The Hound of the Baskervilles

“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.”

Having complimented Watson on his ability to bring out the detective’s best, Holmes then rewinds the praise and replaces it with what is almost an insult. It is as if Holmes cannot really admit how much Watson’s friendship means to him, so he takes it back. To give Holmes credit, he may mean only to clarify his original compliment (see Quote #1, above), but his critique of Watson makes the doctor seem like a useless fool. It is true that Holmes is head and shoulders above nearly everyone at deduction and inference, and it is not wrong for him to know he is the best, but it may be a social flaw to say so.

“‘[…] what further inferences may we draw?’ ‘Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!’”

Holmes and Watson play a favorite game in which first Watson, then Holmes, try to extract information from a limited amount of evidence. On this day, the evidence is a walking stick left by a client whom neither have seen, and Watson deduces some of the client’s characteristics but misses others that Holmes sees more accurately. The great detective first observes carefully, then reasons strictly from the evidence before him, like a scientist. He never guesses, yet heis able to solve puzzling problems that have thwarted the police, public officials, and others. The client, Dr. Mortimer, arrives and validates Holmes’s conclusions.

“‘Recognizing, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe—’ ‘Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?’ asked Holmes with some asperity. ‘To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.’ ‘Then had you not better consult him?’ ‘I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently—’ ‘Just a little,’ said Holmes.”

The visitor, Dr. Mortimer, admires Alfonse Bertillon, who developed systems of measurement, especially of the human head, that were adopted by police worldwide in identifying individuals and suspects. Bertillon’s careful surveys of people’s craniums are of great interest to Dr Mortimer, who studies the discredited—and frequently racist—pseudoscience of phrenology and its focus on skull shapes. Dr Mortimer assures Holmes that, as a detective, he is second to none; this somewhat mollifies the great genius.

“Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since. If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.”

The story of the giant dog that haunts the Baskervilles is handed down through the generations. The writer, a descendant of the ill-fated Hugo Baskerville, in 1742 wants his sons to know of the danger. His advice, that the truth is less terrifying than the imagined, reflects an attitude shared by Holmes, whose job is to hunt the mystery of the giant hound, bring it into the open, and render it harmless.

“‘I must thank you,’ said Sherlock Holmes, ‘for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.’”

It is not the legend of the hound itself but the death of Sir Charles under the spell of the legend that intrigues Holmes. He manages to excuse his own ignorance of the case by name-dropping the pope as a client. In so doing, he also alludes to a case that is never written up by Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are famous for teasing the reader with mysteries that remain forever unexplained.

“‘This article, you say, contains all the public facts?’ ‘It does.’ ‘Then let me have the private ones.’ He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression.”

One of Holmes’s most renowned gestures is to temple his fingers, sometimes while closing his eyes, and listen carefully. It is as if he mentally shifts gears into a more serious mode in which all distractions are removed and only the evidence impinges on his mind. In this case, the gesture signals that he has decided to take the case seriously.

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”

Like all great detectives, Holmes makes a habit of carefully observing the world around him. He has long since learned that most people pay little attention to their surroundings, with the result that nearly everyone misses information that can help them navigate their paths through life more effectively. For Holmes, the obvious provides useful information that helps him solve perplexing crimes. It has since become a standard practice of mystery writers to place clues directly in front of readers in the form of mundane information that may appear to be unimportant, to test their powers of observation.

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

Holmes is a man of science; he is reluctant to look into anything that may derive from supernatural powers, as these cannot properly be studied scientifically. He also knows from experience that nearly everything deemed otherworldly ends up having a mundane explanation. Thus, even on Earth, a demon—if one exists—will find it convenient to make use of ordinary materials and creatures, and these Holmes can decipher.

“I have been to Devonshire.’ 'In spirit?’ 'Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco.’”

Describing his meditations on the Baskerville case, Holmes has fun with Watson, pretending for a moment that he has somehow transported himself psychically to the place of Sir Charles’s death, when in fact he has simply been pondering while seated in his London flat. He looks up from his thoughts and realizes that the mental journey has required a great deal of the stimulants he often uses to enhance his mental faculties. For someone who thinks a great deal, hours can pass quickly, and the body, left to its own devices, can surprise with its unconscious activity.

“Of course, if Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.”

Because the supernatural cannot be studied scientifically—it tends to leave no evidence, nor anything measurable—it is outside Holmes’s area of expertise, which relies on physical facts as the data of an investigation. The odds favor a real-world explanation, and Holmes takes an interest in the case because, from long experience, he has seen that even the most strange or unusual facts end up having a natural interpretation.

“Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel.”

