In bed with Sherlock Holmes 9780889241428, 0889241422

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I: Sex as Well as Violence
II: Looking for Miss Rachel
III: Love, Detection, and Adventure
IV: We Constantly Mention Aunt Clara
V: Be Very Careful When You Say It in Ink
VI: Sherlock Holmes in Love
VII: The Man Behind the Characters
VIII: The Things We Do for Love
IX: A World Without Women
X: There Is Always Romance
Reference Notes
Appendix I — Sherlock Holmes Reference List
Appendix II — A Note On Sources
Appendix III — Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y

Citation preview

In Bed With

Sherlock Holmes

Other books by Christopher Redmond: Between Knuckle and Palm; London: South Western Ontario Poetry, circa 1980.

In Bed With

Sherlock Holmes Sexual Elements in Arthur Conan Doyle's Stories of The Great Detective by Christopher Redmond, B.A., M.A. Illustrations by Sidney Paget

Simon & Pierre Toronto, Canada

We would like to express our gratitude to The Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for their support. Marian M. Wilson, Publisher Copyright © 1984 Christopher Redmond All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Acknowledgement is given for permission to quote from the following: Introduction to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) by Leslie Fiedler. Introduction Copyright © 1976 by Leslie Fiedler. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books Inc. Naked Is the Best Disguise by Sam Rosenberg. Copyright © 1974, Samuel Rosenberg, Publisher

ISBN 0-88924-142-2 12345-87654 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Redmond, Christopher In bed with Sherlock Holmes: sexual elements in Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of the great detective ISBN 0-88924-142-2 1. Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir, 1859-1930 — Criticism and interpretation. 2. Sex in literature. I. Title. PR4624.R41 1984

General Editor: Marian M. Wilson Editor: Betty Corson Assistant Editor: Jean Paton Typesetting and Design: Cundari Group Ltd. Printer: Imprimerie Gagne Ltee Printed and Bound in Canada Simon & Pierre Publishing Company Limited Order Department P.O. Box 280, Adelaide Street Postal Station Toronto, Ontario Canada M5C 2J4

823'.912

C84-098687-4

This book is inevitably and affectionately dedicated TO KATE and to the adventuresses whom, because of her, I have come to know and love

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the many people who have been the sources of my ideas, or who have helped me to clarify and document them. In some cases that has happened through personal conversation, and in other cases through the printed word, the great mass of published Sherlockian scholarship: I could not even attempt a full list, though footnotes throughout the text give credit in many of the places where it is due. My greatest debts are to two noted Sherlockians who are also members of my family. One is my wife, Katherine Karlson Redmond, who not only stimulated my interest in Sherlock Holmes and sex, separately and together, but helped in endless discussions as the work took shape, and made her almost total recall of the canon available as an indispensable reference tool. The other is my father, Donald A. Redmond, who has guided my Sherlockian research as much as I would let him since my teen years, and has given me, most of all, my approach to the text (Doylean rather than Sherlockian, one might say). His Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Sources, which was on press as the writing of this book began, has been of immense help to me, and so has his endless personal encouragement and advice. I am grateful to several of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes for their help. Ursula Moran and Marlene Aig, as close friends who love both Sherlock Holmes and me, have been encouraging when I needed encouragement; Evelyn Herzog deserves particular thanks for assistance in formulating the ideas behind Chapter IV. Maureen Green, a dear friend and the president of The Bootmakers of Toronto during 1984, has given good advice and support during the last stages of preparing the manuscript. Indeed, I must give credit to the very existence of the Adventuresses, for several reasons. By taking on canonical personae, they have given me a clearer picture of Eugenia Render's unmarred face and Nancy Devoy's admirable curves. By raising questions about the importance of women to Doyle and to Holmes, they have stimulated much important scholarship. And by agitating for fair treatment in a largely male Sherlockian world, they have impelled me, and I hope other people, too, to think about the proper roles of men and women. I hope this book will make clear my belief that, in spite of the beautiful differences between men and women, many sexual distinctions in fact have nothing to do with sex and would better be done away with. The attitudes of Sherlockians to sex—sex in the Holmes tales, and to a secondary degree sex in the Sherlockian subculture—is in fact a topic of some interest in this book. Much of Chapter V deals with the keen interest that Sherlockians have long shown in a particular character, Irene Adler, and at many places throughout this book I have touched on the generally held opinions of other (especially female) characters and sexual situa-

Acknowledgemen ts

tions. Partly in order to elucidate this aspect of my general subject, I have made reference in the text or in footnotes to a very large number (indeed, I hope an exhaustive list) of Sherlockian articles that touch on love or sex in some way. Throughout my research I have received invaluable help at the Metropolitan Toronto Library, where Cameron Hollyer and Janice McNabb preside over the world's largest publicly owned collection of Doyle and Holmes material, and also at the library of the University of Waterloo. At the university (which, as my employer, provides indirect support for my Sherlockian research, perhaps more than it bargained for) I have had generous assistance from many people, including some who are mentioned in footnotes in connection with specific points, and Dr. Paul Beam, who was of great help on matters to do'with techniques of literary criticism. To all these people I am deeply indebted, but that is not to say that they are to blame for what resulted. I am the one who has been writing articles for several years pointing to sexual elements in Sherlock Holmes, although of course such matters have been touched on by others as well. Acknowledgements on specific matters will be found throughout the book, and a general acknowledgement is due to Samuel Rosenberg for his brilliant if off-centre book, Naked Is the Best Disguise. I am also the one who was convinced that a book could be written on the subject. This book is my conviction, or obsession, and nobody else's. Any misinterpretations and errors that it no doubt contains are also entirely my responsibility.

Note on Illustrations

The illustration on the cover and those that head the chapters are chosen from among the 357 drawings by Sidney Paget that were published in the earliest editions of the Adventures, Memoirs, and Return of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his autobiography that he had imagined Holmes as a thin and ugly man, but Paget "had a younger brother . . . who served him as a model. The handsome Walter took the place of the more powerful but uglier Sherlock, and perhaps from the point of view of my lady readers it was as well." One of Paget's contributions to the popular image of Holmes was the deerstalker (fore-and-aft) cap, which is never mentioned in any of the tales but along with the curved pipe has become a symbol of Holmes's presence.

Contents

I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X

Acknowledgements Introduction Sex as Well as Violence Looking for Miss Rachel Love, Detection, and Adventure We Constantly Mention Aunt Clara Be Very Careful When You Say It in Ink Sherlock Holmes in Love The Man Behind the Characters The Things We Do for Love A World Without Women There Is Always Romance Reference Notes Appendix I — Sherlock Holmes Reference List Appendix II — A Note On Sources Appendix III — Bibliography Index

6 10 16 26 39 55 70 82 98 113 126 141 155 180 182 184 201

Introduction

hen I lay on the grass in the back yard at the age of twelve, thrilling to the story of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles, I do not think I noticed that the story is not only about murder, loneliness, and demons but also about "It's Nancy!" twisted sexuality. And my father, describing his The Adventure of the Crooked Man. boyhood discovery of The Sign of the Four, has never mentioned that the love story in that novel enthralled him the way the adventure story did. Readers simply do not look for sex and romance in the Sherlock Holmes tales; but they are there, and though boys may not benefit from them, they are an important source of the richness that keeps adult readers coming back to Sherlock Holmes. There are four novels and fifty-six short stories about the great detective, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle over a period of forty years. This book is about those tales, and tries to communicate my own enthusiasm for them, to show how they contain sexual elements which help them give me pleasure now that I did not get from them as a boy. Necessarily, then, it is about the author as well as about the stories, for the author is revealed in his writings. I do not offer any sort of biography of Doyle; that job is being done by others, most recently and powerfully by Owen Dudley Edwards in The Quest for Sherlock Holmes.1 Nor do I look much at Doyle's non-Sherlockian work, though many times a glance at that work sheds light on its principal Subject. Rather, this book focuses chiefly on the original Sherlock Holmes stories and deals with them in detail, assuming that the reader is familiar with them and fond of them. (A warning: it gives away many of the plots.) The people who will find this book of interest are primarily Sherlockians, present or potential— "Sherlockians" being that underground league of agile-minded men and women who didn't abandon Sherlock Holmes after childhood, but come back to the stories again and again, to find something new in each reading. I count myself among them, of course, and I am writing to show them yet another way of looking at these great tales. There are two traditions among Sherlockians who write about the stories, as most of them seem to do, and I have tried to avoid both traditions. One is compulsive and detailed scholarship about very small matters; the other is the pretence that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson lived, and that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not an author but a literary agent. (Both traditions are canonized in The Annotated Sherlock

W

10

Introduction

Holmes2). As for the first, I have tried to deal with large matters, using the small ones as evidence, not ends in themselves. As for the second, I happily acknowledge Doyle's authorship. He was a great man, and I am proud to have a few discoveries and suggestions to offer about his work and what went into it. I have deferred until the late chapters of this book any extended discussion of Doyle's own life and its probable influence on his writings about Holmes. That approach seemed best in this case because I wanted to begin with the Sherlock Holmes tales themselves, which are more familiar to most readers than the details of their author's life. There were, besides, many points that I thought could usefully be made about the stories themselves, before it was necessary to explore more complicated realms. Chapter III touches on the likelihood that The Sign of the Four, the Holmes novel written when Doyle was a newly wed, expresses something of his own feelings in its love story; but the tortured love of his middle years and the happy domesticity of his late years, as they are expressed in the later Holmes stories, are examined only in Chapter VII, by which time the early work has been thoroughly explored for more straightforward sexuality. Besides Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle, this book is about sex. It is my belief, and an underlying principle of this book, that human beings do not really change much: that since the physiological processes of mating remain the same from one century to another, the psychology does not change much either. A pretty woman of 1895, or a handsome man of 1902, will need only perhaps a change of hairstyling and clothing to be attractive in 1984 as well, and to produce a sexual response from the same sort of person who would have liked him or her in the Victorian age. And yet, of course, sexual behaviour does change somewhat, for reasons that must be found in external circumstances, social and economic and cultural and even technological. Ronald Pearsall, the author of The Worm in the Bud, a major study of Victorian sex, writes: The men and women in this book are not an alien species, but ourselves, planted in an age when it was difficult to be honest with oneself, where guilt and alarm filtered out of the personal into the public sphere, when private sexual proclivities were thought to be unique to oneself, and uniquely damning.3

