Looking for the Manx Cat

A Chase After a Symbolic Cat Which Appeared Briefly in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own

Anyone that’s ever tried to catch a cat knows that they can be tricky creatures. Cats are beings of mischief. They are quick, and they are sly. They disappear into shadows and crannies like into fantastical rabbit holes. Furthermore, anyone who has ever spent an extended amount of time observing a cat might have noticed that they always give one the impression that they know something which no one else does. Perhaps it is the way that they blink at you, slow and steady like, completely self-satisfied in keeping their secrets to themselves. But, whatever may be said about the trickiness of realities cats, the cats which one meets in books are far trickier.

Anyone who’s ever encountered a fictional cat knows that, whatever it is that the cats of this world aren’t telling us, the fictional cat certainly won’t tell us either. Do not get me wrong, many fictional cats will swindle and tease you with their riddles, and I wouldn’t say that the fictional cat is a liar, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met a fictional cat that spoke a bland truth. In fact, I’m quite sure there wasn’t a single one of them that was not a riddler.

You’ve probably met the Cheshire Cat, and if you haven’t, I’m quite sure you’ve heard of him. But, if his reputation has somehow evaded you, I should explain that he is a most remarkable trickster. He knows more than he says, and yet never says what he knows. I could not name another who is quite so remarkable, though that has little to do with me not knowing of any others whose tricks and riddles exceed his and more to do with the fact that most other cats, at least the ones which I have encountered, do not have names.
The cat who appeared in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline certainly comes to mind, for he is the one that first remarked that cats do not need names simply because they have no use for them. He told me that “people have names… because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names”. And I must say, I quite agree with him.
The nameless cat in Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is another trickster whose sole purpose is to confuse you. He, like the trickster from Gaiman’s Coraline, also fashionably neglected to introduce himself to me, saying only “I am what I am”, and “I would tell you what you want to know if I could… But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer”. 

It wasn’t until recently though that I encountered a more peculiar creature still; a creature that one might say is a riddle all on its own. Yes, fictional cats may be tricky, that much I know, but the symbolic cat might just be the trickiest trickster of them all.

The symbolic cat is in itself a peculiar creature, it is, as Virginia Woolf says, “quaint rather than beautiful” (A Room of One’s Own, 17). But what makes the symbolic cat so unusual is that we expect symbols to mean something. Yet I do not expect that I will decipher any meaning in our search for the Manx Cat. As I’ve already said, chasing a cat is tricky business. But chasing a symbolic cat may prove near impossible, for cats in books disappear between pages like cats in the real world disappear into shadows, and the Manx Cat has already managed to swindle us, for though he appeared briefly in the title of this essay, I have quite lost track of him since in my excursion after these other fictional tricksters, so let me get back to the point.

We are going to chase the Manx Cat. I first spotted him on page 15 of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and so, if we are to find him, that is where we should begin. 

If I recall correctly, Virginia Woolf had just set the scene by remarking that “it is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said,” (A Room of One’s Own, 13), which I find rather unusual, because the most curious event of this particular luncheon party was the arrival of the cat, (who did in fact not come to the luncheon party but stayed humbly outside on the lawn), and he didn’t say anything at all.
Woolf then goes on to mention all the things which novelists neglect to mention about the on-goings of luncheon parties, such as the soup and salmon that was eaten and the cigars that were smoked, as if this was of “no importance whatsoever” (A Room, 13). Indeed, the writers who failed to mention these details might not even have mentioned the uninvited guest who showed up outside the window.
Woolf had just remarked, most earnestly I’m sure, that all the members of the present luncheon party were going to heaven and exclaimed how right the world is with all its sweet rewards and trivial grudges and grievances and how admirable the friendship is between society and all of their kind (A Room, 14), when the uninvited guest makes his timely arrival.

Of course, the completely unimportant and previously unmentioned ashtray comes into play here, but had it not been there, had things, as Woolf says, “been a little different” she would never have spotted the tailless cat outside (A Room, 15)

He looks just as he did the last time I saw him here. Like before, he does not seem to notice his not having a tail, neither does he notice us watching him, though he is certainly aware of his having made his way once again into an essay, for there is an air of importance about him as he flicks his non-existent tail. Woolf watches him, and she cannot help but notice, as she did the last time, that “something seemed lacking, something seemed different” (A Room, 15).

