by Tim Symonds
I paused for dramatic effect.
‘... Holmes chose to wear the Poshteen Long Coat, last worn by Colonel Francis Younghusband on the notorious trek to Lhasa, which Holmes purchased for no small sum from Perceval Landon.’
To my relief, given I had flung an arm into the air as if ‘from Perceval Landon’ was a most remarkable thing, the audience clapped briefly and sharply.
I rippled on at a breathless trot.
‘Holmes readily tells a man’s trade by inspection of a corpse’s knees, his fingers or a shoulder. How easily he interprets the hand of a miner, the lines etched in that blue trade-mark which handling coal leaves on the skin. Upon the instant of our entry into this building, Holmes remarked on the balsamic odour of the Eastern tobacco hanging faintly in the air. Who else can identify at a sniff, touch or glance a hundred and forty forms of tobacco ash, on which Holmes has produced a monograph titled Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos with coloured plates? Or his ability to recognise the 42 different impressions left by motorcar tyres? Why, he could follow Dudeney in the Lanchester to the farthest corners of the Globe. To keep this faculty in perfect shape, he practices on honeys. Our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, complains she has no further larder space from yards of jars produced by bees across the globe - from Tasmanian Leatherwood to Mrs. Peacock’s Rotherfield Honey Batch L22.’
At this came a second warning whisper from Holmes’ direction. ‘My blushes, Watson,’ he murmured in a deprecating and firm tone.
But to no avail. Ahead was Beecher’s Brook and I was in full canter. Nerves which had forced my face into an involuntary, spasmodic grin now caused me drop my notes. Helpless in the palm of the muse of inexperienced speakers, the Belle Dame sans Merci, I stumbled toward the abyss: ‘Then there was The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle where from observing an ordinary black hat Holmes...’
At this, Holmes rose sharply to a crouching position. Like a baleful puppet on a ventriloquist’s lap, his head snapped sideways. With a malevolent hiss he commanded, ‘Watson! Come to an end, I insist!’
He stayed suspended, menacingly, like a fakir between Earth and Sky. Startled, I backed down towards my seat, my own posterior hovering at a precise level with Holmes’ some inches in the air, my eyes locked on my audience in desperate appeal.
I stuttered, ‘Like the famous Cardinal Newman my Tractarian mother so admired, after whom I am named, Sherlock Holmes possesses a clearness of intellectual perception, a disdain for conventionalities, and, as you note, a temper imperious and wilful. This is the first time he offers an analysis of his art in public and, I hope, he will allow himself to respond to any questions and interrogations you might have. Not for him the fanciful weaving of ingenious theories miscalled ‘intuition’ nor the blind acceptance of circumstantial evidence untested by the searching light of cross-examination. I leave you with this thought, there is not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest Peeler who wouldn’t be glad to shake the hand of Sherlock Holmes and accept a hint or two as to a solution.’
At which final gasp I fell back thankfully into my chair. The slight smattering of applause rang sweetly in my ears. Siviter was at once on his feet, hands together as though at the Mikado’s Court, smiling and bobbing in my direction.
‘Thank you very much, Dr. Watson, for that very full introduction, might I say, in view of your affection for racing, straight from the horse’s mouth. As to your role as a peg, I am certain you are right. To listen to you makes us realise you must lavish a hundred little touches of true knowledge and genuine picturesqueness on the page.’
Siviter turned to my comrade-in-arms. ‘Mr. Holmes,’ he continued, ‘we are especially honoured by a visit from such a famous London specialist. For many years we have been gripped by newspaper reports of your adventures in Wapping and Whitechapel, the very heart of darkness.’
Our host was referring to the many forays Holmes and I made into the most desperate areas of the capital city during this Belle Epoque of crime. Not only Wapping and Whitehall but Mile End, Old Ford, Stepney and Bethnal Green. Every ‘-ism’ known to humankind sprang up in such unpromising soil - socialism, nationalism, secularism, communism, egalitarianism, Panslavism, Zionism, Nihilism, anarchism, pacifism, suffragettism, atheism, the flickerings of Fascism and at least one ‘non-ism’, free love, courtesy of the Hebrew Socialist Union, all the afterbirth of the Industrial Revolution.
