Before we started our discussion of The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, we started with Sherlockian news as usual. And this month, we had a big announcement!
Registration for our conference will open in May, and more news will be released soon. But mark your calendars, and come at once if convenient!
Other news items were discussed after we had our usual giveaways that included bookmarks, books and comics this month. Joe filled everyone in on the events of the BSI Birthday weekend in New York last weekend and all of the Sherlockian activities there.
New media interpretations of Sherlock Holmes were discussed, including Sherlock Gnomes, opening on March 23 and the Burger King toys available with the movie,
the announcement of the Enola Holmes movie series starring Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things,
HBO Asia's new take on the classic stories with Miss Sherlock,
and Elementary's return on April 30.
Randy discussed the upcoming Noble Bachelors of St. Louis event at the St. Louis Public Library next month. If you are interested in attending, please contact him this week.
Andrew gave a quick recap of the previous night's Harpooners of the Sea Unicorn meeting, and announced that their next meeting will be on February 16.
Rob promoted his blog, Interesting Though Elementary, and encouraged everyone to join him in reading as much of the Canon as they can in 2018.
We closed out the news section announcing the next meeting date for March, and found out that half of the people in the room couldn't make it! So, our next meeting has been moved to March 3 at 1:00.
Please note the change and plan to join us then!
It was then time to get into the story! COPP starts off with Holmes lamenting there's nothing to do and how bored he is, muttering the famous line, "Crime is common. Logic is rare." We noted it was nice that he didn't mention cocaine with this bout of boredom, though. The story also gives us call backs to SCAN, IDEN, TWIS, NOBL, and BLUE.
Violet Hunter shows up to ask Holmes' advice and his crabbiness has completely disappeared by the end of her introduction. Violet's story led to an insightful discussion on the importance of long hair to women in Victorian times. Long, luscious hair was seen as a sign of status and good health, and although hairstyles are more diverse today, women with short hair were generally considered to have something wrong with them in Holmes' day.
Violet's story also leads Holmes to muse twice that a sister of his would never accepted such a situation, a line that would launch thousands of speculations about the great detectives, family tree. And as he frets over Violet's predicament, we get another famous line, "Data! Data! Data! I can't make bricks without clay!"
This led to a good discussion about how Holmes views the world. He has seen too many crimes and behavior to appreciate a plaintive scene. His demeanor is one that can see many hidden aspects that the average person wouldn't pick up on. We discussed how all of us have our own form of that. Former firefighters look at houses as possible dangers, IRS agents view money and numbers differently than most folks, and teachers see kids as the type of students they would be in a classroom.
Doyle's use of imagery was also compared to Charlotte Bronte's and other Victorian writers. Nature is used to set the scene that everything is great, when behind the walls of manor houses, drama and intrigue unfold. This method is often employed in Gothic novels.
Once Holmes and Watson meet up with Miss Hunter, we noted how her characterization of the master of the house, Rucastle, and the married servants, the Tollers, were a great ploy to lull the reader into suspecting something other than the truth. Rucastle is the classic con artist, asking for one thing, and then one more thing, and just one more thing, until he has pecked away and gotten the whole situation that he could never ask for up front.
Although Violet spends a lot of time talking about Rucastle and the Tollers, Holmes has solved the case by paying close attention to what Violet says about their son, and announcing that someone has been imprisoned in the house. This led us to appreciated Holmes' early use of psychology in his detection and we noted how Doyle was always on the cutting edge of detection methods, whether it was psychology, fingerprints, or microscopes.
Holmes, Watson, and Miss Hunter go to rescue the trapped person, only to find out that she, Rucastle's daughter, has already escaped with the help of the Tollers. Discussing the ramifications of Rucastle imprisoning his own daughter led to a long discussion about inheritance crimes, the lack of legal protection for women in financial matters, brain fever, and the ability to imprison your own family members for a myriad of reasons until fairly recently. Although Jephro Rucastle may have been a despicable person, we weren't sure if he would've been able to have been convicted of a crime.
But Rucastle does try to stop Holmes and Watson by letting loose his dog, Carlo, which we said is probably the most abused dog in the entire Canon. Nellie pointed out that COPP has many similarities to The Hound of the Baskervilles, not just the large dog, and we talked about if Doyle had this story in the back of his mind as he created HOUN.
In the end, everyone except for Rucastle and his wife live happily ever after. Watson hoped that Holmes would stay interested in Violet Hunter, but to Watson's disappointment, Holmes is back to his focus on crime.
Thanks again to everyone who came out. There was a lot of great discussion from everyone there and we hope to see you at our next meeting on March 3 to discuss Silver Blaze!
