Saved Archived Meta: Sherloki1854 (pt.4)
Dec. 6th, 2010 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
221bcrow“By the 1770s, at the latest, queer women were often called ‘tommies.’ It was the female equivalent of ‘molly’.”
— Peter Ackroyd, Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day (2017)
hmmm.
lmao so that’s why this couple mirroring john and sherlock were named molly and tom, of course.
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How Holmes and Watson appreciate male beauty
Sorry for the awful title.
This is long and I know it – but it is the only way to show just how obvious it is that ACD canon Watson is attracted to both men and women, while Holmes is a lot “easier” to deal with.
When you learn English as a foreign language, the first thing you are taught regarding the use of “handsome” and “beautiful” is that the first applies only to men and the second only to women, “handsome” implying strength and a certain amount of ruggedness, “beautiful” needing regularity and…well, beauty.
Of course, in reality the distinction is not so clear.
In the ACD canon, the word “handsome” is used 52 times; in eighteen of these instances, the word used, by Holmes or Watson, applies to men, eight times to women (sometimes, a woman is called “handsome” more than once), and the rest of the time to things. “Beautiful” and “beauty” appear 132 times, but more often than not as exclamations and as descriptions of things, not people. However, women are called “beautiful” about twenty times (by Holmes or Watson, although in the vast majority of cases by Watson as the narrator), and the word applies to men thrice, not counting Holmes using “beauty” as an ironical term for criminals (just why he does that is another question). “Attractive” is used three times; once about a man and twice about women, although in the second case, it is negated. Some other words are employed to describe good looks as well: “attractive” seldom, “dainty” once and once “natural advantages” are emphasised (great quote, that one).
NB: In the following list I will only count the instances where these words are utilised by Watson or Holmes, not by other people, and as I will say again below, only where it is relevant. I left about a dozen women who are characterised as “beautiful” by Watson out, I am not trying to prove the point that he was never attracted to women, so please do not read this as me reading evidence only selectively.
So…on to the ridiculously long list of evidence.
BOTH MEN AND WOMEN IN ONE STORY
A Scandal in Bohemia
- Holmes about Irene Adler: Oh, she has turned all the men’s heads down in that part. She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. So say the Serpentine-mews, to a man.
This is important: he has never seen her: he is only quoting somebody else. So please do not come with “the woman” here… Especially as her fiancee is described very flatteringly by Holmes after he has seen him – and twice:
- Holmes about Godfrey Norton: He is dark, handsome, and dashing
- Holmes about Godfrey Norton: He was a remarkably handsome man, dark, aquiline, and moustached
Two important conclusions can be drawn: Holmes appreciates Mr Norton’s beauty, but not Irene Adler’s. And Holmes likes moustaches.
Examples of where both the man and the woman are called “beautiful” in the same story (and which are meant to prove the point that not only women were an attraction to Watson especially):
The Second Stain
- Watson about Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope: Terror–not beauty–was what sprang first to the eye
- Watson about Trelawney Hope: The other, dark, clear-cut, and elegant, hardly yet of middle age, and endowed with every beauty of body and of mind
They both are pretty desperate. Yet Watson appreciates his beauty and her distress. Huh.
The Creeping Man
- Watson about a man: tall, handsome youth
- Watson about a woman: a bright, handsome girl of a conventional English type
They are both good-looking. And Watson says exactly the same thing about both of them. Who is he still fooling?
“Attractive”
Thor Bridge
- Holmes: Senator Gibson is an attractive person
- Holmes: which was the more unfortunate as a very attractive governess superintended the education of two young children
However, the difference is that he has never seen the woman and is only quoting the senator while having met the senator in person.
Holmes is not fooling anyone either…
MEN
“Beauty”
- The Illustrious Client – Watson about Baron Gruner: His European reputation for beauty was fully deserved
- The Crooked Man – Watson about a Henry Wood’s face: [it] must at some time have been remarkable for its beauty
- The Dying Detective – Holmes about himself: Three days of absolute fast does not improve one’s beauty, Watson. Implication: Watson has told Holmes that he is beautiful and Holmes now remarks that he will be so again after he has eaten.
“Handsome”
A couple of examples of Watson’s appreciation of masculine beauty, more interesting examples will follow below:
- The Valley of Fear – Watson about Mr Barker: He sat forward, his hands clasped and his forearms on his knees, with an answering smile upon his bold, handsome face.
