The Case Study of Sherlock Holmes (2009) - Scholarly Commons ...

short and are exposed as fraudulent. In The Sign of Four Holmes could be inadvertently
talking about himself: “Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be
treated in the same cold unemotional manner.” Watson, at times astonished by
Holmes‟s cold and detached observance, would exclaim: “You really are an automaton
– a calculating machine . . . There is something positively inhuman in you at times.”
Some Sherlockians, Siegel for example, even believe that “Sherlock Holmes was
completely devoid of emotion . . . [and that] in this lay his success”. I disagree and so
too does Sherlockian Alistair Duncan, author of Eliminate the impossible: An
examination of the world of Sherlock Holmes on page and screen, published in 2008.
He believes “Holmes regards emotion as an obstacle to true logic but at the same time
he is susceptible to very human feelings”. Holmes has the potential to overwhelm his
audience with his investigative passion; in The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,
published in 1903, he literally performs his science with the “air of a conjurer who is
performing a trick”. Legendary Sherlockian Vincent Starrett, author of The Private Life
of Sherlock Holmes (2008), originally published in 1933, believes such theatricality
reveals Holmes‟s “most human failing – his appreciation of applause”. Failing or not,
Holmes‟s emotional afflictions spark contradiction and, according to Lord Holdernesse,
in the 1903 short story, The Adventure of the Priory School, endow Holmes with
“powers that are hardly human”. In Sherrinford‟s performance in Sherlock Holmes
(2009), there are some traces of magic to be found; Holmes, when following Adler,
creates an impromptu disguise from a nearby circus, when captured and blindfolded by
Blackwood‟s father Holmes could sense where he was taken and finally, when cornered
by Blackwood‟s right-hand man, Holmes disappears out the window in a cloud of
smoke. Sherrinford, to his credit, performs a magic trick trifecta: The Master of
Disguise, The Psychic and The Disappearing act. Such a performance harkens back to
the canonical Great Detective, who on several occasions, came shy of being compared
to Merlin himself. From the moment Watson moved into 221B Baker Street, “[he]
eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around [his] companion, and spent much of
[his] time in endeavouring to unravel it”. Holmes, by the end of A Study in Scarlet, was
well aware of Watson‟s curiosity towards his abilities, and so to explain them, he
compares himself to a conjurer:
“You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick, and if
I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion
that I am a very ordinary individual after all.”
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