The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  “It is a formidable difficulty,233 and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there, and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all; or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt, from what we know of him, that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for Les Huguenots.234 Have you heard the De Reszkes?235 Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini’s for a little dinner on the way?”236

  “Be ready in half an hour.”

  Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1902

  213 Dr. Julian Wolff, in his Practical Handbook of Sherlockian Heraldry, identifies Colonel Upwood with Sir William Gordon-Cumming, a lieutenant-colonel in the Scots Guards during the Zulu War (1879). In 1891 Sir William brought an action for slander against a family who had accused him of cheating at the illegal card game baccarat. A long-time friend of Gordon-Cumming’s, the Prince of Wales—the future King Edward VII—himself was subpoenaed as a witness; he was the first in the Royal Family ever to give evidence in a civil court action, and had been compelled to appear (by Gordon-Cumming’s lawyer, Sir Edward Clarke) on the basis of Article 42 of the Queen’s Regulations for the army, which directed that anyone who saw an illegal action being performed by a soldier or officer report it to the appropriate commanding officer. Largely because of the Prince’s evidence under vicious cross-examination by Gordon-Cumming’s counsel, who delved into the Prince’s personal life, Sir William lost the Baccarat Case, as it became known. The case aroused great interest, with many people convinced of Sir William’s innocence; some believed that it was perhaps Edward who had committed some unknown illegal action not revealed in the course of the trial, and that Gordon-Cumming was merely covering for his friend. As a result of the scandal, public opinion turned for a time against the Prince, but ultimately his reputation was undamaged. The effect on Gordon-Cumming’s life, on the other hand, was complete and devastating. He was ostracised from society.

  214 In “Who Was Cecil Forrester?,” Robert Keith Leavitt writes that the Nonpareil must have been “a discreet, footnote kind of club composed of journalists.” He hazards this guess on the basis of the fact that Nonpareil was a type-face. Originally, the name signified the type’s unsurpassable beauty; in 1886, at the urging of type-foundry inventor Nelson C. Marks, who was working to regularise printers’ nomenclature, the word “nonpareil” was adopted by the U.S. Typefounders’ Association and other groups as a size designation (6-point).

  215 This sentence and the preceding do not appear in the Strand Magazine text.

  216 This sentence and the next two do not appear in the Strand Magazine text.

  217 S. Kanto, in “Stapleton no Shoutai” [The true identity of Stapleton], argues that Stapleton could not be Rodger Baskerville Jr. He reconstructs the Baskerville family tree and finds that Rodger Sr. was born in 1842, and Stapleton in 1854, when his supposed father was twelve years old. Kanto concludes that Stapleton was Jack Baskerville, an illegitimate son of the father of Sir Charles Baskerville. He further suggests that Jack and Rodger Jr. co-operated in the crime, with Jack committing the attempted murder and planning that Rodger Jr. would claim the estate.

  218 Yorkshire was England’s largest county, north of the river Humber and bounded on the east by the North Sea (the “German Ocean”). Divided into areas known as Ridings (derived from the Middle English “thriding” or “thirding,” meaning a third part), Yorkshire was largely agricultural, although the West Riding contained the major manufacturing centres of Leeds, Sheffield, Halifax, and Huddersfield and was described by Beeton’s British Gazetteer as “one of the greatest manufacturing districts in the world.” In his “Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient,” Christopher Morley expresses the view that Holmes came from Yorkshire.

  219 Philip Weller reports, in “Stapleton—An Un-Natural Naturalist,” that his examination of the records of the British Museum shows that “the attachment was by no means permanent, and that all reference to the name of Vandeleur has been removed in connection with entomology.”

  220 Benjamin S. Clark suggests that Dr. Mortimer became the confederate of Vandeleur/Stapleton while treating a certain consumptive tutor named Fraser. Clark asserts that when Mortimer came to see Holmes in Baker Street, he was already plotting against Sir Henry Baskerville and deliberately left behind his walking stick, to induce Holmes’s conclusions regarding Mortimer’s character and to establish his complete lack of criminal leanings.

