5While Holder & Stevenson is a fictional firm, it is not difficult to ascertain who Holder may have actually been. Julian Wolff conjectures (in his Practical Handbook of Sherlockian Heraldry) that he was one of the esteemed Glyns of Glyn, Mills & Co. (established 1753). The family was renowned both in banking and in the social world; founder Richard Glyn became Lord Mayor of London in 1758, and the bank itself not only acquired several other banking establishments but also was instrumental in preventing the collapse of the venerable Baring Brothers in 1890. The sensitivity and highly classified nature of the matter at hand required a discretion and authority that Glyn, Mills & Co. would certainly have been trusted to supply.
6Some have seized on this comment as indicating that 221 Baker Street must have been near the southern end of Baker Street, which was far enough from the Underground station to justify employing a cab. It is just as possible, however, that Holder meant that because of the weather, he did not travel from Streatham by cab but instead took the Underground and walked to Holmes’s lodging. The location of 221 Baker Street is discussed in depth in “The Empty House.”
7Edgar W. Smith and A. Carson Simpson both conclude that the “exalted name” is His Royal Highness, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who, as the holder of the title of Duke of Rothesay (of Scotland), would have been the legitimate wearer of a duke’s coronet but who nonetheless had no right to put up a “public possession” as collateral for a personal loan.
8That is, $250,000 in Victorian U.S. dollars, an immense sum in the late nineteenth century, the equivalent of over $6 million in current purchasing power.
9A thin leather made from goatskin and tanned with sumac.
10A coronet was a type of head attire, similar in appearance to a wreath, often consisting of a string of jewels tied at the back with a ribbon or set in a band of gold. Of lesser significance than a crown, the coronet was worn by British peers (see “The Noble Bachelor,” note 16), typically at the coronation of a sovereign. Varying designs indicated the rank of peer. William D. Jenkins suggests that the coronet involved in the case was one made for George Villiers, created Duke of Buckingham by James I in 1623 and assassinated in 1628. Upon the death of Buckingham’s son in 1678, the coronet escheated to the Crown and was subsequently held in the national treasury (from which the Prince of Wales could have “borrowed” it).
11A beryl is actually a mineral, a silicate of beryllium and aluminum whose crystals are hexagonal. Its coloured form is considered a gemstone; emerald, the green variety of beryl, is the most valued, followed by aquamarine, which is blue-green. There is no evidence of the colour of the beryls in the Beryl Coronet.
12A design engraved on the surface.
13Streatham, seven miles south of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was home to numerous handsome villas and country seats of wealthy families and merchants engaged in business in the City.
14Despite the contemporary American taboo against marriage between first cousins (a taboo vigorously opposed by numerous advocacy groups), such unions were not uncommon in Victorian England. In fact, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins, as were Charles Darwin and his wife Emma Wedgwood.
15T. S. Blakeney questions whether this laxity reflected the security at the offices of Holder & Stevenson as well. “John Clay [of “The Red-Headed League”] missed the chance of a lifetime when he went burrowing into the vaults of the City & Suburban Bank,” Blakeney remarks, “when he could, apparently, have just walked into Holder & Stevenson and helped himself.” The secreting of a precious jewel in an insecure bureau cabinet was not without precedent, however. In The Moonstone, a young woman named Rachel Verrinder receives a birthday present of a large yellow diamond that had been stolen from an Indian shrine. The young woman—unaware that the Moonstone was willed to her by her vengeful uncle to bring her bad luck—is depicted as displaying remarkably poor sense in thinking first that she will keep her valuable gem on her dressing table; then in an “Indian cabinet, for the purpose of permitting two beautiful native productions to admire each other.” After her mother expresses concern that the cabinet has no lock, Rachel indignantly replies, “Good Heavens, mamma! . . . is this an hotel?” Like Alexander Holder, Rachel comes to regret her carelessness almost immediately.
16Originally a “fourthing,” a quarter-penny.
17A curved driveway.
18This should probably read “wicket” (in the sense of a gate) but is not corrected in the English book edition.
19This is demonstrated by the “poker-straightening” reported by Watson in “The Speckled Band.”
20These descriptions indicate that Holmes’s and Watson’s bedrooms were upstairs from the sitting room and apparently had direct access downward to the street.
