7For no apparent reason, “Mapleton” in the Strand Magazine and American editions, “Capleton” in English editions.
8He had an estate at Petersfield and was a guest at the wedding of Lord Robert St. Simon, to whom he recommended Holmes (“The Noble Bachelor”).
9An agent who obtains and sells information on the condition and prospects of horses entered for an upcoming race.
10In the English book edition, the sentence reads “There was little difficulty in finding him, for he inhabited one of those villas which I have mentioned.” However, the American text seems to be a more likely explanation.
11A walking stick with a large round head and imported from Penang, an island off the west coast of Malaya. The name, according to Sir Henry Yule’s Hobson-Jobson dictionary, was perhaps a corruption of the Malay pinang liyar (wild areca), or pinang layor (fire-dried areca); it may also have been a reference (well-founded or not) to legal matters in Penang being settled by use of a cane. John Camden Hotten’s Slang Dictionary (1865) refers to it as “now carried by footmen, though formerly by gentlemen.”
12The convex projection in the center of a shield.
13John Weber points out that Tavistock is neither at the north of Dartmoor, as Holmes implies, nor in the middle of the circle of Dartmoor, as Watson states. Instead, Tavistock is on the western extremity of Dartmoor. Weber selects Oakley Farm (two miles east of Tavistock) as “King’s Pyland” and further identifies the village of Collaton as Capleton (Mapleton). He also suggests that the racetrack was not at Winchester at all but instead at Newton Abbott, on the eastern border of Dartmoor.
14A four-wheeled carriage with a top in two parts, so that it may be closed, half-open, or entirely open.
15Although it is tempting to assume that “A.D.P.” stands for the popular pipe manufacturer and tobacco retailer Alfred Dunhill Pipe, Lord Donegall concludes that it referred instead to small-briar pipes made outside Ancona, Italy. Hence, A.D.P. meant “Ancona Della Piccola.” Alfred Dunhill did not open his tobacconist shop (Alfred Dunhill Ltd.) until 1907 and did not manufacture a pipe until 1910, further bolstering this argument. A more likely candidate is English pipe manufacturer A. Posener & Son, who marketed pipes under the label “A. D. Pierson.”
16Smoking tobacco softened and pressed into solid cakes; from the name of the maker.
17John Weiss & Sons of Oxford Street and Manchester manufactured surgical instruments.
18The phrase “for some days” does not appear in some American texts.
19There were two Bond Streets, Old and New. The latter housed numerous attractive and fashionable shops and several picture galleries.
20Holmes comments several times on the detective’s need for imagination: “ You’ll get results, Inspector, by always putting yourself in the other fellow’s place, and thinking what you would do yourself. It takes some imagination, but it pays” (“The Retired Colourman”); “You know my methods in such cases, Watson. I put myself in the man’s place, and, having first gauged his intelligence, I try to imagine how I should myself have proceeded under the same circumstances” (“The Musgrave Ritual”).
Holmes’s comments here fly in the face of his frequent declaration (for example, in A Study in Scarlet) of the principle that it is a mistake to theorize before one has data. Indeed, by “imagining,” is not Holmes guilty of the very practice he condemns there, “twist[ing] facts to suit theories”?
21This and the previous line do not appear in the Strand Magazine or American editions.
22Monsignor Ronald Knox, in his famous satirical essay “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes,” coined the lofty-sounding comic label “Sherlockismus” for Holmes’s epigrammatic sayings, typified in this exchange. Another of Knox’s favourites is “It looks like one of those social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie” (“The Noble Bachelor”).
23Similar to a Western stagecoach, with seats inside and on top.
24This means the horses’s right front leg. The left side of a horse is “near,” the right, “off.”
25Noticeably missing from the card is any mention of the jockeys.
26Note that earlier Watson refers to the “Wessex Cup.” A “plate” is a horse race in which the contestants compete for a prize of fixed value rather than stakes.
