The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes

by Bill Peschel

  Genius. Braggart. Scientist. Fraud. Writers have portrayed Sherlock Holmes as all that and more in their quest to amuse readers. “The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes” brings together all of the major stories, reviews, briefs and illustrations that appeared in the legendary British humor magazine during Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lifetime. Annotated and presented in chronological order, this scrapbook charts the rise of Conan Doyle as a writer and public figure and the meteoric popularity of the world’s greatest consulting detective.

  “The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes” contains:

  • All of the 17 stories in R.C. Lehmann’s “The Adventures of Picklock Holes.”

  • P.G. Wodehouse’s Sherlockian parodies “Dudley Jones, Bore-Hunter” and “The Prodigal.”

  • Briefs and article excerpts that praise and poke fun at Conan Doyle’s work and beliefs.

  • Five complete Holmes parodies including two that haven’t been seen for a century.

  • Cartoons by Punch artists E.T. Reed, Bernard Partridge and others.

  • Reviews of Conan Doyle’s books, including two of the “Sherlock Holmes” play starring William Gillette.

  • Notes on the historical background of the articles and writers, essays on Lehmann, Wodehouse and Punch, plus a new short story featuring Mark Twain and John H. Watson!

  More than a collection of humorous stories, “The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes” shows how Sherlock Holmes shaped the culture, and how the culture shaped our view of Sherlock Holmes. The 223B Casebook Series from Peschel Press reprints the Sherlock Holmes parodies and pastiches published during Arthur Conan Doyle’s lifetime. In addition to being fun to read, the books show how contemporary writers reacted to Conan Doyle’s life and works, and how they reshaped Holmes for their own uses. The result is valuable insight into the “history behind the mystery” of the great detective’s popularity and endurance.

  The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes

  Edited by Bill Peschel

  Peschel Press ~ Hershey, Pa.

  Table of Contents

  The book’s contents below are organized by type, while the TOC displays them into chronological order. Some titles are followed with the section of the magazine they appeared in: “Our Booking-Office” for the book review column and “Charivaria” for the collection of short items. Items that appeared in them were given titles, as were those briefs that were published without one. The titles of some Picklock Holes stories were changed. See the Source Notes section for details.

  Stories and Articles

  The Adventures of Picklock Holes / R.C. Lehmann

  The Bishop’s Crime

  The Duke’s Feather

  Lady Hilda’s Mystery

  The Escape of the Bull-Dog

  The Hungarian Diamond

  The Umbrosa Burglary

  The Stolen March

  Picklock’s Disappearance

  The Return of Picklock

  The Notch in the Tulwar

  The Story of the Russian Anarchist

  A Scandal in Paflagonia

  The Story of the Princess

  The Story of the Lamplighter

  The Adventure of the Swiss Banker

  The Story of the Lost Picklock

  His Final Arrow

  Stories and Articles / P.G. Wodehouse

  Dudley Jones, Bore Hunter

  Back To His Native Strand

  The Prodigal

  Society Whispers From the States

  Major Articles and Parodies

  In Paris Out Of the Season / “The Vagrant”

  Letters to the Celebrated / “The Vagrant”

  The Debut of Bimbashi Joyce / Arthur Conan Doyle

  Authors at Bow Street / C.L. Graves and E.V. Lucas

  A Way We Have at the ’Varsity / R.C. Lehmann

  Telepathy Day by Day / C.L. Graves and E.V. Lucas

  Professor Billinger’s Downfall, or, The Extinct-Game Hunters / “Cunning Toyle” (C.L. Graves and E.V. Lucas)

  The Terrors of War / N.R. Martin

  The Adventure of the Agitated Chemist / F.D. Grierson

  Me, Or the Strange Episode of the Reincarnated Greek / “Evoe” (E.V. Knox)

  The Velvet Blotting Clue / Anonymous

  My Dear Holmes (His Positively Last Appearance on Earth) / Ralph Wotherspoon

  Cartoons

  A Wellington (Street) Memorial / Anonymous

  Mr. Punch’s Animal Land / E.T. Reed

  Sherlock Holmes Adapted.-No. 1 / E.T. Reed

  The Intelligence Department / Leonard Raven-Hill

  Why Read at All? / Lewis Baumer

  How Scotland Yard Detectives Are Trained / Arthur Watt

  Mr. Punch’s Personalities / Bernard Partridge

  Reviews

  A Physiologist’s Wife

  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

  The Great Boer War I

  Sherlock Holmes (“No P’Lice Like Holmes!”)

