Sherlock Holmes in Milan
by Carlo OlivaBiblioteca "Villa Litta", Affori – 10 settembre 2000
Anyone knows Milano is non mentioned in the Canon. Sherlock Holmes is linked to Italy with a long series of connections, well reported by Watson and well known to the students, but no one of these connections seems be able to bring him in our city: nor we can support the idea that this data demonstrates Holmes’s intelligence, for , as many say, the less you go in Milano the better is for you. This postulate is probably correct today, but it was not so in the times of our hero. Milano in the first decades of the century was a more pleasant place, better governed and where you could have a better life than now. Maybe the weather was not the ideal, but in no other point of Italy a lover of London fog could find a so congenial atmosphere
Nevertheless Watson doesn’t report trips, of him or of his friend, in Milano. It is known Florence is the only Italian city clearly visited by Holmes, "a week later" the 4th May 1891, at the beginning of the period of abscondence from criminal chronicles known as "Great Hiatus". Here we will take for granted that Holmes, before to arrive in the Tuscan city, spent a day in Bologna, as reported by Patrizia e Giampiero Benedetti and printed on n°5 of our journal.
To arrive in Florence from the Reichenbach Falls Holmes had to do a trip, somewhere. We completely agree with Enrico Solito and his conclusions about this trip: and if Sherlock Holmes, according to Solito, leaved Milano by train the morning of the 10 May, Monday, our task is to ask to ourselves when he arrived and what did he do here.
It is very difficult, really, to give one’s opinion on the date of his arrival. The sources about this argument are reticent. Solito, I presume, seems to think he arrived the same morning of the 10th, after 3 days in Ticino in order to obtain the indispensable documents. Three days, with all the respect for our President, seem to me really too much. The idea of such a man stopped in Lugano or Bellinzona is hardly acceptable, more over for in that weekend it poured down, and even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t resist three days in Canton Ticino under the rain. We can agree on two days, and they are even too many. So, with a little bit of arbitrariness, we state he arrived in Milano in the evening of the 8th, Friday, or, more probably, the morning of the 9th, saturday, finding accomodation with one of the very good hotels of which the city was proud: maybe the Albergo dell’Ancora, the hotel of the Anchor, situated on the corner between corso Vittorio Emanuele and via Agnello, according the press of the time the most favourite by the musicians and singers: it was owned by a family of Ticino, and so maybe it has been indicated to him in Lugano.
What could done in a wet Saturday in May a refined English gentleman? He had not many things to choose. The Cenacolo by Leonardo, in thos happy times, had not been damaged by the bombs, not restored, and was so visible to anyone who wanted, but we have no clues in the Canon of some interest of Holmes for Leonardo’s paintures. Maybe Holmes could prefer a visit to the Triennial Exposition of Fine Arts, inaugurated in Palace of Brera on 8th, Friday. The hypothesis, as we will see, is intriguing, even if for reasons that have nothing in common with Art.
The first aim for tourists in Milano was, and still it is, the theatre of La Scala. As a keen on music , Sherlock Holmes could surely go on a pilgrimage to the most important temple of lyrics. In that time, differently than today, it was not impossible to have some ticket. But, sadly, the Scala was implacably closed on the 9th and 10th: the lyric season was finished from a long time, and just on the 8th, Friday, there has been, at 2.30 p.m, the last symphonic concert by the Società Orchestrale. Holmes should surely like the programme (higly bold, for modern standards): there was the ouverture from Ifigenia in Aulide by Gluck, the Sinfonia in si bemolle by Schumann – a very few famous piece in that times- , the music for the ballet Castore e Polluce by Rameau and from Armida by Gulli and finally the Coro delle figlie del Reno from Crepuscolo degli Dei by Wagner. But it is really difficult to balance times in order to imagine Sherlock Holmes in the stalls (or in the gallery, for the boxes were all private) during the afternoon of the 8th: a real pity.
La Scala (where there is no recorded a certain Irene Adler ever sang) was not the only possibility to hear music in Milano, in those happy days, but the others possibilities don’t seem to be encouraging. At the Theatre Del Verme (strange for Milaneses today, it was open), on 9th, Saturday, there was the Lucrezia Borgia by Donizetti, interpreted by Maria Vita: a very good work for a lover of traditional "belcanto" but we know our Sherlock had different tastes. In the theatre Pezzana was on stage the Clotilde di Amalfi, ovvero i corsari by Giuseppe Giardino, an opera that didn’t leave a great mark in the history of our musical theatre. We add, by the way, that if our hero would try, for once, to pass to the prose, he couldn’t find else than In corte correzionale, a play in three parts by Feydeau, at the Manzoni Theatre: not exactly the most suitable show for him.
Some student suggested Holmes could avail of the opportunity to go to Cremona, where he was attracted by his interest in violin. However the hypothesis must be refused, for its impossibility from the point of view of the difficulty in railways: and you must consider the rivers Adda and Po were in flood, and the roads were interrupted. Anyway in Cremona at the end of the century, even if there where not sold Japans violins as today, the workshops of stringed instruments , for which the city became famous, were only a memory of the past.
So what? If Sherlock Holmes, in a situation so depressing for a tourist , waited until the morning of the 10th to leave Milano to Bologna, he had to have a good reason. A so reserved and confidential reason to explicate his following impenetrable silence.
Discussing about the various countries visited by the Master during the wanderings in these years, Solito observes, about Tibet, Sudan and Persia, that they were all "border" countries with a particular interest for foreigner politics of British Empire and that confirms the hypothesis that trip was not made only for personal reasons, but that Sherlock Holmes, probably through Mycroft, had been given a certain not official diplomatic task.
