Monument to Sherlock Holmes on Baker Street. Sculptural compositions (5)
On September 24, 1999, a monument to the most famous literary detective Sherlock Holmes was unveiled in London on Baker Street. This detective, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the most popular movie character in the world. In the last century, people even wrote letters to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, believing them to be real individuals.
In March 1990, at 221b Baker Street in London - at an address associated with the name of the great detective and detective - a permanent museum-apartment of Sherlock Holmes was opened, which the British government declared an architectural and historical monument.
In the world there are many monuments associated with the name of Holmes. His first statue appeared in 1988 in Meiringen (Switzerland). In the building of the old English church, the Holmes Museum-Apartment was opened - a complete copy of the one at 221b Baker Street in London. And at the same time, the adjacent street was called Baker Street. The entire “corner” near the church and the statue is hung with enlarged old clippings from the Strand magazine, which printed stories about Sherlock with magnificent illustrations by Sidney Page (1860-1908), who is recognized as the best illustrator of the Holmes and Watson series. Bronze Holmes is resting on a piece of rock, prudently making room for a tourist with a camera. In fact, he is reflecting before the last fight with Moriarty.
The next statue of the famous detective was opened on October 9, 1988 in Karuizawa (Japan). The sculpture can be seen in the city of Karuizawa, where the most famous Japanese translator of "Holmes" Nobuhara Ken lived, who worked on a cycle about the adventures of a detective for 30 years, from 1923 ("The Hound of the Baskervilles") to 1953 (complete collection). Certain difficulties arose with the establishment of the monument - there were fears that the European style of the Holmes statue would not fit into the classic Japanese look of the city, but, in the end, the persistent enthusiasts of the project prevailed. The monument was opened just a month later than Switzerland. What the Japanese Holmes is thinking about is not exactly established. Probably about the difficulties of translation.
Then it was Edinburgh's turn. Here, in the homeland of Conan Doyle, on June 24, 1991, the third monument to Sherlock Holmes was unveiled, which caused quite a stir in the ranks of Stevenson's admirers - but what about the monument to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Stevenson this time remained on the sidelines, but the Edinburgh Federation of Builders was more fortunate - the opening of the monument was timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its creation.
In London, the bronze Holmes appeared pensively looking into the distance, dressed for rainy London weather - in a long cloak, a hat with small brim and with a pipe in his right hand.
And on April 27, 2007, a monument to the great detective was opened on Smolenskaya Embankment in Moscow near the British Embassy. It was the first monument where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are depicted together. It is understandable. Our popularly beloved television series is not about deduction with sanity, but about friendship, about the local way of talking in the kitchen, about ideal relationships between people. The faces of the actors Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin, who brilliantly played the roles of these heroes of Conan Doyle, are guessed in the sculptures.
On Smolenskaya embankment in Moscow, not far from the newly erected building of the British Embassy, there is an extraordinarily beautiful and surprisingly believable sculpture dedicated to Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Watson, who are among the famous heroes of the literary world.
The grand opening of the monument took place in April 2007 and was dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the date of the first publication of the book "A Study in Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle, who managed to create a story about the famous detective. The international charitable public foundation "Dialogue of Cultures - United World" proposed the project "Folk Heroes in Sculptural Compositions". A monument to famous detectives was erected as part of this project.
This is the only sculpture in the world where the legendary couple of detectives are presented together. The figures of the characters in the works of Conan Doyle are depicted in human growth. Next to Dr. Watson, who is sitting on a bench, stands Sherlock Holmes, holding in his right hand, an integral attribute of his image - a pipe, and politely holding his left behind his back. He appears to be giving a colleague some of his thoughts on a particular investigation.
The installation of the monument was preceded by a closed competition among Moscow architects, who competed in creating the best sculptural personification of popular literary heroes. A. Orlov became the winner of the competition. According to him, he drew inspiration from the original illustrations by the artist Sidney Paget, who first portrayed Holmes in a hunting hat, and from the images of heroes created by cinematographers Vitaly Solomin and Vasily Livanov
Fans of the detective genre who are fond of reading the works of Conan Doyle and love his characters are proud and admiring the installation of such a monument. He once again reminds them of the exciting events and fascinating moments in the books of the famous author.
