Sherlock Holmes
Technology
Written by Laura Postlethwaite
If you haven’t yet met Sherlock Holmes, he is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective, appearing on paper for the first time in 1887. With a keen eye for detail, we are first introduced to the character in A Study in Scarlet, where we learn about his ‘passion for definite and exact knowledge’ from an old friend of Watson’s, Dr Stamford. After a while, however, we find that Sherlock’s exacting approach leads many of the characters in the novels to view him as cold and machine-like. Being the late Victorian writer that he is, however, Conan-Doyle seems to take pleasure in this comparison, particularly with the Exposition Universelle taking place just two years after A Study in Scarlet’s publication. This Parisian exhibition, which saw the inauguration of the Eiffel Tower, also championed a gallery of machines, built specifically for the exhibition and measuring an enormous area of 377 by 1,378 ft and a height of 159 ft.
With such a clear global interest in technology at the time of his writing, it is no wonder that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reflects this in his novels. The way he writes about travel in the Holmes stories serves as a great example of this, with Sherlock and Watson’s steamboat pursuit of the suspects in The Sign of the Four taking up an entire chapter. Conan Doyle goes to lengths to describe the machinery:
“We were fairly after her now. The furnaces roared, and the powerful engines whizzed and clanked, like a great metallic heart. Her sharp, steep prow cut through the river-water and sent two rolling waves to right and to left of us. With every throb of the engines we sprang and quivered like a living thing.”
Alternatively, we might see the author making sense of technology through specific characters in the novels, including the baker street irregulars, a group of street urchins who are tasked with delivering information from the streets of London directly to Holmes’ Baker Street address. The job they’re assigned to may be enough to tell us that these characters are a kind of personification of the telegraph system, but to make it crystal clear, Conan Doyle gives them the onomatopoeic ‘patter,’ ‘clatter’ and ‘buzz’ of machinery in his descriptions.
Other examples in The Sign of the Four of this familiar machine-like quality may be found in Sherlock’s own personality, as we see somewhat of a lack of human connection between the detective and the other characters in the novel. For instance, when Holmes is tasked with deducing the history of Watson’s pocket watch, describing its previous owner as a ‘drunkard,’ he fails to acknowledge that the person he is describing is Watson’s own late brother. Although he quickly apologises, the reader already gets the sense that empathy is something almost entirely lost on the character.
He also seems to struggle with maintaining relationships. When I asked David Ward, director of Northern Opera Group’s upcoming Sherlock Holmes opera, about Holme’s character, he noted that: “In ‘The Sign of Four’ we see Watson’s burgeoning relationship with Mary Morstan, and there is a key scene where we see this love blossoming, as Sherlock is wracked with frustration at not being able to solve the case, alone in his apartment.”
This combination of cold science and human nature brings about further themes of the macabre in the novels. For example, the first example we are given of Sherlock’s odd behaviour comes in the form of his beating of cadavers to better understand the bruising process after death; an act that might remind some readers of the 1886 novella, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. In truth, much of the literature written at this time tells us much about Victorian fears about degeneration.
Take Dr Jekyll as an example: the monstrous alter ego of this upstanding man of science is a completely deformed killer whom he literally devolves into upon taking a sip of potion. Holmes’ character also sits at this strange divide between progress and devolution throughout the novels, which is shown through Watson’s eyes as he experiences what it is like to live with the detective. His sophisticated violin playing, for instance, is a textbook example of music-making being used, as it often was in the late nineteenth century, as a means of exercising self-discipline. But the detective’s outbursts, which lead him to spend days on end locked inside his study, conversely show an apparent lack of control. The opening of The Sign of the Four also gives us a stark introduction to Sherlock’s drug habit, and we’re told that he uses substances like morphine and cocaine to ‘stimulate’ and ‘clarify’ his mind, demonstrating this Victorian degeneration fear even further.
Galérie des Machines 1889
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s shortest novel, entitled A Scandal in Bohemia, we are introduced to a woman who will later become Sherlock’s greatest nemesis. Her name is Irene Adler and she is an opera singer who uses her theatrical training to hoodwink Sherlock and blackmail the king of Bohemia.
The singer’s personality seems to be the total opposite of Sherlock’s; where he secludes himself for days at a time in his study, she is seen participating in romantic relationships with high-class suitors and spontaneous marriages to eligible bachelors. In all, Holmes seems totally swept away with Adler’s escapades, finding himself unintentionally as a witness at her wedding in the short story. But it isn’t just him; in Holmes’ final encounter with Adler, it is the singer who lets herself get carried away, shouting out to the detective when she ought to be deep undercover. In this single scene at the end of the novel, we can clearly see that the singer’s way of operating is on an altogether different level to the straight-laced detective.
Yet there are a few similarities between the characters. Both are partial to using disguises; a practice used by Adler in her theatrical training as an opera singer, and a quirk that we see Holmes use many times throughout the novels. In The Sign of the Four, for example, Sherlock’s disguise as an old man is so convincing that he is able to sit and talk to both Watson and Scotland Yard detective, Athelney Jones, without either of them cottoning on. But after the same tactic is used on Adler in A Scandal in Bohemia, she is quick to assert her superiority in the artform: “I have been trained as an actress myself. Male costume is nothing new to me.”
