6 A telling phrase, suggest many commentators, revealing Holmes’s innate snobbery, which manifests itself most particularly in “The Illustrious Client.” However, Holmes’s lack of snobbery—and indeed, disdain for the “upper classes”—is in evidence in his treatment of the king in “A Scandal in Bohemia” and his high-handed manner with Lord Robert St. Simon in “The Noble Bachelor.” Charles A. Meyer suggests that Lady Eva was involved with Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, that Albert requested Holmes’s assistance (see L. W. Bailey’s similar reasoning in note 27 below), and that the Crown’s involvement justified in Holmes’s mind his ungentlemanly treatment of Milverton’s housemaid.
7 Given as “Blackwell” in American editions.
8 Samuel Pickwick, Esq., is the protagonist of Charles Dickens’s farcical novel The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837), first published in serial form under Dickens’s pseudonym, Boz. Founder of the Pickwick Club (whose members travel throughout England and report on their observations and adventures), Mr. Pickwick, a simple-minded and morally upright fellow, is bald and has eyes that twinkle from behind his spectacles. The benevolence Watson refers to is fully on display in Pickwick’s opening speech to the club, wherein he informs his fellow members that “if ever the fire of self-importance broke out in his bosom, the desire to benefit the human race in preference effectually quenched it. The praise of mankind was his swing; philanthropy was his insurance office.”
9 This sentence makes little sense, unless Watson means that Holmes was “baffled” as to his next step; if Watson means that Holmes is baffled by the meaning of Milverton’s remark, it seems more logical that the sentence should read, “I could see clearly that he did not.”
10 Difficult as it may be to believe that so many unfaithful spouses would risk exposure by exchanging risqué love letters—and would actually be caught doing so—the realities of the time make this scenario entirely plausible. As L. W. Bailey points out, private telephones were unavailable, and secret lovers were often forced to send word to each other via notes conveyed by their servants. Naturally, should an opportunist such as Milverton come calling with a large sum of money, many a valet or maid might be tempted to hand the evidence over. “[T]oo often,” writes Bailey, “as in other fields of human activity, avarice proved stronger than loyalty.” At the same time, what Milverton has in hand may not be torrid declarations of passion, but merely straightforward arrangements to meet at a certain location. For a married man or woman, such a message would be considered scandalous enough.
11 David Galerstein points out that it was winter and the weather was severe; it is therefore obvious that Holmes and Milverton’s maid would have to meet indoors, in her bedroom. Only by sleeping with the maid, Galerstein insists, could Holmes acquire the inside information he so urgently needed. “We have seen cases where the Master risked his life to help a client,” Galerstein writes admiringly. “We now see that his profession made other demands on him too, and marvel at the extent to which a private detective must sometimes go to help his client.” Judy L. Buddle expresses a similar view, although she suggests that Holmes’s “swagger” evidences some enthusiasm for the job. Finally, Alan Wilson spins the fanciful theory that Holmes and Agatha eventually had a son, one Sylvanus Escott.
12 “Is it not a tribute to Holmes’s versatility,” Richard Asher writes admiringly in “Holmes and the Fair Sex,” “that he, a man accustomed to discourse upon the Chaldean roots of the ancient Cornish language and the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus, should be equally capable of love talk with a housemaid? Is it not remarkable that a man accustomed to the company of khalifas, dukes, headmasters and lamas should be such a success with a servant?”
13 D. Martin Dakin, among others, takes Holmes to task for his cavalier treatment of Milverton’s hapless employee. “We may well ask if the happiness of a housemaid was not just as important as that of a society lady—even if she was the most beautiful débutante of the season.” While this was decidedly not the case in Victorian society, the detective who elsewhere shows disdain for those placing too much importance on social rank might be expected to show more respect for the feelings of an innocent housemaid than he does here. Holmes’s next comment, that his putative fiancée will be well taken care of by a “hated rival” the instant Holmes has departed, might seem to express some concern as to her fate. But, admonishes Dakin, “this remark, based as it was on the Victorian tradition that the affaires du coeur of domestic servants were something comic and not to be taken seriously, only adds insult to injury.”
Brad Keefauver, in Sherlock and the Ladies, rises to Holmes’s defence, elevating the housemaid (whose name is later revealed to be Agatha) from victim to shrewd manipulator. “I don’t think the engagement was his fault,” he argues. “What man, carefully trying to win a girl’s heart, proposes after seeing her for only a few days, especially if he knows his intentions aren’t sincere? Holmes could have gained the information he needed by simply romancing her; he needn’t have asked her to marry him . . . unless, of course, it was Agatha who forced the proposal out of him.”
14 This remark seems uncharacteristic of Watson—contrast his courage displayed in “The Speckled Band” and The Hound of the Baskervilles and his lack of hesitancy to break the law in a good cause in “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans”—and is likely to have been inserted by him later for dramatic effect.
15 See “The Red-Headed League,” note 63, for a description of this device. A dark lantern would prove extremely useful to the stealth of a burglar, observes Bruce Kennedy: “With the shutter open only a crack, a faint glimmer of light can shine on the subject which would be invisible to the passer-by.”
