stonepicnicking_okapi | Entries tagged with sherlock sunday

Today we are looking at two stories.

"The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" was published in The Strand in March 1893.

The plot of this story is very near to that of "The Red-Headed League."

A person is lured from their designated place in order to further a financial crime. The poor victim is named...Hall Pycroft! He's lured from a new job so that someone else can take his place and rob his new employer and blame him.

"The Adventure of the Resident Patient" appeared in The Strand in August 1893.

Here we get a struggling doctor Percy Trevelyan who accepts a patient (a patient who lives with him in the practice offices) with A Past and two curious characters show up and take revenge on their former associate. This is very similar to the story of Victor Trevor's father and (in a way) to Mary Morstan's father.

I can't say either story is remarkable in my mind.

I found I had a horse sticker, so I did a collage of Silver Blaze.

"The Adventure of the Gloria Scott" is one of my favorite stories. This is the one where Holmes tells Watson about his first case and his friendship with Victor Trevor.

Trevor's dog bites Holmes on the ankle at university. And Trevor checks on him and they become pals.

Apparently, there is a lot of scholarly debate on topics which don't interest me. One is where Holmes went to uni: Cambridge or Oxford. And some scholars say that Trevor Senior's account of his past is so riddled with implausibilities and inaccuracies as to be not believable.

It's a very important story because we get Holmes' origin story as a detective. Holmes gets invited to the Trevors for the holiday and he does a decent deduction of Trevor Senior and the pater familias says,

I don't know how you manage this, Mr Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of fancy would be children in your hands. That's your line of life, sir, and you may take the word of a man who has seen something of the world.

'And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby.

And say what you will about Johns and Jameses and milk-drinking snakes with ears, but when ACD wanted to turn a phrase, he could bloody well turn it.

Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.

I did a drabble of it. I've done many before. It's just a great line.

Title: Ghosts
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Length: 100
Summary: Holmes visits Trevor in Terai after the Fall.

( Read more... )

And I love the last like about Trevor: "The good fellow was heartbroken at it, and went out to the Terai tea planting, where I hear he is doing well.

And I would like to visit the Broads one day.

"The Adventure of the Yellow Face" was published in February 1893 in The Strand.

We get mention of an early spring ramble by Holmes & Watson:

One day in early spring he had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms, and the sticky spearheads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their five-fold leaves. For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately.

Much like the client in the Blue Carbuncle and his hat, Grant Munro leaves a pipe behind and Holmes does a bit of deduction (which I had forgotten about) which is solid.

BUT Holmes makes very bold speculations on practically no evidence with regard to Munro's domestic matter. He instructs Watson to whisper 'Norbury' in his ear whenever he becomes arrogant. I wonder if Watson ever made good on that suggestion.

But the mystery is race, Mrs. Munro had a black child by her first husband which she is endeavoring to conceal from her second husband. But Grant Munro does the right thing:

It was a long two minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence, and when his answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife, and turned towards the door.

'We can talk it over more comfortably at home,' said he. 'I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.'

We are moving into the second collection of stories called The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

Horses!

silverblaze2

"The Adventure of Silver Blaze" is the one about horse racing.

Inspector Gregory asks Sherlock Holmes to accompany him at the stables of Colonel Ross in Dartmoor. A stable boy, Ned Hunter, was drugged after chasing a parasite tipster, Fitzroy Simpson. Soon after, Silver Blaze, the Wessex Cup champion has disappeared.

It gives us the second reference to the deerstalker which became an iconic symbol of Holmes and of detectives in general.

Sherlock Holmes, with his sharp eager face framed in his ear-flapping traveling cap

It gives us this Paget drawing which appears a lot in fandom icons.

And we get Holmes talking about 'the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime' [the fact it didn't bark] which has become shorthand for negative inference.

Also, I want to reproduce what ACD said in response to criticism of it.

I read an excellent and very damaging criticism of the story...he explained the exact penalties which would come upon everyone concerned if they'd acted as I described. Half would be in jail, and the other half warned off the turf forever. However, I have never been nervous about details, and one must be masterful sometimes.

Please quote that last bit at any hate comments on your fic and consider yourself in good company.

I did a couple of ficlets.

Title: Pragmatic
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Length: 200
Prompt: pragmatic
Notes: References to "Silver Blaze"
Summary: John Straker's mistress is not ashamed.

( Read more... )

Title: Superior
Author:

stonepicknicking_okapi
Rating: Gen
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Characters/Pairing: Watson & OC
Prompt: Superior
Warnings/Notes: Reference to Silver Blaze
Summary: A new client reminds Watson of Colonel Ross.

( Read more... )

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"The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" is a dark story about three sisters and a love triangle and the nasty effects of alcoholism and jealousy.

