Sensational Sherlock - Part 3 - Ambiguities of Morals and Method

Sensation fiction is a mix of attention to detail and wild abstraction: “The typical sensation novel was a catholic mixture of modes and forms, combining realism and melodrama, the journalistic and the fantastic, the domestic and the romantic or exotic.” (Pykett, 5) The sensation novel depicts tiniest nuances and singular objects as clues to underlying secrets and guilt. At the same time, characters’ emotions are overwhelming: “everything in a sensation novel is larger than life … Humanity is seen in extremis, perpetually at the point of crisis.” (Hughes, 22) Sensation novels combine domestic realism and older forms of Gothic romance and melodrama (Brantlinger, 1). This is reflected in the narrative style, which alternates precise descriptive detail of setting, objects and external characteristics with tempestuous and hyperbolic expressions of emotion and sensation. This “violent yoking of romance and realism” (Hughes, 16) is also present in Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four.

Holmes’s irrational excitement about detective work and his scientific, analytical method of detection are the most striking example of this combination of romance and realism. Watson observes Holmes at the crime scene in A Study in Scarlet:

“… he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face. So engrossed was he with his occupation that he appeared to have forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to himself under his breath the whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, groans, whistles, and little cries suggestive of encouragement and of hope. As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded, well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards though the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent.” (A Study in Scarlet, Part ,1, Chapter3)

Holmes is performing a forensic examination of the scene, analyzing the footprints, the blood stains and the tobacco ash. In the process Holmes himself appears to have lost his senses, he is so excited. A similar combination of realism and romance is, of course, built into the concept of proximity as shown in the depiction of the crime scenes. Mysterious, terrific and fantastical murders are discovered in houses located at common-sounding suburban addresses. It can also be argued that a mix of realism and romance is built in to the formula of detective fiction: fictional crime and mystery are always romantic; clues to its resolution tend to be the realistic detail spotted by the skillful detective. When Holmes criticizes Watson’s narrative as too romantic and Watson claims it is realistic (The Sign of Four, Chapter 1), Conan Doyle draws attention to this tug-of-war of realism and romance which permeates both novels. 

Watson is seemingly recording the triumphs of his friend’s science of deduction – logical and analytical, hence realistic, reasoning. But the nature of the events - mysterious, exciting and sensational – is pulling his narrative in the direction of romance. Examination of the murder scene in The Sign of Four is a good example of this (The Sign of Four, Chapter 6). In it Holmes points out the various clues. Watson interprets them initially as terrifying and strange (“That is not a footmark.” “It is absolutely impossible.” “a child has done this horrid thing.” “I cannot conceive anything which will cover the facts”), and Holmes keeps dismantling the mystery with his interpretation (“It is the impression of a wooden stump.” “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” “but the thing is quite natural. … You know my methods. Apply them.”)

Throughout the two narratives there is a tension between the romantic, melodramatic experience of the exciting events, and Holmes’s apparent realistic interpretation and handling of them.

The most dramatic fault line between the realistic and the romantic in both A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, is the maligned ‘Gaboriau-gap’, so called because it is thought that Conan Doyle copied the narrative device from Emile Gaboriau’s novels. When the culprit has been caught and Holmes is ready to reveal the reasoning that led him to solve the mystery, the narrative is suddenly hijacked by the story of the criminal and his growing obsession for revenge. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes says: “we have reached the end of our little mystery. You are very welcome to put any questions you like to me now, and there is no danger that I will refuse to answer them.” (A Study in Scarlet, Part 1, Chapter 7) You turn the page and find yourself “on the Great Alkali Plain” (A Study in Scarlet, Part 2, Chapter 1) and meet a grizzled cowboy with a little girl in “dainty shoes and smart pink frock” (Ibid.). The transition is dramatic and disorienting – 221b Baker Street has been whisked away and we are in a strange, distant land, where a romance develops and turns into murderous monomania of a heart-broken lover. In The Sign of Four the ‘Gaboriau-gap’ is better integrated; it is presented as the culprit’s own words (The Sign of Four, Chapter 12).

 

The stories of the culprits are wildly melodramatic, exotic and romantic. One involves a forced marriage and a broken heart, the other an Indian treasure and imprisonment on tropical islands inhabited by cannibals. In the narrative structure, Watson’s realistic narrative of Holmes’s detective investigation is overwhelmed by the romantic drama of the criminal’s experience.

Watson says of Holmes: “So swift, silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained bloodhound picking up the scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defence.” (The Sign of Four, Chapter 6) The ‘Gaboriau-gaps’ develop a thrilling parallel between the criminals and the detective.

