Sherlock Holmes: The American Years

by Michael Kurland

  “By the time your notice appeared, I knew that I needed to enter the world of those rapscallion children. Who could provide the necessary information? The horse-handlers, of course, and so they did—as the result of hours and dollars I spent in the public houses where they congregate. Pursuing their instructions, I managed to ingratiate myself, again for a price, with a gang of young swells, who, once they believed that I would not bring the police, let me know that I was correct: the umbrella had been pinched by a brother-sister pair. Yet more cash outlays led me to their grimy domicile.”

  “If it’s your squandered money you want,” I told him, “nobody asked you—”

  “I do not seek recompense,” he interjected. “I was about to say that I arrived at that place barely in time to dissuade the outraged father—he’d been told of your notice—from his threats to give you a thrashing.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that and so I ignored it. “If not for money,” I demanded, “why’d you keep mixing into this?”

  “The true reason?” He showed a hint of the snaky smile, but his eyes held some other expression I couldn’t decipher. “To escape the humdrum of everyday life, I suppose,” he said slowly. “These little problems help me to do so.”

  My umbrella a little problem! The soaring arrogance of the man! “Once you knew the thieves’ whereabouts,” I said with a defiant stare, “why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “And do their work for them?” he said. “The chief reason is that I gave my word as a gentleman that I would not. Then, too, there was the matter of your challenge.” He nodded at the paper in my hand. “Fortunately for your sake, I was able to recite ex tempore from Smith & Son’s list of umbrella models—and render several sketches. The girl was fascinated, but loath to surrender the one in her possession, naturally enough. At length we negotiated the result you hold—I must say, the toucan-headed model is quite elegant—and the girl was able to prevail upon her father to accept the arrangement. And so here we are. Mystery solved. Umbrella within your reach.”

  I stared at the consent note. “It’ll take a month to get the new one here from London,” I said sourly. “That price is unadulterated banditry!”

  “It’s only half what you offered to pay for the thieves’ remains.”

  “That was in fun! Nobody’d think I meant it!”

  “Some did,” he replied. “And were quite serious in their resentment. Thieves’ honor, you might call it.” He gave the paper a significant glance.

  “Suffering Moses,” I muttered in my misery, and called for a pen to sign his wretched note.

  “If it happens that you prefer the new umbrella,” he said, “you could renege on your promise and not make the exchange.”

  I’d thought of it myself. The urchin would still have her ill-gotten prize and I’d have a grander model. But Holmes’s tone said that no gentleman would stoop so low. Besides that, I wanted my old model back. And I’d never particularly fancied toucans.

  Well, it all happened twenty-two years ago, and this day, May 18, is the anniversary of that cursed ball match. Worn out from the rigors of our recent travels, I am back with my family in comfortable London for a while. This morning, after penning the final words of Following the Equator, I set out from our rooms near Tedford Square to celebrate its completion with a walk along the Chelsea Embankment. Gazing at the fog-streaked Thames put me in a reflective mood. I recalled how the umbrella episode played out just as Holmes had arranged it. When I left the new model under the Pavilion, I worried that I’d come back to find no replacement, and I’d be out both umbrellas. But my old one was waiting for me in prime condition, and with relief I hugged it to my breast. Once my indignation finally smoldered out, I was able to dine out on the story in handsome style—still do, to tell the truth.

  All these years later, that old bumbershoot remains a practical and sentimental friend. It reminds me of my first conquering visits here and also of those tender years in Hartford, when my family was yet young. Here in its home climate it receives regular exercise, and nobody comments except to praise its mature vintage.

  Several times in recent weeks, while strolling near Regent’s Park, I’ve caught sight of Holmes through the side-windows of passing broughams. We’re considerably older in appearance, but we recognize each other. I tilt the umbrella in his direction, and he smiles that thin smile, pounding it home that he hasn’t forgotten.