In an effort to search for this missing thing, Woolf thinks “herself out of the room” (A Room, 15).  We follow her as she meanders through her thoughts into the past to another luncheon party which happened not so long ago. Though she remarks that at first glance everything about this luncheon party is different, everything is also very much the same (A Room, 15). The talk is the same, the room is the same. I imagine the attendees are eating soup and salmon and that the same ashtray sits idly on the coffee table waiting to be dumped.

Unfortunately, though, no one goes to dump the ash out of the window, and so, no matter how much we strain our necks, we will not be able to glance outside. We will never know whether or not there was a tailless cat outside the window. Though somehow, I have an inkling that the Manx Cat had little business there, for what could a tailless cat possibly want at a luncheon party that is so rich and nostalgic; a luncheon party in which nothing is lacking and men and woman hum love poems to each other. I think, if there was a cat outside this window, it probably had a tail.

I have not been to many luncheon parties and so I cannot be sure just how inappropriate Woolf’s random outburst of laughter was. But I cannot imagine that the other attendees understood the joke when Woolf, in an effort to explain her laughter, points at the Manx Cat outside. I must admit, I am not entirely sure I understand the joke myself.

The Manx Cat leaves soon after, for the luncheon party ends, and as it slips away, without so much as an exit, the only thing which we have left to ponder is how strange it is “what a difference a tail makes” (A Room, 17). Though it is rather puzzling that it should show up here, for Woolf does mention that the tailless cat is “rarer than one thinks” (A Room, 17), and so the odds of us sighting it again are rather low. 

The Manx Cat disappears for a long time after that. He might have appeared briefly on page 56 if only to look disapprovingly at the notion that anyone could lock a cat out of anywhere, even heaven.

I followed Virginia on her wanderings the last time I was here, and as I followed her, I kept my eyes open, watching ever for the Manx Cat. And, as I searched for the Manx Cat, Virginia searched high and low for her missing thing. She went searching in gardens and libraries and museums; she searched through the centuries of time, through natural histories and whimsical ones; she searched through the scope of a looking glass and at the point of her pencil; she peered into secluded rooms and wandered empty streets and graveyards, all in search of a flicker of a shadow; a shadow that looks somehow very much like the queer form of a cat.

Eventually, she does what any intelligent person would do when looking for a lost symbolic thing, like a missing cat that never was and may never be again; she goes to the library and, picking up books that aren’t there, she looks for things that are missing. Leafing through these imaginary books, she turns “page after page…feeling that a crisis was approaching” (A Room, 118).

The crisis comes in the form of two people on a beach, a man and a woman who walk towards each other under the sun. In the fanciful world they may have been named Phoebe and Alan. In a more nostalgic world they may have been two poets named Alfred Lord Tennyson and Christina Rossetti. Whatever their names were, we will never know for certain because neither of them bothers to introduce themselves; in fact, neither of them says a word. But the Manx Cat greets you with the nod of his head, for he too sits there on the beach, and he turns to you grinning, very much the image of the Cheshire Cat. And although he does not speak, there is something in his grin that suggests a remark, a sly whisper perhaps –something like “Hello, I am the Manx Cat.”

But, on second thought, I cannot be too sure that that is what the Manx Cat would have said. For as the two people part ways without so much as a goodbye, and their obstructive shadows form into blockades, the Manx Cat blinks its cunning eye, and I could have sworn I might have heard him whisper something like… “Hello reader, I am something missing. I am something wrong.”

But then again, I cannot be sure, for the waves were crashing and the gulls were calling, and the pages flipped, and then the cat was gone.

As I walked along the beach nearing the end of the essay and heard the traffic roar, as Mary Beton ceased to speak, and the sun on the beach peered into the common sitting room, all I was left with was the shadow of a notion that, if I were to write an essay about women and fiction, I would go to another luncheon party. I would look out of the window, and I would not see so much as the solitary shadow of a cat. But there, out on the lawn where the ashes have blown, a cat’s tail hangs from a tree or a hedge, ragged and battered by the wind. But where the cat went, I wouldn’t know.

