During his interview with the Strand in the summer of 1892, Doyle declared for the first time that the character of Sherlock Holmes was loosely based on his former university teacher Dr. Joseph Bell (1837-1911), a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (fig. 64).87 The two first met in 1877 when Doyle studied at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Also serving as Bell’s clerk at the Infirmary, Doyle had the opportunity to witness how his tutor utilised both pathognomonic and physiognomic knowledge — that is, the reading of emotions from facial expressions and the assessment of one’s character based on more lasting physical features — in medical practices. Bell’s shrewd observation, together with his abundant clinical-pathological experiences, enabled him to not only determine certain diseases from the patients’ symptoms, but also trace a man’s occupation and life through various signs displayed on the body.88
86 Doyle, Stories of Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, New York: Harper, 1904, p 14.
87 Harry How, “A Day with Dr. Conan Doyle,” in: The Strand Magazine 2, no. 8, 1982, pp. 182–188.
Not long after the interview Doyle had written to Joseph Bell, again crediting Bell as the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes in his letter, see Arthur Conan Doyle, Letter to Joseph Bell, 1892, Box B, The Stisted Bell Collection (GD16), Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Library & Archive.
88 How, “A Day with Dr. Conan Doyle,” p. 186. “I was clerk in Mr. Bell’s ward […] A clerk’s duties are to note down all the patients to be seen, and muster them together. Often I would have seventy or eighty. When everything was ready, I would show them to Mr. Bell, who would have the students gathered round him. His intuitive powers wer simply marvellous. Case No. I would step up. ‘I see,’
said Mr. Bell, ‘you’re suffering from drink. You even carry a flask in the inside breast pocket of your coat.’ Another case would come forward. ‘Cobbler, I see.’ Then he would turn to the students, and
This method of observation and deduction was later taken up by Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories, constituting the basic principles of Holmes’ reasoning logics.
Yet, it should be noted that similar deducing techniques were also practiced by doctors and scientists at the time. Besides Joseph Bell, there are in fact many other inspirational figures rumoured to be models for Doyle’s fictional sleuth. Most of them were more or less involved in the fields of science and could be related to crime investigation in some way. For example, Sir Henry Littlejohn (1826-1914), who served as a forensic scientist and police surgeon in Edinburgh, was once cited by Doyle as a contributing influence.89 A letter from Dr. Bell to the Strand’s editor Harry How in response to the magazine’s interview also proves that the method was actually familiar among the medical field:
We teachers find it useful to show the student how much a trained use of observation can discover in ordinary matters […] For instance, physiognomy helps you to nationality, accent to district, and to an educated ear, almost to county. Nearly every handicraft writes its sign manual on the hands.90
Despite the author’s frequent attribution of Joseph Bell as his primary real-life model, just like Bell himself clearly states in the response letter above, the method he exploited was never an original invention but a common practice of the age. Rather, what was special is the theatricality in his way of presentation in front of the students and patients. It was this distinctive trait that left a deep impression in Doyle’s memories and would later be inherited by Sherlock Holmes.91
While Holme’s reasoning rests ultimately upon the validity of physiognomy and its related disciplines such as phrenology and pathogonomy, these popular
point out to them that the inside of the knee of the man’s trousers was worn. That was where the man had rested the lapstone－a peculiarity only found in cobblers. All this impressed me very much. He was continually before me－his sharp, piercing grey eyes, eagle nose, and striking features. There he would sit in his chair with fingers together－and just look at the man or woman before him.”
89 Doyle, The Boys’ Sherlock Holmes: New & Enlarged Edition, New York: Harper & Row, 1961, p.
88. Littlejohn was said to collaborate with Joseph Bell in investigation for a couple of cases. Another better known inspirational figure is Leicester’s first private detective Francis “Tanky” Smith (1814-1888), who was said to be good at disguising himself during investigation, but so far no reliable historical sources can be found to prove any actual connection.
90 How, “A Day with Dr. Conan Doyle,” p. 188. Joseph Bell’s letter in reply to the credits given by Doyle was included at the end of the same interview.
91 Ian Ousby, Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press: 1976, p. 142. Correctly pointing out what was original of Joseph Bell’s presenting method, Ousby further traces back to the literary models which proved to be influential to Doyle’s character construction, notably Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Agustus Dupin and Émile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq, see pp. 142–145.
traditions are not limited solely within the said aspect and have found their way into the overall ideological framework of the entire Sherlock Holmes canon. Promoting a moral interpretation based on one’s physicality, the history of physiognomy can be traced back as early as the times of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and his mentor Plato (427-348 BC), whose treatises first sought to link corporal beauty with moral goodness.
