Sherlock Holmes, Qualified Presidential Candidate

By Brad Keefauver

Every campaign is haunted by at least one burning question that refuses to go away. Usually it relates to sex, drugs, war service, or some other indicator of character. And while the issues of sex, drugs, and war service have all come up in the “Sherlock Holmes for President” campaign, none of them have been nearly as persistent as the basic question of whether Sherlock Holmes is even qualified to run for America’s highest office. After all, the critics always ask, isn’t he British? Don’t you have to be an American citizen to run for president? It’s a question that just won’t go away, probably because of that English accent the ladies are so fond of, or, to some small extent, the fame Holmes attained while living at 221B Baker Street in London. But the truth of the matter?

Sherlock Holmes is twice the American citizen most of us are.

How can I say that? Well, even though Sherlock Holmes is commonly thought to be British, no birth certificate has ever been produced by the United Kingdom or its subjects to back up that claim. All they can prove is that he lived there for about twenty years, and their evidence of that is flimsy enough. Sherlock Holmes’s American credentials are much more impressive.

Holmes’s original press agent, one Arthur Conan Doyle, was reported to have said that Sherlock was a distant relation of American justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (this from Rufus S. Tucker’s essay “Genealogical Notes on Holmes” from Profile by Gaslight). Rolfe Boswell then followed this clue in his detailed work, “A Connecticut Yankee in Support of Sir Arthur” (Baker Street Journal, Old Series, Volume 2, Number 2), as he reveals Sherlock’s American grandfather, Dr. Lathrop Holmes. Dr. Lathrop Holmes, Boswell reports, married a Vernet in France, produced a son Siger (named after the French philosopher), then moved the whole family to England where Siger was educated and married.

If one looks at Boswell’s findings with an eye to citizenship laws of the time, one realizes that Siger Holmes had dual citizenship in the U.S. and France, due to his father’s place of birth and his own, and probably also became a naturalized citizen of Britain before his childhood was over. Siger was quite the international fellow, and his propensity for travel has been well documented by William S. Baring-Gould and others. Having such strong paternal ties to America, and yet never having been there, it was only natural that Siger Holmes eventually added the United States to his travel plans, and it was there that his son Sherlock was plainly born.

“I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes,” Sherlock Holmes said in “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.” It is one of the more curious statements he makes during his recorded career, but one that has some very definite implications. As Rosemary Michaud wrote in an article entitled “Sherlock Holmes: Born in the USA” (The Holmes & Watson Report, January 1999):

“This speech of his may seem uncharacteristically fulsome, but it would make sense if it came from a man who could claim to be a citizen of both countries, as I believe Holmes could. He achieved this distinction by the circumstance of his having been born in the United States to parents who were citizens of Great Britain.”

But if American by birth isn’t enough, there are always other ways to obtain citizenship.

“But you’re an American citizen?” Von Bork asked the man called Altamont in “His Last Bow.”

“Well, so was Jack James an American citizen, but he’s doing time in Portland all the same. It cuts no ice with a British copper to tell him you’re an American citizen,” Altamont replied.

And while we know that “Altamont” was, in reality, an alias for Sherlock Holmes, the supposed Irish-American had to have credentials that could stand up to the closest scrutiny. He had to have all the papers of an American citizen. He had to be an American citizen. Now Altamont was an Irish-American whose whereabouts in America can be accounted for over only a two-year period. It takes five years to go through the formal naturalization process in the U.S., so we must assume that Altamont attained his citizenship through some other means. Was this provided for him by some black market, some clandestine government channel, or was it based upon something he already possessed? Whatever the case, reconsider Holmes’s words from “His Last Bow” when he says:

“I beg your pardon, Watson, my well of English seems to be permanently defiled.”

Was he just speaking of his vocabulary? British nationality is lost by foreign naturalization. In accepting American citizenship to serve England’s interests, Sherlock Holmes may have technically renounced any citizenship he had in that country. And that would leave him American, through and through.

American by birth and American by some undercover form of naturalization? That would make Sherlock Holmes, as I said earlier, twice the American that most of us are. And if all those proofs aren’t enough for you, let me add one more voice to the choir: that of the late American president Franklin D. Roosevelt:

“On further study, I am inclined to revise my former estimate that Holmes was a foundling,” Roosevelt wrote to Edgar Smith in 1944. “Actually he was born an American . . .” With all the resources of the U.S. government at his command, the president’s words “on further study” would seem a great understatement. If anyone is capable of finding out whether a human being is a citizen of a given country, it is the leader of that country. And if such a leader declares that his “studies” have shown someone to be a citizen of the country they currently govern, I think we can safely assume that it is so (even if it might not have been before).

So let us put an end to these silly questions of “Wasn’t Holmes British?” and “How can he be qualified to run for president?” and get to the same questions the rest of the candidates face: sexual proclivities, drug use, and war service. Sherlock Holmes may not be as pure as the driven snow, but if there’s anything the man is famous for, it’s answers.

Ask away.