27Wayne Swift translates the symbols “h ft” as meaning “half forfeit.” “This means,” he explains, “that the stake which each owner has to put up in order to enter his horse will not be returned if the horse does not run. Instead, half of that stake will be forfeited.”
28The duke, a member of the St. Simon family, was at one time Secretary for Foreign Affairs. As recorded in “The Noble Bachelor,” the family was somewhat impoverished. This may have been a result of gambling; in “The Empty House,” Watson reports that Ronald Adair won a large sum at cards from “Lord Balmoral,” presumably the same person.
29What is presented as a copy of the race card here is somewhat suspect and incomplete, possibly even assembled after the race from memory, by someone unfamiliar with racing colours. Gavin Brend elucidates: Pugilist’s “blue and black jacket” is insufficiently described—a reference to “blue and black stripes” would have been more appropriate. Iris’s rider seems to have no cap whatsoever. Desborough and Rasper, with outfits consisting solely of sleeves, seem to be missing their jackets. Only the entries for Silver Blaze and The Negro are fully and correctly listed.
30Brandy, that is.
31Alle Caccia finds the incognito running of the horse so unlikely, in light of the standards of the stewards and the prestige of the race, that he concludes that Watson made up the entire incident to show off Holmes’s abilities.
32The question as to whether Holmes bet on Silver Blaze intrigues many scholars (see the appendix on page 420), and one clue may be found here. In “Some Observations Upon Silver Blaze,” Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler notes that Holmes watched the races from the drag and apparently never left it, meaning he could not have placed a bet on that particular day. Yet his admission that he might “win a little on this next race” indicates that he had bet on the race following Silver Blaze’s, presumably placing his wager before arriving at Winchester. Thus he might also have bet on Silver Blaze at the same time.
33A Pullman car was a railway coach designed for sleeping, named after its inventor, the American George Mortimer Pullman (1831–1897). A former cabinetmaker, Pullman experienced little initial success with his first sleeping car, the luxurious Pioneer, which was too wide to fit on most tracks. This situation changed in May 1865 after the Pioneer was included in President Abraham Lincoln’s two-day funeral procession, for which platforms and bridges were modified to accommodate the special coach’s dimensions. After seeing how comfortable railway travel could be, the public began clamouring for the new car, leading Pullman to found the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1867—followed by the model community of Pullman for its workers in 1880 (the town became part of Chicago in 1889). Pullman was the site of one of the most famous and contentious labour disputes in U.S. history in 1894, when workers struck to protest wage cuts and massive layoffs. An American Railway Union boycott, widespread rioting, and paralysis of the railway system led President Grover Cleveland to send in federal troops, finally breaking the strike two months after it had begun.
34Holmes refers to a jockey who deliberately holds back his horse, in order to lose the race.
35The area behind the knee.
36The researches of Roland Hammond, M.D., convince him that a cataract knife could not possibly inflict such an injury, because a horse’s tendons would be too tough for a small knife to make sufficient penetration. “The incident has great dramatic value,” Hammond concludes, “but the thrilling scene depicted [in “Silver Blaze”] does not stand up to the cold light of reason and experience.”
37It is odd indeed that an experienced trainer would approach an untied horse from behind—and then light a match. Alexander Moore Hobb notes that Straker coul
d have prevented the horse from kicking by holding down his tail, but his hands were full with the cravat and the knife. In which hand did he hold the match? “And it was raining,” Hobbs muses. “It’s a wonder he even got the match—beg pardon, vesta—to light.”
38Holmes’s explanation certainly makes sense, but he could have just as easily been mistaken. Harald Curjel, in “Some Thoughts on the Case of ‘Silver Blaze,’ ” asserts that sheep are prone to strained joints and painful foot infections. Therefore, the observed lameness could have arisen from natural causes and not from Straker’s surgery. In addition, suggests Curjel, such surgery would be very difficult to perform unless the sheep were immobilised or shorn and in any event would likely have been observed.