A modern writer may accept that a fictional Dr. Leon Sterndale or a real Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle had the same desires and drives he has, but had still better tread warily in discussing their sexual behaviour, for fear of misunderstanding the social forces that were at work on them. In this book I have made no reckless effort to present a general theory of Victorian society as it affected sex, although from time to time I have had to assume (or occasionally make explicit) some of my conclusions about such matters. The important point to be borne in mind is that similar urges could lead to different actions: in particular, that very small (by modern standards) lapses could have great and disastrous results. Nevertheless, the Victorian period was neither as straitlaced nor as consistent as one might assume. The diaries and letters of many proper Victorians—from clergyman, reformer, and novelist Charles Kingsley to Queen Victoria herself—now make it clear that they felt, and enjoyed, physical passion. But they expressed their passion chiefly in private, in loving marriages, or else in certain other socially tolerated contexts, as gentlemen did with London's thousands of prostitutes. What the Victorians did not do was talk or (especially) write about sex publicly; and that reticence is what has produced the distorted image of sexual prudery that we label "Victorian." 11

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

The first Holmes stories appeared in what Doyle himself calls "the very heart of the later Victorian era," a time long after the high-water mark of social prudery, which, according to one social historian, 4 was a thing of the past by 1850. The middle years of Victoria's reign, Pearl goes on, were a time . . . when prostitution was widespread and flagrant; when many London streets were like Oriental bazaars of flesh; when the luxurious West End nighthouses dispensed love and liquor till dawn; when fashionable whores like Skittles and Agnes Willoughby rode with duchesses in Rotten Row and eminent Victorians negotiated for the tenancy of their beds; when a pretty new suburb arose at St. John's Wood as a seraglio for mistresses and harlots, and at popular pleasure gardens like Cremorne and Highbury Barn, prostitution was given a setting of woodland charm; when respectable men bathed naked at seaside resorts and respectable women watched them, sometimes through opera-glasses; when bloods like Waterford and Windham went their raffish way as though "Prinny" were still at Carlton House; when pornography became a well-organized industry and even the most righteous newspapers fed the public appetite for sex and sensation. 5

Those then were the years when Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes were growing up.6 No doubt prudery flourished in the later Victorian decades, but it coexisted with prostitution and pornography. Fraser Harrison in The Dark Angel gives a picture of later Victorian sex that puts great emphasis on men's unreasonable expectations of women, and vice-versa, but makes no effort to pretend that sexual activity was unimportant or rare. Perhaps the key is that sex remained important to individuals but that they had to pursue it in a society in which decent people maintained strong segregation of the sexes. ("In Victorian London," writes Ronald Bryden, "no decent woman dined in public—the brilliant after-theatre suppers at the Cafe Royal were exclusively masculine affairs. Serious conversation took place only in smoking rooms, to which no woman ever penetrated. . . . It was a society of all-male offices, all-male professions. . . . It was an age of bachelors.")7 Naturally they turned to prostitution and pornography, and naturally in such an artificial environment relations between individual men and women were uneasy, leading sometimes to violence, misery, or madness. Naturally, too, a feminist movement began to make itself felt. The amorous career of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, is the sort of thing Cornelia Otis Skinner has in mind when she describes the 1890s as "essentially an erotic era." One might argue that she is speaking more of France than of England—indeed the prince conducted many of his amours in Paris—but the "elderly roue" she quotes might be equally well from either country: Whoever has not undressed a woman of the Eighteen Nineties, has missed one of the better refinements of love-making, from the first tiny pearl button of her rosepoint cuffs, to the lacings of that inflexible bastion of honor, the corset.8

Sherlockians occasionally have the opportunity to gather in Victorian costume, and it would be hard to disagree. Sir Richard Burton had written in 1886-88 that women of his time lived "in a rustle of (imaginary) copulation," and further described as "mental prostitution" the fantasies, reading, and dreams of women to whom circumstance denied actual sexual activity.9 Men, though circumscribed in many ways, did have some outlets available for their sexual drive. Both sexes were freer thirty or forty years later, and Doyle was still writing his 72

Introduction

stories of Sherlock Holmes; the last ones appeared in 1927. The rigidity of society had cracked (social historians can argue about whether World War I was the important factor, or whether the change came from within, seen first in the Oscar Wilde scandal of the 1890s), and people could make their copulation real (public) rather than imaginary (or hidden). Doyle's writings in this late period are much more human and somewhat racier stuff than he could publish in the 1890s. "The freedom of the 'twenties," writes his biographer, "was . . . much more welcome to him than commentators who have blindly written him off as a Victorian prude could hope to understand."10 Edwards does not write him off in that way, and neither do I, although I emphasize the turmoil of his personal life more than the temper of the times around him. I have already postulated that individual sexual drives do not change much from one generation to another. Such drives, channelled right, lead men and women to mate happily; channelled wrong, they can lead to anything, including murder. Nor are the indirect consequences of those drives much different now from what they were in Doyle's day, or Holmes's day. Repressed sexuality still leads to perversion, and sublimated sexuality leads to creation and expression, now as then, and as in Holmes and Doyle themselves. In this book I shall show where and how that took place, referring both to unconscious allusions and to the explicit behaviour of the characters Doyle created. For I believe that characters in stories can be studied, brought to life in the imagination, on the assumption that they would act in the same way you or I or our acquaintances would act in similar circumstances and social conditions. The hardest part is understanding what the influence of those circumstances and conditions really was.11 It is now, of course, fashionable to direct literary criticism at the position of women in fiction, and in general to look at literature from a feminist point of view. Critics who take that approach find a gold mine in Victorian writing. The male novelists we are dealing with [write the authors of one study] are less able [than female writers] to conceive a powerful, intelligent woman who is not somehow socially, morally, or even physically aberrent. . . . And they are certainly more likely to rhapsodize over women who cater to sentimentalized masculine erotic desires: the coquettes, the angels, the dimpled innocents. But they are also more likely to express conflicting sexual attitudes directly in their narratives and in the psychological and social circumstances of their characters. They keep attention focused on the system itself, on the preconditions that shape their characters' personal choices . . . . Their insecurities lie, not so much in the act of writing itself or in the way that society regards their roles as authors, as in the whole complex of masculine roles that are their cultural inheritance. In the major novels of the authors we are dealing with here, personal ambivalence toward women and sexual roles in general intersects with the crisis in sexual relations that manifests itself throughout their culture. 12

Decades before Doyle, certainly, English authors were creating characters with sex lives: the popular impression of Victorian times as sexless is as wrong about literature as about real life. And Doyle's earliest writings come some thirty years after the "sensational novels" of the 1860s, which are contemporary with the heyday of the greater novelists just described. The popular writing of that early period involves, in the words of a recent critic, "sexual passion in all its irregular aspects, typically surrounded by an air of moral ambiguity. . . . In a genuine sensation novel it becomes in effect an obligation to incorporate a liberal amount of seduction, bigamy, or even prostitution, preferably in connection with the heroine." And, the author adds, "illicit sex is generally accompanied, sometimes even eclipsed, by violent crime, preeminently murder."13 For all that literature had taken a modest swing in a conservative direction by 1890, Doyle's 13

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

readers will not have been surprised to find "seduction, bigamy, or even prostitution" along with "violent crime, preeminently murder." Did Doyle then share those other characteristics of earlier writers, preferring "dimpled innocents" to "powerful, intelligent" women and revealing in his work that he was a captive of his "cultural inheritance?" There are elements of less-than-liberated attitudes, certainly; but there are also enough strong women, and enough important characters who ignore cultural restraints, to warrant the conclusion that Doyle was in this respect "enlightened" and modern. His characters are not mere stereotypes, but real people (though people utterly typical of their class and time). In the stories where sex is relevant at all, furthermore, they act not so much out of conflict and repression as out of desire, in a recognizably modern way. What follows is an extensive study of the ways in which sex and erotic love are topics and driving forces in these stories. I have no doubt that they were present in Doyle's conscious and unconscious mind when he conceived the stories and wrote them down. As far as I know, there is no letter or journal in which Doyle explicitly says that he contemplates including sexual elements in the Holmes stories. He does touch on the subject in one of his medical tales, however: "A Medical Document" in the collection Round the Red Lamp, in which one of the doctors "talking shop" complains that in fiction characters suffer only from diseases that "belong to the upper part of the body. The novelist never strikes below the belt." A colleague agrees with him and observes that . . . there is a side of life which is too medical for the general public and too romantic for the professional journals, but which contains some of the richest human materials that a man could study. . . . It would deal with strange outbursts of savagery and vice in the lives of the best men, curious momentary weaknesses in the record of the sweetest women, known but to one or two, and inconceivable to the world around. It would deal, too, with the singular phenomena of waxing and waning manhood, and would throw a light upon those actions which have cut short many an honoured career and sent a man to a prison when he should have been hurried to a consulting-room.

What the doctor expresses in this Victorian phrasing is the matter of sex gone wrong, a subject that is at the basis of some of the Holmes tales, such as "The Creeping Man;" but he might well have said the same thing about sex going right, for it, too, is fundamental. Doyle clearly knew something about sex: the subject of his doctoral thesis in medical school was tabes dorsalis (locomotor ataxia), a form of syphilis.14 Indeed, he alludes to this research once or twice in his stories, most amusingly in the Sherlock Holmes tale, "The Resident Patient," when he makes Dr. Percy Trevelyan the author of a monograph on "obscure nervous lesions," a not bad euphemism for tabes dorsalis.15 And he did use syphilis as a plot element at least once, in the short story, "The Third Generation,"16 or twice if, as seems possible, the aneurysm that kills Jefferson Hope in A Study in Scarlet was meant to have been caused by syphilis.17 Certainly Doyle could be blunt about sexual matters as they touched on public affairs. In letters to The Times he pulls no punches about the problem of street prostitution in London and the corruption of young soldiers in "harlot-haunted" neighbourhoods.18 It would be interesting, if it were possible, to know just what fraction of life and literature were in Doyle's opinion grounded in sex. For myself, I would not disagree with the estimate, attributed to W.L. George, that "if a novelist were to develop his characters evenly, a three hundred-page novel might extend to five hundredtwo hundred pages for sex preoccupations."19 However, one suspects that Doyle was not always aware of the sexual themes that 14