Holmes, Watson and Lestrade visit Susan Cushing, who has just received by mail two human ears in a cardboard box.

box

I had read somewhere that 'brown study' (meaning a vacuous or melancholy state of mind) was racist but apparently it comes from William Congreve's An Imposible Thing: Invention flags, his brain grows muddly, / And black despair succeeds brown study.

We get a Dupin style 'train of thought' deduction by Holmes of Watson, which is nice. And we get Holmes' fascination with Paganini (which I did a whole fic about). But, in general, I think we are left feeling like Holmes when he asks Watson at the end:

What is the meaning of it, Watson? ... What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?

First I want to show off this gift of a BBC Sherlock oversized coaster/quilt square from

bethctg:

She says the fabric is available on etsy.

Now, we are looking at "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches." We meet the first of our Violets, Violet Hunter.

Miss Violet Hunter seeks advice from Holmes about his commitment as governess at The Copper Beeches, a house near Winchester. His employer Jephro Rucastle, offered her very high wages but ask strange requirements: having her hair cut and wearing a specific dress. She refused at first but Mr. Rucastle offered even more money. Holmes promises to help if the need arises and Violet accepts the job. A few days later, Holmes receives a telegram from Miss Hunter who asks him to come quickly to Winchester.

In this story we get some interesting parts of Holmesian canon. One of my favorite is Holmes' dread of the rural countryside. It's a quirky part of his personality which makes him more interesting to me. Here's a quote:

But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.

Also there is the recurring motif that if something appears too good to be true, it probably is. The job being offered to Miss Hunter is one based in wickedness and greed and cruelty. It is darker than the ruse in The Red-Headed League and even that the one in The Engineer's Thumb.

( <b>Spoiler/Warning: discussion of Watson shooting the dog dead before it can kill the villain.</b> )

It is a dark, Gothic tale and I was thinking it might be a good choice for my werewolf/vampire AU when I read the last notation in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes which talks about what happened to Baby Rucastle, the 6-year-old Violet is hired to be governess for. He is kind of a creepy, cruel kid (his father first describes his tendences to kill cockroaches with a slipper very quickly) but it is never mentioned what happened to him after the case but the father is an invalid and the mother takes care of the father. Edward (the kid) has an abnormally large head and sadistic tendencies and Carlo (the dog) has projecting bones, so there is a specualtion among one Sherlockian critique that they are the same being and the boy is werewolf! *rubs hands together and mutters 'fits right into my plans'*

Here's Holmes lighting his pipe with a glowing cinder because he is EXTRA!

So that is the end of the first collection (except the Blue Carbuncle which, naturally, will be done at Christmastime so we are on the Memoirs!

"The Case of the Noble Bachelor" was published in the UK in April 1892.

In this case, Lord Robert St Simon visits Sherlock Holmes because his fiancée, Miss Hatty Doran, disappeared on the day of their wedding.

So it turns out Hatty's first husband (thought dead) pops up at the wedding, and she runs away with him. And Holmes thinks it would be a great idea to invite everyone to supper (the happy reunited couple, Watson, and the Noble Bachelor of the title, Lord Robert St. Simon, who loses his rich American heiress.). That seems a bit mad, to be honest.

Did Hatty commit bigamy by not stopping the service and making a scene at the church (when she sees her thought-dead first husband)? She did marry another man while being aware (by minutes) that her husband was still alive.

"The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet"

In this case, the banker Alexander Holder goes to Baker Street to tell Holmes his story: he lent £50,000 to a client (thought to be the Prince of Wales) who gave him as collateral the famous beryl coronet. Of course, the coronet is stolen, mangled and three of the stones lost.

Beryls are stones which, when colored, are gems. Green beryls are emeralds. Blue-green beryls are aquamarines. The story doesn't tell us what color these beryls are.

Holmes determines that it was the banker's niece and not his son who is responsible for the theft, aided by an unscrupulous older lover Sir George Burnwell.

I said during Sherlock 60 that I think the relationship between uncle and niece is a bit fishy and the fact that she escapes with a disreputable older man confirms my suspicions.

I am using The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes edited by Leslie Klinger and there is a note by one critic that whenever Holmes has occasion to pull a gun, he gets as near as possible to the person, this critic claimes, owing to poor marksmanship. And in this story he does 'clap a pistol to Burnwell's head.'

Also, they say that even damage to the coronet would be bad and it is damaged, twisted and stones broken off, but the banker runs off at the end to make amends with his son whom he had falsely accused instead of to a goldsmith to get the thing repaired by Monday when the Prince of Wales wants it back. But could the Prince of Wales pawn a public item, national treasure such as that? Hmm.

beryl

So this Sunday, I thought I'd look at body parts, specifically lips and ears.

The most striking thing about "The Man with the Twisted Lip" is Watson's wife calling him James instead of John (as he is referred to in all the other stories). There are many theories about What it Means. I just think it's ACD being careless but I think the theories are fun.