With a light bow Siviter said, ‘We now look forward to your lecture.’
Holmes Gives Clues To His Deductive Methods
Holmes composed himself for a few seconds, with his lids drooping and fingertips together. Then he began. ‘Gentlemen, high praise indeed when my friend Watson refers to Charles Darwin and your servant Sherlock Holmes in a single breath. The Century which so recently went its way was dominated by the theory of Natural Selection. I can justly claim one notable similarity between Darwin’s work and mine. There is divination in both. In common with Darwin I suffered schooling to every conceivable intent both purposeless - except to tyrants - and worthless for any known profession. The fetters of prejudices from my early education lingered with me for many years. My scholastic career was never filled with promise. Often I was hit over the shins with a wicket. Unlike your literary Master, I was never filled with the joy of literature. Macaulay was not my hero though I was impressed by Edgar Allan Poe. Lack of Greek and Latin or fluency in French and German closed off access to the greater part of Western literature yet a great-uncle decided I should become a poet or author.’ He paused. ‘Though surely it would be a foolish or a less impecunious man who starts a working life by choosing ‘author’ for his profession. I learnt far more of substance and value in my short months in rooms on Montague Street, hard by the British Museum, studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient than in many years at school or two years at Cambridge and Oxford studying music of the Middle Ages and the derivation of the Celtic language. Darwin and I are confederate in one passion - for the facts. I use facts solely to serve my deductions, while Darwin stewed them to produce his magnificent general laws. He would have had nothing but contempt for the effete conventions and hypocrisies of our Edwardian England compared to the vitalising effect of the ruthless but straightforward life-and-death struggles of Nature.’
Holmes paused. He looked towards Siviter.
‘But to authors close to home. Who has not enjoyed the verses, sketches, skits and stories of our present host, so full of allusion and quotation, as well as those of your League’s namesake, his gift for phrase, the comic intervention, the delight in parody and imitation? Who has not read among Kipling’s works The City Of Evil Countenances, Abaft The Funnel, The Jungle Books - and Kim? Kim o’ the Rishti who went to the River of Healing, a master work of imperialism, the India of the imagination. Who could forget your literary Master’s evocation of Bombay -
‘Mother of Cities to me,
For I was born in her gate,
Between the palms and the sea,
Where the world-end steamers wait.’
Your President’s patriotism is beyond dispute - think of the tales and poems of the British soldier in India. Who has not visited the Mogul Saloon in Drury Lane to hear The Great MacDermott’s rousing rendition of the war song sold to him by Kipling for a guinea? I found his description of Lamaism invaluable. You can never know too much about magic, mysticism and demon worship. I have often addressed a Pathan with ‘May you never be tired’, a courtesy I learnt from a reading of Rudyard Kipling’s works. And might I say, your President and my good friend Watson and I hold to a principle in common - our concern to defend civilisation against brute Nature and the barbarian. One day, when his volcanic voice is stilled, they should name a crater Kipling on the planet Mercury.’
I nodded slowly with pleasure at these words. It was clever of Holmes to pay homage to the source from which he had learned the
Pathan greeting.
Holmes’ disquisition was interrupted by the sound of voices on the stairs. A modest tattoo was followed by the door opening. The first and tumultuous entry was at floor-board level, a bubbling cauldron of excited, noisy Aberdeen terriers wriggling and rotating like giant brindle caterpillars. They were followed by two aristocratic men around five-and-fifty years of age. Sir Julius Wernher and Alfred Weit had arrived. Both men had been born in Leipzig but chose Queen over Kaiser and settled in England. Both stood about the middle height, dark, with foreign features, attired in the livery of their class, at once recognisable from the window of the Pathé Frères shop near Regent Circus filled with photographs of the celebrities of the day. They were termed, in the popular press, ‘Gold Bugs’. Together they held the greatest financial power in the world, their immense fortunes from determined activity in the Kimberley diamond market. They maintained their position through unsleeping vigilance for the affairs of the Rand. The two were mentioned frequently in the society pages of the Clarion and the weekly illustrated papers whose reporters so assiduously cull the pages of Debrett, following the lives of the rich, the aristocratic and the Royal, covering the grander dinner-parties in Delamere Terrace or Audley Square. In short, covering the territory in which our income was significantly to be found.
