Stoker’s Dracula, an assemblage of excerpts from the journal of Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor, the diaries of Dr. Seward and Mina Harker, and various letters, combines many of the descriptive elements of the previous accounts of vampires: the pale, intelligent aristocrat with a hypnotically sexual allure, the backdrop of eastern European folklore, the ability of the monster to pass undetected through upper-class society. Stoker’s record is coy about the year in which the events of Dracula occurred, and Leonard Wolf, editor of the definitive Annotated Dracula, concludes that 1887 or any other year on a five-year cycle (that is, 1882 or 1892) would match the phases of the moon reported in the journal entries. Jonathan Harker ends by recording a visit to Transylvania “seven years” after the events, so the 1892 date can be discarded, and therefore 1887 seems most probable.
Sherlockians have their own theories about the extent of Holmes’s familiarity with vampires and speculate that he may even have been involved in the Dracula case. William S. Baring-Gould expresses surprise at the lack of an entry in Holmes’s index for “Vampirism in London,” for surely, he believes, Holmes would have kept clippings from the Daily-Graph, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Westminister Gazette, describing the attacks that Stoker’s account ascribes to Count Dracula. (Those same clippings are included in Dracula.) Yet Baring-Gould’s evidence is shaky, for he incorrectly ascribes the newspaper accounts to the year 1890, which Wolf demonstrates to be impossible.
Arthur Conan Doyle may have been familiar with these accounts as well. In 1894, he produced a novel entitled The Parasite, about a “psychic vampire,” Miss Helen Penclosa, an older woman who preys on her victims using hypnotic powers: that is, she doesn’t bite them. Professor Austin Gilroy, the narrator, falls under her spell and undertakes criminal acts, even threatening his fiancée with vitriol. In the end, Gilroy breaks free of Penclosa’s influence by an exertion of will. Somewhat predictably, Conan Doyle’s flight of fancy was not a popular success.
In The Carfax Syndrome, Kelvin Jones asserts that Holmes knew more than he let on to Watson—that he was acquainted with Bram Stoker and was moved to help investigate the mysterious affair involving Count Dracula. When the hunt for the count turned to Europe, Holmes also went abroad, joining Jonathan and Mina Harker and their companions. During the journey, he became involved in performing services for the royal family of Scandinavia and the French government. Most startlingly, Jones asserts that Miss Mary Morstan died of a vampiric attack, and that this fact alone spurred Holmes to investigate Ferguson’s case and cast aside his veil of rationalism.
Harold Niver concludes, from the publicity given to the events of Dracula, that Holmes must have known of the existence of at least one vampire. Why would he not admit it? Because, suggests Niver, Holmes and Dracula had reached a “peaceful co-existence” treaty? Or because Holmes had defeated Dracula himself, in the guise of Professor Van Helsing, the hero of Stoker’s account?
The latter theory is taken up in some detail by William Leonard, in the article “Re: Vampires.” Leonard, too, argues that Holmes must have known of the existence of Dracula. Leonard also considers the argument, first advanced by Jay Finley Christ, that Dracula and Moriarty were one and the same person, although Watson was unaware of the fact. “There were many things which Dr. Watson did not know,” explained Christ, as quoted by Leonard. Christ cited Holmes’s encounter with Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” in which the professor accused Holmes of having pursued him since January. “Here was a clue for Dr. Watson, but he muffed it,” Christ continued. “Moriarty and Dracula were two names for the same man. Mr. Holmes had been after him for over three months and began to catch up with him in January. Moriarty-Dracula knew this all the time, but Watson didn’t get it.”
Niver and Jones both ultimately conclude that Mrs. Ferguson was indeed a vampire and that Holmes concealed this information from her fragile husband, as well as from Watson. But their assumptions are roundly rejected in Thomas F. O’Brien’s careful work “Re: Vampires, Again.” Studying the physical descriptions of Van Helsing and Dracula in Stoker’s text and the ambiguity of Stoker’s reported dates, he concludes, unlike many Sherlockians, that Stoker’s work “must be relegated to the world of fiction. . . .”
