Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches I

by Bill Peschel

  “Almost at once the idea that he had been living a double life occurred to me, his intention doubtless being to quietly drop one individuality after committing the crime and permanently take up the other—a far safer and less clumsy expedient than the usual one of assuming a new disguise just at the moment when everybody is expecting and looking for you to do so.

  “Then there were the interesting facts relating to Booth’s picture and books. I tried to put myself in his place. He valued these possessions highly; they were light and portable, and there was really no reason whatever why he should part with them. Doubtless, then, he had taken them away by degrees and put them someplace where he could lay hands on them again. If I could find out where this place was, I felt sure there would be every chance I could catch him when he attempted to recover them.

  “The picture couldn’t have gone far for he had taken it out with him on the very day of the crime … I needn’t bore you with details … I was two hours making inquiries before I found the house at which he had called and left it—which was none other than Mrs. Thackary’s in Glossop Road.

  “I made a pretext for calling there and found Mrs. T. one of the most easy mortals in the world to pump. In less than half an hour I knew that she had a boarder named Winter, that he professed to be a commercial traveler and was from home most of the time. His description resembled Booth’s save that he had a mustache and wore glasses.

  “As I’ve often tried to impress upon you before, Watson, details are the most important things of all, and it gave me a real thrill of pleasure to learn that Mr. Winter had a cup of chocolate brought up to his bedroom every morning. A gentleman called on the Wednesday morning and left a parcel, saying it was a picture he had promised for Mr. Winter, and asking Mrs. Thackary to give it to Winter when he returned. Mr. Winter had taken the rooms the previous December. He had a good many books which he had brought in from time to time. All these facts taken in conjunction made me certain that I was on the right scent. Winter and Booth were one and the same person, and as soon as Booth had put all his pursuers off the track he would return, as Winter, and repossess his treasures.

  “The newly taken photo and the old blotter with its telltale note were too obviously intentional means of drawing the police onto Booth’s track. The blotter, I could see almost at once, was a fraud, for not only would it be almost impossible to use one in the ordinary way so much without the central part becoming undecipherable, but I could see where it had been touched up.

  “I concluded therefore that Booth, alias Winter, never actually intended to sail on the Empress Queen, but in that I underestimated his ingenuity. Evidently he booked two berths on the boat, one in his real, and one in his assumed name, and managed very cleverly to successfully keep up the two characters throughout the voyage, appearing first as one individual and then as the other. Most of the time he posed as Winter, and for this purpose Booth became the eccentric semi-invalid passenger who remained locked up in his cabin for such a large part of his time. This, of course, would answer his purpose well; his eccentricity would only draw attention to his presence on board and so make him one of the best-known passengers on the boat, although he showed so little of himself.

  “I had left instructions with Mrs. Thackary to send me a wire as soon as Winter returned. When Booth had led his pursuers to New York, and there thrown them off the scent, he had nothing more to do but to take the first boat back. Very naturally it chanced to be the same as that on which our friend Lestrade returned, and that was how Mrs. Thackary’s wire arrived at the opportune moment it did.”

  Sparks from the Troubleman’s Department

  L.A. Robbins

  Although the telephone had been in development through much of the 19th century, there were still many improvements that needed to be made, not only to the phone itself, but the network of wires that phone companies raced to string and repair. Enter the troubleman, whose job was to deal with all kinds of problems, such as stuck ringers, downed wires, and grounded cables. “Sparks” is not the story’s title, but the name of a humor column in Telephony, an industry magazine. Nothing is known of its author.

  Now that the mysterious disappearance of Sherlock Holmes and myself has ceased to occupy space on the first pages of the newspapers I will jot down briefly the circumstances of our vanishing from public view.

  We were seated in our study one evening. Holmes was wrapped in one of his meditations. I had been looking at a magazine.

  “But where, Watson, shall we go?” asked Holmes suddenly.

  “That very question was on my lips,” I exclaimed. “You are a mind reader, surely, to have known it.”

