between

Conan

Doyle's premodern

belief

in

preternatural

fairies,

and his readers'

mod-

ern,

ironic

belief

in

the

fictional Sherlock

Holmes.

I

Many

of

the

early

readers

of the Sherlock Holmes

stories assumed that

the author

must share

those attributes

that made Holmes so

quintessentially

modern:

his

secularism,

his

rationalism,

his

scepticism.

But from

an

early age Doyle

had

expressed

ambivalence

about

modernity.

He had

been raised as

a

Catholic

and

educated

by

Jesuits,

but

as a

young

man he renounced

Catholicism and

gravi-

tated toward

the rationalist and

positivist

stance

of

his medical

school instructors

at the

University

of

Edinburgh.

Yet he

was

not comfortable with modern atheism

and materialism either; his disenchantment with these aspects of modernity, and

dissatisfaction with

agnosticism,

led

him to

explore spiritualism beginning

in

1886,

a

year

before

he

wrote the first Holmes

story.

His

spiritualist

convictions

increased over the

decades,

and he announced his

full-fledged

conversion to

spiritualism

in

I9I7

(before

either his son or his brother

were

killed in

the Great

War).

The

Holmes stories reflect

Doyle's

ambivalence about

modernity.

Twentieth-

century

critics often

argue

that Holmes's continued

popularity

is

partly

due to

the

nostalgic

vision of the late Victorian

era

the

stories

convey:

T. S.

Eliot,

for

example,

claimed

that 'Sherlock Holmes reminds us always of the pleasant

30

Richard

Rorty,

Times

Literary

Supplement,

Dec.

i999,

p.

II.

607




11/25

MICHAEL

SALER

externals of

nineteenth-century

London',31

and

Vincent

Starrett

wrote that

Holmes and

Watson

'still

live ... in a

nostalgic

country

of

the

mind: where it

is

always I895

.32

But

aside from

the

occasional

reference to a

cozy

fire in

the

hearth

or buttered toast on the table at 22IB Baker Street,

Doyle's

stories tend to

emphasize

the

unpleasant

rather

than

pleasant

externals of

nineteenth-century

London. In

the

first

Holmes

tale,

'A

study

in

scarlet',

London

is

described

by

Watson as

'that

great cesspool'

and

'the

great

wilderness';

other

descriptions

of

the urban

environment focus

on dank

fog,

murky

clouds,

'mud-colored

streets',

'dingy

streets

and

dreary byways',

and

so on.33 In

'The

sign

of

four'

the

externals

remain the

same: in

London

the

'mud colored

clouds

dropped

sadly

over the

muddy

streets.

Down the

Strand the

lamps

were but

misty splotches

of

diffused

light

which

threw

a

feeble,

circular

glimmer

upon

slimy pavement.'34

Once

you

start to notice this trend, which continues through the series, it is difficult to

imagine

'pleasant

externals'

in

the

London of

Doyle's

imagination.

Twentieth-

century

critics have

projected

their

own

nostalgia

for

a

distant era on

to the

stories

-

an

important

reason

for Holmes's

popularity, particularly

during

the

troubled

thirties

-

but the

stories themselves

depict

the

squalor

and

anomie of

modern

urban existence.

Doyle's

ambivalence

is

also reflected in

the

character

of

Holmes,

who

is

as

much

a

victim

of

modern reason as he

is,

in

Watson's

words,

'the most

perfect

reasoning

and

observing

machine

that the world has

seen'.35 Holmes

is

often

trapped

in

the iron

cage

of

reason: the banal

routine

of

modern life

bores

him,

and at times he resorts to cocaine

for stimulation. As he tells

Watson

in

'The

wisteria

lodge',

'Life is

commonplace,

the

papers

are

sterile;

audacity

and

romance seem to have

passed

for ever

from

the criminal world.

'3

Yet when

an

interesting

case does

arrive,

Holmes

snaps

out of his

lethargy:

mystery

has been

restored to the

world,

however

briefly,

and as Holmes

notes,

'mystery

... stimu-

lates the

imagination'37

and restores romance to the world. But this is

a

modern

form of romance

in

which

reason

provides

the

magic,

and indeed Holmes's

use

of reason is so

uncannily

effective

that

Watson

remarks,

'You

would

certainly

have been

burned,

had

you

lived

a few

centuries

ago.'3

In

the Holmes

stories,

rationality

is the

problem,

but it is also the solution.

