The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (7 page)

Brian Hodgson was born in 1801 in Cheshire. When he was twenty-one, he joined the Indian Civil Service and was first sent to Calcutta, where he held a junior post. Within the first few months of his arrival, however, it became clear to his superiors that the climate and other discomforts of Bengal were serious impediments to his health. He had lost considerable weight, and there was talk of sending him home. He was sent instead first to Almora in the Kumaon Himalaya, and when an opening appeared in Nepal, he was then transferred there with an appointment as assistant to the British Resident, Edward Gardner.

In April, 1823, Hodgson left Almora for Katmandu. The journey was a difficult one. To reach the Nepalese capital, Hodgson had to brave the notorious jungles of the Tarai, where, in addition to the afflictions acquired in Bengal, he contracted one of the worst fevers of the globe, the
aul
, as it is known in those parts. After his arrival, he spent the first three weeks ill with a high fever that kept him to his bed. Gradually, he began to mend, due largely to the ministrations of Mrs. Gardner and the salubrious climate of the mountains.

Upon his recovery, Hodgson rapidly became an energetic and trusted servant of the Company. So highly did his superiors regard him that Gardner, upon his retirement, recommended that he be appointed his successor. The recommendation was enthusiastically received in Calcutta, and Hodgson, not yet thirty, attained the coveted position of British Resident to the Court of Nepal.

Hodgson was to remain twenty-one years in the post. During that time he pursued a double career. He was officially the Resident, representative of the East India Company to the Court of Nepal. In this capacity, he became an intimate of the court and its rulers, in particular of General Bhimsen Thapa, with whom he wielded considerable influence. At the same time, he pursued a private career of science, immersing himself tirelessly in every aspect of the life of the Himalayas, recording their history, languages, customs, and laws. His fame in Europe began with a series of papers on the little-known religion of the Buddhists, which formed the basis of European research for many decades.

It was in 1844, however, that his policies and conduct came into direct conflict with those of Lord Ellenborough, then Governor-General of the Company. Hodgson was recalled, and rather than take the minor post that Ellenborough offered him in India, he resigned from the service and returned to England, where he devoted his time to scientific research on Asiatic subjects.

A short time after Hodgson’s death, one night late in June of 1894, to be more precise, Holmes and I sat at home, quietly discussing his years of absence after the death of Moriarty. I remember the night vividly, for Holmes had been suffering from severe melancholia during the previous weeks, and those few evenings when he narrated his experiences granted him a brief respite from the black moods of depression that overwhelmed him.

“You have mentioned on several occasions, Holmes, that you journeyed at one point to Katmandu in the forbidden kingdom of Nepal, but it has never been clear to me what you did there or how indeed you managed to enter the country at all.”

Holmes smiled for the first time in many days.

“There are few places, Watson, that affect one as much as Nepal. One of our countrymen has written that it would take the pen of a Ruskin or the brush of a Monet to do it justice, and in those judgements I must concur. The climate is salubrious, the people friendly and as handsome as the landscape. They, however, suffer under the heel of a harsh and backward regime, and though it is in the interest of the Empire to support the present Maharaja, there is no question that the people would throw off his tyrannical yoke were it not for the support and friendliness that Government finds it necessary to display in order to preserve our interests.”

As he spoke, Holmes became more expansive, and I realised only then the affection in which he held his mountain friends.

“As you may recall, Watson, from several previous adventures, I travelled in Tibet in the guise of a Scandinavian naturalist. I changed my identity, however, when I was ready to leave, and journeyed from Lhasa to Katmandu on foot disguised as a Tibetan lama. While resident in Tibet, I had acquired the Tibetan language and had studied sufficiently the native Buddhist religion that, should I choose to, I could be convincing in my expositions of doctrine to the lay folk of the country and to the lamas as well, some of whom I had bested in debate on any number of philosophical subjects. One day the Scandinavian explorer bade good-bye to his friends, and left. Coincident with his departure a lama from Ladakh arrived in Lhasa.”