  221 A West End thoroughfare extending from Brompton Road, just south of Hyde Park, to Fulham Palace Road, almost to the Thames, in the borough of Fulham; it serves as the dividing line between the boroughs of Chelsea and Kensington.

  222 Originally the North Devon Railway, the line became part of the London and South-Western Railway in 1865. B. J. D. Walsh, in “The Railways of Dartmoor in the Days of Sherlock Holmes,” notes that Stapleton would have been headed to Yeoford Junction or Okehampton. There were roads from either of those two places to Moretonhampstead, and from Moretonhampstead he could have continued on to Bovey Tracey. See also Philip Weller’s “The Railways of the Hound: Platform One.”

  223 But a few paragraphs later, Holmes remarks, “There can be no question that he had a confidant …”

  224 Craven Street is a short street extending from the Strand to the Victoria Embankment, where it meets Northumberland Avenue. The Mexborough Hotel would have been virtually in the shadow of the Northumberland Hotel, at which Sir Henry stayed. See note 62, above.

  225 That is, the servant whose tasks included boot-cleaning.

  226 Benjamin S. Clark, who maintains that Dr. Mortimer stole the boot, rejects the idea that the hotel’s “boots” had been suborned. He reasons that Stapleton, “even disguised,” would not have risked stealing the boot from the hotel for so little gain (“a few days”) when he could more easily have taken the boot from Baskerville Hall; and he thinks it unlikely that Stapleton, immediately upon arrival in London, could target (and then would be willing to bribe adequately) the right “boots.”

  227 Why, ponders Clark, did Stapleton follow the pair, when he already had the location of Sir Henry’s hotel and had observed the meeting with Holmes? It would not be because he feared that Holmes had advised bringing in Scotland Yard; rather, he wished to draw attention away from Mortimer, who, in order to be of help, had to remain free from suspicion.

  228 Also spelled jasmine. Any member of the genus Jasminum, shrubs in the olive family (Oleaceae). Jasminum contains about 300 tropical and subtropical species; all are fragrant, flowering, and woody. The plants are native to the Old World—that is, not North America.

  229 Christopher Morley, in his “Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient,” suggests that Holmes may have written a monograph on the subject, accompanied by “a Memorandum by J.H.W. on the Types of Women Likely to Favour the Several Modes of Allure.”

  230 In “Promise Her Anything, but Give Her Bisulfate of Baryta, Or Sherlock Holmes, Parfumeur,” Katherine Karlson argues that Holmes must have made a thorough study of perfumes and their properties at some earlier date, in the course of another investigation. Perhaps Holmes’s investigation was even of a personal nature. Karlson writes that a woman who wears perfume tends to find one with properties that suit her nature. From Beryl’s choice of white jessamine, she suggests, Holmes would have looked for a non-Englishwoman; tr
opical scents were not popular among the British. “Despite her sojourn in the harsh clime of East Yorkshire as the sedate and respectable Mrs. Vandeleur,” Karlson concludes, Beryl, “one of the beauties of Costa Rica,” “could not change her individual fragrance ‘signature’ any more than she could her native Latin temperament.”

  231 Ian McQueen chides Holmes for not having anticipated the overwhelming possibility of sudden fog, and for taking his oversight lightly.

  232 This is Victorian euphemism, presumably, for Beryl Stapleton’s discovery that her husband had been engaging in sexual relations with Laura Lyons; he clearly did not love Laura Lyons and only wished to use her as a tool in his plans.

  233 Scholars are deeply troubled by Holmes’s dismissal of the task as merely “formidable.” The second plan, of disguise, and the third plan, an accomplice, are generally given short shrift. Holmes’s first suggestion—that Stapleton might claim the property from South America—has even greater difficulties; it will be recalled that (presumably under the name of Baskerville) Stapleton “purloined a considerable sum of public money” before fleeing to England. Benjamin Clark proposes another possibility: The claim to the estate originates not with Stapleton but with a family friend, who arranges for evidence to be found showing the legitimacy of a previously unknown heir. The friend informs the court and helps to locate the heir. Such a friend, suggests Clark, was the nefarious Dr. Mortimer.