Doyle

was not

satisfied with the

romance of

reason,

however. He

grew

tired

of Holmes

and tried to end

the series

in

I893

by having

Holmes and his

arch-

nemesis

Professor

Moriarty plunge

into the Reichenbach

Falls. Public

demand

and a

very

lucrative

contract from

his

publisher,

however,

led

Doyle

to revive

Holmes

a decade later.

But

Doyle

never

had

many good

words

to

say

about

his

most famous

character,

and believed

that his most

lasting

novels would be

his

31

Shreffler, ed.,

Baker

Street,

p.

17.

32

Vincent

Starrett,

The

private

ife of

Sherlock

Holmes

(New

York,

I933),

p.

93.

33

Doyle,

The

Complete

herlock

Holmes,

pp.

I5-86.

34

Ibid.,

p.

98.

35

Ibid.,

p.

i6i.

36

T. S.

Blakeney,

Sherlock

Holmes:fact orfiction London,

I932),

p.

126.

37

Doyle,

The

Complete

herlock

Holmes,

p.

37.

38

Ibid.,

p.

I62.

608




12/25

'CLAP

IF YOU

BELIEVE0

medieval

romances

The

White

Company

nd Sir

Jigel.

Doyle

was not

simply

bored

with

Holmes,

as he himself

maintained;

rather,

Holmes's

ambivalences

about

the

modern

world

were

those

of

his

creator,

but Holmes's

solution

-

the use of

reason

to

re-enchant

the world - was not one that

Doyle

found

possible.

Like Holmes,

Doyle

had

been

trained

to be

analytical

and

sceptical,

but unlike Holmes

(as

far

as

we

can

tell),

Doyle

had also been

brought

up

in a

religious

environment,

and

he continued

to crave

the

unambiguous

certainties,

along

with the

traditional

mysteries,

that

religion

provided.

Thus

Doyle

converted

to the faith

of

spiritual-

ism

in

1917,

and

in

I920 eagerly

accepted

the

photographic

evidence of

fairies:

'these

little

folks

... will

become

familiar',

he

proclaimed

in his article

for

The

Strand.

The

recognition

of

their

existence

will

jolt

the material

twentieth-century

mind

out

of its

heavy

ruts

in

the

mud,

and

will make it admit

that there

is

a

glamour and a mystery to life.'39 But Doyle's belief in fairies and supernatural

spirits,

a

premodern

form

of

enchantment,

no

longer

had a future.

Instead,

many

of

his readers

believed

in Sherlock

Holmes

as a

way

to re-enchant

the

modern

world

without

rejecting

the secular

and

sceptical

tenets

of

modernity.

II

Many

readers of

the Holmes

stories

no doubt

took

them

as little

more than

entertaining

fictions,

but

Holmes also

found readers

who believed

in his existence

from

his earliest

appearance.

After the

second Holmes

story

was

published

in

1890,

Doyle

wrote

to

his

editor,

surprised

that

'a ... tobacconist

actually

wrote

to

me

under cover

to

you,

to

ask me

where he could

get

a

copy

of the

monograph

in

which

Sherlock

Holmes described

the difference

in

the

ashes of

I40

different

types

of tobacco'.40

There were

two

types

of Holmes believers:

the

'naive believer'

and

the 'ironic believer'.

Let me

take each

in turn.

The naive believer

genuinely

believed

that Holmes and Watson

were real.

The

press

had

field

days reporting

on

these naive

believers,

who wrote letters

to

Holmes

requesting

his

assistance or scoured

Baker Street

looking

for his residence.

Doyle

received

numerous letters

addressed to

Holmes,

as

did

the

magazines

that

ran the stories.41 Some responded coyly to their earnest enquirers; in 1892 the

penny weekly

Tit-Bits

remarked,

'Buttons

wishes to know whether

Sherlock

Holmes,

the detective

genius

... is

or

is

not an actual

person.

We cannot

positively

say

...

[I]f...

we should find that

no such

person

is

in

existence,

we shall then

39

Doyle,

The

comingof

the

fairies,

p.

32.

Doyle's

Uncle

Richard

was a famous

illustrator,

who

was

known for

his

depictions

of

fairies;

his

father, Charles,

had

also been interested

in

fairy

lore,

and drew

fairies while

he

was confined to

a

sanitarium.

Arthur Conan

Doyle's

willingness

to believe

in

fairies

may thus have had personal as well as spiritual origins. See Martin Booth, The doctor, hedetective, nd

Arthur

Conan

Doyle:

a

biography f

ArthurConan

Doyle (London,

I997),

p.

321.

