>As regards Holmes, didn't one of the stories end with
the line: "And I have
>my cocaine."?
In 19th century Britain, what are nowadays hard and illegal
drugs were acceptable medicines. They were NOT illegal. Queen
Victoria was prescribed laudanum, which contains cocaine.
Cocaine is a pain-killer; when Holmes took refuge in cocaine,
it was against his pain, probably psychological rather than
physical, though I'm not entirely sure about this point. The
reverberations are different, and you have to be careful
about what you read into the situation.
Holmes was a PI - not a policeman, not an amateur. He used
cocaine as Scudder (and many others) use alcohol, no less and
I think no more. He has connections in the highest society
and in the lowest (the Baker Street Irregulars, second-level
criminals). He speaks what is called
"received" English, nicely pronounced, literary. Polite. He
could be sharp and blunt in his speech; he was polite to
women. He had high, idiosyncratic moral standards which were
personal and which he would not compromise.
There is a lot about Holmes which, if you are well read in
the turn-of-the-century novel, seems to echo modern hb stuff.
He is NOT cosy. But the judgement that you make about him
needs to be balanced and conditional; he is really a 19th
century figure, not even 20th century. He doesn't quite fit,
and sweeping judgements will almost inevitably miss the
mark.
MM
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 02 May 2002 EDT