Holmes and the culprit he pursues are both obsessed by the same crime. Both lose their human features in their feverish, agitated, excitement. Jefferson Hope is “human bloodhound, with his mind wholly set upon the object to which he had devoted his life.” (A Study in Scarlet, Part 2, Chapter, 5). Jonathan Small, too, experiences “an overpowering, absorbing passion.”(The Sign of Four, Chapter 12): “To escape, to track down Sholto, to have my hand upon his throat – that was my one thought.” (Ibid.) Tonga,  Small’s companion, the extension of his murderous passions, is a “little hell-hound,” “the little devil,” (The Sign of Four, Chapter 11) “as venomous as a young snake” (The Sign of Four, Chapter 12). The murderers, like the detective, are “hounds.”

Holmes, Hope and Small all have knowledge of dispensing drugs. We are familiar with Holmes’s chemical experiments (A Study in Scarlet, Part 1, Chapter 1; The Sign of Four, Chapter 9). In A Study in Scarlet, Hope describes himself as “a fairly good dispenser” as he tells how he made two pills, one lethal and one harmless, for his Russian roulette by poison. In the Andaman Islands, Small learns “to dispense drugs.” This allows him to save Tonga’s life and as a result he becomes Small’s inseparable companion. This chemical knowledge allows both criminals to commit their crimes by providence and coincidence. Hope’s pills are a rather unreliable method of murder which leaves the judgement to Providence. Small’s rescue of Tonga leads to Sholto’s death when he is unable to control Tonga’s violence.

Both crimes and detection in A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four are morally ambiguous. First, the victims are immoral and their demise is a result of their own bad behaviour. Secondly, drugs introduce into the narratives “a hand of fate,” a supernatural agency of justice so familiar in sensation fiction. Thirdly, the detective’s motivation for detection is self-gratification – to get a kick, to get high on crime. Fourthly, the experience of crime is similar for both the detective and the criminal, they also share chemical expertise.

There is some of the ‘doubling’ typical in sensation fiction in the parallels between the detective and the criminals. But more significantly, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four display the moral ambiguity that sensation novels were so criticized for: “Partly because of its moral ambiguity, the sensation novel was felt to be dangerous by many of its first critics” (Brantlinger, 5; also Hughes, ix).

Watson as a narrator neatly solves the classic problem of detective fiction: how to tell a story without giving its secrets away too early. This is the perverse requirement of any story with mystery which may sensation novelists struggled with: “The narrative satisfactions of the sensation novel depend to a great extent on the gradual uncovering of the central secret(s). To this end the most effective sensation writers developed techniques of narrative concealment and delay or deferral.“ (Pykett, 5) These “new narrative strategies were developed to tantalize the reader by withholding information rather than divulging it.” (Brantlinger, 1-2); see also Hughes, 26)

Conan Doyle’s technique was to introduce Watson as an internal narrator and a Boswell to Holmes’s Dr Johnson. Watson tells us all he knows and therefore gives the impression of a reliable narrator. Holmes occasionally keeps information from Watson, teases him and keeps him guessing to theatrical effect. In this way, Conan Doyle can withhold information from the reader without aggravating her. We do not mind being kept in the dark, because Watson is there with us.

“Whatever the technique adopted the result was the same: a modification, in some cases quite radical, or the omniscient narrator’s role as the reader’s guide, guardian and friend. Without this helping hand, the reader is left to make provisional moral judgements as the narrative unfolds. The result is a considerable degree of moral ambiguity.” (Pykett, 6)

Moral ambiguity here are the intermediate moral judgements we make (which are often wrong) while reading a sensation novel. Because we are no longer supported by an omniscient, reliable narrator, we cannot immediately know the significance and moral value of each event or the true moral nature of each character we encounter.

“At the same time as the narrator of a sensation novel seems to acquire authority by withholding the solution to a mystery, he or she also loses authority or at least innocence, becoming a figure no longer to be trusted. … the narrative persona must now become either secretive or something less than omniscient” (Brantlinger, 15)

Secretive narrators are unreliable by definition. Less than omniscient narrators are fallible. Watson is fallible, but his less than omniscient narration is bolstered by Holmes’s superb intelligence and deductive skills. Holmes and Watson work as a double act to provide a solution to the most significant problem with narrative technique created by sensation fiction: the incompatibility of a traditional omniscient narrator with a plot involving mystery.

To summarize my reading of Conan Doyle’s two stories: how many boxes of ‘sensation fiction’ can we tick for A Study of Scarlet and The Sign of the Four?

Plot: √Crime, √Mystery, √Proximity, Sex, √Doubles, √Coincidence.

