The lady stared in amazement.
“Could it be done on five thousand pounds?”
“Well, I should think so, indeed!”
“Very good. I think you will sign me a cheque for that,26 and I will see that it comes to Mrs. Maberley. You owe her a little change of air. Meantime, lady”—he wagged a cautionary forefinger—“have a care! Have a care! You can’t play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands.”27
1 “The Three Gables” was published in the Strand Magazine in October 1920; its first American publication was in Liberty on September 18, 1926.
2 While this might seem a throwaway insult, Holmes could literally be detecting something familiar and unpalatable in Steve Dixie’s scent—or at least, that is what Walter Shepherd deduces. He postulates that Holmes, intimate with so many parts of the city, may have detected olfactory traces on Dixie of the area known as the Old Nichol or the Jago, the haunt of the worst of criminals, into which even the police travelled only in pairs. “[T]he odour of the Jago,” Shepherd writes, “was exceptional even in the most squalid areas of East London.” Of course, most people of the time—when hot running water was a luxury available only to those of certain means and baths were commensurately infrequent—would be considered malodorous by today’s standards. “[I]n the 1890’s even the ordinary respectable citizens often carried about with them traces of what we might call ‘tainted atmospheres,’ ” explains Shepherd. “For example, in the buses, in street crowds, or in the Underground railways, the curious smell of the early mackintoshes was prominent in wet weather, and body-odour in fine.”
3 Properly the “Holborn Bars,” which are stones at the junction of Gray’s Inn Road and Holborn marking the edge of the City of London.
4 In medieval times, the large, centrally located, open space of the Bull Ring in Birmingham was the site of a thriving market for livestock and food. The space possibly also hosted bull- or bull-and-bear–baiting, hence the name. As Birmingham through the centuries grew more modernised, so did the Bull Ring, and it came to accommodate numerous shops. (Today, the concept of a market continues: The site has been developed as the Bullring shopping centre.)
5 Many criticise Holmes’s apparently racist attitude toward Dixie and note the contrast with his treatment of Grant Munro’s stepdaughter (“The Yellow Face”) and Daulat Ras (“The Three Students”) as evidence of the fakery of “The Three Gables.” June Thomson attempts to take a view that de-emphasises race, admitting that “the Victorians tended to regard uneducated people of non-white races as uncivilized” but adding that Steve Dixie is, in particular, “a thoroughly unpleasant character.” In support, Thomson names other examples in which Holmes exhibits blatantly disdainful behaviour toward other men who are considered violent or cruel, such as Neil Gibson (“The Thor Bridge) or Dr. Roylott (“The Speckled Band”), both of whom are white. Yet she acknowledges that Holmes’s manner here, regardless of its origin or intent, seems singularly harsh. “If it is any defence, which I doubt,” she writes, “it should be added that Holmes had an ‘abnormally acute set of senses.’ ” She further speculates, as she does for “The Mazarin Stone,” that Holmes during this period of time is suffering from undue stress, a culmination of years of overwork and his separation from his good friend Watson. William P. Collins makes no excuses for Holmes, concluding that he was “moulded into a Victorian conscious of the superiority of the British and aware of class and colour separation . . .”—that is, no more (or less) prejudiced than other Victorians.
6 An official attached to (that is, employed by) the British embassy. Some nations used their attachés as spies (a practice still making headlines around the world), though there is no evidence that espionage was part of Douglas Maberley’s duties.
7 An alcohol solution made up of opium and camphor, once used in cough remedies and now predominantly used to treat diarrhea. Generally, a paregoric could be understood to mean any soothing medicine (the word comes from the Greek pareēgorikos, or consoling). Therefore, Holmes is rather derisively telling Susan to take some medicine for her “wheeze” if she wishes to listen undetected in the future.
8 In 1861, the government decided that savings from all parts of the county of London could be collected at the rudimentary money-order branch of the post office, then transmitted to a central savings bank in London. The bank, designed to encourage the lower classes to save money, grew rapidly, and by 1883, over 2.8 million depositors had accounts there. The average balance was almost £14. By 1901, one in four used the system, for a total of more than 7.6 million depositors.