  D. Martin Dakin suggests as an alternative: “no doubt some judicious oiling of palms, such as was not unknown in Latin America then, could have kept the authorities quiet and even induced them to support [Stapleton/ Baskerville Jr.’s] claim. It would have rubbed some of the gilt off the gingerbread not to be able to enjoy his inheritance in person, but it looks as if Rodger Baskerville junior was more interested in the money than in the estate proper.”

  In “Stapleton’s Solution,” Hugh T. Harrington offers the ingenious suggestion that Laura Lyons was a Baskerville, the illegitimate child of Rodger Baskerville and Mrs. Frankland, and that Stapleton proposed to marry her and to claim the estate through her. He bases this surmise on the coincidence of her and Sir Henry’s eye colour, stating that they are the only two individuals in the entire Canon with hazel eyes.

  234 Les Huguenots, first presented in 1836, made Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) the most successful composer in Europe and helped redefine French grand opera, though the earlier Robert le Diable (1831) is arguably his most famous work. A child prodigy on the piano, he was born Yaakov Liebmann Beer and was descended from a long line of prominent rabbis; his own father, however, was a wealthy Berlin sugar refiner.

  Les Huguenots commemorates the massacre of Protestants by Catholics on St. Bartholomew’s Day in Paris on August 24, 1572, at the same time celebrating the romance and opulence of sixteenth-century France. John Farrell, in “A Fiddle, Opera, and Holmes,” notes that performances of the opera were “events of great popular interest and enthusiasm, often the hottest tickets in town. They were called ‘The Night of Seven Stars’”—demanding seven major vocal talents—“and were not cheap tickets.” Farrell cites a Metropolitan Opera performance on December 26, 1894, starring the de Reszkes, Lillian Nordica, Schalchi, Plançon, Maurel, and Nellie Melba, as “the first time ever that tickets at the Met were raised to the exorbitant price of seven dollars apiece.” Farrell suggests that the tickets were a gift from a grateful client and do not reflect an enthusiasm for opera on Holmes’s part.

  235 Although Holmes probably meant the brothers, who frequently appeared together, there were actually three singing de Reszkes, Jean (1850–1925), tenor; Edouard (1853– 1917), bass; and Josephine (1855–1891), soprano. According to the Grove Dictionary of Music Online, Jean was celebrated for his “beautiful voice, fine musicianship, and handsome appearance,” Edouard for his “huge voice and giant stature.” Both performed extensively around the world. Josephine had a six-year career in Paris, but was not a success in 1881 when she sang Aida at Covent Garden and retired from the stage, except for a few performances in 1884 with her brothers in Paris.

  Harold Schonberg disputes the dating (see note 234, above) of the Les Huguenots appearance of the de Reszkes at the Met, reporting that they appeared there in the opera once, on November 25, 1896. He is alone in this. William S. Baring-Gould notes that Anthony Boucher, in correspondence with Dr. Charles Goodman, states that the de Reszkes sang the opera together twenty-one times from 1891 to 1901 at the Metropolitan, as well as performing it in London and elsewhere. According to scholar François Nouvion, the de Reszkes performed in Les Huguenots at Covent Garden on June 15, 1889, May 20, 1891, July 8, 1893, and June 16, 1899. Patrick Drazen, in “On the de Reszkes,” adds July 11, 1887, and Boucher, in “Footnote to a Footnote,” adds a performance in 1888. None of these dates coincide with any dates suggested for The Hound of the Baskervilles by the major chronologists (see Appendix 5), and until 1890, the opera season in London was almost invariably the summer. In fact, only two autumnal performances of Les Huguenots were given at Covent Garden, on October 20, 1890, and October 26, 1891, and the de Reszkes appeared in neither. However, as Boucher notes, a careful reading of Holmes’s remark reveals that he did not state that they were appearing in that evening’s performance.

