The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (82 page)

31
.
226 Gordon Square
: The numbers of a square would never reach that high.

First published in the
Strand
in May 1892. Alternative titles: ‘The Mystery of the Beryl Coronet' (
Cincinnati Commercial Gazette
); ‘The Story of the Beryl Coronet'(
San Francisco Examiner
). The story could be set in or around 1890.

1
.
bow-window
: There were no bow windows in the houses on Baker Street and so the description offers no clue as to the identity of no. 221B.

2
.
the Metropolitan station
: Baker Street Station on what was then the Metropolitan Railway.

3
.
of the banking firm of Holder & Stevenson
: Based on the Glyn family, according to Dr Julian Wolff 's
Practical Handbook of Sherlockian Heraldry
(1955).

4
.
one of the highest, noblest, most exalted names in England
: A number of Holmes commentators have claimed the figure is based on Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII.

5
.
the beryl coronet
: Beryl, a silicate mineral, is composed mostly of the metal beryllium.

6
.
Streatham
: A south-west London suburb, halfway between Charing Cross and Croydon.

7
.
farthing
: In pre-decimal currency, a quarter of a penny. It was legal tender until 1961.

8
.
Do you go out much in society?… care for it
: Adapted from Charles Pooter's ‘No, candidly, Mr Merton, we don't go into Society, because we do not care for it', from George and Weedon Grossmith's
The Diary of a Nobody
, the first extract appearing in
Punch
in 1888.

9
.
my own son do
: A passing remark which has caused commentators much fun. The American detective writer Rex Stout mused in his piece ‘Watson was a Woman?' (
Saturday Review of Literature
, 11 March 1941) that Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey was Holmes's son, while Manly Wade Wellman suggested that Holmes junior was Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's infamous butler. A number of American newspapers ran a comic strip called ‘Sherlock Holmes Junior' from 1911 to 1914.

10
.
And now I must fly to my dear boy
: But what about the state of the coronet, which has been twisted out of shape and from which a piece has been broken off? How does Holder hope to get this repaired in time to hand it back to the noble exalted name?

First published in the
Strand
in June 1892. Alternative titles: ‘Adventures of the Copper Beeches' (
St Louis Post-Dispatch
); ‘The Copper Breeches' [sic] (
Minneapolis Journal
). The plot came from Conan Doyle's mother, who suggested a story about a girl with ‘beautiful golden hair, who, kidnapped and her hair shorn, should be made to impersonate some other girl for a villainous purpose'. The story could be set in or around 1889.

1
.
You have degraded… into a series of tales
: Contrast with Holmes himself in ‘The Blanched Soldier', from
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
: ‘Having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader.'

2
.
outside the pale of the law
: But Neville St Clair (in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip') would surely have been successfully prosecuted for wasting police time.

3
.
a weaver by his tooth
: Weavers were in the habit of cutting the thread with their teeth and would probably have a dental defect.

4
.
a compositor by his left thumb
: A compositor set type ready to print and might have had a callus on the tip of the thumb from holding the type down.

5
.
Montague Place
: Conan Doyle had rooms on this Bloomsbury street, at no. 23, in 1891 when he first moved to London. The property was demolished when Senate House, the University of London's administrative headquarters, was built in the 1930s.

6
.
Violet Hunter
: The first of several Violets in the canon. There is a Violet Smith in ‘The Solitary Cyclist', from
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
; a Violet Westbury in ‘The Bruce-Partington Plans', from
His Last Bow
; and a Violet de Merville in ‘The Illustrious Client', from
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
.

7
.
sweating – rank sweating
: i.e. as in a sweat shop where one works hard for little pay.

8
.
Winchester
: Cathedral city in Hampshire, and the capital of England in Saxon times.

9
.
dog-cart
: See ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip', note
7
.

10
.
Bradshaw
: Manchester printer George Bradshaw (1801–53), who drew up the first railway timetable in 1839.

11
.
Black Swan Hotel
: It stood on Winchester High Street and was recommended in the 1897
Baedeker
. The Black Swan was demolished in 1934.

12
.
acetones
: There are no acetones as such, just acetone, CH
₃
COCH
₃
, a colourless sweet-smelling liquid solvent.

13
.
Aldershot
: Hampshire town associated with the military since 1854. It
features again in ‘The Crooked Man', from
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
.

14
.
locus standi
: Latin, ‘rightful position'.

15
.
Walsall
: A Midlands town eight miles north-west of Birmingham in the heart of what is known as the Black Country.

First published in the
Strand
in December 1892. The story could be set in or around 1890.

1
.
Dartmoor
: It would be hard to find a more unsuitable place for racing stables than these 365 square miles of rolling moorland outcrop in Devon.

2
.
King's Pyland
: Probably Princetown, Dartmoor town and home of Dartmoor Prison.

3
.
Paddington
: See ‘The Boscome Valley Mystery', note
2
.

4
.
fifty-three and a half miles an hour
: The two fastest trains on the line, the
Zulu
and the
Flying Dutchman
, were given 87 minutes to get from Paddington to Swindon, a distance of 75 miles, for which they needed to average a speed of just over 51 miles an hour.

5
.
Silver Blaze
: Michael Harrison suggested in
Immortal Sleuth
that a possible source for the story was the Mordaunt scandal in 1869 involving a Sir Frederick Johnstone, owner of the horse, St Blaise, which in 1881 won the hat-trick of the Derby, the Oaks and Ascot Gold Cup.