Holmes then recalled that he had been befriended by a Nepalese trader long resident in Lhasa, and it was with his caravan that he made the difficult journey south. The trader, a Newar of the Tuladhar caste, had lived in Tibet for many years. His name was Gorashar and he dealt in cloth and a variety of manufactured goods, including on occasion Russian weaponry. Holmes met him purely by accident shortly after his arrival, and they soon became friends. Gorashar returned home to Nepal every four years, and it was fortunate that one of his trips coincided with Holmes’s Tibetan sojourn. Gorashar warned him that he travelled at his own risk and that discovery in Katmandu would result in severe punishment. Holmes assured his friend that he was willing to bear the risk and that in any case his stay would be brief.

The journey was difficult, more difficult than the one by which he had entered Tibet. From Lhasa they went to Shigatse, then to Gyantse, crossing the Tsangpo or Brahmaputra River in one of those strange boats of yak skin that the Tibetans have made from time immemorial. From this point they began the ascent to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, a climb that strained the lungs of all.

“Many of the animals refused to go further,” he said, “and we had to search for fresh replacements. This caused endless delays. We finally crossed the pass above Nyalam at nineteen thousand feet, moving then to the village of Khasa where we spent the night. On the following morning we crossed to Kodari, resting there for the evening. The following day we began our descent toward the kingdom of Dolakha, a few days walk from Katmandu.”

Holmes described the passing from Tibet into Nepal as a dramatic change. Though filled with astounding sights, Tibet is by and large a barren land of great immensity. Nothing there prepared him for the sight of the snowy heights of the Himalayas, the clear mountain streams that pass through them, or the lush vegetation that begins to appear as soon as one begins the descent.

“To my knowledge, I was the first European to visit Dolakha, a forgotten kingdom of remarkable beauty, one even whose name is unknown to the civilised world. It was there that we began to recover from the rigours of our journey and I began to sense a well-being that I had not known before in my life.”

I smiled inwardly, for my friend rarely allowed himself to display his emotions, but in speaking of Nepal there was an exultant tone in his voice that I had not heard in a long time. He seemed to divine my thoughts, for he said, rather sternly, “Although I have often been amused by your portrayal of me as a cold, calculating machine without emotion, I have chaffed a bit at it as well, for it is of course untrue in one sense. I have emotions. In that I am like all other men. But they are completely in check and at the service of my brain. In that I am perhaps like no other.”

I was amused by his attempt to attribute to my rather paltry literary efforts his own attempts to present himself as a thinking machine, but I did not join him in argument here, for I did not wish to interrupt him. Seeing that I had nothing to say, he grew pensive for a moment, then continued, as I had hoped he would.

After their rest in Dolakha, they proceeded through Panch Kal to the old town of Banepa, just east and south of the Nepal Valley. Holmes remembered clearly the morning in Banepa. They rose and bathed in one of the local dharas or fountains and then turned their direction along the road that leads to Katmandu. The morning sun had begun to burn off the winter mist and it was still early when they began the final ascent. It was there that they had begun to see the first signs of the beautiful Newar villages that lie scattered across the landscape. As they ascended a low hill, they passed a series of small brick temples.

“The fields were green, for there had been heavy winter rains, and the fertile fields were in full bloom. We reached the top of the ridge and as I turned to the right, there lay before me the Valley of Katmandu! I must say, Watson, that I was taken aback, as I have never been before or since, even more than by my first sight of Lhasa. There it lay, its golden pagodas, shining rivers, and verdant fields. I watched silently as our long party passed. Gorashar noticed my rapt attention.”

“This is my home,” he said quietly in his inimitable way.

“For the first time in my adult life, Watson, I had let down my guard. My will relaxed and for a few moments I was at peace in a gentle world, one apparently without crime and its evils. Perhaps I might remain here, I thought, and devote myself to meditation and the contemplation of first principles. Or perhaps it was here that I should lead the life of a householder, far from my enemies, and unknown to them.

“For a few moments, these were tempting thoughts, but I quickly rejected them, knowing that once I had joined the struggle there was no turning back. I knew well that intelligent evil had begun to tire of London and the other metropolitan centres of Europe. Of course there is no end to the mayhem and the brutality of the London back alleys, but it is almost always the result of small frictions, with no overall pattern. If one were to find the intelligent criminal, one would have to seek him out in the most unlikely of places. The more innocent the soil, the more likely it is to be sought out by the criminal for his evil purposes. One had only to look at the innocent face of a Nepalese child, Watson, to understand what fertile soil the Himalayas might prove to be.”

