On the Nature of Friends and Enemies
In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle praises friendship with powerful words. “For without friends no one would choose to live,” he asserts, “though he had all other goods.”1 Friendship is helpful in nearly every stage and station in life (though Aristotle does pause to mention that bitter people and the elderly have a hard time making friends). Friendship comforts, protects, and corrects, and perhaps most beneficially, Aristotle writes, “those in the prime of life it stimulates to noble actions—‘two going together’—for with friends men are more able both to think and to act.”2 Friendship can bring the best out of us.
Given the importance of friendship in Aristotle's mind, it makes sense that he would discuss it in his main treatise on ethics. It's still a bit of a surprise, however, that two out of the ten chapters in Nicomachean Ethics are devoted to friendship. For Aristotle (and others in the ancient world), friendship was a big deal. C. S. Lewis, writing in The Four Loves, notes that for the ancients “friendship seemed the happiest and most human of all the loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue.”3
Yet in Lewis's estimation, the modern world ignores friendship and what is most unique about it: “Very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all.”4 As Lewis suggests, we often understand friendship as a kind of watered-down romantic love or perhaps displaced family affection. Lewis uses literature to make his point. Whereas romantic and parental love have been star players in the literature of the last few centuries (especially romantic love), friendship is lucky to get a part in the chorus. He writes, “I cannot remember that any poem since In Memoriam, or any novel, has celebrated it. Tristan and Isolde, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, have innumerable counterparts in modern literature: David and Jonathan, Pylades and Orestes, Roland and Oliver, Amis and Amile, have not.”5 Lewis's observation was astute fifty years ago and is still relevant today: since Lewis's death, the lovers' stories mentioned have all been portrayed in major Hollywood movies. The friendships have not.
Although Lewis is fundamentally correct here—friendship is often overlooked—I must strain to point out one pairing in modern literature that bucks the trend: Holmes and Watson. In fact, with the exception of Romeo and Juliet, the friendship of Holmes and Watson is surely better known now than the rest of the great romances of the Elizabethan stage. Furthermore, the names Holmes and Watson are so deeply connected with friendship that they have come to be synonymous with the idea. To be a Sherlock means to be a detective. But to be someone's Watson means being a supportive and loyal friend—the kind who cares enough about you to tolerate your annoying quirks and yet also refuses to tolerate your drug habit. If friendship is as important as Aristotle suggests, then we might want to investigate it, learning about its philosophical dimension and also seeing some examples of true friendship. In this chapter we will examine the friends and enemies of Sherlock Holmes as a way of recovering this ancient virtue, which is under-praised and often misunderstood.
As a bonus, Holmes's relationships can teach us more than just about friendship. Holmes is a man known for his enemies as well. Though perhaps slightly less of a household word than Watson, to be someone's Moriarty means to be an archenemy. The figure of Moriarty, though introduced and killed within the span of a single story (“The Final Problem”), looms large in our memories. To imagine Holmes without Moriarty is almost as difficult as imagining Holmes without Watson. I will thus conclude with an examination of the nature of enemies.
The word friend is much vaguer than son, daughter, husband, wife, or lover. We sometimes call someone a friend when we really mean an acquaintance. We probably have online friends whom we have never met. It's likely that we have work friends we see all the time, but we would not attend their funeral. In the age of Facebook, the word friend has been watered down to such a point that it implies little more than you know someone's name and don't actively hate him.
What defines a friend? How and how much do you have to like someone for him to count? Even in Aristotle's day, there were different levels of friends, and friendship could encompass drinking buddies, coworkers, teammates, and close intimates. All friendship is a form of knowing “reciprocated goodwill,” Aristotle indicates in the Nicomachean Ethics, but he quickly moves on to distinguish between three kinds of friends: friends of use, friends of pleasure, and friends of virtue.6
The first is based in mere usefulness, like needing a ride to school or someone to help you with precalculus. Friends of use are essentially people you get on with for some benefit that comes from an amiable relationship. This might be your office mate, the guy who cuts your lawn, or your nutritionist. You chitchat when you see them but never think of them when they aren't around. Many work relationships are friendships of utility.