How We Tried to Keep the Moon

The day we found out the moon was leaving the world looked to the sky.
Even though we were told the moon was disappearing, we suddenly saw it everywhere. It was on posters, in the papers, and on television channels. The headlines were inescapable: Moon Leaving Earth’s Orbit. Newsagents shouted it in the streets and you’d overhear it in passing conversations. We didn’t know when or why the moon was leaving us. We would look out of our windows and there she’d be, in the sky where she’d always been, seemingly unaware that she had become the novelty of the decade. She was the headliner, the main attraction, the newest thing, and yet, to the naked eye she hadn’t changed at all. The moon looked the same as it always had.
Yet on earth, the prices of telescopes quickly went up. People climbed mountains and towers to get a closer look at her, almost as if we thought we could witness her departure. We became a society of moon-gazers. But, as day by day we watched her from our rooftops, nothing seemed to change. The moon waxed, and she waned, but she had always done that. The uproar died down eventually, and soon everything returned to normal.
Until the day an Italian philosopher rowed out to sea. He said afterwards that the easiest way to follow the moon is by boat, for nowhere does she seem closer than out upon the waters. He was the first to notice that the moon had shrunken.
Of course, no one could prove it. The mathematicians and the astronomers did their calculations, yet their math could not convince them. Across the nations, people raised their thumbs to the night sky. The moon had shrunken, and nothing could convince them otherwise. 
So, it was that the world became obsessed with the moon. It was as if now that we knew that she was leaving the world had rediscovered her vitality to the sky; almost as though we had forgotten that she had been there all along.
Never-the-less, the world came together; scientists, inventors, scholars, explorers, and philosophers; masterminds and visionaries of all sorts band-together with but one ambition: to figure out how to convince the moon to stay.

The first to attempt it was a Russian physicist who believed that the best way to retrieve the moon was by strengthening the earth’s gravitational pull. Rumors circulated about the possibilities of magnetic power. A couple of documentaries were filmed and for a time this convinced the people that the problem would be solved.
But, as more and more moon-gazers took to the sea, people quickly became aware that the ocean’s tides were falling. Things only got worse after that.

The next to hit the headlines was a French inventor. Sketches of blueprints were released of a preposterous contraption designed to reel the moon back into the earth’s orbit. A commotion of stories followed.
Though word of the French inventor soon disappeared, extremists and enthusiasts of all sorts endeavored to construct the Frenchmen’s invention. Technicians, Architects and Carpenters attempted to build the device. Everyone wanted to be remembered as the person who had saved the moon.
For a while, this society of innovators took over the news. Stories were heard of people climbing the Eiffel Tower in an attempt to lass the moon. But, as the stories became more and more absurd, the Frenchmen’s scandal was soon forgotten.
The world continued as normal for a time. But the story of the moon’s flight soon resurfaced when a German Astro-photographer snapped a shot of her in her full form, a photograph which he claimed was proof of her departure.
Once again, the moon seemed to have shrunken right before our eyes.

Scientists no longer tried to disprove that the moon was leaving after that, though whether that was because the Astro-Photographer’s photograph had convinced them or whether they had decided it was best to ignore the upheaval no one really knew.
But, as the scientists stepped away, the artists took over. A sensation of works followed of which the moon was the latest inspiration. She became a prodigy, a monument of art.
The first to captivate the audiences with their moon-work spectacle was an English playwright who had written a play about a poet who built a ladder atop mount Everest and used it to climb to the moon.
Not long after, circuses started advertising acrobats who could swing into the night sky and funambulists who slung lines to the moon. Dancers waltzed on the moon and artists painted her. A composer released a rhapsody of lullabies inspired by her. Sonnets and nursery rhymes were written. Filmmakers released features about her, and a Spanish chef created a concoction known as moon-cheese.
But the funny thing is, in all the hustling and bustling, people stopped looking at the moon again. She was still there for all to see, yet people were too busy to notice her.
The last piece of moon-art I ever saw was a mural painted on the side of an observatory depicting the moon breaking free from its bounds of nooses and chains and forces of magnetic power. Under it was written in broad letters Free the Moon.
The moon never did end of leaving, and yet, somehow, we lost her still. Though the mural was painted over a few days later, I can still see visibly in my mind’s eye the image of the moon drifting off into space like a great balloon, finally liberated from her shackles. Sometimes when the moon peeks into my bedroom window late in the evening I cannot help but wonder why it is that she decided to stay.

A Day in London Below

I stopped to take this picture while I was reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

It was a cool and cloudy day and I could hear the stream outside my window rushing. I lit my Rainy Day Reads candle and read the day away.

I had my second cup of coffee sitting on my nightstand, and by the time I remembered to drink it, it was already cold. My brother always says I have a habit of leaving my coffee unfinished. But I blame the book for that one. I have always been fascinated by Gaiman's imagination. But this book! My, was it ever beguiling!

Fantastic Mr. Fox Goes for a Walk

To continue with my focus on Fantastic Mr. Fox, here is a drawing I've been working on for the last two weeks. I started working on this before I wrote my previous blog post. I wonder what it says about me that I unconsciously decided to paint in his tail...