Installed in 2007 in Moscow near the building of the British Embassy in honor of the 120th anniversary of the publication by Arthur Conan Doyle of the first short story about the London detective.
Five Soviet films directed by Igor Maslennikov about Sherlock Holmes, filmed in 1979-1986, deserved love and recognition not only in Russia, but also in England itself. In 2006, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain ordered Vasily Livanov to be awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire for "the most reliable Holmes in world cinema."
There are many monuments to Sherlock Holmes - in Switzerland, Japan, Scotland and, of course, on Baker Street in London. Memorial plaques mark iconic places associated with Watson, such as in Afghanistan, where a fictional character was shot in the arm. Memorial plaques hang in the Criterion bar on Piccadilly, in the chemical laboratory of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where the heroes first met, in the vicinity of the Swiss waterfall in Reichenbach. Since 1990, the address 221B finally appeared on Baker Street, which did not previously exist, which did not prevent fans of the author of the deductive method from sending countless letters to him for more than a hundred years. Now a museum-apartment has been opened at this address, and the British government has declared the house an architectural monument.
In Russia, the famous pair of Conan Doyle characters has always been the epitome of impeccable, exemplary English style. Their main features - a bright mind, elegant humor, self-irony, aristocracy, incorruptibility, ideal style - formed the reference image of a British gentleman. Historically, Russian-English friendship has developed in the best way thanks to mutual cultural interest, and the monument to Watson and Holmes at the British Embassy in Moscow is a symbol of dialogue between the two countries.
Anglo-Russian history
Mutual understanding between Russians and Englishmen over the centuries has been facilitated not only by literary images and cultural associations, but also by the similarity of views on some problems of world politics. Despite the fact that Russia and England often found themselves on opposite sides of the front, their military and state interests often coincided, and as a result, they repeatedly became political and economic allies. Since 1698, when Peter I visited the British Isles, a new era of diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries began. After the trade agreement of 1736, England and Russia fought together in the Seven Years' War. The coolness under Catherine the Great, who was skeptical about the "American campaign" of George III, was replaced by unity in the fight against the French Revolution (both England and Russia sent troops to France, unsuccessfully trying to restore the fallen monarchy), and then in the war against Napoleon. All this gave rise to a surge of Anglomania in Russian diplomatic circles and a craze for "all things English" in the high society of St. Petersburg.
Sherlock Holmes entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular movie character in the world. More than a hundred films have been made about him. The first was taken by Arthur Marvin in 1900 in America. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scotsman, ship's physician and versatile writer, created the Sherlock Holmes epic from 1887 to 1926. He was upset by such close attention of the public to such a frivolous hero. The murder of Sherlock in a fight with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls caused an uproar. According to legend, having received a letter from Queen Victoria, the writer succumbed to persuasion and again revived the hero.
But at the beginning of the 19th century, mutual sympathy was replaced by suspicion again. As soon as Alexander I returned from Europe, where he was honored as the winner of Napoleon, a Russophobic wave broke out in London due to the Russian suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-31. The famous English call in the Crimean War "We will not give Constantinople to the Russians!" speaks of a gigantic disagreement in the "Eastern question", which in those years became a stumbling block for all of Europe. It seemed that for the British, Russia was becoming a principled adversary. But only a few years passed, and the common enemy in the person of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the tour of the Russian Imperial Ballet in London, reconciled the two powers and dispelled the myth of a ruthless barbarian from the East threatening Europe. And the big tour of Nicholas II with his wife Alexandra Feodorovna in Europe in 1896 ended with a visit to Queen Victoria - Alexandra's grandmother. As a result, under the Anglo-Russian agreements of 1907, the powers became allies as part of the Entente military-political bloc, which united them during the First World War.
The aggression of the Hitlerite coalition made the anti-communist Churchill prefer Stalin to Hitler. And in 1945, the Potsdam Conference of the "Big Three" with Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill determined the fate of Europe for many years to come.
Russia and Britain are still the most important players and potential partners on the world stage. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, located opposite the British Embassy, are witnesses to this.
