Monthly Meeting Minutes - 11th February 2021

The Shingle of Southsea Holmesian Society

Monthly Meeting Minutes

For the first time, The Shingle of Southsea attempted to hold an online Zoom meeting, to reduce the COVID-19 risks raised by meeting in person. The meeting was recorded and can be seen here:

However, for traditionalists, the written minutes are still provided here:

Date of Meeting: 11th February 2021

 

Location of Meeting:

The Sherloft, My House, Portsmouth, UK

And Zoom on the internet.

 

Attendees:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)

 

Apologies:

There were no apologies.

 

The Toasts:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) provided the following toast to Langdale Pike:

Langdale Pike

Raise a glass to Langdale Pike

A strange and languid gossip type

Whose knowledge attracts Holmes attention

But, Canonically, gets just one mention.

 

 

Motions:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)  moved that we elect a new chairman.

The motion was not seconded.

 

Presentation:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) gave the following presentation on the topic of Sherlock Holmes’s attitudes towards women:

 

Holmes’s Attitude to Women

By Paul Thomas Miller

 

It is often remarked that Holmes had a poor attitude towards women. It is just as often counter-remarked that his attitude was not as bad as Watson reported. But when we consider that the Canon spans a period of about forty years between The Adventure of the Gloria Scott and His Last Bow, I wondered whether there was evidence of Holmes’s attitude changing over time.

The primary difficulty in examining this is one of Holmesian Chronology. Sherlockians have long argued over the dates of cases. I will use my attempt to make sense of the dates – Watson Does Not Lie, Wildside Press. (It would be interesting, at a later date, to note whether other chronologies give a steadier evolution of Holmes’s attitudes.)

 

In A Study in Scarlet, we get the first hint of Holmes’s opinion of women in chapter five when he exclaims “We were the old women to be so taken in.” The suggestion here is that old women are foolish. Of course it is debatable whether it is age, gender or the combination of both which render a person foolish, but taken at face value, this opinion from March 1881 already indicates Holmes’s poor opinion of women.

This attitude continues over the next seven years.

In February 1884, in Beryl Coronet, he suggests that women in love become irrational and that this explains the willingness of Mary Holder to betray her uncle: “I have no doubt that she loved you, but there are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other”. Holmes specifies that this is something that women are capable of. Not men, who he seems to have a higher regard for.

Then in the Autumn of 1886 he gives us his rant about female inscrutability in The Second Stain: “And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable… How can you build on such a quicksand? Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling-tongs.” The implication is clear – women are irrational and silly.

One would expect his attitude to have been modified sooner as in 1887, during The Five orange Pips he confesses “I have been beaten… once by a woman.” Surely they cannot all be so irrational if one is capable of besting Holmes. “No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done,” said Holmes on 4^th March 1881. And yet his ability wasn’t enough to stop this unknown woman. As we will see, he still had a poor opinion of women in 1888, but perhaps some groundwork had already been done to enable the change that was about to come.

The case which is supposed to indicate a change in Holmes’s attitudes is A Scandal in Bohemia, which took place in March 1888. He begins the case with his old attitude. There is a suggestion that women are untrustworthy – “Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting.” And another nod towards female irrationality – “When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most.” He is specific regarding gender here. Presumably he believes men would do something more intelligent, like try to put out the blaze. But by the time Watson writes this story up in 1891, Irene Adler had succeeded in making a difference to the potential misogyny Holmes fostered – “He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late.”

So, if we trust Watson, we should expect that after the Adler case (and certainly by 1891) Holmes no longer casts doubt on female intelligence. To some extent this is true.

He still thinks they are untrustworthy. Consider his warning to Watson four months later in The Sign of the Four: ““I would not tell them too much,” said Holmes. “Women are never to be entirely trusted,—not the best of them.”” But trustworthiness and cleverness are very different things. In fact, the implied sneakiness of women would require a certain intelligence. And Holmes’s opinion on potential female intelligence is confirmed at the end of the case when he demonstrates a high regard for Mary Morstan: “I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way…” Note, there is no hint of “in spite of being a woman”.

In The Twisted Lip, Holmes confesses that women are worth listening to when, on 15 June 1889 he states: “I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.” But this is a bit of a back-handed complement – he accepts Mrs. St. Clair may have a valid point, but not because she can think well – it’s just instinct. It is as if Holmes has modified his thoughts on female intelligence, but not wholeheartedly.

And by 1890, he seems to have returned to its pre-Adler stance when he decides Mary Sutherland is too irrational to be told the truth about Hosmer Angel in A Case of Identity: “If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian saying, ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’ There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.” This hardly matches up with the change in attitude Watson reported a year later. In fact, this seems to be directly making “merry over the cleverness of women”.

My personal thought is that Holmes actually just had a poor opinion of Mary Sutherland – not all women - and expressed it with a poor choice of words.  After all, consider the high opinion he had of Violet Hunter in The Copper Beeches which took place one year later: “You seem to me to have acted all through this matter like a very brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could perform one more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not think you a quite exceptional woman.” Holmes isn’t entirely reformed in this statement – his use of “girl” is patronizing and “exceptional” suggests normal women wouldn’t be this smart. But, he doesn’t have that attitude of “all women are irrational” that the Hafiz quote suggests.

There are two suspicious comments made by Watson subsequent to the events of A Scandal in Bohemia which we must also consider. In The Dying Detective, published 1913, Watson claims “…he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women. He disliked and distrusted the sex, but he was always a chivalrous opponent.” And in The Greek Interpreter, published 1893 Watson references Holmes’s “aversion to women.” These comments do not claim that Holmes still thinks women are less intelligent, but that he dislikes women.

I understand why Watson had these opinions of Holmes - he seems to disregard the wellbeing of women too easily. In The Golden Pince-Nez, we see Holmes in 1894 where Watson reports how Holmes easily manipulates women whenever he likes: “I may have remarked before that Holmes had, when he liked, a peculiarly ingratiating way with women, and that he very readily established terms of confidence with them.”

More shockingly, there is the maid in Charles Augustus Milverton, who Holmes gets engaged to despite having no intention of staying with her. But he knows she has another suitor who she will be consoled by. Holmes isn’t actually cruel to her, but he doesn’t dwell on irrelevant details in the middle of a case and it is his failure to express care that leads Watson to his opinion. But Holmes may well care, without taking the time to show Watson he does. While Watson based his opinions of Holmes on what he saw, he didn’t see everything. And with a person as superficially unemotional as Holmes, Watson stood no chance of seeing into his heart.

In fact in 1926 we get a much better idea of what is going on in Holmes’s head. Holmes gave us a direct insight in The Lion’s Mane: “Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart, but I could not look upon her perfect clear-cut face…” Women have seldom been an attraction to Holmes. Not never. The inference being that Holmes has been attracted to some women. This disproves many of Watson’s assumptions about Holmes disliking women. The truth is merely that Holmes was not open about liking women in the presence of Watson.

So did Holmes’s opinion of women change after Irene Adler bested him? I think so. Perhaps not openly enough for Watson to see it, but enough that he was more open to the intelligence of women. He even considered a heterosexual relationship a possibility in The Devil’s Foot in 1897: “I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done.”

 

Any Other Business:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) raised the issue of heating in The Sherloft again. There are no funds for heating.