Sidney Paget illustration from "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"
Watson describes Holmes as "
bohemian" in his habits and lifestyle. Described by Watson in
The Hound of the Baskervilles as having a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness, Holmes is an
eccentric with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In many of the stories, Holmes dives into an apparent mess to find an item most relevant to a mystery. In "
The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", Watson says:
Although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind ... [he] keeps his cigars in the
coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece ... He had a horror of destroying documents ... Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.
[16]
[Holmes] had no breakfast for himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition.
[32]
Sidney Paget, whose illustrations in The Strand Magazine iconicised Holmes and Watson.
While the detective is usually dispassionate and cold, during an investigation he is animated and excitable. He has a flair for showmanship, preparing elaborate traps to capture and expose a culprit (often to impress observers).
[33] His companion condones the detective's willingness to bend the truth (or break the law) on behalf of a client—lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into houses—when he feels it morally justifiable,
[34] but condemns Holmes' manipulation of innocent people in "
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton". Holmes derives pleasure from baffling police inspectors with his deductions and has supreme confidence—bordering on arrogance—in his intellectual abilities. While the detective does not actively seek fame and is usually content to let the police take public credit for his work,
[35] Holmes is pleased when his skills are recognised and responds to flattery.
[24]
Except for that of Watson, Holmes avoids casual company; when Watson proposes visiting a friend's home for rest, Holmes only agrees after learning that "the establishment was a bachelor one, and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom".
[24] In
"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", he tells the doctor that during two years at college he made only one friend, Victor Trevor: "I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year; ... my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all". The detective is similarly described by Stamford in
A Study in Scarlet.
Drug use
Holmes occasionally uses addictive drugs, especially in the absence of stimulating cases. He uses
cocaine, which he injects in a seven-percent solution with a
syringe kept in a
Morocco leather case. Although Holmes also dabbles in
morphine, he expresses strong disapproval when he visits an
opium den; both drugs were legal in late-19th-century England. As a physician, Watson strongly disapproves of his friend's cocaine habit, describing it as the detective's "only vice", and concerned about its effect on Holmes's
mental healthand intellect.
[36][37] In "
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", Watson says that although he has "weaned" Holmes from drugs, the detective remains an addict whose habit is "not dead, but merely sleeping".
Watson and Holmes both use tobacco, smoking cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, and Holmes is an expert at identifying tobacco-ash residue. Although his chronicler does not consider Holmes's habitual use of a
pipe (or his less frequent use of cigarettes and cigars) a vice
per se, Watson—a physician—occasionally criticises the detective for creating a "poisonous atmosphere" of tobacco smoke in their confined quarters.
[38]
Finances
The detective is known to charge clients for his expenses and claim any reward offered for a problem's solution, such as in "
The Adventure of the Speckled Band", "The Red-Headed League", and "
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet". In "
The Problem of Thor Bridge", the detective says, "My professional charges are upon a fixed scale. I do not vary them, save when I remit [omit] them altogether". In this context, a client is offering to double his fee, and it is implied that wealthy clients habitually pay Holmes more than his standard fee. In "
The Adventure of the Priory School", Holmes rubs his hands with glee when the Duke of Holdernesse mentions his ₤6,000 fee, an amount that surprises even Watson (at a time where annual expenses for a rising young professional were in the area of ₤500).
[39] However, in "
The Adventure of Black Peter", Watson notes that Holmes would refuse to help even the wealthy and powerful if their cases did not interest him.
Although when the stories begin Holmes initially needed Watson to share the rent for their residence at 221B Baker Street, by the time of "The Final Problem", he says that his services to the government of France and the royal house of Scandinavia had left him with enough money to retire comfortably.
Attitudes towards women
As Conan Doyle wrote to Joseph Bell, "Holmes is as inhuman as a
Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love".
[40] Holmes says in
The Valley of Fear, "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind",
[41] and in "
The Adventure of the Second Stain" finds "the motives of women ... inscrutable .... How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial actions may mean volumes ... their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs".
[42] In
The Sign of the Four, he says, "I would not tell them too much. Women are never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them". Watson calls him "an automaton, a calculating machine", and the detective replies: "It is of the first importance not to allow your judgement to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit—a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money".
[43]
At the end of The Sign of Four, Holmes states that "love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgement."
Watson says in "
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" that the detective inevitably "manifested no further interest in the client when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems". In "
The Lion's Mane", Holmes writes, "Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart," indicating that he has been attracted to women in some way on occasion, but has not been interested in pursuing relationships with them. Ultimately, however, in "
The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", he claims outright that "I have never loved".
Despite his overall attitude, Holmes is adept at effortlessly putting his clients at ease, and Watson says that although the detective has an "aversion to women", he has "a peculiarly ingratiating way with [them]". Watson notes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" that Mrs. Hudson is fond of Holmes because of his "remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women. He disliked and distrusted the sex, but he was always a chivalrous opponent".
[44] In "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", the detective easily manages to become
engaged under false pretenses in order to obtain information about a case, but also abandons the woman once he has the information he requires.
Irene Adler
Irene Adler is a retired American opera singer and actress who appears in "
A Scandal in Bohemia". Although this is her only appearance, she is one of the most notable female characters in the stories: the only woman who has ever challenged Holmes intellectually, and one of only a handful of people who ever bested him in a battle of wits. For this reason, Adler is the frequent subject of
pastiche writing. The beginning of the story describes the high regard in which Holmes holds her:
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler ... yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
Five years before the story's events, Adler had a brief liaison with Crown Prince of
BohemiaWilhelm von Ormstein while she was
prima donna of the Imperial Opera of Warsaw. As the story opens, the Prince is engaged to the daughter of the King of Scandinavia. Fearful that, if his fiancée's family learns of this past impropriety, the marriage would be called off, Ormstein hires Holmes to regain a photograph of Adler and himself. Adler slips away before Holmes can succeed, leaving only a photograph of herself (alone) and a note to Holmes that she will not
blackmail Ormstein.
Her memory is kept alive by the photograph of Adler that Holmes received for his part in the case. He refers to her from time to time in subsequent stories.
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