40

Green,

ed.,

The Sherlock

Holmes

letters,

p.

4.

41

The General Post Office continued to receive

letters for Holmes

through

the

I950s.

Booth,

The

Doctor,

p.

I II.

609




13/25

be

very

much

disappointed

indeed.'42

(Although

a note

of

exasperation

could

also be detected

in the

editor's

comments,

as

in the

following

to reader

'H.L.':

'It is not true that Oliver Wendell Holmes was the father of

Sherlock

Holmes;

as

a matter of fact, they were not related at all.

')43

Interestingly, the press identified

many

of

these

naive believers as

foreigners,

perhaps reflecting

unease

with the

idea that British common sense could

in

practice

be so uncommon.

In

1926

a

leader

in

The Timesnoted that

In

certain

backward

ountries,

t

is

said,

full obituaries

of

the

great

Sherlockwere

published

as

of

a real

man;

and those

who

spent any

time

on

the Continent about

twenty yearsago

may

recall

seeing

... what seemed to

be whole librariesof

apocryphal

Holmes

literature,

not

by

any

means

translations,

ut

the free creations

of

a

mythological ancy,

rather ike the

Eastern

egends

of Alexander

the Great.44

And

in

1930

one

writer

to The

Timesobserved that

'thousands of

people'

believed

Holmes was

real,

citing

among

the thousands

the Turks

in

Constantinople.45

But

press reports

of naive

believers

were

not

simply

an instance of

Orientalism;

in

I937

The Times also

enjoyed reporting

about

an

elderly

Danish

couple

who

had

written

a

respectful

letter

to Holmes

requesting

financial assistance.46

The naive belief

in

Sherlock

Holmes

can be

explained

in

part by

the

dynamics

of

mass

publishing

and the

beginnings

of

celebrity

culture

in the i88os and

I89os.

The Holmes stories

quickly

garnered

a wide

readership

among

an

increasingly

literate

population.

Doyle's

own talents

as

an

author,

and

Holmes's distinctive-

ness as a character, were of course central to the popularity of the series. Several

commentators

stressed

how lifelike

Holmes was

in

comparison

with

the

detectives

of

Edgar

Allan

Poe and

Emile

Gaboriau,

or

of

Doyle's

contemporary

imitators.47

Doyle

also

maximized

the size

of

his avid audience

by

writing

the

continuing

adventures

of

his

character

as self-contained

short

stories

rather

than serial

chapters,

enabling

new

readers to

become

involved

with

Holmes

at

any point

in the run

of

stories,

and established

readers

to

become

eager

anticipators

of

his

next

adventures.

George

Newnes,

the

publisher

of The

Strandand

Tit-Bits,

promoted

the

Holmes

stories

vigorously

in both

mass circulation

magazines.

While TheStrand, n which the Holmes short stories first appeared,

was aimed

at

a middle-class

audience,

the

penny-weekly

Tit-Bits

extended

Doyle's

readership

into

the

working

classes.

Tit-Bits

reprinted

the Holmes

stories

after

they appeared

in The

Strand,

and

published

editorial

material

implying

Holmes

was

real,

as well

as

frequent

references

to,

contests

about,

and

parodies

of

the

stories.

In

addition,

Holmes

received

enormous

media

exposure

both

when

Doyle

tried

to end

the

series

by

killing

him

in

1893,

and when

Doyle

bowed to

public

pressure

and

brought

Holmes

back

in

I902.

Holmes was

also

one

of the first characters

to

become

ubiquitous

through

being

taken

up

by

all

the new mass

media.

He

was

42

Green,

ed.,

The Sherlock

Holmes

letters,

p.

64.

43

Tit-Bits,

27 (27

Oct.

1894),

p.

67.

44

Green,

ed.,

The Sherlock

Holmes

letters,

pp.

143-4.

45

Ibid.,

p.

148.

46

Ibid.,

pp.

173-4.

47

See,

for

example,

'Some

inconsistencies

of

Sherlock

Holmes',

Bookman,

14 (1902),

p.

446;

Christopher

Morley,

'Notes

on

Baker

Street',

Saturday

eview,

8

(28Jan.

1939),

p.

12.

6TO MICHAEl.

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14/25

'CLAP IF

YOU

BELIEVE'

visually

recognizable through Sidney Paget's

remarkable

illustrations

n

The

Strand;

Doyle

said

of

Paget

'he illustrated

the stories

so well that he made

a

type

whichthe whole

English-reading

ace came to

recognize'.48

He also

became

recognizable hroughWilliamGillette'sportrayalof him in a very popularstage

dramatization hat toured

America

and Britain

at the turn

of the

century, hrough

numerous short films that

appeared by

the

mid-twenties,

and

through

radio

dramatizationsas well

as

feature-length

ilms

in the

thirties.

