Character Illustrations
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
28/05/11 12:35
“There are no crimes and no criminals in these days,” he said, querulously. “What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
26/08/09 16:07
It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
18/08/09 14:09
He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me — many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead — but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
11/08/09 17:04
I descended to breakfast prepared to find my companion in depressed spirits, for, like all great artists, he was easily impressed by his surroundings. On the contrary, I found that he had nearly finished his meal, and that his mood was particularly bright and joyous, with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
06/08/09 16:30
Holmes had spent several days in bed, as was his habit from time to time, but he emerged that morning with a long foolscap document in his hand and a twinkle of amusement in his austere gray eyes.
“Patience! Patience, Mr. Garrideb!” said my friend in a soothing voice. “Dr. Watson would tell you that these little digressions of mine sometimes prove in the end to have some bearing on the matter."
Holmes had lit his pipe, and he sat for some time with a curious smile upon his face.
“I merely called to make your acquaintance, and there is no reason why I should interrupt your studies,” said Holmes. “I prefer to establish personal touch with those with whom I do business."
I noticed that my friend’s face cleared when the American left the room, and the look of thoughtful perplexity had vanished.
“I wish I could look over your collection, Mr. Garrideb,” said he. “In my profession all sorts of odd knowledge comes useful, and this room of yours is a storehouse of it.”
“This is a more serious matter than I had expected, Watson,” said he. “It is fair to tell you so, though I know it will only be an additional reason to you for running your head into danger. I should know my Watson by now. But there is danger, and you should know it.”
Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.
“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God‘s sake, say that you are not hurt!”
It was worth a wound — it was worth many wounds — to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.
His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive."
"Help yourselves, gentlemen. Call it a deal and let me beat it.”
Holmes laughed.
“We don’t do things like that, Mr. Evans. There is no bolthole for you in this country."
“Patience! Patience, Mr. Garrideb!” said my friend in a soothing voice. “Dr. Watson would tell you that these little digressions of mine sometimes prove in the end to have some bearing on the matter."
Holmes had lit his pipe, and he sat for some time with a curious smile upon his face.
“I merely called to make your acquaintance, and there is no reason why I should interrupt your studies,” said Holmes. “I prefer to establish personal touch with those with whom I do business."
I noticed that my friend’s face cleared when the American left the room, and the look of thoughtful perplexity had vanished.
“I wish I could look over your collection, Mr. Garrideb,” said he. “In my profession all sorts of odd knowledge comes useful, and this room of yours is a storehouse of it.”
“This is a more serious matter than I had expected, Watson,” said he. “It is fair to tell you so, though I know it will only be an additional reason to you for running your head into danger. I should know my Watson by now. But there is danger, and you should know it.”
Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.
“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God‘s sake, say that you are not hurt!”
It was worth a wound — it was worth many wounds — to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.
His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive."
"Help yourselves, gentlemen. Call it a deal and let me beat it.”
Holmes laughed.
“We don’t do things like that, Mr. Evans. There is no bolthole for you in this country."
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
02/08/09 16:17
Holmes had read carefully a note which the last post had brought him. Then, with the dry chuckle which was his nearest approach to a laugh, he tossed it over to me. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
31/07/09 14:25
Holmes knocked out the ashes of his pipe with a quiet chuckle. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
26/07/09 14:36
“I think he’s in bed and asleep,” he said.
It was seven in the evening of a lovely summer’s day, but Dr. Watson was sufficiently familiar with the irregularity of his old friend’s hours to feel no surprise at the idea.
“That means a case, I suppose?” Read More...
It was seven in the evening of a lovely summer’s day, but Dr. Watson was sufficiently familiar with the irregularity of his old friend’s hours to feel no surprise at the idea.
“That means a case, I suppose?” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
21/07/09 17:12
“Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution, since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
18/07/09 18:03
Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
15/07/09 16:24
In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity. To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
05/07/09 13:49
Holmes smiled with an expression of weary patience.
“The bath!” he said; “the bath! Why the relaxing and expensive Turkish rather than the invigorating home-made article?” Read More...
“The bath!” he said; “the bath! Why the relaxing and expensive Turkish rather than the invigorating home-made article?” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
01/07/09 14:53
His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London. On the other hand, his payments were princely. I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
29/06/09 14:04
In the third week of November, in the year 1895, a dense yellow fog settled down upon London. From the Monday to the Thursday I doubt whether it was ever possible from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The first day Holmes had spent in cross-indexing his huge book of references. The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby — the music of the Middle Ages. But when, for the fourth time, after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the windowpanes, my comrade’s impatient and active nature could endure this drab existence no longer. He paced restlessly about our sitting-room in a fever of suppressed energy, biting his nails, tapping the furniture, and chafing against inaction.
Read More...
Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
23/06/09 15:32
Holmes was accessible upon the side of flattery, and also, to do him justice, upon the side of kindliness. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
20/06/09 18:19
“My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace; the papers are sterile; audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove?” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
14/11/08 15:28
Sherlock Holmes rose with a smile.
“You are two of the most busy men in the country,” said he, “and in my own small way I have also a good many calls upon me. I regret exceedingly that I cannot help you in this matter, and any continuation of this interview would be a waste of time.”