And yet the power of the figures of Holmes, Dracula, and Moriarty is such that they may, in the minds of some, be forever linked. Numerous pastiches, parodies, and comic books essay the connection. Perhaps the finest is Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, envisioning an England ruled by Count Dracula, recently married to Queen Victoria, an England in which vampirism has become a mark of upper-class status. Sherlockian scholar David L. Hammer concurs with this civilised view of the traditional monster, writing, “Vampirism stands a fair chance of being regarded as essentially an eccentricity in England, provided of course the vampire observes good form, adheres to what is proper, eschews excessive public displays, and doesn’t harm birds or animals.”
While Holmes, Watson, and Robert Ferguson could not have read Stoker’s book in 1896, Watson most surely would have done so before writing “The Sussex Vampire,” which was not published until 1924. Watson might also well have seen Nosferatu (“The Undead”), the 1922 German film that was based on Dracula but that, being unauthorised, used different names for the characters. In the movie, Count Dracula becomes Count Orlok, and the vampire is depicted not as a stately nobleman or romantic creature but as having, in the words of Alan Ryan, editor of The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, a “hideous, ratlike appearance.” Nonetheless, the magnetism of Max Shreck’s performance must have reminded Watson that vampirism’s hold on the public was a powerful one, a fascination not to be easily dismissed.
1 “The Sussex Vampire” was published in the January 1924 issues of the Strand Magazine and Hearst’s International Magazine.
2 Theodore C. Blegen finds this remark disconcerting. “In case after case, the doctor has reported roars and explosions and even paroxysms of laughter by Mr. Holmes. I think we must, unhappily, assume another little lapse of memory on Dr. Watson’s part.” See “The Mazarin Stone,” note 32, for a more detailed discussion of Holmes’s pattern of laughter.
3 The area of London known as Old Jewry (originally “Jews’ Street”) was settled by Jewish refugees, fleeing persecution in other parts of Europe in the early part of the twelfth century. Forbidden from practising any business except the lending of money, the Jews, to whom many of London’s noble families now became indebted, were subject to periodic bouts of anti-Semitism on the part of the English public and the monarchy itself. In 1189, a riot instigated at Richard I’s coronation saw many Jewish families burned alive or clubbed to death in the streets of Old Jewry. The harassment continued and intensified until 1290, when the immigration of financiers from Italy prompted Edward I to take away the Jews’ state-imposed livelihood by banning them from practising usury. With the decree, some 15,000 Jews were expelled from London, the houses of Old Jewry confiscated by the crown.
4 “Of even date” means that Ferguson’s letter bore the same date as the lawyers’. The phrase is still common “legalese.”
5 The combination of vampires, tea brokerage, and a law firm specializing in machinery produces a rather strange marriage indeed. And later in the tale, Ferguson recounts that he met his Peruvian wife during a business transaction involving the importation of nitrates—which would not seem to have anything remotely to do with tea. Gordon R. Speck expresses scepticism of the entire situation in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire: Hoax, Jokes, and Hubris.” The combination of vampires, South America, and nitrates suggests to him that Ferguson may well have been involved with the importation of bat guano. Was Ferguson too embarrassed to admit how he made his living?
6 Who is E.J.C.? J. W. Scheideman, noting the careful, non-judgemental tone of the letter and its delicate balance between “fact and fancy,” concludes that the conservative Messieurs Morrison, Morrison, and Dodd would probably not have written such a fair-minded note themselves. “Perhaps E.J.C. was
a Cockney office-boy,” Scheideman ventures, “who boldly tackled Mr. Ferguson’s problem with a combination of common sense . . . and official form when other members of the firm hesitated.”
7 Richard W. Clarke discovers that the Matilda Briggs was owned by the Oriental Trading Company, based in Shanghai. Another, more intriguing angle is pursued by Edgar W. Smith, who calls attention to the ill-fated Mary Celeste. Found mysteriously abandoned between the Azores and Portugal in 1872, she had sailed from New York under the leadership of Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs. The captain had been accompanied by his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Briggs, and their daughter, Sophia Matilda Briggs.