Introduction

did lie behind his work, or the reactions that they would produce in readers;20 if he had been, he might well have suppressed or softened the stories in which they surface. He did suppress one Holmes story and at least one other short story, as Chapter II shows, and it was by no means the most sexual story he chose to suppress, or the one that should have threatened his self-respect the most. About the surface love interests his attitude probably was one of slightly naughty amusement at what he had done. 'Talk about love-scenes!" he wrote to a sister about his work in a historical novel, The Refugees. "It is volcanic."21 He was more right than perhaps he knew. It may already be apparent that when I say "sex" I frequently mean "women," particularly women considered as different from men. Some male Sherlockians have enjoyed writing or reading tasty descriptions of the many attractive women in the Holmes stories;22 this book is not intended to follow in that tradition, although Chapter IV certainly examines the charms of Irene Adler. It is a study of sexual relations in general. However, not only is its author male but so are the author of the Holmes stories and his principal characters. Inevitably, then, apart from possible appearances of homosexuality, which I discuss in Chapter IX, the appearance of sex means the appearance of women, seen as something different from what is male. I apologize, therefore, for any apparent implication that all readers of Sherlock Holmes stories are male. I know very well that they are not, and I hope that, while writing from my own male point of view, I am also providing some material that female readers may find relevant. I hold a powerful belief in the rights of women (to be paid, respected, and considered by society as fully as men are, for example); but I do not abandon the also powerful belief that men and women are in important ways psychologically different and complementary (and a good thing, too). In large part, what I am documenting are the points in the Holmes stories at which their differences become part of the affairs with which Doyle has Holmes deal. I think readers of both sexes can find that valid. And I am talking about real people (or literary characters intended to strike the reader as real people). That effort is made more difficult by the ease with which both writers and readers can make people into symbols. Edwards, Doyle's most penetrating biographer, devotes close attention to the powerful influence of Doyle's mother, and gives her credit for "her son's triumphant belief in the superiority of women," as exemplified in Irene Adler's triumph over Sherlock Holmes in "A Scandal in Bohemia."23 Whatever Doyle's belief in such a superiority, recent Sherlockian readers have certainly seen Ms. Adler as a symbol of Woman, as Chapter IV shows. Perhaps I have from time to time fallen into the same unfruitful sort of speculation, and certainly in Chapter IX I examine the ways in which characters and details provide the expression for the author's not altogether conscious feelings; but in general I have tried to stick to things that, and people who, are indisputably there. Whether Edwards's generalization about Doyle is valid is a question I do not try to answer. I begin with the story of "The Illustrious Client," both because of its intrinsic relevance—explained at the beginning of Chapter I—and because the birth of this book came with my discovery that my fiancee (now my wife) had a nom de guerre among the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes: Kitty Winter. The Adventuresses are a league of female admirers of the great detective, of whom I say much more in Chapter IV Each of them adopts the name of a female character from one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, to be used in humorously formal contexts, and discovering that Kate had branded herself Kitty Winter led me to "The Illustrious Client" with a new interest. 75

Chapter I Sex as Well as Violence

44^phe Adventure of the Illustrious Client" is an J. unusual Sherlock Holmes story in two ways: it contains no mystery, and it is drenched in sex. Holmes is employed, not to hunt down a criminal or explain a strange sequence of events, but to stop The Adventure of the Cardboard a marriage, and he is successful in doing so, with Box. the assistance of a remarkable young woman named Kitty Winter. "You needn't go into my past," she tells Sherlock Holmes. "That is neither here nor there." But her past is very much to the point, for she is, beyond doubt, a prostitute, and there are not many characters of that sort in the Sherlock Holmes tales. Rarely are sexual elements represented as explicitly as in this late tale (it was first published in October 1924, fifty-fourth of the sixty Holmes stories to see print). There is, of course, no denying that the Sherlock Holmes stories are chiefly about mystery and adventure—they are detective tales, not romances. However, only seven of the sixty have no women characters at all, according to Paul Stephen Clarkson's count,1 and where there are women, it will be found, there is usually sexual attraction of some kind. More explicitly, Pierre Nordon says that "In twenty of [the sixty stories] either the central or subsidiary action depends on a love affair,"2 and Julie Maynard states that "fifteen out of the sixty reported cases . . . involve either actual or implied adultery"3 These figures are high enough to startle most Sherlockians, but it will be seen that they are if anything lower than they might be if all forms of sexuality are considered. Nor is it necessary, in arguing that sex pervades the stories, to wrench occasional phrases out of context for comic effect. That has been done on occasion, most thoroughly by the learned and jovial John Bennett Shaw,4 and most effectively by H.W. Starr in his examination of how Mrs. Hudson catered to Holmes's needs in "The Empty House."5 Much can sometimes be seriously read into a few unguarded words, but the words must still be read in the context of the entire story, indeed in the context of all Doyle's works. A simple example: Starr observes that in The Hound of the Baskervilles Dr. Mortimer claims to have spent "many a charming evening" with the late Sir Charles Baskerville "discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot." Starr suggests that the anatomy in question includes unusual development of the genitals and the secondary sex organs, which will have been of interest to Sir Charles and Dr. Mortimer.6 "And," Starr adds, "we also realize why Stapleton could feel confident that Sir Charles

16

Chapter I — Sex as Well as Violence

would be drawn, alone, after dark, to the moor-gate which he so dreaded, by a letter from pretty Laura Lyons." One chuckles at this proposition; it is enjoyable but it gets the scholar no further forward. On the other hand, the alliterative initials of Laura Lyons, which on the face of things could equally well have been any of the other letters of the alphabet, turn out to have a significance to the reader, because they reflect Doyle's thinking about larger issues, and the way he put his novel together. (Chapter III begins the discussion of that particular point.) When enthusiastic readers have looked for sex, they have begun, and frequently ended, with the story titled "A Scandal in Bohemia." Chapters IV and V give special attention to that story and its heroine, Irene Adler, who has been of so much interest to readers that in the past decade she has often been uprooted to appear with Holmes in book-length parodies of Doyle's original stories.7 Indeed, modern parodies have generally had much more sex and love interest visible on their surface than the original stories do. Sex is not missing in the originals, but it is, for the most part, described with some reticence, and deeply and naturally involved rather than dropped in for obvious sensational effect.8 Holmes's colleague Dr. John H. Watson in the first paragraph of "The Illustrious Client" calls the affair "in some ways, the supreme moment of my friend's career." In fact, it is nothing of the sort; Watson seems to make that judgement chiefly because of the "illustrious" but anonymous client who retains Holmes in the matter, a client who can only be the King himself.9 The stories are full of generous superlatives, and in this very story Holmes demurs when someone labels his opponent the most dangerous man in Europe. "I have had," he says with a smile, "several opponents to whom that flattering term has been applied." No; the importance of the client or of the adventure has nothing to do with its choice as the starting place for a study of Sherlock Holmes and sex. The study starts not with a king but with Kitty Winter. The very description of Miss Winter that Watson gives when she first appears in the story is both attractive— 'a slim, flame-like young woman with a pale, intense face'— and repulsive: "youthful, and yet so worn with sin and sorrow that one read the terrible years which had left their leprous mark upon her." Miss Winter comes into the story after Holmes has tried, and failed, to prevent the marriage in a more prosaic way. He has been out to reason with the prospective groom, the cool and vicious Baron Adelbert Gruner, and made not the slightest impression on him. Miss Winter, dredged up from the underworld of sin, tells Holmes "with fierce energy" that her degraded state is all Gruner's doing. "I am his last mistress!" she soon screams at Violet de Merville, the aristocratic young woman who sees only good in the vile baron and is determined to marry him in spite of entreaties from Holmes, her father, and, for all one knows, also the King. "I am one of a hundred," the flame-like young woman tells her, "that he has tempted and used and ruined and thrown into the refuse heap, as he will you also." How did she come to this? "If," Kitty Winter said to Holmes, "I stood before her [Violet de Merville] and told her how he used me—" but she never did tell her, and the reader is bound to wonder: what—and let us be explicit here—is Baron Gruner meant to have done to Kitty Winter? He seduced her? Unquestionably; she calls herself "his last mistress." That incidentally disposes of any suggestions that she was a prostitute before she fell into Gruner's clutches, whatever she may have been afterward. When she met him she had enough position to be taken as a mistress, not merely a night's or an hour's diversion. So she was seduced, and perhaps kept for weeks or months, and unfeelingly abandoned. It is 17

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

hard, though, to extend a seduction and abandonment into "terrible years," a phrase that Watson uses, or to explain the "leprous mark" of her experiences, however metaphorical that phrase might be. An abandoned mistress even in the late Victorian era was not necessarily condemned to the gutter, and it is easy to imagine the "flamelike" Kitty Winter turning her experience as mistress of a Gruner to good advantage as one of the grandes horizontals, a species not quite extinct. He abused her physically? Possibly so, though Watson's description does not suggest that she was left with any serious injury, nor does she mention anything of a physical kind. He ruined her reputation? But she cannot have had one, in a society sense, if she became Gruner's mistress; and her repute would hardly suffer when she left that station if it did not suffer when she gained it. He left her with a venereal disease? Watson's reference to the "leprous mark" that Miss Winter's past had left on her face makes this an attractive hypothesis. But that phrase seems to be used metaphorically, as has been mentioned (and as will be discussed further in a moment). The description of the lady as "flame-like" but "pale" is compatible with the signs of tuberculosis, as they are usually portrayed in Victorian literature, but not particularly with those of syphilis. Furthermore, there is no evidence whatever that the "remarkably handsome" Baron Gruner is suffering from any such disease. He forced particular indecent acts on her? Here we begin to come close to what must be intended. Without becoming clinical, it is difficult to speculate on particular bedroom actions that might have left Kitty Winter emotionally as well as physically the worse for wear, or what acts might have repelled her. It is a commonplace that men keep mistresses in order to enjoy sexual services their wives will not provide, but most of the time that simply is fellatio. Does the Baron's "cruel, hard gash" of a mouth indicate a taste for whippings, the perversion that the English traditionally associate with the Germans? He did not hesitate to murder his wife; he took joy in having LeBrun crippled for life; he would certainly have whipped or scarred his mistress if that suited him. But, again, there is no indication that Kitty Winter was scarred or whipped. What further degradations? Whatever he tried to do, could not Kitty Winter escape? There are two clues to what must really have happened. One is Miss Winter's own remark: "Oh, if I could only pull him into the pit where he has pushed so many!" and the other is Gruner's "brown leather book," his "lust diary." Before following those clues, it is necessary, however, to define the inquiry. It is not meant that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote part of the story as a puzzle for which there is a "correct solution" which the shrewd reader can figure out. Quite possibly Doyle did not think much below the surface of the story. He was fond of women (that point is amplified in Chapter VII), but he did not likely have much time to think about either perversion or the demi-monde; he may well have thought of his creation Kitty Winter as "ruined" by Baron Gruner and left it at that. But the story is not artistically satisfactory if there is not a plausible sequence of events in its past that can account for the facts presented in its present. I think there is such an explanation; and if Doyle was not conscious of it, he would at least have acknowledged it had anyone dared to present it to him. The explanation is that Kitty Winter was not so much a mistress, though she may once have had that status, as a victim: she was sold into white slavery to be a prostitute. The white-slave traffic out of England had been immense through most of the nineteenth century, though it was cut down considerably after agitation by the Salvation Army, the Pall Mall Gazette, and other agencies led to the passage of the Criminal Law 78