- The Reigate Puzzle – Watson about Alec Cunningham: his handsome features
- The Greek Interpreter – Holmes asking a man for an identification: “He wasn’t a tall, handsome, dark young man?”
- The Norwood Builder – Watson about the unhappy John Hector McFarlane: I looked with interest upon this man, who was accused of being the perpetrator of a crime of violence. He was flaxen-haired and handsome
- The Dancing Men – Watson about Mr Abe Slaney: He was a tall, handsome, swarthy fellow
- The Abbey Grange – Watson about Lord Brackenstall: His dark, handsome, aquiline features
- The Second Stain – Watson about Trelawney Hope: His handsome face was distorted with a spasm of despair (He cannot shut up about Trelawney Hope, can he now?)
- His Last Bow – The narrator (Watson?) about Von Bork: his keen, handsome face was flushed
- The Bruce-Partington Plans – Watson about Colonel Valentine Walter: an instant later we were joined by a very tall, handsome, light-haired man of fifty […] there were the long light beard and the soft, handsome delicate features of Colonel Valentine Walter.
- The Hound of the Baskervilles – Watson about Mr Barrymore: He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features […] Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom […] The second description sounds ridiculously like a romantic tragic hero.
- The Illustrious Client – Watson about Baron Gruner: extraordinarily handsome, with a most fascinating manner, a gentle voice and that air of romance and mystery […] He was certainly a remarkably handsome man […] Watson is a romantic who is attracted to the bad boy. Haha. And he cannot shut up about Gruner: see above. Must have been very attractive.
- The Blanched Soldier – Holmes about Godfrey Emsworth: One could see that he had indeed been a handsome man with clear-cut features sunburned by an African sun […] And this is really interesting because who else was “as brown as a nut” when Holmes first met and moved in with him?
It appears that Watson is attracted to both genders (I know, that is not news to anybody) and Holmes pretty much only to one.
And here is what everybody always wanted to know, whether consciously or not:
The Retired Colourman - Holmes about Watson: With your natural advantages, Watson, every lady is your helper and accomplice
Here we go: Holmes compliments Watson on his looks.
And now Watson about Holmes: Watson once admires aquiline features. Guess who else has them?
The Man With The Twisted Lip – Watson about Holmes: In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features.
This quotation does not need explaining.
Anybody still wants to tell me that they were never attracted to each other in the books?
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Holmes and Watson holding hands. And being touchy in general.
“Take my hand” happens only once, sadly… Canon is much more forthcoming. ;) Here just a few of the nicest instances from only two stories:
The Empty House, 1894
- I gripped him by the arms. […]
- Again I gripped him by the sleeve, and felt the thin, sinewy arm beneath it. “Well, you’re not a spirit anyhow,” said I. […]
- There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter.
- Just saying that this all happens in a few hours.
Charles Augustus Milverton, 1885-1888?
- He seized my hand in the darkness […]
- Still holding my hand in one of his he opened a door […]
- I felt Holmes’s hand steal into mine […]
- I fell upon my face among some bushes; but Holmes had me on my feet in an instant, and together we dashed away across the huge expanse of Hampstead Heath. (Probably holding hands the whole time (Holmes first has to pull Watson up and then they run “together”) - fine, this interpretation is going quite far, but not too much I believe, considering the rest of the story.)
By the way, also belonging to the general theme of them being somewhat…touchy:
Holding another’s wrist is a sign of fear/excitement. There are two interesting and comparable instances where somebody grabs Watson’s wrist.
The Speckled Band, 1883
“My God!” I whispered; “did you see it?”
Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like a vice upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low laugh and put his lips to my ear.
The Sign of Four, 1888
He held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my wrist, and we all stood with thumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great black house there sounded through the silent night the saddest and most pitiful of sounds […]
In the earlier story (according to when the story takes place), Holmes holds Watson’s wrist, and later, in a similar situation, Watson has his “love interest” (yes, right) do exactly the same thing. (Which is, I think, even more evidence for the theory that Mary Morstan is a fabrication of his imagination… Watson needed to make the scene more romantic/gripping, so he did a rehash of what had happened with Holmes in a similar situation.)
(I am not a touchy person. But I do know touchy people and even they would not behave in such a way.)