9 The great Italian Renaissance artist Raphael Santi (1483–1520)—Raffaello Santi or Raffaello Sanzio, in Italian—was given the nickname Il Divino, or “The Divine,” for the rare combination of transcendence and humanity that he brought to his paintings. The emerging Raphael borrowed certain techniques from Michelangelo, such as lighting and shading, but strove for a more serene and universal style, leading to his celebrated series of Madonna paintings, which exhibit a touching sweetness and sense of intimacy. As the architect for the Vatican, Raphael, an atheist, was commissioned by Pope Leo X to create ten large tapestries for the Sistene Chapel, depicting the Acts of the Apostles. These were hung by 1519. Raphael died on his thirty-seventh birthday and was buried at the Pantheon in Rome.
10 Published in 1623 by John Heminge and Henry Condell under the auspices of publishers Edward Blount and William Jaggard, this volume included all thirty-six of Shakespeare’s plays (excluding the disputed Pericles) and has widely been considered the authoritative Shakespearean text. Prior to the appearance of the First Folio, piracy in publishing was rampant and standards of authenticity difficult to enforce. Heminge and Condelle, Shakespeare’s fellow actors at the Globe theatre, undertook the project in an effort to correct the various inaccuracies that existed in published versions of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as to disown the plays that had been falsely attributed to him. The collection, entitled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Published According to the True Originall Copies, was nine hundred pages long and was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death.
11 In 1890, Queen Victoria designated a factory in Derby, which had been producing fine English China since 1750, as “Manufacturers of porcelain to Her Majesty” and allowed it to affix the word “Royal” to its name. The Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company (or simply Royal Crown Derby) produced delicate, richly decorated ivory and eggshell china, as well as officially sanctioned reproductions of porcelains from Persia and Japan. A piece of Derby china is distinguished by one of several marks, generally depicting a crown atop a “D” in blue or red.
12 Unwonted sarcasm, it seems.
13 This is surely a novel view of the services of a lawyer.
14 One of several annual directories of the residences and commercial establishments of London, such as the directory issued by the post office or the commercial directories issued by Kelly & Co. for various trades and cities (the name “Kelly’s” remains in use today for industrial directories).
15 Michael C. Kaser calls attention to the odd fact that while the label for Milan, affixed by Italian transportation authorities, gives the city name in Italian (“Milano”), the label for Lucerne—a German-speaking town—has been written in French. The Italian for Lucerne would properly be “Lucerna,” the German “Luzern.” Did Douglas Maberley’s baggage make an unintended detour through France on its way to Lucerne? Holmes’s eagle eye may have spotted that at least one of the bags could have been tampered with, and re-labelled, en route; hence his realisation that they would need to be carefully safeguarded and checked.
16 The three rock towers of the Langdale Pikes (named Harrison Stickle, Loft Crag, and Pike o’ Stickle) are located in England’s Lake District, now a national park. The area of mountains and lakes was once a favourite of literary figures, including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey, who became known as the Lake poets or the La
ke School. “Langdale Pike,” therefore, was likely a literary pseudonym.
17 It seems an inescapable conclusion that the club was White’s, at No. 37-38 St. James Street, whose famed bow window played a central role in the hierarchy of the already tony establishment. The window was built in 1811 directly over the entrance steps, replacing the old front door. Beau Brummell, the British dandy and raconteur, used to hold court in front of the window with his admirers and friends. But he was one of only a few select club members whose right to a window seat was unquestioned. As Ralph Nevill, in London Clubs: Their History and Treasures, relates, “an ordinary member of the club would as soon have thought of taking his seat on the throne in the House of Lords as of appropriating one of the chairs in the bow-windows.” Sitting exposed to the outside world, of course, proved tiresome when one was constantly being recognised; and so, Nevill continues, “It was decided, after anxious discussion, that no greeting should pass from the bow-window or from any window in the club. As a consequence, the hats of the dandies were doffed to no passers-by.” The fact that Langdale Pike, no matter how “strange,” spent so much of his time lounging by the bow window of “St. James’s Street” certainly speaks volumes about his status in London’s social world.
