Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches I

by Bill Peschel

  “I tell you, Cotson,” cried Potluck next morning, while we were awaiting the expected visitor, “You must give up writing books. Why not put me in a musical comedy? It’s the best paying business on earth; and now that there is a slump in assassinations my services will not be so much in demand.”

  “But who’ll write the music?”

  “I will, of course. Ay, and the words too. We’ll get Leafette to do the scene painting and so keep the money in the family. What would you think of, say, The Anarchist Girl, or, Potluck to the Rescue, eh?”

  My reply was rendered inaudible by the noisy entry of Mr. Plantagenette Bailey, who seemed to be as excited as ever.

  “Well, what news?” he burst out with.

  “Take a chair, Mr. Bailey,” said Bones, blandly, handing our visitor the only whole one in the room.

  “Yes, yes; but I want to know if you were successful last night.”

  “Steady, my friend,” replied Potluck. “Have you got your cheque book with you?”

  “Here it is,” said the manager.

  “That’s the best thing I’ve seen for six months,” cried Potluck, smiling. “You must know that I make an additional charge of two shillings a word. My American publishers insist upon that.”

  “Very well,” said Mr. Bailey; “but be as short as possible.”

  “Right. Cotson, take down each word I say. Now, Mr. Bailey, the plot of The Hi-ti Girl has been gagged by your comedians. They’ve killed it by gagging, and if you want your plot to be recognizable, you must get rid of your comedians.”

  “But the public insist upon gags. They are necessary if the piece is to be kept up to date,” protested the manager.

  “In that case,” said Potluck, “the public don’t want a plot in a musical comedy. If the critics say the contrary, ignore them. The box office receipts are all you need concern yourself with. They are satisfactory, I understand.”

  “We’re turning money away,” answered the manager. But I’m sorry we couldn’t have a plot as well as the ‘gags.’ However, I suppose I can’t have everything. Here’s your cheque, Mr. Bones. If you should ever contemplate going upon the stage I’ll be glad to make you an offer. Good morning, sir.”

  “The modern stage is essentially democratic,” said Potluck, when our visitor had gone; “and the democracy does not want high art. It prefers high kicking. The Ibsen school of dramatists write of Society with a capital S, forgetting that what the playgoer really wants is a musical comedy with a capital chorus. Mr. Tree’s Academy’s idea for teaching the young how to shout may help towards reviving interest in the drama, but it can only be a temporary revival, as the relatives of the students will soon get tired of going to see them act. Meanwhile, musical comedy flourishes, and a brisk trade is being done in barrel organs. Who can complain?”

  Sketches

  George Howe

  This is another parody from Groton, the New England boarding school that produced “Sherlock Holmes at Groton” in 1903. George Howe (1886-1955) went on to Harvard (and joined the Harvard Lampoon) before becoming a Beaux-Arts-trained architect. Howe was the co-designer of the PSFS Building in Philadelphia, the first International-style skyscraper built in the U.S. and a National Historic Landmark.

  Sherlock Holmes lay back in his deep chair, holding his feet in his hands and slowly blew rings of smoke around the chandelier. From his left arm protruded a small morphine-injector. Between his teeth he held a violin, on which he now and then played selections from Mozart. Suddenly, he gave his nervous form a hitch and leaped from his chair. There was a knock.

  “Aha,” he cried in his deep baritone, “There is a man at the door.”

  “How do you know?” cried Watson, surprised as usual at his friend’s marvelous powers.

  “I hear him,” answered Sherlock, mysteriously.

  With a flip he dexterously sent the butt of his cigarette up the chimney. With a crash the door opened, and an enormous man of some forty-odd years forced his huge bulk through the door-way. As he entered the room he took a revolver from behind his ear and snarling like a gorilla he sprang toward Holmes and discharged its contents up his nose.