Thus

Holmes

became

a

media

celebrity

n

his own

right,

in a

period

when

the

culture of

celebrity

was

new and not

yet fully

understood.The

synergistic

effect

of all

this attention

devoted to Holmes

may

have

encouraged

less

sophisticated

readers o

approach

the storiesas

non-fictional

ratherthan

fictional.

AsJonathan

Rose has

noted,

working-class

eaders

who were

used to

interpreting

he

Bible

literallymight also approachsecular iterature n the same manner if they were

not familiar

with

diverse forms of

writing,

and

'[e]ven

into

the

early

twentieth

century, many

older

working people

had

not

learned

a

different

method of

reading'.

(The

son of

one such

reader

recalledwhat

happened

when

his mother

read Tom

ones:

She

believed

every

word of it

and could

not

conceive

how

a

man

could sit

down and

invent the

story

... out of

his

head.

)49

Doyle

wrote

the

stories

in a

realist

style,

with

allusions

o

contemporary

vents and

earlier

case-histories';

readers who

were

unused to

distinguishing

among

different

modes of

writing

might

easily

have fallen

nto

the

trap

of

believing

Dr

Watson's

compelling,

factual'

narratives.50

Indeed,

Doyle

was one

of several

prominent

writers

of the

fin-de-siecle

ho

reacted

against

the

dominance

of

literary

realism

by

artfully

combining

the em-

piricism

and

apparent

objectivity

of

the

realistswith

the

imaginative

abulations

of

the

early

nineteenth-century

omantics.

Following

the

precedents

set

by

Edgar

Allan

Poe

andJules

Verne,

writers ike

Doyle,

H.

Rider

Haggard,

Robert

Louis

Stevenson,

Rudyard

Kipling,

Bram

Stoker,

H. G.

Wells,

and

others

clothed

their

fantastic

tales

in

the

guise

of

realism,

creating

the

genre

of the

New

Romance.51

48

Orel,

ed.,

SirArthur

onan

Doyle,

p. 79.

49Jonathan

Rose,

The ntellectual

ife

of

theBritish

working

lasses

New

Haven,

2001),

p.

97.

5

Editors

could

deliberately

efface

the

distinction

between

'fact'

and

'fiction' in

order

to

attract

readers;

at

other

times

sensationalist

iction

and

reportage

were

juxtaposed

within

the

same

journal

or

newspaper.

For

examples

of the

blurring

between

sesational

iction

and

sensational

reportage

n

the

I86os,

see

Deborah

Wynne,

The

ensation

ovel

nd

he

Victorianfamily

agazine

New

York,

200o).

And in

Britain,

at

least,

public

education in

the

years

immediately

after

the

i870

Education

Act

did

not

necessarily

rain

students o

distinguish

among

different

genres

of

writing.

David

Vincent

argues

that

at this

time

the

schools

tended to

provide

students

with 'an

acquaintance

with

literacy

ratherthan

an

effective

command'.

David

Vincent,

Literacy

ndpopular

ulture:

ngland,

75o-I9i4

(Cambridge,

1989),

p.

90.

51

Some

critics,

such as

Patrick

Brantlinger,

have

argued

that

this

genre

was a

reaction

against

realism

and

returnto

the

Gothic.

But,

as

Nicholas

Daly

notes in

his

rebuttal

o

this

line of

argument,

this

was

not

how

contemporary

critics

envisaged

it,

a

finding

my

own

research

supports.

Patrick

Brantlinger,

The

reading

esson:

he

hreat

f

mass

iteracy

n

nineteenth-century

ritishfiction

Bloomington,

1998),

pp.

I71-209;

Nicholas

Daly,

Modernism,

omance

nd

thefin

de

siecle:

popularfiction

nd

British

ulture,

i880-i9I4

(Cambridge,

I999),

p. I2.

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15/25

MICHAEL

SALER

To

contemporaries,

these

new works

appeared

to

redress the

sense

of

pessimism

expressed by

scientific and

literary

naturalism

during

the

last third

of the

century.

'The

world is

disenchanted',

wrote the

critic

Andrew

Lang

in

an

i887

sonnet

about Haggard's She (1887). But, he continued, it can become re-enchanted

through imaginative

leaps exemplified

by

Haggard's

epic.52

Writing

about

Haggard's

King

Solomon's

mines

(1885)

and

She,

the

critic W. E.