It was with these sobering thoughts that Holmes walked the last few miles from the Banepa ridge into the city of Katmandu. He felt curiously vulnerable, for in the act of relaxing his will, he felt as if he had weakened in body as well. It was as if the armour that he had forged throughout his life had been pierced for the first time.

“I came out of my reverie sufficiently to notice that the caravan was well ahead of me. Gorashar himself had also tarried and was only a few yards ahead. He had been waiting for me. By the time I reached him I had sufficiently recovered my composure, but not well enough to hide my thoughts from his sensitive eyes. He said nothing, but I felt reassured by his presence.”

They walked together behind the caravan, passing to the south of the ancient city of Bhaktapur and through the town of Thimi. It was late afternoon when we reached the outskirts of Katmandu.

Gorashar owned a small inn in the centre of town, where he also lived with his family. His guests were Indian merchants for the most part. He invited Holmes to stay, for he could take his meals in his room and be less conspicuous than if he ventured forth on a regular basis. For the first few days, Holmes confined his activities to his room and the small but beautiful courtyard of the hotel. He had decided that he needed a more manageable disguise before he ventured forth. A Tibetan monk in this part of the city called for notice, and he felt that while the guise was a convenient one while travelling, it was too difficult to maintain once one was in residence.

“You know well, Watson, my abilities with regard to disguises and have remarked yourself more than once in your chronicles that the world had lost a great actor when it was decided that I should devote my life to the study of crime. Yet, I must say, with regard to these abilities, that Nepal taxed my talents to the fullest. Although I am capable of shedding at least a foot from my height, I could never pass for a Gurkha. The build of these hillmen and their physiognomy is completely different from ours. Being a Tibetan monk or European trader was quite satisfactory for travel but far too confining for a stay in Katmandu. Also, sooner or later, I should be found out. The disguise of Sigerson, the Scandinavian scientist, which I had abandoned in Lhasa, I could not revive, for the Nepalese government does not allow Europeans into the country without elaborate justification or bribes. I needed a new disguise, therefore, one that would at once arouse little attention and yet afford me the freedom that I needed to move about at will. I decided that I should have to become an Indian, for they cross the border in the Tarai freely, and that I would have to be of high caste, for there would be no other that would secure my freedom of movement. The dark-skinned frail Bengali I immediately eliminated, as well as the peoples of northern Bihar and Oudh. A Rajpoot prince? Perhaps, but I decided against it on the grounds that the Gorkhali rulers were said to be in constant touch with the maharajas of Rajpootana and that I should be hard-pressed for elaborate fictions. South India I know nothing of, and besides, the Tamilians are darker-complexioned than the people of the north.

“This reasoning left me with the Punjab and Kashmir from which to choose. Sikhs were too visible and their small community would immediately find me out. This left Kashmir, and I decided the best disguise might be that of a Kashmiri merchant. The difficulty was, of course, that these merchants are nearly all Mahometans, and the activities of Mahometans are restricted by the Hindoo orthodoxy of the Nepalese maharajas. In the end, I decided on the disguise of a Kashmir Brahman or pandit, who had come to Nepal to study the languages and dialects of the Himalayas. I had met on my way to India a young Irishman from Belfast by the name of Grierson, who was conducting a linguistic survey. He had remarked to me that his assistants were mainly Kashmiri Brahmans, who were well-educated, light-complexioned, and well versed in English. I was also aware of the work done in Kashmir by the Hungarian scholar Aurel Stein, whose archaeological interest had led him into remote areas of the Hindoo Kush. And so I became, shortly after arriving in Katmandu, Pandit Kaul, Assistant, Royal Linguistic Survey of India. I would carry letters from both Grierson and Stein, forged of course, but convincing enough. So quick was my reasoning in all this that my decision took but a few seconds, the steps in my explanation to you being decided almost instantly by the mind.”