  When the smoke cleared away, Watson saw the wretch lying on his back, face down, with the poker twisted five times around his neck, while his tongue, forced out by strangulation, was grasping in vain at the leg of a chair. Holmes was lying before him, minutely examining the soles of the villain’s feet with a magnifying glass.

  “Aha,” he cried, “they are made of leather. The mystery is cleared.” And seizing a pair of pincers he quickly twisted his own face into the shape of an Italian count. Then he left the room and was gone.

  Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes; or the Worm That Turned

  J.W. Courtney, M.D.

  Joseph William Courtney (1868-1928) lived a distinguished life as a Boston physician—via Harvard Medical School—and was a highly regarded specialist in the diseases of the mind and the nervous system. He was elected to the American Neurological Association and acted as an expert witness in cases dealing with the mind. He wrote several books, including The Conquest of Nerves: A Manual of Self-Help (1911), and contributed papers on the nervous system to the New England Journal of Medicine.

  Published in the May 19 issue of The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, this outstanding parody treats Watson as if he were a real doctor and not just Holmes’ admiring foil.

  “Ah, good morning Holmes,” said Dr. Watson without even raising his eyes from the paper which lay before him on the table at his clinic for diseases of the nervous system. “Somewhat surprised I see that I should know who it was,” he continued as he went on reading. “It’s very simple as you are wont to say.” He pushed back his chair, looked up and extended his hand. “In the first place I had just looked at my watch and seen that it was a quarter after eleven. Now, under no circumstances is a patient admitted after eleven; and when I looked over the assembly on the benches some ten minutes ago, there wasn’t a soul there that didn’t have some defect in his gait. My assistants and the hospital attendants are trained not to enter without knocking. What’s more, there came to my nostrils, above the stuffy odor of the clinic, the smell of that awful Red Herring brand of cigarettes, which you alone of all my extensive acquaintance are able to smoke. Now, my dear fellow, as to your being surprised. You can’t deny that since your awful experience with our late friend, Moriarty, your nerves have got the faintest bit on edge. As I read, your legs from the knees up fell just in range of vision from the tail of my eye, and I was able to see that my salutation produced the faintest upward twitch of your trousers through an involuntary contraction of the thigh muscles. ’Pon my word, though, you are the most unsatisfactory fellow! I’ve been begging you to come here for years to see the only really interesting phase of human morbidity, and you have persistently denied yourself this intellectual treat. And now you drop in upon me from the clouds when I haven’t a bally thing on hand that’s worth while.”

  During this outburst, so astonishingly long-winded for the erstwhile shrinking and self-effacing Watson, Sherlock the magnificent stood gazing at him with the well-known look of amused superiority which he invariably kept on tap for his mix-ups with the upstart Lestrade. Not a muscle of his long keen face relaxed, but his pallor deepened, until Watson, who watched him narrowly, wondered if he really did have pernicious anemia or if his lemon-yellow complexion were merely the result of the excessive use of breakfast food subcu, coupled with the inhalation of the fumes of Red Herring cigarettes. He knew that his quondam mentor was decentering the tigroid bodies of his higher cortical cells in the act of thinking, but just what was at the bottom of these obvious mental gymnastics eluded his penetration.

  For the benefit of our readers, we will explain Holmes was miffed, for it was now disagreeably obvious to this twentieth-century prodigy that during his long demise his microcephalic ex-serf the doctor, either by the excessive use of that minute portion of his anatomy which lay under his thatch, or by the vicarious
function of some other organ, had developed his rudimentary faculty of thought. It was also annoyingly evident to him that the pathways between the place—wherever it might be—that Watson used in thinking, and the organs whereby he externalized thought, had been thoroughly cleared of all the tangle and pseudo-intellectual underbrush which formerly so effectually impeded them. In his wildest flights of cocainized fancy, no such thing as a rival had ever taken shape. And now, suddenly, to bump into the possibility, so to speak, in tangible form, and that, too, in the form of this low-grade idiot of a Watson made him feel like a four-ply Rip Van Winkle.

