The Stockbroker's Clerk notes

[mightymads]

The difficulty of the Holmes work was that every story really needed as clear-cut and original a plot as a longish book would do. One cannot without effort spin plots at such a rate. They are apt to become thin or to break. (Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures)

STOCK is an example of just that. There was a deadline, and ACD had to come up with something, so he rehashed REDH in a not particularly creative way. He returned to the same plot device again much later in 3GAR. Still, STOCK has its moments.

- Holmes's description: "the high, somewhat strident tones of my old companion’s voice." Jeremy Brett channeled it masterfully. We all know that the main inspiration for Holmes was Dr. Joseph Bell. In a documentary book called The Ardlamont Mystery by Daniel Smith, Dr. Bell is described the following way:

"He was just as smartly attired as his Edinburgh colleague, and blessed with those hawkish features and piercing eyes that seemed to be able to penetrate into the very soul of a subject. Yet those who were not familiar with him may have been rather disconcerted by his slightly jerky gait as he made his way to the witness stand, and every bit as surprised by the high-pitched timbre of his voice when he began to speak. Yet to Doyle and the thousands of Edinburgh citizens who had encountered him as colleague, teacher or doctor over the years, these were characteristics that had long ago failed to warrant mention. In fact, they were the result of an episode that encapsulated Bell’s overwhelming desire to act for the greater good, even at significant personal cost.

In his role as surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in the 1860s, Bell had keenly felt the dismay of his young diphtheria patients, particularly when they would cough and choke as they struggled for breath. Intent on finding some practical means to lessen their ordeal, he came up with a technique of sucking out the thick, grey-white coating that characteristically obstructs the back of the throat in diphtheria victims. He even developed a specially adapted pipette for the purpose. It was, however, a treatment with considerable risk attached, given the highly contagious nature of the disease. Late one night in June 1864, Bell was by his own admission feeling very tired and was perhaps less meticulous than usual. This was the occasion, he was convinced, when he himself contracted diphtheria as he made his ward rounds, which in turn led to a bout of post-diphtheritic paralysis resulting in his distinctive gait and vocal pitch."

 

- Holmes&Watson: Yet another instance when Watson is ready to drop everything and follow Holmes anywhere the moment Holmes shows up on Watson's threshold. Watson also tells us how easily Holmes reads him, they basically communicate without words. And their shared interest in strange cases: "unusual and outré features which are as dear to you as they are to me."

- Watson's practice which is better than that of his neighbour: Just how many people should have visited Watson's predecessor to literally wear out the steps so that it is visible with a naked eye? Three inches, seriously? If that's the case, why not replace such obviously shabby steps?

- Hall Pycroft on job hunting: "No one knows how these things are worked. Some people say that the manager just plunges his hand into the heap and takes the first that comes." Some 130 years later I have a feeling that this hasn't really changed.

- 126b Corporation Street: "Today, Corporation Street extends from New Street and its station for some two miles all the way to the site of Conan Doyle's home circa 1880. Clifton House, Aston Road is long gone, along with much of the Victorian city. A blue plaque, erected by the civic society, commemorates the author's residence in what was then still a village. These were formative years for Conan Doyle: as doctor, writer and man. He turned 21 as ship's surgeon aboard the Greenland whaler, Hope, during the first of two maritime adventures that punctuated extended periods in Aston as medical assistant to Dr Reginald Ratcliff Hoare who treated him more like a son than an employee. The family was represented at Conan Doyle's wedding to Jean Leckie in 1907. Hoare lives on as the inspiration for Dr Horton in "The Stark-Munro Letters"...and both doctors perhaps in Sherlock Holmes's identical morning habit of smoking the dottles of a previous night's pipes." (source)

Birmingham, Corporation Street 1890

 

-“We picked him out of the gutter, and he won’t leave us so easily.” I don't really understand why Pycroft gets so worked up about it. When you're out of job for a long time and become desperate, this is an adequate description of your situation.

- The advance Pycroft receives from the con artist: In today's money it's about £13,000. Not bad. At least he has something to live on until he finds another job.

