by Bill Peschel
[Back] Depken: Friedrich Depken traced the development of detective stories starting with Edgar Allan Poe in Sherlock Holmes, Raffles and their Prototypes (1914, English translation by Jay Finley Christ, 1949).
[Back] Greek unseen: A passage of prose or verse from a classical Greek author that is presented to the student to be translated. In Britain’s public schools and universities, translating Greek or Latin was a traditional lesson or punishment (called “doing lines,” such as “Fortescue, you will do 100 lines of Horace for misbehaving”).
[Back] This venerable city: It was in “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.” Officially, Cambridge was a town. It did not receive city status until 1951.
[Back] Thucydides: Athenian historian, philosopher, and general (c.460-c.400) whose History of the Peloponnesian War is considered to be a classic scholarly work.
[Back] Liddell and Scott: A Greek-English Lexicon by Henry Liddell (1811-1898) and Robert Scott (1811-1887), published in 1843 and available online for easy reference.
[Back] O.U.D.S. or the A.D.C.: Since we don’t know which university this was set at, Belsize speculates that he was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society or Cambridge’s Amateur Dramatic Club.
[Back] Soames’s gyp: A college servant, used particularly at Cambridge (at Oxford they’re known as scouts). They run errands, brush clothes, and wait at table. Gyp is a Greek word for “vulture,” in the belief that they prey on their employers like one.
[Back] Temerarious: Reckless or rash.
[Back] Vacuosity: A variation on the word vacuum, implying an emptiness, or a lack of form or definition.
[Back] Contumely: Insolent or insulting language.
[Back] Von Hindenburg: Army officer Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) was chief of the German General Staff (1916-1919) and later Germany’s second president (1925-1934). He was considered a national hero after coming out of retirement and, at 66, crushing Russia at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914.
[Back] L’attaque, toujours l’attaque: The Simpsons joke implying that the French are “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” would not have worked a century ago. French for “attack, always attack,” the phrase has been attributed to Napoleon, French Revolution-era politician Georges Danton (1759-1794), and German chess master Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879).
[Back] Fianchetto: A powerful tactic in the opening stage of the game in which the bishop is moved to the second row in front of the knight, the longest diagonal on the board. It appears that when Bones said, “That’s a fianchetto,” Moratorium thought that he was identifying the make of the gun.
[Back] Biltmore: The New York Biltmore hotel was a luxury high-rise that opened in 1913. Built next to Grand Central Terminal, it had its own arrival station for its guests. It was the site of several conferences, including one by Henry Ford that tried to negotiate a truce to end World War I. The Biltmore’s clock in the Palm Court was so widely known that it became a popular meeting spot for New Yorkers. In Tis, a memoir by Frank McCourt (1930-2009), he recalls his boss assigning him to clean the Palm Court: “He says we have the best lobby in the country. It’s the Palm Court and known the world over. Anyone who’s anyone knows about the Palm Court and the Biltmore clock. Chrissakes, it’s right there in books and short stories, Scott Fitzgerald, people like that. Important people say, Let’s meet under the clock at the Biltmore, and what happens if they come in and the place is covered with dust and buried in garbage. That’s my job, to keep the Biltmore famous.” In 1981, over protests by preservationists, the hotel was closed, stripped to its steel skeleton and rebuilt.
[Back] Subscription to its magazine: The Red Cross sold memberships and published a quarterly magazine during the war with articles on the conflict and its medical efforts. After the war it was converted to a general-interest magazine but lasted only until 1920.
[Back] Vaso-motor: The medulla is a part of the brain stem. It controls many involuntary functions (sneezing, for example) as well as the cardiac and respiratory systems. Its vasomotor center controls the blood vessels. Damage to it can cause neurogenic shock, causing the blood vessels to relax, decreasing blood pressure and leading to organ dysfunction and death.