16 Why? Was Watson’s wound so little trouble that he could play tennis? The plague of wearing tennis shoes as daily wear had not yet affected men’s fashions.
17 Technically, plethora is a medical condition in which one’s body contains too much blood; a person who is “plethoric” may be defined as moving slowly and having a ruddy complexion. Holmes is likely using the more familiar meaning of the term—“excessive”—for he has already stated that Milverton is a heavy sleeper.
18 Humphrey Morton identifies Appledore Towers as the house now known as The Logs, located at the corner of East Heath Road and Well Walk and built in 1868. The first existing record of the house’s occupant is Edward Gotto, who lived there from 1873 to 1896—after which The Logs, curiously, is said to have stood empty for two years. “Cannot we assume,” proposes Morton, “. . . that Milverton moved to The Logs in 1896, changed its name to Appledore Towers and was in residence until his timely and unlamented death a year or two later?” Morton’s identification seems generally correct, in light of the fugitives’ later run across the Heath. Yet this location leaves unexplained Holmes and Watson’s drive to Church Row, farther west than the location in question. They were then required to walk back toward Appledore Towers, when they could just as well have alighted at Hampstead Heath Station and walked a short way west.
19 A heavy curtain hung over the doorway of a room.
20 The light switch, which does make a sort of sharp, clicking noise when flipped on or off (“snick!”), was not in public use when the events of “The Adventure of Charles August Milverton” are thought to have taken place, writes William E. Plimental in a letter to the Baker Street Journal. Rather, prior to the light switch, one would turn off a light by using “the little square attached to a table lamp, and the push-button in the wall for a chandelier, neither of which gave what might be called a ‘snick.’ ” Plimental uses that information to date “Charles August Milverton” later than most chronologists do, placing its occurrence in 1900 or 1901.
21 “Where did she go?” D. Martin Dakin astutely asks. Holmes and Watson’s escape will require scaling a six-foot wall, but “Victorian costume, including in this case mantle and veil, did not encourage that form of exercise. . . .” Instead, Dakin believes that the woman, having infiltrated Milverton’s househol
d as a servant, returned to some other portion of the house to resume her duties, providing her with the perfect cover.
22 The shout given by a fox-hunter when he sees a fox break cover.
23 Gavin Brend (and others) doubts that the two-mile run ever took place. “By the time a runner has travelled one mile (let alone two) he will have a fairly accurate idea of the pursuit behind him,” observes Brend, in a private letter to William S. Baring-Gould. “He will know how many men are following him, whether they are gaining or losing ground and how he manages finally to shake them off.” Since Watson makes no mention of such a chase, Brend disabuses the notion that he and Holmes felt compelled to run for two miles—although he does allow that they may have travelled two miles across Hampstead Heath, running part of the way. Even those commentators who accept the two-mile run observe that the wound in Watson’s leg had obviously healed considerably by the time of this tale.
24 Although it seems possible that it was Holmes, not the mystery lady, who actually killed Milverton, Bruce Harris’s seemingly ludicrous contention that Holmes and Milverton had a homosexual affair—and that Holmes eliminated him to suppress the evidence—has stirred up its share of controversy. John Linsenmeyer, who was editor of the Baker Street Journal when Harris made his theory public, voices his “strong conviction” that while Holmes might have killed Milverton for “good and sufficient reason . . . , [Harris’s] suggestion . . . is unacceptable.”
25 The manuscript originally continued, “Yes, yes. It is she.”
26 The identity of the lady is never revealed, but based on Watson’s description of her, both earlier (when he notes her “dark, handsome, clear-cut face . . . a face with a curved nose, strong, dark eyebrows, shading hard, glittering eyes, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth”) and here, L. W. Bailey concludes that she must have been a member of a titled Jewish family.
According to Bailey, Jews were allowed entrance into the titled aristocracy only after the rise of the Rothschilds, headed by patriarch Mayer Amschel Rothschild. And even for that esteemed family, an official place in British high society was slow in coming. The Rothschild brothers—Amschel Mayer, Salomon, Nathan Mayer, Karl, and James—were made barons by the emperor of Austria in 1822; Nathan, who had established the flourishing London branch of the family’s banking operations, accepted the title but stated that he still wished to be referred to as “plain Mr. Rothschild.” Yet Lionel de Rothschild, the son of Nathan Mayer, was denied a peerage in his father’s adopted country when Queen Victoria said in 1869, “To make a Jew a peer is a step the Queen could not assent to.” This despite the fact that his father had aided the British government against Napoleon and had essentially saved the London stock market from collapse after the allied victory at Waterloo; and despite the fact that Lionel had become the first Jew elected to Parliament in 1847. (Refusing to take an oath containing the words “in the true faith of a Christian,” Lionel left his seat empty for eleven years until the oath was revised.)
