Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed for more than a century as a rather cold, machine-like human being so intent on piecing together the clues needed to solve the series of crimes that come his way that he basically has little room for any of the myriad other interests to which human beings are subject. By this standard of reasoning, it would be almost too easy to conclude that he is very much the epitome of the man of science who rejects all mystery and melancholy associated with his chosen professions. In fact, a close reading reveals that Sherlock Holmes not only straddles the closing of many pre-Victorian assumptions about magic and mystery and the opening of the forensic myth-busting of the 20th century, but also has one foot in the bright world of empirical knowledge and the other planted firmly in the shadowy underworld of uncanny.
Like a great actor, Holmes regularly takes on the appearances of other people while hidden behind false noses, wigs and accents not his own. Holmes seems to take an actor’s pride in being able to give a convincing performance when he is going undercover and, indeed, he is even not above injecting a little mystery about his secret self even to his faithful companion, Dr. Watson. The old book peddler whom Watson stumbles into on the streets eventually makes a quick second appearance in his post-Reichenbach Falls life by rather shockingly showing up unannounced at his home. In the time it takes for Watson to move his head and look around behind him, the elderly old man not only transforms into the vital figure of Sherlock Holmes, but seeming resurrects himself from the dead, causing the flummoxed Dr. Watson to faint for the first and last time in his life if he is to be believed.
“The Empty House” has Watson recounting a strange tale of Sherlock faking his death at the falls and choosing to reveal his return to the living in a manner almost brings to mind a performance at a phony psychic’s séance intended to relieve gullible grieving family members of the dearly departed of their money more than it brings to mind anything alluding to the uniformitarian science of Darwin and Huxley. What possible scientific purpose could Holmes have for finally letting Dr. Watson know in such a melodramatic manner, after years of assuming he was dead, that he was, in fact, very much alive and very well?
The resurrection of Sherlock Holmes in “The Empty House” connects in a starkly defined line through his disguises and role-playing in “Charles Augustus Milverton” and his secretive undercover work on the Moors when Watson thought he was back in London throughout the bulk of “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” That line also runs through the various disguises and masquerades he utilizes expressly for investigative purposes in stories ranging from “A Scandal in Bohemia” to “The Norwood Builder.” Quite clearly, Holmes demonstrates an enthusiasm for playacting that stands diametrically opposed to his conventional image of emotionless deducing robot confirmed by the very man who invented him.
The more one views the love of mystery (that on more than a few occasions take on the form of a magic act) which Sherlock Holmes exhibits whether he is solving the riddle of the hound from hell or finally letting Dr. Watson in on his disappearing act back at Reichenbach Falls, the more difficult it becomes to view him merely as a man of science intent on dispelling the more unexplained aspect of life. While Sherlock’s methodology for solving crime is firmly rooted in the scientific method, the route that he follows when applying that method is far too often conducted under the cover of enigmatic and occasionally even cryptic techniques often matching the crimes themselves in terms of defying adequately logical explanations.