Holmes certainly has friends of use. In fact, most of his lasting relationships were of this type. One notable example is Holmes's working relationship with the Baker Street Irregulars, the street urchins who perform surveillance and run legally questionable errands on behalf of Holmes. He pays them for this, of course, but their relationship is amiable. They treat Holmes with respect, calling him “sir” and “guv'nor,” and Holmes is likewise polite and generous with his pay.7
Mrs. Hudson, Holmes and Watson's landlady, also seems to be this kind of friend. For Holmes at least, their relationship is always defined by business (he pays a goodly rent, she puts up with his nonsense). Once Holmes moves out, we can hardly imagine him bothering to send Mrs. Hudson a Christmas card (if he did so for anyone, that is)—though it's worth noting that according to Watson, Mrs. Hudson is far fonder of Holmes than he apparently is of her.8
The second type of friendship Aristotle describes is based on the pleasure of each other's company. Aristotle notes that this is closer to real friendship because it is less about some extrinsic benefit and more about mutual enjoyment. This friendship is based in emotional, social, or perhaps sexual pleasure (that is, friends with benefits, as young people say). This could involve hanging out with the class clown just to laugh at his jokes, spending time with a popular person because of the whirl of excitement that surrounds her, or hooking up with someone at band camp just because you are bored. But this kind of friendship can be fleeting as well because it is only based on witty conversation or some other pleasurable activity. If the class clown becomes depressed and therefore less funny, a friend of pleasure will stop hanging out with him. Likewise, if the popular girl or boy suddenly becomes a pariah, the friend of pleasure moves on. When the pleasure stops, the friendship stops.
It is hard to say that Holmes had many friendships of this sort. Describing his university days, Holmes describes himself like this: “I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms…so that I never mixed much with the men of my year.”9 Holmes does mention one friend, Victor Trevor, a classmate with whom he bonded, mostly over their mutual friendlessness.
Despite this one blip on the radar, it is still clear that Holmes did not value socializing for conversation for its own sake, and apparently he never sought out mere chums—though he didn't go as far as his brother Mycroft did, founding a special establishment, the Diogenes Club, where conversation was forbidden. In “The Greek Interpreter,” Holmes describes this club to Watson:
There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.10
Given that Holmes enjoyed this atmosphere, and given the scarcity of other friends besides Watson in his life, it is easy to assume that Holmes had little use for friends of pleasure. Though not shy, Holmes was clearly not a clubable man.
This brings us to the third kind of friendship, which is the truest for Aristotle. This friendship is based on mutual appreciation and respect for the friend's good character:
Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other [as] good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good—and goodness is an enduring thing.11
Two criteria jump out immediately from Aristotle's description of perfect friendship: being “alike in virtue” and “wish[ing] well of one another” Translating this a bit, we might call these two criteria shared virtue and shared support. True friends, then, are equals in terms of character and wish the good of each other. This is fine and sensible.
But are Holmes and Watson friends of this sort? It might seem on the surface that Watson and Holmes are not alike in virtue, but rather are quite unlike in a certain sense. Watson is the marrying type (being married either once or twice, depending on whom you ask), whereas Holmes has a more monkish temperament. Moreover, Watson is less inquisitive and slower-witted than Holmes. Holmes can be snappish and rude, while Watson behaves like the well-bred British subject that he is. These latter two differences show themselves in nearly every Conan Doyle mystery when Holmes stingingly criticizes his friend's poor detective skills. Do these differences prevent their friendship from being perfect?
As an eminently sensible philosopher, Aristotle of course does not imply that the likeness that friendship needs should be confused with sameness. Nor does occasional conflict rule out working for the good of the other. In the next section, we will see how a deeper examination of Aristotle's criteria (and Holmes and Watson's relationship) reveals how exemplary their friendship was.
Watson and Holmes are alike in virtue in that they are both matched in having a high level of character. They're both educated and thoughtful, and they care deeply about justice. Further, they both have highly developed skills. Watson is a crack shot and a medical man. Holmes is a skilled boxer and the greatest detective in the history of the world. Perhaps most importantly, they both have a taste for setting off on adventures and they have the courage (another virtue of Aristotle's) to carry them through to the end.
Though Holmes seems the greater of the two men because of his skill in detection (and in many senses he is, though he's also prone to some darker vices than Watson), it is worth noting that Watson's greatest skill is apparent on virtually every page of the Holmes stories. Because of Conan Doyle's fictional framing device, we hear of Holmes's greatness through the excellent prose of Dr. Watson. Though Holmes dismisses Watson's stories as melodramatic, a true fan likes them just the way they are. In this sense, Watson, together with Holmes, cocreates the greatest detective stories ever written.
