“I address this letter of introduction to the following monograph, written by my own hand. I have undertaken to commit this autobiographical revelation of the factual events of my life to writing, at the suggestion and encouragement of my best friend in the world, my brother Mycroft Holmes. The written record of my adventures as conveyed by Dr. John Hamish Watson, rather than myself, as you will read herein, are a fallacious perversion of the reality of my own identity and activities. – Sherlock Sherrinford Holmes”
“Watson and I gathered our things and a five p.m. set out in a hansom cab from Baker Street to arrive at the one place at which I was certain to locate my brother in the early evening each day: The Diogenes Club.
“There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town.
No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.”, I informed Watson as we jostled our way through the streets of London in the cab.
This very exclusive men’s club was named after Diogenes, the Cynic. He made a virtue of extreme poverty, begging for a living and sleeping in a large tub in the marketplace. He was notorious for his provocative behavior and philosophical stunts. He carried a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He regularly antagonized Plato, disputing his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaging his lectures. After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth, where he was befriended by Alexander The Great.
Fundamentally he was a Western contemporary of the ancient Indian ascetics who abstained from worldly possessions and comfort in favor of poverty as an aid toward spiritual purity. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action and not theory. His life was a relentless campaign to debunk the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society”, I explained to Watson, having read several treatises concerning the life of Diogenes written by modern day Cynics.
Alexander the Great went to meet Diogenes because he was impressed that the philosopher was so highly admired despite having neither money nor power. However, while Diogenes was relaxing in the sunlight one morning, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favor he might do for him. Diogenes replied, “Yes. Stand out of my sunlight.”
Alexander declared, “If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes”, I said anecdotally, as Watson absorbed my diatribe, as well as the scenery passing by the window of our hansom.
The Diogenes Club was apparently founded, in part, as a front for the SIS, which, as you may know, is the supreme and indispensable brain-trust behind the British government. This organization secures government secrets and advises the best course of covert action to enable Britain to intervene in the affairs of other nations without detection.”
~ excerpt from the book SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, by Lawrence R. Spencer
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Diogenes of Sinope was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophyhe was born in modern-day Sinop, Turkey, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.
“To readers of the accounts of my investigatory cases:
“I have undertaken to commit this autobiographical revelation of the factual events of my life to writing, at the suggestion and encouragement of my best friend in the world, my brother Mycroft Holmes.”
“The written record of my adventures as conveyed by Dr. John Hamish Watson, rather than myself, as you will read herein, are a fallacious perversion of the reality of my own identity and activities.”
You may recall that, at the end of the first published story of my detectives adventures, A Study in Scarlet, Watson was so impressed by my elegant handling of the case, and so incensed by Scotland Yard’sclaiming full credit for its solution, that he exclaimed: “Your merits should be publicly recognized. You should publish an account of the case. If you won’t, I will for you.”
Owing to my utter disinterest in self-proclamation, and my propensity toward the incessant pursuit of new mysteries to solve, my response to this proposal was, “You may do what you like, Doctor.”
Hence, Watson proceeded to write the story, which was represented as “a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson”, or so I was led to assume. None of the facts you will read herein have ever been surmised, supposed and imagined with respect to any of my adventures. Indeed, the nature and identity of the dramatis personae on the stage of the intrigue I relate to you now have never before been revealed.
The challenges of this case were the most difficult I ever faced in my career. Indeed, the formidable combination of investigation skills, information gathering, and persistence required the considerable energies of both myself and my dear brother, Mycroft, together with a legion of agents from the Office of The Chancellor of The Exchequer, as well as the Secret Information Services (SIS), whose resources were engaged upon the matter for several years.”
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.”
I invite you to join this escapade, if you will indulge me, into my ultimate adventure. Moreover, I trust that posterity will inherit some small benefit from these observations upon the volatile process, distillation and residue of my life.”
Sherlock Holmes
Sussex Downs, England”
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— Excerpted from “An Open Letter from Sherlock Holmes”, published in the book, “Sherlock Holmes: My Life”
“I desired to keep this particular fragment of the case because of my interest in the alchemical experimentations performed by Dr. Jekyll, which were a means of physical and spiritual transmutation. I esteemed that his experiments were very, very much akin to my own investigation into this subject. I, like so many others, Sir Isaac Newton, foremost amoung them, have shared the dream and drama of a transcendental quest through alchemical methods. The agony and ecstasy of that quest are expressed eloquently, as follows, is this account of his own life:
“I was born into a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me.
Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature.
In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members.
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral, and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens.
I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements.
If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together — that in the agonized womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated?
I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mist like transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion.
For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete. Enough then, that I not only recognised my natural body from the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp of lower elements in my soul.
I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.
I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.
I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment braced and delighted me like wine!”-
Excerpt from the book SHERLOCK HOLMES — MY LIFE, by Lawrence R. Spencer
“The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.”
— Oscar Wilde
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“The most difficult task for the rational observer is to avoid becoming, through empathy or introspection, that which one observes. This ability, applied, enables a detective to emulate the impulses of the criminal – no matter how insane or counter-survival the result of their behavior might be. Fortunately, one need not become a criminal in order to fully comprehend the demented universe of these insane creatures!
Many years ago I read about the case of the Irish poet, Oscar Wilde, a man of great intelligence and artistic sensibilities. The man, although married, with children, who was a respectable person of society, was attracted into a licentious life through association with decadent perverts. It ruined him thoroughly, causing him to lose all that he had gained in reputation, respect, possessions and freedom.
This once great and clever man was cast out from society, and imprisoned to serve for two years of hard labour. As such, he was removed from contact with the depraved associates who precipitated his undoing. During the interval of his imprisonment he applied the innate intellect which elevated him above the multitude, to reflect upon the essence of his existence.
Here is a small portion of a letter he wrote to an associate which was published in the London Times obituary notice of his passing:
“When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal.
It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else – the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver – would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”
I have concluded that criminality, and insanity – forms of the same disease – are contagious. In human society, as with the cancerous cells of a dying body, a healthy cell can be corrupted or overwhelmed by proximity to or interaction with the cancer. Therefore, I esteem that it is important to differentiate and segregate the sane from the insane, the healthy from the unhealthy, and likewise, the identification of the spirit with the body.”
— Excerpt from SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, by Lawrence R. Spencer
“I suppose you are right Mr. Holmes. It is difficult, if not impossible, to stay apace of your ability to remain logical in the face of a situation which is so absurdly enigmatic. You are proposing that the philosophical paradigm of reality should be considered of equal importance with fiction. How can you ever solve a criminal case, your occupation, if every piece of hard evidence could be a contrivance of imagination on the part of the investigator or of the criminal?”, said Mr. Dodgson.
“Quite the contrary”, I said. “But rather than keeping to my methods alone, let me ask you what meaning you attribute to the following passage in your book”, I said, turning to the page which described in the encounter between Alice and the Cheshire Cat.
“Let me read your own words to you.”
“…she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she
thought: still it had VERY long claws and a great many teeth, so she
felt that it ought to be treated with respect.
‘Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know
whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider.
‘Come, it’s pleased so far,’ thought Alice, and she went on. ‘Would you
tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where–‘ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long
enough.’
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question.
‘What sort of people live about here?’
‘In THAT direction,’ the Cat said, waving its right paw round, ‘lives
a Hatter: and in THAT direction,’ waving the other paw, ‘lives a March
Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.’
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad.
You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’
Alice didn’t think that proved it at all; however, she went on ‘And how
do you know that you’re mad?'”
“So, Mr. Dodgson, let me pose the same question to you that young Alice asked of the chimerical cat in your own story: how do you know whether you are mad or not mad? How would you satisfy yourself that I am not mad? How do we know that everyone is mad or not mad?”, I said, rising from my chair to place the manuscript upon the sideboard.
I refilled my pipe once again, in anticipation of the protracted debate that was sure to follow on the heels of these profoundly, absurd, yet existential queries and arguments.
Mr. Dodgson did not seem the least bit nonplussed by my insinuation regarding his sanity, or the sanity of all. Rather, he thanked us very cordially for our hospitality, rose from his chair and reached the door to exit the apartment. As he reached the door he turned back to me.
“Mr. Holmes, I will leave the resolution of this mystery entirely in your very capable hands. If anyone were able to solve the questions you pose to me, I assure you that I am not that man. Neither are any of the mentors whom I have studied, including Sir Isaac himself. I trust that you will be kind enough to inform me of your eventual success, if such is possible. Good day to you, gentlemen”.”
Excerpted from the book SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE, by Lawrence R. Spencer
No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.”, I informed Watson as we jostled our way through the streets of London in the cab.