Chapter I — Sex as Well as Violence

Amendment Act, 1885 ("an Act to make further provision for the protection of woman and children, the suppression of brothels and other purposes"). "It has never been entirely stamped out and exists to this day," writes Charles Terrot, a historian of the phenomenon.10 Certainly in 1924 it was still vivid enough in memory to be available for literary use. During the heyday of the practice, girls and young women were kidnapped or tricked and imprisoned, sometimes in British brothels and sometimes in establishments as far away as Australia, the United States, Brazil, and Singapore. But the largest part of the traffic was with Belgium and France. English girls were in great demand for several reasons: the strict laws protecting the girls of most Continental countries; the pure Victorian upbringing that made English girls both malleable and delightfully shockable, not to mention slow in realizing that they were in a brothel, not in a hotel on the way to the plush governess's job they had been promised; and, presumably, the difficulties that language and distance would put in the way of their escaping. The more childish and innocent the victims, the more profitable they are [wrote Alfred S. Dyer, the founder in 1880 of the London Committee for the Exposure and Suppression of the Traffic in English Girls for the Purposes of Continental Prostitution] . A wealthy Continental debauchee, reared under the influence of the moral blight of licensed debauchery, whose respect for womanhood has dwindled to an outward politeness of behaviour, but whose unrestrained and now uncontrollable passions have sunk to a position, in which, notwithstanding his outward politeness, he is morally half-brute and half-devil, will pay an amount equal to a poor man's income for the opportunity of violating a betrayed, terrified and helpless virgin. . . . It is well known that on the Continent the patrons of these places soon become satiated with the ordinary forms of immorality, and, in the craving of their lust for novelty, the poor inmates are made subjects of the most inhuman, unnatural, and diabolical outrages, the nature of which it is impossible to mention.11

From Terrot's narrative it appears that apart from ordinary copulation these outrages came under two main headings: flagellation and the rape of virgins or children. Kitty Winter was neither of those; but it is also reported that young women of her sort were valued in the trade: "A small number of girls, who did not respond to the breaking-in treatment and fought their captors tooth and nail, were rated as being highly valuable, since there was a great demand for girls of exceptional spirit—especially in Germany."12 Generally they were drugged to get them aboard boats to cross the Channel. Perhaps, then, Kitty Winter was taken to Germany as a special treat for some roue. What could better describe Gruner than Dyer's phrase "wealthy Continental debauchee"? And his mention of "outward politeness:" the words might be Holmes's own, as he describes the establishment at Vernon Lodge and notes Gruner's "considerable artistic side" and "breeding . . . with a superficial suggestion of afternoon tea." It is indeed easy to imagine Gruner as a patron of exclusive brothels, though not the much more numerous cheap and common ones; he might, like several roues among the European royalty, have patronized Mary Jeffries's exclusive "flogging-house" at Rose Cottage, Hampstead.13 But Kitty Winter uses terms about Gruner that seem to rule him out as simply a customer in a brothel where she worked or was forced to work. "What I am," she says, "Adelbert Gruner made me." It sounds rather as though he was not the customer but the manager or the procurer. And that would explain the little leather book, too: not only its existence but its location. Its contents were meticulous: "Snapshot photographs, 19

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

names, details, everything about" the women involved. That sounds coldblooded even for the methodical German. And if the women were the conquests of his own bed, surely the souvenirs would be kept at the bedside, not in a pigeonhole in a study. If the records were business ones, on the other hand, the study would be the natural place for them, and one would expect method and order in their keeping. The conclusion is inevitable that the women Gruner recorded were the ones he had merchandised at some stage along the road from kidnapping or seduction through "breaking in" (a process in which he may himself have taken, so to speak, a hand) to delivery at some point in Belgium or perhaps his Austrian homeland. The photographs that are mentioned raise an interesting point. If they were mere "head shots," as actresses now call them, they can have been of little use to a seller of female flesh, unless perhaps he simply needed to identify them; and though a lover might prize such pictures of a cherished face, the jaded Baron might be expected to want to record more than just the face. So the photographs probably showed more—and one wonders how the Baron went about having them taken. They may even have been, by Victorian if not modern standards, pornographic; one sees Victorian erotic pictures on occasion and marvels that breasts and the inevitable string of pearls can look so innocent. In this case one can imagine the photographs as a significant cause of the degradation Miss Winter felt. "Of all the persons involved in this sordid affair," writes Bliss Austin, "the one who makes the greatest claim to our sympathies is Kitty Winter, the lass who went to see Baron Gruner's etchings and then repaid him by etching his face with acid."14 Pierre Nordon is less flattering: The shattering entry of the deplorable prostitute in The Illustrious Client must be attributed to Conan Doyle's efforts to start a new series of Adventures. The story was written in 1925 [sic\ but Nordon may have been going by the date of English publication] and shows what vain attempts he made to distort his own fastidiousness.15

Whether Doyle was in his writings as censorious about morality as Nordon makes out is a question that will in part be dealt with later in this study. For present purposes it is perhaps enough to deny that Kitty Winter is "deplorable." She is presented entirely sympathetically (when Holmes calls Kitty Winter and Violet de Merville "flame and ice face to face" there can be little doubt that he is on the side of the flame). Not many characters anywhere in the canon are invited to come along with Sherlock Holmes when he takes direct action against a villain, but Kitty Winter is given that privilege. Not many prompt Holmes's personal concern ("get that girl out of the way," he urges, thinking of her when he is himself badly injured); and not many, for that matter, are called "the woman" twice by him, as Kitty Winter is.16 From the author's point of view rather than from the character's, finally there is evidence that Miss Winter is to be considered in a good light. That is the obvious, but profound, fact that she is the person who really ruins Baron Adelbert Gruner. Holmes does get his little leather book, and it is suggested that its vile contents were shown to Miss de Merville to prevent the planned marriage; but what really punishes Gruner is not so much the end of Violet de Merville as the end of his face. He can always get another society beauty, but not without his looks; and he can never get those back after Kitty Winter has destroyed them with vitriol. The importance of that gesture is underlined by the parallel between the description of Miss Winter's own face early in the story— "leprous mark" and all—and that of the Baron's as the vitriol does its work: 20

Chapter I — Sex as Well as Violence

The vitriol was eating into it everywhere and dripping from the ears and the chin. One eye was already white and glazed. The other was red and inflamed. The features which I had admired a few minutes before were now like some beautiful painting over which the artist has passed a wet and foul sponge. They were blurred, discoloured, Inhuman, terrible.

Vitriol-throwing was, if not a popular, at least a recognized, device of the period for what might be called sexual terrorism; one thinks of the crazed blue face of "La Vitrioleuse," the print by Eugene Samuel Grasset.17 One does not question that it was devastating, but the description seems exaggerated, especially with Watson's emotionladen adjectives. Vitriol is simply sulfuric acid, described in standard reference works as a "colorless, oily liquid" very dangerous to the human body in every possible way. "Contact with the body results in rapid destruction of tissue, causing severe burns," one handbook says. The most notable characteristic of sulfuric acid is its strong affinity for water, which it will extract instantly from almost any organic substance: wood, sugar, or animal tissue. In short, it chars flesh, taking water out of the organic components and leaving black carbon behind. Anecdotal evidence of vitriol in the face includes the story of a chemist some years ago who was splashed when a gas valve was accidentally opened and blew into a dish of the acid; prompt immersion of his head in a nearby tank of water prevented serious damage, and in fact he probably suffered more from the heat generated when the acid met the water than from the direct effect of the acid. After some weeks of cortisone ointment treatment there were no visible scars on his face.18 Watson does not describe charring; he describes flesh literally dissolving, horrormovie style, and one must conclude that the horror-movie effect is the one Doyle wanted. Gruner, the personification of sexual—fleshly—evil in this story, has had revenge wreaked on his very flesh. "Nevertheless," writes Jerome F. O'Malley in a recent article19 that tries to read this story as a religious document, "the violence is gratuitous and does not help the case toward a solution. Holmes makes this clear, when he recognizes that Violet would continue to love the Baron as a 'disfigured Martyr'." O'Malley describes Miss de Merville as "a symbolic representative of the Virgin Mary," pointing to the highly spiritual language with which Holmes describes her, giving the impression that she can purify even the evil Gruner of his sin. Such a theology "was anathema to Conan Doyle," by the later years of his life a fervent believer in spiritualism, says O'Malley. He is on shakier ground here, since Doyle always argued that spiritualism is entirely compatible with Christian faith, indeed requires it. But O'Malley's central analysis of the story has much to recommend it, and would be still stronger if he had added a comparison of Miss Winter to the beloved prostitute-saint, Mary Magdalene. She has, in the end, much more human interest than the virgin. It is worth speculating (with the same caveat applied earlier to all speculation about Kitty Winter's past) what future was really in store for Violet de Merville as the wife of the Baron. "Your refuse heap is more likely to be a grave, and maybe that's the best," Kitty Winter told her, and that was on the assumption that the Baron really was going to marry her, and then presumably mistreat and betray her. It is just possible, of course, that he would not have married her at all—that she would have ended up in the whiteslave shipments to the Continent, where the "demure, pale" ice maiden would have fetched an excellent price. Enough has surely been said by this time to make it clear that sex is both an important element in "The Illustrious Client" and a complicated one, and that a full apprecia21