As indicated above, together with a matched level of excellence, friends must also recognize and acknowledge each other's virtue. Friends know they appreciate the virtue in the other, or else they could not be true friends. Mutual admiration is crucial for friends of virtue. Watson clearly admires Holmes, saying Holmes was “the best and wisest man whom I have ever known.”12 Here, though, more than any other area, Holmes nearly fails at friendship. Perhaps because Holmes so often chides Watson's purple prose style and slowness of detection, or because of Holmes's cold manner, it seems that Watson is sometimes unsure of the mutuality of appreciation. However, when Watson is shot, this reveals to him, once and for all, that even to this most calculating of men, Watson is not a mere friend of use:
It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.13
A certain level of equality is necessary for the highest form of friendship. Yet it is possible for two people to have equal virtue and not be friends. Friendship is about more than similarity in character. As Aristotle indicates, friends also actively support one another, doing good for the other. This element is also picked up by Thomas Aquinas (whose philosophy sometimes has a Watsonish quality in relation to Aristotle, whom he calls simply “The Philosopher”). Aquinas states that living a happy human life requires friends, because friends help each other to flourish:
If we speak of the happiness of this life, the happy man needs friends, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 9), not, indeed, to make use of them…[but] that he may do good to them; that he may delight in seeing them do good; and again that he may be helped by them in his good work. For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.14
Watson's eventual success at getting Holmes off cocaine is one shining example of this kind of helping.15 Plus, in nearly every story Watson supports Holmes by acting as a sounding board for Holmes's theories. As Watson recounts in one of the later stories, “The Creeping Man”:
[Holmes] was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence.16
A former military man, Watson's cool head and military-issue revolver serve Holmes well many times. To be sure, friendship with Holmes provides Watson with much-desired excitement, satisfaction in helping to right wrongs, and fodder for his stories.
In “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client,” Holmes is severely beaten by thugs hired by Baron Gruner. Rushing to Holmes's bedside, Watson is concerned. Having ascertained that Holmes will survive, he immediately asks, “What can I do, Holmes? Of course it was that damned fellow who set them on. I'll go and thrash the hide off him if you give the word.”17 Like a true friend, Watson wants something to do for Holmes. Like a man of action, his first thought is of thrashing the wicked baron.
As alike in virtue, friends share many good qualities. As mutually supportive, friends work to bring those qualities out of each other. These two qualities combine to create a relationship where two persons almost combine into one. Because of how like you a friend is, and because you stand on equal footing, you can share things with a friend more easily than a parent or a lover. For Aristotle, a friend is “another self.”18 Though it is hard to say what Aristotle explicitly means here, the phrase makes intuitive sense. Michael Chabon, the author of The Final Solution, a work of Holmesian fan fiction, backs this up when he writes that Holmes and Watson are “an archetypical pair who have only Quixote and Sancho as rivals in the hearts of readers and in the annals of imaginary friendship, that record of wildly limited men who find in each other, and only in each other, the stuff, sense, and passion of one whole man.”19
The character of this mutual support, however, must be clarified. The support of friends is not a servile waiting at the elbow, but more often a silent encouragement by working alongside. A friend encourages your love of sports trivia not by explicitly praising your knowledge, but by arguing with you about who the best NFL team is.
The desire of friends is for each other's company, but not in the sense of lovers. Lovers are focused on their love for one another, but friends rarely talk about their friendship. As C. S. Lewis phrases it, “We picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead.”20 Friends want to be together so that they can enjoy some activity. This is why groups of friends are not limited to just two, as romantic pairings are; more friends together amplifies the shared pursuit. Friends join together to do something. At the end of his discussion of friendship, Aristotle makes this clear: “Whatever it is for whose sake they value life, in that they wish to occupy themselves with their friends; and so some drink together, others dice together, others join in athletic exercises and hunting, or in the study of philosophy, each class spending their days together in whatever they love most in life; for since they wish to live with their friends.”21 True friends, then, need to meet often and share their lives together. Watson is a true friend to Holmes because he enjoys living with Holmes and is always game for an adventure. His appreciation and support for Holmes is not found in his voluble praise for Holmes's brilliance as much as his willingness to sit in a hedge on a cold night.22
Aristotle, Holmes, and Watson help us to understand what it means to have friends. However, in the process, they also help us to understand what it means to have enemies. To gain a rough understanding of what it means to have an enemy, we can simply invert Aristotle's general definition of friendship and call it “reciprocated ill will.” For whatever reason, practical or moral, enemies wish each other ill (at least in the specific sphere in which there is antagonism).
