“I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just been serving his time in Pentonville.43 One day he had met me, and fell into talk about the ways of thieves and how they could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be true to me, for I knew one or two things about him, so I made up my mind to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money. But how to get to him in safety? I thought of the agonies I had gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at any moment be seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time, and looking at the geese which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the best detective that ever lived.
“My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she was always as good as her word. I would take my goose now, and in it I would carry my stone to Kilburn.44 There was a little shed in the yard, and behind this I drove one of the birds, a fine big one, white with a barred tail. I caught it, and, prising its bill open, I thrust the stone down its throat as far as my finger could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature flapped and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the matter. As I turned to speak to her the brute broke loose, and fluttered off among the others.
“ ‘Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?’ says she.
“ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you said you’d give me one for Christmas, and I was feeling which was the fattest.’
“ ‘Oh,’ says she, ‘we’ve set yours aside for you. Jem’s bird, we call it. It’s the big white one over yonder. There’s twenty-six of them, which makes one for you, an one for us, and two dozen for the market.’
The bird gave a gulp.
Dan Smith,
Sunday Portland Oregonian, August 20, 1905
“ ‘Thank you, Maggie,’ says I; ‘but if it is all the same to you I’d rather have that one I was handling just now.’
“ ‘The other is a good three pound heavier,’ she said, ‘and we fattened it expressly for you.’
“ ‘Never mind. I’ll have the other, and I’ll take it now,’ said I.
“ ‘Oh, just as you like,’ said she, a little huffed. ‘Which is it you want, then?’
“ ‘That white one with the barred tail, right in the middle of the flock.’
“ ‘Oh, very well. Kill it and take it with you.’
“Well, I did what she said, Mr. Holmes, and I carried the bird all the way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had done, for he was a man that it was easy to tell a thing like that to. He laughed until he choked, and we got a knife and opened the goose. My heart turned to water, for there was no sign of the stone, and knew that some terrible mistake had occurred, I left the bird, rushed back to my sister’s, and hurried into the back yard. There was not a bird to be seen there.
“ ‘Where are they all, Maggie?’ I cried.
“ ‘Gone to the dealer’s.’
“ ‘Which dealer’s?’
“ ‘Breckinridge, of Covent Garden.’
“ ‘But was there another with a barred tail?’ I asked, ‘the same as the one I chose?’
“ ‘Yes, Jem, there were two barred-tailed ones, and I could never tell them apart.’
“Well, then, of course, I saw it all, and I ran off as hard as my feet would carry me to this man Breckinridge; but he had sold the lot at once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they had gone. You heard him yourselves to-night. Well, he has always answered me like that. My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am myself. And now—and now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me! God help me!” He burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands.
There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing, and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes’s finger-tips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose, and threw open the door.
“He burst into convulsive sobbing.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1892
“Get out!” said he.
“What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!”
“No more words. Get out!”
And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls from the street.
“After all, Watson,” said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, “I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing, but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony,45 but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again. He is too terribly frightened. Send him to gaol now, and you make him a gaol-bird for life.46 Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward.47 If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which also a bird will be the chief feature.”
A WINTER’S CROP
“A GOOSE has no crop,” Miss Mildred Sammons states in a letter to the Chicago Tribune of December 26, 1946. Dr. Jay Finley Christ, to whom her note was sent for comment, replies: “Mildred Sammons’ announcement in the Line of Dec. 26 that ‘a goose has no crop’ produced a considerable shock among Sherlock Holmes experts. Consultation of one ornithologist, two zoologists, and three poultry dressers, together with ocular demonstration, made it abundantly clear that the lady is correct. Holmes made an alimentary error, which the Baker Street Irregulars should have noted long ago.”
S. Tupper Bigelow, in “The Blue Enigma,” seeks to defend Holmes’s knowledge of geese. He consulted the Encylopaedia Britannica Library Research Service: “[W]e contacted members of the Department of Ornithology at the Natural History Museum of Chicago. I am quoting below their comments to this office: ‘We do not know of a goose that has a crop, properly speaking. Many geese have a gullet that distends, but it is not a dilation of the osesophagus before its entrance into the thorax. In other words, it is not a crop.’ ”
Dr. Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler then enters the fray, taking Holmes’s side in the matter. He quoted experts in the poultry department of the Agricultural School of the University of New Hampshire, who state “[G]eese have crops. The crop is simply not as visible as on a turkey, but apparently all barnyard fowl have them.”
The Marquis of Donegall, then head of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and editor of the Sherlock Holmes Journal, asked two more sources, the Minister of Agriculture and Fish, and Mr. Edward Moult, a practical farmer. The Ministry wrote:
The view of the Ministry’s Chief Poultry Adviser, Dr. Rupert Coles, M.Sc. (Agric.), M.Sc. (Econ.), B.A., Ph.D., D. Sc. (Agric.), D.V.Sc., is: “The American Professor [Christ] is quite correct in stating that ‘a goose has no crop.’ However, as a Sherlock Holmes fan I am glad to say that this fact does not necessarily invalidate the theory in the story of ‘The Blue Carbuncle.’ ”
Coles made his case by pointing out that chickens and turkeys have a true crop or storage pouch at the lower end of the gullet; while geese and ducks have no such pouch, the gullet can be dilated as much as 2-½ inches and provide storage capacity when the gizzard is full. Assuming that the Blue Carbuncle was three-quarters of an inch or so in diameter, Coles continued, and the goose had been fully fed before Ryder acquired it, then the jewel could indeed have been stored in the gullet, even if Holmes was technically in error in describing the goose as having a crop.
Edward Moult, the farmer, replied that he believed that a goose has a crop, albeit an elongated one (unlike the round crop of a hen). This belief, he asserted,
is supported by my veterinary surgeon, fish and game dealer, a natural science grad
uate and a butcher. On the other hand my own butcher, another vet., and Mrs. Stanton, in the village, do not think the animal is thus endowed, or, and this is significant, they do not remember one. One should be aware too of the complicaton caused by the use of colloquial, non specific terms during Trans-Atlantic research.
“So I think,” concludes the Marquis, “we can take it that crop, gullet, dilation, proventriculus, or whatever, Mr. Henry Baker’s goose—undoubtedly over-fed at that moment—experienced no difficulty or discomfort in concealing the Countess of Morcar’s blue carbuncle for the relevant period of time. Q.E.D.”
In “The Matter Is a Perfectly Trivial One . . . ,” Peter Blau submits, however, that “the matter of geese’s crops is really beside the point . . . if we assume that the Blue Carbuncle was not found in the goose’s crop at all, and that the long debate has actually centred on a printer’s error, which substituted an o for Watson’s a.”
1“The Blue Carbuncle” was published in the Strand Magazine in January 1892 and in the New York Strand Magazine in February 1892. It also appeared in January 1892 in American newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, where it ran under the title “The Christmas Goose that Swallowed a Diamond.” See “A Scandal in Bohemia,” note 1.
2What we think of as Christmas was actually invented, for the most part, in the Victorian era. Prior to the 1800s, Christmas, which had evolved from winter solstice festivals, had often been an occasion of raucous, drunken celebration. The publication of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in 1843, with its message of goodwill and charity, helped to transform the holiday into an appreciation of family and community. The words to many Christmas carols were penned in the 1800s, both in England and the United States, and the Christmas tree was popularised by Prince Albert, who brought the practice over from his native Germany in the 1840s. In addition, the tradition of exchanging Christmas cards originated during this era—the first commercial Christmas card is said to have been printed in 1843—and, aided by the 1860 reduction of postage to a half-penny for unsealed envelopes and formal calls such as Watson’s, attained widespread popularity by the 1870s and 1880s.
3Fletcher Pratt computes that by 1914, when the record of Holmes’s detective activities ceases, no crimes had taken place in one quarter of the total published cases. In nine of these cases, there was no legal crime. In six no crime took place because Holmes intervened in time to prevent its occurrence.
4Watson is not speaking here of crimes committed by Holmes or himself, such as throwing a smoke-bomb into a house and creating a near-riot (“A Scandal in Bohemia”) or washing a man’s face against his will (“The Man with the Twisted Lip”).
5A member of the Corps of Commissionaires, an association of pensioned former soldiers, formed in London in 1859 by a retired cavalry officer, determined to better the lot of veterans, who were often down on their luck. Commissionaires were uniformed and acted as porters, messengers, attendants, and the like.
6A hard low-crowned felt hat; a bowler; a derby. It is commonly thought that the first bowler hat was designed for a Mr. William Coke (that is, “Billy Coke”) by James and George Lock and produced by their supplier, William Bowler. Various witnesses to the Jack the Ripper murders, which occurred in 1888, reported seeing a gentleman wearing a felt hat or billycock. The hat was very popular, and no one has yet suggested that Henry Baker was involved in the brutal slayings.
7If Henry Baker was proceeding northward along the west side of Tottenham Court Road and the roughs came out of Goodge Street on the south side, or if Baker was travelling southward on the west side and the roughs were on the north side of Goodge Street, neither party would see the other until they ran into each other on the corner. It being “the season of forgiveness,” one likes to think that the collision was accidental.
8Most families in the 1800s celebrated Christmas with a dinner of roast goose, although the end of the century saw an increasing preference for turkey (a trend imported from the United States). Accompanying the bird were often—among other treats—a plum pudding (perhaps containing coins and trinkets) and a mincemeat pie. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861) contains several excellent recipes for these ornaments of the holiday table.
9S. Tupper Bigelow points out that it is just as logical to assume that Mrs. Henry Baker and Henry Baker were mother and son or daughter-in-law and father as husband and wife. The bird might have been intended for Mrs. Henry Baker, but “H.B.” could stand for anything. See “The Noble Bachelor” and “Black Peter” for other coincidences of initials.