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It was late that night when Holmes returned from his solitary excursion. We slept in a double- bedded room, which was the best that the little country inn could do for us. I was already asleep when I was partly awakened by his entrance.
“Well, Holmes,” I murmured, “have you found anything out?”
He stood beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall, lean figure inclined towards me. “I say, Watson,” he whispered, “would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?”
“Not in the least,” I answered in astonishment.
“Ah, that’s lucky,” he said, and not another word would he utter that night.
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devoursjohnlock
— Watson on Watson, A Study in Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887)“The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavoured to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered, how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavouring to unravel it.”
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Sherlock Holmes has a heart
It is always though that Holmes is “an automaton, a calculating machine”. That that is not true is obvious: Watson repeatedly says that he feels/sees/glimpses Holmes’s great heart, although he always tries to make it sound like it was a one-off thing. Which only works until you see a few of his statements together. :)
- The Devil’s Foot, 1897
- “You know,” I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen so much of Holmes’s heart before, “that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.”
- The Bruce-Partington Plans, 1895
- “I knew you would not shrink at the last,” said he, and for a moment I saw something in his eyes which was nearer to tenderness than I had ever seen.
- The Three Garridebs, 1902
- It was worth a wound–it was worth many wounds–to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.
ALSO: Home is where the heart is – that is an old adage. And where is home? Baker Street, where Holmes and Watson spent the greater part of their lives together, is home, as both of them constantly call it. The rest – home=Baker Street=heart=Watson/Holmes – is easy…
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“Cadogan West”, Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes
(i.e.: Is it possible to stick more allusions into 1895 stories? It is.)
The Bruce-Partington Plans
In late 1895, Mycroft sends Sherlock a telegram that runs like this: “Must see you over Cadogan West. Coming at once. – Mycroft.” The first sentence is of extreme importance. It does not sound like Cadogan West was a name, more like code for something. But what could it mean? Another allusion to Oscar Wilde’s trials: in the course of the trials he was arrested while he was staying at the Cadogan Hotel, which was located in the West of London. This is important because it links the case, which is brought in by a person capable of manipulating the public order, with the scandal surrounding Wilde. Message: “we are not done yet, some things still have to be tidied up”. Here, it might also be interesting to note that the government originally wanted to hush the whole scandal surrounding him up, and not give him a prison sentence at all, but in the end the government had no choice but to accept the impending sentence because the public was set against Wilde very strongly.
There are a few references to discretion in the following paragraphs (“one has to be discreet”), and another emphasis on the fact that Mycroft must have an extremely valid reason for coming to Sherlock (probably because it is too delicate a matter for Mycroft): “Jupiter is descending to-day. What on earth can it mean?” (Holmes). He then continues wondering: “Who is Cadogan West, and what is he to Mycroft?” Holmes probably assumes Cadogan West is code for a person of some importance to Mycroft. Could Mycroft himself be in danger of getting tied up in a scandal?
Maybe not, but what this young man is believed to have done? He has stolen some secret papers from Whitehall (can be read as “Mycroft” - even Holmes clearly says this: “Government employ. Behold the link with Brother Mycroft!”), ten pages in total, but when ends up with his head smashed in on the tram tracks, and only seven sheets in his pocket, which leaves three sheets of potentially dangerous content somewhere Mycroft has no access to. So Mycroft needs Sherlock to bring those papers back. The claim that these ten sheets of paper are technical plans is nonsensical: the plans are supposed to enable the holder to build a Bruce-Partington submarine, which makes little sense given the technicality of submarines. No, this is ridiculous and Mofftisson know it: the Bruce-Partington programme turned out to be completely inconsequential in TGG. The only thing that this tells us is that somebody needed the original copies to achieve a certain goal. Well…
Now comes another clue: Cadogan West is engaged to a Miss Violet Westbury. This is the second Violet in a 1895 case, and as The Solitary Cyclist was published before The Bruce-Partington Plans, it can only be deduced that Watson recycled a name, hinting at the fact that most of this story is heavily…edited.
In conclusion: Cadogan West is a reference to Oscar Wilde. Mycroft fears the repercussions of the scandal and gets Sherlock to investigate the the theft of some highly sensitive papers related to the scandal/trial. And this is by far not the only allusion in the 1895 stories… (here the longer version)
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Sharing a room - always…
Most stories are set in Baker Street and London in general, and if they have to go to the country to investigate, Holmes and Watson usually return to Baker Street by the night train (interesting enough, that thought), but when they are forced to spend the night in a hotel, they manage to end up sleeping in the same room ridiculously often.