It is interesting to note that our little country too could be fully considered in this category. In 1891 Italy was from nine years a partner of the Triple Alliance, together with Germany and Asburgic Empire: it was the continental system builted by Bismarck in anti-britannic and anti-french role , reinforced in 1888 with a iron-made military convention. Bismarck was not in 1891, but there was the alliance, even if in the may of 91 it was near to its expiry, and there were secret contacts –surely known to Her Majesty’s Intelligence, to renew it. If these contacts couldn’t succeed, it was surely a great good stroke for London government: it would have not to approach France and Russia, paying annoying arrangements in Tibet, in Sudan, in Persia or elsewhere, but it could continue to play alone as the only world power – as today do, sadly, USA. Surely between the three partners Italy, from British point of view, was the most interesting. The Alliance has been strongly wanted by the Crown and the military lobbies, above all for reasons of internal politics, but it was absolutely unpopular. The democratic circles, moderate too, continued the risorgimental traditional friendship for France (and England). The problem of irredentism (the will of Trento to become Italian) was a great trouble in the Austro-Italian relationship. Moreover the authoritarianism of the new Kaiser (Wilheim the second, who has been received with great pomp in Rome on the august of 1888) caused a lot of concern, and even who didn’t care the parlamentar democracy didn’t support the idea of Italy allied with the Asburgo. It is obvious that these contradictions opened possibilities to the international diplomatic game. Surely tempting proposals arrived to the Italian Government in order it shift the front, as it did twenty-three years later. But, of course, in such kind of materies, privacy was essential. Her Majesty’s emissary should be a person absolutely unknown to the Chanceries and able to move in the most reserved incognito.
The may of 1891 was particularly favourable for the coming of such an emissary . On February the first Government Crispi has fallen, and Prime Minister was the Marquise Antonio Di Rudinì, chief of a moderate coalition of centre and right (even if with some ministers, as Giovanni Nicotera at the Intern, who came from the left). Crispi was closely knit with the King Umberto and could be considered as the principal supporter of the Triple Alliance, according to him the best possible warranty for a politic of colonial power, of reinforcement of the power of the Government and of the position of the Army. The coalition of Di Rudinì, on the contrary, tried to change this politic, even if with a lot of hesitations and an infinite caution. The reapproaching to France (and so to the United Kingdom) was one of the principal diplomatic goals of this Government.
One can obey Sherlock Holmes was an outsider for diplomatic world: this was in fact the necessary condition. More over , outsider is not exactly unknown: Italian and British Chancery surely well remembered the role he had two years before in the thorny affair of the Naval Treaty.
Well. It is enough to see the newspapers of those day to note a strange thing: the presence in Milano of one of the most important members of the Government Di Rudinì. We refer to Pasquale Villari (1826-1917), formally Minister for the Public Instruction , but one of the historical leaders of the Moderate Party, great historian and political thinker.
The only presence of a Minister in that period in Milano is an extraordinary fact. Those were rather troubled days. The celebration of the 1st of May , promoted two years before by the International Society of the Workers to substain the cause of the work against the capital, has been absolutely not pacific. In Rome there were troubles, police charges and the death of a policeman, a carabiniere and a lot of workers. Few days later has been arrested the principal speaker of the day, the anarchist Amilcare Cipriani, only three years before pardoned after eight years of deportation in the New Caledonia, and of course this arrest inflamed again the mobs. In Milano the situation was only a little bit more calm: in the theatre of Cannobiana spoke the socialist leader, the lawyer Filippo Turati (with a strong polemic against democratic and republican parliamentarians who, invited at the manifestation replied yes first, but then wouldn’t dream to come) , but there had been disorders too: fights and tumults at the Lanzesi factory, occupation of the Meinhert factory near Porta Volta, the obliged closure of several other factories and in the evening a failed manifestation in the square of Duomo, with at least one wounded. In the days after there were arrests and trials in all Italy and terrible polemics at the Parliament, where the Government has been accused to be not enough energetic (!).More over there was at the Parliament another discussion about African politics, a question that divided in the same way the majority and the opposition and that needed the utmost engagement of the political movements.
It seems incredible a Minister in such a situation spent his time in Milano. More over if we consider the reasons reported by the newspapers: the inauguration, on the 8th May, of the Triennial Exposition of Fine Arts , and the day after of the Exposition of the Toys and Childish Hygiene. Well, it is true Viallari was Minister for Public Instruction, but surely he didn’t care toys and children hygiene.
Immediately comes up the hypothesis that the Italian Government waited on the 8th or 9th May in Milano an incognito emissary, who carried some tempting diplomatic offers from London, and asked to one of the most important between its member, arriving in the city on the 8th for the inauguration of an Exhibition, to remain in the city a day longer, with the first possible excuse , to wait for him. And the employers of Villari couldn’t find at the last moment another excuse than the opening of the exposition of Toys.
How, and in which circumstances the meeting happened, we can’t know. Probably Sherlock Holmes could be contacted by some collaborator of the Minister during the Triennial, to arrange a meeting: but surely in Milano there were a lot of German and Austro-Hungarian agents, and so all had to happen in the utmost secret..
As we well know Sherlock Holmes, would leave the day after to Bologna and Florence. Surely he couldn’t have a great role in the real negotiations, that had been arranged elsewhere. His role, probably, has been only of bearer, who in diplomacy is not a simple deliveryman. He surely spoke with the Minister who, a rare case among the intellectuals of the time, knew English: but surely he was replaced after by another person, an incapable for the project didn’t succeed and the Triple Alliance was renewed in the same 1891, with all the fateful consequences we know
But this is not his guilty. On the contrary, for his attempt that, if successful, could preserve Italy from the horrors of the first world war, we must thank him.