The Guiding Plight

There are two things in The Canon of Sherlock Holmes which have bothered me since I first read them. One is that white whale I talk about from time to time. It's something that I can find absolutely no evidence for. It's the one I'll always work on here and there, and someday I'll justify Watson's words about it. (Sorry, still ain't gonna say what it is.) The other is one of those I'm-going-to-write-a-paper-about-this-one-day things. It's a Holmes line from 'The Redheaded League' (REDH) - "It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London." Well, I'm going to write a blog post about it instead. For now.

To be fair, I actually did start that paper years ago, but I found it was going to be a major undertaking, so it got put on the eternal back burner. However, I'm in a good mood, so I'll put my notes here (sort of) so you can see how far I got. (It's not much, though.) First, I had three links to Google Books for publications that had articles about the number of businesses in London at the time they were printed. I knew I would need many more - three of them wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface as this was an ever-changing aspect of the London life. Heck, it still is today...and that's everywhere. I had a link to an article from 1886 about London street names, and another one from 1891 about the changes to the city's streets and roads. I had two links to pieces which actually mentioned this very Holmes quote, and somewhere I found that London had 4.3 million people in 1893. But, like I said, I realized the depths that I would have to go to write the thing, so I put it aside.

I know it's heresy, but I was going to do my best to prove that The Great Detective could NOT have had an exact working knowledge of London. An exceptional one, yes, but exact? No. Think about it - he would have to know about every single street (road, alley, byway, place, mews, square, etc.). London was in the midst of a massive influx of people, and everything was growing. New buildings, businesses, restaurants, offices, shoppes, hotels, pubs, schools, hospitals, workhouses, manufacturers - you name it. He would have to know about cabmen shelters, urinals, drinking fountains, statues, stinkpipes, mansions, gardens, stables, churches, cemeteries, sidewalks, tunnels, bridges...it just goes on and on.

We get a little taste of this in the first episode of SHERLOCK with Benedict Cumberbatch as our hero. He has to recall his knowledge of the streets to cut off a cab he thinks may contain a murderer. We see that he remembers a closed road and an alternatve route. He also has to know about the timing of traffic signals and pedestrian signage and crosswalks, and he has to know what buildings he has climb the fire escape stairs on, and which he's going to have to jump between. Is this possible? Yes. In a small area. Could someone with an upper level genius IQ be able to do this with an entire city? No idea. Standard IQ here, but I still doubt it. None of this takes into account variables like broken or missing stairwells, full or empty parking areas, ever-changing potholes affecting traffic, emergency vehicles, jaywalkers, delivery people on bicycles - things like that. So again, I can't imagine this as a possibility. It makes for good TV, but it's not realistic to me.

Now, Holmes did have an advantage with his collection of articles and information about many things in and around London. He also had that brain of his. He didn't let it get gummed up with stupid, and only stocked it with necessary data. He had dozens of newspapers that had tiny type and many thousands of words about everything happening in the city and it burroughs, and he had books like Baedeker's Guides to have some of that info in a compact form. We know Holmes kept a huge index about people, places, and events that he often worked on, and we also know he had reference books on his shelves, so he had places to go for refreshing his mind. There's no mention of a Baedeker's in the canon, though I feel pretty certain that he had them, too. The problem is that we're talking about someone who would need this kind of information from day one in his profession, and have it all the time. He was in business for over 20 years, and the changes happening in the area were almost immeasurable, so we're not talking about a simple task. However, from a chronologist's point of view, this statement by Holmes has nothing to with whether or not REDH occurred in June or October, or in any year from 1887 to 1890, so there's that.

Along the lines of guidebooks, the above Francis Chichester - Guide To Good Living In London came into my possession recently, and as wonderful as it is to have and one day use to navigate London, I'm distracted by the fact that I cannot figure out when this thing was published. I know it's from before 2004, but that's all I have. There's no year of publication, no ISBN number, no anything anywhere in it to help me determine when it saw it's first sunrise. I found another one from 1999 which is very similar but the lettering is different. My copy has all upper-case lettering, but the one I found online has upper and lower-case. (And I have no idea how the website selling it knows what year it came out.) I have been through every single page of this thing, and have exhausted all of my clever research skills to figure this out, but nada. I am no closer now than I was when I received it. Any ideas? I would truly appreciate it.

When I was a kid I was always impressed that my mother knew where any street was in the towns in and around where I grew up. It was almost superhero-like. Now that I'm older and realize that the entire area I'm referring to could probably fit inside just one of London's train stations, it becomes less impressive. (Sorry, mom. I love you.) I think you can see, though, why writing a paper on this problem would be a massive...well...problem. Maybe I'll pick it up from time to time like the white whale situation, but I don't know if it's ever going to be finished. It's something to strive for, but don't be expecting it any time soon. What you can expect is for me to once again express my admiration for all of you readers. You keep my brain cramping for more posts, but I have aspirin for that, so I'll keep typing away. I'll see you next month, and as always...thanks for reading.