Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  [Back] The Murders in the Rue Morgue: Published in 1841, it was the first short story featuring Dupin and considered by many to be the first modern detective story.

  [Back] The Cloister and the Hearth: A novel published in 1861 by Charles Reade (1814-1884). A young Dutch artist travels through 15th century Europe after his father tries to kidnap him to stop his marriage. Conan Doyle praised the novel, describing it as “abrupt, jerky, and incoherent to an exasperating extent,” yet “the wisest and the most beautiful [novel] I have ever read.” Reade fell out of favor after his death, and George Orwell described his books as possessing “the charm of useless knowledge.” Coincidentally, Reade was also accused of plagiarizing his fellow authors, to which he replied, “It is true that I milked three hundred cows into my bucket, but the butter I churned was my own.”

  [Back] The Gold-Bug: An 1843 short story by Poe that popularized cryptograms and secret writing after it won a writing contest sponsored by a Philadelphia newspaper. Both it and “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” used a simple substitution code that could be cracked using the letter-frequency method.

  [Back] Patti kind: Adelina Patti (1843-1919) was a famous opera singer renowned as much for her business sense as for her voice. At the height of her popularity, she demanded payment in gold before going on stage. Her contracts stipulated that her name be top-billed and printed larger than any other name. Her final singing tour of the U.S. in 1903 was a failure due to the deterioration of her voice. Despite this, she gave another farewell tour in 1906 but still gave occasional performances at a theatre she built at her house in Wales. Broadway singer Patti LuPone (born 1949) is her great-grand niece and was named for her.

  [Back] Missing despatch box: As told in “The Adventure of the Second Stain.”

  [Back] Australian Eleven: Leslie W. Pye’s omission from the Australian Eleven to play against England ignited much arguing in the region’s newspapers. Sources for the other mysteries could not be found.

  [Back] Hoss Valley: A reference to Moss Vale, a town in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Gov. Rawson’s summer residence was in nearby Sutton Forest.

  [Back] Moriarty: James Moriarty was a barrister and Crown Prosecutor who also wrote several legal textbooks.

  [Back] Neitenstein: Frederick Neitenstein (1850-1921) was a prison reformer. In charge of New South Wales’ prisons, he developed policies such as separating prisoners by classes and instituting physical drill and other programs to turn prisons into “moral hospitals.” “Gaol expenditure” referred to his bureaucratic success in transferring the cost of housing lunatics in prison to another department, creating a great savings on paper.

  [Back] Rozhestvensky’s fleet: As admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy, Zinovy Rozhestvensky (1848-1909) led the Baltic squadron of 38 ships, including eight battleships, from St. Petersburg to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, only to see them destroyed in the Battle of Tsushima.

  [Back] Barren Jack Reservoir: A dam-created lake on the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales. The name is a corruption of the Aboriginal name for the area, and is now called Burrinjuck. The Murrumbidgee is the second-longest river in Australia.

  [Back] Carruthers Government: Sir Joseph Carruthers (1857-1932) was premier of New South Wales (1904-1907). In Australia, the premier is appointed by the governor who is appointed by the monarch.

  [Back] Beau Brummell: A gentleman of Regency England (1778-1840) who was the arbiter of men’s fashion. By favoring full-length trousers instead of knee breeches, knotted cravats, and shirts made from linen, he led the way toward the modern suit.

  [Back] The Normannia: There was a steamship by that name that was launched in 1890, but it was owned by Hamburg America, not Norddeutscher Lloyd. It was sold to the Spanish Navy in 1898 for use in the Spanish-American War, sold the next year for debt payment, and scrapped in 1906.

  [Back] Larger opening: He was using a monaural stethoscope, a slender tube with a wide mouth at the top and a wider disk at the bottom that was placed over the heart.

  [Back] Bromo-caffeine: An effervescent powder used to relieve headaches, indigestion, hangovers, and, according to one drug manufacturer, “with ladies the headache and backache of neurasthenia, hysteria, dysmenorrhoea and kindred disorders.”

  [Back] Wireless telephone: This is an example of imagination outpacing science. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone in 1876. By 1900, a message could be sent using radio signals, and the next year Marconi sent a Morse-code signal across the Atlantic. There were hopes that a Marconiphone-like device like the one in the story was possible, and one was tested as early as 1907, but it would take years of research and development before it would be commercially available.

  [Back] Leap year: It was traditional in Britain and Ireland that women could only propose marriage during leap years.

  [Back] St. Anthony: Most likely a reference to Anthony the Great (c. 251-356), who was recognized as the first ascetic who went into the wilderness, specifically the Egyptian desert. The numerous supernatural temptations he underwent became a popular subject for artists and writers.

  [Back] Fatal snake-charm: She was named for the heroine in Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.’s Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny (1861). Elsie was half-woman, half-snake after her mother was bitten by a rattlesnake while pregnant. Holmes called this one of his three “medicated novels,” because the character’s mental or health problem was diagnosed in the text. Elsie Venner also introduced the phrase “Boston Brahmin” to refer to the city’s “harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy.”

  [Back] Lancet and your spade: A lancet is a small, sharp-bladed tool used for surgery and dissection. The spade is a small-bladed tool used for digging and was a jibe at his archaeological work.

