Victorian 221b

My somewhat belated notes for MUSG. It's a special story in many ways. It's one of examples of Holmes's narrative style: concise, spare, exact, without romantic and poetic elements which characterise Watson's tales. It is also another story of his early days which he basically told Watson to avoid cleaning :D

There's so much we learn about the Baker Street rooms and Holmes's habits from the opening paragraphs: Holmes's antics and Watson's lax attitude towards housekeeping. Watson calls it 'being Bohemian'. I wonder what a mess the place turns into when Mrs. Hudson has a holiday. What about their house in Sussex?? I've always imagined it as nice and cosy but perhaps some adjustments are in order.

Tobacco in the Persian slipper and papers transfixed by a jack-knife are such iconic features of Holmesiana. Jeremy Brett noted that a Persian slipper is not the best place to keep tobacco because it becomes dry--but what if Holmes smoked so much that there was no time for it to dry? Or, perhaps Holmes kept a tobacco pouch in the slipper?

This is a canon story where Holmes looks at Watson 'with mischievous eyes'. Seriously. How can one ever deny shippers their pleasure after such canonic descriptions?

One of the untold stories Watson mentions here is 'the singular affair of the aluminium crutch'. I found an interesting bit about it in Observance of Trifles:

Of particular interest might be the aluminium crutch. In those days, they hadn't yet developed a cheap and efficient process of extracting aluminium from ore, and as a result, the metal was prohibitively expensive--more so than even gold or platinum, at times. So to make something like a crutch from aluminium would be unusual and extravagant beyond belief. So why do it? Perhaps to make a lightweight crutch that could conceal something within...perhaps a weapon...?

I didn't know that titbit about aluminium before. Sounds very intriguing indeed!

Holmes mentions that he had built a considerable but mostly non-profit practice by the time he met Watson. Meaning that the police consulted him whenever they wished and allowed Holmes to visit crimes scenes for practice, probably. He also says that his methods were much discussed by his fellow students. Was it due to his involvement in the Gloria Scott case? It's rather suggestive that there was a scandal after all, with Victor fleeing and Holmes becoming somewhat notorious.

However, Holmes states in GLOR that he was in the university for only two years. But here he says 'during my last years at the University there was a good deal of talk there about myself and my methods'. Was it YEAR instead of YEARS? Or was it after Holmes left the university himself? Many possibilities for headcanons.

Montague Street. Holmes's famous abode before Baker Street. As it often happened, ACD wove some of his real life into the Holmes universe. Having left Southsea, young and recently married Conan Doyle went to study ophthalmology in Vienna and later moved to London in hopes of building a practice in the capital. His first address in London was in Montague Place:



What 'large issues' proved to be at stake in the Musgrave case? Did the finding of the Charles I crown become a sensation which contributed to Holmes's reputation as a private investigator? He does mention that there was some sort of litigation and a big sum of money involved for Musgrave to be able to keep the crown at his estate.

The way Reginald Musgrave is described, he is quite a queer-coded character: 'a young man of fashion', 'a bit of a dandy', 'languid and yet courtly manners'. Perhaps Holmes recognised him as a fellow queer man? Yet it doesn't seem that they were close: 'Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of observation and inference.'
Another point that I noticed is the description of Brunton. It has mutually exclusive statements. At first he is characterised as 'a man of great energy', but by the end of the paragraph 'he was comfortable, and lacked energy to make any change'. Perhaps it depended whether or not he had energy? Quite energetic to become the head of the household staff, but not interested in a career of a scholar?This story has this running gag of 'excitable Celts': Welsh, Irish, doesn't matter. It seems like Doyle did indeed believe in this stereotype as he said of himself:

'I am half Irish, you know,’ he once told one of London’s press lords, after losing his temper over a newspaper story, ‘and my British half has the devil of a job to hold the hotheaded rascal in.’ (Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters)Despite Musgrave's aloofness, he is a considerate master: he tells Rachel to go to bed and not to work when he sees that she looks unwell. I suspect that not all employers were so attentive to their domestic help. 

I also find interesting this idea: 'A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.' Quite femenist, considering that it comes from Doyle, isn't it?

And finally another thing I borrow from Observance of Trifles:

'And Brunton could hardly try to sell it [the crown] to a collector or a museum (or to the royal family) without revealing its provenance, which of course would reveal that he had stolen the booty. At best, that would likely mean he wouldn't get any money; at worst it would mean jail time.

Perhaps he planned to hide it, and then reveal to Musgrave what the ritual meant, and sell it back to him...I'm starting to think that maybe Brunton wasn't so smart, after all (Of course, if he were smart, he wouldn't have been caught going through family documents in the library like that...)'

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:

- 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)




- “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? 

There'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 :)

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.

Last week, in a discussion of the book A is for Arsenic, smallhobbit mentioned a podcast called Shedunnit, saying that this book was referenced there. I got curious and found this podcast on Google Podcasts.

The very first topic covered in that show, the aftermath of WWI and ‘surplus women’, caught my attention immediately. I enjoyed how the topic was presented, in an easy to understand way, and yet with in-depth research and interviews with experts. Basically, the balance of the educational and entertaining elements was ideal. No wonder I ended up binge-listening to the entire series (50 episodes) within the next three days or so.

