The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes

by Bill Peschel

  In May, a story surfaced in American newspapers that ACD was planning on spending the summer in Montauk, Long Island, to research a Holmes story set there. The story was reprinted countless times in the U.S. and Britain. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to Collier’s magazine seeking particulars so he could invite ACD to his Montauk home. ACD scotched the report, but that didn’t stop Wodehouse from having fun with the idea.

  The A.B.C. shop in the story is a tea shop owned by the Aerated Bread Company. The company was launched in 1862 to market, at a time when there were concerns about bakers kneading bread with filthy hands, a “sanitary” bread made with mechanically infused carbon dioxide instead of yeast.

  [It is rumoured that Sherlock Holmes, when he reappears, will figure in a series of stories of American origin.]

  I met him in the Strand. It was really the most extraordinary likeness. Had I not known that he lay at the bottom of a dem’d moist unpleasant waterfall, I should have said that it was Sherlock Holmes himself who stood before me. I had almost made up my mind to speak to him, when he spoke to me.

  “Pardon me, stranger,” he said, “can you tell where I get a car for Victoria?”

  I told him.

  “Do you know,” I said, “You are astonishingly like an old friend of mine. A Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

  “My name,” he said coolly.

  I staggered back, nearly upsetting a policeman. Then I seized him by the arm, dragged him into an A.B.C. shop, and sat him down at a table.

  “You are Sherlock Holmes!” I cried.

  “Correct. Sherlock P. Holmes of Neh Yark City, U.S.A. That’s me every time, I guess.”

  “Holmes!” I clutched him fervently to my bosom. “Don’t you remember me? You must remember me.”

  “Name of—?” he queried.

  “Watson. Dr. Watson.”

  “Wal, darn my skin if I didn’t surmise I’d seen you before somewhere. Watson! Crimes, so it is. Oh, this is slick. Yes, Sir. This is my shout. Liquor up at my expense, if you please. What’s your poison?”

  I said I would have a small milk.

  “Why, the last I saw of you, Holmes—” I began.

  “Guess you didn’t see the last of me, sirree.”

  “But you did fall down the waterfall?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “Then how did you escape?”

  “Why, I fell over with Moriarty. The cuss was weightier than me some, so he fell underneath. If two humans fall over a precipice, I calkilate it’s the one with the most avoir-du-pois that falls underneath. Consequently I was only considerable shaken, while Moriarty handed in his checks.”

  “Then you weren’t killed?”

  “My dear Watson, how—? No. Guess I survived. But, say, how are all the old folks at home? How’s Sir Henry Baskerville?”

  “Very well. He has introduced baseball into the West Country.”

  “And the hound? Ah, but I remember, we shot him.”

  “No. He wasn’t really dead. He recovered, turned over a new leaf, and is now doing capitally out Battersea way.”

  Just then a look of anxiety passed over my friend’s face. I asked the reason.

  “It’s like this,” he said; “I’ve been in the United States so long now, tracking down the toughs there, that I reckon I’ve acquired the Amurrican accent some. Say, do you think the public will object?”

  “Holmes,” I said, “it wouldn’t matter if you talked Czech or Chinese. You’ve come back. That’s all we care about.”

  “It’s a perfect cinch,” said Holmes, with a happy smile.

  Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk.

  The Return of Picklock

  R.C. Lehmann

  The reappearance of Holmes in “The Adventure of the Empty House” also meant that Lehmann could bring back Picklock Holes for another series of eight stories.

  (Being Passages from the Re-incarnation of Picklock Holes.)