What to do at the monument
1. To make an important decision or find a way out of a difficult situation, you need to sit between two detectives and hold on to Watson's notebook. You can't touch Sherlock Holmes' smoking pipe - according to the Moscow tradition, this promises nothing but trouble.
2. You can walk along the embassy building and appreciate the intellectual minimalism of the architectural project created under the direction of Richard Burton. The main idea of the monument is the closeness of English and Russian cultures, expressed, for example, in the combination of traditional stone and wood with ecological materials used by British designers in the process of creating interiors. The grand opening of the building on May 17, 2000 was attended by Princess Anne of Great Britain. Of the new building, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "It will become not only the British window to Eastern Europe, but also the Russian window to Britain."
Englishmen in Russia and about Russia
Until the 16th century, England knew nothing about the Moscow principality - instead of it, boundless Tataria stretched on the geographical maps of Europe. In August 1553, in the bay of St. Nicholas, to the walls of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery (later the city of Severodvinsk was founded in its place), the only ship that survived from the English expedition, sent to the Arctic Ocean by King Edward VI, landed. So the British first entered the Russian coast. The captain of the ship Chancellor, brought to Moscow, had a letter from Edward VI in several languages, in which the English monarch asked for permission to trade. Ivan IV found the offer mutually beneficial and gave the go-ahead. The first trading English "Moscow Company", founded in 1555, had huge privileges, curtailed only under Peter I. For the British, John granted in Kitai-Gorod, next to the Kremlin, chambers, on the territory of which only English laws were in force.
The memoirs of the English pioneer Chancellor have been preserved, where he describes the luxury of dinners, a red brick castle with nine churches, where the tsar lives: “Moscow itself is a great city. It seems to me that it will be bigger than London with a settlement, but at the same time it is very wild and stands without any order ... There are no such people, accustomed to a harsh life, anywhere else under the sun, because they are not afraid of any cold. In his notes, the Englishman also pays great attention to the size of the Russian army that struck him.
Ivan the Terrible, having kept his guests for about a year, was imbued with sympathy for England and sent the expedition home with rich gifts and assurances of friendship. A few years later, he caught fire not only with the idea of an alliance with a powerful maritime state, but also with love for Elizabeth I. In the process of sophisticated diplomatic negotiations related to matchmaking, England achieved a de facto trade monopoly with Russia at sea, and Elizabeth, having heard about polygamy and waywardness of the Russian monarch, nevertheless eluded moving to the Kremlin.
Russian Anglophiles and Dandies
In the XIX century, Anglomania swept the capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburg and Moscow. From about the 1840s it became fashionable not only to read Walter Scott and Dickens, but also to travel to the British Isles without any business purpose. Upon their return, Counts Pyotr Shuvalov, Mikhail Vorontsov, and the princes Golitsyn laid out regular English parks, lined their estates with colonial British artifacts, and gathered English important people in their salons. After the Nemetskaya Sloboda in Moscow burned down in 1812, Anglican services were held in the house of the famous Anglophile Anna Golitsyna on Tverskaya. In those same years, the youth of the nobility, following Pushkin, loved to surprise secular society, imitating the English dandies Byron and Brummel, and some eccentrics, returning from fashionable London dressed up in extravagant tailcoats and starched ties, turned off their over the knee boots and allowed a special English accent in their speech, depicting from themselves as foreigners, as M. Pylyaev mentions in the book about the Russian aristocracy "Remarkable eccentrics and originals."
Englishmen in Moscow
The first Englishmen, merchants of the Moscow Company, began to settle in Moscow since the time of Ivan the Terrible. Under Alexei Mikhailovich, they settled in the German settlement. Since the era of Peter the Great, a British subject in the Russian Empire was no longer a rarity. An important event of the 19th century was the construction of the Anglican Cathedral of St. Andrew in Moscow (1878) in Voznesensky Lane. Already in our time, since the 1990s, Moscow for the British has again become one of the centers of attraction in Eastern Europe. They are brought here by business, art and private life. At the beginning of the 1910s, about 25,000 Britons live in Moscow, of which about 1,000 are students.
The monument to Sherlock Holmes in London must be looked for, of course, on Baker Street. True, not on the street itself, but near the metro station with the same name. However, both Baker Street and the museum-apartment at the legendary address 221-b are also close there.
