Sherlock Holmes - Ch. 1: A Scandal in Bohemia

[Chris OConnor]

Sherlock Holmes - Ch. 1: A Scandal in Bohemia

Please use this thread to discuss the above-referenced chapter of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You're also welcome to create your own threads if what you'd like to say doesn't necessarily pertain to a particular chapter.

[Robert Tulip]

Conan Doyle begins A Scandal in Bohemia with a character portrait of Holmes as one for whom love, and all emotions, were “abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.” I am not sure how a person without emotions can be balanced, but there you are. Comparing emotions to “grit in a sensitive instrument” looks rather extreme, even autistic.

The powers of storytelling in this introduction deserve comment. We see the hint of a love interest, a vivid characterisation, the context of his friendship with Watson, a remarkable international public profile, all combining to energise the reader’s interest in a few deft short strokes. Despite his cocaine addiction, Holmes’ powers of intellect in solving crime remain formidable.

A Scandal in Bohemia is set in the year 1888, 136 years ago now, and so well before living memory. Even so, there is a freshness in the telling, a lack of the quaint style often associated with the grammar of the nineteenth century. The first unfamiliar word to me was ‘gasogene’, which I learn was a Victorian era device used to carbonate liquids, or to produce gas for fuel by burning charcoal or wood.

The thrill of reading Sherlock Holmes is his extraordinary powers of deduction. Watson is shown into his room, where the conversation begins with Holmes estimating that Watson has put on 7.5 pounds since they last met. The ridiculous precision and impossibility of this observation, which leads to an argument about whether the increase was actually 7 pounds, helps to generate the atmosphere of light humorous intelligent entertainment for which Conan Doyle is renowned and celebrated. Further impossible deductions lead Watson to compare Holmes to a wizard, with the easy superiority of genius.

Like a game of chess, once a master’s move is explained it is often as clear as day, but we mere mortals lack any capacity to see it in advance.

[Robert Tulip]

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Sherlock Holmes the philosopher: here we see a simple summary of modern epistemology, which may seem logically obvious but which largely escapes the majority of the population.

The paradigm shift from religion to science at the modern enlightenment placed data and theory in the place formerly occupied by tradition and authority as the basis of assent. Religious apologetics as an intellectual method is guilty of the fallacy noted here by Holmes, twisting facts to suit theories.

[Robert Tulip]

I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. “When I hear you give your reasons,” I remarked, “the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.” “Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

The clear distinction Holmes draws here between sight and observation may seem obvious, and yet it defines an empirical watchful temper that remains constantly observant, looking for clues to solve puzzles, riddles and crimes, Watson's constant failure to match Holmesian feats of thorough observation is a source of much wry and ironic humour.

[LanDroid]

I was also struck that it didn't read as quaint and "twitty" as I remembered. I take it this is a rare case where Sherlock's cover is blown, yet his mission succeeds anyway.

"I was still balancing the matter in my mind when a hansom cab drove up to Briony Lodge, and a gentlemen sprang out. He was a remarkably handsome man..."

Hansom (as apposed to handsome) is another word I had to look up, referring to a small two-wheeled horse drawn carriage.

I was also surprised at the mention of cocaine, thinking it was merely hinted and implied in the stories (especially for children), but there it is out in the open on page 2 of this story. This reminds me of the movie The 7% Solution where coke abusers Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud team up in ways I don't recall... Wow Laurence Olivier plays Professor Moriarty. That should be fun to watch again.

[Robert Tulip]

Holmes arranges his witness and narrator, telling Watson “Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.” Boswell was the famous interpreter and recorder of the utterances of Dr Samuel Johnson, renowned for personality, ideas and wit. Enter The Visitor.


A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste. Heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and fronts of his double- breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his shoulders was lined with flame-coloured silk and secured at the neck with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by his whole appearance. He carried a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper part of his face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black vizard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment, for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. From the lower part of the face he appeared to be a man of strong character, with a thick, hanging lip, and a long, straight chin suggestive of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy. “You had my note?” he asked with a deep harsh voice and a strongly marked German accent.

[Robert Tulip]

“The most incisive reasoner and most energetic agent in Europe”, Sherlock Holmes, insists to Count Von Kramm, his aristocratic masked Bohemian visitor, that Dr Watson must stay to hear his story, ‘both of us or neither’. This is partly a narrative device, given Watson’s Boswell role, but also a way to connect Holmes’ unrivalled brilliant genius of deduction and observation with ordinary folk. As a doctor, Watson is a cut above the common run, and yet his humorous pedestrian plodding alongside the freakish feats of detection by Holmes gives the reader a point of reference, serving to highlight and engage this astonishing and incredible story.

[Robert Tulip]

The masked visitor turns out be the King of Bohemia, visiting London incognito from Prague, a fact deduced by Holmes. The king has compromised himself in a courtesan photograph. He has three days to get the photo before this blackmailer with a soul of steel, “the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men”, publishes the photo to destroy his impending wedding plans. Having methodically excluded all fraudulent possibilities, Holmes concludes that the photo is genuine. It is the small asides that generate the humour in Conan Doyle’s writing: ““Oh, then we have three days yet,” said Holmes with a yawn. “That is very fortunate, as I have one or two matters of importance to look into just at present.”