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

tion of the story will not be achieved without close examination of some sexual matters. The statement that "The Illustrious Client" is exceptional in being "drenched in sex," was accurate, for none of the other stories either provides such abundance or has so little mixture of the sexual with the more familiar Sherlockian elements—the mysterious, the gaslit, the violent. But its distinction is only a matter of degree, and that can be best shown by immediate attention to another story that shows strong sexual elements: "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax." I give it attention at this point for two reasons: one being that its central feature is drawn from the same sexual phenomenon that lies behind "The Illustrious Client," namely the white-slave trade, and the other being that it is the only story in the canon that demands a serious consideration of that specifically sexual crime, rape.20 A reasonable objection to that statement is that the story does not seem to be about rape at all, but about "disappearance," or at best kidnapping, coupled of course with jewel theft. It is true that the story makes no mention of sexual assault on the person of Lady Frances. But all the trimmings are there, as will be shown, and in any case the word "rape" has not always had its present connotations of something that happens in a parking garage or an alley as part of an immediate assault. (I am well aware that, contrary to the common belief, many rapes, perhaps a majority, happen in residences and are committed not by strangers but by people well known to the victim. But the common belief is what is relevant here.) The Oxford English Dictionary, under "rape," places in 1861 the first use of the word in which its meaning is specifically sexual violation, rather than a special form of kidnapping (as in "the rape of the Sabine women"). Doyle first has Holmes describe Lady Frances as a "drifting and friendless woman . . . the inevitable inciter of crime . . . helpless . . . migratory . . . lost . . . a stray chicken in a world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed. I much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax." One really expects him to say that he fears she has fallen into the hands of the white slavers, who naturally preferred to seize a "friendless" woman, as being less likely to be enquired after (and for whom "obscure boarding-houses," mentioned by Holmes as the natural milieu of such a woman, are convenient staging areas on the way to Continental brothels). It comes as something of a relief to hear that Lady Frances, though "beautiful," is now "in fresh middle age," and that the chief concern at the moment is for her jewels. Of course, that changes. Watson follows her trail through Europe, making "a very pretty hash" of the investigation and incidentally stumbling across one of the canon's many cameo love affairs, that between Marie Devine, the lady's personal maid, and Jules Vibart, a head waiter. Holmes joins him, and then the Honourable Philip Green, the lady's spurned but honest suitor, becomes part of the team: I swear to you, Mr. Holmes, that there never was in this world a man who loved a woman with a more wholehearted love than I had for Frances. I was a wild youngster, I know—not worse than others of my class. But her mind was pure as snow. She could not bear a shadow of coarseness. So, when she came to hear of things that I had done, she would have no more to say to me. And yet she loved me—that is the wonder of it!—loved me well enough to remain single all her sainted days just for my sake alone.

(This speech is startlingly like another speech made to Holmes by a man with naval connections, Captain Jack Crocker in "The Abbey Grange," a story also connected to this one by the coincidence of a woman from Australia named Fraser. But is is not clear what importance those similarities have.) 22

Chapter I — Sex as Well as Violence

Holmes learns that Lady Frances has fallen into the hands of "Holy" Peters and his wife. "His particular specialty is the beguiling of lonely ladies by playing on their religious feelings," he tells Watson, "and his so-called wife . . . is a worthy helpmate." He speculates that the lady is already dead or else "in some sort of confinement;" and there is much reason to think that the confinement which ran through Doyle's mind as he wrote those words was white slavery of the kind already discussed. The agents who recruited girls for the brothels—in various ways, but especially through such tricks as offering young women congenial and well-paying work on the Continent—often worked in husband-and-wife teams, and by the time a victim realized that something was wrong, she was a prisoner, perhaps in a strange land. It turns out, however, that Lady Frances Carfax is in London. In the story's climactic scene Holmes realizes where she must be: sharing a coffin with a dead old woman, and on the way even now to be buried. Grabbing screwdrivers, he and Watson and an undertaker's man pry off the lid, unwrap the lady's head from its wreath of cotton-wool soaked in chloroform, and revive the victim, who presumably comes to her senses in Green's arms. This device, which is the central gimmick of the story, is, as it happens, also strongly reminiscent of the white slavers' techniques. According to Terrot, muckraking journalists investigating the sordid business in 1885 revealed that coffins were used when "recalcitrant" girls, or small children who couldn't be trusted not to misbehave, were being shipped from England to the Continent: "They were first of all doped and then put in coffins which had air-holes. But the lids were nailed down. Sometimes a victim would wake up in her coffin during the sea voyage and would die of sheer panic or self-strangulation."21 It is not being argued that Doyle intended to describe a narrow escape from white slavers; at most, such a plot suggested some details of the one he actually used, and it seems safe to say that such an image was in his mind. Lady Frances may have been rather past the age to be attractive to white slavers, but she is certainly attractive to Watson. "Her age was not more than forty," Doyle makes him note. "She was still handsome and bore every sign of having in her youth been a very lovely woman." Of course, Watson, some years her senior, was always an admirer of the ladies. Indeed, Christopher Morley declared, as a throwaway line, that Lady Frances became his third wife. 22 And George Haynes, examining his behaviour in this case, makes a good argument for his being smitten with her long before he ever saw her: he becomes passionate and irrational as he tracks her through Europe, eventually getting involved for her sake in a street fight he cannot hope to win. 23 The lady also still appealed to Philip Green. We have in this story, written when Doyle was fifty-two and his second wife thirty-eight, a charming testimony to the possibility of romantic love in early middle age. Dean W Dickensheet, a noted Los Angeles Sherlockian, gets the credit for first pointing out, so far as I know, an important erotic aspect of this usually underestimated story.24 He is wrong in his generalization that Watson avoids the subject of sex, that "his reticence in the matter of the tender, not to say the animal, passions might have been learned at the knee of The Good Queen herself," but right that Watson couches sexual matters in cautious and indirect language. On the specifics he raises, there is no doubt that he is right. He quotes the key passage from "Lady Frances Carfax": "Holmes . . . disclosed the statuesque face of a handsome and spiritual woman of middle age. In an instant he had passed his arm about the figure and raised her to a sitting position." He assesses this passage as follows:

23

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

It is the adjective describing that face which deserves our attention. Denotatively, "statuesque" may be used to describe a face, but that is not its common connotative usage. And consider that, in using it, Dr. Watson was moved to place the noun "figure" close upon it.

Furthermore, he notes, it was Peters's intention to make Lady Frances disappear in the coffin without trace. "What travelling-garments, therefore, would Peters provide for such a journey? Exactly!" In short, Lady Frances Carfax was naked in the coffin. "No wonder that this half-hour left such an impression on Watson, and that Holmes was so anxious that they retire and leave Lady Frances in the care of The Hon. (and pugnacious) Philip Green." The article is accompanied by an explicit and convincing drawing by Tom McGee. It is noteworthy that Watson applies the word "spiritual"25 to Lady Frances at that very physical moment—noteworthy, and perhaps indicative that he has indeed developed an abstract devotion to this lady whom he is now seeing (very much in the flesh) for the first time. The word "figure" is still more significant, however, for, as will be seen many times in the course of this study, that is the word Watson is made to use whenever a woman's beauty is the subject of comment. There can be no doubt that the woman being rescued from the coffin is presented as a sexual being, and though she is not literally the subject of rape, she is certainly naked and passive and confined, available for any sort of abuse. It may also be significant that her head is wrapped in cotton-wool: masked and blindfolded, she is without identity, "depersonalized" as social scientists say rape victims have to be. (There may even be a sexual aspect to her name. As I drew to Don Redmond's attention, and he mentioned in Sources, there is an irresistible connection between Carfax as the lady's name and Carfax as the estate where Bram Stoker's Dracula lived. "That Doyle uses the name in a case which hinges upon a coffin containing the un-dead Lady, as well as the withered corpse of Rose Spender, is an obvious reference back to the tale of the thirsty Count," he writes.26 The story of Dracula is often interpreted—and presented—as sexually stimulating, vampirism being a sublimated form of rape.) The dark side of sex dominates, then, in "Lady Frances Carfax" as it does in "The Illustrious Client," although in this story there is a motif of healthy, loving sex and there is an explicit happy ending that one can read into "The Illustrious Client" only with an exercise in imagination. It would, of course, be an exaggeration to say that the whole Sherlock Holmes canon is full of sex this obvious, but there are other stories that have similarly obvious sexual elements; indeed, Chapter II draws attention to a story that was suppressed for twenty-three years by Doyle himself because of its sexual topic. Some stories have sex as their motive ("The Norwood Builder" is not only a fine example but the story that set me on this track). Others have incidental love interests ranging from the trivial (the dying love of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Baker in "The Blue Carbuncle") to the powerful (the chief example being The Sign of the Four, which is examined at length in Chapter III). There are stories of adulterous violence, and stories of happy love under pressure. Nor is that all. When I speak of sex in the Holmes stories, of course I first mean genital activity, what happens in bed, along with the kisses and gestures and flirtations that lead up to it. But sex also happens in the mind—the author's mind and the reader's mind—and it may be conveyed through those overt touchings and couplings in the stories, or it may be conveyed in much more indirect ways, so that the reader will be affected, moved by the power of sex to see the beauty of human beings and the immensity of 24

Chapter I — Sex as Well as Violence

the world and the glory of God, even though no bride or seducer or prostitute has been mentioned. Such sex may be loosely called "subliminal" or "Freudian" or just "implied." One example: Victor Hatherley's amputation in "The Engineer's Thumb" (a story not considered at length in this book) achieves some of its effect on the reader by the similarity between such an amputation and (figurative or real) castration. It is not necessary for the reader to draw the parallel consciously for it to have its effect of mixed horror and contempt; and perhaps the reader will be startled to recall that the engineer sustains his wound while a beautiful woman is helping him to escape from a bedroom. In the same sort of way, "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House" are not only the bald narrative of Holmes's supposed death and his reappearance three years later, but also a death-and-rebirth myth in which the waters of the Reichenbach Falls represent the waters of birth. 27 It is common to respond to analyses of this kind as nonsense or at least exaggerations, but the reader is invited to keep an open mind when later chapters present strong evidence for some such readings. Less extreme examples of indirect or subliminal sex are more easily recognized. What is meant here is situations that, though not fully described, in fact represent sexual activity—and not just simple coupling, of the kind one may choose to infer from Holmes's wooing of Agatha the maid in "Charles Augustus Milverton," but more elaborate pictures. Chapter II describes two stories that get some of their punch from implicit situations of plural sex, for example; in Chapter VI there is some discussion of one story that is a miniature gothic romance, carrying the usual burden of sexual stimulation that comes from gothic fright. And the stories examined in Chapter VIII show allusions to sexual practices ranging from the thrilling to the bizarre: the full range of actions and fantasies now commonly aired in "variations" sex magazines, or classified in Nancy Friday's books about sexual fantasy.28 Of course, these categories are not mutually exclusive. Most stories have sex in some form; some have plots largely or partly about sex or erotic love; some have implicit sexual situations; most can be persuaded to yield Freudian meanings of some kind, their validity ranging from unquestionable to unlikely. Out of sixty stories Doyle wrote about Holmes, no more than a dozen can be ruled entirely out of consideration from a sexual point of view. And in many of them, as will be seen, images and events were clearly shaped by the love life of their author. That is particularly true of the stories published after the supposed death of Holmes at Reichenbach; but a full examination of the stories can best begin with the early ones, and it is to the first story of all that Chapter II now turns.