A decade after the queen’s snub, the social landscape had altered significantly, with the Jewish-born Benjamin Disraeli serving two terms as prime minister in 1868 and 1874–1880 and enjoying the queen’s particular favour. In 1876, Queen Victoria bestowed a peerage upon Disraeli, making him the Earl of Beaconsfield, and in 1885 she granted one to Lionel de Rothschild’s son, Nathaniel Rothschild. Meanwhile, the queen’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales (Albert Edward, later Edward VII), had become great friends with the Rothschilds, blithely ignoring the disapproval of the British elite.
Considering how long Jewish people had been excluded from the nobility, it seems likely that the mystery murderess acquired her aristocratic status via a gentile husband. “If the lady was of Jewish extraction,” Bailey concludes, “it is quite clear that her husband was not, since he had a ‘time-honoured title.’ One may surmise therefore that he had married into one of the Jewish families he had met through the Prince of Wales.”
27 Watson has obviously taken great pains to disguise the murdereress’s identity from the public; remember that he begins this narrative by stating his longstanding refusal to expose the details of Milverton’s death “even with the utmost discretion and reticence . . . but now the principal person concerned is beyond the reach of human law.” Most readers (and scholars) assume that this means the woman in question had recently passed away, but L. W. Bailey has a different theory. Calculating backward from the story’s April 1904 publication date, Bailey assumes that Watson began writing up the events early in 1903. “On the 26th of June, 1902, Edward VII had been crowned King of England,” Bailey muses, “and had thus become technically above the law and so ‘beyond its reach.’ Is it not possible that by his choice of words Watson was hinting at a truth he dare not reveal, and into which even now it would be indelicate to probe any further?”
D. Martin Dakin adopts the more mundane view that Watson’s words must refer to the demise of the lady who shot Milverton, but he raises some telling questions about Watson’s publication of the tale. Why would Watson risk confessing his and Holmes’s illegal activities (not to mention their suppression of evidence regarding a murder) at all? Surely he must have realised that legal repercussions were inevitable. No, Dakin concludes, something must have occurred to assure Watson that there would be no risk to himself from publication of the tale. In 1902, Holmes was involved in a case—“The Illustrious Client” —that also involved burglary supposedly committed for a good cause. Holmes’s service to that client, reasons Dakin, would have put him in such good graces with royalty that Watson deemed it safe to reveal his and Holmes’s own previous turn at playing Robin Hood. “But it cannot have been very agreeable to Inspector Lestrade,” Dakin considers, “. . . to know how he had been led up the garden path. It is probable, however, that by then he had also retired, and might therefore have been more inclined to look indulgently on Holmes’s past treatment of him.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS1
A favourite of readers, “The Six Napoleons” finds Holmes on the track of a jewel thief, just as in “The Blue Carbuncle.” However, where Holmes sees the traces of a relentless burglar, Inspector Lestrade sees only a madman on the loose. Set in the closing years of Holmes’s career, the case reveals that notwithstanding Holmes’s constant criticism of Scotland Yard, he is revered there. In perhaps the first recorded instance of deliberate manipulation of the news, Holmes declares, “The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.”
IT WAS NO very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, to look in upon us of an evening, and his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes, for they enabled him to keep in touch with all that was going on at the police headquarters. In return for the news which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was always ready to listen with attention to the details of any case upon which the detective was engaged, and was able occasionally, without any active interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from his own vast knowledge and experience.
On this particular evening Lestrade had spoken of the weather and the newspapers. Then he had fallen silent, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar. Holmes looked keenly at him.
“Anything remarkable on hand?” he asked.
“Oh, no, Mr. Holmes, nothing very particular.”
“Then tell me about it.”
Lestrade laughed.
“Well, Mr. Holmes, there is no use denying that there is something on my mind. And yet it is such an absurd business that I hesitated to bother you about it. On the other hand, although it is trivial, it is undoubtedly queer, and I know that you have a taste for all that is out of the common. But, in my opinion, it comes more in Dr. Watson’s line than ours.”
“Disease?” said I.
“Madness, anyhow. And a queer madness too! You wouldn’t think there was anyone living at this time of day who had such a hatred of Napoleon the First that he would break any image of him that he could see.”
Holmes sank back in his chair.
&n
bsp; “That’s no business of mine,” said he.
“Exactly. That’s what I said. But then, when the man commits burglary in order to break images which are not his own,2 that brings it away from the doctor and on to the policeman.”
Holmes sat up again.
“Burglary! This is more interesting. Let me hear the details.”
Lestrade took out his official notebook and refreshed his memory from its pages.
“The first case reported was four days ago,” said he. “It was at the shop of Morse Hudson,3 who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road.4 The assistant had left the front shop for an instant, when he heard a crash, and hurrying in he found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments. He rushed out into the road, but, although several passers-by declared that they had noticed a man run out of the shop, he could neither see anyone nor could he find any means of identifying the rascal. It seemed to be one of those senseless acts of Hooliganism5 which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the constable on the beat as such. The plaster cast was not worth more than a few shillings, and the whole affair appeared to be too childish for any particular investigation.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books) Page 29