During this time Holmes spent some of his time smoking and dreaming in the cottage, but a greater portion in country walks which he undertook alone, returning after many hours without remark as to where he had been. ----- "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot"
Like many people of my generation, I gave up smoking years ago. However, every now and again, I find myself tempted to smoke. Not because I have a physical craving for nicotine but because, like Holmes, I found that my imaginative thinking for problem solving seemed to work better as I sat (actually stood outside) and smoked. There was something about smoking that eased the deliberate act of choosing to stand still and creatively think. Perhaps it was about having something to do with my hands while my thoughts agitated. Perhaps it was about being confined to the smoking spot while my mind went out and abroad to wherever it wanted to go.
Don't get me wrong. I hated everything about smoking (the smell, the mess, the bother, the cost, the sheer danger of it) except...well, smoking. I liked how my brain seemed to work and I liked the stress relief aspect of it. I was fortunate to never become a heavy smoker and when I decided to quit, I just did with very little fuss or bother. As I said, fortunate, especially considering all the bad that smoking can entail. But, still, I certainly understand Holmes's smoking-in-order-to-think processes.
Better Sherlockians than I am have written extensively about Holmes and his smoking and I certainly have nothing of any great importance to add to the body of work. Sometimes I think we gloss over how actually awful that much smoking must have been. We have fun talking about a "three-pipe problem" and being grossed out by Holmes's habit of a before-breakfast pipe composed of "all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before." We never forget how much smoking he did in order to solve the problem of "The Man with the Twisted Lip":
He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed, and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag -tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old brier pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features.
And of course Watson was right there smoking with him. At this moment, I can't remember if Watson ever said he believed smoking helped him think and I'm too lazy to find out. I doubt it, though. Watson probably smoked because almost everyone smoked. Those rooms in Baker Street were probably a yellow mess that was not at all like the romantic "A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane As night descends upon this fabled street..."
Over the past three years as I've struggled to learn to write fiction I missed the smoking-thinking more than ever. The only substitute I found for the the process was baking, especially bread. Kneading works almost as well as far as the hands busy and standing in a specific space aspects of the smoking. A few months ago I was having trouble nailing the opening of a story. I had written it at least a half dozen times and nothing seemed right.
I took a break to bake some pecan sticky buns--a good dough recipe that required some serious kneading. As I worked the dough my mind started to wander. For no specific reason this bit from Arthur Conan Doyle's "After Cormorants with a Camera" came to mind:
I had two stands — one a short ash tripod, the other an invention of my own, which I have found of great service in working the moorlands of Scotland. It simply consists of a stout walking-staff four feet long and shod with iron. This is fitted to the camera by means of an adjustable ball-and-socket joint. The advantages which I claim for this simple arrangement are not only its lightness (a consideration which will have weight with every practical worker in the open air) but also its cheapness, and the facility it affords for the focusing of a moving object. By it free movement is secured in every direction, both horizontal and vertical, while four inches of iron spike are sufficient to guarantee perfect steadiness.
There was something about that walking stick that gave me not only the opening to the story but the emotional make up of my lead character who carried it. He was a man who proved to be able to move in every direction as needed but to stay perfectly steady in himself. The opening of "Among The Ruins" eventually came to read like this:
I watched the dawn break above as I set out from Sparwick towards the ruins of the ancient Payneven manor house. I followed the footpath along the Windrush with the aid of my stout walking-staff, four feet long and shod with iron—an invention of a colleague of mine, the articulate one in South Norwood with photography as a hobby. He intended it as a camera stand, the camera fitted by means of an adjustable ball-and-socket joint, but I found it perfectly balanced for rough ground walking along the river.
Our poor fellow faced rough ground in many different ways along the river but that is a story for another day.
I've lightened up on the baking in the last six months as the household was putting on a little too much weight. The bulk of the kneading had to stop. I've found lighter recipes that work best with hand mixing and that kinda works. It is not as effective as the kneading or the smoking but needs must.
I'll never go back to smoking like Holmes but I certainly hope that someday I get to go to Cornwall to take hours long country walks by myself like he did. I have a Sherlockian friend who was able to walk like Holmes in Cornwall for a week but that, too, is a story for another day.