21Holmes was almost certainly speaking hypothetically here of his “own son,” but many speculate as to children Holmes may have fathered illegitimately. In fact, the purported offspring of Holmes are so numerous (and of such diverse maternity), including, for example, such luminaries as detective Nero Wolfe and boxer Larry Holmes, that one must be amazed that he actually found time to handle cases.
22If the coronet was indeed “one of the most precious public possessions of the Empire,” Burnwell must have anticipated difficulty in disposing of it. Robert Pattrick suggests that he had made an arrangement to do so with Professor Moriarty (see “The Final Problem”).
23The wisdom of this observation belies Holmes’s view that “the fair sex is [Watson’s] department” (expressed in “The Second Stain”) and speaks of considerable experience on Holmes’s part.
24Why did Burnwell leave the case behind?
25Earlier, Watson recounts Holmes’s having returned from his investigation “swinging an old elastic-sided boot in his hand,” which he tosses in a corner—but there is no mention of its mate. Perhaps, finding both cumbersome, he discarded one along the way, keeping the other for evidence.
26Robert Keith Leavitt observes, “Whenever [Holmes] had occasion to pull a gun on a really desperate character, he got as near as possible to his man before showing his weapon.” Aware of his own poor marksmanship, Leavitt argues, Holmes made it a practice to clap his pistol against his captive’s head. See “The Dancing Men” and “The Mazarin Stone” for other examples of this behaviour.
27A receiver was a person who received stolen goods—a “fence,” in modern parlance—which, if done knowingly, constituted a felony under Victorian law.
28Bargaining or haggling about terms or price.
29Ian McQueen finds it remarkable that within a few short years of settling down in Baker Street, in rooms which he had to share for reasons of expense, Holmes was able to produce £3,000 of his own money ($15,000 in U.S. dollars, more than thirty times the annual income of Mary Sutherland, noted in “A Case of Identity”) to buy back the gems from the receiver.
The reader will recall that Holmes asked Holder for a check for four thousand pounds. Did he intend to pocket the extra £1,000 as a reward for keeping silent about the true facts of the matter? Richard Oldberg cynically suggests that Holder’s client selected Holder as his banker precisely because he expected Holder to be lax about security and discretion and conspired with Sir George Burnwell to steal the coronet and then blackmail Holder. To avoid a public scandal, which would ruin Holder’s reputation as a banker as well as besmirch the “exalted name,” Holmes went along with Holder’s explanation—for a price.
30A. Carson Simpson ponders this denouement: “We are told that ‘any injury to [the coronet] would be almost as serious as its complete loss.’ But it was in fact injured, being twisted out of shape and having a piece broken off. How did Alexander Holder expect to get it made as good as new between Saturday morning, when he got back the missing piece, and the following Monday, when the borrower would return to reclaim it?” Holder must have realised this, for he made no move to seek out a goldsmith and instead rushed off to make amends with Arthur. Simpson concludes that Holder must have expected to apply a little “genteel
blackmail” to the “exalted name” who used a national treasure as personal collateral.
31John Hall believes that Sir George had no motive to steal the coronet and could not possibly have arranged the theft as Holmes suggests in the time allotted. Instead, he reasons, Mary must have masterminded the theft, and he interprets this remark of Holmes as indicating that Holmes, too, did not think that Sir George was exclusively guilty.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES1
Women in distress, especially governesses, constituted a large portion of Holmes’s clientele. One of Conan Doyle’s sisters was a governess, and it was a respectable employment for the emerging class of working women. Although Holmes scoffs that his practice is turning into “an agency for recovering lost lead pencils, and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools,” he admits that the case of Miss Violet Hunter (the first of four Violets to cross his path) is an exceptional one. In “The Copper Beeches,” the last tale of the series collected as the Adventures, the freckle-faced Miss Hunter calls upon Holmes for “backup” as she accepts a job that pays too much. Watson feels Hunter quite capable of taking care of herself, but Holmes uncharacteristically worries, muttering about “no sister of his” taking a situation such as Miss Hunter’s. Scholars have (with little success) tried to make these remarks into background material about Holmes’s family. Others speculate that “Violet the Hunter” may have set her cap for Holmes, perhaps with encouragement from Dr. Watson. As the story concludes, Holmes dismisses Violet Hunter as merely one more “pretty problem,” and Watson duly records her marriage to another, although a note of sadness—perhaps over Holmes’s indifference to the charms of Miss Hunter—is evident in the Doctor’s voice.