  During this prolonged fit of abstraction, Holmes had made up his mind on at least one point: Watson must be squelched once and for all.

  “You’re right, my dear Watson,” he said finally with assumed cordiality. “I ought to have come round before, but you know how many really important things I have to disentangle, and how little time I have to waste on the obvious, but I’ve made up my mind to devote a morning to you, and if you’ll name a day I’ll be here.”

  “Any day will suit me,” said Watson, politely refusing a proffered Red Herring cigarette. “I’ll go along with you now, and we’ll decide as we walk.”

  Watson rang the bell for an assistant, left the remaining patients in his charge, and started from the hospital with Holmes arm in arm.

  It was Monday and the throng about the doors was of the usual large proportions after the Sunday inactivity of the out-patient departments. At the exit from the lodge the way was temporarily blocked to Holmes and his fidus Achates by a burly fellow on crutches, who seemed to handle the one under his right arm with peculiar difficulty for a man of his powerful build.

  As they went along, Holmes turned to Watson and said with a tinge of malice, “Why can’t the duffers of surgeons give these poor devils proper crutches? It’s bad enough to think of that chap’s family being without his support for a long time on account of his foot, but an extra two months’ loaf with a crutch-maimed arm is an outrage. There are an awful lot of incompetents in your profession, Watson.”

  Watson stopped and eyed the man with the crutches keenly, his face flushed with indignation at Holmes’ sneer at the profession.

  “I think you’re entirely wrong in your conclusions, my friend,” was his only reply. Then, as the object of their remarks came along, he stopped him and said, “You’d have been better off without the liquor, wouldn’t you my good man?” Watson’s question was accompanied by a significant glance in the direction of the big fellow’s right hand.

  The lout, with the instinct of his class, at once recognized the professional calling of his questioner, hung his head sheepishly and replied, “I guess it was the booze that did me up all right, for I was doing fine with the foot till I got out with a crowd of my friends Saturday night. Nothing would do them but they must stand treat to celebrate the getting better with the foot. I was loaded when I got home but the hand seemed all right then. Yesterday morning, though, when I woke up, it was all numb and deadlike, and it ain’t been no use to me since.”

  During this reply Holmes appeared restless and uneasy, and at its conclusion he took Watson by the arm and said, “I’m in quite a hurry, old man, and if you’re coming along with me, you’ll have to come at once.”

  Watson hastily directed the man to come to his clinic the next day and started along with Holmes.

  Holmes was consumed with inward rage; he knew that Watson would rough him at the earliest opportunity, and decided to give him no opening. He immediately started in and talked a blue streak on the probable cost of the midnight oil consumed by Homer while writing the Iliad. He figured it out by a secret process of calculation, which he knew would excite Watson’s envy, and this in itself brought a certain amount of balm to his wounded feelings.

  Watson let him rattle on until they were near Holmes’ lodgings and then butted in with “I say, old chap, do you still hold the views on surgical incompetency that you expressed a while ago, and do you still feel that you should not waste your time on the obvious?”

  Holmes grunted and quickened his pace.

  “Because if you do,” went on the imperturbable doctor, “I think a morning at my clinic will prove a strong mental corrective. By the way, I must make a note to send you a reprint of my lecture on the fallaciousness of the apparently obvious in clinical diagnosis. This case we just saw exemplifies my teachings beautifully, and you must confess, my dear Sherlock, that you did not give due consideration to all the factors entering into it. Had you noticed the soiled condition of the padding on the tops of the crutches, it would have been obvious to you that the padding had been put there at the time the crutches were given. This fact in itself demonstrates that the surgeon was cautious and precludes to a large extent the possibility of crutch paralysis; now this is Monday, and the day on which we usually get a crop of Saturday-night paralysis, that is to say, paralysis of the radial nerve caused by a drunk’s sleeping on his arm; but enough of this. You come round on Friday, and I’ll try to show you something interesting.”

