Sherlock Holmes was born into the Victorian age, but at the beginning of the twenty-first century, interest in the detective, his companions, and his life and adventures continues unabated—and indeed, has swelled. The fifty-six short adventures in these volumes, and the four short novels that will appear in the final volume, represent all that can be definitely known about the Great Detective and the Good Doctor. Yet, as the annotations that appear below in the following stories will reveal, there is an infinite universe to study and in which to speculate.
The game is afoot!
LESLIE S. KLINGER
July 4, 2003
1 Some students of the Master Detective contend that he is indeed still among the living. Their principal proof for this contention is the observation that the death of one so famous would not have gone unreported by The Times of London, which has to date published no obituary for Holmes. Others sneer that Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character. However, such a wild assertion will not be considered in a work as serious as these volumes. In the words of the eminent bookman Vincent Starrett, writing of Holmes, “Only those things the heart believes are true.”
2 “The Implicit Holmes,” Baker Street Journal (O. S.) 1, no. 2 (April 1946), 111–112 (The Editor’s Gas-Lamp).
3 Whether Conan Doyle ever met Sherlock Holmes is equally speculative, although it is widely reported that Conan Doyle gave illustrator Sidney Paget a cigarette case on the occasion of Paget’s wedding with the inscription “From Sherlock Holmes, 1893.”
4 £1,595 in current purchasing power. All conversions to modern equivalencies of currency are based on the work of John J. McCusker, “Comparing the Purchasing Power of Money in Great Britain from 1264 to Any Other Year Including the Present,” Economic History Services, 2001, URL http://www.eh.net/hmit/ppowerbp/, and McCusker’s How Much Is That in Real Money?: A Historical Commodity Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2001).
5 Conan Doyle apparently omitted to mention to either Newnes or Smith that he was submitting the manuscripts on behalf of his friend John Watson, and, as happened with A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, the stories—and every successive tale of Sherlock Holmes—were published with Arthur Conan Doyle credited as the author.
6 Walter himself illustrated only one story, “The Dying Detective” (included in volume II).
7 £61,039 in current purchasing power.
8 Gillette was not the only actor who was identified with the rôle; English actor H. A. Saintsbury gave an estimated 1,400 performances in the part in England between 1902 and 1905 and in 1929, and H. Hamilton Stewart appeared as Holmes more than 2,000 times in the English provinces between 1906 and 1918.
9 Quoted in Stashower, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle.
10 Memories and Adventures, p. 103.
11 Some skeptics say that the study of Holmes’s life ends with the records of Conan Doyle as well. See Preface.
12 “The Bruce-Partington Plans.”
13 “The ‘Gloria Scott’.”
14 “The Musgrave Ritual.”
15 “The Final Problem.”
16 The variety of theories is discussed in detail on page 745 below.
17 “The Lion’s Mane” and “The Blanched Soldier.” Although “The Mazarin Stone” and “His Last Bow” are written in the third person, both are generally attributed to Watson. Subsequent to Watson’s publication of “Shoscombe Old Place” in 1927, numerous writers claimed to have “discovered” lost writings of Watson or other records of Holmes’s life and adventures, but these must be discarded as weak fictions. This edition contains every authentic record of Sherlock Holmes.
18 “The Lion’s Mane” and “The Blanched Soldier.” Note that while Watson does not participate in the events recounted in “The ‘Gloria Scott’ ” or “The Musgrave Ritual,” he is present as an audience for Holmes’s reminiscences.
19 The student of Watson’s life is bedeviled with the same problems as a biographer of Holmes, namely, the lack of any record of his existence outside the purportedly fictional works of Arthur Conan Doyle. See Preface.
20 Dr. Watson evidences a familiarity with the diggings at Ballarat, Victoria, which suggests personal knowledge (The Sign of Four). However, Watson states there that he “visited” Ballarat, and in “Boscombe Valley Mystery,” he had no knowledge of the Australian slang expression “Cooee!” The matter is unsettled at best.
21 A Study in Scarlet.
22 See this editor’s “Art in Whose Blood?” for a more detailed consideration of this speculation.
23 Conan Doyle reported that he received £25 for all rights to the story.
24 The Sign of Four.
25 A Study in Scarlet (1887) and The Sign of Four (1890), both classed as “novels” even though quite short by modern standards.
26 Sadly, no scholar has been able to find any copies of the articles in newspaper archives.
27 “The Final Problem.”
28 “The Blue Carbuncle,” “The Speckled Band,” “The Engineer’s Thumb,” “The Noble Bachelor,” “The Beryl Coronet,” “The Copper Beeches,” and “Silver Blaze.”
29 “The Cardboard Box,” “The Yellow Face,” “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’,” “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The Reigate Squires,” “The Crooked Man,” “The Resident Patient,” “The Greek Interpreter,” and “The Naval Treaty.”
30 Holmes practised in London from 1881 (perhaps earlier, but not recorded by Watson) to 1891 and 1894 to 1902. Only A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) were published during these periods.
