The Hound of the Baskervilles: Modern Belgian Masters, Paralyzing Spectacles, and the Art of Detection

He would talk of nothing but art.…

—Watson on Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles

Holmes had the impersonal joy of the true artist in his better work.

—Watson on Holmes in The Valley of Fear

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

—Holmes to Watson in "The Greek Interpreter"

When an admiring Watson exclaims to Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet (1887), "'[Y]ou have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world,'"¹ he proclaims one of the most enduring myths of popular culture: the myth of Sherlock Holmes as the scientific detective. This widespread image of Holmes as the eponym of science is succinctly expressed by Iain Pears in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: "What Conan Doyle created was the perfect positivist, the embodiment of Victorian faith in rationality and science, convinced that the right combination of method and reason could overcome all obstacles."² Nowhere is the myth of Holmes as the quintessentially scientific detective seemingly more in evidence that in the best known—and probably the best—story, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). According to James and John Kissane, this story "almost uniquely presents … the hero-detective acting specifically as the champion of empirical science, facing its crucial challenge, the challenge of the seemingly supernatural. Holmes does more than expose crime and defeat a criminal, he … demonstrates reassuringly the sufficiency of reason."³ And he does so by presenting himself as the voice of modern science battling superstition. As a man of science, he contemptuously rejects the supernatural explanation of Sir Charles's death—"'I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world'"⁴—and he dismisses the legend of the hound of the Baskervilles as of interest only to "'a collector of fairy-tales.'"⁵ He scorns Dr. Mortimer's willingness to entertain a supernatural explanation for Sir Charles's mysterious death: "'And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?… I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists.'"⁶ When Mortimer reports on the footprints that Sir Charles left as he stood smoking by the gate onto the moor, Holmes exclaims: "'If I had only been there!… It is evidently a case of extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to the scientific expert.'"⁷ And when Mortimer criticizes him for entering "'into the region of guesswork,'" Holmes self-confidently replies: "'Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation.'"⁸ The phrase "the scientific use of the imagination," as Lawrence Frank has shown, is the title of an 1870 essay by the Victorian geologist John Tyndall.⁹ By alluding to Tyndall's essay, Holmes implies that he considers himself to be doing in the new science of criminology what Tyndall did in geology. The aura of science that hovers over Holmes and the story is reinforced by the fact that almost all the male characters are amateur scientists. Dr. Mortimer is an amateur archaeologist who "has been excavating a barrow at Long Down, and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy."¹⁰ Mortimer has also published scientific articles, one in the Lancet entitled "Some Freaks of Atavism," another, "Do We Progress?" in the Journal of Psychology. He won a prize for his paper "Is Disease a Reversion?" Stapleton is a naturalist "devoted to Nature"¹¹ and particularly to collecting rare butterflies and moths; Holmes learns from the British Museum that Stapleton is "a recognized authority"¹² on entomology. Mr. Frankland, a neighbour, is "an amateur astronomer."¹³

But all the talk about science in the story is a red herring. Notwithstanding the iconic image of a scientific Holmes peering through a magnifying glass or filling the sitting room at 2221B Baker Street with the fumes from...