  Sherlock Holmes (Our Holmes)

  The Hound of the Baskervilles

  The Great Boer War II

  Sir Nigel

  The Last Galley

  The Lost World

  The Valley of Fear

  His Last Bow

  Danger! and Other Stories

  Briefs and Excerpts

  The Fighting ‘Foudroyant’

  Crime Briefs

  Our Colonial “Comrades” at the Lyceum

  The Sign of Faure

  Penmen’s Politics

  A Sporting Offer

  Holmes Redivivus

  Mr. Punch’s Symposia

  To Brighten Cricket

  Great Discoverers

  Cheap Books

  Sir Conan Doyle on Big Bores

  Misfire

  International and Imperial Crime Exhibition, 1910

  Mr. Punch’s Gala Variety Entertainment

  The Great Wager

  Holmes Arrested

  Holmes’ Death

  Literary Gossip

  From the Street of Adventure

  The Mud Larks

  On the River

  The De Keyser Case

  Dedications

  Mrs. Asquith Remembers

  Australia

  Telepathic Dog

  The Thunderbolt

  Ministers Who Might Have Been

  Put and Take

  Witchcraft

  Appendix

  A Taste of Punch

  The Idle Life of R.C. Lehmann

  The Blossoming of “Plum” Wodehouse

  Grit: A Talk With Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Bonus Story: The Humorist’s Curse

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  About the Editor

  Introduction

  This book is a result of hubris. Originally, I intended to publish only the 17 Picklock Holes stories, annotated, along with an essay about R.C. “Rudie” Lehmann and Punch magazine.

  But as I started searching through the back issues, I found that Punch did more than treat the Great Detective like a hand puppet for the amusement of its readers. It reviewed Conan Doyle’s books and used his creation as a yardstick to measure his fictional rivals. It praised his patriotic turns and laughed immodestly when he said that fairies existed. It seems as if Punch treated Conan Doyle like a fictional character, and Sherlock Holmes as if he was real.

  Much like the rest of us.

  Then I came across two P.G. Wodehouse parodies, written when he had narrowly escaped from a ruinous career in finance at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank on Lombard Street. A lifelong affection for Holmes and Conan Doyle did not keep him from borrowing
his friend’s creation for his own purposes. Maybe, I thought, I could throw them in as well. Then I read his song about Holmes and an article about William Gillette boxing with New York’s upper crust at a party. Let’s add them to the mix as well. Plum interviewing Conan Doyle? Great, even if it was for another long-defunct magazine.

  That inspired the fatal idea: Did Punch do anything else with Holmes and Conan Doyle? By this time, I was hooked. I learned that Conan Doyle debuted in Punch, not because of Holmes, but for a short story about a romance gone wrong. “A Study in Scarlet” and “The Sign of the Four” was ignored, but not a patriotic poem he wrote opposing the sale of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagship to the Germans.

  Then Punch met “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” and it was love at first sight. Satire needs popular icons; simplified versions of people and institutions with most of their flesh boiled away, but still strong enough to be instantly recognizable and bear the weight of the jokes. Holmes’ amazing deductive ability, forbidding demeanor, cocksureness and toys (the pipe! the Stradivarius! the deerstalker!) made him adaptable to any need a writer might have. Holmes could play the hero, straight man, and fool. Best of all, being immortal, he’d never wear out.

  Leaving Conan Doyle upstaged by his creation, a role he would play, bitterly at times, for the rest of his life. Hi-ho, as Kurt Vonnegut said.

  Punch’s relationship with Conan Doyle varied between admiration and gentle satire. Many on the staff remembered his illustrator uncle, Richard. The magazine had used his cover illustration for decades, so they would already be inclined to treat Conan Doyle kindly.

  It helped that he was a good writer. With a few exceptions, Punch’s reviewers loved his books. Also, Conan Doyle, like Punch, was loyal to the Empire. During the Boer War, he risked his health to oversee a field hospital in South Africa and made enemies in the hidebound military for advocating reforms based on the lessons learned in the war. He used his pen to defend Britain against her enemies for which he would receive a knighthood.

  He also rarely engaged in public activities that could provide useful fodder for satire. When he was irritated by the self-promoting antics of popular novelist Hall Caine, Conan Doyle sent an anonymous letter of complaint to a newspaper, but he told the editor to give Caine his name should he want to know who wrote it.

  It was Conan Doyle’s advocacy for spiritualism in 1917 that changed Punch’s attitude. His embrace of the faked Cottingley Fairies photos made him look foolish. Finally, the writers had something new to hang their punch lines on, and they took full advantage of it.

  So when you dip into this book expecting a series of Sherlockian parodies, you’ll find more. You’ll see Conan Doyle as he appeared through Punch’s skewed lens. You’ll see the ways Sherlock Holmes was portrayed, from the butt of jokes to the embodiment of all that was good in the Empire. Plus, you’ll discover a glimpse of Imperial Britain at its height, confident in itself and its future.

  And a few laughs, too.

  About the Articles

  “The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes” reprints most of the articles, stories, cartoons, briefs, and columns that mentioned Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in chronological order. Not every appearance was noted. Some brief mentions were omitted, as were the reviews of mystery novels that simply compared the detective’s abilities to Holmes, nearly always unfavorably to the work in question.

  The English spelling of most words were retained. Some minor editing was made for the sake of clarity. Some captions were replaced with typeset versions to make them readable.

  Articles appear under their own titles if available. Some appeared without a title in one of two columns: “Our Booking-Office” for book reviews and “Charivaria” that consisted of short items. Titles were supplied where necessary. Conan Doyle is referred to as ACD in the introductions. Publication dates and further information about titles can be found in the Source Notes at the end of the book.