Like friends, enemies can take all shapes and sizes. As a citizen of any country, it is likely that we have some political enemies somewhere. Likewise, as sports fans or members of a political party, there are those within the country that wish us (or our team or party) ill. These are less philosophically interesting for our present concern. Personal enemies are far more illuminating to study because these relationships defined by antagonism can be clear indicators of the kinds of people we are.
Holmes, as a good heroic character, has many enemies; in nearly every case, he's striving against someone. Let's look at three different types of personal enemies Holmes has and show how each of these can be understood as an instance of opposition in one or more of the key areas of true friendship.
I will start with the most innocuous form of enemy, which I will dub a competitor. Having a competitor means having a relationship defined by opposition in some shared sphere of activity. Instead of sharing in the activity in a friendly way, however, your opposition to one another defines your relationship and will likely threaten your mutual goodwill. This kind of competition is different from a friendly game of basketball, where the competition is desired and even necessary. All too many businesses wish not only to win the market, but also to put their competitors out of operation. Likewise, political parties do not desire competition from their opposite and would prefer to be able to consistently set policies that reflect their ideology. Serious sports fans can get into this mode if they take things too far, but a rational sports fan knows that ultimately, without real competition, the game would be boring. Competitors, as I am using the term, are enemies because they offer unwanted competition. Competitors do not support each other, which is a key element in friendship. Quite the opposite is true. One competitor's success depends on the other's failure.
Irene Adler is the infamous woman from “A Scandal in Bohemia” and a true competitor with Holmes. Hired by the future king of Bohemia to retrieve an embarrassing picture of the nobleman and Adler, Holmes lays clever plans to retrieve the portrait. Adler, however, who has no intention of using the portrait to embarrass the future king, is annoyed by the plans to steal her property and so stays one step ahead of Holmes, foiling his plans. Holmes and Adler here are not merely engaged in a game of sport. Neither desires the other to succeed. Holmes has his reputation on the line, and Adler has her own honor at stake. Because Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes are alike in their virtues of cleverness, however, the competition is fierce.
Adler's brilliance in this case trumps Holmes's, and she even taunts the detective by greeting him on the street after having escaped his clutches (though Holmes is not aware that it is Adler, who is in disguise). When Holmes does manage to gain entrance to Adler's house to steal the incriminating picture, she has already fled the country, leaving behind only a picture of herself, which Holmes keeps. Interestingly, Holmes's admiration for Irene Adler (and hers for him) grows through the process, creating a form of reciprocal goodwill that Sherlock retains for the rest of his days, as Watson attests.
The second kind of enemy, the rival, is similar to a competitor, except that in the case of rivalries, reciprocal goodwill is not nullified by overt competition in some common activity, as is the case with the competitor. With rivals, antagonism is generated in a group because of some tension that arises from shared activity, anxiety about inequality of excellence, or simply the wavering of reciprocal goodwill. Rivals are often friends of some kind, or at least seem to be friends. Or, perhaps, two people may have a relationship that oscillates between friendship and enemy-ship. Hence, the more colloquial term for a rival would be frenemy.23
Humans being fallible, friendships may falter and turn toward antagonism simply out of weakness or moral failure. Little irritants might turn friends slightly against each other. This is the most common case of “frenemy relationships” (friends failing to consistently support each other) but not the most significant. Here the failure of mutual support is mostly due to weakness of the will.
More significantly, rivalry may arise when a new addition to a group of friends has the same set of skills—for instance, when the class clown is suddenly matched by an equally funny classmate. Here the rivals share the same goal (to make the students in the class laugh), but the presence of both may well reduce the ability of each to express his talent. Likewise, two skilled leaders may fall into rivalry in a company, sports team, or group of friends. As Aristotle and Aquinas saw, part of the activity of friendship is giving and supporting one another. However, a rival takes away one's ability (or one's perceived ability) to contribute fully. This is because the rival has the same skills and abilities. Most of the time, people who are alike can learn to work together. What harm is there in being one of the two funny people? But until very similarly gifted people learn to share the role, there will be tension.
Interestingly, this kind of enemy relationship suggests something about friendship. Equality of every kind may not always benefit friendship because friends may have a difficult time establishing their separate excellences. Holmes and Watson are unlikely to become rivals because in areas of medicine and prose writing, Watson is superior, and in areas of reasoning and criminology, Holmes is superior. Because of their different skill sets, Holmes and Watson can each contribute fully without stepping on each other's toes.