  I was sitting gloomily in my study at 259, Peckham Road, reflecting, as was my invariable habit at this hour of the evening, on the curious and alarming decrease in the statistics of crime since the melancholy disappearance of my superhuman friend Picklock Holes in January, 1894. My life from that moment had been, I felt, a mis-spent one. What had I done to replace, even in a small way, the gorgeous murders, the dexterous and convincing burglaries, and the ingeniously perpetuated frauds which, before that dreadful event, had made me a happy and, to some extent, a useful man? I ought to have done something—assault and battery or arson or even embezzlement would have been better than nothing—but, as a matter of fact, I had not found energy to turn my hands to a single felony or misdemeanour since Holes had left me. The reflection necessarily made me sad. What would I not have given to hear him say with a touch of unwonted asperity, “Potson, you’re a fool,” or, “Potson, you’re a numskull,” as, together, we tracked out the hidden mazes of some terrible mystery hitherto unsuspected, or brought the conviction of guilt home to some blood-stained and prematurely triumphant ruffian. To be sure I still possessed my incomparable collection of clues, all carefully labelled and filed in the secret drawer of my roller-top desk, but for the last nine years or more I had not had the heart to use them, even in so simple a matter as the unexplained decrease of my cold legs of mutton or the gradual disappearance of my cambric handkerchiefs. No, Holes had vanished, and the clues, the revolver, the handcuffs, the black silk mask, the footprints, the thumb-marks and all the other paraphernalia of detection should remain undisturbed for ever.

  Musing thus I suddenly heard the unmistakable explosion of a pom-pom shell in the street outside, followed immediately by the fall of a heavy body and a succession of shrill screams. In the old happy days I should not have hesitated as to my course. Holes would have been on the spot, and we should without any delay have proceeded to discover the author of the murder, for murder I could not doubt that it was. But now, I am free to confess, the occurrence excited but a languid interest in my mind. However, I rose and went out at the front door, impelled by I know not what mysterious prompting. As I did so a tall figure with a calm impassive face, a marble brow and a meditative aspect, suddenly rose from the pavement on which it had been lying and confronted me at full length. Great heavens! could I believe my eyes? It was—yes—no—it could be no other—it must be—but before I had time to finish my thought my emotion became too great and I fell headlong on to the kamptulieon floor of the passage.

  When I came to myself I was once more in my study, and Picklock Holes was bending over me and bathing my temples with brandy-and-water as if nothing had happened.

  “You seem surprised, my dear Potson,” he said, when I had at length resumed my place in my arm-chair, “you seem surprised to see me. Nerves a little unstrung, eh? Bad sign, bad sign.”

  I confessed that his appearance had, under the circumstances, unmanned me.

  “I know,” I added, “that such weakness was unworthy of one who has been honoured with the intimacy of the greatest man of this or any other age. But I trust, Holes, you will not remember it against me.”

  “Tush, tush,” he replied in the kindest possible tone, “you mean well, Potson; you always did, but emergencies (which are by their very nature events of a startling and unexpected nature)”—no words of mine can express how lovingly he dwelt on this parenthesis—“emergencies sometimes overwhelm the strongest of us. And pray, how is Mrs. Potson?”

  “Mrs. Potson,” I said, “is no more.”

  “Ah, yes,” he mused, “of course. I heard of her death in Khiva.”

  “In Khiva!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, while I was staying with the Khan—a capital fellow, but no detective. You must know that when I pretended to disappear in the Serpentine about nine years ago—”

  “Pretended!” I gasped. “But I thought you were drowned—you and your enemy Sherlock Holmes. How came it that, in spite of all the proofs of your death, you—”

  “Still the same old Potson, I per
ceive,” he murmured, without moving a muscle in his ascetic face. “Amiable, but—well, yes, I suppose we may say so—a fool.”

  “Then it is indeed you, Holes, and no other,” I cried, “back from the grave and prepared once more to lead me into crime.”

  “Yes,” he said calmly, “I am no other. Since leaving you I have been personally conducted through Maoriland by Mr. Seddon; have enjoyed three rounds with bare knuckles with President Roosevelt in the White House; have dined with President Krüger (this was some years back) on a stoep and onions; have given Lord Curzon a course of induction lessons in Calcutta, and helped to provide mules and Whitstable oysters for Mr. Chamberlain on the illimitable veld.”

  “And now,” I exclaimed, after the silence produced by this astounding narration had come to an end, “now you have returned and will once more take me with you wherever you go. Oh, Holes, I have been so lonely.”

  “No matter,” said Holes abruptly. “But stay, there has been a murder outside.”