8 This was probably the species Sundamys infraluteus, discovered by Guy G. Musser and Cameron Newcomb and reported in 1983 in their 270-page article in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. They describe the adult male, indigenous to the tropical forests of Sumatra, as weighing in excess of 22 pounds and measuring 24 inches long, including the tail. Having obtained six specimens for study, Musser and Newcomb note that the rat “is difficult to catch and its habits are unknown.” See “The Dying Detective,” note 14, for speculation on the giant rat of Sumatra in relation to Culverton Smith, who had lived in Sumatra and attempted to poison Holmes, probably with a tropical disease.
9 See “‘But What Do We Know About Vampires?’” page 1576, for an examination of the vampire literature with which Holmes, Watson, and their client might have been familiar.
10 A yegg, or yeggman, is a burglar or a safecracker. Although the exact origins of the term are murky, William Pinkerton, of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (see “The Red Circle,” note 17), believed both “yegg” and “hobo” to be related to gypsies. Excerpts from speeches given by Pinkerton between 1900 and 1907 reveal the following logic: “When a particularly clever thief is found among a gypsy tribe, he is selected as the ‘Yegg’ or chief thief. This expression is now adopted by the better class of thieves among tramps and hobos of this country. As late as twenty years ago, one tramp meeting another and wishing to be sure of his identity as a professional tramp would address him as ‘Ho-Beau.’ This expression subsequently developed into the word ‘hobo.’ If a tribe or band of tramps found among their number a particularly persistent beggar or daring thief, they, using the expression of the gypsies, called him a ‘Yegg.’ Then came the name of ‘John Yegg’ and finally the word ‘Yeggman.’ ”
11 One is tempted to connect this “wonder” with the famous ornate fin-de-siècle gilt and velvet auditorium of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, which opened in 1895 and was undoubtedly well known to the musical Holmes. Howard Lachtman identifies the “wonder” as a mechanical horse produced by the Vigor company. Its virtues are described in the accompanying advertisement.
12 Harold Niver suggests that Holmes may have obtained this information from the reverse side of the newspaper article he received from Hungary in the aftermath of “The Greek Interpreter” (“Months afterwards a curious newspaper cutting reached us from Buda-Pesth”). Or perhaps Holmes had some contact with Arminius Vambery, the Hungarian scholar who is said to have advised Bram Stoker in his research for Dracula and who may have been the model for that book’s Professor Van Helsing. See “The Musgrave Ritual,” note 7.
13 This region of central Romania was controlled by Hungary for much of its history, including during the Victorian era. Transylvania’s popular association with vampires originates with Vlad Tepes, the “real” Dracula, who ruled over neighbouring Wallachia, just to the south of Transylvania, in the mid-fifteenth century. A ruthless leader who is historically regarded in Romania as both a hero and a tyrant, Tepes executed his enemies and suspected traitors by impaling them upon stakes; this type of rule earned him the name Dracula, meaning “son of the dragon” (or, in some interpretations, “son of the devil”). Count Dracula, of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was a native of Transylvania, and the story of Dracula took place in a district just bordering Transylvania, “in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.”
14 Blackheath, for which Watson played, was an amateur rugby club founded in 1858; Richmond was formed in 1861. In 1871, these clubs were among the founders of the Rugby Football Union. See “The Missing Three-Quarter,” note 11.
15 In 1865, ten acres of the Old Deer Park—located near the Thames on the outskirts of Richmond, close to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew—were leased to the Richmond Cricket Club. In 1866, the Cricket Club let out ground to the Richmond Football Club (that is, the rugby club) for use in the winter. J.P.W. Mallelieu contends that despite Ferguson’s unequivocal statement, Watson never played rugby for Blackheath and that he was thrown over the ropes at the match Ferguson recalled when, drunk, Watson wandered onto the playing field (see “The Missing Three-Quarter,” note 13).
16 Perhaps selected by Holmes for its collegiate associations. See “The Creeping Man,” set in “Camford,” evidently Holmes’s university, where Holmes and Watson lunch at the “Chequers,” a pub recalled by Holmes with some fondness.
17 The carved, moulded, or drawn representation of a name using pictures, or some kind of hieroglyphic riddle.
18 Holmes refers to Eleanor of Castile, who accompanied her husband Edward I on a crusade to the Holy Land in 1270–1272. According to legend—possibly apocryphal—Eleanor saved Edward’s life by sucking the poison from a dagger wound in his arm.