Characterization: √Deviant characters; √Irrational character motivation; √ Abnormal mental states

Style: √Accuracy of detail, √Expressions of emotion, √Melodrama, √Mix of realism and romance

Ideas: √Moral ambiguity; Uncertainties about gender roles

Form: √ Fractured or insecure narrative voice (narrative omnipotence problematic)

Conan Doyle’s first two Holmes stories are sensation novels, only he pretty much left out women.

Paul Violaine – Apprentice Villain or Unfortunate Victim

In The Slaves of Paris both villains and their victims are trapped by their own passions and desires. Most characters in Gaboriau have both good and bad qualities. Even Mascarin, as we find out at the end of The Mystery of Champdoce has a redeeming feature – he is not all evil.

Paul Violaine’s experience of being caught in the net is the most interesting. Paul arrives in Paris penniless with Rose. He is 23 years of age. He is the bastard son of Montlouis, a merry young man involved in the early romantic and tragic shenanigans of Diana de Mussidan and Norbert Duke de Champdoce. Montlouis is killed by Octave de Mussidan, whose remorse then leads him to support Paul and his mother financially until he becomes of age.

In the opening chapter of Caught in the Net Paul returns to the lodgings where Rose is waiting. He has been unsuccessful in his search for work. Rose is not pleased and an argument follows. Paul complains:

“I ask you have I left one stone unturned? Have I not gone from publisher to publisher to sell the songs of my own composing – those songs that you sing so well? I have endeavoured to get pupils. What fresh efforts can I try?” (Caught in the Net, Chapter 1)

He defends himself: “I have no trade; I am no mechanic.” (Ibid.) At his first meeting with Mascarin, the villain pulls no punches talking to Paul:

“You wasted your time over music, and composed songs and, I know, an opera, and thought yourself a perfect genius ...Foolish boy! Every year a thousand poor wretches have been thus intoxicated by their provincial celebrity, and have started for Paris, buoyed up by similar hopes. Do you know the end of them? At the end of ten years - I give them no longer - nine out of ten die of starvation and disappointment, and the other joins the criminal army." (Caught in the Net, Chapter 2)

Paul’s character is established in the opening pages. He is ambitious but lazy. He feels a sense of entitlement. Mascarin offers Paul 12,000 francs a year for an unspecified job. It is an offer Paul cannot refuse. Naïve and covetous, handsome and not very smart, Paul Violaine is just what Mascarin has been looking for. As Dr Hortebise puts it at the cliff hanger ending of chapter 2: “… he will mould this child between his fingers like wax.” (Caught in the Net, Chapter 2)

“Staggering like a drunken man, Paul Violaine descended the stairs when his interview with Mascarin had been concluded.” (Caught in the Net, Chapter 7). Paul is “absolutely stunned” by his good fortune. “Paul was utterly dazed.” (Ibid.) He remains is a state of dazed confusion for much of the rest of the story. He next appears at Mascarin’s office “very pale, and his eyes had the expression of some hunted creature. His attire was in disorder and betokened a night spent in aimless wanderings to and fro.” (Caught in the Net, Chapter 10) He declares “My life has ended.” Rose has left him, and he has been accused of stealing the 500 francs Daddy Tantaine lent him. (Ibid.)

When Paul describes the loss of Rose, Mascarin concludes that Paul’s “words were too fine for his grief to be sincere.” (Ibid.) The accusation of theft is a more serious matter. Paul is “horror-stricken,” “utterly bewildered,” he listens to Mascarin in “breathless eagerness,” “a cold shiver ran through his frame,” he stammers, “he was crushed down beneath this weight of argument.” “He had lost the power of hearing.” All this happens to Paul in the space of a couple of pages. By appearing to save Paul, Mascarin alleviates these physical symptoms brought on by Paul’s first brush with crime. Mascarin has captured Paul. He admits that there never was a job for 12,000 francs, but he has “taken a great liking to” Paul. Mascarin will make Paul rich. All he wants in return is “absolute obedience.” (Ibid.)

Mascarin takes Pauls to Van Klopen, a “man-milliner” and “Regenerator of Fashion.” (Caught in the Net, Chapter 11). Listening to Mascarin and Van Klopen plotting “Paul’s cheek had grown paler and paler, for, occupied as he was, he could not fail to comprehend something of what was going on.” Paul begins to learn of Mascarin’s plans: “It was too evident to him that his protector was engaged in some dark and insidious plot, and Paul felt that he was standing over a mine which might explode at any moment.” (Ibid.) The various characters are “all jumbled and mixed up together in one strange phantasmagoria. Was he, Paul, to be a mere tool in such hands? Toward what a precipice was he being impelled!” (Ibid.)