25

Chapter II Looking for Miss Rachel

/^~A hapter I discussed a Sherlock Holmes story v_y which has sex but no mystery, and another whose mystery is thoroughly bound up with sex. Far more common are the stories in which mystery is dominant, and in which sex, though it appears, is 4 " Go back!' she said." secondary, its commonest function being as motive The Hound of the Baskervilles. for the crime that Holmes solves. Such a connection should be no surprise to anyone who has read about crime, either Victorian or modern, fictional or real. (One study of 480 Victorian murders has found that 127 of the victims were wives, five husbands, and thirty sweethearts or paramours.!) In the Holmes stories, the pattern begins in the very first of them, A Study in Scarlet \ because it comes first and because it is a novel rather than a short story, and for other reasons that will become apparent, it pays to have a close look from this point of view. The events of the story begin, after some preliminaries in which Watson meets Holmes and gets to know him, with a body in a deserted house in a shabby neighbourhood in the unfashionable area of London south of the Thames. It proves to be that of Enoch J. Drebber, of Cleveland, Ohio—a foreign place; already both Holmes and the investigating police incline to the belief that an alien grudge has been brought to London and settled by violence—and it is attended by two clues that are out of the ordinary. One is the word "Rache," printed on the wall in blood; the other is a gold ring, apparently a woman's wedding ring, which is found with the body. "There's been a woman here," cries Inspector Lestrade when he sees the ring; but Holmes, who has been looking closely at footprints, knows better. "Clearly," he tells Watson later about the ring, "the murderer had used it to remind his victim of some dead or absent woman." The identity of the woman? Lestrade puts great stress on the mysterious bloody writing: "the writer was going to put the female name Rachel, but was disturbed before he or she had time to finish. You mark my words, when this case comes to be cleared up, you will find that a woman named Rachel has something to do with it." Holmes of course knows better: '"Rache' is the German for 'revenge;' so don't lose your time looking for Miss Rachel." When the case is solved, though—Holmes solves it essentially by cabling to Cleveland to ask about Drebber's antecedents, learning by return that "Drebber had already applied for the protection of the law against an old rival in love, named Jefferson Hope," and then proceeding to find Jefferson Hope—it proves that the

26

Chapter II — Looking for Miss Rachel

inscription was simply a blind. (Indeed, Holmes suggests as much to Watson as soon as they are out of earshot of the Scotland Yarders.) The killing is indeed revenge, but it has nothing to do with Germans, and of course a good deal to do with a woman. The woman's name is not Rachel; it is Lucy. The reader gets her story through a third-person narrative, which is not presented as Watson's work but as Doyle's own. Lucy lived in Salt Lake City, the capital of the Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, and as "the Flower of Utah" she was much sought after in polygamous marriage, in particular by two prominent young men, Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson. But she loved someone else, Jefferson Hope, "a Christian" and not a Mormon, and she nearly escaped from Mormon territory to marry him, her beloved stepfather dying in a skirmish when Drebber and Stangerson caught up with the fugitives. She was forced to marry Drebber, and she pined away and died within a month. It took twenty years for Jefferson Hope to catch up with Drebber and Stangerson and kill them—Drebber in that deserted house, Stangerson in Halliday's Private Hotel a few hours later. Lucy Ferrier is the lady's name, and "Rachel" merely a red herring, and yet it is a particularly apposite red herring. The chief literary reference to the name Rachel2 is in the book of Jeremiah, 31:15-16, quoted in Matthew's gospel, 2:18: "In Rama was there a voice heard, Lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, And would not be comforted, because they are not." Jefferson Hope's life is dominated by the dead, Lucy and her father, and his description of the peace he felt when he had avenged the deaths strongly suggests the next sentence of Jeremiah's prophecy: "Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy." The original Rachel is the wife of Jacob in the book of Genesis; their first meeting (Genesis 29:1-12) sounds rather like the meeting of Jefferson Hope and Lucy Ferrier, flocks of animals and all, and it is to be noted that Hope spent many years toiling for his Lucy's sake just as Jacob did for Rachel, though Jacob's toil was before the marriage and Hope's came after the lady's death. Pierre Nordon makes an important point in his examination of A Study in Scarlet when he says that the reader must resist any tendency to concentrate on the Watsonian first half of this novel at the expense of the Doylean second half.3 After all, at the time the book was written and published, neither the readers nor Doyle himself knew that this was "the first of the Sherlock Holmes stories." It was a novel, to stand on its own, and the chapters set in and around Mormon Utah are essential to it—especially so when what is under consideration is sex and romance, for most of the sex and romance are concentrated there. Apart from the completely fictional marriage of Tom and Sally Dennis (Part I, chapter v) and Drebber's improper advances to his landlady's daughter (Part I, chapter vi), nothing of that sort takes place in Holmes's London; the love interest dies with Lucy Ferrier back in Utah. But to call it a love interest, or even a love triangle, is to understate its complexity. The facts, if events in a novel may be so called, have already been simply stated, but the context Doyle gives them and the way he describes them produce a special impact. It would be dramatic enough if young Drebber had stolen young Hope's girl, she had died young, and Hope had dedicated his life to revenge. (Doyle might well have written such a story; in fact, "The Norwood Builder" comes close.) It is the involvement of the Mormons that gives A Study in Scarlet most of its impact, an impact that survives even for contemporary readers and which in a poorer-informed England of the late nineteenth century must, as Harrison says In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, "have con27

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

firmed a good many of the more traditional British in their view that there was nothing wickeder than a Mormon."4 A useful source of explanation on this point is Jack Tracy's little book Conan Doyle and the Latter-Day Saints.5 In a chapter on "Literary Sources: Nonfiction," Tracy describes a number of books, known in England in Doyle's time, that described Mormon life, usually with more enthusiasm than accuracy and with special emphasis on the horrors of polygamy. Among them is J.H. Beadle's book, Polygamy: Or, the Mysteries and Crimes ofMormonism, published in 1870 and in subsequent editions for more than thirty years. Says Tracy: It is mentioned here not because it is known to have come to Doyle's attention but because of the large number of trivial details included in "The Country of the Saints" that can be traced to it. They include a chronology of the Pioneer Party and allusions to Gentile cattle-dealers in Salt Lake City, to Rocky Mountain sheep, and to the ten thousand who followed the Church leaders to Utah, as well as a lengthy account of Mormon "schisms;" along with the usual misinformation about the Danites and the persecution of Gentiles.6

He might well have mentioned two other incidents: that of a woman who fled Salt Lake City with her child to escape polygamy, but was overtaken thirty miles from the city (the same figure Doyle uses in Part II, chapter v), and that of a young woman who took poison rather than be "sealed" in marriage to a Mormon bishop.7 It must be repeated that there is no certainty that Doyle read Beadle's book, but it can be taken as typical of the information about Mormons prevalent in the eastern United States and in England late in the nineteenth century. Certainly Doyle did not see the 1904 edition of the book before writing A Study in Scarlet, which was published seventeen years earlier, but its tone is important, and its tone is largely one of titillation. On the cover of Polygamy there is a gold-stamped illustration of "five wives." The title page calls the account of Mormon teachings and rites "thrilling," which it is not. Page 9 offers a drawing of three women with this caption: "Three wives of a Mormon apostle—the two younger women are sisters and were married on the same day." Similar illustrations appear throughout the book: "Harem of a wealthy Salt Lake City merchant" (here one woman is reclining, another apparently unbuttoning her dress), "The old wife gets the jewelry intended for the young one" (the old one is a hag, the young one an innocent-faced beauty), and a number of others. Quite the most attractive women in any of the drawings, interestingly, are "Brigham Young's apostate daughter" and a young woman who, rather like Lucy Ferrier, met a Gentile one day, "fell in love at sight," and eloped with him. Much of this 600-page book deals with historical and theological subjects, and with the then-pending controversy over whether the alleged polygamist Reed Smoot should be admitted to the United States Senate, to which Utah had elected him. But its emphasis is polygamy, which the author denounces at length. "The Mormon is but onethird married," he writes; "he has in such unions provided for but one-third, and that the lowest, basest part of his nature." He concedes here and there that only a minority of Mormons had ever lived polygamously, and that polygamy had now been outlawed by the state of Utah, but charges that the outlawing is a sham and the practice continues. And he makes every effort to have the reader feel exactly the position of a woman, or indeed a man, living in such circumstances. On page 256 he warns of "a universal, and worse than Moslem, jealousy;" on page 260 he describes how tensions arise in a polygamous household: 28

Chapter II — Looking for Miss Rachel

Her first thought is, "It's that woman! If it wasn't for that little huzzy—" And he thinks, not that she is nervous, or that she is kept in the house too much by the child, his child; but his first thought is, "She's mad about my other wife! The blamed women are never satisfied." And in such a weak and nervous state, holding perhaps a sickly baby in her wearied arms, the poor wife receives this bit of comfort from her young husband: "I promised to spend the night with my other wife!"

One other section of the book is worthy of note, the one that offers a lurid description of various Mormon ceremonies. It is noted on page 394 that in the Endowment ceremony, "The female candidate is stripped," and after various washings and ceremonial dressings the candidates watch a sort of morality play, involving Adam and Eve and Satan: He approaches Eve, who is separated from Adam, and begins to praise her beauty; after which he proffers the "temptation." (Here there is a difference in the testimony. John Hyde says, the "fruit offered consisted of some raisins hanging on a shrub;" one lady states that the temptation consists of gestures and hints "not to be described;" while another young lady, after implying that Adam and Eve were nearly naked, merely adds: "I cannot mention the nature of the fruit, but have left more unsaid than the imagination held with the loosest possible rein would be likely to picture, . . . the reality is too monstrous for human belief, and the moral and object of the whole is socially to unsex the sexes.")