  “Not at all,” the great detective answered, lighting his pipe. “The process of deduction is very simple. You have just been reading Conan Doyle’s latest yarn about us.”

  “Yes”

  “Your thought was that we must hide where he could never find us to get any more stories out of us.”

  “You divine it exactly,” I answered. “We must bury ourselves alive. But where will that be possible?’

  “I know a sure way for us to lose ourselves from the knowledge of our fellows without even leaving town,” said Sherlock.

  “What must we do?—stain our faces and dress as Spaniards?”

  “No.”

  “Wear false whiskers and ride about in invalids’ chairs?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you’d like us to disguise ourselves as an organ-grinder and a monkey?”

  “No, my dear Watson; your guesses are as wide of the mark as usual and show what an ordinary mind you have. We will continue to go our way about the city in our customary clothing and complexion, and we will even stay here in these apartments. But we will have our telephone taken out and our names removed from the telephone directory, and nobody will ever be able to find us again.”

  The Duchess of Quinton’s Diamonds

  Frank Richardson

  This is the second appearance in this series of a story by Frank Richardson (1870-1917), after “The Humility of Holmes” in the 1905-1909 volume. The Oxford-educated barrister was the bee’s knees of British humorists. His books were praised, his bon mots were quoted in newspapers, and he was a popular man about London. This and the following entry are from Love and Extras (1911).

  Professor Murderarty, admirably disguised as a vendor of pork pies, stood outside the roundabout which was doing enormous business at the village fair. Little did the yokels who purchased delicacies from his tray suspect that he was the chief of the International Crime Bureau.

  A stolid country policeman exchanging badinage with him was interrupted by a quasi-imbecile of the Silly Billy type, dressed in a smock frock and chewing a straw. In semi-incoherent language the young man applied for a free sample of the pseudo-pieman’s wares. Murderarty flashed a sinister glance at him:

  “I am giving away no free samples,” he snapped. “My pies are a penny apiece.”

  The moon-struck one gaped with mouth wide open.

  Suddenly his mouth shut like a trap.

  He flung off his battered haystack-shaped straw hat and revealed a gent’s heather mixture deer-stalker cap.

  “I have no penny,” he said, as from beneath his smock frock he produced a pair of handcuffs, “but I have a warrant for your arrest. Watson, you will find the Duchess of Quinton’s diamonds in the third pie from the middle.”

  A. CONAN DOYLE.

  M(ainly) A(bout) D(uchesses)

  Frank Richardson

  It must be confessed that this is neither a parody nor a pastiche. It is tangentially related to Holmes through the mention of a famous actor. Instead, treat this as a meditation on the different ways cultures view humor and the rickety structure on which fame can be based.

  Take Frank Richardson. Although he was one of Britain’s most popular humorists, he is forgotten today. Much of what one generation finds funny, future generations do not. In Richardson’s case, it might have been the fun he made of facial hair
, which displayed signs of being a compulsion. It was so pronounced that newspaper writers would draw him in when the subject came up, as in this story on the popularity of soldiers wearing moustaches: “And Eve is overcome with emotion when Adam returns from the front with what Mr. Frank Richardson would call a complete set of face fittings.” After his death, one newspaper observed that “his particular topic of humour was the subject of whiskers, which he discovered by accident and perhaps worked it for rather more than it was worth. But his treatment of it was hailed at the time as an amusing innovation, and by pen and pencil, and by judging at seaside male ‘beauty-shows,’ it cannot be said that he was wholly unsuccessful in his peculiar hobby.” Sic transit gloria mundi.

  Statement of claim: Owing to the immense failure of my last two articles on Dukes, I am compelled to admit that writing about men of this sort is not my specialty. I did my best. But my best was no earthly good. Dukes did not like it. Readers of The World did not like it. And the Editor of The World hated it. But even Napoleon was not always successful. He had his Waterloo. Dealing with Dukes was my Waterloo.

