Lots of Sherlockian news as usual! So let's get started:
The Noble Bachelors of St. Louis had their 50th anniversary dinner last month, attended by many members of The Parallel Case. Our very own Nellie was awarded Noble Bachelor of the Year, and the toasts to Holmes, Watson, and The Woman were all given by Parallel Case members.
A kickstarter campaign for wooden Sherlockian figures is going on now, and they look fabulous!
Another kickstarter campaign is going on for "The Irregular Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," a collection of new Sherlockian stories written for a younger audience. Parallel Case members Peter and Rob both have stories in the book.
We discussed the Sherlockian email exchange between 16 different scions and groups.
Lots of books were sold at the meeting to benefit the St. Louis Sherlock Holmes Research Collection.
A new Facebook group, 221 Be Here, has been formed after online harassment issues surfaced with a longtime Sherlockian.
The next Harpooners of the Sea Unicorn meeting will be this Friday.
Elementary returns for its final season on May 23, with a villain named Odin Reichenbach, and the return of Kitty Winter.
The Norwegian Explorers conference will be August 8-11.
A new Nicholas Meyer book will be released this October, "The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols."
The Left Coast Sherlockian Symposium will be held in Portland, OR on October 12 & 13.
The Kirkwood Theater Guild will be performing "The Game's Afoot, or Holmes for the Holidays" November 1-10.
The BSI Archive Conference will be held in Bloomington, IN on November 8-10.
Nicholas Hoult (Tolkien, X-Men: Phoenix Rising) has been cast as Sherlock Holmes in the upcoming Enola Holmes film.
Joe recently went down to southern Illinois to interview Bill Cochran for the BSI History Project.
And now, on to The Crooked Man!
*****
Holmes calls on Watson at home one summer night after Mrs. Watson had gone to bed. The group had lots of questions about Holmes' motives in these first few pages.
- Why did Holmes arrive so late, was he avoiding Mrs. Watson?
- What was the purpose of Holmes staying the night at Watson's home if they were going to leave so late in the morning?
- Did Watson need to be a witness in this matter? Holmes has gotten information without witnesses plenty of times (BERY, TWIS, SILV, etc.) And if he did, why not use Major Murphy, the man that brought Holmes in on this case?
We also get to see some of Holmes' quick deductions in these first pages. Holmes tells Watson that he's still smoking the Arcadia mixture, he's showing his military habits by keeping a handkerchief in his sleeve, no one is currently staying with him, a workman has been in the house, Watson has been busy in practice. Oh, and that his writing is meretricious. Heather pointed out that right after this we get to hear one of the few times that Holmes says, "Elementary."
Elaine posed some questions about Watson's servants. How many did he have? The Canon says servants - plural, so at least two. What roles would the Watsons have employed? Where did they live?
Holmes brings Watson up to speed on the Barclay murder investigation, telling him that the man and his wife had an argument that night behind a locked door, and ends with ominous words: "He was never seen alive again."
After Holmes had questioned the servants, the maid remembered hearing Mrs. Barclay say the name "David" twice. No one in the house was named David. Heather observed that maybe the Barclays' servants weren't as worried as they said to the police. Maybe this all started out with them trying to get some juicy gossip on the masters.
No one was able to question Mrs. Barclay about the previous night's events because she had brain fever. Rob pointed out that it's always brain fever! Nellie thought that the fainting spell could have been induced by Mrs. Barclay's corset, which led to some nice talk of the Enola Holmes books, where most of us learned about the terrors of Victorian corsets.
After investigating the crime scene, Holmes decided that a third person was in the room with Colonel and Mrs. Barclay and came in through the window. Holmes found prints of a man who came from the nearby road and ran across the lawn to the house.
And this mystery man had a small animal with him. Holmes describes a small four footed mammal to Watson.
Watson: It's a dog.
Holmes: It ran up the curtain.
Watson: A monkey.
Holmes: No, nothing I'm familiar with and it's carnivorous.
Holmes questioned Mrs. Barclay's friend, Miss Morrison, who had been with out with her before the deadly argument. He is able to get out of her that they were returning home when a crooked man carrying a box saw Mrs. Barclay and exclaimed, "My God, it's Nancy!" Mrs. Barclay said, "I thought you had been dead thirty years," to the man and then sent Miss Morrison on while she talked with the man. When Mrs. Barclay met back up with Miss Morrison, she was very angry and begged her friend not to say anything about this meeting to anyone. Michael wondered if this is the same Annie Morrison from our last story, The Reigate Squires.
Holmes tracked the man down. He was Henry Wood who had been in London for five days. He had a small furry animal in his box, had been performing in soldiers' bars, and paid for his lodgings in rupees.
While Holmes went off to collect Watson, he left Henry Wood's apartment under surveillance by Simpson of the Baker Street Irregulars. Rob noted that this is only one of three stories where the famed Irregulars appear, and it is the only short story in the entire Canon where these boys are mentioned.
This led to a description of the phrase "Street Arabs" used to describe the Baker Street Irregulars. Joe and Michael discussed the term "Arab," as referring to the nomadic nature of the people. So applying the word "Street" before it would have been a fair description for the time, even if it sounds off-putting to our present-day ears.