As you can see in the picture, I used tea (English breakfast if you're wondering) for the sky with a touch of yellow paint for the brighter parts.

I used a mixture of green tea and acrylic paint for the hill. You can see some of the tea leaves still on the page. 

The light and the flowers are done with acrylic paint.

And the finished result!

Why Mr. Fox Had to Lose His Tail

"Did we get him?" said Bean.

"One of them shone a flashlight on the hole, and there on the ground, in the circle of light, half in and half out of the hole, lay the poor tattered bloodstained remains of.... a fox's tail." ~Fantastic Mr. Fox

Ever since I re-watched Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox earlier last week something about the movie has been bothering me. I was a child the first time I saw the film, and the feeling it gave me was one I had only ever experienced when facing things that scared me. I couldn't quite trace what it was about the movie that frightened me, except to know that it was a similar feeling to being trapped inside a closet space with no way out, or being chased by something in a nightmare. It was these types of tight, claustrophobic, and ultimately squeamish fears that the film brought back to me then, as it does now.

And yet it wasn't that Fantastic Mr. Fox was a movie that outright scared me as a child, for I had no nightmares about it, neither did it trouble my waking hours. Indeed, I could easily push the inner feeling of panic away. But then, all I had to do was think about the movie, and the gut twisting feeling would return.

I experienced a similar feeling the first time I read the tale of Peter Rabbit, who likewise narrowly dodges a bloody end at the hands of a farmer. Like Mr. Fox, Peter Rabbit loses something in the chase, and though it is not a body part, it is just as essential to his being as Mr. Fox's tail. Peter Rabbit's blue jacket and shoes are hung up on the skeletal form of a scarecrow, a formidable symbol showing just how nearly the farmer caught him. 

It wasn't until years later when I read Richard Adam's Watership Down and found myself experiencing the same feeling of panic that I began to wonder what it was about these tales that caused me to feel such fear. I found it increasingly strange that the fear I felt as a child troubled me just the same as an adult. And yet these tales are, at their core, children's tales, animal stories, full of wit and charm, and, of course, violence.

Finally, last week on my way to the grocery store, as I was thinking about Mr. Fox's tail, it hit me. The idea in itself has been in these stories all along, and so I can take no credit for them. But, in thinking about Mr. Fox's tail, I was finally able to put my finger on why these tales cause me to relive feelings of claustrophobia and cleithrophobia.

It started with me wishing that Mr. Fox could get his tail back, or better yet, that he hadn't lost it in the first place. A fox's tail is such a nice tail, after all. And the bony, fur-less tail he later gets back is so gory and ugly, the exact opposite of everything a fox's tail should be.

I wasn't sure why it bothered me so much, because it shouldn't have. It was just a tail. Only a child would wish for such a simple thing to be remedied, for such a perfect world where foxes didn't have to lose their tails.

But I soon realized that it wasn't the violent loss of the tail that left such a sour taste in my mouth, but what the tail represents. In short, what I was really wishing for was that Mr. Fox could live in a world in which bullets didn't bite so hard, in which death didn't nip so closely at his heels, and consequences didn't come in such a final form.

But consequences are hardly unique to these beast tales. On the contrary, every well told tale has consequences. Books like Game of Thrones dish out consequences to no end. And yet, even this adult story, which is so well known for its violence and brutal off-killings, didn't make me feel quite so claustrophobic and quite so fearful as Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Fantastic Mr. Fox and tales like it remain the most harsh example of consequences any children's story has ever displayed. What's more, in these tales consequences are given so very quickly. The childish "naughtiness" of Peter Rabbit nearly results in his untimely demise, a harshness which no fortunate child ever experienced. Indeed, a vegetable garden has never seemed so terribly claustrophobic as when Peter Rabbit gets lost in it; a human home has never felt so like a deathtrap as when one of these animal protagonists is trapped in it.

What's more, the animals in these stories are charming, humorous, and even bear peoplelike qualities, such as the wearing of clothes. Nonetheless, the story does not allow them to escape their animal lives, even if they do live in furnished houses and wear jackets. And, being animals, they can be killed for almost nothing. After all, in tales like Peter Rabbit characters are turned into pie, an act which literature normally reserves for the most disturbing acts of revenge, consider Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, for example. Furthermore, the animals in these stories have something the humans in them don't. They have motive, desire, wants, curiosities. Meanwhile, the humans in these stories are little more than creatures of mass productivity, with endless gardens, bird-farm empires with wire fences around them and ravage beasts to guard them. It is only after the critter penetrates them that the human's motives are revealed, and we, the reader, come to realize that their only desire is a repulsive refusal to allow animal trespassers and a revolting need to punish the animals that do.

