Re: Phantoms

s Holmes notes in The Sussex Vampire, "This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply." And yet his cases often presented touches of the bizarre and, at first glance, the supernatural. Aside from the business at Cheeseman's, we have the spectral Hound of the Baskervilles, the strange affair of the Creeping Man, and the eerie trappings associated with the Wisteria Lodge, among others. And the element of the supernatural is even more prominent in the unfinished/unpublished stories such as the case of the Matilda Briggs and the giant rat of Sumatra ("a story for which the world is not yet prepared", in Holmes' words) (SUSS); the mysterious disappearances of Mr. James Phillimore and the cutter Alicia, "which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged"; and the strange madness of Isadora Persano, "the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science" (THOR). On the whole, Holmes and Watson were presented with a fair number of creepy cases for an agency that stood "flat-footed upon the ground".

Sherlock Holmes stories are often referenced by a four-letter acronym (e.g. THOR, SUSS). Follow this link for a complete list.

It has been suggested (by Peter Haining, for one; q.v.) that Holmes may have had even more involvement with the apparently supernatural than the evidence of the Canon suggests. Indeed, it is at least possible that in the months preceding his legendary meeting with Watson, Holmes was involved to some degree with the curious business of "the kidnapping of Christine Daaé, the disappearance of the Vicomte de Chagny and the death of his elder brother, Count Philippe", and the legend of the Ghost that inhabited the labyrinth beneath the Paris Opera House - a story rendered in print by the reporter and adventurer Gaston Leroux as The Phantom of the Opera.

Holmes' French Connection

We know, from the Canon, that Holmes had a family connection in France and, by the time of The Sign of Four (1888, per Baring-Gould's chronology), was already being consulted by Francois le Villard, who had "come rather to the front lately in the French detective service". From the fact that Villard's letter to Holmes is written in French, we may also deduce that Holmes was somewhat fluent in the language. Why would he have bothered to learn it at all, unless it had been necessary for a case at some point? Besides, as Mr. S. C. Roberts has noted, there has always been a strong Gallic component to Holmes personality.[1]

"Holmes and Watson were presented with a fair number of creepy cases"

The case would certainly have interested him. The apparently spectral doings and the ingenuity and elusiveness of their perpetrator would surely have appealed to the man who eventually tracked down the Napoleon of Crime. It also seems likely that Holmes' love of music and the opera in particular would have made the investigation attractive. We know, for example, that he enjoyed "a Wagner night at Covent Garden" (REDC) and had "a box for 'Les Huguenots'" (HOUN). When he found himself oppressed by the sordid case of Josiah Amberley, he elected to "escape from this weary workaday world by the side door of music" and hear the mysterious Carina sing at the Royal Albert Hall (RETI). How could a man whose grandmother was the sister of the French painter Vernet (GREE) resist the combination of murder, mystery, and music brewing away in Paris?

I'm hardly the first person to suggest this, of course. As I noted earlier, the well-known Sherlockian Peter Haining raises the possibility in his introduction to the 1983 Dorsett Press edition of Phantom, and includes, in an appendix, two bits of correspondence relating to this idea. One of them, from "DMR" in the Devon County Chronicle in 1965, suggests that Holmes' visits to Persia between 1891 and 1894 might have included investigations into the background of Erik, the titular phantom, since this is given as the nation of his origin. The other correspondent, one Barbara Goldfield, suggests that Holmes' role was probably more that of a consultant than an active investigator. She points out that the Opera Ghost meets his end at the hands of an angry mob rather than through the intervention of the police, and suggests that Holmes, had he been more directly involved, would not have permitted such an outcome. It is also possible, of course, that Holmes' failure to bring the case to a more satisfactory conclusion would account for his neglecting to tell Watson of the business.

Until someone opens the "travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box" (THOR) at Cox and Company, we'll probably never know. I wonder, though, if the Master could cash in on some of Mr. Lloyd Webber's millions?

Opera Singer

[1]Roberts, S.C. "A Biographical Sketch of Sherlock Holmes". reprinted in: Shreffler, P. (ed.) The Baker Street Reader (Greenwood, Press, 1984)