When Holmes and Watson arrive at Wood's apartment, he is huddled in front of a fire although it is summer. This led to a discussion on why Wood would be sitting there. Srini proposed that Wood was used to much warmer climates after having spent years in India and Afghanistan. Adam thought that Wood would have been using the heat from the fire to help the chronic pain from his twisted body.
Wood tells Holmes and Watson that "It was providence that killed [Barclay]," and then told his story of being betrayed into the hands of the Indian Army by Barclay. We discussed the problems with this story. First of all, it is only Wood's account, with nothing to back it up. Secondly, Barclay did not know that help was on the way, so his treachery not only doomed Wood, but the rest of his troop, himself, AND the woman he loved. Why would he do such a thing?
Nellie pointed out that Barclay's actions would warrant a court martial, at least.
Wood was kept prisoner for years and then escaped "North to Afghanistan." He then moved on to Punjab and eventually back to London. Srini produced a map and showed the group that going north from Bhurta (which is probably the city of Kampur) does NOT put you in Afghanistan. Wood's travel narrative doesn't hold up here.
After Wood saw Mrs. Barclay in London, he followed her home. From the road, he saw the couple fighting, rushed in, and at the sight of him, Colonel Barclay died, hitting his head on the fireplace fender on the way down. Michael described a fireplace fender for us, relating it to the piece of a car with the same name.
Wood then told Holmes and Watson about his pet, Teddy, which Watson recognizes on sight as a mongoose. We wondered why Watson would be able to identify the animal on sight, but not when he and Holmes were discussing the creature earlier.
This led to Elaine quoting Peggy Perdue's essay about this story in About Sixty, stating that the story "Rikki Tikki Tavi" came out around the time that chronologists have placed this story, so many English would be aware of the animal. Rob noted that Sherman the birdstuffer from SIGN had a pet mongoose named Slow-worm that Holmes and Watson didn't seem to remember when talking about the mongoose in this story. Kristen commiserated with Wood, wondering just how hard it would have been to catch a mongoose after everything that had gone on in that room and how agitated Wood would have been.
Major Murphy happens to be walking by Wood's apartment at this moment, and Holmes tells him that Barclay died of apoplexy and the problem is solved. Srini, a doctor himself, noted that it would be very rare to die of apoplexy so quickly.
We all wondered what happened to Mrs. Barclay and Henry Wood after the story ended. Did Mrs. Barclay stay in the house? Did Wood apply for his military pension? We will never know.
Watson asked what "David" had to do with all of this, and Holmes refers him to the books of Samuel in the bible. We discussed how likely it would be that Holmes and Mrs. Barclay would be familiar with the story of David and Bathsheba, being at it was a somewhat obscure story. Joe speculated that Mrs. Barclay was already involved with church activities with the Guild of St. George, so it could be presumed that she would have more of a religious leaning than the average woman. Nellie pointed out that Victorian upper and middle women had a lot of time during the day to read, and much of this reading time could have been devoted to biblical readings.
Rob cited Leslie Klinger's Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, saying that Holmes' saying the story would have been found in "the first or second of Samuel" proved that Holmes would not be a Roman Catholic, because he would have referred to those books as "the first or second of Kings." Christopher made the connection that David's first born son from his affair with Bathsheba died as an infant and the Barclays had no children of their own.
Branching off of this discussion, Michael filled us in on the Guild of St. George. We will close this month's post with his write-up. Our next meeting will be on July 13 to discuss The Resident Patient. Come at once if convenient!
The Guild of St. George
Real or Fictional?
In CROO, Nancy Barclay went to a charity event in Aldershot. Holmes tells Watson that Mrs.
Barclay “had interested herself very much in the establishment of the Guild of St. George, which
was formed in connection with the Watt Street Chapel for the purpose of supplying the poor with
cast-off clothing.”
Jack Tracy’s Encyclopedia Sherlockiana has a listing for The Guild of St. George with an
asterisk, indicating Tracy’s conclusion that it is a fictitious entity. Tracy was mistaken. The
Guild of St. George is real.
The Guild of St. George is a real charity, founded in 1871 by John Ruskin, an author, artist,
university professor, social commentator, and polymath. Ruskin established the Guild as a
utopian society with the goal of making ordinary working people and rural people in England
happier, through education in arts, beauty, and goodness, and by raising people from abject
poverty. In 1889, when Baring-Gould dates CROO, and in 1893 when it was first published, the
Guild of St. George was expanding. It is quite consistent with its mission to have a clothing drive
for the poor.
There is also a connection between the Guild’s founder John Ruskin and Arthur Conan Doyle
(“ACD”). Ruskin’s book The King of the Golden River, published in 1850, was illustrated by
Richard Doyle, a prominent commercial artist. Said Richard Doyle was known to ACD as
“Uncle Dickie,” for he was an older brother of ACD’s father Charles. That book was a very
popular children’s book, and has been reprinted many times. Several copies are available in our
local library today. ACD, born in 1859, most surely read it as a child. With the connection
between Ruskin and Dickie Doyle, the popularity that book, and the prominence of John Ruskin,
there is a high likelihood that the literary agent ACD was familiar with the Guild of St. George.
The Guild still exists and operates in the UK as a small educational charity trust.
https://www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk/
Take that, Jack Tracy!
