I’ve been reading the Sherlock Holmes tales for the first time and have been proceeding in the order of publication. I read The Final Solution despite the lackluster quality of the last set of stories of that period jumped almost immediately into Hound of the Baskervilles since it’s generally agreed upon as the best of the stories (likely due to Conan Doyle getting some distance from Holmes before setting out on a new tale).
As I was reading it I was struck by the near identical background between the villain of the piece (I’m leaving off the name for those who are not familiar with the book; you should read it if you haven’t because the story was everything I heard it was) and Professor Moriarty. Pains seemed to be taken to allow for him to be Moriarty (Holmes mentions that he went by yet another name which isn’t given and describes him in similar terms as he does Moriarty) and the lack of a body at the end speaks of the possibility, but checking the information on the Internet regarding this I didn’t really find anything and you’d think it would bear a mention somewhere if there was some official statement at some point on his identity one way or the other.
I’m quite certain I’m not the first to notice such a thing so I ask those of you who are fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories to fill me in. Is it stated at some point that the Professor had an earlier encounter with Holmes? Was it all a coincidence? Is it a point of contention among Holmes fans that after a century of arguments they’ve all agreed to never speak of it again?
Holmesians make their reputation by coming up with theories that make connections that no one else had ever thought of, so somebody somewhere probably has put these men together.
But it certainly is not generally accepted, or even occasionally stated. Moriarty is acknowledged to appear in only two stories, “The Valley of Fear” and “The Final Problem” (and indirectly in “THe Adventure of the Empty House”) and that’s it. The villain of “Hound” is the villain in “Hound” and no one else.
I thought Moriarty was mentioned by Holmes as the instigator of The Red-Headed League (though he did not actually appear as a character). Of course, I may be misremembering.
You’re misremembering. The Adventure of the Red-Headed League is completely self-contained.
In the BBC/Granada production of Sherlock Holmes (easily the best adaptations I’ve seen), they showed that Moriarty was the brains behind the Red-Headed League. It was done simply as a way of foreshadowing, and building-up for their presentation of The Final Problem. As it stands, the Red-Headed League didn’t have Moriarty, and didnb’t need him – John Clay was supposed to be smart enought to pull it off. But it’s in the tradition of trying to put Moriarty into Holmes stories where he doesn’t belong, just to give Holmes a “worthy opponent”. The original William Gillette/Doyle stage play “Sherlock Holmes” brought in Moriarty along with bits from other stories (like “A Scandal in Bohemia”) for just that reason, and they’ve been doing it ever since. The Basil Rathbone movies did it a lot. I have a copy of the play version of “The Sign of Four” that ran in Atlanta about 25 years ago. The original novel had nothing to do with the good Professor, and even pre-dated his invention, but they threw him in that play all the same.
As for Hound of the Baskervilles and Moriarty, I don’t see the connection – both villains were masterminds, heads of educational institutions, and had no problem going head-to-head with Holmes, but it’s hard to reconcile the shady, behind-the-scenes manipulator with the reptilian head-shaking style with the hands-on, loner, yet superficially honest villain of Baskervilles. But you can propose it as a theory. Some Holnmesian probably has in the past, and written it up in the Baker Street Journal or something. For my part, I never saw the strong attraction of Moriarty, and can live without more of him.
I can certainly live without the need to insert Moriarty into anything involving Sherlock Holmes, it’s just that reading the Final Solution and Hound of the Baskervilles back to back made those similarities jump out at me. But in any other medium where Holmes is you inevitably Moriarty follows and it is not particularly interesting that way.
Just from The Final Solution (I haven’t gotten to the other official Moriarty story yet), Moriarty has to be one of the least interesting foils for Holmes ever. Holmes is constantly saying how dangerous and brilliant he is and yet we see little evidence of it. Moriarty gets to walk in, threaten Holmes, leave, give him a little chase, decieve Watson into leaving Holmes alone, and then give Holmes a bit of time to turn over all the evidence against him. As a character there he’s dull as dishwater and his only real claim to fame is being the weapon of choice that Conan Doyle used to finish off Holmes.
The text runs closer than you give it credit for, CalMeacham. For example, the schools that the two men ran are described in identical words at one point and I find it hard to believe that the parallels were not intentional. But on the other hand you are correct in that there are differences. Hense my reason for asking; I thought that it was already brought up and resolved at some point.