  “There has,” I said; “who could have—”

  “Pshaw,” he ejaculated, “don’t you know? It was Sherlock, the most accomplished and dashing ruffian in London. He brought the pom-pom from Pretoria. But I have already handed him over. He is safely bound—”

  “In cloth?” I ventured to suggest.

  “And will certainly be remanded till next month,” said Holes, paying no attention to my witticism.

  And that is how my matchless friend returned.

  Holmes Redivivus

  This brief requires a long explanation, but it demonstrates how Punch entertained a wide range of readers. Men who recall, perhaps with a shudder, grimly translating their lines of ancient Greece and Rome text in public school will recognize the punch line from the odes of Horace (65-8 B.C.). “Redivivus” is Latin for “reborn”; “non omnis moriar” for “I shall not wholly die.” The phrase comes from the middle of the ode:

  Non omnis moriar multaque pars mei

  vitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera

  crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium

  scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.

  I shall not wholly die and a greater part of me

  will evade Libitina [Goddess of Death]; continually I,

  newly arisen, may be strengthened with ensuing praise so long

  as the high priest climbs the Capitoline with the silent maiden.

  Motto for Sherlock Holmes Redivivus.—“Non omnis Moriar(ty).”

  The Notch in the Tulwar

  R.C. Lehmann

  For those unfamiliar with weapons, a tulwar is a type of curved sword used by cavalry and infantry in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

  It was on the morning of October 22—how well I remember the day, and how immaterial is the exact year—that, as I was rapidly and skilfully removing the top of a boiled egg prior to absorbing its contents, I was startled by the sudden but not, I must admit, unexpected appearance of Holes, the master-spirit of this or any other age. I had just time to hide the egg away under my napkin when he advanced upon me with an air of almost pathetic impassivity and pointed a long forefinger meditatively at me:—

  “Potson,” he said sternly, “you have been, nay, you are at this moment, over-eating yourself.”

  “My dear Holes,” I replied somewhat peevishly, for during the nine years of his absence I had grown accustomed to a certain amount of independence, “My dear Holes, I assure you—”

  “Tush!” said Holes—and I have never heard the word pronounced more shortly—“Listen to me; you cannot deny that you have been eating. Very well, then. Mark what follows. If you have been eating—you have assented to the use of the past tense—your eating is, grammatically at any rate, finished or, to use a permitted equivalent, it is over. You are, therefore, over-eating, and as you are physically unable to over-eat me or anybody else, except yourself, you must be over-eating yourself. Do I make myself plain?”

  “My dear Holes,” I gasped with an enthusiasm which under the circumstances may perhaps be pardoned, “I have never, no never, in all my life known you to be so marvelously, so convincingly deductive. It is indeed good of you to interest yourself to such an extent in my welfare, all the more good—”

  “Better,” interrupted Holes in a tone of severe correction.

  “All the better of you, seeing that I can never hope to be worthy of you. Holes, when I am with you or when I think of you, I sometimes feel that I am a fool, that I can never hope to be a fit companion to one who has overawed the chancelleries of Europe and has brought criminality home to some of the remotest and duskiest potentates of Asia and Africa.”

  “Pooh, pooh,” said Holes, not unkindly, “you must not despair, Potson. To do so were unmanly.”

  I was profoundly moved, and grasped his hand in a silence more eloquent than words.

  So we sat for a few moments, when Holes suddenly rose, and, pointing to the napkin, which still reposed on the table, said with a voice in which indulgence was beautifully mingled with accusation, “Potson, do you see that napkin? Can you tell me what is underneath it? No, of course you cannot; but I,” he continued, his eyeballs positively blazing with excitement, “can. Let us proceed by a process of exhaustion. It is not an elephant. The shape of the pachyderm and the peculiar conformation of his tusks forbid the notion. It is not a £500 Tit-Bits prize, for your intelligence—pardon me, Potson—is not sufficient for the discovery of such a treasure. Again, it is not Mr. Chamberlain’s eye-glass, for I saw him myself only ten minutes ago”—he stood up reverentially, and an expression of worship came over his marble face—“I saw him myself only ten minutes ago, with his monocle affixed to its accustomed centre of vision. We have, therefore, to some extent narrowed the field of investigation, and still proceeding by the same method we are driven to the conclusion that the concealed object is”—here he dexterously flicked the napkin from the table—“ah, as I thought, an egg prepared for degustation by the removal of the upper portion of its hard integumentary covering.”

