Sherlock Holmes In America

Adair.

Then something entirely miraculous happens. Holmes and Watson are restored to their old rooms in Baker Street, which despite fire and gunshots are found to be in essentially pristine condition, maintained by Mycroft Holmes and Mrs. Hudson, with “all the old landmarks in their places,” including the chemical corner, the acid- stained table, the scrapbooks, the violin, the pipe rack, and the Persian slipper.

And Holmes’s encyclopedia of biographies, where in addition to Morgan the poisoner, Merridew of abominable memory, and Matthews, who knocked out one of Holmes’s teeth, we find Colonel Sebastian Moran, London-born son of Sir Augustus Moran, the former British Minister to-Persia.

By now, it’s clear that the combination of murder and magic, so quintessentially Celtic, is powerfully at play here. Like Conan Doyle himself, Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran have a patina of Britishness to overlay their Irishness, but Hibernianism in the blood can take the strangest forms, and in this case it took the form of two respectable “Englishmen” who were, of course, really disguised Irishmen. Exactly like Conan Doyle himself.

And so we come to His Last Bow, that moody, mysterious and moving ave atque vale, written in the third person-as if by Conan Doyle himself-in which all of the Literary Agent’s obsessions can at last be viewed in full flower. Secret identities. Irishness as a marker of betrayal. A false identity, as false as that of “Birdy Edwards” during the Pinkerton man’s undercover work in Vermissa Valley. Holmes learned American gangland slang in Chicago, joined an Irish secret society in Buffalo, and got into trouble with the constabulary in Skibbereen as he polished his anti-English credentials. Then (in collusion with Martha, the ever-faithful Mrs. Hudson), he sprang the trap on the German spy, von Bork. And when the imperious kraut vows vengeance, how does Holmes respond? “The old sweet song. How often have I heard it in days gone by”-an allusion to the famous American popular chanson written by the Irish-American James L. Molloy in 1884, “Love’s Old Sweet Song.”

Says Holmes: “It was a favorite ditty of the late lamented Professor Moriarty. Colonel Sebastian Moran has also been known to warble it. And yet I live and keep bees upon the South Downs.”

And yet I live. Keep that in mind. We’ll come back to it in our final peroration. And what identity, of all possible identities, does the master of disguise, the man who could impersonate stable hand and wizened bookseller alike, employ? An Irishman. An Irish-American.

An Irish-American named Altamont. As in Charles Altamont Doyle.

Sir Arthur’s father.

The pinnacle of Sherlock Holmes’s career-his greatest service to England-comes as an Irish-American named “Altamont.”

In this valedictory, in which Holmes utters the memorable lines: “Stand with me here upon the terrace…” Conan Doyle sums up all his ambivalence about his own nature and his own family, and seems to reconcile it at the very end. Holmes and Watson, together for the last time, with the proximate enemy, von Bork, vanquished, but an east wind coming, an east wind such as never blew on England yet. God’s own wind… And then, embarrassed by this most un-British display of sentiment, Holmes turns his attention to von Bork’s check for five hundred pounds and rushes off to the bank to cash it before the Kaiser can stop payment on it.

Thus does Holmes’s quintessential Englishness assert itself.

And yet I live. Why does Holmes say this, at this particular moment, and in this particular context? Why would he not live? After all, many years before, he had vanquished Professor Moriarty with his knowledge of baritsu, and dodged Colonel Moran’s rocks and avoided his exploding bullet. By the time of His Last Bow, on the very eve of World War I, Holmes had survived every attempt on his life, every battle, every boxing match, Dr. Roylott’s swamp adder in The Speckled Band, even Tonga’s poisoned dart in The Sign of the Four.

On the eve of World War I… when just across the Irish Sea a storm was gathering that would culminate with the Harp flying, however briefly, above the G.P.O. in Dublin…

When both the British Empire and Conan Doyle himself stood, however unknowingly, not on the terrace but upon the precipice, into which both would soon hurtle. As Britain would lose her Empire, Conan Doyle would lose his faith, and embrace spiritualism; the father of the ultra-rationalist, “no ghosts need apply” Sherlock Holmes, would not only reject the faith of his fathers, he would embrace a far older and more primal faith: the faith in the spirit world.

The faith of the ancient Celts, who could cross over between the dark land of Mordor and the living.

Who knew that Life and Death were and are two sides of the same coin, inevitably twinned, not to be feared but embraced as a necessary duality. Like sun and moon. And: Male and female.

Which brings us to the last and most important story link in our chain: The Sign of the Four.

In which Holmes and Watson meet another “mor” character. Who turns out to be Holmes’s deadliest enemy.

Mary Morstan.

Or, as she was briefly known, Mrs. John H. Watson.

Whose pivotal, vital, and indispensable role in the Canon is not sufficiently understood or remarked upon. For if Sherlock as “Altamont” was a partial salvation of Conan Doyle’s father, can it not be said of Mary that she is nothing less than “the Mam”?

Moriarty, Moran, Morstan. From Holmes’s point of view, the three greatest challenges of his career, each one inextricably linked by ethnicity and etymology. Moriarty and Moran we have already considered. Let us now turn our attention to the formidable Miss Morstan.

The literary parallel between her and Colonel Moran should be obvious. He was an officer in the Indian Army; her father was an officer in the Indian Army. Their names are, in fact, nearly identical, and indeed “Morstan”-with its wonderful frisson of implicit death-is anagrammatical for “St. Moran.” Thus, Mary Morstan is the “good side” of Colonel Moran.

Holmes, however, takes an instant dislike to her. When at the conclusion of The Sign of the Four Watson announces their engagement, Holmes coldly tells his Boswell that he cannot congratulate him. For Holmes has instantly sensed an enemy, however innocuous she might appear, and realizes, with the chill wind of death blowing past him in the shape of Tonga’s dart, that the world will not be able to contain both him and Miss Morstan.

One of them will have to die.

Now, it may be objected that Mary Morstan is not Irish. Apparently born in India, her mother dead, she is sent to school in Edinburgh (much like Watson himself, who was packed off to boarding school in the Scottish capital as a youth), and later comes down to London. But consider the evidence:

1. Her Christian name is Mary, the most common Irish name for a girl. Conan Doyle’s own mother was named Mary.

2. By her own admission, she has no relatives in England.

3. She goes to school in Edinburgh, with its large Irish population.

4. She earns her living as a governess, a standard occupation in England for an unmarried Irish girl.

5. She is described by Watson-a man who boasts of great experience with women-as blonde with pale skin and large blue eyes: typical physiognomy of the west of Ireland, with its heavy Viking influence.

6. While the name Morstan is unusual, there is a district in County Down, near Belfast, called Morstan Park.

It’s very likely, therefore, that Captain Arthur Morstan-interesting choice of a first name-was born in Northern Ireland (there’s the Home Rule problem again), raised in Edinburgh, joined the Indian Army, not the regular Army (which might indicate that he was a Catholic, not a Protestant). In charge of a convict settlement in the Andaman Islands-a fit duty station for an Irishman, perhaps, but not an Englishman-he later dies of heart attack brought on by an attack of furious temper.

When Watson marries Mary Morstan, Holmes’s world is shattered. Other than scorn, he has no way to fight back. With Dr. Roylott, he could unbend the poker; with Moriarty, he could jiu-jitsu him over the side of the Reichenbach Falls; with Col. Moran, he could outsmart him and deliver him into the hands of the police.

But against Mary, he could do nothing.

And so Holmes “dies” at the conclusion of The Final Problem, the best and wisest