So Watson does a favor for a friend of his wife's and pops the husband out of an opium den. In the process of this, he stumbles upon Holmes who is investigating the disappearance of Neville Saint-Clair. To cross over with my Edward Gorey collage, perhaps Neville died of ennui! Ha! No. It's a decent story, but it grates for 2 reasons: 1. the 'reveal' involves Holmes wiping Saint-Clair's face and removing his make-up/disguise. Theatrical make-up is not that easy to remove. and 2. I don't like the underlying assumption about homelessness. It smacks of that conservate myth that homeless people are making/could make a lot of money if they begged properly (so they shouldn't receive help, public or private, because they're really okay, leading to the 'welfare queens' myth).

Five years ago, I tried my hand at Paget's illustration of Holmes in his large blue dressing gown.

"The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" is from March 1892. One of Watson's patients acquires his injury by means that seem like a case, so Watson takes him to Holmes. The engineer almost gets squished by a hydraulic press used by counterfeiters. One source I read said ACD got the idea from Wilkie Collins' story about the mysterious bed, which I like a lot.

I posted this video back in the Sherlock 60 days. These guys prove that Hatherley could not have gotten his thumb chopped off the way ACD describes.

Watch on YouTube

This Sunday, we'll look at two stories, published in October and November of 1891.

You can be permitted for forgetting about The Boscombe Valley Mystery. It's a rather forgettable story. The one about the Australians. So, with Mary's blessing, Watson is dragged away from his home and office (and poor Anstruther is left with his caseload at short notice) and goes off to join Holmes.

However, we do get mention of the silhouette of Holmes and the outfit which would become iconic:

Sherlock Holmes was pacing up and down the platform, his tall, gaunt figure made even gaunter and taller by his long grey travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap.

So there is a small deduction of Watson's shaving routine. And we get close scrutiny of footprints. And there's a convenient amount of bigamy at the end. And it's the opposite of fair play because you would have to have a detailed knowledge of Australia to figure out the dying man's last words. And Agatha Christie used this device too but made it South Africa and Kenya, too, I believe, partners doing other partners out of their fair share of a mine or swindling in the colonies which follows them back to the mother land.

Oh, and Lestrade is there.

"The Five Orange Pips" is about the Klan. It's a sad testament that the Klan no longer have to threaten their enemies with dried seeds, they can put on business suits and get elected to high political office and do what they will. I did feel a kind of empathy for Watson. So, the storm blows over, and the morning is clear, and he find in the newspaper a report of Openshaw's murder. It sort of parallels our own feeling every day when you open up your news feed and find the White Supremacists in Power have pissed on another of our freedoms.

I do think Holmes is rather reckless to let Openshaw go that evening. And ACD employs his favorite way of dispatching villains: drowning at sea.

I'm jumping around a bit in the first collection of stories The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" was published in February 1892. ACD got the idea for the story from an article in Nineteenth Century by Sir Joseph Fayrer about the Indian adder.

We get Holmes being kind to an abuse victim. And showing physical strength by unbending a bent fire poker. We get the deduction of the dog cart (which I think BBC Sherlock cribbed for the deduction of the Pink Lady's legs).

I once made the band an original character in the Inky Quill & Co 'verse. The band's name was Cyril Monteverdi No-Legs, and he liked opera.

Also, in real life, I have actually been even closer to a baboon than Holmes and Watson. When I visited Akagera safari reserve in Rwanda, a baboon entered the breakfast room and stole the jam off my table, the jam I was using! They really are fierce, strong, and intimidating creatures with a kind of blunt playfulness.

Quotes I like:

1. When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. [This is the money quote, right? The jackpot. Say what you will about continuity, but when ACD turned a phrase he turned it!]
2. These are very deep waters...
3. 'It is not cold which makes me shiver... [said in the right voice, this is very effective]
4. This exchange between Roylott and Holmes [the sass!]:

'I will do nothing of the kind. My stepdaughter has been here. I have traced her. What has she been saying to you?'

'It is a little cold for the time of the year,' said Holmes.

'What has she been saying to you?' screamed the old man furiously.

'But I have heard that the crocuses promise well,' continued my companion imperturbably.

So I did a collage. I realized when doing the junk journals that I really enjoy doing the edges, finding fun ways to trim the outer edge of the page, but for some reason, I haven't done that with my collages so I am going to start because it really is great fun. So see the gold cord for the Valentine pink and this one on the other side.

The first episode (1979) of the old Russian Holmes (aka Livanov Holmes) dealt with this story, along with Holmes & Watson's introduction, and I thought that the (probably) practical considerations of production budget, the dousing a lot of the set of darkness produced an extra sinister and eerie effect, which works very well, I think.

Watch on YouTube

I listened to an audiobook version of "A Case of Identity," and the main reaction, which I always have to this story, is pure rage.