Henley

observed

'just

as

it was

thoroughly accepted

that there

were

no more

stories to

be

told,

that

romance

was

utterly

dried

up,

and

that

analysis

of

character ... was the

only thing

in

fiction

attractive

to

the

public,

down there came

upon

us

a

whole horde of

Zulu

divinities and

the

sempiternal

queens

of

beauty

in

the

caves

of

Kor'.53

Many

of the

works

of the

New

Romance were

themselves

spectacular

texts

for the new

age

of

the

spectacle. They

utilized the latest

advances

in

printing

technologies, such as half-tone lithography, to incorporate photographs, drawings,

diagrams,

and

maps

as a

complement

to

the authors' aim

of

imbuing

their

fantasies with an

aura

of

scientific

authenticity.54

She,

for

example,

contains

numerous footnotes

-

a mark

of

objective

scholarship

-

by

both the

narrator

and

an unnamed

'editor' to correct

or

elaborate on the

narration.

(Thus

footnote

2,

attributed

to

the

narrator,

begins

'The

Kallikrates

here referred

to

by

my

friend

was

a

Spartan, spoken

of

by

Herodotus

(Herod. Ix.72)

as

being

remarkable for his

beauty.

He

fell at

the

glorious

battle of

Plataea

(September

22,

B.C.

479).')55

The

frontispiece

of

She

s a

photograph

-

another

contemporary

indicia of truth56 of

a 'Facsimile of the Sherd

of

Amenartas',

Haggard's

invented

potsherd

that

provides

the

protagonists

with

key

information

for

their rather incredible

quest

in

search

of

She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.

Haggard

had

an

artist friend create

the

sherd,

and had three

separate

scholars insure

that

the

ancient

Greek, Latin,

and

Old

English

inscriptions

on

it

were

correct;

these were

also

presented

in

the three

languages

within

the

text

itself.57One reviewer called

She 'a

marvelously

realistic

tale

of

fantastic

adventures',

and

Blackwood's

Edinburgh

Magazine

praised Haggard

as

'the avatar of

the old

story-teller,

with

a flavour

of

the

nineteenth

century

and scientific

explanation'.58

In

these

ways,

the

New

Romance facilitated the

exercise

of animistic

reason,

in

which

imaginative

explorations

were

grounded

in rationalist tropes, as well as the ironic imagination, which delighted in the

sober

presentation

of the

extravagant.

But the

knowing

admixture of realism and

52

Anonymous

[Andrew

Lang],

He

(London,

1887),

n.p.

53

Peter

Beresford

Ellis,

H.

Rider

Haggard:

a

voicefrom

he

infinite London,

1978),

p.

II9.

54

Neil

Harris,

'Iconography

and intellectual

history:

the

halftone

effect',

in Neil

Harris,

Cultural

excursions:

marketing

ppetites

nd

cultural astes

n modern

America

Chicago,

I990),

pp.

304-17.

55

H. Rider

Haggard,

She

(London,

1887),

p.

0o.

56

For a discussion

on

how

photography

was

used

as evidence

by

the

Victorians,

see

Jennifer

Tucker,

'Photography

as

witness,

detective,

and

imposter:

visual

representation

in Victorian

science',

in Bernard

Lightman,

ed.,

Victorian cience n

context

(Chicago,

I997),

pp.

378-408.

57

Ellis,

H. Rider

Haggard,

p.

Io8.

58

Morton

Cohen,

RiderHaggard:

his

life

and works

London,

1960),

pp.

102-I6.

6I2




16/25


17/25

The writers were some

of

the most

prominent figures

in

Britain and

America,

including

journalists

like Desmond

MacCarthy

and

Christopher

Morley,

novelists

like

Dorothy Sayers

and Vincent

Starrett,

academics

likeJacques

Barzun,

broad-

casters like Elmer Davis, and businessmen like Edgar Smith, the vice-chairman

of General Motors.

In

I934

Sherlock Holmes Societies were

formed

on both sides

of

the

Atlantic,

to

pursue

these

studies and to celebrate the

memory

of the

greatest

detective

who ever 'lived'.

Morley,

during

his tenure as an editor at the

Saturday

Review,

used

the

weekly journal

to

promote

this conceit to

a wide audience.