10In fact, the London Post Office Directory of 1890 listed only seven Henry Bakers; only 139 Bakers were listed altogether in London.
11A popular hair cream, scented with lime.
12The “big head, big brain; big brain, great mind” principle, a subset of the Victorian science of phrenology, had a great many Victorian followers. It was first espoused by the Viennese physician Franz Joseph Gall, who laid out his theory in an October 1, 1798, letter to Joseph von Retzer, explaining—his tongue, we might assume, at least partly in cheek—“A man like you possesses more than double the quantity of brain in a stupid bigot; and at least one-sixth more than the wisest or the most sagacious elephant.” The thinking went that the larger the skull, the larger the brain beneath it, and the greater that brain’s power in any number of faculties. (For a more detailed discussion of phrenology, see “The Final Problem,” note 14.) Without weighing in on the question of intelligence, Dr. Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler concurs that the hat wearer probably did have a good-sized brain rather than any sort of medical abnormality. “Judging size of brain from size of hat is quite reliable,” Zeisler agrees, “for large skull without large brain will be unusual, in such things as acromegaly and hydrocephalus; the latter could have been excluded, and the former was practically unknown to any one before 1886, and was very rare then.” Watson similarly remarks upon Inspector MacDonald’s “great cranium” in The Valley of Fear, and Moriarty expresses surprise at Holmes’s lack of “frontal development” in “The Final Problem.”
13It is a bit rash to assume, of course, that Baker could not still afford to buy an expensive hat or that it was the only one he had. As S. Tupper Bigelow points out, Baker might well have had a battery of expensive hats at home and chosen to wear the billycock on that particular evening.
14“This, of course, is ‘ineffable twaddle’ and ‘unmitigated bleat’ at their best,” scoffs Bigelow. “There cannot be a three-year-old hat in the world, now or then, whether worn by the finest Olympic athlete or a skid-row bum, that does not have evidence of perspiration on its inside or on its inner band. Everybody perspires in given circumstances.”
15There are numerous improbabilities in this line of reasoning, helpfully deconstructed by J. B. Mackenzie in 1902. First, it would seem unnecessary for this individual to bring his hat upstairs at all, let alone busy his spare hand with it instead of simply putting it on his head. Mackenzie further remarks that grease from a candle in one hand would hardly have an easy transfer to a hat carried in the other.
16See “A Winter’s Crop,” page 224, for a consideration of whether a goose actually has a crop (a part of a bird’s gullet that may be used as a pouch, for storage or digestion).
17This is a mythical test. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, garnets, aquamarines, beryls, and so forth are all harder than glass and will cut it. Even tempered glass will cut glass.
18A carbuncle is a garnet, typically cut en cabochon (with a domed top). Garnets come in many colours: white, yellow, green, red, orange, brown, purple, and black; no “Blue Carbuncle” garnet has ever been reported.
19The Times had been in existence for over a century at this point, having been founded on January 1, 1785, as the Daily Universal Register (its name was changed to The Times in 1788). Its circulation in 1856 was 51,658 copies, nearly seven times that of its nearest competitor.
20Richard Lancelyn Green remarks, “[£20,000] would be an improbable price for a stone of 1
2 carats (even if it were unique). The Russian or Orloff Diamond of 194 carats in the Russian Imperial Sceptre was valued in 1891 at £90,000, and the Hope Diamond (which had cost £18,000) was valued at £30,000. The moonstone, in the Wilkie Collins novel of the same name (1868), was said to be worth £20,000.”
21Probably Claridge’s, a hotel favoured by foreign royalty, nobility, and other distinguished guests seeking a certain degree of anonymity. (Queen Victoria visited Empress Eugènie of France there in 1860). The opulent Savoy opened in August 1889, but it is unlikely that by December 1889, the generally accepted date of “The Blue Carbuncle,” a bedroom grate would need repair.
22The Metropolitan Police District consisted of twenty-two divisions (now sixty-three divisions). “B” Division at the time covered Knightsbridge, Chelsea, and Fulham, not the district in which any of the events in “The Blue Carbuncle” occurred.
23In 1887, there were six evening papers, excluding the purely commercial Shipping and Mercantile Gazette. These were the Globe, dating from 1803; Evening Standard, 1827; St. James’s Gazette, 1880; Evening News, 1881; Pall Mall Gazette, 1865; and The Echo, 1868. The Star was established in 1888. According to Peter Calamai, in “Headlines and Deadlines: How Sherlock Holmes Used the Press,” the only omitted general-interest afternoon daily was the Westminster Gazette. However, there were also eleven morning papers.
24Amoy (also known as Xiamen), a city in southern China, was captured by the British in the first Opium War and opened up to trade as a “treaty port” as a condition of the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing. The Jiu-lung River flows into the city of Amoy; there is no river known as the “Amoy River.”
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books) Page 34
