Knowing Your Subject

‘It is a capital mistake to theorise before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.’
‘A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA’
Sherlock Holmes was a walking encyclopaedia, wasn’t he? Surely he, of all men, could hold forth on pretty much any subject you cared to mention?
The answers to these questions are not as clear-cut as you might expect. Take Watson’s early impression of the breadth of Holmes’s knowledge,
as detailed in A Study in Scarlet:



His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing.
Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax,
however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the solar system. That any civilised
human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the Earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary
fact that I could hardly realise it.
In the same story, Watson gave this more detailed rundown of his new friend’s areas of strength and weakness:
Sherlock Holmes – his limits
1. Knowledge of Literature. – Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy. – Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy. – Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics. – Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany. – Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology. – Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes
upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry. – Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy. – Accurate, but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature. – Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
Holmes played upon the alleged deficiencies in his knowledge at various times. In ‘The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor’, he insisted, ‘I read
nothing except the criminal news and the agony column’; when challenged on his ignorance of the solar system, he demanded of Watson: ‘What the
deuce is it to me?’
We should take all this with a pinch of salt. Holmes was focussed on the job at hand and he thus attempted to clear his mind of intellectual clutter
irrelevant to a particular task. Knowledge for Holmes was purely utilitarian (something quite at odds with the Victorian era’s love of knowledge for its
own sake). ‘Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes,’ Stamford told Watson before introducing him to Sherlock.
‘It approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you
understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it
himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.’
Would knowledge of the solar system have assisted Holmes greatly in solving any of his cases? Unlikely. Do we really believe that he didn’t have at
least a rudimentary grasp of the structure of the solar system? Not really. In ‘The Greek Interpreter’ he talks with confidence on the ‘causes of the
changes of the obliquity of the ecliptic’, suggesting Watson was rather off beam in assuming a lack of astronomical knowledge.
Then there is the assertion about his breadth of reading. Critic E. V. Knox noted that in the course of the stories we see Holmes ‘quote Goethe
twice, discuss miracle plays, comment on Richter, Hafiz and Horace, and remark of Athelney Jones: “He has occasional glimmerings of reason. Il
n’y a pas des sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l’esprit!”’ Elsewhere he mentions Tacitus, Flaubert, Thoreau and Petrarch. Hardly
suggestive of ‘nil’ knowledge of literature.
Holmes was also an innovator in several academic areas. Among the literature he produced were monographs on different types of tobacco ash,
the polyphonic motets of Lassus, ciphers, document-dating, tattoos, tracing footprints, and the impact of trade upon the form of the hand. To say
nothing of his ‘Book of Life’ or his Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. ‘You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae,’ Watson told him once.
Indeed.
In conclusion, despite Watson’s occasionally disparaging words, the extent of Holmes’s knowledge was almost certainly as vast as you might
expect. Perhaps his greatest genius was to be able to streamline his knowledge in the moment so that whatever was swirling around in his mind
had, in Conan Doyle’s own words, ‘real practical application to life’.
Quiz 13 – Holmes Trivia
Sherlock Holmes overcame innumerable challenges by arming himself with the necessary knowledge to do so. By reading this book, it is assumed
that you want to think like Sherlock. But how much do you actually know about him? Test yourself with this quiz.
1. What was Dr Watson’s first name?
2. Which famous family of French painters was Sherlock related to?
3. Who introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson?
4. What was Irene Adler’s job?
5. What was the name of Dr Watson’s wife whom he met in The Sign of Four?
6. Who was the ‘Napoleon of crime’?
7. Where had Dr Watson qualified as a doctor?
8. What is the name of Sherlock’s brother?
9. At which Pall Mall club was this brother a member?
10. Where did Sherlock apparently fall to his death in 1891?
11. What was Sherlock’s London address?
12. What job title did he give himself?
13. Where did he settle in his retirement?
14. Where did Sherlock famously keep his stash of tobacco?
15. Holmes donned two disguises in A Scandal in Bohemia. Can you name one of them?
16. In which county was Baskerville Hall?
17. Who was the leader of the Baker Street Irregulars?
18. Which story details Holmes’s first criminal investigation?
19. What is unusual about ‘The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier’ and ‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane’?
20. Where did Dr Watson keep papers concerning Holmes’s other cases?