TO THE MAN who loves art for its own sake,” remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of The Daily Telegraph,2 “it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases3 which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes célèbres and sensational trials in which I have figured, but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province.”
“And yet,” said I, smiling, “I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.”
“You have erred, perhaps,” he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs, and lighting with it the long cherrywood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.”
“It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” I remarked, with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend’s singular character.
“No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. “If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.”4
“Taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1892
It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast on either side of a cheery fire in the old room in Baker Street. A thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit, and shone on the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, for the table had not been cleared yet. Sherlock Holmes had been silent all the morning, dipping continuously into the advertisement columns of a succession of papers, until at last, having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very sweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.
“At the same time,” he remarked after a pause, during which he had sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire, “you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the King of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.”
“The end may have been so,” I answered, “but the methods I hold to have been novel and of interest.”
“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth5 or a compositor by his left thumb,6 care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils, and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!” He tossed a crumpled letter across to me. It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and ran thus:—
Dear Mr. Holmes,—
I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten to-morrow, if I do not inconvenience you—
Yours faithfully,
Violet7 Hunter.
“Do you know the young lady?” I asked.
“Not I.”
“It is half-past ten now.”
“Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring.”
“It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this case also.”
“Well, let us hope so! But our doubts will very soon be solved, for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question.”
As he spoke the door opened, and a young lady entered the room. She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.
“You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure,” said she, as my companion rose to greet her, “but I have had a very strange experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what I should do.”
“Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything that I can to serve you.”
I could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner and speech of his new client. He looked her over in his searching fashion, and then composed himself, with his lids drooping and his finger-tips together to listen to her story.
“I have been a governess for five years,” said she, “in the family of Colonel Spence Munro, but two months ago the Colonel received an appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia,8 and took his children over to America with him, so that I found myself without a situation.9 I advertised, and I answered advertisements, but without success. At last the little money which I had saved began to run short, and I was at my wit’s end as to what I should do.
“There is a well-known agency for govern
esses in the West End called Westaway’s, and there I used to call about once a week in order to see whether anything had turned up which might suit me. Westaway was the name of the founder of the business, but it is really managed by Miss Stoper. She sits in her own little office, and the ladies who are seeking employment wait in an ante-room, and are then shown in one by one, when she consults her ledgers, and sees whether she has anything which would suit them.
“Well, when I called last week I was shown into the little office as usual, but I found that Miss Stoper was not alone. A prodigiously stout man with a very smiling face and a great heavy chin which rolled down in fold upon fold over his throat sat at her elbow with a pair of glasses on his nose, looking very earnestly at the ladies who entered. As I came in he gave quite a jump in his chair, and turned quickly to Miss Stoper.
“ ‘That will do,’ said he; ‘I could not ask for anything better. Capital! capital!’ He seemed quite enthusiastic, and rubbed his hands together in the most genial fashion. He was such a comfortable-looking man that it was quite a pleasure to look at him.
“ ‘You are looking for a situation, miss?’ he asked.
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“ ‘As governess?’
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“ ‘And what salary do you ask?’
“Capital.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1892
“ ‘I had four pounds a month in my last place with Colonel Spence Munro.’
“ ‘Oh, tut, tut! sweating—rank sweating!’ he cried, throwing his fat hands out into the air like a man who is in a boiling passion. ‘How could any one offer so pitiful a sum to a lady with such attractions and accomplishments?’
“ ‘My accomplishments, sir, may be less than you imagine,’ said I. ‘A little French, a little German, music and drawing—’10
“ ‘Tut, tut!’ he cried. ‘This is all quite beside the question. The point is, have you or have you not the bearing and deportment of a lady? There it is in a nutshell. If you have not, you are not fitted for the rearing of a child who may some day play a considerable part in the history of the country. But if you have, why, then, how could any gentleman ask you to condescend to accept anything under the three figures? Your salary with me, madam, would commence at a hundred pounds a year.’
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 50