As Richard Adams wrote in Watership Down,

"Animals don't behave like men... If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality."

Ultimately, the thing that makes animal tales of this nature feel so claustrophobic is that there is not a lot of wiggle room in them. Their world is harsher and much quicker to strike than any human one we know, for in their world there is no buffer between one mistake and another; there is no intermediary between one mistake and death. Thus, a single misstep could very easily be one too many. Indeed, death is never more than a step away, and though Mr. Fox and Peter Rabbit ultimately give it the slip, it does not miss them by much.

But like I said, the squeamish feeling leaves me as soon as I stop thinking about these stories, in other words, as soon as I return to my human life, in which death does not live so close, in the farmhouse down the hill, or worse, laying watch outside my front door.

As Roald Dahl concluded his animal tale masterpiece,

"They sat there by the hole, waiting for the fox to come out. And so far I know, they are still waiting," (Fantastic Mr. Fox).

Castaways of the Flying Dutchman

"All you need for real happiness is the sun on your face and a friend by your side." ~Brian Jacques, Castaways of the Flying Dutchman 

Love for Well-Worn Paperbacks

I detest the mistreating of books, as I hate the mistreating of trees. I find it despicable when people misuse something that may very well outlive them. For indeed, the average lifespan of a book, much like a tree, is very likely to outlast the lifespan of a person. And although these things appear on the surface to be inanimate, there is so much beauty and possibility for wonder and growth in these things that their unnecessary destruction angers me.

There is, however, a difference between a mistreated book and well worn book.

The most worn out book I own is a paperback addition of Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

The spine is cracked, pierced by white like so many paper-veins showing through its otherwise black spine. The cover is bent in a few places, like an old photograph, or a letter that has been unfolded too many times. What's more, my handwriting is woven in with Dickens' own words, my messy script playing around with the printed paragraphs; drawing lines and arrows, underlining the words I want to read again, the sections I spent the most time in marked by pencil. Sometimes there are scribbles too, words jotted down; thoughts and references tugged out of my mind by the on-goings of the page.

I love this worn out book, not just because Bleak House is one of my favorites, but because I love how lived in this particular addition feels.

My copy of Bleak House is worn because I read it well. The cover is bent in places from all the time I spent carrying it around with me on the inside of my bag.

I have a love for worn out books, paperbacks specifically.

There are some readers who morn the wearing out of a book. I, on the other hand, have come to be greatly fond of this process. I believe it to be my right as a reader.

There is something comforting about a well worn paperback. You can tell when it has been opened, and even to what extent it has been read. If a reader quit part way through, the cracks will stop and the further pages will not open as naturally.

But a book that has been well-read and well-opened will open easily. It will want to be opened, for it has gotten used to be handled by readers, being visited by fingers and skimmed by eyes.

Breaking in the spine of a paperback book is like wearing in a pair of walking shoes; it is the wearing through, the cracking, that shows that there has even been a journey. These shoes have been walked in. They have gone places, a well worn pair of shoes seems to say. Or, in the case of the well worn paperback: this book has been read.

“Books do not age as you and I do. They will speak still when you and I are gone, to generations we will never see. Yes, the books must survive.” ~The Hiding Place

Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?

 An Analysis of the Prime Example of Fictional Immortality 

Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most recognizable fictional character of all time, something which is somewhat remarkable considering how many faces he’s worn. It seems strangely suitable that Sherlock Holmes, among his many skills, should also be a master of disguise. For each time he returns, be it to the stage, the screen, or on the page, he is never quite the same. In all the different faces which have represented Sherlock Holmes we have come to recognize him mainly by his distinguished silhouette: the large beak-like nose, the tall lean figure, the deer-stalker hat, and calabash pipe, all of which are signature to his demeanor. Yet ironically, most of these are credited, not to Conan Doyle himself, but to British illustrator Sidney Paget. Even Holmes' well-known catchphrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” comes, not from the original work, but from author P.G. Wodehouse. These are not the only well-known Holmesian characteristics which are credited to other creators. Ever since Conan Doyle let loose detective Sherlock Holmes into Victorian London in A Study in Scarlet, artists have been creating their own interpretations of the world-famous detective, and thus he has become immortalized, not just by one, but thousands of reworkings and adaptations. It may therefore seem somewhat misleading to fully credit Arthur Conan Doyle with the creation of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps it is more suitable to say rather that Conan Doyle did not in-fact create Holmes. He discovered him.

