Sherlock Holmes Victorian Parodies and Pastiches

by Bill Peschel

  In congenial employment she had escaped the ceaseless unrest of those misguided maidens who merely look on life as a lottery with husbands (forsooth) as prizes. Nor had she worried herself or others about the imaginary rights or visionary wrongs of her sex. A single life of good work well done sufficed for her—was in fact her ideal, and she declined to change it. Assiduous in her attention to her patients, she possessed the happy knack of appearing so to interest herself in each one of them as to make him or her to think that he or she was of all others the one of her particular predilection. So thought Tom Harding.

  “Sister Helen,” said he one day several weeks later, the day in fact before his intended departure from the Home, “How can I ever sufficiently thank you? You to whom I owe my life. How?” he was continuing with evident warmth as he rose from his seat.

  At this moment the door opened and Edith Deschamps, formerly Cohen, nee Hamilton, the future Mrs. Harding, entered. As with a slight cry she ran forward to Tom’s arms, Sister Helen left the room. So will we.

  “Just in time!” said Sister Helen to herself, as she walked along the corridor, “I believe the foolish fellow was getting fond of me and fancied the feeling mutual.”

  Edith, after the nearly tragic incident of the Garden-party had been seriously ill and for a time it was feared that her brain might be permanently affected. No communication had been allowed between herself and Harding and today was their first, and to him, unexpected meeting.

  An hour later they strolled down into the Hall and telephoned for Miss Deschamps’ brougham which had been sent to the stables a few minutes distant.

  “Edith,” said Tom sentimentally as they rested on the settee “do you remember the old days at Southsea?”

  “How slow they are with that carriage!” said she with some impatience. “Yes, of course, I do remember them, but after all, Tom, we were very young. I have thought of them during my illness,” she continued after a pause, “of your boyhood and seafaring life, after, you dear clever old thing.”

  “Clever!”

  “Yes, of course you are clever! Show me another who has written so brilliant a play as “Tempest-tossed.” But do tell me, dear, where you acquired your literary faculty and knowledge of stagecraft.”

  “My darling,” said he, rising hurriedly, “the brougham is at the door.”

  “But you have not answered my question, Tom dear.”

  “That, my sweet Edith,” said he uneasily, “involves a little secret. You remember at the rehearsals the man with a dull drabbish—well—I will tell you the pedigree of that play after we are married.”

  “Now remember,” said Edith as she stepped into the brougham, “you are to be sure to get the license tomorrow,” adding with a twinkle in her eye “you may be considered convalescent but I shall not feel you are quite out of danger till you, I mean we, are married.”

  * * * *

  It has been averred that the fine range of building, which from the rear of old Whitehall, overlooks the Victoria Embankment and the Thames, has a site unequaled in the world.

  This no one will dare to deny, who, by day or night, has looked out from an upper balcony of Whitehall Court; whose eye has swept the grand River-bend and garden from St Stephens to St Pauls and thence on to the grim outline of the Tower; who has felt throbbing beneath and around him, the pulse of the Great City who has turned again to watch the flow, calm but eternal, of the mighty artery which is London’s lifeblood.

  It was in the drawing room of a flat in Whitehall Court that Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Hathaway one evening in May awaited the arrival of their guests for dinner. Well as Hathaway himself had worked, Fortune, that fickle Goddess, had been unusually kind to him. Owner and Editor of the leading weekly Review he now occupied a lofty position in the literary and political world. But the most valued of his successes was his election, by his old ‘Varsity’ to be her representative in Parliament, where he was steadily advancing in estimation as a thoughtful and forcible speaker. Lastly, in that most fateful of all experiments, marriage, he felt himself fortunate beyond his brightest hopes.

  The little dinner party to be given that evening by Iris—for she was now his wife—and himself was of a specially interesting character. It marked renewal of their friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Tom Harding, now, not only happily married, but also the proprietors of a twelvemonth-old curly headed cherub whose like (of course) the World had never previously seen.