  With Duchesses, however, I am on firm ground. I know all about Duchesses. Of course, I don’t know Duchesses—to speak to. If I did, I would not venture to write about them. But I claim to be able to place on paper a word-picture of Duchesses as they are to-day. I have had exceptional facilities.

  And for this reason. My aunt, Mrs. “Ben” Cohen—you may have met her, because she knew all the best people in Bayswater—once interviewed a Duchess for the character of a servant. Mrs. “Ben” Cohen (who is unhappily no longer with us) lived in Westbourne Terrace.

  This event—this very great event in her career—occurred when I was a boy at Marlborough. Often and often have I met her blocking the traffic between the What Not and the Oddment Departments at Whiteley’s in order to describe to astonished and delighted matrons the demeanour of the Duchess. At great length she was wont to explain the surroundings of the Duchess, the approach to the Duchess’s boudoir, the manner of the Duchess, the refinement of the Duchess, and—eventually, I regret to say—the untrustworthiness of the Duchess—as an expert in under-housemaids.

  Still, this is a liberal education for me. Just as the late Mr. Wilson Barrett in his youth swore that he would one day act Hamlet at the Princess’s Theatre, so I swore that I would—in the fullness of time—write about Duchesses in The World. Very few prophets, even the greatest prophets, live to see their prophecies fulfilled. My prophecy is being fulfilled. Therefore I take somewhat high rank as a prophet. There is a great demand for really trustworthy prophets nowadays, especially in the sporting and the weather lines.

  Scene: The hall in St Odol House, Curzon Street, the superb residence of the Duke of St Odol. The time is 10.15 p.m. Up the double marble staircase are swarming women—painted, perfumed, and décolletées, with alabaster shoulders, sumptuously gowned, marvellously tiaraed. At the lowest estimate there are twenty million pounds’ worth of diamonds (real and imitation) in the building. The men are pretending not to be present, and hoping that they will soon be able to get away.

  At the head of the staircase stands the Duchess of St Odol, receiving her guests. She is a woman of forty-five summers, plus this autumn; her nose is aquiline, and so is her figure. By her side is the Duke—perhaps the most unnecessary man of our day. Occasionally he whispers comments, generally hostile, on the arrivals into the ear of the Grand Duchess Oscar Oscarovitch. The Grand Duchess is an American, a white satin sachet of a woman. She is not yet twenty-eight, as a matter of fact she is twenty-five; her past is so questionable that there cannot be any doubt about it.

  THE GRAND DUCHESS (speaking with an accent like a banjo to the Ordinary Duchess): Say, Gert, ain’t he come yet?

  THE ORDINARY DUCHESS (biting her lip): I’ve not seen him; but he has promised faithfully to come. I can’t believe that Mr. Gillett will disappoint us. (Shivering.) I’m quite sure that if Mr. William Gillett does not appear, all my guests will think that I’ve got them here under false pretences.

  THE GRAND DUCHESS (with tears in her eyes): I can’t believe he won’t come! It would be too bad. I’d give anything to meet him. I do admire him so. He’s just too bully for words. I tell you what it is, Gert, the first time I saw him I fell in love with him right away. And to think that I shall be presented to him to-night! My! I feel as if a thousand little birds were fluttering in my breast.

  A stream of Cabinet Ministers, miscellaneous Duchesses, and eminent Dukes cynically congratulate the Duchess of St Odol on the success of her entertainment. Occasionally, to her horror, she is met by the query “Has he come yet?” and she is compelled to answer “No.” Her face becomes paler and paler. Suddenly it lights up into a smile. Her eyes flash. A solemn silence pervades the hall. One feels as though one were in church—not at a wedding.

  THE ORDINARY DUCHESS (with a glad sigh of relief): There he is! Thank heaven, there he is! My ball will be a success, after all!

  THE GRAND DUCHESS (all agog): Where? Where?

  THE ORDINARY DUCHESS (almost fainting, as she points with her bouquet): There he is! He’s coming up the stairs now! Don’t you see that splendid-looking man in faultless evening dress, with a faultless white beard and pince-nez? That is HE.*

  THE GRAND DUCHESS (completely baffled): That beaver?