[Back] Winter Garden: The Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway was built in 1896 as the American Horse Exchange. In 1911, the Shuberts converted it into a theatre, and it has operated as one ever since. The big show there in 1918 was Sinbad, a musical starring Al Jolson (1886-1950).
[Back] Barkeeper’s palsy: A rarely used bit of slang meaning getting the shakes from mixing too many cocktails. The phrase can be found in print only in “’Twixt the Bluff and the Sound,” a 1917 serial by Irvin Cobb (1876-1944) in The Saturday Evening Post.
[Back] Pons Asinorum: Latin for “bridge of donkeys,” applied to the theorem in geometry that the angles opposite the equal sides of an isosceles triangle (that is, a triangle in which two of the three sides are of equal length) are themselves equal. It’s called this because the diagram that proves the statement looks vaguely like a bridge, and that those who can’t understand the theorem have the proportional intelligence of a donkey. The phrase is also applied to any problem that tests the intelligence of the solver.
[Back] Teuton: Germany, a nationality with a reputation for humorlessness.
[Back] Have no that repose: From “Lady Clara Vere de Vere” by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), in which the unnamed narrator tells the flirtatious noblewoman that he refuses to love her. He recalls a previous lover of hers, now dead, and how his mother tried to warn him off:
She spake some certain truths of you.
Indeed I heard one bitter word
That scarce is fit for you to hear;
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
[Back] Coruscating: Brilliant or stylishly showy. Sparkling.
[Back] Spurious drivel: The quote is from a 1917 article, “The Undiscovered Country,” in The Strand by Edward Clodd that was written in response to Conan Doyle’s “The New Revelation.” Clodd (1840-1930) was an agnostic banker, writer, and anthropologist who objected to an incident in Conan Doyle’s article about his friend, the eminent scientist Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940). In the days after his son, Raymond, died in the trenches, Lodge and his wife received messages from him through a medium, Mrs. Osborne Leonard. Clodd writes:
“From the enormous mass of communications purporting to come from discamate spirits, not an ennobling nor high-toned message can be extracted; all, all is nauseating, frivolous, mischievous, spurious drivel. Through his control, (the spirit of) a little Indian girl Feda, (the spirit of) Raymond Lodge tells his father that the houses in the Beyond are made ‘from sort of emanations from the earth’; that his white robe is ‘made from decayed worsted on your side’; that he has his ‘little doggie’ with him; that cigars made ‘out of essences and ethers and gases’ are provided for smokers, and ‘whisky-sodas’ for drinkers! Faugh!”
[Back] Tub-thumpers: A street corner person or a ranting, ignorant preacher, especially when applied to a dissenting minister (that is, not a member of the Church of England). Assumed to originate from the way they would thump their lectern to emphasize their points.
[Back] Mephitic: Foul-smelling, noxious.
[Back] Cacodyl: A poisonous liquid derived from arsenic that smells of garlic. Inhaling it caused tingling in the extremities, giddiness, and insensibility. It was considered for use as a poison gas during WWI but never used.
[Back] Dr. Le Mesurier’s: Probably a reference to Col. Lemesurier Taylor, who with Miss A. Goodrich-Freer, investigated in 1897 reported hauntings at Ballechin House in Perthshire, Scotland. A variety of guests were invited to stay there for three months, and some reported phantasms and mysterious sounds and voices. However, Frederic Myers of the Society for Psychical Research visited the home, listened to the testimony, and concluded there was no evidence of supernatural occurrences.
[Back] Desmond: Mrs. Desmond Humphreys (1860
-1938) was a popular novelist, a devotee of occultist and medium Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891) and sympathetic to Spiritualism. In 1919, she published The Truth of Spiritualism.
[Back] Tantalus: A carrying case for bottles, designed so that the handle locked down the tops of the bottles, making them secure for transporting and also impervious to tampering by servants tempted to drink a tot and fill it back up with water.
[Back] Boxing: A magazine founded in 1909 that is still published today.