39According to Baedeker, no train from Winchester arrived at Victoria Station; rather, they used Waterloo Station.
40In his autobiography, Memories and Adventures, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, claiming authorship of this story, plainly owns up to its factual deficiencies, confessing that he has “never been a racing man, and yet I ventured to write ‘Silver Blaze,’ in which the mystery depends upon the laws of training and racing. The story is all right, and Holmes may have been at the top of his form, but my ignorance cries aloud to heaven. I read an excellent and very damaging criticism of the story in some sporting paper, written clearly by a man who did know, in which he explained the exact penalties which would come upon everyone concerned if they had acted as I described. Half would have been in jail, and the other half warned off the turf forever. However, I have never been nervous about details, and one must be masterful sometimes.”
THE CARDBOARD BOX1
“The Cardboard Box” is one of Watson’s finest stories, combining brilliant detection and a powerful human drama. Easily the darkest tale in the entire Canon, Holmes and Watson here investigate a case that begins with the delivery of a gruesome packet and ends with a revelation of alcoholism, adultery, and murder. Following up the slenderest of clues, wholly overlooked by Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, Holmes discovers serious crime where the police see only grotesque humour. Even Holmes, the hardened criminal investigator, is deeply troubled by his discoveries: “What is the meaning of it, Watson? . . . What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?” In fact, the case is so stark in its portrayal of human emotions that Arthur Conan Doyle suppressed publication of the story in the first edition of the Memoirs, deeming it unsuitable for younger readers. A poor editorial job on the story left its opening muddled; here it is restored to its original version from the pages of the Strand Magazine, as Watson intended it.
IN CHOOSING A few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, so far as possible, to select those which presented the minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field for his talents. It is, however, unfortunately, impossible entirely to separate the sensational from the criminal, and a chronicler is left in the dilemma that he must either sacrifice details which are essential to his statement, and so give a false impression of the problem, or he must use matter which chance, and not choice, has provided him with. With this short preface I shall turn to my notes of what proved to be a strange, though a peculiarly terrible, chain of events.
It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the house across the street was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs of winter.2 Our blinds were half-drawn, and Holmes lay curled upon the sofa, reading and re-reading a letter which he had received by the morning post. For myself, my term of service in India had trained me to stand heat better than cold, and a thermometer at ninety was no hardship. But the morning paper was uninteresting. Parliament had risen.3 Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest4 or the shingle of Southsea.5 A depleted bank account6 had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.
Finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I had tossed aside the barren paper and, leaning back in my chair, I fell into a brown study.7 Suddenly my companion’s voice broke in upon my thoughts.
“You are right, Watson,” said he. “It does seem a most preposterous way of settling a dispute.”
“I fell into a brown study.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1893
“Most preposterous!” I exclaimed, and then suddenly realising how he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in my chair and stared at him in blank amazement.
“What is this, Holmes?” I cried. “This is beyond anything which I could have imagined.”
He laughed heartily at my perplexity.
“You remember,” said he, “that some little time ago when I read you the passage in one of Poe’s sketches8 in which a close reasoner follows the unspoken thoughts of his companion, you were inclined to treat the matter as a mere tour-de-force of the author. On my remarking that I was constantly in the habit of doing the same thing you expressed incredulity.”
“Oh, no!”
“Perhaps not with your tongue, my dear Watson, but certainly with your eyebrows. So when I saw you throw down your paper and enter upon a train of thought, I was very happy to have the opportunity of reading it off, and eventually of breaking into it, as a proof that I had been in rapport with you.”
But I was still far from satisfied. “In the sample which you read to me,” said I, “the reasoner drew his conclusions from the actions of the man whom he observed. If I remember right, he stumbled over a heap of stones, looked up at the stars, and so on. But I have been seated quietly in my chair, and what clues can I have given you?”
“You do yourself an injustice. The features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his emotions, and yours are faithful servants.”
“Do you mean to say that you read my train of thoughts from my features?”