31 “The Abbey Grange.”
32 Watson’s second marriage is evident in “The Blanched Soldier,” set in January 1903 (“The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association”), and in 1902, in “The Illustrious Client” and “The Three Gables,” it is plain that he is no longer living with Holmes at Baker Street, suggesting that the marriage had already occurred.
33 These remarks were made to Baron Gruner in “The Illustrious Client,” however, and may have been dissembling.
34 Brooks also appeared as Holmes in Sherlock Holmes (1932), based on Gillette’s play.
35 The Sleeping Cardinal (1930), The Missing Rembrandt (1932), The Sign of Four (1932), The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1934; released in the United States as The Valley of Fear), and Silver Blaze (1936; released in the United States as Murder at the Baskervilles).
36 These were Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943), Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943), Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman (1944), The Scarlet Claw (1944), The Pearl of Death (1944), The House of Fear (1945), The Woman in Green (1945), Pursuit to Algiers (1946), Terror by Night (1946), and Dressed to Kill (1946).
37 A “pastiche” is generally a serious attempt to produce a story in the style of the original author. A “parody” imitates the writer’s style for comic effect or ridicule.
38 A. G. Macdonnell, then head of the English group, actually attended the first formal dinner of the Irregulars in late 1934.
39 For reasons undiscerned, English Sherlockians are known as “Holmesians”; American Holmesians are known as “Sherlockians.”
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (London: George Newnes, 1892);
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (London: George Newnes, 1893).
A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA1
“A Scandal in Bohemia” is the first of the Sherlock Holmes short stories to have appeared in the Strand Magazine; eventually, all of the works but the novels A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four appeared there. “A Scandal in Bohemia” is memorable for what it reveals about Holmes’s attitude toward women, and it is the only story in which we see Holmes defeated—although he may well have decided that he was on the wron
g side in the matter and been glad of his “defeat.” The opera singer “heroine,” Irene Adler, has inspired generations of women Sherlockians, leading to the 1965 formation of the “Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes” by women who were banned from joining The Baker Street Irregulars (a rule subsequently reversed). In “Scandal,” we see for the first time the partnership of Holmes and Watson in action. Watson is no longer merely the reporter, as he is in A Study in Scarlet or The Sign of Four, and his participation is essential in carrying out Holmes’s plans. There is little mystery in this first tale, but the reader’s interest is seized by Watson’s opening words: “To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.”
I
TO SHERLOCK HOLMES she is always the woman.2 I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen; but, as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer.3 They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler,4 of dubious and questionable memory.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness,5 and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention; while Holmes, who loathed every form of society6 with his whole Bohemian7 soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police.8 From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa9 in the case of the Trepoff murder,10 of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee,11 and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.12 Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.
One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice13), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door,14 which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell, and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case15 and a gasogene16 in the corner. Then he stood before the fire, and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.
“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.”
“Seven,” I answered.
“Then he stood before the fire.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1891
“Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.”17
“Then, how do you know?”
Spirit case.
Harrod’s Catalogue, 1895
“I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?”
“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess; but as I have changed my clothes, I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary Jane,18 she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice; but there again I fail to see how you work it out.”
He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long nervous hands together.
“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by some one who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.19 As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform,20 with a black mark of nitrate of silver21 upon his right-forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope,22 I must be dull indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”
Harrod’s Catalogue, 1895
I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. “When I hear you give your reasons,” I remarked, “the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled, until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.”
“Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an armchair. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”
“Frequently.”
“How often?”
“Well, some hundreds of times.”
“Then how many are there?”
“How many? I don’t know.”
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. By the way, since you are interested in these little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences,23 you may be interested in this.” He threw over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted notepaper which had been lying open upon the table. “It came by the last post,”24 said he. “Read it aloud.”
The note was undated, and without either signature or address.
There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o’clock [it said], a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the Royal Houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask.
“This is indeed a mystery,” I remarked. “What do you imagine that it means?”
“I ha
ve no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?”
I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.
“The man who wrote it was presumably well to do,” I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my companion’s processes. “Such paper could not be bought under half-a-crown25 a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff.”
“Peculiar—that is the very word,” said Holmes. “It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up to the light.”
I did so, and saw a large E with a small g, a P, and a large G with a small t woven into the texture of the paper.
“What do you make of that?” asked Holmes.
“The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather.”
“I carefully examined the writing.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1891
“Not at all. The G with the small t stands for ‘Gesellschaft,’ which is the German for ‘Company.’ It is a customary contraction like our ‘Co.’ P, of course, stands for ‘Papier.’ Now for the Eg. Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer.”26 He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. “Eglow, Eglonitz—here we are, Egria.27 It is in a German-speaking country28—in Bohemia,29 not far from Carlsbad.30 ‘Remarkable as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein,31 and for its numerous glass factories and paper mills.’ Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make of that?” His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books) Page 7