As a writer, I’ve been a reader for a much longer portion of my life. Not surprisingly, this included the adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes. In my boyhood years, one story in the collection came and passed without much of note beyond it being the great detective’s most felonious adventure, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton".
Years later, and somewhat wiser to the ways of the world, I revisited it in audiobook format during a long drive and was in for a surprise.
I didn’t just no longer enjoy the story, I now despised it. It made me feel gross.
This was especially jarring as for most of the other stories in the collection I was having a load of fun strolling down memory lane. The problem was that the moral and philosophical framework underlying the story was, and I don’t use this word lightly, perverse.
This might shock some of my more liberally minded friends, who see me as a religious fanatic. What’s going on, Jon? You like the Victorian era, remember? I thought you said their culture had a much better grasp of human nature and making a functional society than current year?
They did. That does not mean they were right about everything. The framework in this particular short story is a highly concentrated example of this error.
The poison I’m addressing here traces its position in the west back to the 12th century and goes by the name of courtly love. Though these days, it is the behavior most people me when they use the word ‘chivalry’, which has nothing to do with being a strong man, a good fighter, or anything like that.
It is not a Christian worldview, even academics admit to that.
https://condor.depaul.edu/dsimpson/tlove/courtlylove.html
The article calls it a ‘suave new form of paganism’ but I can’t imagine Odysseus, Hector, Alexander the Great, or even your average pagan from days of yore looking at this with anything but disgust and confusion.
The Christian idea of the ‘noble pagan’ is a pagan who can embody, or at least approach embodying, the four cardinal virtues of prudence justice, temperance, and fortitude. No noble pagan will come of courtly love, it destroys noble character and even the possibility of noble character. It tries to raise a woman’s base feelings to a moral force which men must fight for and submit to as the greatest honor they can achieve.
The man must be a spineless, put-upon, doormat of a simp and the woman a proud, frigid, unfaithful harlot who at best favors him lightly.
This is completely against any sane sense of honor or morality from both Christians and pagans and is baked into the setup, and you see permutations of it in so much once you know what to look for. C.S. Lewis goes into much more detail about ‘the religion of love’ in his writings, so if you’re interested in the details, go there. Or Darlock’s now inactive blog, there’s a lot worth reading there.
Suffice to say here, that the ideals had permeated British culture thoroughly in Holmes’ day.
Even now, the highest order of chivalry in England in the Order of the Garter, the symbol of which is emblazoned on their passports.
The most popular story behind that symbol that some woman had a suspiciously timed wardrobe malfunction and the king decided to protect her from the shame of having dropped her underwear in front of him and the rest of the court by putting it on and saying: “Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks evil of it)”.
Yeah… if you think on it for more than a second, you see what’s going on here.
This saying is also emblazoned on the country's passports to this day.
Very Lancelotian, but utterly alien to the eyes of knights like Roland, or even the older version of Arthur called the Red Ravager of Britain.
Now with the framework explained, let’s look onto the adventure itself:
Enter Milverton, the most honest crook around.
Sherlock Holmes is in the employ of a Lady Eva Blackwell, the most beautiful debutante of the hour. He’s tasked with retrieving some letters that would cause a scandal and end her marriage engagement to a wealthy and powerful noble.
He describes Milverton as such:
“I’ll tell you, Watson. He is the king of all the blackmailers. Heaven help the man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power of Milverton! With a smiling face and a heart of marble, he will squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry. The fellow is a genius in his way, and would have made his mark in some more savoury trade. His method is as follows: He allows it to be known that he is prepared to pay very high sums for letters which compromise people of wealth and position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians, who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in this great city who turn white at his name. No one knows where his grip may fall, for he is far too rich and far too cunning to work from hand to mouth. He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when the stake is best worth winning. I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?”
Pretty passionate words here, but look at Milverton’s actions. Slimy? Sure. But the worst man in London? Shall we get into murderers, slanderers, and a lot of the behavior people got up to in Whitechapel (Jack the Ripper’s favorite haunt)? It’s easy enough to dismiss this on its own as mere drama, but that’s just a rationalization. It’s there and dead serious because of the philosophical framework of the story.
Holmes claims that the letters are merely ‘imprudent’ but this is Doyle trying to have his cake and eat it too.
Let’s take a step back and look at the situation with a bit more objectivity. Pretend Holmes said nothing about the letter’s contents.
Eva Blackwell is the most beautiful bachelorette in the game. She is due to be married to a powerful noble who is much, much better off than she is. Someone has some letters she wrote to a penniless squire some years ago. What’s in them? We don’t know, so let’s look at how she acts.
She is willingly offering every penny she can procure to get the letter back, and everything in the story says that she will be ruined if it reaches her husband to be. Not embarrassed, not put out, not even just having somewhat worse prospects than before, but ruined. She is willing to do anything to make sure they never reach her husband to be or the rest of high society.
