Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography by Nicholas Rennison

Author:Nicholas Rennison [Rennison, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9781555848736
Google: RQwxAzs3peYC
Amazon: B0097D786K
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2007-12-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

‘I THEN PASSED THROUGH PERSIA…’

WHY THE AMBAN MADE HOLMES’S journey possible and what the two men discussed during the detective’s sojourn in the Tibetan capital are matters for debate rather than certainty. The only evidence lies in a number of cryptic references in Foreign Office papers about relations with the Manchu Empire dating to the following year. These make no mention of Holmes by name but the person described as ‘our representative in discussions’ is almost certainly he. From these Foreign Office documents it is clear that the amban, one of those few Chinese officials aware of the true power of European colonial nations, was eager to establish lines of communication with the West. The attempt was doomed to failure. Less than a decade after he and Holmes spoke, the Boxer Rebellion broke out and a joint force of Western powers marched on the Chinese capital to assert its authority.

Holmes remained in the Tibetan capital for nearly six months, giving him plenty of time not only to confer with the amban but also to learn about the country’s religion. For a self-proclaimed rationalist, Holmes was always fascinated by the non-rational beliefs of the faithful of all religions, and Lhasa would have provided him with many opportunities to satisfy his curiosity. After leaving Lhasa in the spring of 1892 (we know the date from another reference in a largely forgotten Foreign Office document), Holmes stages another of those disappearing acts that punctuate his years abroad. We have little but his own word as to his whereabouts. As he continues his narrative to Watson, he tells him, ‘I then passed through Persia.’ The idea that Mycroft might have instructed his brother to visit Tehran if he could is entirely feasible. At the time, dark suspicions of Russia’s ambitions in Persia haunted the minds of British imperialists as powerfully as did concerns that it would expand into Afghanistan, Tibet and the remoter steppes of Central Asia. Fears of Russian influence in Persia were, indeed, more reasonable than the anxieties that had sent Holmes off the edges of familiar maps and into the unknown city of Lhasa. For most of the second half of the nineteenth century, the Persians were keener to maintain friendly relations with the Russians than they were to listen to the voices of those British ministers to the Shah’s court (one of whom was the father of Colonel Sebastian Moran) who were advocating different policies. Indeed, in 1856 a dispute about territory to the south of the country had led to a war that Britain had rapidly won.

In the following decades, determined efforts had been made on both sides to improve relations. In 1873, the British public had been treated to a dazzling spectacle of Oriental splendour when the Shah of Persia, Nasr-ed-Din, visited the country. Dressed, according to one observer, in ‘an astrakhan cap and a long coat embroidered with gold’ and wearing ‘as many diamonds and precious stones as his apparel would bear’, the Shah fitted perfectly with ‘the preconceived notions people had formed of an Eastern potentate’.

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