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“The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger” is a very unusual Sherlock Holmes story. The shortest of all the Holmes short stories and written quite late in the “canon” (February 1927, the 54th of the 56 Holmes short stories), Conan Doyle uses it to illustrate Holmes’ moral convictions rather than his intellectual skills. Indeed, in “The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger,” Holmes solves no mystery, foils no villains, and displays none at all of the fantastic deductive powers which provide the theme for all of the other stories and novels. No, the qualities Doyle shows off in this tale are Holmes’ profound compassion, empathy, and a religiously-based sanctity of life ethic.
Yes, it’s true. Though Sherlock Holmes’ reputation may be that of a proud, socially-detached, scientific-minded thinker who has little to do with formal religious practices, careful readers know of numerous indications that the great detective is not at all antagonistic to a belief in God. For instance, there are several allusions to God in the “canon” including Holmes’ reference to his survival at the Reichenbach Falls as “the blessing of God,” his knowledge of the Old Testament narrative of David’s murder of Uriah as being in either 1st or 2nd Samuel, his description of the Great War as “God’s own wind none the less,” his reference to Ecclesiastes 10:8 in “The Speckled Band,” and the mention in “The ‘Gloria Scott’” about a dog biting his ankle when he “went down to chapel.”
Of related interest is that there was only one client for whom Holmes served twice; namely, Pope Leo XIII in “the little affair of the Vatican cameos” and “the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca.”
There are also quite moving passages in which Sherlock Holmes shows his belief in God to be more aligned with biblical revelation than with the detached deism held by turn-of-the-century freethinkers. Examples? The God Who Holmes believes in is a God of wisdom and justice. In “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” Holmes tells a terminally-ill murderer, “It is not for me to judge you. You will soon answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes.” And in “The Adventure of the Red Circle,” the detective describes human life as “a series of lessons with the greatest as the last.”
There is also the very moving passage in “The Naval Treaty” where the scientific sleuth recognizes and appreciates the wisdom and grace of a personal God as revealed in His gifts of creative beauty. Suddenly affected by the fragile beauty of a little flower, Watson records Holmes stopping in the middle of a conversation to say, “‘What a lovely thing a rose is!’ [Holmes] walked past the couch to the open window, and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.
‘There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion’ said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. ‘It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.’”
To be fair, one must also mention Sherlock Holmes’ admiration of Winwood Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man,” a secularist tract which was condemned as a most “irreligious work” by none other than William Gladstone. Holmes’ religious views, one concludes, were neither consistent or thorough. Nor were they guided by strict exegesis of the Scriptures. Still, Sherlock Holmes’ passionate desire for a deeper, more enlightened understanding of a transcendent God is movingly portrayed in both “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” and “The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger.” Those two passages read as follows:
“What is the meaning of it, Watson? What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”
And, “The ways of fate are indeed hard to understand. If there is not some compensation hereafter, then the world is a cruel jest.”
These two passages are quite moving, expressing an enigma commonly faced even by convinced Christian believers. They are not the mocking complaints of a skeptic but rather honest evaluations of the anxious problem of suffering and evil…evaluations which are yet founded upon an optimistic trust in God’s enveloping goodness.
But finally, let me get to the matter of Holmes’ fervent belief in the sanctity of life, no doubt born of that same trust in God’s kind and just Providence as illustrated earlier. Here’s the situation — Holmes and Watson have met Eugenia Ronder, a young and once lovely circus performer who has been horribly disfigured by a lion. And again, the story has no mystery to be solved, no true adventure for the great detective to pursue. Indeed, Conan Doyle’s singular purpose for including it in the “canon” seems to be to dramatize (and thereby emphasize) a proscription against suicide by putting it in the voice of the overwhelmingly popular character of Sherlock Holmes.
In the concluding paragraphs of the story, Eugenia has opened up and told her tragic tale to Holmes and Watson. The detective then says:
“Well, well, it is of little consequence now. The case is closed.”
“Yes,” said the woman, “the case is closed.”
We had risen to go, but there was something in the woman’s voice which arrested Holmes’s attention. He turned swiftly upon her.
“Your life is not your own,” he said. “Keep your hands off it.”
“What use is it to anyone?”
“How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world.”
The woman’s answer was a terrible one. She raised her veil and stepped forward into the light.
“I wonder if you would bear it,” she said.
It was horrible. No words can describe the framework of a face when the face itself is gone. Two living and beautiful brown eyes looking sadly out from that grisly ruin did but make the view more awful. Holmes held up his hand in a gesture of pity and protest, and together we left the room.
Two days later, when I called upon my friend, he pointed with some pride to a small blue bottle upon his mantelpiece. I picked it up. There was a red poison label. A pleasant almondy odour rose when I opened it.
“Prussic acid?” said 1.
“Exactly. It came by post. ‘I send you my temptation. I will follow your advice.’ That was the message. I think, Watson, we can guess the name of the brave woman who sent it.”
Arthur Conan Doyle was a lapsed Catholic who eventually became involved in Freemasonry and the most extreme elements of spiritualism. Nevertheless, he himself and his character of Sherlock Holmes held a general worldview that had been instructed (though but weakly) by the Holy Scriptures, including the divine virtues of justice, compassion, appreciation of beauty, and faith in the rewards of an afterlife. And, before retiring Sherlock Holmes once and for all to his bee-keeping, Conan Doyle appears to have written one of his last Holmes stories in order to underscore another divine truth; that is, that human life, whatever its state or condition, is created by God and of infinite value to His purposes. It is to be cherished, protected, and promoted both for its inspirational value to others…and for its own sake.
A Sherlock Holmes story with a pro-life message? No doubt about it. And though it is perhaps surprising to the casual reader, to the devout Sherlockian, it is quite elementary.