Sherlockian Dementia: Bricks Without . . . Bricks

After a decade or so of wandering both the well-worn and uncharted halls of Sherlockian scholarship, students of Holmes-lore may find a certain weakness of the mental faculties beginning to set in. Without warning, they might suddenly find themselves taking leaps of illogic, theorizing before the facts, making bricks without clay, eliminating the improbable ... or maybe even just rambling on and on, quoting and misquoting Holmes himself. Perhaps such maladies spring from that all-too-human drive to produce scintillating Sherlockian scholarship long after the well is dry -- if it ever had water in it to begin with. Or perhaps bad Sherlockiana is simply a reversion, an atavistic result of non-Sherlockian genes. Whatever the cause, bad Sherlockian slholar-

ship is a disease we must all face at one time or another. Whether it is in a friend, a relative, or even in ourselves, bad Sherlockiana is something we who live alongside the legacy of Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore.

The slightest nudge can set off the potentially bad Sherlockian scholar. Take, for example, a recent acquaintance and really sad case in point, whom we shall call Rotherhithe. Rotherhithe was minding his own business, attending a meeting of his local scion society, when one of the members (one K.J. of St. Louis, Missouri) complained: "I'm exhausted with these Irene-Adler-Was-Actually-Toby theories." Rotherhithe was intrigued. After frantically searching his DeWaal bibliography for Irene-Was-Toby theories and finding none, he found himself decided that if no such theories existed, then, by John Watson, he was the man to hypothesize one. His place in the history of Sherlockian scholarship would be assured, he mused. Knox. Starrett. Rotherhithe. So would read the roll of Sherlockian greatness.

His purpose firmly embedded in his mind, Rotherhithe set out on an exhaustive journey of research and discovery on Toby the dog. Data began to fill the pigeonholes of his brain-attic at a furious pace: Toby-one of Sherman the birdstuffer's forty-three dogs-"an ugly, long-haired, lop-eared creature, half spaniel and half lurcher, brown and white in colour, with a very clumsy, waddling gait"-fond of sugar and gets along well with Sherlock Holmes. Hmmm, Rotherhithe considered, there are possibilities here.

His brain stuffed to its cranial limit with Toby data, Rotherhithe turned on Irene Adler. Aha! Irene Adler first appears in Holmes's life some time after Watson's marriage, a marriage caused by the events of The Sign of the Four, a case in which Toby figures prominently (to Rotherhithe’s way of thinking). Adler is an accomplished contralto, the lowest musical voice in women-in the same key as the howl of the spaniel/lurcher, one might think. Rotherhithe certainly did. And from there, his thought processes ran, to put it simply, amok.

All we know of Adler before "A Scandal in Bohemia" is her one brief fling admitted to by the king and a bit of data in Holmes's index. No kinsmen attended her wedding; were there any? Or was her entire past besides the one bit with the king and an opera appearance or two simply a fiction? Holmes merely clipped his data from a newspaper; could he have been deceived by an enemy conspiring to see him fail at the hands of a woman? That's it -- MORIARTY!! (Students of Sherlockian psychopathology take note -- the entrance of Moriarty into a thesis that has nothing to do with FINA, EMPT, or VALL is usually a warning sign of a mind on its way out.) In 1888, the time of SCAN, Moriarty was probably beginning to have psychic flashes that he had better start plotting against this upstart detective for his own future good.

Moriarty in 1888 -- something about that nagged at Rotherhithe's beleagured brain. Moriarty in 1888, Moriarty in 1888, Mori... 1888, Mor ... More ... Moreaux in 1888! That's it! Rotherhithe rushed to his set of histories by Herbert G. Wells and verified his discovery-the island of Dr. Moreaux was in operation until 1888, or at least 1887! Rotherhithe recalled Dr. Moreaux's classic experiments in vivisection and the alteration of animals to human form by grafting and other surgeries. That was it, that was the key! It wasn't that Irene Adler was actually Toby, but really Toby was actually Irene Adler! Rotherhithe's brain whirled, past logic, past semantics, past the boundaries work-a-day minds fear to approach. Moriarty planned to discredit Holmes with the help of his French cousin Moreaux by causing Holmes to fall in love with a dog who had outsmarted him. Watson had merely been polite when be wrote that Holmes referred to the woman who bested him as "the woman." What Holmes really referred to her as was "the b----."

Well, we're sure you get the picture. Rotherhithe eventually scrawled all of this on paper and sent it to Philip Shreffler, editor of THE BAKER STREET JOURNAL. Mr. Shreffler, long familiar with the symptoms of Sherlockian brain deterioration, called the matter to the attention of Rotherhithe's family, who saw to it that Rotherhithe received the proper psychiatric care. For Rotherhithe, and for many others, it was not too late. Their warning signs were recognized in time for treatment. For others ... well, don't be too quick to criticize the next time you read truly hideous Sherlockiana in WHEELWRIGHTINGS or elsewhere. We have to get our theories published somewhere. Heh, heh.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, March 1987)