The moral and object of Beadle's book may have been to keep Reed Smoot out of the Senate and to stir up contempt and hatred against the Mormons, but it seems also to have been to give an impression of endless and shameless orgies in Salt Lake City. Whether women (the book is dedicated to "the Women of America, Whose Sympathies are ever active in behalf of their Suffering and Oppressed Sisters") were as titillated by such revelations as men must be open to some doubt. Judging from modern pornography, letters to "swinging" magazines, and popular studies of sexual fantasy, the sexual side of polygamy is exciting, at least in the imagination, to many men but not to many women. Nancy Friday, the collector and anthologizer of fantasies, puts it this way in the relevant chapter: The man who dares suggest the idea of multiple sex to his lover is usually met with tears or anger. In these fantasies it is of the utmost importance to note that the women are described as not being jealous of one another. Equally crucial to the emotional tone is that no male rival ever enters. Only women's love is in the air here, women's sex, women's kisses, women's tenderness and affection . . . and all for him.8

Polygamy, then, is a powerful erotic image, and it seems that Doyle made use of it to give A Study in Scarlet more punch. He could, after all, have made Drebber and Stangerson members of any religious or cultural group, and still given Hope a motive for revenge against them. Indeed, he could still have presented Drebber as a lecher, with his "disgustingly free and familiar" manners toward the maidservants and his speaking to young Alice Charpentier "in a way which, fortunately, she is too innocent to understand," not to mention "actually" embracing her. There are lechers of all backgrounds. But to Doyle such behaviour must have best characterized a polygamous Mormon. It does nothing to advance the rest of the plot, nor indeed does Drebber's drunken effort to have Alice come away with him so that she can "live like a princess," but it establishes his character as a lustful abuser of women. Inspector Gregson, who tells this part of the story, does not of course know at the time that Drebber is a Mormon, nor does Sherlock Holmes or the reader. But the reader has been prepared to accept 29

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

that fact when it comes along. (It is not clear from the text that Holmes ever hears the whole story of Lucy Ferrier, in fact. All that Jefferson Hope tells him, in Part II, chapter vi, is that "That girl that I spoke of was to have married me twenty years ago. She was forced into marrying that same Drebber, and broke her heart over it." The Echo does make some mention of "love and Mormonism," in the final paragraphs of the novel, but one wonders who was alive to tell them the details. And it must be remembered that the Mormon part of the tale is not narrated in Dr. Watson's voice, so presumably he never knew all the facts either.) It is in Part II, chapter ii, of the story that Lucy Ferrier, grown into her late teens and "lithe, girlish" beauty (with the "long chestnut hair" that Doyle will attach to the head of Violet Hunter in a short story published several years later), falls in love with Jefferson Hope. She is attached to no one else at the time, and she meets him by chance: he conveniently rescues her from a stampede. Within half a dozen sentences the narrow escape is forgotten and she is flirting with the "tall, savage-looking young fellow . . . clad in the rough dress of a hunter." Within another half dozen, they have parted, but with arrangements to meet again, and Hope is "gloomy and taciturn" as he rides off with his companions. He has outdone Romeo in falling in love at first sight, and the reader's credulity is stretched: The sight of the fair young girl, as frank and wholesome as: the Sierra breezes, had stirred his volcanic, untamed heart to its very depths. When she had vanished from his sight, he realized that a crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver speculations nor any other questions could ever be of such importance to him as this new and all-absorbing one.

Miss Ferrier falls in love somewhat more slowly, as Hope, being a nice old-fashioned boy, comes to call not so much on her as on her father, to talk politics and tell stories of his Western adventures. "On such occasions, Lucy was silent, but her blushing cheek and her bright, happy eyes showed only too clearly that her young heart was no longer her own." In due course they agree to be married, and Hope rides off for a final few weeks of business; Lucy "walked back into the house, the happiest girl in all Utah." Both young lovers are shown in the most favourable of lights, though the emphasis is on the woman's beauty and docility, the man's strength and acumen in some vaguely defined business; neither has much of a personality beyond such cardboard shape. During Hope's last brief absence the Mormon terror strikes, and Doyle is able to describe it in sexual as well as violent terms. Mormon marriage is in old John Ferrier's eyes "a shame and a disgrace," he writes, and he offers this narrative: The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about—rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elderswomen who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror.

The Mormons are, in fact, stealing women, feeding their sexual appetites, and perhaps giving the reader a guilty thrill.9 And Lucy Ferrier herself is wanted as a wife for "one of the elect." Brigham Young himself comes to see her stepfather. The girl is young [he says], and we would not have her wed gray hairs, neither would we deprive her of all choice. We Elders have many heifers, but our children must 30

Chapter II — Looking for Miss Rachel

also be provided. Stangerson has a son, and Drebber has a son, and either of them would gladly welcome your daughter to his house. Let her choose between them.

Doyle here shows Young as a little more flexible than the iron dictator Beadle tries to portray, and the result is that Miss Ferrier is at least being offered to someone young and presentable, not to one of the dirty old men or near-relatives with whom Beadle is much concerned. When the two youths appear, though, they are not prepossessing— and Drebber comes off much the worse, as a "bull-necked youth with coarse, bloated features" who speaks "in a nasal voice" and smirks. He quarrels with young Stangerson then, and they seem to be on delicate terms in London twenty years later, when Drebber is the one who grabs housemaids on the stairs and Stangerson is "a quiet, reserved man," in Madame Charpentier's phrase.10 It is Drebber who eventually gets Lucy Ferrier, after the dramatic escape and recapture that are told in Part II, chapters iv and v. "Whether it was the terrible death of her father," the narrator writes, "or the effects of the hateful marriage into which she had been forced, poor Lucy never held up her head again, but pined away and died within a month." Doyle has, of course, introduced this quick death for dramatic reasons, but some explanation seems called for, since death from grief is not as common as literature might suggest. The young bride had seen her father shot; more important, if the descriptions of her attitude are to be believed, was her sudden separation from her lover, days or perhaps just hours before they were to be married at last. And then she is married instead to this "coarse," "sottish" young Drebber. Still, why should this healthy and athletic young woman, who was "an accomplished rider" when Hope first met her, not only pine and weep like the kidnapped women Doyle mentions, but actually die within a month? It must be noted that "her strength appeared to fail her" even while the journey of escape is beginning, and that she seemed "more like a ghost than a woman" even before her actual marriage to Drebber. Unless she was ill (consumptive? but that seems unlikely for a strong young woman in the climate of Utah), this sounds like pregnancy. The Victorian reader may well have recognized it as such, though Doyle neither says so nor indicates that Hope and his fiancee had sexual intercourse at any point. If such a thing is intended, it must have been shortly before Hope's two-month absence, since her weakness is typical of a pregnancy's early stages and since there is no hint that her condition ever became known to Drebber, as it would have done if she had reached the four- or five-month stage. No doubt Drebber's loutish attentions hastened her death, whether she was weakened by pregnancy or not. It is stated that he had "other wives,"11 but even if they were kind to Lucy and helped her bear the burden of his drunken unpleasantness, she was the youngest and newest and probably prettiest of the wives, and during that month she must have had constant sexual attention from him, both sickening to her and probably accompanied by violence. And so she dies, and Jefferson Hope comes raving in from the mountains to interrupt her wake, kiss her cold forehead once, and carry away her gold wedding ring. "She shall not be buried in that," is his cry, and an understandable one. But it is less clear why he takes away the ring, which can only have reminded him of Drebber's outrage, and left the lady. Why does he not carry off her body and give it burial beside that of her father, away from Mormon country, so that she could be free in death if not in life? Physically he could have done it, if the other feats that are described are true. Logically he should have done it. But instead he lets the Mormons bury his love, and he carries Enoch Drebber's ring around the United States and Europe for twenty years.12

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When Hope at last catches up with Drebber, in that deserted house in the Brixton Road where the reader first comes into this story of revenge, and forces him to eat poison, he shows him the ring. "I laughed as I saw it," Hope tells Watson and Holmes, "and held Lucy's marriage ring in front of his eyes. It was but for a moment, for the action of the alkaloid is rapid." Drebber is dying; he sees the ring briefly, and one gold ring is much like another; he has in any case had several wives; even though he knows who Hope is, does he really recognize that wedding ring? As a symbol it is, of course, more important to Hope than to anyone else—and yet Hope promptly loses it, busy being "light-hearted and cheerful" and writing false clues on the wall. Psychologically, this piece of the story is less than convincing. The ring is there for two reasons, and of course Doyle had it stolen not because Hope would want to carry such a thing around but because he needed it on hand at the time of the murder. There had to be a clue that would let the investigators know that a woman was involved in the case. (Or perhaps not: Holmes tells Watson in the final chapter that he had come to that conclusion even before the ring was found. But it "settled the question" even for Gregson and Lestrade.) A further reason is symbolic: a ring carries certain meanings, for the reader as well as for Hope. In western civilization a gold circlet is specifically associated with marriage, and so the ring presents meanings that, say, a woman's picture or lock of hair would not do. A ring is also specifically a sexual symbol (used as such, for example, in the obscene pun at the end of The Merchant of Venice). Holmes hears some of Hope's story, though not, as has been mentioned, the Utah background. It would be interesting to know what action he would have taken if not for Hope's death in his cell. He cannot act on his own to set Hope free, even if he wanted to, since "the forms of the law must be complied with," but this is a case much like "The Abbey Grange," later in the detective's career, in which when he could let a justified avenger off he did so. Watson writes that Hope's death carried him before "a tribunal where strict justice would be meted out to him'—that is, the face of God—and Watson at least probably thinks, as Doyle has made sure the reader will think, that "strict justice" for Hope will be commendation rather than punishment. And so ends A Study in Scarlet, leaving just two questions. One is the identity of the person, masquerading as "Mrs. Sawyer," who came to claim the ring from Dr. Watson, but proved too agile for Holmes to follow back to Jefferson Hope. Hope refuses to say who it was, and nobody presses him on the subject. "It must have been a young man," says Holmes, but it is hard to see why it could not have been a young woman; and the cock-and-bull story of Sally and Tom Dennis that Mrs. Sawyer tells is perhaps more likely to be a woman's invention ("what with the women and what with liquor shops") than a man's.13 Yes, Hope calls him "he," but that is not decisive, and the question remains open.14 The other question is the title of the story. It is of course taken from Holmes's words at the end of Part I, chapter iv, when he calls the case "the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh?"15 But why that word? It is used here about murder, with reference presumably to the colour of blood. But blood is rather crimson than scarlet, and "scarlet" has other connotations. It is best known from the biblical prophecy that "though your sins be scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18). That passage does not restrict its attention to any particular kind of sin; "harlot" and "murderers" are both used metaphorically immediately afterward; but metaphorical uses of the word ever since have been concentrated on sexual sins. The two chief appearances of the word 32