  [Back] Castles in Spain: The phrase, a variation of “to build castles in the air,” originated in the medieval French poem Roman de la Rose (c. 1235). In this work of courtly literature about the acts of love, the God of Love tells the man yearning for a protected, private place to make love that:

  “Thou dreamiest thy beloved on

  Lies naked in thine arms, become

  Thy wife, and decks thy joyous home.

  And so shalt thou rejoice amain

  In building castles then in Spain,

  And find delight in joys unstable,

  Built up of lies and foolish fable.”

  So for finding a private place with your lover, it’s understandable that you’d imagine building a fortress, but why in Spain? There are several theories. Two of the most popular were that castles in the Moorish-occupied country were dazzling to French eyes. Another was that that building in a country other than your own was nearly impossible. The most likely explanation is simpler: the previous line’s last word in the original Roman de la Rose (“compaigne”) needed a word that rhymed in the next line (“Espaigne”).

  [Back] Coeval: Someone of equal status, age, or experience.

  [Back] Lecturing tour: Conan Doyle and his brother, Innes, toured the U.S. from September to December 1894. He lectured in 30 cities, met John Kendrick Bangs and Rudyard Kipling, and visited the grave of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had died that year.

  [Back] Very popular: The novel by Katherine Thurston (1875-1911) was popular in both Britain and America, where it was retitled The Masquerader. The novel was filmed four times between 1912 and 1933, and the play opened on Broadway in 1917. But her success came at a price, and the couple divorced in 1910. Ernest Thurston complained in court that she made more money than him and that she dominated him. Tragically, she died the next year at 36 from asphyxia caused by an epileptic seizure.

  [Back] Chloral: An organic compound which when combined with water creates chloral hydrate, a sedative and hypnotic substance.

  [Back] Strangers’ Gallery: The visitors’ gallery in the British House of Commons. Tickets can be obtained from the visitor’s parliamentary representative, or nowadays by standing in line. Despite Holmes’ comment, firearms are not permitte
d.

  [Back] Mr. Alexander and Mr. Thorold: George Alexander (1858-1918) was an actor and theatre manager. He produced Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and made a star of Mrs. Patrick Campbell in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893) by Arthur Wing Pinero. W.J. Thorold: William James Thorold (1871-1941) was an actor, author, and London editor and managing director of The Smart Set.

  [Back] Mr. E. Temple Thurston: Thurston (1879-1933) was an Anglo-Irish poet, playwright, and author. His best-known work was The Wandering Jew, which was performed on Broadway in 1921 and filmed twice.

  [Back] Mr. Adolf Beck: A notorious trial in the 1890s, Beck was mistakenly identified and convicted of defrauding numerous women, for which he served five years in prison. Three years after his release, he was convicted again for a similar crime, only this time the criminal responsible for all the frauds was captured and Beck was pardoned. Beck’s ordeal pointed out the weakness of witness identification in criminal cases and led to the creation of a court of appeals.

  [Back] Other Men’s Shoes: A fictional book.

  [Back] Miss Marion Terry: English actress (1853-1930) and sister of the more famous Ellen Terry. Her career spanned five decades, and she played the lead in 125 plays, including works by Oscar Wilde, Henry James, W.S. Gilbert, and Arthur Wing Pinero. Another actress-sister, Kate, was the grandmother of Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000).

  [Back] F’r Gawd, f’r country: One of Yale’s unofficial mottos, which appears in the last line of “Bright College Years,” the university’s unofficial alma mater:

  Oh, let us strive that ever we

  May let these words our watch-cry be,

  Where’er upon life’s sea we sail:

  “For God, for Country and for Yale!”

  Professor and songwriter Tom Lehrer (Harvard, ’46) parodied the song in “Bright College Days,” with the memorable line “Soon we’ll be out / Amid the cold world’s strife / Soon we’ll be sliding down / The razor blade of life.”

  [Back] Jawn L. Sullivan: Irish-American John L. Sullivan, (1858-1918) was recognized as the first world heavyweight boxing champion.

  [Back] Ar-rchy Road Terrors: “Archy Road” (officially Archer’s Road) was an Irish-American enclave in the Bridgeport area of Chicago and immortalized in Dunne’s stories.

  [Back] Gold-cure: A besetting sin is a fault to which a person is especially prone. Gold-cure: A purported cure for alcoholism promoted by Leslie Keeley that was popular in the late 1890s. At its height, there were more than 200 branches of the Keeley Institute in the United States and Europe offering injections of its secret formula which included bichloride of gold. The institute’s popularity faded after Keeley’s death in 1900.

  [Back] Rubberer: Someone with nothing better to do than to watch some stranger go about their business, also called a rubber-necker. To the rubberer, as O. Henry described in his story “A Comedy in Rubber”:

  “The importance of the event does not count. They gaze with equal interest and absorption at a chorus girl or at a man painting a liver pill sign. They will form as deep a cordon around a man with a club-foot as they will around a balked automobile. … They gloat and pore and glare and squint and stare with their fishy eyes like goggle-eyed perch at the hook baited with calamity.”