  The ironic capper is that just this month Smith & Sons introduced a new deluxe model at the top of their line of men’s umbrellas. Its teak handle features an elegantly carved bust of Sherlock Holmes. While I’m not a likely candidate for purchase, I have to confess that the notion of crimping Holmes’s head in my fist has a powerful pull. As for the likeness itself—I’ve studied it with some care through the show window at Smith & Sons—it rouses one like military music on parade! So grand and noble is it in conception that it puts to shame the general class of carved profiles! Why, in its royalty it rivals Caesar! Only the most ill-natured of ninnies would fail to agree that it’s a thrilling wonder—and even more dizzying in its wonderment when compared to the original thing.

  And once in Hartford, who knows in what further adventures Sherlock Holmes might find himself embroiled? Steve Hockensmith has a good idea.

  * * *

  THE OLD SENATOR

  by

  STEVE HOCKENSMITH

  My dear Brother:

  First off, let me quickly allay your fears. This missive does not convey the news you’ve no doubt been expecting and dreading. The Old Senator still lives. Feebly, painfully, at times bitterly and one could almost say begrudgingly, yet he lives.

  I also do not write to ask you to leave Washington. Father insists that his infirmity should not impinge upon your preparations for assuming office. Much as you might like to be at his side, know this: The Old Senator takes great comfort in knowing that the Young Congressman is, even now, following in his footsteps.

  He takes comfort, too, in constant company and the good wishes of his many admirers. Mr. Hayes and Mr. Grant have sent their regards, as have a host of old friends from the Party, and the Hookers and the Beechers (among others) are regular visitors. And, of course, one of us—Mother or Eliza or I—is ever at the Old Senator’s side.

  But alas, so to, I must tell you, is pain. Father struggles to breathe. He cannot take more than two steps unaided. He has no appetite, and what food he does eat only brings on new agonies and indignities. He is always tired yet cannot sleep deeply.

  It is not enough to say that our father is dying. Much of him, I think, is already dead. It just remains for the last of the body to give way and for the spirit to depart.

  Yet while that spirit remains—and fervently it does so, undiminished even as its vessel decays—the Old Senator is with us. And in that I have found a blessing, much as I wish to see his misery brought to an end. Even in the grip of his final sufferings, you see, our father has put an older hurt behind him.

  It is that I wish to tell you about—as well as (to descend into the realm of the petty) a shocking bit of gossip that will no doubt filter out to you through the Hartwells or the Gilberts or some other old Hartford stalwarts. Take their whisperings with a grain of salt, Brother, and take my account as gold, for the Old Senator and I were there.

  Naturally, you might expect Father not to be anywhere other than his bed, of late. But last week he was feeling well enough to take the air around the grounds twice a day, and Dr. Dahlinger came to think that an outing might actually do the Old Senator some good.

  “Nothing taxing, mind,” the doctor told us after finishing his near-daily call on Father. “A picnic. A speech. A recital. Something that will get him out of the house for a few hours without wearying him too much. It’s not exercise the man needs. It’s engagement.”

  “I know just the thing,” Eliza announced, and she scurried out of the room.

  She returned shortly with a creased copy of the Courant folded open to an article I recognized
. . . because I’d read it with great interest almost four weeks before. The headline: EMINENT THESPIAN TO TAKE HARTFORD STAGE.

  After conquering New York City with his powerful Orsino, it seemed, the Russian/English actor Michael Sasanoff was taking his production of Twelfth Night on tour across the States. The second stop would be Hartford’s own National Theater. The performance was now mere days away.

  “Father should go,” Eliza said. “Willy can take him.”

  As you’ve said so often, our sly sister would surely have made the best politician of us all, so cunning and tenacious can she be in pursuit of an objective—such as, for instance, total reconciliation between the Old Senator and his Prodigal Son.

  Mother read the notice with the air of barely concealed disdain that has ever characterized our parents’ attitude toward “the boards.”

  “Eliza,” she said gravely when she was done, and she looked up at me, “I think it’s a splendid idea.”

  And so it was decided that I should squire the Old Senator, of all people, to an evening of theater. (How quickly Father acquiesced to this plan I do not know, for Mother took it to him in the privacy of their chambers. Needless to say, it was a fait accompli before it was even broached, as the only member of the family who can match Eliza’s powers of persuasion is the woman who birthed her.)