Shedunnit is a podcast dedicated to the Golden Age crime fiction (roughly 1920s-1930s), although it references earlier works and characters like Sherlock Holmes and touches upon those which came much later, like Miss Fisher. But the main focus is on the interwar era, real-life cases which took place during that time, and the Detection Club, a literary circle of crime writers, members of which included Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

It was fascinating to hear about lives of creative women in the interwar era, how they shaped the literary landscape and were breaking stereotypes, doing what they felt was right and not what was expected from them from a conservative point of view.

The Shedunnit podcast is hosted by Caroline Crampton, a British freelance writer with a lovely voice. An average episode is about twenty minutes—a convenient format—and there’s also bonus content in the Shedunnit Book Club where premium subscribers and the host read various crime novels and discuss them. I’m really glad to have learned about this show! Looking forward to the next episode on November 11.

A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie is a handy little book if you write a casefic and need a clear, informative reference about poisons. According to her official website, Dr. Kathryn Harkup is “a science communicator, chemist and vampirologist. She completed a doctorate on her favourite chemicals, phosphines, and went on to further postdoctoral research before realising that talking, writing and demonstrating science appealed a bit more than hours slaving over a hot fume-hood. She writes and gives regular public talks on the disgusting and dangerous side of science.”

In this book Dr. Harkup discusses poisons which Agatha Christie used in her plots, accuracy of her writing, real-life cases which might have inspired Christie or even might have been inspired by her novels, and the way those poisons work inside the body. To be honest, sometimes I had to skip the scientific parts of the book to keep on reading, but the history of poisons and real-life cases were fascinating.

There are a couple of notable quotes characterising Agatha Christie as a writer, especially if compared with Arthur Conan Doyle:

“Christie always considered herself a ‘popular’ writer, and acknowledged that she did not produce great works of literature or deep insights into the human condition.”

and

“Christie also corresponded with experts to check her facts. For example, in 1967 she wrote to a specialist asking about the impact of putting thalidomide in birthday-cake icing – how long would it take to make an impact? How many grains would be needed? However, this idea was never used in any of her stories.”

So Christie didn’t entertain an ambition to become a writer of “serious” books, but she respected her audience and strived to excel in her chosen niche. She checked her facts, even though she didn’t consider her writing to be a “respectable” branch of literature. What a stark contrast, isn’t it? Doyle could obsess over the correctness of uniforms in his Brigadier Gerard stories but never bothered to find out basic facts about snakes for a Holmes instalment. I often wonder whether it was a blessing in disguise. Would Holmes stories have been that good had Doyle taken them seriously? I couldn’t bring myself to read any of his historical novels except Rodney Stone which was rather mediocre.

It’s nice to return to Holmes and Watson and see how kind Holmes is to Watson. At the conclusion of the case Holmes invites Watson to come along with him to the police station since Watson is interested in the case. Holmes keeps including Watson into the action. It’s so considerate of him.

When asked about his actor friend, Hope declines to answer. Frankly, I’d like to know who that person is. I’d love to see Holmes tracing him. This would have made an excellent action sequence and another demonstration of Holmes’s deductive powers. This would work instead of the forced Mormon narrative! As we discussed in the previous post, having John and Lucy’s backstory told from Hope’s POV would be much neater, with all the unlikely and inaccurate things cut. Somehow, I can’t help mentally editing the second part of STUD to make it less awkward.

Back to the London part, it’s weird that Hope, having smelled a rat in the advertisement about the found ring, nevertheless had no suspicion when summoned by a street urchin to the very same address. But considering the previous American chapters, perhaps it’s not that surprising. Hope is a thickhead. Regarding the pills and an equal chance for the persecutor and the persecuted—that’s ACD’s notion of chivalry, isn’t it? Practically, though, it’s very silly. It would have been terribly ironic if Drebber had chosen the harmless pill and Hope had been compelled to eat the poisonous one.

In the last chapter Holmes explains to Watson his train of thoughts which was a revolutionary thing at that point. Very few detective novels did that at the time, and that was one of the factors which made Holmes legendary. His supposition that Hope wouldn’t change his name while travelling in Europe was a bit of a stretch. Hope could have easily done that. But, Hope being Hope, didn’t. The Mormon part aside, STUD is fantastic. It draws me in time and time again. When I was searching for inspiration while trying to write a mystery in another fandom, I read The Mysterious Affair at Styles (the first Poirot novel) and STUD. The difference was colossal. And while I enjoy Agatha Christie, after re-reading STUD a couple of years ago, I found myself in the Holmes fandom.

recently_folded, thank you so much for your awesome editing! I'd be lost without it!

An amazing piece of art by ireallyshouldbedrawing inspired writing of this story.

Verse: ACD
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Professor Moriarty, Wiggins, Mrs. Hudson
Rating: M
Warnings: Period-typical homophobia, non-graphic depictions of violence, alcohol abuse
Word Count: ~24K 

Summary: Many circumstances of the events at the Reichenbach Falls could not be mentioned in Dr. Watson's published stories. Moriarty made attempts on Watson's life, and the main reason Holmes disappeared was to keep his life partner safe. Believing Holmes to be dead, Watson could not cope. His behaviour became downright self-destructive. A month later Holmes learned about that and found a way to let Watson know. From that point on, John was waiting for Sherlock for three long years.

Read on AO3

PS  If you like this story, do drop a line in comments on AO3. While art is for art's sake, of course, after six months of research and writing a new chapter, it would be good to know that I'm not shouting into the void :)