6
.
Isonomy stock
: Isonomy was the horse that won the Cambridgeshire in 1878, and the Manchester Plate and Ascot Gold Cup in 1879 and the following year.

7
.
Penang lawyer
: A walking stick made from wood imported from Penang island off the coast of Malaysia.

8
.
landau
: See ‘A Scandal in Bohemia', note
34
.

9
.
vestas
: See ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip', note
13
.

10
.
long-cut Cavendish
: Flavoured tobacco pressed into cakes, named after the maker.

11
.
Weiss and Co., London
: At the time a real firm that specialized in optical instruments.

12
.
To the curious incident of the dog… That was the curious incident
: Probably the most famous Holmesism, apart from the apocryphal ‘Elementary, my dear Watson'.

13
.
Winchester
: See ‘The Copper Beeches', note
8
.

14
.
drag
: Private stagecoach drawn by four horses.

15
.
four-and five-year-olds
: There are no races reserved for four-and five-year
olds. Conan Doyle was criticized for the racing details in ‘Silver Blaze' – there is no mention of trainers, weights, pedigrees, ages of the horses or the time of the race – and he admitted in
Memories and Adventures
: ‘Sometimes I have got upon dangerous ground where I have taken risks through my own want of knowledge… I have, for example, never been a racing man, and yet I ventured to write “Silver Blaze,” in which the mystery depends upon the laws of training and racing. The story is all right… but my ignorance cries aloud to heaven.' A journalist in a sporting paper claimed that half of the characters would have been put in gaol and the other half warned off the turf if they had behaved as outlined in the story. Nevertheless Ellery Queen was captivated by the story and claimed it as ‘one of the five leading Sherlockian short stories'.

16
.
Fifteen to five
: The same as 3–1, and a term which is nowadays rarely used.

First published in the
Strand
in February 1893. Originally intended title: ‘The Livid Face'. The story was inspired by a meeting between Conan Doyle and the black civil rights leader Henry Highland Garnet on board the
Mayumba
in 1882. The story could be set in or around 1888.

1
.
the affair of the second stain
: Conan Doyle later wrote ‘The Second Stain' which appeared in the
Strand
in December 1904 and was later included in
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
.

2
.
the Park
: Probably Regent's Park near Baker Street, or possibly Hyde Park.

3
.
seven-and-sixpence
: The equivalent of 37
^½
pence.

4
.
brown wide-awake
: A soft felt hat with a broad brim.

5
.
Atlanta
: Now capital of Georgia, the city was captured and burned by General William T. Sherman in 1864 during the American Civil War.

6
.
but the yellow fever broke out badly
: There was never a bad outbreak of yellow fever in Atlanta, which lies about a thousand feet above sea level and does not have the kind of damp climate on which yellow fever thrives.

7
.
I have seen his death certificate
: Stuart C. Rand pointed out in ‘What Sherlock Didn't Know' (
Atlantic Monthly
, November 1945) that the state of Georgia and the city of Atlanta didn't issue death certificates until 1914.

8
.
Pinner, in Middlesex
: A district of north-west London, to the west of Harrow, named after the Pin, a tributary of the River Colne.

9
.
Norbury
: Conan Doyle had moved to Norwood, two miles south-east of Norbury, in 1891.

10
.
the station
: Norbury Station is situated on London Road, the A23, which
further north becomes Brixton Road, where James Ryder secretes the gem in the throat of one of his sister's geese in ‘The Blue Carbuncle' from
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
.

11
.
Jack
: Why does Grant Munro's wife call him Jack? Perhaps she is suffering from the same strain of absent-mindedness that makes Watson's wife call him James in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip', from
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
.

12
.
Crystal Palace
: Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace built of iron and glass to house the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park was the most progressive and far-sighted building of its age; it shocked the Victorians at a time when the fashion for revivalist Gothic was at its height. After the Exhibition the Crystal Palace was dismantled and re-erected in a part of Sydenham, two miles north of Doyle's Norwood home, that henceforth became known as Crystal Palace. The palace burned down in 1936 and the remnants were removed in 1941 during the Second World War, when it was considered to be helpful to enemy planes.

13
.
I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him
: The state of Georgia passed a law in 1865 which forbade marriage between ‘white persons and persons of African descent'. John Hebron and Effie may have married outside Georgia, but even so the union would not have been tolerated once they had arrived in Atlanta.

First published in the
Strand
in March 1893. The story could be set in or around 1889.

1
.
marriage
: See ‘The Noble Bachelor', note
2
.

2
.
Paddington district
: By the end of the nineteenth century the area around the railway terminus for trains serving the West Country was fashionable, and the grand stucco houses immediately south of the station on Norfolk Square and Sussex Gardens would have appealed to someone like Watson. Nowadays many of those houses have been converted into hotels and the Paddington area is shabby, as are the districts surrounding most of London's other railway termini.

3
.
St Vitus's Dance
: Popular name for acute chorea, which involves irregular involuntary contractions of the muscles. The name ‘St Vitus's dance' is medieval in origin and dates back to the dance mania epidemics associated with religious hysteria in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when people in the German Rhenish provinces made pilgrimages to the
Chapel of St Vitus in Swabia as the saint was supposedly able to provide a cure.

4
.
I trust that Mrs Watson has entirely recovered from all the little excitements connected with our adventure of the Sign of Four?
: Mrs Watson, then Miss Mary Morstan, was the heroine of that Holmes novella.