What do you think is in them? Something just imprudent? Or something terrible?
If she’s really in love with her husband to be, then a little imprudence in one’s youth (actual imprudence, not using it as a euphemism) isn’t anything that can’t be worked around. If this was the case, then the sums talked about would be laughed at.
No man will break off a marriage because a woman wrote the Victorian equivalent of ‘I totes have a crush on you, here are some lines I mutilated in taking them out of a trashy romance novel I shouldn't have read’ years ago when she was young and stupid.
But let’s say it’s purely pragmatic. Noble marriages and romantic love often don’t together, at least not in the set-up phase. Honor dictates one should be honest in business dealings, so dishonesty here isn’t any better.
Once again, the lady is paying literally all she can and had employed Holmes to be her champion. She will be ruined if that letter reaches anyone.
Can you imagine what it must be that will send all the men away from the most beautiful bachelorette and to literally any other girl? Is what you’re imagining simply ‘imprudent’? Is a woman trying to marry with that secret under wraps going to be someone anyone should trust at all?
I hope you know the answer to that.
Whether from a pragmatic or a romantic point of view, the situation simply does not allow Lady Blackwell to be merely imprudent at one time in her youth. This is something serious.
Negotiations with Milverton quickly break down. While Blackwell is willing to pay every penny she can scrape together, it does not come close to the asked for amount. Milverton laughs at this, claiming it is good to make an example of someone now and then so that others are more willing to pay in the future.
After he leaves, Holmes, in a chivalrous dereliction of his usual character as a cold, calculating thinking machine firmly on the side of justice and right, decides that this justifies any and all crimes on his part to destroy all the letters Milverton has. He even cracks a joke about sharing a cell with Watson if they’re caught.
Holmes might not have been overly-concerned with the strict letter of the law before or after this story, but the Holmes of the other stories wouldn’t turn to a life of crime merely for this. To drive the Lancelotian nature of the venture home, Watson even goes out of his way to call the escapade ‘chivalrous’ and notes how much that excited him.
After some working and spying, the pair break into Milverton’s home with the intent of destroying his collection of blackmail material.
Milverton is unexpectedly awake at the late hour and in his study, ostensibly to meet a maid who has offered some blackmail material on her mistress. To his surprise, the person who arrives is not a maid, but one of his previous blackmail victims who didn’t pay up. She's here because, to quote her:
“So you sent the letters to my husband, and he—the noblest gentleman that ever lived, a man whose boots I was never worthy to lace—he broke his gallant heart and died.”
Let’s again step back from the narrative and look at the facts presented in it.
Milverton showed her husband evidence of whatever it was she was hiding from him, and he died from learning it.
Repeat: Whatever she did was enough that it KILLED her husband, all but stated to be a well-known and powerful noble, to learn of it. This is not embarrassment or imprudence. It’s not even a social game that just hurts the girl's prospects but doesn’t make her really immoral per se.
Now let’s look at her actions.
Did she reveal her past before the marriage (presuming it wasn’t an event during the marriage) to let him know what he was getting himself into, even in the most private and discreet of ways? No.
Did she come clean after the wedding, or after the event in the marriage, of her own volition, perhaps thinking his love for her would allow him to graciously overlook her past sins and later lie of omission? Nope.
Did she even show real regret and, say, hold herself up as an example of what not to do to other young ladies so that they might not follow in her footsteps and bring death and dismay to decent men? The ending confirms that not a word as to her husband’s cause of death becomes known beyond the characters in the story.
Did any of her actions ever give any indication she’s sorry for anything but losing some standing and stability? Not at all.
You should be able to draw the right conclusions about her character here, but the story’s courtly love framework says “Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks evil of it)”, so you’re not supposed to think of this murderous, lying harlot as anything but a victim unfairly put upon for having her secrets revealed and thus justifying vigilante execution for a guy who is, at most, a petty crook.
That should tell you a lot about the narrative we’re being sold here.
This is terrible. This is what Holmes and Watson are fighting to support.
Compare this character to Milverton who… told the truth about some people. Sure, there’s blackmail, and not a nice guy, but there’s no slander. He goes out of his way to make sure his documents are real. This is the definition of actions having consequences.
This is what happens to him:
“The woman stood with her hand buried in her bosom, and the same deadly smile on her thin lips.
“You will ruin no more lives as you have ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound—and that!—and that!—and that!”
She had drawn a little gleaming revolver, and emptied barrel after barrel into Milverton’s body, the muzzle within two feet of his shirt front. He shrank away and then fell forward upon the table, coughing furiously and clawing among the papers. Then he staggered to his feet, received another shot, and rolled upon the floor. “You’ve done me,” he cried, and lay still. The woman looked at him intently, and ground her heel into his upturned face. She looked again, but there was no sound or movement.”