“Your features, and especially your eyes. Perhaps you cannot yourself recall how your reverie commenced?”
“No, I cannot.”
“Then I will tell you. After throwing down your paper, which was the action which drew my attention to you, you sat for half a minute with a vacant expression. Then your eyes fixed themselves upon your newly framed picture of General Gordon,9 and I saw by the alteration in your face that a train of thought had been started. But it did not lead very far. Your eyes flashed across to the unframed portrait of Henry Ward Beecher10 which stands upon the top of your books. Then you glanced up at the wall, and of course your meaning was obvious. You were thinking that if the portrait were framed, it would just cover that bare space and correspond with Gordon’s picture over there.”
General Gordon’s Last Stand.
G. W. Joy, 1885
“You have followed me wonderfully!” I exclaimed.
“So far I could hardly have gone astray. But now your thoughts went back to Beecher, and you looked hard across as if you were studying the character in his features. Then your eyes ceased to pucker, but you continued to look across, and your face was thoughtful. You were recalling the incidents of Beecher’s career. I was well aware that you could not do this without thinking of the mission which he undertook on behalf of the North at the time of the Civil War, for I remember your expressing your passionate indignation at the way in which he was received by the more turbulent of our people. You felt so strongly about it, that I knew you could not think of Beecher without thinking of that also. When a moment later I saw your eyes wander away from the picture, I suspected that your m
ind had now turned to the Civil War, and when I observed that your lips set, your eyes sparkled, and your hands clenched, I was positive that you were indeed thinking of the gallantry which was shown by both sides in that desperate struggle. But then, again, your face grew sadder; you shook your head. You were dwelling upon the sadness and horror and useless waste of life. Your hand stole towards your own old wound and a smile quivered on your lips, which showed me that the ridiculous side of this method of settling international questions had forced itself upon your mind. At this point I agreed with you that it was preposterous and was glad to find that all my deductions had been correct.”
“Absolutely!” said I. “And now that you have explained it, I confess that I am as amazed as before.”
“It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I assure you. I should not have intruded it upon your attention had you not shown some incredulity the other day.11 But I have in my hands here a little problem which may prove to be more difficult of solution than my small essay in thought reading.12 Have you observed in the paper a short paragraph referring to the remarkable contents of a packet sent through the post to Miss Cushing, of Cross Street,13 Croydon?”
“No, I saw nothing.”
“Ah! then you must have overlooked it. Just toss it over to me. Here it is, under the financial column. Perhaps you would be good enough to read it aloud.”
I picked up the paper which he had thrown back to me, and read the paragraph indicated. It was headed, “A Gruesome Packet.”
Miss Susan Cushing, living at Cross Street, Croydon,14 has been made the victim of what must be regarded as a peculiarly revolting practical joke, unless some more sinister meaning should prove to be attached to the incident. At two o’clock yesterday afternoon a small packet, wrapped in brown paper, was handed in by the postman. A cardboard box was inside, which was filled with coarse salt. On emptying this, Miss Cushing was horrified to find two human ears, apparently quite freshly severed. The box had been sent by parcel post from Belfast upon the morning before. There is no indication as to the sender, and the matter is the more mysterious as Miss Cushing, who is a maiden lady of fifty, has led a most retired life, and has so few acquaintances or correspondents that it is a rare event for her to receive anything through the post. Some years ago, however, when she resided at Penge, she let apartments in her house to three young medical students, whom she was obliged to get rid of on account of their noisy and irregular habits. The police are of opinion that this outrage may have been perpetrated upon Miss Cushing by these youths, who owed her a grudge, and who hoped to frighten her by sending her these relics of the dissecting-rooms. Some probability is lent to the theory by the fact that one of these students came from the north of Ireland, and, to the best of Miss Cushing’s belief, from Belfast. In the meantime, the matter is being actively investigated, Mr. Lestrade, one of the very smartest of our detective officers, being in charge of the case.
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 58