Sir Julius Wernher was the first to approach, radiating suavity, with a silver beard and full moustache. He lifted golden pince-nez to his eyes as he came to the centre of the room like a vieux marcheur, bringing with him a faint whiff of Roger and Gallet cologne. His clothing displayed a delicate touch of individuality, harking back to an older fashion except for the contrasting choice of strikingly fashionable lightweight hat. Made of green felt, the brim rolled slightly inwards on the side, a single crease running down the centre of the crown and pinches at the front.
Sir Julius owned a 3000-ton yacht, The Miloca, always at the ready in Cattaro. Weit’s and Sir Julius’ great ‘palaces’ in London were decorated, by all accounts, with imperial grandeur, in the sumptuous taste of Edwardian new wealth, heavily influenced by the Art and fashions of Continental Europe. Sir Julius’ Mayfair house was entered by a long flight of marble steps from the drive to the front door, a footman stationed on every third step in knee-breeches and with powdered hair which straggled when it poured with rain. Terracotta statues traced to the tomb of Qin Shi Huang Di, first emperor of China stood inside the entrance. It was reported the bedrooms were as palatial as the downstairs salons, in accord with the opulence and vulgarity of our plutocracy, each with Louis X1V suites picked out with an occasional pink electric light. He had assembled a fine Art collection, including one very large oil-colour by Pevensey. So quickly had he amassed the works they were almost certain to include both masterpiece and fake, like the Tsar’s famed collection in St Petersburg. The great names of our time wandered into his palatial homes: Prince Francis of Teck, Sir Thomas Lipton, Lady Sarah Wilson. The latter’s courage during the siege of Ladysmith had made her a heroine. The men wore rings on plump fingers and smoked cigars; not a few were owners of Derby winners. A photograph in Collier’s Magazine by Catherine Cooke showed great beribboned baskets of flowers, like oblations to a goddess, being delivered daily to Sir Julius’ home by horse-drawn vans, coachmen and attendants in livery. Orchids from three continents, malmaisons, and lilies for display in tall, cut-glass vases were scattered throughout the vast construction.
For his visit to Crick’s End, Alfred Weit had chosen a somewhat rusty suit of black-and-white herring-bone tweed, a tie composed of thin pale blue stripes on a black background, and heavily-brogued shoes and cloth spats. In his left hand he held a pair of yellow chamois gloves. My friend Marsh had mentioned seeing Weit with Van Beers, Sir Julius and Siviter at a private club on Whitehall Gardens at the height of the Anglo-Boer hostilities.
Separating from Sir Julius, Weit crossed the room towards a fine, thick piece of bulbous-headed wood known as a Penang lawyer. For his country residence he maintained Salisbury Hall, a little manor-house near St Albans, with a fine garden surrounded by a moat, once Nell Gwynn’s petite maison. He had the face of a Disraeli, lividly pale, with finely-arched eyebrows, though the eyes were beryl rather than intensely black. The eyes spoke of repeated contact with Tropical diseases. Ancient fires flickered in his sallow cheeks.
At their entry Siviter rose to his feet quicker even than I, rushing across to greet them, pursued like a hind by the terriers at his legs.
‘Ah, and in excellent time,’ Siviter cried. ‘Mr Holmes, Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson, I see already you recognise our guests. I might say they have helped me greatly with my investments - more than ten thousand pounds in Kaffirs - or I would never have kept my driving habit alive. As Polonius said, ‘Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel’.’
He gestured from the two men to us.
‘Dr. Watson has steered us safely through to three o’ clock, though you must be sorry you have missed his gripping talk on coats and hats. As you may be aware, Dr. Watson is Holmes’ panegyrist, Ruth to his Naomi, obliging us by inspiring awe of his colleague’s deductive powers to steer a determined course between Scylla and Charybdis. He alone has dissuaded us from transmogrifying the Kipling League into a syndicate of crime, I can tell you.’