Again, Milverton did nothing but report the truth. Anyone living clean is completely beyond his grasp. She’s the one who broke her husband’s heart (note he’s not mentioned in her little executioner’s speech, or anywhere else, but the one mention quoted above) by doing whatever it was she did. But actually, placing blame on women is impossible in the courtly love set up.
This is not a sane moral framework. This is the framework of courtly love. Of Lancelot and Guinevere being anything but terrible people. Of women being beyond reproach, and men debasing themselves in service of the worst in the female condition being the highest honor.
Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame on him who thinks evil of it)
There are plenty of people who unironically accept the story’s narrative. The attitude is so baked into our culture most people who read this now more than a century old story will see no issue whatsoever with the moral frame presented and reflexively submit it even if they normally proclaim beliefs to the contrary.
That why this poison is so evil, it is subtly woven into western culture at this point that we struggle to even see it. Equivocations and rationalizations are easy, and will be met with praise from many corners.
The worst part is, unlike a lot of good things in Victorian culture, this attitude wasn’t left behind by the current era. It's actually gotten much worse.
Don’t believe me? Then let’s have a test.
Stop me if you’ve heard this tale before.
A young girl is friends with a mentally handicapped guy growing up, he’s got an obvious crush on her but is pretty passive about it due to his mental disabilities.
The girl is being sexually abused by her father, something the guy doesn’t understand, but she is soon rescued by the police. After being placed in her grandmother’s custody, she starts sneaking out to slip into the guy’s bed, though despite the abuse it seems to be them both just sleeping in the bed.
Fast-forward to high school, they’re in separate schools but meet again at prom dance (the girl was at an all-girl’s school).
The mentally handicapped guy, still with a massive crush on the girl, sees her in a car and interprets her having sex with her date as her being assaulted.
After the guy is put off and leaves by with a fight despite the girl’s protests, the guy apologizes, not entirely sure why she is mad at him. The girl then takes him back to her place and asks him if he’s ever had sex. She then coerces him into a sexual encounter he completely lacks the ability to understand or meaningfully consent to.
Their paths don’t cross again until years later. The guy is now in the military and learns the girl has dropped out of college and is now a stripper. His limited mental capacity makes him interpret this as her having become a singer.
For some reason, after the last stripper leaves the stage, the girl does try to start singing instead of doing her job.
The crowd quickly becomes rowdy and the guy swoops in and protects her, taking her away from the violence at high personal risk.
She leaves him by the side of the road and hitchhikes with a stranger, out of his life again.
After having lucked into some medals and an honorable discharge, the guy accidentally gets lost when going to receive his medal and finds himself as a guest of honor among some antiwar activists.
The girl is in the crowd, sees him and goes to him as the antiwar activists ‘awww’ at what they see as a happy reunion.
She is now a particular flavor of hippie who take him to a violently radical left-wing organization’s rally where she is predictably slapped around by some of the guys, which seems pretty normal behavior both in the scene and for her in particular. The guy again rises to her defense, and they are both kicked out of the area.
She tells of what she’s been doing since then, revealing a life of drug abuse, promiscuity, and other forms of degeneracy, but the guy doesn’t get it, and she knows that. While he doesn’t understand how much of a degenerate she has become, the guy understands she is in trouble and, having achieved some mild success in the world, tries to offer her a way out and a different life.
She leaves him to go back to the guy who slapped her around.
She’d not seen at all for years. The guy mourns and does not move on. But his investment and hard work hit good luck years later. He becomes rich, richer than most kings, with more money than he could ever hope to spend. Word of his success gets out as he sets himself up to live out the rest of his days comfortably.
This is when the girl re-enters his life. She lives with him for a while until he, awkwardly, asks her to marry him because he loves her.
She rejects him, has a one-night stand with him, and leaves without saying goodbye.
He doesn’t see her for years, but clearly pines for her regardless. He then receives a letter from, asking to meet. She reveals that she has a son and the reason she reached out to him is that she is dying of the STDs she picked up in her life. She says the kid is his and this is accepted without question.
She lives in comfort and convenience, worshiped by the mentally handicapped man until she dies a few months later of her STDs (which she probably passed onto him, but that’s not made clear).
Now, if a story presented this girl as an angelic character, a nice girl and one who the guy should be happy to have that wedding ceremony with, one who is blameless because she had a hard life and is loving and worth the treatment the guy gives here, would you buy that?
Would you think this is a good story with a happy ending?
That’s the plot of Forrest Gump. What a prize, right? What a happy ending.
According to millions who’ve fallen for the old poison, it is.
I hope you never fall for it.
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