The

aspect

of Holmes

that made

him into a

modern

icon for

all

those who

professed

belief

in

him,

to whatever

degree,

was that

he re-enchanted

modernity

without

compromising

the central tenets

of

modernity:

rationalism, secularism,

urbanism,

mass

consumerism.

He made reason

magical,

the

prosaic

poetic.

He

believed that every detail of modern life, ranging from the footprints of a giant

hound

to advertisements

in

mass

circulation

newspapers,

was

charged

with

meaning.64

By

I920,

Doyle

no

longer

believed

that;

only

the existence

of the

supernatural

could

imbue

modernity

with

enchantment.

But

Holmes,

and

the

conventions

of the

mystery

genre

he

stood

for,

could

assuage

the

modern

craving

for the

magical

without

ever

reverting

to

the

supernatural.

In

a

1942

interview

Jacques

Barzun

stated,

'We

believe

in Holmes

because

he

believes

in science

and

we

do too.'65

But

Holmes's

science

of observation

was not

the same

as

positivistic

science.

It re-enchanted

the world

by

imbuing everything

with

hidden

import.

Holmes

demonstrated

that

profane

reality

could be

no less

mysterious

or

alluring

than

the

supernatural

realm;

the

material

world was

laden

with

occult

significance,

which

could be

revealed

to

those

with

an observant

eye

and

logical

outlook.

When

Watson

remarks

that

Holmes

has

made deductions

based on clues

'quite

invisible

to

me',

Holmes

replies

in

exasperation,

'not invisible

but

unnoticed,

Watson.

You

did not

know

where to

look,

and so

you

missed

all

that was

important.

I

can

never

bring you

to

realize the

importance

of

sleeves,

the

suggestiveness

of

thumb-nails,

or the

great

issues

that

may hang

from

a boot-lace.'66

While

Holmes

is

obviously

gifted

in his

powers

of

observation,

the

implication

of the tales

is that

such

skills

can be

practised

by anyone. In 'The red-headed league', this democratic message

is

made

explicit.

The client

of this

tale

is

initially

dumbfounded

when

Holmes

scrutinizes

him

and determines

that

the

man has

engaged

in manual

labour,

takes

snuff,

is

a

Freemason,

has visited

China,

and has

recently

done

a

great

deal

of

writing.

Holmes

then

explains

how

he deduced

each

point

from

the

man's

appearance,

and

the

client

is

pleasantly

surprised

at the

apparent

simplicity

of

the

detective's

methods:

'I

thought

at first that

you

had done

something

clever,

but

I

see

that

there

was

nothing

in

it,

after

all.' The

client reveals his

ignorance,

of

64

Franco

Moretti

suggests

that

Doyle's

detective

stories

may

have become

canonical,

unlike those

of

his

rivals,

because

of

Doyle's

novel

emphasis

on

the

use of

clues in the narrative. Franco

Moretti,

'The

slaughterhouse

of

literature',

Modem

Language

Quarterly,

i

(2000),

pp.

207-27.

65

Shreffler, ed.,

Baker

Street,

p.

26.

66

Doyle,

The

complete

herlock

Holmes,

p.

I96.

614

MICHAELT SALER




18/25

'CLAP

IF YOU

BELIEVE'

615

course,

since Holmes

is

supremely

clever,

but readers

could nevertheless

share

his

delight

that the method

is

accessible

to the common individual.

Watson's

occasional

successes in its

practice

are further confirmations

of this

enchanting

notion.

G. K.

Chesterton

readily

perceived

both

this

reinscription

of

supernatural

glamour

into the

profane

world,

and the

democratic

implications

of the

mystery

genre

Doyle helped

establish. A fan of

the

great

detective,

Chesterton

argued

in

I9OI

that

mysteries

were

the

modern

equivalent

of

fairy-tales

that

encouraged

ordinary

readers to

perceive

marvels

in the

commonplace:

No one can have

failed to notice

that in these stories

the

hero or the

investigator

crosses

London with

something

of the loneliness

and

liberty

of a

prince

in a

tale of

elfland,

that

in

the course of that

incalculable

ourney

the

casual omnibus

assumes he

primary

colours

of

a fairyship ... It is a good thing that the averageman shall fall into the habit of looking

imaginatively

at ten men in

the street even if

it is

only

on

the

chance that the

eleventh

might

be a

notorious

thief.67

Contemporaries

agreed

with

Chesterton,

arguing

that the

Holmes tales

should

not be

considered mere

escapism,

because

they

encouraged

readers to

emulate

Holmes's

rational

scrutiny

of

everyday

life.

Writing

to

Tit-Bits

in

1894,

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