At Siviter’s words of introduction Holmes stepped forward from the fireside towards the new arrivals.
‘We are greatly honoured,’ Sir Julius Wernher stated, looking intently at Holmes.
‘Most certainly,’ affirmed Weit. ‘We are well acquainted with your reputation and that of your estimable colleague Dr. Watson.’ He gave a courteous bow which I, though not Holmes, mirrored to the inch in Japanese style.
Weit’s complexion, while darkened by the sun, displayed a disturbing pallor as though a splash of milk had been mixed in. He would not be the first to have his constitution shattered by living a life abroad. Sensing my eye upon him, he turned to engage me directly. ‘And Dr. Watson, as a medical man, can you see from my complexion my health is not the best from too long in Tropical climes?’
I answered his query with a sympathetic nod.
He continued, ‘Therefore, as my own doctor is at his best compounding for French horses, may I ask you a question, deeply personal to me, though not to you?.’
I begged him to consider my medical knowledge entirely at his service.
‘How much longer would you give me to live?’
I reeled from this unexpected question but answered openly. ‘You have suffered a brain attack and have recovered. This may give you a tendency to depression. To avoid a recurrence of the stroke, you must restrict your habitation to altitudes no higher than Chamonix. May I recommend regular visits to Töplitz. As for a tonic, I have particular confidence in the unfailing powers of quassia, obtained from the wood and bark of the Surinam Tree, bitter, it is true, but a fine medicinal drug.’
Again Weit pressed. ‘And as to length...?’
‘At least the span, if you follow my advice.’
Weit looked pleased. ‘I shall do so assiduously, Dr. Watson.’
I turned to find myself under Sir Julius’ scrutiny. Upon this cue I responded, ‘And you, Sir Julius, like several in this room, have suffered from Blackwater Fever. Its fevers and vomiting put great stress on the human body. I perceive a cataract in your right eye. You must temper the glare of the Tropical sun. Whenever you are outdoors in Africa I advise you to wear a broader-brimmed hat than the one you hold in your hand.’
At this, Holmes broke in.
‘Sir Julius, in the matter of headwear, I see you follow our King in your choice of hats.’
Sir Julius appeared startled at Holmes’ observation. He looked down at the green felt object in his hand. Before he could reply, Holmes continued, ‘though I see you have worn it for the first time today.’
Sir Julius had been taking adv
antage of the change of speakers to take snuff from a tortoise-shell box, brushing away the wandering grains from his coat front with a large, red silk handkerchief. At Holmes’ words his head swung round. There was an indefinable, faint expression on his lips. He began, ‘Why, Holmes, how in the name of good-fortune...’
‘I assure you it is nothing especially clever,’ Holmes responded with an airy wave.
‘Perhaps so, but do explain,’ Sir Julius requested, his eyes fixated on my companion’s face.
‘Have you not just returned from the outside, where you spent an hour or two?’
‘Why, yes.’
‘And in the open air, not confined within a carriage,’ Holmes continued, gesturing at a mix of clay and chalk on both arrivals’ shoes.
‘Quite so,’ came the reply.
‘In rather inclement weather?’
‘Indeed.’
‘In which you would be expected to wear a hat?’
‘As you say.’
‘When you entered this room, you had a faint imprint on your forehead from wearing a hat a half-size too small - the mark already fades. Had there not been rain you might not have worn it at all for it must have pressed upon the temple. Certainly you would not continue to wear it by choice. Closer to your home you would have exchanged it at once. I therefore assume you have worn it for the first time to-day.’
Before Sir Julius could respond, Siviter clapped his hands. ‘Bravo, Holmes! Now gentlemen, gentlemen, we must proceed!’
At a clap of her Master’s hands, a maid-servant entered to remove the household dogs. Pained expressions brimmed in the terriers’ eyes as, even while the door was closing on them, they offered their master a last chance to let them stay. Sensing a malleable soul in the parlour, one of them looked across to me with a most comical cock to his head. His engaging behaviour was to no avail. Siviter pressed shut the door firmly behind them.