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Why CARD was removed from the Memoirs
Nov. 13th, 2020 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mightymadsThere's a curious backstory about the publication order in The Memoirs. Originally Silver Blaze was followed by The Cardboard Box and indeed sometimes it still can be found there in some editions. For convenience, I'll just cite Wikipedia below :)
So yeah, in some versions of RESI there's weirdly hot weather for October: 90 degrees! Everyone's out of town and Watson longs for a holiday in Southsea which he can't afford because of being broke.
Compare:
"It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the house across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs of winter. Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship. But the morning paper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country." (CARD)
It had been a close, rainy day in October. Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer of 90 was no hardship. [...] (RESI)
This also establishes that Watson loves nature while Holmes prefers the city. It contradicts LION, where Holmes says that he always enjoyed countryside (and hence I have a headcanon that LION was actually written by Watson from Holmes's POV as its style is also romantic, quite OOC for Holmes).
Another interesting point is an image of Holmes lying in the centre of a web—quite a parallel with Moriarty. It was pointed out in a blog called An Observance Of Trifles which I mentioned earlier and which has excellent meta.
The story was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in January 1893. It was first published in the US in Harper's Weekly on 14 January 1893. It was also published in the US edition of the Strand in February 1893. In The Strand Magazine, the story included eight illustrations by Sidney Paget. It did not include any illustrations in Harper's Weekly.
"The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" was not published in the first British edition of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, but it was published in the first American edition, though it was quickly removed because of its controversial subject matter. The story was later published again in American editions of His Last Bow, and put into British editions of the Memoirs. Even today, most American editions of the canon include it with His Last Bow, while most British editions keep the story in its original place, within the Memoirs.
When "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" was removed from publication, Conan Doyle moved a passage from it that showed Holmes "mind reading" Watson to "The Adventure of the Resident Patient". (The text of the moved passage runs from "Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa" to "I should not have intruded it upon your attention had you not shown some incredulity the other day.") This passage reveals Dr. Watson to be an avid admirer of Henry Ward Beecher, whose portrait he keeps at his home. The passage seems to have little to do with the mystery but may be a subtle reference to the theme of adultery as Beecher was famously put on trial for the offense in 1875, an event many contemporary readers would have remembered.
So yeah, in some versions of RESI there's weirdly hot weather for October: 90 degrees! Everyone's out of town and Watson longs for a holiday in Southsea which he can't afford because of being broke.
Compare:
"It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the house across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs of winter. Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship. But the morning paper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country." (CARD)
It had been a close, rainy day in October. Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer of 90 was no hardship. [...] (RESI)
This also establishes that Watson loves nature while Holmes prefers the city. It contradicts LION, where Holmes says that he always enjoyed countryside (and hence I have a headcanon that LION was actually written by Watson from Holmes's POV as its style is also romantic, quite OOC for Holmes).
Another interesting point is an image of Holmes lying in the centre of a web—quite a parallel with Moriarty. It was pointed out in a blog called An Observance Of Trifles which I mentioned earlier and which has excellent meta.