  “Holes,” I said, “you are more than mortal!”

  “Tuth, tush,” said Holes. “A little common sense, my dear Potson, will carry us far. But hist!”

  I histed.

  “Someone is approaching,” whispered Holes; “we must be prepared.”

  So saying he rapidly took down from the wall my old Indian tulwar, broke a piece from its edge with his powerful forefinger and thumb, tore his frock-coat up the back seam, removed his boots and covered the lower part of his face with the grey beard and side-whiskers of a Colonial bishop. To force me underneath the sofa and conceal himself under the table was the work of a moment, of that very moment, in fact, when a footstep, coming softly up the passage, paused at the door of my breakfast-room. Directly afterwards a voice, which I recognised as that of my man Carter, was heard to say, “I’m going to clear away breakfast, Mrs. Coles. Might I ask you to bring up Mr. Potson’s boots?”

  “We have him now,” hissed Holes from under the table. “He cannot escape us.”

  The door was then opened, and, as I assumed (for I could not see), Carter entered the room.

  “Hal’o,” he said, “master’s gone, and without his boots too. Lor’, what’s this ugly old pig-sticking thing doing on the table? Someone’s been a breaking a bit out of its edge. I wonder where ever—”

  As he uttered these words Holes sprang out at him. The struggle that followed was severe but short, for Holes had regained all his old muscular activity, and was an antagonist to be reckoned with. In less than five minutes Carter was securely bound and gagged, and Holes was sitting upon him.

  “I am sorry, my dear Potson,” he said, “to disturb your domestic arrangements, but I have long been looking for the assassin who slew the Imaum of Tulliegorum and decamped with his seraglio. The deed was done with a tulwar, which I find in this ruffian’s hands. The missing piece I myself extracted from the shattered head of the Imaum. Here it is, and, as you see, it fits exactly.”

  There was no
gainsaying such evidence. I was sorry to lose Carter, a valuable servant who had become accustomed to my ways, but I consoled myself by the thought that I had aided the cause of justice and enabled my great friend to give one more proof of his transcendent abilities. I ought to add that Holes, with his usual generosity, settled a comfortable annuity on Carter’s widow and her nine children.

  The Story of the Russian Anarchist

  R.C. Lehmann

  Lehmann takes Watson’s unquestioning loyalty to Holmes to the limit in this story, while utilizing one of the more popular villains of thriller fiction at the time: the crazed revolutionary.

  I have, I think, mentioned once or twice before that Picklock Holes had a very mean opinion of the general intelligence as well as of the special ability of the detective police. He did not limit this depreciation to England; wherever he might happen to meet a detective, whether amid the teeming thousands of Nijni Novgorod (where he executed one of his most celebrated feats in the destruction of the Czar’s renegade great-aunt), or on the sandy wastes of the great desert of Sahara (where single-handed he captured the entire tribe of Beni Bashas), he never failed to allow a smile of sardonic contempt to pass like a cloud over the stern and otherwise habitually impassive features of his intellectual face. No doubt there was some reason for this. A man so efficient, so able and so generally sought after as Holes would not have allowed a mere baseless prejudice or professional jealousy to warp his judgment. Still, I am free to confess that the manner in which he habitually spoke of or addressed the minions of Scotland Yard grated somewhat harshly on my ears. Yet who was I that I should criticise such a man as Holes? He was a great inferentialist, a mighty deducter who had given his proofs a thousand times over; I was but a humble medical man, retired from such practice as I had once enjoyed, and now gaining a reflected glory from the wonderful being whose extraordinary condescension enabled me to participate in the matchless exploits which had brought convictions home to the most hardened and successful assassins, forgers, embezzlers, false pretenders, burglars, will-destroyers, pickpockets and coiners of the age, had on not a few memorable occasions confirmed the sway of sovereigns over their discontented and frequently rebellious subjects. The sentence I have just written is a long one, but my readers will agree that the greatness of Holes would have justified me in protracting it still further.