  In “The Records of Baker Street,” Boucher questions whether the de Reszkes were Holmes’s real reason for taking in Les Huguenots, proposing instead that Holmes was driven by suppressed romantic longing for Irene Adler, who undoubtedly earlier performed the rôle of the page Urbain. “Irene Adler’s spectacular entrance as Urbain must have been unforgettable; and it is more than understandable that a man might haunt later performances of Les Huguenots, half in vain hopes of finding a new portrayal to eclipse her memory, half to nurse the pleasant pain of recollection.” Guy Warrack conjectures that the de Reszke Huguenots may have been the occasion of Holmes’s first glimpse of Adler, but this places The Hound of the Baskervilles before “A Scandal in Bohemia,” a dating not agreed to by other chronologists.

  236 D. Martin Dakin is among those who find the uncertain fate of Beryl Garcia Stapleton less than satisfactory. “Did she return to her native land?” he wonders. “And why was Sir Henry so hurt that he should have been deceived by her? What did he expect the poor girl to do? She tried her best to save him, by every means short of betraying her husband (and risking being murdered by him).” Dakin wishfully suggests that she and Sir Henry might have married after all.

  APPENDIX 1

  The Butterfly and the Orchid

  The Butterfly. The Editors of the Catalogue of an Exhibition on Sherlock Holmes held at Abbey House Baker Street London NW1 May–September 1951 dispute Stapleton’s identification of the butterfly on the moors as a Cyclopides.

  The generic name Cyclopides is no longer valid; it was erected in 1819 by Hübner for five species, only one of which was British. This is the butterfly now known as the Chequered Skipper; the name Cyclopides for this form lingered on in books on natural history for some years, and its use by Stapleton is quite understandable. However, his statement “He is very rare” is, for Dartmoor, a considerable understatement; for it would have been the first and only record for that part of England.

  The Editors then consider alternatives and conclude that the butterfly in question was likely one of the group known as the Skippers (Hesperiidae). Skippers share a distinctive darting and rapid flight, and the Editors find Watson’s description of “a small fly or moth” “very suggestive, since this group of butterflies is primitive and approaches the moths in a number of respects.” Further identification is not practical, although the Editors also point out that October, the apparent month of the events, is far too late for any Skippers.

  Walter Shepherd, in On the Scent with Sherlock Holmes (1978), makes the clever suggestion that Stapleton confused the name with Cyclorrhapha, a sub-order of flies containing several large British species and including the hover-flies, house-flies, blow-flies, and bot-flies.

  A brightly coloured hover
-fly might well catch the eye of a naturalist, even when engrossed in a tricky conversation, and its darting, dodging flight, interspersed with brief stationary hovers, would compel a pursuer to make the ‘jerky, zig-zag, irregular progress’ that Watson records. But the problem of the name remains, for no naturalist, even in the most desperate state, could ever refer to a single insect as a “Cyclorrhapha.”

  The most likely explanation, Shepherd proposes, is that “Stapleton ejaculated ‘Cyclopides’ merely as a means of breaking up the conversation, which had drifted dangerously towards the hound concealed on the moor.”

  The Orchid. There is also controversy over the identity of the orchid noted by Stapleton. The Editors of the Catalogue consider several possibilities. The primary candidate is Orchis Prætermissa Druce (the common marsh-orchid). “In many ways this seems the most likely; it is a marsh orchid, and common on Dartmoor. Moreover, it is one of the few orchids that might be found actually growing in amongst the mare’s-tails (Hippuris vulgaris L.), provided that the water was not deep at that point.” However, the dates of the adventure are wrong for this flower, which is very unlikely to appear after mid-August.

  Similarly, Orchis Latifolia L. sec Pugsley (the early spotted orchid), while growing among Hippuris, flowers in early summer (May–June). Orchis Ericetorum (Linton) E. S. Marshall (the heath spotted orchid) is common on Dartmoor, where it can be found up to 1,750 feet, but it prefers acid conditions and is unlikely to be growing among Hippuris, and it flowers at the wrong time. On the other hand, Hammarbya Paludosa (L.) O. Kuntze (the bog orchid) flowers late, and, although it is not very likely to be growing with Hippuris, such growth is not impossible. “The difficulty here,” note the Editors, “is to imagine why Mrs. Stapleton wanted it, since her interest in orchids seems to have been aesthetic rather than technical; it is an inconspicuous plant, never more than six inches high and often considerably less, and with small greenish flowers.”