This Greek tradition was carried on by the Italian Giambattista della Porta (1536-1615) with his De Humana Physiognomia in 1586 and had its popularity revived again in Europe by the end of the 18th century with the influential physiognomic study of the Swiss pastor Johann Kaspar Lavatar (1841-1801).92 Reintroducing the concept that specific character traits of individuals could be reflected on one’s outer appearance, Lavaterian physiognomy as a pseudo-science rode on the epoch’s tide of rapid scientific progress and later evolved with its branch phrenology, creating a common visual language in the mainstream of the 19th-century Western culture.93
According to Richard Twine, the breadth of both physiognomy and phrenology’s popularity and influence was so great that these sets of ideas were gradually intertwined into a complex interpretive framework for deciphering physicality over the course of the mid-19th century, and thus considerably expanded the realm of characterisation for the Western novelists.94 Instead of viewing the detective as a resonance of the late Victorian faith in the absolute power of logic and rationality, such premise actually opens up new possibilities to depart from the classical reading of the Sherlock Holmes stories. For instance, in her critical analysis Rosemary Jann offers a quite insightful perspective by focusing on how Doyle
92 Richard Twine, “Physiognomy, Phrenology and the Temporality of the Body,” in: Body and Society 8, no. 1, 2002, pp. 67–88. In his study Twine not only chronologically traces the historical development of physiognomy and its later conduits in phrenology, but also take into consideration the physiognomic beliefs still latent in modern society see pp. 69–70. For a brief summary of these pseudo-sciences as fixtures in the Victorian literature, see Rhonda Boshears and Harry Whitaker, “Phrenology and Physiognomy in Victorian Literature,” in: Progress in Brain Research 205, 2013, pp. 87–112. For an in-depth discussion on the significance of physiognomy in the 19th-century culture, see Lucy Hartley, Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
93 Twine, “Physiognomy, Phrenology and the Temporality of the Body,” p. 72. Notice that the impact of physiognomy and phrenology was not restricted in Europe as there were also many publications regarding the same subjects printed and distributed in the States during the 19th century. For instance, Illustrated Physiognomy (1879) by a certain Professor A.E. Willis was reprinted in several editions and widely circulated around the country at the time.
94 Ibid., pp. 72–73.
attempts to reassure the existing social codes in the Victorian society and justify the particular social order they imply through his narrative manipulation.95
“The myth of rationality that Doyle constructs”, Jann eloquently argues,
“relies heavily on the posited but seldom tested validity of indexical codes of body and behaviour,” and Holmes’s deduction — or abduction, to be more precise — is impeccable only because Doyle has already casted the mould for the sleuth to perfectly fill in “the clay of facts.”96 A potent reader of social codes, Sherlock Holmes then becomes a powerful medium for Doyle’s ideological investments, which rely heavily on his exploitation of the ethnic and class stereotypes in his times.97 A look into his characterisation of the villains in the stories may reveal such implantation of personal ideas. In both his patriotic support of the Empire and attempt to reaffirm the British national identity, Doyle sought to shape the foreign entities in his narratives into the dangerous Other.98
Fermented by racial physiognomy popular at the time, Doyle’s latent elaboration of scientific racism seems to establish a rule that evil comes from the outside, and exposure under the foreign influence are likely to bring corruption, both physically and morally. As in the case of Dr. Grimsby Roylott in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (1892), his stay in India is deemed as the cause for his violence of temper, which had been “intensified by his long residence in the tropics,” while his appearance also bears marks of corruption from the East:
A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the other of us, while his deep-set, bile-shot eyes, and his high, thin, fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old bird of prey.99
The frequent association of the foreign lands, particularly the East, with rather derogatory terms suggests an intended contrast between the so-called Victorian purity and the foreign contamination.
95 Rosemary Jann, “Sherlock Holmes Codes the Social Body,” in: ELH 58, no. 3, 1990, pp. 685–708.
96 Ibid., pp. 686, 688.
97 Ibid., pp. 691–693.
98 Erica Foss, “The Villain as Other: Foreign Criminals in Victorian Literature,” Heroes and Villains Conference, Oxford, September 2011.
99 Doyle, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, p. 114.
For more similar examples, see Foss, “The Villain as Other: Foreign Criminals in Victorian Literature,” pp. 3–6.
If the criminals are shaped as the dangerous foreigners, Sherlock Holmes then is the epitome of the quintessential Englishman. A thinker and a man of action who is able to reconcile reason with passion in his “scientific use of the imagination” and strong interests for “the fantastic,” Holmes embodies many qualities that are considered the essence of an ideal British gentleman.100 Although Doyle’s portrayal of the sleuth, as seen from John Watson’s eyes, provides the readers with a strong and attractive persona, the canonical descriptions of Sherlock Holmes in fact impart few visual clues to the detective’s actual appearance.
