Impressions of Sherlock Holmes
Impressions of Sherlock Holmes is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche published anonymously in The New-York Times on 28 october 1894.
Impressions of Sherlock Holmes
He Says that Man Has Not the Capability Not to Invent Cults.
Sherlock Holmes could have communicated wisdom to the reporter if the latter had been young enough to receive it, for he admitted him into the intimacy of his home life, which, in accordance with the dictates of a very moral, though gently cynical, philosopher, one should ardently love.
Although the reporter lacked tact in inducing him to make a show of his talents. the first time that he met Sherlock Holmes the latter dazzled him with his aptness in penetrating all sorts of mysteries. His mind, disentangled from all commonplace things, permitted no incidental proposition to embarrass it, and went in a direct line to events which had not yet occurred. An example of this faculty is often given by his friend, Hyams, the well-known golf champion of Lenox, who received him one day at the threshold of his cottage, on the stairs of which men hurried up and down, carrying sofas, divans, seats covered with silk and lace, bookcases of rosewood, and other futile and unnecessary pieces of furniture. Hyams, to explain, said:
"Estelle, my poor late wife's friend, whose house is all topsy-turvy for repairs, asked me to take care of her furniture for two or three weeks. It's a great bother, but I had no reason to refuse."
"There could be no valid reason," said Sherlock Holmes, "but when you marry think of your son."
"What a notion!" exclaimed Hyams, in unaffected surprise. "I am not thinking of marriage. At all events, you know that my son is the dearest being on earth to me."
The two friends talked for several hours without making the least allusion to this incident, but, when they parted, Sherlock said in a firm, tenderly imperious voice:
"Think of your son!"
Of course, a few weeks later, Hyams married Estelle, for a woman's furniture hooks itself to wherever it happens to be, with hooks of steel, more securely than ivy, with its thousand claws; but blind as was the old to realize that the future Mrs. Hyams illy concealed her hatred for his son. He had not force of character enough to postpone the projected marriage, but he gave to his son a notable portion of his fortune, for Sherlock's warning flashed through his mind at the right moment.
Facts like these are trifles in Sherlock's experience. His ideas in their abstract liberty, disengaged from all anecdotic dross, are much more striking, but to express them, a translator is inevitably a traitor. The reporter found at Sherlock's home one day a young stranger, whose rapid thoughts summarized, in concise phrases, universal history.
"He is" said Sherlock, "a priest of talent, who has every possible chance to become a Bishop."
"What!" exclaimed the reporter, with an irreverence that his astonishment excused "a priest with a slate-blue waistcoat and a long beard! He is not a Roman Catholic priest, I am sure."
"No," replied Sherlock, very seriously, "he is a member of the atheistic cult; only he belongs to a dissenting sect."
The reporter has the habit and the good taste never to be astonished, but he could not repress a slight movement which was vaguely like surprise.
"Don't affect to ignore the most elementary things. Sherlock said, in a tone which was affable, yet severe. "Certain philosophers refuse to designate by the word God original causes or lack of original causes; but as they have to name them when they have to speak of them, the new word which they adopt is equivalent to the ancient one, and expresses the same idea in as precise a manner. It is thus that, to use a vulgar but excessively clear comparison, prudishness of the language has replaced by other syllables, syllables which people refused to pronounce. What has happened? That the new word "unmentionables," for example, designates drawers as clearly as the word drawers.
"Yes, but you were talking of cults."
"Certainly," he said impulsively, "for man has not the ability not to invent cults. As individuals are not entirely different from one another, several individuals in a group necessarily have ideas in common. These ideas, by virtue of an imperious need of the human mind, they clothe in symbols. That is a religion. Friends attend a funeral and adopt an insignia by which they may recognize one another. They have created a rite. Those who, not being Christians, and wishing nevertheless to do honor to the memory of a Christian, stay at the door of the church, cannot stay there if the rain falls in torrents. They seek for shelter in the corner wineroom. They have thus consecrated another church. As they cannot all talk at once, one of them, the most eloquent or the most talkative, expresses the thought of all, in verse or in prose. His words are a hymn or a prayer. Finally, his faculties are so great for the task that it is habitually intrusted to him. The suffrage of his friends has delegated to him a sacerdotal function."
"Aren't you exaggerating a little?" said the reporter.
"On the contrary, I am attenuating," said Sherlock, "for man constructs always after he has destroyed. Can't you see that the atheists will write the history of those among them who, persecuted by Governments or by very ordinary Philistines, will have suffered for atheism? These histories, wherein shall necessarily be mingled allegories and legends, what will they be? Will they not be gospels?"