[Back] Caviare: Another spelling of caviar, the roe of sturgeon or other fish served as a delicacy. Holmes is implying that his composition is too sophisticated for the common herd.
[Back] Language of Turfey: Holmes is paraphrasing Genesis 27:22, in which Jacob steals the birthright of Esau from their father, Isaac. Old, blind and wanting to pass leadership of his family to Esau, Isaac sends him out to hunt for meat with which he would use to bless Esau. While Esau was gone, his mother, Rebekah, who knew of Isaac’s intentions, dressed Jacob in his brother’s clothes, laid goatskins on his arms to simulate Esau’s hairiness, and sent him in with the meat. Isaac, feeling the goatskins, says, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.’”
[Back] Greyfeather or Red Jacket: Two Indian spirit guides used by mediums at the time. Indians were popular channels because of the belief that aboriginal tribes retained a connection to the departed.
[Back] Moody and Sankey: Ira Sankey (1840-1908) and Dwight Moody (1837-1899) were traveling American evangelists who preached throughout the U.S. and Britain. They published several compilations of Christian hymns, including Sacred Songs and Solos (1877). Hymns Ancient and Modern was the hymnal used by the Church of England. It has gone through several revised editions since it was introduced in 1861.
[Back] Professor Cranford: In The Reality of Psychic Phenomena (1918), Dr. William Crawford (1881-1920), an engineering professor at Queens University, described his experiences investigating mediums, including Kathleen Goligher (b. 1898), who he was convinced was authentic. After his suicide in 1920, other investigators found evidence that Goligher was a fraud. One saw her “levitating” the table with her foot during one séance, and traced the presence of “spiritual ectoplasm” to white muslin.
[Back] Six individuals: The seven members Crawford describes in his book were Goligher and her father, brother, three sisters, and brother-in-law, all of whom were mediums.
[Back] Says her prayers: Crawford wrote that “The séance is opened with the singing of a hymn and a prayer. In a few minutes light raps are usually heard near the medium, which quickly increase in intensity. Within a quarter of an hour most of the phenomena are often in full swing. A hymn is sung occasionally during the course of the séance. The sitting is closed by prayer.”
[Back] Proceeding by innuendo: Ellis’ animosity was traced to Clodd’s sole reference to Goligher in a footnote in The Question: If a man die, shall he live again? published the previous year. Responding to Crawford’s article in Light about experiments that “confirmed” that the medium could create ectoplasm, Clodd wrote:
“The lady through whom these wonders are manifest is a Miss Kathleen Goligher, the eldest daughter of a family whose members are Spiritualists. ‘They make,’ Sir W.F. Barrett tells us, in his On the Threshold of the Unseen, ‘a sort of religious ceremony of their sittings, always opening with prayers and hymns.’ Although these pietistic preliminaries have naught to do with the genuineness or spuriousness of phenomena at ‘spirit circles,’ they have often been coverings of fraud, and they lend an air of suspicion to the séances of the Goligher household. It would be well if Sir W.F. Barrett would arrange to bring the young lady and the apparatus to London for submission to a series of scientific tests at the hands of biologists and other experts, among whom [magician] Mr. Devant might be included with advantage on the principle of setting a conjurer to catch a conjurer. Science knows no finality, but it must have conclusive evidence before it accepts the existence of ‘a form of matter hitherto unknown’ among the properties of the human body.” After Crawford’s death, Edmund d’Albe investigated the medium and found evidence of fraud, as described in The Goligher Circle (1922). After its publication, Kathleen Goligher retired and faded from history.
[Back] Queensbury rules: A code of conduct in boxing, written by sportsman John Graham Chambers (1843-1883) and published as “the Queensberry rules for the sport of boxing” by the Amateur Athletic Club, after one of its founders, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry (1844-1900). The rules, emphasizing fair play and gentlemanly behavior, included setting up the size of the ring, the length of rounds, prohibitions on wrestling or hugging, and requiring the use of gloves. (Queensberry was also the father of Alfred Douglas, and responsible for the downfall of his son’s lover, Oscar Wilde).