Though it may seem an odd statement, it seems that Sherlock Holmes is, in fact, more influential than the man who created him. This in itself is entirely bizarre, for Holmes, of course, is fictional. Yet even in his time, multitudes of readers were convinced of his existence. To Doyle's own dismay, he received countless letters all address not to him, but to Sherlock, imploring the detective to help solve their tragedies and mysteries. In the present day, Sherlock Holmes seems more alive and real than Conan Doyle himself. So, Holmes has become the reality and the author the shadow, a silhouette perched in an armchair behind the figure of his creation. Though the simple solution would be to dismiss this as a case of excellent story-telling, someone like Sherlock Holmes would not be convinced of such a mundane conclusion.

It deems worth noting that Sherlock Holmes is not the only fictional character granted this endowment of immortality, nor is he the only one who has skipped the line between reality and fiction so effortlessly. Figures like King Arthur or Robin Hood of Loxley, to name a few, have also crossed this line, slipping out of the fictional world and leaving behind relics and remnants of misplaced evidence, as if they might actually have existed. Indeed, to this day experts are still uncertain whether or not these figures actually existed, and to what extent the stories we have about them are true. While their origins may be obscure, their influence, however, is undeniable. Sherlock Holmes himself does not have much in common with these figures, it is their mutual prestige on the public which makes them so extraordinary. Of course, there is one other key point in which these figures share: they are all heroes.

King Arthur, the righteous and just king, leader of the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, the noble outlaw who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, we’ve all heard of them. But what exactly does Sherlock Holmes have to do with them?

When we think of Detective Sherlock Holmes, words like righteous, just, and noble are certainly not the first that come to mind, if, in fact, they come to mind at all. Sherlock Holmes is flawed, often times selfish, and at times completely unsympathetic. Indeed, he has been compared to machine. What's more, it is his lack of human weakness and emotion that most fascinates those fictional characters who come know him, and those who in their turn come to know him on the page. Even so, when it comes to fictional immortality Holmes somehow manages to exceed them all. While King Arthur and Robin Hood were the heroic figures of their own time, Sherlock Holmes has become a heroic icon, not only of his own time but most every time since.

When a character becomes immortalized in this way they will inevitably become, not just a character, but an idea. Robin Hood, for example, exemplifies justice. He is a hope for the poor, a reclamation of a better world in a time of oppression. In the same way, Sherlock Holmes has also become the incarnation. He is the image of the ultimate expert. A man who, with his powers of deduction and wit can unravel any mystery. Sherlock Holmes springs out of an era of order, an industrious empire, a society overtaken with invention and vision, and yet a society overcome by the ever-growing fear that their world, a world of which the pace was ever quickening, was spinning out of control. This is a fear which is no less relevant in today’s society than it was to the Victorians who witnessed the First Industrial Evolution when the world began to move too quickly. One could argue that the world has not stopped its Industrial ascent since.

It is perhaps for this very reason that, more than a decade after his initial appearance, Sherlock Holmes has still not retired, despite what Doyle tried to make us believe in The Adventure of the Lion's Mane. And if he has indeed retired at one point or another, he has been raptly replaced by a successor, a new Sherlock Holmes for a new time.

Since Conan Doyle’s death in 1930, the public has seen Sherlock Holmes return again and again. Indeed, ever since Arthur Conan Doyle brought back Sherlock Holmes ten years after his supposed death, it seems it is quite impossible to kill him. His immortality is so adamant, and the public’s adoration so persistent, that not even his creator could kill him off. We see in Sherlock Holmes that something truly fascinating occurs when a character outlives his creator with such perpetuation. Not only has Sherlock Holmes outlasted his time, he has pervaded through every time since, slinking straight out of the fog of Victorian London into the present day, solving mysterious and delivering justice, whether that be to protect innocent murderers, or the wrongfully accused; to restore honor to the disgraced or repair trust for those that have been torn apart by a crippled system. He is a shadow of a man instantly recognized by his fans, fans who as a mass manage to maintain the illusion that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the detective who has, and most certainly will, outlive them all, is still out there today, solving mysteries, dispelling superstitions, disproving irrationality and illusion; debunking legends even as he himself becomes one.