Tell her!

Here's the plot: Mary Sutherland's stepfather (under a false identity named Hosmer Angel) woos then jilts his stepdaughter so that she will not marry and keep supporting himself and Mary's mother financially, and Holmes solves the case but chooses not to reveal the truth to his client:

'If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old Persian saying, "There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman." There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.'

I've written plenty of rage-fic & dark fic, even dark poems, over the ending of this case.

But apparently this is also based on a true story. A young girl named Joan Paynter consulted ACD himself about her missing fiancé and ACD found the guy but convinced the young lady that he wasn't worth the trouble.

Here's Holmes at the end taking two steps toward the whip to give it to Mary's stepfather, but he lets him go.

It's February, a month often associated with red because of Valetine's day, so let's do "The Red-Headed League."

The moral of the story is one ACD comes back to over and over again: if it sounds too good to be true, it is. A worker who works for half wages is probably up to no good. And a scheme where you copy out an encyclopedia for four pounds a week, likewise.

We get a call-back to next week's case of Mary Sutherland even though this story was published a month before that one. This is another habit of ACD: 'these things happen' is what he said when someone pointed out he put a river in Utah many, many miles from where it actually runs, going forward that's what I will call it. 'These things happen.' James, John, Mary Morstan's mother, the case in a year when Holmes was dead, etcetera. 'These things happen.'

We also see in John Clay the dress rehearsal for Moriarty as the robbery was 'ripped from the headlines' in the form of the robbery of a Boston bank where Adam Worth bought the house next door and started tunneling. Worth (late 19th c. crime boss and fraudster) is said to be the inspiration for Moriarty.

We get a deduction of Jabez Wilson, which I like, and a lot of lines which often appear in later adaptations (e.g., 'I wouldn't miss it for the world!').

Listening to it yesterday in audio version, I noted the 14-year-old girl in the house of Jabez Wilson. She's only mentioned once, but I think it would be interesting to expore what role she might have in the case.

I think I wrote an AU of this with my Vampire Holmes/Werewolf Watson AU but I can't find it. :(

In this story, we get insight into Holmes' love of music, with him and Watson attending a performance by Sarasate. So have the Granada version of this.

Watch on YouTube

The real Sarasate.

I put together this simple moodboard for the short story which gives us Irene Adler:

I understand that after writing two novels [A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four], Arthur Conan Doyle was bored with his medical practice [can you imagine being one of his patients at this time??] and he whipped this story out in a matter of days and was so pleased he wrote four more (which ended up in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collection.).

And I think BBC Sherlock "Irene's Theme" is very pretty.

Watch on YouTube

a beach in winter with the sand covered in snow text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in cursive font colours blended with the skyline

Challenge #9

In your own space, create a fanwork.

This is my Sherlock Sunday entry #2 for 2025.

The Sign of Four is the second of four Sherlock Holmes novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Interesting fact: Oscar Wilde and Doyle attended a party in 1899 sponsored by Lippincott Publishing and both ended up with book deals by the end of it. The Wilde book was The Picture of Dorian Grey and Doyle's was The Sign of Four

I listened to an audiobook version of The Sign of Four with David Timson as narrator who does a solid job. And I made a collage. (a physical collage made with sticker and paper in a notebook and scanned).

The Sign of Four is where Watson gets a wife and we see Holmes' cocaine addiction. We meet the Baker Street Irregulars and a certain dog named...?

The dog in the collage is the only dog sticker I had. He doesn't look like that in the book! I included 6 pearls for the ones Mary receives from an anonymous benefactor and a map of the Andaman Islands. It's unlikely that kind of shaped bottle would hold cocaine but the other ones were less likely.

One of the best parts of The Sign of Four is that we get the Watch deduction which BBC Sherlock riffed on in the first episode of that series. And the scene in the cab of Sherlock explaining the clues from John's phone has to be one of my very favorite scenes in all of fandom.

Watch on YouTube

And a drabble I did inspired by the phrase 'neat Moroccan case' which we get in The Sign of Four

Title: Neat Moroccan case
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Rating: Gen
Length: 100
Prompt: confused
Notes: Angst. set during Hiatus (when Holmes is 'dead')
Summary: Watson tries to find a cause for his bad mood.

( Read more... )

Challenge #6

Share your favourite piece of original canon.

I am going to attempt to start a Sunday Sherlock tradition (doing a post about Sherlock Holmes on Sundays).

So have a moodboard or two. And a favorite piece of Sherlock Holmes canon (meaning the original novels and short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle) is that there are a lot of Violets in it.

A collage or two (Holmes themed & Watson themed):

And the nice thing about Holmes canon is that there's always something new to learn. For example, I did not know that ACD was paid 25 pounds for A Study in Scarlet and that in the novel reprint in 1888 included drawings by ACD's father, Charles Doyle. Here's one of them: