I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.
Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories
43. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor (April 1892, Adventures)
This is one of Doyle’s stories which displays to the reader those endearing qualities of organization and care that so often the movies about Holmes (to their discredit and to their disservice) frequently ignore. The Noble Bachelor opens with Holmes returning from an afternoon stroll to find a letter from Lord St. Simon waiting for him, and, to learn more about his client, the famous detective consults his reference books. Screen adaptations about Holmes (especially those aimed at a popular audience, such as those starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch) very often conflate Holmes’ wild and ecstatic moments of genius with a chaotic and disorganized environment, but Conan Doyle is careful not to permit this. Holmes may have his oddities (he keeps his tobacco in a Persian slipper and decorates the wall by punching “V.R.” with bullets [a pastime that I also would thoroughly enjoy, albeit shooting out a bald eagle design rather than a Victoria Regina]), but he is, on the whole, methodical and organized.
Holmes’ reference books must have taken many days to compile and to maintain. His chemical pursuits are studies in precision. And the hours which he devotes to the study and writing of his many monograms (some, for instance, on the differences between one hundred and forty types of tobacco, as outlined in Boscombe) are long. While it may seem to Hollywood as though a sensational individual who absorbs the intricacies of the world as if by magic is most attractive, the opposite is in fact true. Like The Rocky film series which is improved by its training scenes, the sedulous study, meticulous organization, and almost paralyzing exactitude of Holmes’ regimen make the man more human, more relatable, and more empathetic. When Holmes is laissez-faire in his treatment toward others, indifferent toward humanity, and careless in his method, then he is less endearing than when he shows his emotion for Watson, his empathy, and his painstaking organization. When adaptations, especially popular ones, replace his mindful nature with the purported frenzy of genius, these adaptations weaken Holmes’ character—although they may think they are strengthening it. Better to show, as in The Noble Bachelor, how willingly Holmes listens to Watson’s brief and how his hard-won knowledge is actually won. The driest, most solitary aspects of Holmes’ study are captivating.
Bearing this in mind, in The Noble Bachelor, the case that Lord St. Simon brings to Holmes is a trivial one for our detective, thanks to his rigorous study of crime. Holmes has solved the problem before St. Simon has even left the room, and Holmes confides to Watson how he reached the solution so quickly. Holmes says that he has, “knowledge of pre-existing cases which serve me so well. There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich the year after the Franco-Prussian War.” Again, this apparently sorcerous ability to solve cases at the drop of a hat comes from Holmes’ preparation. He never misses the agony or crime columns in the paper. He tracks cases from around the world. He is deeply immersed in his field, more so than any official policeman or any other amateur detective. The work that he does behind the scenes is what makes him appear so extraordinary, though, as he explains time and again, there is no real wizardry behind the results that he conjures; any perceived magic is an illusion; his only resources are logic, deduction, and hard work. In The Noble Bachelor, Holmes has only to locate the bride, and, with the aid of a few well-informed guesses and some legwork, he speedily finds her. Once reunited with Lord St. Simon, Hatty explains herself and her position, and she goes off with the man whom she truly loved, while Lord St. Simon remains unmarried, the deflated but still noble bachelor.