Besides this commonality, the two also share their love of music. As already mentioned, Sherlock epitomizes Victorian ideals of self-discipline with his practice on the violin. But, besides this, we also learn that the detective enjoys live music performances, as Watson waits for his return from a concert by world-renowned cellist Norman Neruda in A Study in Scarlet.
This hidden theatrical side is also explored in the upcoming opera, as David Ward describes:
“…There is subtlety within this idea, although undoubtedly the persona of being an unfeeling automaton of detection is the primary character that Sherlock wants us to see… He seems to take great glee in dressing up and taking on various disguises, and I think there is interest to be had in examining how much his general persona is an ‘act’. Why does he do this, what is he trying to hide (from himself, or others)?”
The key difference between Adler and Holmes, however, is their approach to music more generally. After attending this concert, Holmes is keen to tell Watson about the joys of music but ends up coming across as extremely scientific: ‘“It was magnificent,” he said, as he took his seat. “Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it…”’
Gayle Hunnicutt in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984)
Overall, Conan Doyle’s representation of the detective as a cold machine somewhat undermines his love of theatrics, so that he doesn’t quite fit into the same bracket as his opera singing rival. It is clear that they’re of like mind, however, as the singer is the only character in the entirety of the Holmes collection that manages to outsmart the detective. Ultimately, Holmes conveys an automated version of the theatricality presented by Adler, so that we might compare him to another popular technology of the 19th century…
The phonograph began as an invention by Thomas Edison in 1877 and allowed music to be taken from the stage and placed in the homes of listeners. Of course, this wasn’t the first time that versions of live performances entered private spaces, with transposed manuscripts of popular arias previously being widely distributed to opera fans. Later, less popular methods included the Théâtrophone which acted like a telephone, connecting at home listeners in Paris to public performances in real time across telephone wires.
The introduction of the wax cylinder phonograph, however, saw the most definitive turning point in music listening. By etching soundwaves into a wax cylinder, the phonograph meant that music fans could listen to the same recording on demand for the very first time. Mark Katz explains how this allowed musicians to ‘transcend time, space, and human limitations’, in a fascinating book about sound recording entitled Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music.
The phonograph combined science and theatre together in a way that was extremely reliable, guaranteeing its listeners an almost perfect final take, much like our trusty detective and his perfectionist approach to deduction. After recording a gramophone record during her illustrious career as an operatic Soprano, Nellie Melba famously reflects on the clinical process:
“I shall never forget that once after making what I believe would have been the most beautiful record, I stumbled backwards over a chair, and said “Damn” in an all too audible voice. That “damn,” when the record was played over came out with a terrible clarity, making me feel much as a sinner must on the Day of Judgement. No, singing for the gramophone could not be described as a rest cure.” - Melodies and Memories
But with this seemingly perfect and streamlined product came a sense of rigidity, both for listeners and performers alike. Musicians recording their sound onto cylinders (or later, discs) would invariably find themselves in small, windowless rooms, almost piling on top of each other to ensure that they would be heard by the device. And for listeners too, the attention to minute detail that early music recording afforded meant that their favourite tracks became mechanical and unhuman. Even more than that, listeners had to adjust to a much shorter form of listening, with the cylinders only allowing tracks a maximum duration of three minutes. With his knack for swift and precise deductions, we are getting closer to piecing together Sherlock’s mechanical personality.
Holmes also represents the ability that early music recording bestowed to musicians in the 20th century: that is the modern skill of DJing. A shortened form of the term ‘disc Jockey’ DJing saw its inception at a dance party in 1943 in Otley and involves the manipulation of recorded sound to create unique original tracks. Although obviously popular long after Conan Doyle’s time, the disc jockey does have much in common with Sherlock Holmes. Specifically, the detective takes a great deal of pride in his ability to manipulate his own thoughts and enter his ‘brain attic’. Thus, he can come up with entirely new conclusions, showing a creative process behind his masterful deductions.
I asked David about how these deductions would be represented on stage:
“We’re playing with a few different things to bring these deductions to life. Through our R&D process one of the ideas we really hit on was playing with time and space in different ways to try to represent Sherlock’s mind and process in a new way. So, for example, when he’s investigating the murder scene, rather than have him run around the room searching for clues, we tried bringing the clues to him – demonstrating his command of the space, and the way his mind filters out unnecessary detail to arrive at the solution. As he says in the novel (and sings in the opera!) – “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth”.
Edison wax cylinder recorder wood engraving
Ultimately, it seems that Sherlock Holmes is a character whose description throughout the novels can be summed up by the industrial landscape at the time of his conception. With new developments in technological Britain in the 19th century, it makes sense that Holmes should represent the strange machinery that Arthur Conan Doyle was himself becoming familiar with. Today, we might turn to shows like Black Mirror to get to grips with and speculate about the new digital age but it’s the lure of the Sherlock Holmes stories that remains irresistible to us. From 2010 to 2017 the BBC’s adaptation of the novels, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, proved our attachment to the character. Whether we’re presented, in the show, with a computerized version of Holmes ‘mind palace’ or we see how Watson interacts with malfunctioning self-service machines in the supermarket, we really aren’t as different from Conan Doyle as we might think when it comes to using fiction for interpreting and imagining technology.