  Sister Helen, through whose good offices the reconciliation had been affected, and old Mr. Grey were also to be among the select dozen of guests. But the chief interest centred in the fact that the story of the finding of Iris, at present a secret even to herself, and to Lawrence was to be told tonight by none other than Sherlock Holmes, himself who had formed something approaching a friendship for the Hathaways.

  “However you could have been induced,” said Lawrence to his wife, “to bury yourself for all those months in that Batterseas back-alley passes my comprehension.”

  “Not half so incomprehensible as that I, Iris, should have allowed that horrid, untidy, slum-hunting fellow with that awful beard to propose to me without my hitting him over the head. What I said to him I have not the slightest idea. I had to talk to stop his flood of nonsense. Need I add details?”

  “Of course you know he was supposed to be keeping a look-out for you on behalf of Holmes during his absence abroad. But for his opportune elopement with the Baroness Bleithauer, Heaven only knows what would have become of you or whether you would have been found at all. Robinson, poor chap, after proving a failure at the Bar, gradually changed his principles for the customary cant about ‘freedom’ for everybody and everything—free breakfast—tables—education, speech, thought, and apparently, love!”

  A quarter of an hour later all the guests had arrived but one. The conversation turned almost entirely on the anticipated appearance of Sherlock Holmes who was not what is known as a ‘diner-out’ and who evaded the wiles of the genus lion-hunter, charmed the never so wisely.

  Mrs. Moreton-Plunkett who had been the earliest arrival was in a state of excitement even greater than usual. She did not believe he would turn up. Others mentioned the rumour that he was at present grappling with a gigantic conspiracy which had already undermined the foundations of the Throne itself. Hathaway remarked that if alive Sherlock Holmes would be present, while Harding referred to a report current during the afternoon that Holmes had at length met in the ranks of crime, his own intellectual equal, a former mathematics professor at one of the Universities, a man of iron nerve, of endless resource and steeped in the life of infamy.

  “How very terrible,” ejaculated the irrepressible Mrs. Moreton-Plunkett who found it necessary to fly to her smelling salts.

  At that instant, above the hum of distant traffic, and through the half-open windows, came the stentorian tones of two newspaper men who on impressive occasions invariably hunt in couples.

  “Orrible! Orrible! Murder! Death o’ Sherlockomes!”

  A few moments later Lawrence Hathaway read to his guests the following telegram in the Evening Magnet.

  “Zermatt Switzerland,

  Wednesday.

  “This morning the Englishman Sherlock Holmes and a certain Professor Moriarty fell from a precipice more than a thousand feet in depth. Near the verge of the abyss the ground affords evidence of a severe struggle.”

  Dead! And with him died the secret of the finding of Iris.

  1895

  In this quiet period of their lives, the Conan Doyles settled into Davos, where he continued to ski and write the Gerard stories for The Strand. The stories were well-received, and Greenhough Smith welcomed a replacement for Holmes. He also began work on Rodney Stone, a historical novel about bare-knuckle boxing set in the Regency era, that he would finish in September.

  In October, during a business trip to London he met Grant Allen, a fellow Strand contributor. Allen told him that he had cured himself of tuberculosis by staying at Hindhead, Surrey, about
50 miles southwest of London. Conan Doyle visited the village and thought the dry weather ideal for Louise’s health. Eager to live in England again, he bought land and hired an architect to design a home.

  While the house was being built, and with Switzerland unseasonably cold, Conan Doyle took Louise to Egypt in November. In season, the country was considered a good place for a consumptive, and Louise was delighted with the change. During the voyage, Louise rested while Conan Doyle worked on his Gerard stories, helped by suitcases full of books he had bought at a London auction.

  While they mingled with British society at a hotel near Cairo, Conan Doyle continued to write. He worked on Uncle Bernac, another novel set in the Napoleonic era, and adapted for the stage a novel by his friend and mentor James Payn called Halves. He climbed the Great Pyramid and golfed. His attempts to improve his horsemanship led to an encounter with an unruly steed who dragged him across the desert and kicked him in the forehead. The encounter left him with five stitches and a sagging eyelid.