Paul realizes that he is trapped  and there is no way out for him:

“But the web had been woven too securely, and should he struggle to break through it, he might find himself exposed to even more terrible dangers. He felt horrified at his position, but with this there was mingled no horror of the criminality of his associates, for the skilful hand of Mascarin ad unwound and mastered all the bad materials in his nature. He was dazzled at the glorious future held out before him …” (Ibid.)

 

This is the moment, in this progress of a young rake, when Paul Violaine moves from being a victim and a dumb tool to being a villain’s apprentice. His weak and ambitious nature is seduced. He goes along willingly: “I yield myself up to the impetuous stream which is already carrying me along.” (Ibid.)

Paul’s fall and corruption is completed when Rose arrives with her new lover and he witnesses Rose's transformation. Paul is left gasping, his “legs bent under him, and he staggered.” This is the last straw; now, he says to Mascarin, “I am willing to do whatever you desire.” (Ibid.)

Paul moves into new lodgings and assumes a new identity as instructed by Daddy Tantaine and Mascarin: “You must cast aside your old skin, and enter that of another.” (Caught in the Net, Chapter 25) “Paul’s brain seemed to tremble beneath the crime that his companion was teaching him.” (Ibid.) As soon as he is alone “he was seized with such mortal terror, that he sank in a half fainting condition into an easy-chair. … He recalled the incidents in the life of the escaped galley-slave Coignard, who, under the name of Pontis de St. Hélène, absolutely assumed the rank of a general officer, and took command of a domain.” ((Ibid.)

(Source:

http://www.toujoursla.com

Pierre Coignard, the “son of a vine dresser” from the Loire region (“Celebrated Trials of the Nineteenth Century,” p405) joined the republican army after the French revolution and “became a corporal in the grenadiers of the Convention But his disposition was ill disposed by nature and soon giving indulgence to his perverted habits he was found guilty of certain acts which occasioned his condemnation for fourteen years to the galleys.” (Ibid.)

“After four years of captivity he broke his irons and escaped from prison” (Ibid.) and returned to France. There he assumed the name and identity of Count de Sainte Hélène and launched himself on a career of crime with a gang of accomplices. He committed fraud and forgery and a string of burglaries using his assumed aristocratic title to gain access to wealthy households. “All the robberies in which Pierre Coignard and his band were engaged had been conducted with a subtle ingenuity that baffled the keen researches of even the police of Paris” (“Celebrated Trials of the Nineteenth Century,” p412)

Eventually, Eugène Vidocq caught up with Coignard and he was brought to trial in June 1819. In the debate about Coignard’s true identity he argued that the scars on his legs that identified him were not really from small pox but  “the effect of bruises which Vidocq had inflicted by severe kicks (“Celebrated Trials of the Nineteenth Century,” p410). Coignard had run out of luck and the judges  condemned him "to the travaux forces for life to exposure in the iron collar and to be branded by the letters TF." (“Celebrated Trials of the Nineteenth Century,” p415)

The story of Pierre Coignard can be read in the April 1833 edition of Fraser’s Magazine (Vol. 7, No XL, pp393-415) in an article entitled “Celebrated Trials of the Nineteenth Century.” The article is a translation from the French original Causes criminelles célèbres du XIX^e siècle, rédigées par une société d'avocats (Tome second, 1827, pp219-287). This French compendium of famous trials was a prime source of material for sensational writers like Gaboriau.

Coignard’s criminal career has parallels with Mascarin’s. Scars as an identifying feature appear in Mascarin’s plot, too. Still, Paul Violaine seems to be having characteristically inflated ideas about his own abilities, when he compares his own criminal aspirations with the varied activities of fraud, forgery and theft of Coignard. Paul’s role in Mascarin’s plot is passive. His task is to look pretty and provide Flavia with an aristocratic title.  When he figures out André’s true parentage, h e faints (The Mystery of Champdoce, Chapter 20). Paul Violaine is not exactly master villain material. As Daddy Tantaine observes: “He is a perfect sham! … even his vices are mere pretence.” (The Mystery of Champdoce, Chapter 25)

By the time Paul marries Flavia, he is beyond all caring:

“The change was great, but Paul was no longer surprised at anything. He did not feel the faintest tinge of remorse; he only feared one thing, and that was that by some blunder he might compromise his future ... (The Mystery of Champdoce, Chapter 34)

In the end, Paul’s weak character and overall uselessness in the endeavours of life turn against Mascarin. Like a tool used against its maker, Paul’s very nature becomes Mascarin’s greatest punishment. This is a fitting and deliciously ironic end to Gaboriau’s excellent sensation novel.