  THE ORDINARY DUCHESS (horrified): Beaver? What do you mean?

  THE GRAND DUCHESS: Why, in the States we call a man with a beard a beaver. What do you call him over here? Why does William Gillett come here made-up as a beaver, a polar beaver?

  THE ORDINARY DUCHESS (aghast): William Gillett made-up (not believing her ears) as a beaver?

  THE GRAND DUCHESS (speaking as woman to woman rather than as Duchess to Duchess): Say, Gert, this ain’t the man at all! I saw him the other night as Sherlock Holmes, and he was clean-shaven. It ain’t the custom over here for actors, when they’re invited out, to wear fancy fittings (her eyes wide open with astonishment), is it, Gert?

  THE ORDINARY DUCHESS (solving the mystery): You were thinking of William Gillette, the actor! This is Mr. William Gillett, the—

  The Ordinary Duchess spends twenty minutes explaining to the Grand Duchess who Mr. William Gillett really is, and his importance in modern life.

  * She really said “HIM.” But I am the last man in the world to give away a Duchess.—F. R.

  Final note: Richardson’s gentlemanly mask hid a profound depression, which led to his suicide, ironically by cutting his throat with a straight-edge razor. In his memoir A Pelican’s Tale, editor Frank M. Boyd remembers Richardson with this anecdote:

  Every now and again it used to occur to the somewhat erratic genius in his chambers at Albemarle Street, that he had nothing better to do at the moment than come along to 10 and 11 Fetter Lane and look me up. Usually he arrived at luncheon time, and then we fed together.

  On the last occasion that he called at The Pelican office, he found me sorting some papers, one of which fell out of the bundle on to the floor. Richardson picked it up and looked at the list of the names and dates inscribed upon it.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “It is the list of suicides I have known,” I said; “if you read the names you will find you are acquainted with quite a number of them.”

  “Good Lord,” he said, “what a dreadful idea. Why, there are thirty-six of them. I wonder who the thirty-seventh will be.”

  He was the thirty-seventh.

  1912

  The sinking of the Titanic in April pitted Conan Doyle against his former Hindhead neighbor, the playwright George Bernard Shaw. They had known each other well enough in the late 1890s to appear together at Hindhead Hall to promote world disarmament; and the puckish Shaw would later claim that he had converted Conan Doyle “from Christmas-card pacifism to rampant Jingoism.”

  This time, they were on opposite sides. In the two weeks following the disaster, the newspapers were full of conflicting information, frequently inaccurate, about the b
ehavior of Captain Smith, the crew, and the passengers. In a letter to The Daily News, Shaw attacked what he saw as “ghastly, blasphemous, inhuman, braggartly lying … It makes us vainglorious, insolent, and mendacious.” He claimed that the “women and children” rule was not carried out, pointing to one incident and ignoring the casualty lists that suggested otherwise. He also attacked accounts that the crew had behaved heroically, and snappishly called the captain’s act of steering his ship into the ice field “a triumph of British navigation.”

  Some of his complaints were correct, such as the different survival rates between the first- and third-class passengers. But they were lost in his viciousness and contempt at a time when families and the nation were grieving.

  Conan Doyle was appalled at Shaw’s behavior. He himself had lost a friend, the journalist, social reformer, and spiritualist W.T. Stead in the disaster.

  “How a man could write with such looseness and levity of such an event at such a time passes all comprehension,” he roared back in his letter to the press. Shaw was cherry-picking his data, he said, and mistaking sympathy for Captain Smith with approval of his decisions. “It is a pitiful sight to see a man of undoubted genius using his gifts in order to misrepresent and decry his own people.” Privately, Conan Doyle blamed Shaw’s vegetarianism: “It was strange that all the mild vegetables which formed his diet made him more pugnacious and, I must add, more uncharitable than the carnivorous man.”