  [Back] C.O.S.: Charity Organization Society, a group founded in 1869 with the purpose of moving people out of poverty through support groups, education, and encouraging thrift. The groups that sprang from this movement evolved into the United Way in the U.S., and Family Action in the U.K.

  [Back] Medicean nose: A reference to a feature found in the faces of the powerful Medici family in Renaissance Italy. Medici men had the large and beaked noses typical of Florentine men.

  [Back] Stayless: She was not wearing a corset.

  [Back] Ashmolean lectures: The Ashmolean Museum was established at Oxford in the late 17th century to house objects collected by antiquarian, naturalist, and politician Elias Ashmole (1617-1692). The Minoan civilization was established on Crete and other Aegean islands from 2600 to 1400 B.C.

  [Back] Andrew Lang: Lang (1844-1912) was a Scots poet, novelist, and collector of folk and fairy tales published in 12 influential books named for colors (e.g., Blue Fairy Book, Lilac Fairy Book).

  [Back] Ophelia: “We know what we are, but not what we may be” is spoken by Ophelia, the daughter of the merchant Polonius in Hamlet. She was intended to wed Hamlet, but goes mad after he kills her father and drowns herself in a brook.

  [Back] Finished saying that ballad: Before she walked in, Logan made a reference to Annie of Lochroyan, from “Lass of Lochroyan,” a Scots ballad about a woman who searches for her lover with the young boy he fathered. She crosses the sea and finds his castle and cries out “O open the door, Lord Gregory! / O open and let me in! / The wind blows loud and cauld, Gregory, / The rain drops fra my chin.” But she is turned away by his mother and dies at sea, leaving a grieving Gregory.

  [Back] Cannoble Lee: A reference to “Young Lochinvar” a poem by Sir Walter Scott. Lochinvar steals a girl and rides off, followed by her father’s clansmen, and “there was racing and chasing on Cannoble Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.”

  [Back] Feared Mr. Lang: In “Jesper Who Heard the Hares,” from The Violet Fairy Book, a king sets Jesper the task of herding a hundred hares home. With the help of a whistle, he succeeded in keeping them near him. The king sent first his disguised daughter, then his queen, to lure a hare away from Jesper. They succeed—the daughter with payment of a kiss, and the queen for cackling like a hen—but he whistles the hares back. When the king tries, he is asked to “stand on your head, whack your heels together, and cry ‘Hurrah.’”

  [Back] The Doll’s House: The heroine of an 1879 play by Heinrik Ibsen (1828-1906). A controversial play at the time, Nora questions her role in a male-dominated society and as a result leaves her husband and children.

  [Back] That was the law: Echoing Chesterton’s belief in the value of faith over facts as expressed by Basil in The Club of Queer Trades:

  “Facts,” murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, “how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly—in fact, I’m off my head—but I never could believe in that man—what’s his name, in those capital stories?—Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It’s only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up—only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars.”

  [Back] Mr. Kay of Chesterton: This story opens with Rupert Grant and Mr. Gully Swinburne asking for Logan and Merton’s help. When they ask who Basil Grant’s known relatives were, they mention “Mr. Kay of Chesterton in Essex, distant relative.”

  [Back] That bonny boy: From “Jellon Grame,” a traditional Scottish ballad collected by Francis James Child. When Grame threatens to kill his pregnant lover, she pleads for their child’s life. He kills her, cuts out the infant, and raises it as his sister’s son. When the child grows up, he asks about his mother. Grame takes his son to her grave, tells the truth, and is killed in revenge.

  [Back] Of the lighthouse family: Robert Stevenson (1772-1850) was a civil engineer and builder of lighthouses. His grandson was author Robert Louis Stevenson.

  [Back] Mr. Gully Swinburne: The narrator of the Club of Queer Trades stories. Chesterton had mixed feelings about the alcoholic poet Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909) who championed decadence before drying out and growing up into an elder statesman of letters. Chesterton praised some of his works, but parodied “Dolores”—one of those “damn you for being an alluring and mystical woman” poems—with her reply (“Oh, pagan Priapean poet, / You give me a pain.”).

  [Back] Boswell of Auchinleck: This is the same family line that produced James Boswell, Samuel Johnson’s friend and biographer. James was the 9th Laird of Auchinleck in Scotland.

  [Back] Hae
loupit ower a stane dyke: Literally “leapt over a stone dyke [wall].” The idiom “to loup dykes,” according to The Scottish National Dictionary, means “to weather troubles successfully, to tackle difficulties boldly and effectively.”

  [Back] Procured evidence: Until the 1960s, the spouse suing for divorce had to show evidence of cruelty, incurable mental illness, or adultery. When both partners were amiable to a split, but their actions didn’t qualify, they would create a fake situation, such as the husband being “found” by a private detective in a hotel room with a woman, to reach the proper standard of proof for a judge to grant a divorce.

  [Back] Praenomen: His personal name. In classical Rome, the praenomen was the infant child’s personal name, as opposed to his family name.

  [Back] Courtplaster: A precursor to adhesive bandages. It was sold in two forms: a small sheet from which a piece was cut and applied to the wound, and a liquid form which was brushed on and allowed to dry.