John Greenleaf Whittier and Sherlock Holmes

Science or Sensation?

At that time—oversea in New England—the Quaker poet, abolitionist, and one of the founding editors of The Atlantic, John Greenleaf Whittier was now heaped with honors, as his fully engaged life drew to a close. Four decades earlier he had written The Supernaturalism of New England, a compilation of folklore inspired and derived from the fireside accounts of his childhood. These accounts were not fictions, but a type of gossip. Gossip was not considered fiction. Rural townspeople, hamlet and country dwellers, were interested in what, to them, actually happened. Things read in books could be novelistic, but when you heard a story from loved ones or friends—it had to be real. Accounts of the supernatural had the same believability, the verisimilitude, of gossip—which only the sternest incredulity could withstand in such a setting.

If I’ve done my job right, meaning you are still with me, you will also, perhaps, be saying ... John Greenleaf Whittier and Sherlock Holmes? The Quaker abolitionist juxtaposed in the same essay with the great analytical detective? Supernaturalism and the methodology of rationalism? Is this credible? Where is she going with this?

Not quite sure. So let’s leave early rural Haverhill Massachusetts and go back to Baker Street in London to see what Holmes is saying about Watson. Actually, it was on the Kentish train, on their way to Abbey Grange, Marsham, that Holmes said to his chronicler, in his “cold, incisive, ironical voice”:*

‘I must admit, Watson, that you have some power of selection, which atones for much which I deplore in your narratives. Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an instructive and even classical series of demonstrations. You slur over work of the utmost finesse and delicacy, in order to dwell upon sensational details which may excite, but cannot possibly instruct, the reader.’

‘Why do you not write them yourself?’ I said, with some bitterness.

‘I will, my dear, Watson, I will. At present I am, as you know, fairly busy ....Our present research appears to be a case of murder.”—The Adventure of the Abbey Grange

Conan Doyle could easily author John Watson because Watson is a writer. As Dr. Sturgis pointed out, doing Sherlock Holmes was much harder for Conan Doyle, even though Doyle was trained in medicine. Yet, once the characterization was set, Conan Doyle’s real challenge lay in coming up with these mysteries, these puzzles. Straining after the calculus of the puzzle, crafting posers ... out of—? This may be part of his desire to kill off his famous but burdensome detective in the Reichenbach Falls. What was more congenial to his mind? The love of his creative life ran in the vein of Walter Scott, faux medievalism, and the English Romanticism. He was exhausted trying to work out the Sherlock Holmes “tales of ratiocination.” Conan Doyle is playing the afore mentioned game: “Why can’t you write these tales yourself, Holmes?”

*Watson’s description of Holmes’ voice (above) is from Hound Of The Baskervilles.

Science or Sensation?—more to come

© S. Dorman Spring 2024