Sherlock Holmes versus the Red States

In the matter of Country Mouses vs City Mouses, I hold no brief for either side.  I would prefer to live in the big city, but not any big city.  I like Boston, Chicago, and New York, but I would rather live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan than Dallas, Miami, LA, or Washington, DC.  I believe that the suburban idyll is a white elephant we've sold ourselves.  We tell ourselves that we move to them for our kids, but statistically they are not any safer in the suburbs than they would be growing up in Manhattan and culturally the suburbs' greatest achievement is video games.  Human life was meant to be lived in either a small town or a big city not in a car, where suburbanites spend a whole lot more of their time than they know.  Add it up.

But I don't believe the people in one place are better than people in another and I think that James Lileks is a fool for wasting so much time and energy trying to make the case that his neighbors are morally superior to mine or Woody Allen's.   People are pretty much no damn good wherever they are.  Lileks may stand a better chance of avoiding being mugged where he lives, but that's not because his suburban neighbors are so much more honest and god-fearin' than Woody's.  It's because he and his neighbors have done such a good job of walling themselves in against the maurading hordes.  There are lots of invisible walls in the suburbs.  What looks like evidence of suburbanites' deceny is evidence of their fear, suspicion, and intolerance of people who are not like them, plus the luck of the real estate market.

Fear, suspicion, and intolerance are not absent in small towns or big cities.  Suburbs just happen to be monuments to those qualities.

I do believe, that on the whole, people in the city are better behaved than people in suburbs or small towns.  I don't mean politer or friendlier, over-rated and easy virtues anyway.  I mean they are less likely to hurt each other.  The reason there is more crime in New York City than there is in Lileksland or any other part of Red America is that there are more people.

But there are more kinds of evil than what gets ripped from the headlines to provide a plot for this week's episode of Law and Order or a story arc for The Wire.  I happen to share Sherlock Holmes' prejudice about the unwholesomeness of life outside the cities.

This is from The Copper Beeches:

By eleven o’clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man’s energy. All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and gray roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage.

“Are they not fresh and beautiful?” I cried with all the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.

But Holmes shook his head gravely.

“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

"Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”

“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

“You horrify me!”

“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger."

Comments

[Edo]

Apologies advance, but it seems to be my night for picking nits. In the absence of anything intelligent to say, I'll simply point out that Moose Jaw is two words and Saskatchewan has only one "e."

[Lance]

Edo,

I don't consider it nitpicking. I appreciate the copy editing. I'm embarrassed by the Saskatchewan misspelling, because I looked it up before I posted. But my atlas has Moose Jaw as one word. Time for a new atlas. I've fixed them both. I also added a link to Moose Jaw's official website, just to make amends. Thanks for the heads up.

[harry near indy]

lance,

just found your blog during late night insomnia. i enjoy it, and will add it to my regular browsing on the web.

i was born and raised in a small town in central indiana during the 1950s to 1970s. yeh, it was conformist and all that, but there was one good thing about it -- the streets had sidewalks, where you could walk and kids could ride their bikes. it also had a downtown/business district that you could walk to or ride your bike to.

nowadays, the streets in the subdivisions in that town have no sideways and no area for pedestrians. i read an article years ago in the atlantic monthly that said that is a big, big mistake. a sin of omission instead of commission, as catholic theology would put it.

also, the business district has died. small grocery stores, shoe repair shops, clothiers, coffee shops/diners/cafes, etc. -- the original owners died or retired, their kids didn't go into that line of work, and no one replaced them because big business replaced small business, as big fish eat little fish.

very sad.

[coturnix]

Funny, Shelrock Holmes retired in the country to raise and study honeybees, while Dr.Watson decided he needed the hustle and bustle of London.