A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (12 page)

– Dr Watson, in A.C. Doyle: “Black Peter”

1. The Introduction

Those who in their kindness read these tales will have noted that Sherlock Holmes depended on his acute observation of physical evidence. Until his results were clear, he was reluctant to tell his thoughts and would leave me to guess haltingly his own, finer intuitions. I would like to turn to a case that depends on emotional nuance as much as physical events, a case that had a lasting effect on Holmes and on me. It is also unusual in that, while Holmes investigated the case itself, I puzzled out a hidden, unexpected, parallel issue.

This manuscript is not to be read during Sherlock Holmes’s lifetime or those of Inspector Stanley Hopkins, Mr Arthur Tanner, Sir Eric Soames, or Mr John Wright CBE. If the duty of publishing it should fall to my executors, I rely on their honesty to transmit it exactly as is here to be given. My words report what after consideration I judge needs to be said on a certain subject, no more and no less, and I take responsibility for them.

It was in the late spring of 1894, on a night that Holmes and I began by attending the opera. We, like multitudes of others, were admirers of the great Adelina Patti, who returned that evening as Zerlina after a season abroad in America. Following the performance, we began our walk back to Baker Street with strolling through the Covent Garden market. Holmes, during his periods of activity, had an appetite for incidents, for observing, and crowds gathered densely here.

It had been the first truly temperate day after a cold winter. People craved escape. They invented errands or they idled and talked, whatever came to mind as long as it brought them out of doors. The sun had lasted late in the evening. After it set, the air was still pleasantly warm, and people lingered near the flickering market gaslights and wood fires that sought to penetrate the dark.

As we walked and Holmes watched them, he whistled snatches of the duet that Patti had performed in the opera:

…
Vorrei, e non vorrei…

and

…
Mi trema un poco il cor…

Happy at seeing my friend so absorbed, but wishing no less to poke fun at him for it, I hummed the answering part that Victor Maurel, as Don Giovanni, had sung:

…
Partiam, ben mio, da qui…

My humming made Holmes conscious of his whistling. He looked at me and smiled. Our progress through the market had slowed as the observations reaching him accumulated and, I suppose, required deliberation to process. I did not know what they concerned – fragments of stories involving cheese mongers and flower vendors – but he found his impromptu work worth doing.

He whistled again, and this time I sang the words, softly but aloud, to the notice of some passers-by and much to Holmes’s amusement and distraction. People stared, wondering were we perhaps a well-dressed but under-rehearsed pair of buskers who would soon ask payment for our performance.

Holmes said to me, “Notice how Mozart makes da Ponte’s words repeat endlessly, so we no longer regard the characters as speaking realistically, for the purpose of informing each other.”

Our walking came to a complete stop, it finally being beyond even Holmes’s great powers simultaneously to analyse the varied, rapidly succeeding scenery of the market and also to lecture me on the subtleties of musical drama while ensuring my sufficiently dutiful attention.

He continued, “Eventually the words reach such heat in their reiteration that they melt and transform. At first the Don and Zerlina sing
a ristorar le pene
, but it changes to
le pene a ristorar
.

“In Mozart, words aren’t merely accompanied by music; they turn into music. I don’t say they lose their meanings, but they attenuate to be only tokens of them. They carry their meanings along with them and spin them into patterns, intertwining and exchanging them with the pure tones of the orchestral instruments in a higher art form than Wagner has imagined.”

This was no more abstruse or less comprehensible than lectures Holmes had given me in the past – about the chemical properties of bisulphates, or about patterns of wear on coat sleeves.

He did not accord me his complete attention but went on scrutinizing the activities at the market stalls. I was content to enjoy him. He was himself, in his element. He was after all a detective and also, when he chose to explain his conclusions, an interesting, unusual speaker.

I too looked around the market, and I noticed, some feet away, a neatly dressed, exceptionally handsome young man of about twenty years. He might have been a university undergraduate, although then he ought have been away at university. He must have attended the opera that evening, as we had. Like us, he apparently had no specific business in the market. What held my attention was that, among the people he watched in the crowd, the one he often looked at was my friend Holmes. I couldn’t divine the cause of his interest, but he was not a criminal. Holmes, alert to everything else, acted unaware of him.

There broke out a cry from a booth opposite, and a figure jostled me as he swiftly made away. The young man near us gave a rapid, startled, appealing look to Holmes, then ran after the fugitive.

Others took up the chase.

Soon a constable arrived. From the excited conversation we gathered that the pocket of a customer at the booth had been picked and his wallet taken.

The policeman blew his whistle but then saw the pursuers straggling back discouraged, with no captive pickpocket to show for their pains. He opened his notebook. “Tell me what happened.”

The angry victim argued with the constable, who plainly was prepared to do nothing more than to record the story and turn it in at the end of his shift.

At that minute we heard a voice, out of breath but proud, announce, “I have it!” We turned and saw the young man returning.

“All right, you!” growled the constable, who pushed his way through the crowd toward him. Rather than accepting the wallet, the officer grabbed it roughly and, seizing the boy by the collar, dragged him to the booth. “I’ll teach you to nick an honest man’s pocketbook.”

Holmes, with his calm authority, spoke up: “Officer, I can vouch for this man. He did not steal the wallet. On the contrary, he retrieved it from the thief and deserves be commended.”