Reading carefully into John Watson’s famous description of his immediate impression on Sherlock Holmes when the two first meet at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in A Study in Scarlet (1887), one may find Holmes’ aquiline features and the character traits which follow accordingly are actually typical phrases commonly used to describe intelligent and strong-willed personas in the physiognomic conventions in Victorian literature.101 “Hawk-like nose” or “the prominence and squareness” of his chin, all these descriptive details of Holmes’ contour, in spite of their seemingly concreteness on first impression, are ambiguous in nature and often subject to personal perceptions. It would then be more concise to deem Doyle’s text as the bones that construct readers’ abstract perception of Sherlock Holmes’ personality, and Sidney Paget’s illustrations bestow the flesh on this immortal figure, giving the character a corporeal presence in people’s mind.
From whom did Paget draw inspirations for the detective’s facial features and physique have always been a heated subject among Holmesian scholars and fans.
Vivid anecdotes have been told and passed on from generation to generation, and amid these twirls of stories one particularly popular conjecture has arisen. That
100 Doyle, “The Hound of Baskervilles,” The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, p 362. “Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel.”;
“The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” p. 108. “In glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none common place; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend toward the unusual, and even the fantastic.”
101 It is also quite possible that Doyle had been influenced by some physiognomic treatises such as George Jabet’s 1852 satirical physiognomy work, in which aquiline noses are described to indicate
“great decision, considerable energy, firmness, an absence of refinement and disregard for the bienséances of life.” See George Jabet, Notes on Noses, London: Richard Bentley, 1852, p. 9.
Sherlock Holmes was modelled after Walter Paget (1863-1935), the illustrator’s younger brother, is a hypothesis almost accepted as truth nowadays (fig. 65).
In his autobiography Memoirs and Adventures, Doyle once refers to Walter Paget as the visual model chosen by the artist, though he somewhat expostulating about Walter being more “handsome” than the Sherlock Holmes he originally conceptualised.102 Whether true or not, Doyle’s testimony clearly shows that such belief has become a firmly established consensus among not only the readers but also the people who were close to the artist. Surely with this idea in mind one could hardly overlook the striking resemblance the younger Paget bore with the everlasting detective. Though the eldest Paget brother Henry (1856-1936) had eventually denied such ungrounded supposition, the public kept circulating the speculation with conviction.103 Even the artist’s own daughter took a part in creating this myth with her reminiscences of her uncle Walter being called Sherlock Holmes in public.104
Perhaps it is the irony that Walter, the original candidate for the illustrator, became the model himself playing its trick to fuel this frenzy. In the end, every available account remains unverifiable. Yet the point is never about truth or fiction. It is about how to make believe — to break that boundary between fiction and reality, to lure the readers into the grey area and fascinate them with an imagined world paradoxically built upon logic and reason. This attempt to make believe is especially ostensible when one interprets the Strand’s editorial choice on the Paget brothers’
“journalistic” style as a conscious strategy to integrate fictional narratives with actual reports of events, and the same strategy also applies to the periodical’s text, thus reinforcing the intended confusion.
102 Doyle, Memoirs and Adventures, p. 90. “He had, as I imagined him, a thin razor-like face, with a great hawks-bill of a nose, and two small eyes, set close together on either side of it. Such was my conception. It chanced, however, that poor Sidney Paget who, before his premature death, drew all the original pictures, had a younger brother whose name, I think, was Walter, who served him as a model.
The handsome Walter took the place of the more powerful but uglier Sherlock, and perhaps from the point of view of my lady readers it was as well.”
103 According to the1912 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the elder Paget brother Henry strongly denied this conjecture, claiming “the assertion that the artist's brother Walter, or any other person, served as model for the portrait of Sherlock Holmes is incorrect.” Cited from Andrzej Diniejko,
“Sidney Paget, the Artist Who Illustrated the Sherlock Holmes Stories,” in: The Victorian Web, accessed on December 2nd, 2014. http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/pagets/introduction.html
104 Pound refers to this particular anecdote provided by Sidney Paget’s daughter, Winifred Paget, see Pound, “Enter Sherlock Holmes,” p. 42. “His daughter Winifred remembers that when her uncle Walter attended a recital at what is now Wigmore Hall, London, ‘as he walked to his seat, a woman in the audience exclaimed: Why, there’s Sherlock Holmes!’”
The mechanism here is twofold. First, these Sherlock Holmes narratives consequently start to question the stories’ authenticity. The other mixing of fiction and reality lies in the Strand’s ambiguous arrangement of its publishing materials, by which fictional narratives and articles on real facts are intertwined and amalgamated without clear distinction and order.