Find Sherlock Holmes
Getting to the monument, as you understand, is not difficult: you need to take the subway to the Baker Street station (it is located in the first transport zone in London and is connected to five subway lines). Even before leaving the station, you will feel that Sherlock Holmes is somewhere nearby: the profile of the great detective with the invariable pipe in his teeth is found here, if not at every step, then at least quite often. Next, exit the subway onto Marylebone Road, a little to the left - voila, the statue of Sherlock Holmes is in front of you in all its almost three-meter height.
If you decide to find a monument during land travel - look for the intersection of Baker Street and Marylebone Road, the metro station will again become your guide.
Long way home
The monument to Sherlock Holmes in London was installed relatively recently - only in 1999. By that time, the beloved literary hero had already been immortalized in many places - for example, back in 1988, a statue of Holmes appeared in Meiringen, Switzerland, not far from the Reichenbach Falls, where, according to the story known to us as “The Last Case of Holmes”, a decisive battle between the detective and the professor took place Moriarty. Sculptures appeared in Japan and Scotland - in the homeland of Conan Doyle, memorial tablets in Sherlockian places both in London and around the world. The museum-apartment of Sherlock Holmes was already opened in 1990 on Baker Street, but he never had a monument to the great detective, if I may say so, at home - in the English capital.
Meanwhile, the idea to erect a monument to Holmes was proposed long ago - the beginning was laid back in 1927 by the famous (including his detectives and their hero - Father Brown) writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton. True, his efforts were not crowned with success. Then the idea was promoted by the London Sherlockians - and already from 1951 - from the very moment of the creation of the London Sherlock Holmes Society. The issue was again actively returned in the 90s. The catch was that the monument was proposed to be erected in the center of Baker Street, and this is a rather busy street and such a move would lead to traffic problems. After a series of long discussions, a compromise was found - and in September 1999, the statue of Sherlock Holmes was solemnly opened near the metro station.
Was there a cloak?
The creation of the monument was funded by the Abbey National building society, which also owns the legendary address “221-b” on Baker Street. The nine-foot bronze sculpture was created by John Doubleday. By the way, he is also the creator of the already mentioned monument to Sherlock Holmes in Meiringen - so the Swiss and London Holmes can be considered brothers to some extent, especially since there is a certain similarity between them - both in face and in clothes.
The sculptor depicted the London Holmes (Swiss, too, by the way) in the classical form familiar to us: a winged cape, a deerstoker - a cap with two peaks, an invariable pipe with a curved mouthpiece. All these attributes, plus a magnifying glass and an eagle profile, have long been firmly associated exclusively with Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile, Conan Doyle has no mention of such equipment for a detective anywhere. And in general, at that time, vestments were not for the city: a deer stocker, for example, was worn when hunting deer, or just to go to the countryside (visors at the back and front protected the neck and eyes from bad weather). The same with the cloak: the Inverness cape (sleeveless cloak with a spacious cape), in which the sculptor “dressed” Holmes, if it was used by that, it is unlikely for walking around London - with rare exceptions, this is again clothes for travel and country trips. trips.
However, it is possible to trace where the tradition of dressing Sherlock Holmes in these clothes came from. For example, Sherlockian experts note that in some works, which take place outside the city, Holmes wears either a tight cap or some kind of headdress that covers his ears. Perhaps the deer stocker at that time most suited both of these descriptions, or maybe for another reason - but the artist Sidney Paget, who illustrated Doyle's stories in Strand magazine, depicted the detective in this cap, and since then it has not been a deer stocker at all, but Sherlock Holmes hat.
If the great detective “owes” a headdress to Paget, then the cape and the curved pipe (and the phrase “Elementary, Watson!”) were added to the image of the detective by actor William Gillett, who played Holmes in the theater at the beginning of the 20th century and embodied him in one of first screenings. The image was picked up and eventually firmly stuck to Sherlock Holmes. Not least thanks to the cinema - after all, the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the most filmed character in the world. More than two hundred films have been made about him, so it is not surprising that in the end the image in the lionfish and the dearstoker began to be perceived as a classic canon.
Well, the book Holmes, despite all his inherent eccentricity, dressed, judging by the references in the text, quite conservatively - in a suit, a fresh shirt and a frock coat ...
