A Hard Day At Work

No matter who we are, no matter what we do, we all have the occasional chuck-it-all day. Those days when the work is at its hardest, and your luck is at its lousiest. You're tired, you're frustrated, and you want to bolt for the door and take up clam-digging on a beach somewhere. My grandfather used to say that on those days he wanted to drive to the end of a road somewhere and set up a little farm, grow his own food, and be done with it. Every job has those days, the ones where you want to get as far away from it . . . as fast as you can. Even a job like Sherlock Holmes's.

Holmes? The guy with the greatest job in Victorian England? Running around solving cases, reaping the rewards of his genius, an occasionally just lying around the house when he didn't feel like working? The job of a consulting detective is what the rest of us dream about when we're having a bad day at work. What would Sherlock Holmes have to complain about?

He never really tells us. Sure, every now and then he complains about not having had a good case in awhile. And he did say that the business of the Beryl Coronet caused him "a hard day's work." But either Watson never recorded the day-to-day gripes about detective work, or Holmes just never bothered him with them. I tend to think is was the former, because Watson did give us an occasional hint.

Take "The Final Problem," for example. It was Holmes's greatest case, his battle with the ultimate criminal. It was also probably the hardest Sherlock Holmes had worked in his entire career. He spent at least four months on the case, probably more. He skipped meals, went without sleep some nights, and all the usual things he did when immersed in an investigation. When Watson finally sees Holmes as the case nears its finish, the doctor does report that his friend is in good spirits. But at the same time, Holmes keeps talking about one thing:

"Again and again he recurred to the fact that if he could be assured that society was freed from Professor Moriarty, he would cheerfully bring his own career to a conclusion."

Holmes is overworked. Holmes is tired. Holmes wants out.

"Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by Nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible," he tells Watson.

Already, the great detective is looking at another career choice. Watson, on the other hand, is probably not looking forward to chronicling the adventures of the world's foremost naturalist. He might even have to keep practicing medicine, a job he obviously isn't too fond of.

And after this series of the hardest days of his career, Holmes actually does something that very few among us will ever do. He walks off the job.

Once Professor Moriarty is dead at the bottom of the Reichenbach, Holmes has a thought: "It struck me what a really extraordinary lucky chance Fate had placed in my way." He goes on to tell Watson about people wanting to kill him, blah, blah, blah. But we know what he was really thinking about: The clients who'd be showing up on his doorstep the moment he got home. The Scotland Yard whiners coming around looking for non-credited help. In short, the work.

So, Sherlock Holmes, the world's foremost consulting detective, says: "Take this job and shove it into Reichenbach Falls," and he starts climbing. He climbs over one mountain, then another, and eventually winds up in Tibet. You can't walk off a job any more drastically than that.

Eventually, though, he did come back. Like the rest of us, Sherlock Holmes got fed up with his job on occasion. And like the rest of us, he also needed the money.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, September 1991)