Holmes can switch his mind abruptly and completely from one topic to another. In this way, he focuses on a single project at a time; during idle moments, he works on a different activity with a clear head. He is thus not prone to the pitfalls of what is now called multitasking.

“There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.”

Not one to accept trivial mysteries, Holmes thrills to the challenge of perplexing puzzles of great importance. Small defeats and dead ends merely inspire him to greater efforts. He treats setbacks as challenges.

“The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one’s soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples.”

Through Watson’s letter to Holmes, the author describes a place fit for the supernatural. Much of the suspense of the story depends on uncertainty about the true nature of the mysterious hound that haunts the moor. The setting suits a spectral creature; it is meant to evoke both a thrill of fear and a doubt about rational explanations for the mystery. Stories of miraculous or terrifying events in the past acquire an aura of truth that more recent events fail to achieve. The reader wonders if maybe strange and terrible creatures might have once roamed the lonely districts of Dartmoor, and that perhaps some remnant of them roams there still.

“[Holmes] was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.”

Watson describes Holmes as someone who likes to have everything under control all the way down to his personal hygiene, even when he is camping in a wilderness. Holmes’s profession involves personal risk, and leaving small things to fate can result in disaster. Thus, he takes care of every detail so that he is never at a disadvantage, especially when tracking a deadly criminal.

“Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove.”

There is a major difference between understanding a culprit’s intentions and proving his guilt to others. Unless he can point to an attempt by Stapleton to kill Sir Henry, Holmes knows that no court will take steps against the man. Holmes and Watson somehow must catch Stapleton in the act.

“‘[…] presuming that all our conjectures are correct—‘ ‘I presume nothing.’”

A chief difference between Holmes and an amateur is that Holmes’s mind is completely scientific in its work: He reasons always from the facts at his disposal and never engages in guesswork. When the facts are not enough, he may make decisions based on probabilities, but he never assumes that a maybe is a certainty. Watson’s easy assumptions don’t rise to Holmes’s standards. It is a lesson Watson and the readers must be reminded of over and over.

“To all the world [Selden] was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.”

Selden’s sister, Mrs. Barrymore, does what she can to protect her violent brother, but her efforts fail. She—alone among all humanity—mourns the death of a man universally hated. It is a credit to Watson that he can perceive the decency of someone who mourns the flicker of goodness lost within the firestorm of evil.

“‘The fellow is a Baskerville—that is evident.’ ‘With designs upon the succession.’ ‘Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our most obvious missing links. We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!’ He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.”

A portrait of Hugo Baskerville so resembles Stapleton that it becomes clear to Holmes that the entomologist is a descendant of the great family. That he is hiding in plain sight means he intends nothing good toward Sir Henry. The discovery puts in place the critical piece of the puzzle Holmes has wrestled with, and he can now focus on laying his own trap for the man who would set a snare to kill his cousin. Holmes’s laugh of victory is a death knell for his opponent.

“My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.”

Yet another of the book’s lessons in criminology is the importance of seeing past distractions to the essence of a problem. Hair, hat, and handbag are changeable, but faces tend to remain the same. Holmes’s ability to focus on the underlying structure, not only of faces but of crimes, is part of his arsenal of detection.

“[…] that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him.”

The huge hound with the terrifying face bursts from the fog, and Watson and Holmes fire on it, causing it to howl. At once, the legend is crushed because the creature, though large, is only a dog. It is the moment when the riddle of the devilish specter is reduced to an earthly, if still dangerous, creature. Reason prevails, and Holmes’s methods are vindicated.

“Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night.”

Professionally dedicated to leaving nothing to chance, Holmes keeps his mind and body fit, and he has an athlete’s reserves of strength equal to the task of taking down the huge dog. All the preparations in the world are not enough, though, to account for surprises and sudden changes in a situation. Holmes’s athleticism thus proves critical when fog obscures the target, and the dog’s appearance—artificially enhanced by glowing paint—stuns everyone.

“The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.”

Holmes explains the importance of looking deeply into clues that seem to make no sense, as they often betray the thought process of the perpetrator and reveal motive and tactics. In Sir Henry’s case, a missing boot finally points to a real dog on a scent and not some supernatural specter. This knowledge helps Holmes greatly in solving the case and trapping the culprit.

“There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over [Beryl] which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions.”

Through Holmes’s comment about the entangled relationship between Stapleton and his wife, the author expresses a surprisingly modern view of the stresses on certain types of misaligned marriages. That love and fear may strengthen each other in a person’s view of a loved one is, in modern times, a common motive that binds fictional characters together in criminal behavior. This quote also reflects the theme of women’s external limitations in a patriarchal society.