- Why not hire some actor to impersonate the employer in Birmingham? They didn't have to tell him about their plan. They just could have said that they wished to pull a friend's leg or something. If they paid handsomely, I'm sure that the actor wouldn't have asked questions.

- “The paper! Of course!” yelled Holmes, in a paroxysm of excitement. “Idiot that I was! I thought so much of our visit that the paper never entered my head for an instant. Holmes isn't omniscient. He can't think of everything at once, especially when events unfold very fast. That's very human and true-to-life. Had it been Poirot, this little detail wouldn't have escaped his attention. Poirot is way too perfect. 

- And then Holmes asks Watson to read the newspaper aloud because that's what Watson does in their partnership. Holmes surely likes to hear Watson's voice. There was also a suggestion on tumblr that perhaps Holmes is dyslexic. An interesting possibility, isn't it? 

Comments

[luthienberen]

As usual superb notes =^_^=
---A fantastic quote mightymads! I quite agree. The Stockbroker's Clerk for me is not as well crafted as RESID and forgettable beyond some Holmes & Watson moments.

---Date wise it is intriguing that the story is set soon after Watson's marriage though we are not given a firm time.

---Competent!Medical Doctor Watson. I do love how confident Watson is that he can build his practice and indeed it appears he has been successful :) Though the step thing is bizarre ; perhaps it is done merely for Holmes to deduce it with a flair?

---Jeremy Brett was truly talented and an excellent Holmes -that quote is a perfect example of this. Also, a reminder of how brave Victoria doctors & scientists had to be...the risks they took to try and heal and discover cures. No wonder Doyle admired Profesor Bell, with good reason.

---I adore how beautifully close H&W are and how well Holmes knows his Watson.❤

---The case is baffling. The money is too good. I can appreciate how desperate Pycroft was, but the sum of £500 year old money would have had me paranoid and suspicious. And yes to the job hunting :O

---Ditto, it is an accurate summation of his circumstances & really, any offence should be tempered by the fact he was picked by Mawson.

---YAY for a great Doyle snippet of history.

---Crikey the advance is extremely generous so Pycroft isn't too hard done by.

---Hiring an actor would surely be less risky, but I feel that this would muddy the connection so Doyle, pressed for time, went with an obvious feint which offers Pycroft a reason to go to Holmes.

---Holmes' lack of omnipresence makes him more real for me and helps him live on forever with Watson in Baker Street or retirement 🙂

---An interesting possibility. I always take it as Holmes absorbing information better by listening to Watson's voice, because hearing something read aloud can draw your attention to a line or point you may have missed originally.

I think the discussion is more fun, oops, than the actual story.😂

[mightymads]

Perhaps Holmes did process information better when he was listening rather than reading. For me, it's the opposite. For example, I love audiobooks, but I can focus on details only when I have the text in front of my eyes.

I wonder how Holmes got by before he met Watson. Watson made Holmes's life so much better in so many ways :)

[rachelindeed]

Thank you so much for the historical details and annotations about this story that you shared. I had no idea that Bell's gait and voice were affected by his work in coming up with a way to help diptheria patients -- he seems like a very admirable doctor, and that will now always make the descriptions of Holmes's voice more poignant for me.

Oddly enough, I once wrote a short fic about the idea that Holmes processed information better by listening than by reading, and that it was Watson who figured that out for him :)

Not the Voice That Commands (2634 words) by rachelindeed
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Additional Tags: Friendship, references to A Study in Scarlet, Getting to Know Each Other
Summary:

John Watson is not an unobservant man.

[mightymads]

The Ardlamont Mystery is worth reading at least for the info about Doyle's mentors, Sir Henry Littlejohn and Dr. Joseph Bell. It's no wonder that Doyle had cutting-edge knowledge on forensics as they were at the forefront of developing it. They also did a lot for their city and community, truly amazing men.

Thank you for your rec! I'll go read it :)

[luthienberen]

I am the same like you, I process better reading (though lectures are fine if I have text or pictures to focus on). Audiobooks are a hard slog for me usually so I rarely listen to them. There are exceptions such as for example Rob Inglis reading the Lord of the Rings & again I have the books to hand.

I completely agree, Watson made Holmes' life so much better :)