  Publications: The Stark Munro Letters (Sept.).

  Mrs. Dr. Sherlock Holmes

  Anonymous

  This sketch of a conjecturing, strident interrogation ratcheted as high as it can go appeared in the Feb. 9 issue of Tit-Bits.

  All of a sudden, she turned to the man in the tramcar on the left, and said:—

  “You were putting down an ingrain carpet at your house this morning. Don’t attempt to deny it, for I have most conclusive evidence.”

  “How do you know?” he stammered, in surprise.

  “There is lint on your knees, sir, showing the kind of carpet, and your thumb is done up in a rag to prove that you hit it with a hammer. You have a bunion on your left foot. Deny it at your peril!”

  “Yes, I have a bunion; but—”

  “I knew it, because you can’t keep that foot still, now and then you utter a cuss word below your breath. You are living with your second wife. Admit the truth of what I say, or take the consequences.”

  “How on earth can you tell that?” he asked, as he began to turn pale round the mouth.

  “By the hairs and dandruff on your coat. Your first wife always brushed you before you went out. Now, you have a small child at home.”

  “Yes, a boy three years old; but—”

  “I knew it, because he shoved that jumping-jack into your pocket while you were playing with him just before you came out. You are also an absent-minded man. Denial will be useless, and may get you into serious trouble.”

  “I—I—”

  “If you were not an absent-minded man you would not have pocketed that table-napkin handkerchief, nor come out with your old hat on. While your first wife has been dead for several years, you have not placed a tombstone at her grave. Don’t try to bluff me, sir!”

  “You are right, but—”

  “Of course I am. When we passed that marble shop you gave one look at the tombstones and placed your hand on your wallet. Your present wife is not domestic.”

  “No, she is not; but how on earth can you tell?”

  “The moths have eaten your coat, there are two buttons off your vest, and from the way you wriggle that right foot I’m sure you have holes in your stockings. Think not to deceive me.”

  “Great lands, woman!” he gasped, as the perspiration stood out on his forehead, “but you must be—”

  “Mrs. Dr. Sherlock Holmes, sir,” she finished. “I have to get out here to solve a mystery in a butcher’s shop. Blood has been found on a cleaver, the butcher’s wife has got a new sealskin jacket, and the errand-boy has a boil on his leg. ’Sdeath! I will unravel the whole affair in five minutes, and spot the murderer! Good day, old man.”

  A Trip to the Country

  Charles Loomis

  Illustration by Florence Scovel Shinn

  Although Holmes doesn’t appear in this story, his theory of the science of deduction does. It is an early example of a Sherlock Holmes parody that featured neither Sherlock Holmes nor Dr. Watson. It appeared in the Feb. 20 issue of Puck, and was republished as “A La Sherlock Holmes” in The Four-masted Cat-boat and Other Truthful Tales (1895).

  Jones and I recently had occasion to take a drive of four or five miles in upper Connecticut. We were met at the station by Farmer Phelps, who soon had us snugly wrapped in robes and speeding over the frozen highway in a sleigh. It was bitter cold weather—the thermometer reading 30 above zero. We had come up from Philadelphia, and to us such extreme cold was a novelty, which is all we could say for it.

  As we rode along, Jones fell to talking about Conan Doyle’s detective stories, of which we were both great admirers—the more so as Doyle has declared Philadelphia to be the greatest American city. It turned out that Mr. Phelps was familiar with the “‘Meemoirs’ of Sherlock Holmes,” and he thought there was some “pretty slick reasonin’” in it. “My girl,” said he, “got the book out er the library an’ read it aout laoud to my woman an’ me. But of course this Doyle had it all cut an’ dried afore he writ it. He worked backwards an’ kivered up his tracks, an’ then started afresh, an’ it seems more wonderful to the reader than it reely is.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jones; “I’ve done a little in the observation line since I began to read him, and it ‘s astonishing how much a man can learn from inanimate objects, if he uses his eyes and his brain to good purpose. I rarely make a mistake.”

