Why We Love Sherlock Holmes

“He is Galahad and Socrates, bringing high adventure to our dull existences and calm, judicial logic to our biased minds,” wrote Edgar W. Smith in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

“Let it be said, more simply, that he is the personification in us of something that we have lost, or never had. For it is not Sherlock Holmes who sits in Baker Street, comfortable, competent and self-assured, it is ourselves who are there, full of a tremendous capacity for wisdom, complacent in the presence of our humble Watson, conscious of a warm well-being and a timeless, imperishable content. 

“The easy chair is drawn up to the hearthstone of our very hearts — it is our tobacco in the Persian slipper, and our violin lying so carelessly across the knees — it is we who hear the pounding on the stairs and the knocking at the door. The swirling fog without and the acrid smoke within bite deep indeed, for we taste them even now.”