“None of that, you. Just move along and go about your business.”

I was surprised to observe a member of the Metropolitan Police speak so rudely to a man dressed as well as Holmes was. There seemed no good reason for his fury against the young man or against Holmes.

By now, other officers had arrived from the nearby Bow Street station in response to the policemen’s whistle. Along with them came Inspector Stanley Hopkins.

Holmes stood his ground. “It hardly makes sense that, having stolen the wallet, he would return and proclaim his possession of it. He is innocent.”

Enraged, the constable wheeled on Holmes. “And what are you, his punter? I’ll run you –”

He was interrupted by Inspector Hopkins. “Constable, are you completely stupid that you fail to recognize the man you are insulting?”

“Oh, I know what he is, right enough, Inspector, and his friends too. Just let me take care of them.”

Hopkins stepped forward, his face inches from the other’s. “This gentleman is the famous Mr Sherlock Holmes who has often been of decisive aid to Scotland Yard investigations, including my own and those of Inspector Gregson and Inspector Lestrade. You will release the young man, and you will apologize humbly to him and also to Mr Holmes.”

The constable ventured a sneer of derision. “I don’t apologize to their kind. Never.”

“Then you’ll not represent the police. Give me your badge.”

There was a vast inequality in station between the constable and the inspector. The contest of wills between them lasted longer than might have been expected, but the badge was soon enough handed over.

The other policemen dispersed, the crowd returned to their business, and Hopkins smiled sweetly to us.

“Holmes, I’m terribly, terribly sorry, and I formally apologize on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.”

“It’s certainly not your fault, Inspector. Thank you for rescuing us. I hope that man will not cause too much of a row for you at Headquarters.”

Hopkins gave a short laugh. “I don’t think he will be able to justify using such public discourtesy to you.”

The young man who had been the policeman’s captive came over to us, and Hopkins apologized officially to him as well. He asked, “Are you a friend of Mr Holmes?”

I shook his hand and thanked him for his interest in my writing. Like the inspector, I chose to call him “Mr Tanner.” Holmes, however, in the perverse way he had of being friendly at unexpected times, accepted the invitation to call the young man “Tanny.”

This made Hopkins look an enquiry at Holmes. He then turned to Mr Tanner. “Please be more careful to avoid attracting the notice of policemen.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir. It was Mr Holmes’s notice I’d hoped to attract – by catching a criminal right in front of him.”

“You should know that Mr Holmes is closely connected with the authorities. Involvement with one would bring involvement with the other.”

I did not see why this well-spoken, gentle young man should need special care in avoiding the authorities. However, he answered Hopkins with a smile: “Yes, sir.”

Once we were under way, though, conversation proved awkward and halting. Tanner tried to express agreement with the remarks about Mozart he’d earlier overheard us make, but Holmes had lost the mood for that train of thought and had little new to add.

2. The Falsehood

It was late by now and the crowds had emptied away. Commercial establishments were closed for the night. We came out from the narrow streets near the market and into Charing Cross Road, whose width would hold as many people as might be presented to it. There was only a suggestion of fog, just enough to give palpable body to the atmosphere and form to the lamp light. We turned onto Oxford Street, and a sense of silence seeped into us, a sense of calm within the large, deserted spaces around us.

Holmes said, “Tanny, you’re quiet. Go ahead and talk. You’re with friends.”

The boy looked first at me. “It’s him,’ he told Holmes, “meaning no disrespect.”

“If you’ve followed Dr Watson’s stories then you know that my clients tell him whatever they tell me. He will treat confidences with the same objectivity and fairness that I do myself, and they are as safe with him as with me.”

“Yes, I know, but he’s not…”

“Watson, please forgive any unintended slight that we cast upon your honour by asking for explicit reassurance, but Tanny’s story will involve matters that are impossible to talk about openly – intimate and liable to invite dire, sudden opprobrium from those from whom Tanny differs.”

I looked at Tanner, observed his nervousness, and said, as gently as I could, “Nothing you could tell us would make me act otherwise than as an ally of Sherlock Holmes.”

Holmes told me, “Thank you, Watson.”

“Of course.”

“Tanny will tell us things. But, rather than letting his meaning sink in slowly, I think it is better if I summarize a certain feature of it first in a nutshell.”

I did suddenly comprehend the disproportionate hatred that the constable had shown earlier. Less naïve than I, the officer must have recognized what Tanner’s business was in Covent Garden. He must have been delighted to find a pretext, even a false one, to harass and arrest the boy. I saw with shame the meaning of his cryptic remarks about Holmes and me, his conclusions about our relationship to Mr Tanner.

Like all adult men in the modern age of Queen Victoria, the age of steam and rail and the Industrial Revolution, I understood the concept of inversion and had heard of its being practised – that there were men who preferred men to women. As a physician, I was aware of the work of my colleague Dr Havelock Ellis, who was then collaborating with John Addington Symonds on their book
Sexual Inversion
. The phenomena they described rarely had direct, practical implication in the daily routine of medicine, other than in certain morbid manifestations. In general society, as a topic of polite conversation, inversion was, as Holmes had said, unmentionable. That it could apply to the clean, comely young man before me was entirely not possible.

Nonetheless, my profession had trained me to react only after careful thought and to reason from realities instead of condemning them. These tendencies had been reinforced by observing Holmes’s procedures as a detective.