  Acknowledgements

  Finally, a word of thanks goes out to these people without whom this book would have remained a dream: Andre Gailani of Punch Ltd. for efficiently arranging for permission to publish excerpts from that wonderful (and lamented) magazine; Scott Harkless, my research assistant on the 223B Casebook project; Denise Phillips of the Hershey Public Library for obtaining needed books; and Teresa Peschel, my editor and wise advisor.

  —Bill Peschel

  Hershey, Pa.

  1890

  A Physiologist’s Wife

  Punch did not review “A Study in Scarlet” upon its appearance in “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” in 1887 or in book form in July 1888. It also ignored “The Sign of the Four” when it appeared in February 1890. Instead, it was a short story about an eminent researcher’s love affair gone ironically wrong that drew a mention in “Our Booking-Office.” At the end of lengthy praise for George Sims’ mystery “The Case of George Candlemas,” the reviewer

  . . . highly recommends this story, as he also does a short tale in Blackwood, for this month, entitled “A Physiologist’s Wife,” by A. Conan Doyle.

  1892

  The Fighting ‘Foudroyant’

  ACD joined in the indignation at the news that one of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagships, H.M.S. Foudroyant, was going to be scrapped. Worse, it was going to be sold to a German businessman! The wooden sailing ship was outdated and falling apart, but patriotic Britons considered the sale to a foreigner to be a national insult. On Sept. 12, The Daily Chronicle published a poem from ACD, “For Nelson’s Sake, H.M.S. Foudroyant,” that began:

  Who says the Nation’s purse is lean,

  Who fears for claim or bond or debt,

  When all the glories that have been

  Are scheduled as a cash asset?

  If times are bleak and trade is slack,

  If coal and cotton fail at last,

  We’ve something left to barter yet—

  Our glorious past.

  Punch took up the cause with a poem of its own that was equally full of fire and fervor. It followed ACD’s line of a nation selling off its history and references J.M.W. Turner’s painting of the Temeraire being pulled to the ship breaker’s yard:

  “Great Turner has pictured the old Temeraire

  Tugged to her last berth. Why the sun and the air

  In that soul-stirring canvas, seem fired with the glory

  Of such a brave ship, with so splendid a story!

  Well, look on that picture, my lads, and on this!

  And—no, do not crack out a curse like a hiss,

  But with stout Conan Doyle—he has passion and grip!—

  Demand that they give us back Nelson’s old Ship!”

  In the end, the anonymous Punch scribe pleaded that the Foudroyant be preserved alongside Nelson’s other flagship Victory:

  “While a rag, or a timber, or spar, she can boast,

  A place of prime honour on Albion’s coast

  Should be hers and the Victory’s! Let us not say,

  Like the fish-hucksters, “Memories are cheap, Sir, to-day!”

  The campaign succeeded when a British businessman bought the Foudroyant. It was used as a training ship for boys until 1897, when a storm drove it onto the beach at Blackpool. The Foudroyant was broken apart and its wood used for, among other things, furniture, souvenirs, and the wall paneling for the Blackpool football club’s boardroom.

  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

  “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” received a positive review, with some odd reservations, from “the Baron de B.-W.,” the non de plume of “Our Booking-Office.” “Charles, his Friend,” referred to a character type in the theatre (who would appear in the program that way) whose sole purpose was to stand by and admire the hero. It would not be the last time that Watson’s role in the stories would be seen this way.

  By this time, Holmes was already part of the cultural currency, his name a by-word as a solver of mysteries. In the “Essence of Parliament” column (Feb. 11, 1893
), when a member of the House of Commons disappears, the writer mused that it is “evidently a case for Sherlock Holmes; must place it in his hands.”

  The title of Mr. Conan Doyle’s new book, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” is incomplete without the addition of, “And the D.D., or Dummy Doctor,” who plays a part in the narratives analogous to that of “Charles, his Friend,” on the stage. The book is, in many respects, a thriller, reminding one somewhat of “The Diary of a Late Physician,” by Samuel Warren. This volume is handsomely got up—too handsomely—and profusely, too profusely, illustrated. For both romancer and reader, such stories are better un-illustrated. A sensational picture attracts, and distracts. In this collection, the Baron can recommend “The Beryl Coronet,” “The Red-Headed League,” “The Copper Beeches,” and “The Speckled Band.” The best time for reading any one of these stories is the last thing at night, before turning in. “At such an hour, try ‘The Speckled Band,’ and see how you like it,” says the Bold Baron.

  1893

  The Bishop’s Crime

  R.C. Lehmann

  In June 1891, the first Holmes short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” appeared in The Strand Magazine. Three months later, the first parody, “My Evening With Sherlock Holmes,” by J.M. Barrie, no less, appeared in The Speaker. A trickle of stories followed, but it was Punch’s R.C. “Rudie” Lehmann who first saw the possibility of creating a series of parodies modeled after the first book. Lehmann wrote eight stories in this cycle, eight more in 1903 and ’04, and added the capstone in 1918, just as ACD did.