18 Holmes paraphrases the Bible here in assessing the lawyer’s conduct: “Thou trusteth in the staff of this broken reed.” Isaiah 36:6. Could Holmes have been insulted that Mrs. Maberley did not ask him to provide protection?
19 This is the only instance in the Canon in which Holmes collaborates with an unnamed Inspector. This may be another point for those who contend that “The Three Gables” is a work of fiction.
20 As Christopher Redmond notes, she is one of the “series of ambiguous Latin, yet English beauties who appear . . . in the later period [of Holmes’s career: Beryl Garcia of The Hound of the Baskervilles], Maria Pinto Gibson of ‘Thor Bridge,’ Emilia Lucca of ‘The Red Circle,’ Mrs. Ferguson of ‘The Sussex Vampire,’ . . . Senora Durando (Burnet) of ‘Wisteria Lodge.’” As late as the twentieth century, the “foreigner” (that is, any person not of English birth) was still viewed by the English with distrust and suspicion.
21 Holmes uses the phrase “She is pure Spanish” figuratively, one imagines. The province of Pernambuco had been ruled by the Portuguese, not the Spanish, since 1654 (and before that, the Dutch). Throughout the nineteenth century, Pernambuco rebelled against Portuguese rule in a series of armed insurrections, and in 1891 was finally made a state of the Brazilian Republic—whose own nobility, of course, was of Portuguese heritage. Pernambuco’s capital, Recife, is also known as Pernambuco, though it unclear whether Holmes is referring to the city or the state.
22 Literally, “the beautiful lady without compassion.” Holmes is likely alluding to John Keats’s poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1819), which in turn took its title and theme from a medieval poem by early French poet Alain Chartier. Keats’s ballad concerns a knight who, wandering through a meadow, falls hopelessly in love with a mysterious woman who is “Full beautiful—a faery’s child, / Her hair was long, her foot was light, / Her eyes were wild.” After a brief romantic encounter, the knight falls asleep and dreams of others who have fallen under the same woman’s spell. “I saw pale kings, and princes too, / Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; / They cried, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci / Hath thee in thrall!” Upon awakening, the knight finds himself alone and heartbroken.
23 “Underrated” in the Strand Magazine and book editions.
24 To calcine is to heat a substance to a high temperature just below the melting point, thus oxidising it or ridding it of moisture or other unwanted matter. In light of his training, one may forgive Dr. Watson for using such a technical word that essentially means “burned.”
25 As mild as the rescued excerpt of the manuscript seemed—“it was nothing to the bleeding of his heart as he saw that lovely face”—could it be that what unnerves Isadora Klein is not a sappy love story in which she plays the villain, but something more explicit? In In Bed with Sherlock Holmes, Christopher Redmond guesses that the rest of Maberley’s manuscript “might presumably have been racier; strong pornography was extensively written and read among the late Victorians, and a Maberley whose mind had virtually come unhinged because of the way a woman had treated him might possibly have produced some of it.” Indeed, he would have had plenty of source material: An 1872 appeal of the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” based in London, proudly reported that within the two previous years the society had been “the means of bringing to punishment, by imprisonment, hard labour, and fines, upwards of forty of the most notorious dealers [in pornography].” Nonetheless, the appeal continued, “these polluting productions are still circulated throughout the country, principally through the post-office, penetrating into the schools of both sexes.” Perhaps the most famous example of Victorian pornography is My Secret Life (1890), the supposed autobiography of “Walter,” a married gentleman who seeks pleasure with some 1,500 women. (It was written in language that surely would have made Holmes blush.)
Notwithstanding such titillating speculation, however, even a tame manuscript might well have caused Mrs. Klein’s mortification. “It must be stressed,” Redmond reminds us, “ . . . that it did not take X-rated material to make the stuff of embarrassment or blackmail for a respectable Victorian.”