  On Friday morning, Watson left the place that most people call home, but which with him was merely a place to stay when he wasn’t needed by Holmes. He proceeded to the latter’s lodgings in Baker Street, and the two went on together to the hospital. Arrived there, Watson cast a searching glance over the benches and ushered Holmes into the consulting room. Then he rang the bell and ordered the externe to show in first the musician on the front seat.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the externe, “but I haven’t had time to take any histories, and I don’t know who you mean.”

  Watson walked to the door, threw it open, and beckoned to a man sitting on the front seat. The patient entered and sat before Watson’s table.

  “Musician, did you say?” asked Holmes apathetically.

  “Yes, musician, and I should add, a player on a wind instrument.”

  Holmes examined the man’s buccinators in their normal condition, and then got him to puff out his cheeks. He appeared satisfied with his examination, and when Watson asked him if he had made up his mind as to how he, Watson, had arrived at his conclusion as to the man’s occupation, he answered in a tired way, “Why, certainly, you have only to look at the muscles of his lips and cheeks; they tell the story.”

  “Wrong,” said Watson, “it’s much simpler than that. Just observe the little goatee he wears. I venture to say he believes the loss of that would prevent his playing for a week. Am I right?” he asked, turning to the man.

  “Oh, yes, sir. I wouldn’t cut that off for the world; it’s strengthening to the lip, and I shouldn’t be able to play till it grew again.”

  Watson soon got at the facts of the case, examined and disposed of it.

  During this time Holmes looked absently out of the window.

  The next patient was ushered in, and without speaking, presented a note to Watson. The latter, without looking at the note, exclaimed, “Ah, a teamster, I see.”

  “That observation was superfluous,” broke in Holmes superciliously. “I knew he was a teamster the moment I saw him. He has the complexion of a man much exposed to the weather and wears the sort of clothes common to people of that class.”

  “That may all be true, but it would apply equally well to a cabman, and it is dangerous to draw conclusions on such general grounds. Perhaps you did not notice that this man took the note he brought me out of his hat—a typical teamster trick.”

  Holmes made no reply, but bit his lips furiously while Watson read the note. Watson turned the case over to his assistant and called for the next patient. It proved to be a man with a marked tremor of the right hand. Without a word, Watson took hold of the trembling hand and observed it closely for a few moments. Then he said quietly, “Here, my dear Holmes, is an interesting tremor in a left-handed plasterer who has done no work for some time. Am I right, my man?”

  “Quite right, sir,” was the answer. “I’m left handed, and I’m a plasterer by trade, but this cursed shaking
has laid me up for nearly six months now.” At this point Holmes was about to say something, but hesitated and looked the man over carefully in silence. Watson sat quietly back in his chair and observed his friend’s scrutiny of the patient with an amused twinkle in his eye.

  Holmes’ face was a study. It had grown several shades yellower than usual and again made Watson think of pernicious anemia. The powerful magnifying lens was now brought into play, and the man’s nails, ears, and eyebrows thoroughly examined by its aid. Obviously, Holmes was stumped. By this time he was breathing hard and mopping his brow.

  After a time Watson broke in with: “Well, my dear Holmes, what do you say?”

  “Nothing, except that it’s beastly stuffy in this room,” growled Sherlock, the peerless.

  “Well, let’s have a window open, and then, perhaps, I can show you a thing or two of interest about this man that you may have overlooked with your glass. You will first observe that the tremor involves the right hand. On looking at this hand closely, you will see a half-softened callus over each joint of the thumb, and similar ones over the root joint and the one next to it of the forefinger. You see none over any other joints. This shows that these particular joints mentioned must habitually come in contact with some hard surface. Now, from my study of artisans’ hands, I know that this condition is peculiar to the plasterer, and that it is brought about by the contact of the mortar board. In this case it is the right hand that shows the condition, so the man must do the actual plastering with the left. I hardly need mention that the somewhat softened condition of the calluses indicates this man’s abstinence from work for some time.”