19 Curare, an extract found in tropical plants, was used in poison arrows by native South Americans for warfare and hunting. Its active ingredient is an alkaloid that causes muscle paralysis, first in the facial region and then moving on to the limbs. Finally, the poison arrests the respiratory functions, often causing death. In modern medicine, curare is used as a relaxant, an anaesthetic, and a treatment for spastic paralysis.
20 While Holmes may have seen his answer in the spaniel’s injury, several scholars look at the same dog and see only controversy. Because curare acts first upon the facial muscles (which contain the most nerves), followed by those of the neck, chest, and limbs, the evidence that only Carlo’s legs were paralysed seems incongruous. Stuart Palmer, noting that curare “kills within minutes or has no effect at all,” speculates that the poison used was not curare at all, but possibly “an extract of the deadly nightshade, the Upas tree, or the venom of the Red Leech.”
“The spaniel Carlo should have died at once,” Mrs. Eleanor S. Cole confirms. Holmes himself has proclaimed that “it would mean death [for the child] if the venom were not sucked out,” and therefore, the same would be true for a dog, which would have weighed less. To explain Carlo’s seemingly miraculous survival, Mrs. Cole theorises that Jacky had second thoughts about his cruel action and was moved to suck some of the poison out of the wound, preventing the dog’s demise but not its debilitation.
F. A. Allen, M.P.S., contemplates that Jacky may have run a crude experiment on the dog, injecting a small amount of poison into Carlo’s back with “a dirty half-scraped arrow-tip.” The dog’s continued paralysis would have been largely attributable not to the poison, which would have lacked potency, but to infection or trauma caused by gouging the dog’s back with the arrow-tip. George B. Koelle agrees that Carlo was given a nonlethal dose of curare, and that the effects would have worn off in less than a day. Thus the veterinarian’s diagnosis of spinal meningitis might actually have been correct, he surmises (in which case Holmes’s deduction would have been little more than a fluke), or else the arrow tip might have damaged or otherwise traumatised Carlo’s sciatic nerve.
21 The dynamic between father and son here could surely fill an entire psychology textbook. Jacky is a clinging, jealous, troubled little boy; but his doting father seems all too blind to his flaws. “Psychologically [Jacky] is an interesting study,” D. Martin Dakin comments; “but we cannot acquit his father of some responsibility for his aberrations, by the sentimental way in which he treated him: to describe a boy of fifteen as ‘poor little Jack’ and ‘the dear lad,’ and to address
him as ‘dear old chap’ and ‘little Jacky’ does not encourage a healthy relationship in the family.”
22 Even D. Martin Dakin, who rejects from the Canon many of the stories in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, accepts “The Sussex Vampire” as genuine, citing the authenticity of “trivial details about the doctor’s early life” (for example, the mention of Watson’s rugby days) and Holmes’s immediate cynicism regarding the existence of vampires. The sarcastic Holmes is in full force here, as well, making wry comments such as, “I never get your limits, Watson. . . . There are unexplored possibilities about you.” While some scholars have noted that circumstances of the lame spaniel in “The Sussex Vampire” bear striking resemblance to those of the lame sheep of “The Silver Blaze”—in both, a would-be criminal practices upon an animal before turning to his human target—Dakin explains away the similarity by suggesting that little Jacky may have read “Silver Blaze,” and thereupon was struck by inspiration.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GARRIDEBS1
No scholar has yet found anyone with the genuine name of “Garrideb,” and the uniqueness of the name plays a critical rôle in this tale. “The Three Garridebs” is undoubtedly a late case, probably occurring in 1902, and it may well be that the criminal was a reader of Dr. Watson’s works, for the crime strongly resembles the deceptions employed in “The Red-Headed League” and “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk.” The case is most noteworthy for what it reveals about the partners: As in “The Devil’s Foot,” another late case, Holmes expresses a moving concern for Watson’s safety. Perhaps as a sign of Holmes’s age (48) or his impending retirement in 1904, Holmes and Watson’s relationship has grown from that of mere flatmates in 1881 to the closest of friendships.
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 94