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
2. The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (April 1904, Return)
Perhaps (even more than Moriarty) the most contemptible of all Holmes villains, Charles Augustus Milverton takes center stage in this appropriately eponymous story. Doyle’s description of Milverton is so memorable as to make it worth repeating here. First described in association with snakes: a “slithery, gliding, venomous creature,” Milverton is then cast as the “king of all blackmailers” and a man with “a smiling face and a heart of marble.” Once he enters Baker Street, Milverton appears as “a man of fifty, with a large, intellectual head, a round, plump, hairless face, a perpetual frozen smile, and two keen grey eyes, which gleamed brightly from behind broad, golden-rimmed glasses. There was something of Mr. Pickwick’s benevolence in his appearance, marred only by the insincerity of the fixed smile and by the hard glitter of those restless and penetrating eyes.” Milverton is diabolical evil incarnate, with an oily smile and a gun beneath his luxurious coat; he is the iron beneath the velvet glove; he is HBO’s Penguin: an amoral man, out only for himself, one who will stick at nothing. Our vision of Milverton, as readers, is only improved and cemented by Sidney Paget’s masterful depiction. There we see Milverton—hat in hand like a supplicant, deceitfully benevolent smile upon his face, the rich astrakhan over his shoulders—and we can hate him, for, as Holmes says, this is a man who cripples people’s lives “to add to his already swollen money-bags.”
There is less mystery in this case than in most, but the tale is unlike any other in the Holmes canon. It is truly an adventure, one in which Holmes and Watson are in the moral right in burgling Milverton’s home. (One only wishes that the poor maid’s heart didn’t have to get broken in the process, but one cannot make omelets without breaking a few eggs.) The quibble I have with this story is with the presumptive husbands of the women whom Milverton is blackmailing. I put myself into these men’s shoes. If I were to receive a letter from a man like Milverton, of course I would be angry, and I would confront my wife about it. She, likely upset, would explain to me how she was blackmailed by this man, whose name, Charles Augustus, would then be burned into my brain. My anger would turn on him. How dare this Milverton extort and blackmail the love of my life! How dare he think that I would do nothing? How dare he think that I would behave so single-mindedly as to have no notion of revenge toward Milverton himself? Leaving things to simmer with my wife, I would track down that low and cowardly Milverton, and I would… Well, better not to say, but suffice it to say that there are other men in this world who, understanding the position, would act the same. It is hard, therefore, to think that no man had revenged himself upon Milverton before, and thereby put an early stop to his dastardly scheming.
That said, the plot is a great one, and the writing is superb. I have always enjoyed the story, and I find that it’s one that I often go to when I’m looking for a good Holmes adventure to read before bedtime. For its re-readability, its precipitating prose, its uniqueness, and for the sheer magnitude of the villain, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton is one of Doyle’s best.