In Sherlock, Mofftisson made fun of this, I think:
Hounds of the Baskervilles:
GARY: Eh, sorry we couldn’t do a double room for you boys.
JOHN: That’s fine. We-we’re not…
So they are more open in the original canon that in the series, for crying out loud!
Here you go:
The Valley of Fear, chapter 4
Sergeant Wilson: There has been nothing like this that I can remember. There are some bits that will come home to you, Mr. Holmes, or I am mistaken. And you also, Dr. Watson; for the medicos will have a word to say before we finish. Your room is at the Westville Arms. There’s no other place; but I hear that it is clean and good. The man will carry your bags. This way,gentlemen, if you please.
The Man with the Twisted Lips
“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?
“If I can be of use.”
“Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.”
The Speckled Band
Watson: Sherlock Holmes and I had no difficulty in engaging a bedroom and sitting-room at the Crown Inn.
The Missing Three-Quarter
Holmes to Watson: This little inn just opposite Armstrong’s house is singularly adapted to our needs. If you would engage a front room and purchase the necessaries for the night, I may have time to make a few inquiries.
The Priory School
Watson: Sherlock Holmes left the house alone, and only returned after eleven. He had obtained a large ordnance map of the neighbourhood, and this he brought into my room, where he laid it out on the bed, and, having balanced the lamp in the middle of it, he began to smoke over it, and occasionally to point out objects of interest with the reeking amber of his pipe.
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Watson: We drove to the Hereford Arms where a room had already been engaged for us.
The Beryl Coronet
Watson: It was not yet three when we found ourselves in our rooms once more. He hurried to his chamber and was down again in a few minutes dressed as a common loafer.
(Baker Street rooms, but it is Waston’s room that is located upstairs! What was Holmes doing there? Has he moved in with Watson?)
Charles Augustus Milverton
Holmes to Watson: We have shared the same room for some years, and it would be amusing if we ended by sharing the same cell.
Exactly how closely are those two living together in the books?
Johnlock in canon
Holmes and Watson are very much in love with each other and together:
First of all, let’s hear what Doyle calls them: “Sherlock and his Watson”
After knowing Watson for a week: “my dear fellow” (A Study in Scarlet)
“My friend and partner” the whole time (eg in Red-Headed League).
After knowing each other for three years, Watson once wakes up in the “morning to find SH standing, fully dressed, by the side of [his] bed” at quarter past seven (Speckled Band). Etiquette was exceedingly important, and Holmes openly flouts convention. It is one of his most interesting traits: he does not believe in the law (cf Charles Augustus Milverton) and therefore would not have any problems with anything that opposes jurisdiction if he is convinced it is the right thing to do.
“It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subsequent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent modified.” (Final Problem) – if you ignore the past with the marriage (see below) the only thing that remains is the “very intimate” relationship between them.
Watson certainly is very vocal in his admiration: “the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known” (Final Problem)
The story where Holmes comes back from the dead also shows Watson’s complete devotion: “I find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind”, “When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life.” (Empty House)
Now to a very conclusive piece of evidence: they are being attacked by a criminal: “In an instant he had whisked out a revolver from his breast and had fired two shots. I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh. There was a crash as Holmes’s pistol came down on the man’s head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair. “You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!” It was worth a wound – it was worth many wounds – to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.“ [Watson reassures him he’s fine] "He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife. "You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?”“ (Three Garridebs)
Do I have to comment on this? "Depth of loyalty and love”? He’s supposed to be “an automaton, a calculating-machine”.
Holmes has just drugged them with something that works exactly the same way as in “Hounds” (2.2): “The turmoil within my brain was such that something must surely snap. I tried to scream and was vaguely aware of some hoarse croak which was my own voice, but distant and detached from myself. At the same moment, in some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes’s face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror–the very look which I had seen upon the features of the dead. It was that vision which gave me an instant of sanity and of strength. I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door, and an instant afterwards had thrown ourselves down upon the grass plot and were lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine which was bursting its way through the hellish cloud of terror which had girt us in. Slowly it rose from our souls like the mists from a landscape until peace and reason had returned…”
Aha. So he is dying, but what gives him strength is that Holmes is suffering? And the end is just ridiculously romantic.