  More than once, in the days that followed, I thanked God that it was Twelfth Night and not Lear the venerable Mr. Sasanoff would be gracing us with. A comedy the Old Senator and I could endure together. A tragedy about ungrateful, intractable children, on the other hand, would be sheer torture.

  We hadn’t spoken of the rift between us in months, Father and I. I had resigned from my troupe, come back to Hartford to be with him, and that seemed to suffice. Whether I would again pursue acting at the first opportunity—“first opportunity” meaning, of course, upon his death—he did not ask. Perhaps, I thought, he was afraid to hear my answer. Perhaps, I thought, he lacked the strength to debate it. Perhaps, I thought (incorrectly, I now know), he simply no longer cared.

  If Father had asked about my plans, my reply might have surprised him, for I had no plans upon leaving Louisville, beyond being at his side. After I’d spent years fruitlessly trying to convince our parents that my future was in The Theater, The Theater seemed to be telling me I was quite mistaken: The only “future” I had with it, it appeared, was as an obscure utility player in stock companies in the hinterlands. Whether I would ever act again, I did not know.

  The evening of the performance, Jason drove us to the theater in the rockaway. It would’ve warmed your heart to see the Old Senator come down the front steps, dressed again in a fresh-pressed black suit and not a wrinkled and stained nightgown. His movements were slow and stiff but steady, and his head stayed high even in those few moments he did stumble. Though Eliza and I hovered beside him, he even managed to pull himself up into the coach unaided.

  Once I was settled in next to him, Father gave the roof two raps with his walking stick, and off we went. I looked out to see Eliza smiling at us as the rockaway rolled off—while Mother was wearing an expression so dour you’d have thought Father and I had just boarded the ferry across the River Styx.

  We said little on the way to the theater. There was idle talk of the grandchildren; of the Rands and the Turnbulls and the other neighbors whose homes we were passing; of this or that triviality of the day (the bacon at breakfast had been terribly salty, etc.). But nothing was said of where we were going. I almost came to think Father had forgotten our plans for the evening entirely.

  “Is it autumn so soon?” he said at one point, staring out at the fading leaves upon the trees lining the road.

  “Yes,” I said. “Hard to believe summer’s over already.”

  Father sank back into his seat looking strangely uneasy, and in my heart I had to wonder: If he doesn’t know the season, does he even know the year?

  Yet it was a different man who stepped from the coach a quarter hour later. Father’s back was straighter, his eyes clearer, his step livelier than in months. In the course of the twelve-step climb up the steps to the theater doors, we were hailed at least two dozen times, and Governor Andrews himself seemed to speak for all when he boomed out, “By gad—it’s a pleasure to see the Old Senator among us!”

  The reactions to me, of course, were more muted, where a reaction was visible at all. The huzzahs were reserved for Father. I was acknowledged only with the occasional nod . . . or smirk.

  Ahhh, the wayward son returns with his tail between his legs, I could almost hear the Skeffingtons and the Wests and the rest of them thinking. And still he struggles to warm the Old Senator to the theater.

  Of course, one of the friendliest receptions I could have expected would have been from the Clemenses, yet I was relieved not to see them there. As you know so well, it was Mr. Clemens who secured my first professional engagement in Boston and later underwrote my apprenticeship with Mr. DeBar’s company in New Orleans. Relations have been strained between him and the Old Senator ever since.

  What’s more, I had my own selfish, cowardly reason for avoiding “Mr. Twain”: I didn’t want to admit what little success his money seemed to have bought. If not for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I fear I would have bankrupted the man.

  All in all, it was a relief when we were safely settled in our seats (in one of the boxes, naturally—Mother would have it no other way). The theater was at its most radiant that night, every gaslight shining like a star, the proscenium aglow with promise, and for a moment I managed to lose myself in that keen excitement that reaches its crescendo just before the curtain rises and a new world opens up.

  “So,” Father said, “the stages you play out west . . . they’re as impressive as our National?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Not nearly.”