[Back] Ad misericordiam: A logical fallacy in which the speaker appeals to the audience’s pity for the subject to win support.
[Back] Barnaby Rudge: A novel by Charles Dickens set during the Gordon Riots of 1780 when mobs rampaged through London in protest against an act intended to reduce discrimination against Catholics. Newgate hangman Ned Dennis participated in the riots, but changed sides near the end, only to be caught. The night before his execution, Dennis is a cringing wretch praying for a last-minute pardon. When an inmate taunts him with “See the hangman when it comes home to him,” Dennis replies:
“You don’t know what it is,” cried Dennis, actually writhing as he spoke: “I do. That I should come to be worked off! I! I! That I should come!”
“And why not?” said Hugh, as he thrust back his matted hair to get a better view of his late associate. “How often, before I knew your trade, did I hear you talking of this as if it was a treat?”
“I an’t unconsistent,” screamed the miserable creature; “I’d talk so again, if I was hangman. Some other man has got my old opinions at this minute. That makes it worse. Somebody’s longing to work me off. I know by myself that somebody must be!”
“He’ll soon have his longing,” said Hugh, resuming his walk. “Think of that, and be quiet.”
[Back] No material reward: Holmes seems to have forgotten the numerous times he received payment for his services. According to the canon, he received £1,000 each for recovering the Beryl Coronet, the Blue Carbuncle, and the King of Bohemia’s photo, £6,000 in the Priory School case, and £500 from a German spy in “His Last Bow.”
[Back] Base half-crowns: Uttering is the crime of passing counterfeit currency.
[Back] W.K. Clifford: English mathematician and philosopher (1845-1879). His contention in “The Ethics of Belief” that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” is considered to be a rebuke against religious faith, and was attacked by philosopher William James (1842-1910) in his essay “Will to Believe.”
[Back] Sir Roland House: Likely a reference to the physicist and Spiritualist Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), who was a close friend of Conan Doyle. He had published Raymond or Life and Death (1916), documenting the séances he and his wife had attended in their attempt to reach their son, who was killed in battle. “Raymond” told him that the afterlife was similar to Earth. People looked as they did when they were alive, and there were even whiskey and cigars available (which caused of much merriment in the press).
[Back] Asinorium Club: Latin for “donkey” (or, more likely, asses).
[Back] Foxes: The three Fox sisters of New York launched the Spiritualist movement in 1848 when two of them—Margaret (1833-1893) and Kate (1837-1892)—claimed that they could communicate with spirits through knocking through code. The children’s report caused a sensation, and during the 1850s gave hundreds of séances in New York City despite allegations of fraud. Their sister Leah (1814-1890) became their manager and they became popular successes. Magaret and Kate admitted in 1888 that they were fakes and publicly demonstrated how they could make the raps; in Margaret’s case by cracking her toe joints. Despite their confessi
ons (which Kate recanted the next year), they’re still treated seriously in parapsychological literature.
[Back] Jerry Cruncher: A porter in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. As a “resurrection man,” he steals bodies from their graves and sells them to medical schools for dissection.
[Back] Old clo’: Old clothes, inspired from the street cry of the clothes peddler.
[Back] Resurrection-man: Someone who digs up fresh corpses and sells them to medical schools. The most famous resurrection men were William Burke and William Hare of Edinburgh, who took the shortcut of murdering their victims.
[Back] Fletcher system: A system advocated by Horace Fletcher (1849-1919) who argued that food should be chewed about 100 times to get the most nutrition out of them and leave behind less waste.
[Back] Japanned: A lacquer finish, derived from Asian lacquerwork, that commonly looks like black enamel paint.
[Back] Second Stain: A Conan Doyle story published in 1904 as part of The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
