Dark was the day that Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, loyal friend and flatmate of detective Sherlock Holmes, reported the death of the world's only consulting detective at the hands of his greatest foe. Though Conan Doyle was eventually knighted for his recounting of Holmes' heroism, most noted that a piece of the man died on that day, and the spark was gone from his person.
Ever the center of controversy, Conan Doyle's muse, the mercurial Mr. Holmes, had divided London society: some claimed he was a genius of the first rate, owing, perhaps to the touch of Dwarven blood that ran in his veins; others believed him a menace, undermining Scotland Yard and too obsessed with petty feuds and personal glories to be of much use to anyone. But through the eyes of his biographer, the Scotch army doctor Conan Doyle, Holmes' skills as a consulting detective always seemed to outweigh his notoriously difficult personality and his barely masked contempt for his counterparts in the Yard.
So while some journalists, like the infamous Robert D'Onston Stephenson, sought to expose Holmes as a criminal, a Chalkholm Clan sympathist (despite their contributions, the British Dwarven clans were never much liked), and a charlatan, Conan Doyle's command over the pen always cast the Great Detective in the most intriguingly sympathetic of lights, and ensured that the public would turn on any who disparaged him.* In essence, there could be no Holmes without Conan Doyle, just as there could be no Johnson without Boswell.
So when Dr. Conan Doyle and his wife returned from the continent with news of Holmes' death, such was the outcry that, for decades after, many refused to believe that the man was dead, bullying and threatening his closest friend in hopes of revealing his location. The publication of the last of Conan Doyle's Holmes memoirs, however, put most into a generous mood, seeing that, Christlike, the Great Detective had sacrificed himself to save them from a great evil.
Even now, as we have the benefit of hindsight in piecing together the life of Professor James Moriarty, comprehension fails at the notion of understanding his motivations. Perhaps, just as Holmes was, Moriarty was driven by detached love of reason, certainly the parallelism is charming, but we may never truly know. What is certain is that he was born in Dublin in 1832, and studied mathematics and astronomer under the venomous auspices of Carl Friedrich Gauss at the University of Gottingën. We know that he was a fierce rival of Simon Newcombe, going so far as to write libelous invectives calling Newcombe's scientific credentials into question.
The trail gets colder once he emigrates to America, accepting a position at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. We know that he had the position for less than a year before disappearing and showing up some twenty years later in London, well-established as the Napoleon of crime. All the rest is speculation: his close partnership with Adam Worth, his ties to the Si-Fan triad and their representative Henry Ashleighton, his position as the head of the British Illuminati, the existence of an illegitimate daughter, Quinntessa Moriarty, supposedly fathered on the American spy, Irene Adler, even his supposed involvement with Ambrose Dexter and the Church of Starry Wisdom are all conjecture.
Conan Doyle claimed ignorance to the vast majority of Moriarty's activities, merely articulating that Holmes had uncovered a lifetime's worth of damning evidence, and had been so thoroughly blackmailed by Moriarty and his protege, Sebastian Moran, that the ill-advised meeting at Reichenbach Falls was the only viable solution. While this was sufficient for the Holmesanite public, Scotland Yard, backed by Mycroft Holmes' parliamentary inquiry committee, spent years after Reichenbach searching for answers and, if any were forthcoming they were not shared with the public.
Indeed, even the supposed resurrection of the Great Detective in the next century brought no answers as Holmes was thoroughly tight lipped about his deceased rival, and Conan Doyle, clearly betrayed by his friend's decision to live in hiding after faking his death, seemed to be outside Holmes' confidence.
Whatever the master plans of Moriarty, lay they in economic ties to organized crime in China and America, or in apocalyptic designs divined from gazing at the stars and studying non-Euclidian geometry, they died with him, and the greatest mind of a generation nearly died to both foil and obfuscate them.
*Many claim that Stephenson's being investigated as a suspect during the Whitechapel Horrors was the result of a Holmesanite seeking to enact his revenge. Given how much Holmes clashed with the Yard during their joint investigation of those murders however, it is unlikely that anyone in the police would have cause enough to love the consulting detective to the point of besmirching his prime detractor.
No comments:
Post a Comment