  Just then we drove past an outbuilding. The door of it was shut. In front of it, in a straight row and equidistant from each other, lay seven cakes of ice, thawed out of a water-pan.

  “There,” said Jones; “what do we gather from those seven cakes of ice and that closed door?”

  I gave it up.

  Mr. Phelps said nothing.

  Jones waited impressively a moment, and then said quite glibly: “The man who lives there keeps a flock of twelve hens—not Leghorns, but probably Plymouth Rocks or some Asiatic variety. He attends to them himself, and has good success with them, although this is the seventh day of extremely cold weather.”

  I gazed at him in admiration.

  Mr. Phelps said nothing.

  “How do you make it all out, Jones?” said I.

  “Well, those cakes of ice were evidently formed in a hens’ drinking-pan. They are solid. The water froze a little all day long, and froze solid in the night. It was thawed out in the morning and left lying there, and the pan was refilled. There are seven cakes of ice; therefore there has been a week of very cold weather. They are side by side: from this we gather that it was a methodical man who attended to them; evidently no hireling, but the good man himself. Methodical in little things, methodical in greater ones; and method spells success with hens. The thickness of the ice also proves that comparatively little water was drunk; consequently he keeps a small flock. Twelve is the model number among advanced poultrymen, and he is evidently one. Then, the clearness of the ice shows that the hens are not excitable Leghorns, but fowl of a more sluggish kind, although whether Plymouth Rocks or Brahmas or Langshans, I can’t say.

  “Leghorns are so wild that they are apt to stampede through the water and roil it. The closed door shows he has the good sense to keep them shut up in cold weather.

  “To sum up, then, this wide-awake poultryman has had wonderful success, in spite of a week of exceptionally cold weather, from his flock of a dozen hens of some large breed. How’s that, Mr. Phelps? Isn’t it almost equal to Doyle?”

  “Yes; but not accordin’ to Hoyle, ez ye might say,” said he. “Your reasonin’ is good, but it ain’t quite borne aout by the fac’s. In the fust place, this is the fust reel cold day we’ve hed this winter. Secon’ly, they ain’t no boss to the place, fer she’s a woman. Thirdly, my haouse is the nex’ one to this, an’ my boy an’ hers hez be’n makin’ those ice-cakes fer fun in some old cream-pans. Don’t take long to freeze solid in this weather. An’, las’ly, it ain’t a hen-haouse, but an ice-haouse.”

  The sun rode with unusual quietness through the heavens. We heard no son
g of bird. The winds were whist. All nature was silent.

  So was Jones.

  The Genius of Herlock Sholmes

  He Solves A Thrilling Mystery and Exhibits to Advantage His Wonderful Gifts

  Anonymous

  Before the existence of wire services such as the Associated Press, newspapers had an informal exchange service. They would send each other their issues, and anyone was free to use what they needed. This not only benefited the newspapers, but writers such as Mark Twain who burnished their reputation, if not their wallets, on the backs of widely published stories.

  This article shows how far and fast a story can spread. It originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press on March 3 under the headline “A Great Detective; It Was an Easy Matter For Him to Quiet the Woman’s Fears.” Less than three weeks later, it appeared in the Los Angeles Herald as simply “Herlock Sholmes.” It then crossed the ocean to Australia, where it appeared on June 7 in the Warragul Guardian and the Broadford Courier and Reedy Creek Times, and the next day in the Caulfield and Eisternwick Leader. It probably circulated to other newspapers as well, because it appeared again on Jan. 23, 1904—nearly nine years after its debut—in the Bowral Free Press in Australia.

  I was talking to my friend Herlock Sholmes when there came a knock on the door and a woman entered.

  “I want to see Mr. Herlock Sholmes,” she said, in a quivering voice.

  “Very well, madam, I am he,” replied the great detective, with all the courtliness of a great gentleman.

  “I have a communication that I wish to make to you alone,” she went on. “It is of a strictly private character, and I prefer that no third person hear it.”