  The Old Senator grunted, and just then—as if in sympathy with my spirits—the lights dimmed.

  I wish I could say the play brightened my mood. Unfortunately, it embodied everything I find embarrassing about my calling. Mr. Sasanoff’s Orsino was purely porcine—ham sliced thick and served with a generous side portion of tripe. The Great Thespian was not merely heavy-handed but heavy-booted, stomping around the stage with such an exaggerated swagger he trampled not just the floorboards but any trace of the Bard’s nimble wit. His company, predictably, followed suit, turning in performances so broad it’s a wonder they could all fit upon the same stage.

  There was one notable exception, however, and it is here—with the entrance of the sour, glowering Malvolio—that things took an unexpected turn that continued on not just through the remainder of the play but through the remainder of the night and beyond. As Malvolios go, he was young—my own age, I would guess. Yet there was about his performance a striking combination of mesmerizing intensity and masterful restraint that would have seemed more fitting in a seasoned old campaigner like Mr. Sasanoff. If he played a few moments with a tad too much hand wringing and eye rolling, I placed the blame on his manager/star, not him, for a completely understated turn would’ve seemed as out of place as Edwin Booth in a Punch and Judy show.

  I wasn’t the only one who found the rest of the company’s muggings unamusing. Father didn’t so much as chuckle the once, and between acts, I asked him what he made of the proceedings.

  “A bit juvenile, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean . . . ‘Sir Toby Belch’?”

  I nodded glumly, knowing there was much more such juvenilia to come in the following acts.

  “I like the villain, though,” Father went on. “Malvolio.” And here he reminded me that our dignified old Père has a droll humor of his own he’s doled out far too infrequently in recent years. “A good Puritan, like our ancestors.”

  “Yes. The actor who’s playing him—I think he’s the best in the cast by far.”

  “Of course, you’d think so,” Father said. “He’s your mirror image.”

  The comment jolted me. Not because I perceived it to be a jab at my actorly
egoism—though I suppose it was. In truth, though, I simply hadn’t noticed the resemblance.

  When Malvolio returned to the stage a few minutes later, I saw it. He was taller than I yet slighter of build, with a jaw that was more a pointed V than my blocky U. But in all other regards—gray eyes, hawkish nose, dark hair, long limbs—we were what the rubber-stamping bureaucrats in Washington would call carbon copies.

  We even shared a name: The program listed him as William Escott. I spent the remainder of the play marveling that a talent such as his should bloom in so infertile a field as Mr. Sasanoff’s troupe, and I couldn’t hold back a “Bravo!” as he took his bows. The rest of the audience, however, saved their cheers for the star—Sasanoff, who was favored with such a wildly overenthusiastic ovation one would have thought Shakespeare himself had just taken the stage. It roiled in me a deep bitterness, I’ll admit, that so many in that hall who judged me a fool for pursuing a career in theater couldn’t see, when actually in one, the difference between brilliance and bluster.

  The Old Senator’s applause was half-hearted, to say the least. Not because he was so wearied by the evening’s (supposed) entertainment. As the curtain fell for the final time, he was much refreshed . . . having slept through the entirety of the last act. Still, I thought it best not to subject him to the jostling hordes pouring toward the exits, and he and I remained in our seats waiting for the crowd to thin.

  This would have been the perfect moment to act on the opportunity Eliza had provided, broaching our old quarrel—my career (or lack of same)—and putting the matter to rest somehow. Yet I didn’t have the nerve. How could anyone justify a life on the stage when a travesty like Sasanoff’s Twelfth Night had just unfolded upon it?

  So we just sat there in silence until there was a rap upon the door, and who should come barging in like a herd of buffalo in evening clothes but Horace and Eleanor Turnbull! And, no—they hadn’t wandered into the theater by mistake thinking it was hosting a debutante ball or a Presbyterian worship service or a witch burning or some other function they might find socially acceptable. The self-same Turnbulls who once had been so scandalized that I—a notorious and unrepentant performer—should take an interest in their daughter were now inside a theater, and the team of wild horses that had dragged them there was nowhere in sight.