Sherlock Holmes: The Detective As Hero            13

When works of literature endure cross-culturally, are read in
French, Telugu and Uzbek, and survive the cataclysmic social
changes that occurred during the years between the disintegration
of the British I'aiipire with its comforting \^ictorian certainties and
the development of the chaotic technocracy that is the modern
world, it is reasonable to assume that readers are responding to
the intrapsychic similarities between people which outweigh dif¬
ferences caused by widely disparate national backgrounds. For
certain readers, immersion in the world of Sherlock Flolmes and
the good doctor extends beyond simply reading the works. Since
the establishment of the Baker Street Irregulars in 1934, a club
exclusively for male devotees of the Canon, other clubs called
Scion Societies have been formed all over the world. In Denmark,
Burma, and New Zealand, the Sherlockian can find a congenial
environment in which to enjoy what for many people has become
a major hobby. For those who wish more than occasional club
meetings, commercial ventures based upon the characters of
Holmes and Watson abound as well. Conventions, cruises, mys¬
tery weekends, even international tours that feature sites men¬
tioned in the Canon, are among the travel industry's perennial
offerings. Innumerable other businesses have cashed in on the
public's awareness of these two characters, pointing up their im¬
portance as universal symbols.

The world Doyle created in the Sherlockian saga conveys an
aura of verisimilitude convincing in its recreation of the social
fabfic of Holmes's time. Richness of detail and intriguing charac¬
terizations are Doyle's strengths. To his dedicated readers, it hard¬
ly matters that his plots are sometimes rather thin. In "A Scandal
in Bohemia," the first of the Holmesian short stories, Holmes fails
to recover a photograph that reveals Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigis-
mond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and heredi¬
tary king of Bohemia, in the company of Irene Adlcr, a retired
prima donna from New Jersey. Holmes, rarely described in espe¬
cially positive terms, perhaps because Doyle retained a lifelong