Sherlock Holmes will call
Bronze Holmes with a pipe in his hands looks thoughtfully at the endless stream of people scurrying around him, it seems, around the clock. You won’t be able to take a familiar hugging selfie with the monument - the statue stands on a polished pyramid-shaped pedestal (low, but you still find yourself noticeably lower than the detective). But, if you want, you can… talk to Sherlock Holmes. In 2014, the monument was included in the Talking Statues project, which started that year in London and Manchester. The project at that time included 35 monuments, and both historical figures and literary characters spoke, and even ... a cat and a goat.
Want to hear the famous detective? The scheme is simple: there is a QR code on a conspicuous round plate next to the monument, which must be scanned using a smartphone. After that, the bell will ring - Sherlock Holmes is calling you. In the voice of actor Ed Stoppard and with a touch of humor, he will give you some thoughts - for example, about his appearance or Professor Moriarty. The words for Holmes were written by the writer Anthony Horowitz (including the author of the novel about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes “The House of Silk”).
Whether any signs are connected with the Holmes monument in London is difficult to say, but some say that for good luck you can rub the shoe of the great detective. True, which one - right or left - is not specified.
In April 2016, the bronze detective was introduced to public performances: Greenpeace activists put respirators on Sherlock Holmes and a number of London statues (even on the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square) in protest against air pollution.
Sherlock Holmes is a literary character created by the talent of the English writer Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). His works, dedicated to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the famous London private detective, are rightfully considered classics of the detective genre.
Societies of admirers of the deductive method of Holmes spread throughout the world. In the last century, people even wrote letters to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, believing them to be real individuals.
As one anecdote says: in the UK, the last power plant was closed, now all the energy in the country is generated by the writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who is constantly turning in his grave due to the constant appeal of our contemporaries to his most famous creation - a series of stories about the adventures of private detective Sherlock Holmes. For 40 years of work on the cycle, the writer created 56 stories and 4 stories about his adventures. There is some truth in every joke, and there is hardly a single literary hero who would be as famous as the London detective. Not without reason, he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most filmed literary character. What Mr. Holmes was not in numerous films, serials, performances, radio shows! But, of course, the most interesting thing is to find out how Sherlock Holmes is seen by his compatriots and countrymen.
On September 24, 1999, the first and so far the only monument to Sherlock Holmes in the British capital was opened in London. To guess where the monument stands does not require a virtuoso mastery of the deductive method. Of course, on Baker Street, right next to the subway station of the same name.
The English sculptor John Doubleday depicted the hero Conan Doyle as a middle-aged man, peering thoughtfully into the distance, with a pipe in his hand, wearing a cape and a hunting cap with two visors. It is unlikely that a real London detective of the 19th century could wear such a costume: both the cloak and the headdress could rather be found in the countryside, in the city he would have attracted too much attention. But this is exactly how Sherlock was dressed by the artist Sydney Paget, who worked for the Strand Magazine, which has published stories by Conan Doyle since 1891. Paget's illustrations have become classics and are recognized as the best. And so the familiar image was established.
The famous apartment of Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street is also a fictional place. In Conan Doyle's day, there were only 100 houses on the street. Researchers of the writer's work suggest that houses 19 - 35 could be the prototype of the detective's dwelling, especially since house number 32 is just opposite, from where Colonel Moran tried to shoot Sherlock. Opened in 1990, the museum - the detective's apartment is located in house number 239, and the number 221b flaunting on its door is nothing more than the name of the company that owns the museum.
In addition to London, several other places in the world can boast that there is a monument to the famous detective. These are Swiss Meiringen (a town in the vicinity of the Reichenbach Falls), the Japanese city of Karuizawa (the first translator of Sherlock Holmes stories Nobuharo Ken lived there), Scottish Edinburgh - the birthplace of Conan Doyle - and Moscow. In the Russian capital, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (this is the first monument where the detective is not depicted alone) settled down at the English embassy, and Andrey Petrov created the sculpture.
The features of the Russian Holmes and Watson are easily guessed by the actors Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin, who played the characters of Conan Doyle in Igor Maslennikov's favorite film since childhood.