26 Holmes’s bypassing of a fee in “The Three Gables” leads David Galerstein to contend that Isadora Klein’s five thousand pounds will not, in fact, end up entirely in Mrs. Maberley’s bank account. As Mrs. Maberley does not likely have the means to pay Holmes on her own, Galerstein theorizes that Holmes plans to deduct his fee from the amount first, then give the rest to his “client.” Holmes’s slippery sense of ethics is clearly on display here—money for freedom—and he is not shy about letting the guilty party know it. “When he asked for the money,” Galerstein observes, “he told Mrs. Klein he was compounding a felony ‘as usual.’ He was bluntly admitting that for a sufficient fee he would overlook a crime and that he had done so many times before.”
27 Taken as a whole, “The Three Gables,” though ostensibly written by Watson, raises a few scholars’ suspicions as to its true authorship. “The plot is fantastic and improbable,” writes D. Martin Dakin, “and is it likely that any real man would have the name of Langdale Pike?” Dakin takes particular umbrage at the characterisation of Holmes in this story. He is depicted as ridiculously cruel and unfunny toward the maid Susan, unashamedly open to bribery, and worst of all, racist in his dealings with Steve Dixie. “No admirer of Holmes can read these scenes without a blush,” Dakin laments. “For Holmes was a gentleman; and one thing no gentleman does is to taunt another man for his racial characteristics.” Suggesting that the author of “The Mazarin Stone” (which similarly failed in its attempt to portray Holmes as witty) might also have been the author of “The Three Gables,” Dakin deems this “the poorest story of all in the generally accepted Canon. . . . [I]t was neither written by [Watson] nor represents true history.”
Of course, Dakin’s view is in the minority, and the story remains securely in the Canon. Walter Pond cautions, “The only proper attitude for the Sherlockian scholar is to have confidence in the integrity of Dr. Watson and his literary agent and to accord proper respect to all the stories, whether or not they conform to our own notions of ethics or plausibility.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE1
That “The Sussex Vampire” is the genuine article—a Watsonian tale—is unassailable, which means that the suspicions that swirl around other stories in the Canon are blissfully nonexistent here. No scholar questions Watson’s report of Holmes’s great index, with references to Victor Lynch, the forger; the giant rat of Sumatra, “a story for which the world is not yet prepared”; Vanderbilt and the yeggman; Vittoria the circus belle; and Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder. References to Watson’s youth, when he played rugby for Blackheath, also support the authenticity of the account. There is no record of the
reaction of Watson’s friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to such a mystical tale. Doyle, who by 1924 was known as the “St. Paul of Spiritualism” and had committed his life to sharing his belief in the reality of the supernatural, might have harboured a particular fondness for “The Sussex Vampire.” In striking contrast to Doyle, Holmes declares himself to be a confirmed sceptic: When a supernatural explanation is proffered for the mystery at hand, Holmes remarks, “This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. . . . No ghosts need apply.” This is consistent with Holmes’s pragmatic attitude in The Hound of the Baskervilles, when he rejects a diabolical explanation: “In a modest way I have combatted evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task.”
HOLMES HAD READ carefully a note which the last post had brought him. Then, with the dry chuckle which was his nearest approach to a laugh,2 he tossed it over to me.
“For a mixture of the modern and the mediæval, of the practical and of the wildly fanciful, I think this is surely the limit,” said he. “What do you make of it, Watson?”
I read as follows:
46, OLD JEWRY,3 Nov. 19th.
Re Vampires
SIR,—
Our client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of Ferguson & Muirhead, tea brokers, of Mincing Lane, has made some inquiry from us in a communication of even date4 concerning vampires. As our firm specializes entirely upon the assessment of machinery the matter hardly comes within our purview and we have therefore recommended Mr. Ferguson to call upon you and lay the matter before you.5 We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.
We are, Sir,
Faithfully yours,
MORRISON, MORRISON, AND DODD.
per E.J.C.6
“Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,” said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. “It was a ship7 which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra,8 a story for which the world is not yet prepared. But what do we know about vampires?9 Does it come within our purview either? Anything is better than stagnation, but really we seem to have been switched on to a Grimms’ fairy tale. Make a long arm, Watson, and see what V has to say.”
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 91