Most significantly, another version of rivalry occurs when two persons would seem to be equally matched but one is actually the superior. This threatens the ability of one or the other to offer his talents, but it also causes the inferior person to become insecure about his level of excellence. In A Study in Scarlet, we can see that Holmes and several inspectors on the police force have this kind of rivalry.
Called out to investigate a murder in their first case together, Holmes gives Watson the rundown on the London detectives:
“Gregson is the smartest of the Scotland Yarders,” my friend remarked; “he and Lestrade are the pick of a bad lot. They are both quick and energetic, but conventional—shockingly so. They have their knives into one another, too. They are as jealous as a pair of professional beauties. There will be some fun over this case if they are both put upon the scent.”
I was amazed at the calm way in which he rippled on. “Surely there is not a moment to be lost,” I cried, “shall I go and order you a cab?”
“I'm not sure about whether I shall go. I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather—that is, when the fit is on me, for I can be spry enough at times.”
“Why, it is just such a chance as you have been longing for.”
“My dear fellow, what does it matter to me. Supposing I unravel the whole matter, you may be sure that Gregson, Lestrade, and Co. will pocket all the credit. That comes of being an unofficial personage.”
“But he begs you to help him.”
“Yes. He knows that I am his superior, and acknowledges it to me; but he would cut his tongue out before he would own it to any third person. However, we may as well go and have a look. I shall work it out on my own hook. I may have a laugh at them if I have nothing else. Come on!”24
This gives us a good sense of why rivalries arise. Here Holmes notes that although Lestrade and Gregson are the best of Scotland Yard, they are not up to his level of skill. Because of the realities of the police force, however, Gregson and Lestrade are falsely seen to be Holmes's superiors (or at least equals). So when they work together, tension over who is the superior detective arises between the Inspectors and Holmes (and apparently among the detectives as well). The following scene drives this point home.
When Holmes arrives at the scene of the murder, he's presented with a dead body and some writing: RACHE. Gregson and Lestrade make a few bad guesses about the meaning of the word (guessing it to be the unfinished name RACHEL) and can guess little about the nature of the crime. Holmes blows both of them out of the water with his skills in observation and reasoning:
“I'll tell you one thing which may help you in the case,” he continued, turning to the two detectives. “There has been murder done, and the murderer was a man. He was more than six feet high, was in the prime of life, had small feet for his height, wore coarse, square-toed boots and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar. He came here with his victim in a four-wheeled cab, which was drawn by a horse with three old shoes and one new one on his off fore leg. In all probability the murderer had a florid face, and the finger-nails of his right hand were remarkably long. These are only a few indications, but they may assist you.”
Lestrade and Gregson glanced at each other with an incredulous smile.
“Poison,” said Sherlock Holmes curtly, and strode off. “One other thing, Lestrade,” he added, turning round at the door: “‘Rache’ is the German for ‘revenge’; so don't lose your time looking for Miss Rachel.”
With which Parthian shot he walked away, leaving the two rivals open-mouthed behind him.25
As befits the behavior of rivals, Holmes intentionally embarrasses Gregson and Lestrade as retaliation for their lack of recognition of his superior skills.
It is worth mentioning that in later stories, Holmes and the other inspectors get along better. In “The Empty House,” Holmes refers to the inspector as “my friend Lestrade.”26 But this is undoubtedly because Lestrade and the rest of the police have adjusted to the inequality between them and Holmes in detection. This suggests that rivalries that arise from oversimilarity can easily fade away if those involved come to a better understanding of their equality (or inequality).
The third kind of enemy is the worst, and one that is nearly impossible to turn to friendship. If a true friend is another self, a true foe is the antiself, with whom you have no shared feeling of goodwill at all. Although competitors may incite anger and rivals may incite insecurity, a foe arouses loathing. This is not because foes oppose your actions (though they will do that), or because they do not wish the good for you (though they do not wish it), but because your natures are fundamentally at odds with one another.
The existence of a foe explains why, though Holmes often approached solving crimes like a game, occasionally he would take an exceptional personal disliking to a criminal. One example is Charles Augustus Milverton, a sly London blackmailer nearly as cunning as Holmes himself.27 Another is Grimesby Roylott, a terrible man whom Holmes accidentally kills in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” although he admits that it will not “weigh very heavily upon [his] conscience.”28
Among the ranks of foes, none is more famous than Professor Moriarty, who is perhaps the most famous villain in all of modern literature, despite appearing in only one Holmes story as a living threat. Nevertheless, his ghost looms over the Holmes stories in our memory, and subsequent adaptations have expanded Moriarty's fictional longevity. Why is this so?