Read More...
“You are two of the most busy men in the country,” said he, “and in my own small way I have also a good many calls upon me. I regret exceedingly that I cannot help you in this matter, and any continuation of this interview would be a waste of time.”
Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
11/11/08 13:44
Holmes uttered an exclamation.
“You have other injuries, madam! What is this?” Read More...
“You have other injuries, madam! What is this?” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
27/10/08 14:54
Things had indeed been very slow with us, and I had learned to dread such periods of inaction, for I knew by experience that my companion’s brain was so abnormally active that it was dangerous to leave it without material upon which to work. For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career. Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’s ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes. Therefore I blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that dangerous calm which brought more peril to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous life. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
23/10/08 15:04
Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
17/10/08 14:54
My friend’s temper had not improved since he had been deprived of the congenial surroundings of Baker Street. Without his scrapbooks, his chemicals, and his homely untidiness, he was an uncomfortable man.
Read More...
Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
13/10/08 16:49
It was no very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, to look in upon us of an evening, and his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes, for they enabled him to keep in touch with all that was going on at the police headquarters. In return for the news which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was always ready to listen with attention to the details of any case upon which the detective was engaged, and was able occasionally without any active interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from his own vast knowledge and experience.
Read More...
Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
23/09/08 16:55
As Holmes turned up the lamp the light fell upon a card on the table. He glanced at it, and then, with an ejaculation of disgust, threw it on the floor. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
21/09/08 14:16
Holmes, however, like all great artists, lived for his art’s sake, and, save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse, I have seldom known him claim any large reward for his inestimable services. So unworldly was he — or so capricious — that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose case presented those strange and dramatic qualities which appealed to his imagination and challenged his ingenuity. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
11/09/08 16:50
I am aware, Mr. Holmes, that you take a very high line in professional matters, and that you are prepared to work for the work’s sake. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
02/09/08 17:47
My friend, who loved above all things precision and concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand. And yet without a harshness which was foreign to his nature, it was impossible to refuse to listen to the story of the young and beautiful woman, tall, graceful, and queenly, who presented herself at Baker Street late in the evening, and implored his assistance and advice. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
27/08/08 15:52
Holmes had been seated for some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull gray plumage and a black top-knot. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
24/08/08 17:30
He shrugged his shoulders in humorous deprecation of the state of things which he had himself done so much to produce. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
21/08/08 23:53
Let me say to that public, which has shown some interest in those glimpses which I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a very remarkable man, that they are not to blame me if I have not shared my knowledge with them, for I should have considered it my first duty to do so, had I not been barred by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the third of last month. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
18/08/08 18:07
“I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that I am by no means a nervous man.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
13/08/08 15:28
Sherlock Holmes rubbed his hands with delight, and I stared with astonishment at our client. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
11/08/08 14:35
So moved was I that even had it been a difficult matter I should have tried it, but of course I knew well that Holmes loved his art, so that he was ever as ready to bring his aid as his client could be to receive it. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
09/08/08 19:47
“My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
07/08/08 14:26
He was deep in some of those abstruse chemical investigations which absorbed him utterly as long as he was engaged upon them. Towards evening, however, the breaking of a test-tube brought his research to a premature ending, and he sprang up from his chair with an exclamation of impatience and a clouded brow. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
04/08/08 16:51
I handed him my pouch, and he seated himself opposite to me and smoked for some time in silence. I was well aware that nothing but business of importance would have brought him to me at such an hour, so I waited patiently until he should come round to it. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
01/08/08 16:14
Even his iron constitution, however, had broken down under the strain of an investigation which had extended over two months, during which period he had never worked less than fifteen hours a day and had more than once, as he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a stretch. (Dr John Watson) Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
31/07/08 17:23
As to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.
Read More...
Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
26/07/08 13:56
For a whole day my companion had rambled about the room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his pipe with the strongest black tobacco, and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or remarks. Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by our news agent, only to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
22/07/08 17:19
Taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illusctrations
21/07/08 13:51
Sherlock Holmes pushed him down into the easy-chair and, sitting beside him, patted his hand and chatted with him in the easy, soothing tones which he knew so well how to employ.
Read More...
Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
20/07/08 13:21
“I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
18/07/08 17:23
I (Watson) even persuaded him to forgo his Bohemian habits so far as to come and visit us. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
17/07/08 16:07
“I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
15/07/08 12:03
“I should recommend you also to send a note by the cabman to your wife to say that you have thrown in your lot with me.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
13/07/08 13:29
Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime.... Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
11/07/08 08:38
“It is really very good of you to come, Watson,” said he. “It makes a considerable difference to me, having someone with me on whom I can thoroughly rely. Local aid is always either worthless or else biased.” Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
09/07/08 14:55
Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable.
Read More...
Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Characters Illustrations
07/07/08 17:10
Relapsing into his armchair and putting his fingertips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
06/07/08 13:49
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
03/07/08 15:55
It was when he was at his wit’s end that his energy and his versatility were most admirable. Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
02/07/08 16:59
He was a late riser, as a rule.... Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
30/06/08 17:19
An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes.... Read More...
Sherlock Holmes - Character Illustrations
30/06/08 13:48
I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson.... Read More...