Everything about The Man With The Twisted Lip totally explained
"The Man with the Twisted Lip", one of the 56 short
Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, is the sixth of the twelve stories in
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in the
Strand Magazine in December
1891.
Synopsis
After rescuing a friend's husband from an
East End opium den, the 'Bar of Gold',
Dr. Watson rather improbably finds his friend Sherlock Holmes there, disguised as an old man apparently trying to extract information from the addicts in the den.
Mr. Neville St. Clair, a respectable and punctual country businessman, has disappeared. Making the matter even more mysterious is that Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that she saw her husband at a second-floor window in a rather rough part of town near the docks. He withdrew into the window immediately, and Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that there was something very wrong.
Naturally, she tries to enter the building, but her way was blocked by owner of the opium den, a
Lascar. She fetches the police, but they can't find Mr. St. Clair. The window in which she saw her husband yields only a dirty, ugly
beggar, well known to the police, by the name of Hugh Boone. The police are about to put this report down to madness of some kind when Mrs. St. Clair spots and identified a box of wooden bricks that her husband said he'd buy for their son. A further search turns up some of her husband's clothes. Later, his coat, with the pockets full of several
pounds' worth of
pennies and
halfpennies, is found in the
Thames just below the building.
The beggar is arrested and locked up at the police station, and Holmes initially is quite convinced that Mr. St. Clair has been the unfortunate victim of murder. However, several days after Mr. St. Clair's disappearance, his wife receives a letter in his own writing. The arrival of this letter forces Holmes to reconsider his conclusions, leading him eventually to an extraordinary solution. Taking a bath
sponge to the police station, Holmes washes Boone's still-dirty face, causing the mess to fall away and his face to be revealed — the face of Neville St. Clair! Upon Mr. St. Clair's immediate confession, this solves the mystery, and also creates a few problems.
It seems that Mr. St. Clair has been leading a double life, one of respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he'd been an
actor before becoming a
newspaper reporter. In order to research an article, he'd disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he was given a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair's secret as long as no more is heard of Hugh Boone.
The story in unique among Holmes stories in two ways: when the mystery is resolved, it turns out that no crime has been committed and there's no villain; and unlike other stories, Holmes (or in fact, Doyle) doesn't explain how he solved the mystery, and leaves it to the intelligent reader to work out (the clue is fairly enough given in the story).
What the modern reader may find striking is the obvious fact that the use of
narcotics wasn't illegal in the time of the story. Although the opium den was an environment connected with crime and underworld, it operated quite openly and legally. The selling of opium or other drugs was in and of itself no crime in London of 1889, and nobody so considered it.
Adaptations
A silent version of
The Man with the Twisted Lip was made in 1921, directed by Maurice Elvey, and a
short film version was made in 1951, produced by
Rudolph Cartier.
Granada Television also produced a version in 1986, adapted by
Alan Plater as part of their
The Return of Sherlock Holmes television series.
The short story "Blind Willie," in
Stephen King's book
Hearts in Atlantis, has distinct similarities to "The Man with the Twisted Lip."
Reference in later books
Holmes arrives at the solution after putting on a dressing gown and spending a sleepless night with an ounce of shag tobacco for his pipe - and by the morning has the solution. In
Dorothy Sayers' "
Strong Poison" (1931), Lord
Peter Wimsey - who is in the frequent habit of making humorous comparisons between himself and Holmes - is faced with a perplexing mystery and remarks: "
Give me the statutory dressing-gown and ounce of shag, and I undertake to dispose of this little difficulty" (whereupon he spends a sleepless night of his own and duly solves the mystery).
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Man With The Twisted Lip'.
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