Mere minutes later: “"You know,” I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen so much of Holmes’ heart before, “that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.”“ (Devil’s Foot)
No comment.
They are breaking into a criminal’s house, and are in danger of being discovered: "I felt Holmes’ hand steal into mine…” (Charles Augustus Milverton) - So when there is a threat, Holmes clearly doesn’t care about propriety, but wants to reassure the doctor instead. What would any author who writes such a scene about a man and a woman very obviously “imply”?
“the man whom above all others I revere” (Thor Bridge) - Hmm… Watson can be quite eloquent.
But the following quotation/situation is my favourite: “It was in the year ‘95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great University towns […] It will be obvious that any details which would help the reader to exactly identify the college or the criminal would be injudicious and offensive. So painful a scandal may well be allowed to die out. With due discretion the incident itself may, however, be described, since it serves to illustrate some of those qualities for which my friend was remarkable. I will endeavour in my statement to avoid such terms as would serve to limit the events to any particular place, or give a clue as to the people concerned.” (Three Students)
Or to give a clue as to what really happened. So… Explanation:
1. In the year 1895 there were the Oscar Wilde trials, which caused a great many men who were more or less openly gay to “go on holiday” for a few months.
2. Universities were supposed to be more progressive than cities. Oscar Wilde met Robbie Ross at uni.
3. The “painful scandal” Watson is talking about here is about three students who are meant to sit a Greek exam, but one of them cheats. That’s not a scandal. Even I’ve helped another student to cheat in a Greek exam (Greek can be a horrible subject), and I’m a model student.
4. They had to flee from London because of the public awareness the spectacular trials had caused.
5. But of course Watson could not say it like that, so he had to invent a virtually new case.
Do we want to know more?
“Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate (…) those who were around him.” (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
But why did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle create a character who would have been imprisoned if he had been a real person and had the authorities known about his illegal preferences? An important question, and more than one point has to be considered to answer this.
Sir ACD’s Sherlock Holmes was heavily inspired by Poe’s Dupin. Poe wrote three stories about Dupin, an amateur detective living in nearly complete isolation in Paris. These stories are narrated by an unnamed narrator, probably a Briton or an American. And their relationship is quite unequivocally a romantic one. Here parts of the first story, The Murders in Rue Morgue:
“Our first meeting was at an obscure library […] where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume brought us into closer communion. We saw each other again and again […] I was astonished, too, at the vast extent of his reading; and, above all, I felt my soul enkindled within me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination […] I felt that the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price; and this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city; […] I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper […] Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen—although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visitors. […] We existed within ourselves alone. It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon […]”
So… I do not think that I have to explain all that much. The so-called subtext is not even subtext here. Paris was – due to the Napoleonic Laws – known as a place where is was possible to have a homosexual affair in relative safety. So it is reasonable to say that Dupin and his nameless friend were indeed lovers.
Now, Sir ACD chose to take those two characters and their flat and – with some minor alterations – wrote his stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson living at 221b Baker Street in London. His characters are based on two men having a physical relationship with each other, and although why he chose to do this, nobody knows, it is a fact. You could make more of this argument, but I think it is enough at this point.
Sir ACD, the upright Victorian moralist gentleman, hated Sherlock Holmes. He told an actor he may “marry him, murder him, or do anything he liked with him”, which not only shows that marriage and death are essentially the same for Sherlock Holmes, but also – and more importantly here – expresses his disdain for his own creation.
I said I was going to talk about Oscar Wilde. Wilde was born in 1854 (the year of SH’s birth – what a coincidence) and represents a type of decadent man known as the dandy. Holmes is a Bohemian, which was considered about as decadent as dandyism, and their lives follow similar patterns. Interestingly enough, Dorian Gray and The Sign of Four were commissioned during the same dinner by the same editor, and it can be said that the two authors were competitors. Wilde, however, was probably the more popular person, and I believe Sir ACD was somewhat jealous of him. Oscar Wilde’s trials are constantly alluded to in 1895 Sherlock Holmes stories, by the way…
I mentioned above that he hated Sherlock Holmes. But how do these two things fit? Sir ACD wanted a good reason to hate Holmes. There is the expression “to laugh up one’s sleeve”, I personally I am of the opinion that is precisely what he did.