As Aristotle would have quickly seen, Holmes and Moriarty are true enemies because they are well matched in terms of their virtues, except that Moriarty's virtues are applied to an evil end. Hear Holmes's description of Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” and note how much his brilliance sounds like Holmes's:
His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumors gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an army coach. So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you now is what I have myself discovered…. He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.29
Holmes and Moriarty are the greatest of enemies, but they perhaps could have been great friends—had Moriarty not been bent toward evil.
After this vivid introduction, we see Holmes and Watson fleeing England to escape death at the hands of Moriarty and his henchmen. They go to Switzerland, where Moriarty alone encounters Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls; they grapple and both tumble (Watson thinks) over the cliff into the deadly pool below.
Had this been the death of Holmes, it would have been a sad day for the fans but a fitting end for the great detective. Holmes's hatred of Moriarty was no moral failing on his part but rather a proper perception of Moriarty's masterful criminality. Holmes had met his match and was even willing to die in order to remove him from the world. We hear this from Holmes's own mouth when he first encounters Moriarty in London:
“It has been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to you.”
“You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,” said I. “Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the latter.”30
That Holmes was willing to die to rid the world of its greatest criminal reveals two significant things. First, although enemies want to harm us, they may also unknowingly bring the best out of us. As when Watson was shot, we see in this moment of crisis the substance of Holmes's character. Here is a man for whom criminal detection was not just an intellectual problem. It was a moral crusade. In facing Moriarty, Holmes is at his finest—and, one might also say, at his most fulfilled. Holmes is ridding the world of his opposite number, a shadow version of his own genius.
Second, that Holmes must be willing to die to rid the world of Moriarty shows us that, unlike other forms of enemies, a foe cannot be turned into a friend. Holmes comes to admire Adler and befriend Lestrade, but he and Moriarty remain locked in combat to the end. If we keep our wits about us, a rival or a competitor can be transformed into a friend of use, pleasure, or even of virtue. But a foe cannot. Foes must be avoided or thrown off the falls.
May we all be lucky enough to find our own Watsons or Holmeses and to turn our Adlers and Lestrades into friends—and may we never find a Moriarty.
1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Lesley Brown and trans. David Ross (London: Oxford World Classics, 2009), 8.1.
2. Ibid.
3. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1960), 87.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 8.3.
7. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four, in The Complete Sherlock Holmes (New York: Doubleday, 1960), 126–27. All further citations are to this edition.
8. “Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience. His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London. On the other hand, his payments were princely. I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him. The landlady stood in the deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem. She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women.” “Dying Detective,” 932.
9. “The Gloria Scott,” 374.
10. “Greek Interpreter,” 436.
11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 8.3.
12. “Final Problem,” 480.
13. “Three Garridebs,” 1052.
14. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (Raleigh, N.C.: Hayes Barton Press, 1925), 1–2, Q4, A8.
15. “Missing Three-Quarter,” passim.
16. “Creeping Man,” 1071.
17. “Illustrious Client,” 984.
18. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 9.9.
19. Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing along the Borderlands (San Francisco: Harper Perennial, 2008), 27.
20. Lewis, Four Loves, 98.
21. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 9.12.
22. Though understandable for literary reasons, it was unfortunate for Holmes that he was not able to make more friends of virtue. Because of his medical work and his marriage (or marriages), Watson could not always be around. If Holmes had expanded his coterie of friends, he might have been able to accomplish even more, and he might have been less prone to boredom and drug use.
23. Chuck Klosterman dubs the kind of enemy I am calling a rival a nemesis, and what I'm calling a foe an archenemy. Though Klosterman isn't interested in getting into why these relationships occur, I think he pretty accurately describes the nature of these two sorts of enemies. I owe a debt to Klosterman for suggesting that the subject of enemies was worth exploring, and sparking the inspiration for the second part of this essay. Chuck Klosterman. “Nemesis,” in IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (New York: Scribner, 2006), 243–48.
24. Study in Scarlet, 26–27.
25. Ibid., 32.
26. “Empty House,” 492.
27. For more on this, see David Rozema, “Not the Crime, but the Man: Sherlock Holmes and Charles Augustus Milverton” (chap. 2, this volume).
28. “Speckled Band,” 273.
29. “Final Problem,” 470–71.
30. Ibid., 473.