Chapter II — Looking for Miss Rachel

in that sense are the scarlet woman of Revelation 17:1-5, popular since the seventeenth century as an abusive symbol of the Roman Catholic Church, and the scarlet letter of Nathaniel Hawthorne's adulteress Hester Prynne. Doyle's choice of the word "scarlet" is thus startling. But is is appropriate—more appropriate than Holmes can know when he uses the word to Watson—since a thread of passion, and of licentious (polygamous) sex, does run through this story. There would be less romance, and less attention to sex, in subsequent stories of Sherlock Holmes, once Doyle realized that he was writing detective stories rather than ordinary novels. Some later Holmes stories, as has been shown already and as will be shown at length in subsequent chapters, have just as much sex of one kind or another as this one. But the combination in this form was not repeated immediately. The Sign of the Four, the second Holmes story to be published (again a novel), has both murder and a love interest—a very chaste one—but they are not closely connected. (That intertwining is considered at length in Chapter III.) The short stories that then replaced novels as the vehicles for Holmes's adventures combine crime and sex, or romance, in various forms and in various combinations. It is not until the fourteenth of those short stories, published in January 1893, that one again finds this purest combination, a murder with sex for its motive. It is convenient to examine that story here in juxtaposition to A Study in Scarlet. Its title is 'The Cardboard Box," and its distinction among the sixty Holmes stories is that not long after its original publication in the Strand Magazine it was suppressed by Doyle himself on the grounds that it "involved an illicit love affair."16 After the original Strand and Harpers Weekly appearances, to be precise, it was published in the American, but not the British, first edition of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, dated 1894, and then it disappeared, not to be seen again until it turned up in His Last Bow in 1917. (A passage from it, the introductory "thought-reading" episode, had meanwhile been transferred to "The Resident Patient" from the time of the first British edition of The Memoirs, and remains in that story in the Doubleday omnibus and kindred American editions, though not in the John Murray omnibus, which is the British standard.)17 It is worth examining just how much the story justifies such suppression. "The Cardboard Box" starts off like so many others of the stories: the police draw an incident to Holmes's attention because it is bizarre, but they see nothing serious in it. In this case Susan Cushing, a maiden lady in Croydon, has received through the mail a packet, the cardboard box of the title, containing two human ears preserved in coarse salt. Holmes examines the relics closely and concludes that because they lack the characteristics of a medical student's prank, "there is no practical joke here . . . we are investigating a serious crime." Quickly enough he figures out that one of the ears belongs to Mary Browner, the missing sister of the maiden lady; that the two ears were intended to be delivered to Sarah Cushing, the third sister; that the cutting off of the ear followed a murder; and "that a man—presumably a seafaring man—had been murdered at the same time. Jealousy, of course, at once suggests itself as the motive for the crime." With that information he is able to have the police arrest Mary's husband, James Browner, who quickly confesses that he killed his wife and her lover, cut off their ears, and mailed them to sister Susan because she was the one who turned his wife's affections away from him. It is true that the story involves "an illicit love affair," although Browner's narrative is very circumspect about its details. However, it is far from the only story that does so. Fletcher Pratt is bewilderingly wrong when he writes that Holmes's recorded cases 33

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes include "Not a single divorce case; not even one of adultery."18 Julie Maynard more realistically lists fifteen stories that "involve either actual or implied adultery."19 In another article she compares this particular case with "The Abbey Grange" and "The Devil's Foot," and speculates that those two later tales suited Doyle's sense of justice, and that he "sympathized with their discretion and allowed their stories to be told, while repressing The Cardboard Box . . . as immoral.20 Judgement on that suggestion can be reserved until Chapter VII, which looks at those two stories and the special reason why Doyle may have been in sympathy with characters in them. Certainly there must be more to the matter than just the presence of adultery—even though "The Cardboard Box" is one of the earliest stories which have that, and standards may have relaxed as time went on. Little help is provided by Doyle's direct statement on the matter. "In April, 1903, I had breakfast with Doyle at Morley's Hotel in London," writes A.B. Maurice, "and asked him about the story. It had been suppressed at his wish. He thought that a tale involving sex was out of place in a collection designed for boys."21 Quite apart from the point that the Strand was not a periodical "designed for boys" and that the audience for the stories in their early appearances was mostly adult men, Doyle was in April 1903 about to write "The Norwood Builder," "The Dancing Men," and "The Solitary Cyclist," all of which— the third most dramatically and perversely—are "involving sex" to some degree. Nor are "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Yellow Face," to name just two of the stories already in print, by any stretch of the imagination on boyish themes. Two letters in which Doyle touches on the suppression (briefly, as far as one can tell from the passages provided) are quoted in an article by "Ellery Queen" listing rarities in the Queen (i.e., Fred Dannay) Sherlockian collection.22 "The story omitted is rather more sensational than I care for," he says about "The Cardboard Box" in one of them. Apart from quibbles about the word "sensational," which certainly seem to apply to A Study in Scarlet, one might ask why Doyle wrote it if he was not comfortable with it—and there is always the fact that by 1917 he changed his mind. The second letter offers an even less convincing explanation: "As far as the book [The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes] goes I should certainly wish . . . the second story (which is weak) to be omitted." Weak, this story is certainly not. All this embarrassment on the part of the author might be understandable if he had written bedroom scenes into the story and then repented of them. (In a non-Holmes story he says in an aside that "that which is most engrossing to us consists in those gradual shades of advance from friendship to intimacy, and from intimacy to something more sacred still, which can scarcely be written at all, far less made interesting to another.")23 But "The Cardboard Box" is anything but explicit. As Browner describes things to Holmes, Alec Fairbairn inspired a "light of welcome" on his wife's face; the lady "would go round to have tea with her sister and him;" Fairbairn once fled when Browner approached; and the two were spotted in a cab, "chatting and laughing," when the husband was believed to be out of town. That is shown as enough to make him kill them both, but it is meagre evidence that they are in a direct sense lovers. Nor does their next action provide absolute proof: they go to a suburban beach resort on a hot afternoon and take a boat ride. By the standards of the time that was, of course, very improper behaviour, and perhaps most husbands of today would also question it. But it hardly seems grounds for murder or even proof of adultery. If anything, it is an indication to the contrary: Fairbairn and Mary (Cushing) Browner generally met, according to the narrative, under the auspices of the lady's sister, and one would think that 34

Chapter II — Looking for Miss Rachel

if they were bent on actual sexual activity, an afternoon when the husband was out of town and they had escaped the sister's supervision would be the time to head for bed, not for the beach. Jim Browner may, then, be imagining, or hallucinating, the affair. According to one writer, retouching the words one writes, as Browner does with "Croydon," is a characteristic of hypochondriacs;24 if that is so, Browner may be supposed to suspect that he is going mad (he mentions "whizzing and buzzing" in his ears). But all this is speculation, and beside the immediate point, which is that there is nothing sexually explicit in the story. It does provide one other sexual element, beneath the surface, and that is the titillating idea of a man and two women in bed. For the triangle involving Jim Browner, his wife, and Alec Fairbairn is not the first triangle in the story. Before Fairbairn ever came on the scene, Browner says in his statement that Sarah "liked to be alone with me" and eventually gave hints that she would like him for herself. (This incident, too, is described in terms frankly astonishing in the mouth of a seaman; he reads the whole affair from "a glint from her eye" and hands that "burned as if they were in a fever." The delicacy is impressive.) Since Sarah, rejected, turns immediately from love to hate, there is no suggestion that a sisterly three-in-a-bed affair ever takes place. But the reader can imagine it, and leer at the possibility of not just two women but sisters, a particular ornament of fantasy and scandal. Such images were a feature of the 1885 scandal that destroyed the career of Sir Charles Dilke (although a modern look at the evidence suggests that he was probably innocent). The woman who accused him of debauching her, Virginia Crawford, claimed that he had enticed her into his bed along with a maidservant called "Fanny;" later investigations suggested that she and her sister Helen Harrison had shared more than one lover.25 An interesting aspect of this story is the ages of its characters; for though the women in the Dilke scandal were very young (Mrs. Crawford barely twenty), and one might expect a thirty-three-year-old Doyle to make young people the central figures in a tale of passion, in feet the Cushing sisters and Jim Browner are middle-aged. Susan Cushing is described as "a maiden lady of fifty;" the exact ages of the others are not stated, although "Sarah was thirty-three, and Mary was twenty-nine," when the marriage took place, some years earlier. So they are all clearly older than was its author when he created them— although somewhat younger than he was when in 1917 he once again allowed the story to be published. Owen Dudley Edwards sees Sarah Cushing as an example of a "fairly consistent phenomenon" in Doyle's writings, "the unattractive woman who seeks to force a man who does not like her to subject himself to her will." He is able to cite one or two other examples, but fails to persuade that such a pattern really does exist.26 Whether or not it is about the desperation of an aging woman, "The Cardboard Box" is certainly about adultery, and about the violence prompted by it. The episode of the ears, too, makes the violence more stark, though it is described in less gruesome terms than the amputation of the engineer's thumb in the story of that name. Amputation of ears turns up repeatedly in Doyle's stories: in "The Surgeon Talks" and doubly in "The Winning Shot,"27 not to mention the importance of a carved stone ear in "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement."28 One wonders who Doyle thought was in the right. In the final paragraph Holmes asks "solemnly:" "What is the meaning of it, Watson? What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial

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In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.

It is just possible that Doyle's reason for suppressing "The Cardboard Box" was not the adultery as such, nor yet the butchery, nor even the combination of the two, so much as the story's grey grimness, which led to that concluding paragraph. Here is a case in which many lives are ruined and no one, dead or alive, is in the right. A story without any possibility of a happy ending might indeed best be kept away from "boys." Doyle went through a similar process of publication, withdrawal, and eventual restoration with other (non-Holmes) stories as well. Edwards writes: Certainly his refusal to allow certain stories to go beyond magazine publication was not always connected, or not only connected, with immaturity of quality. . . . My impression is that he would feel the urge to produce a story, would block it out and hammer it out with professional care, and would send it to appropriate periodicals without much thought as to what it might reveal. He saw book publication as a much more formal matter, and here he certainly worried as to its effects on his mother.29

Mention has already been made of the "thought-reading" episode at the beginning of this story. Holmes watches Watson for a few moments, then surprises him by remarking that he has been thinking about Henry Ward Beecher and General "Chinese" Gordon. This incident at first appears to be unrelated to the events that follow, but for all its moralizing about war as a preposterous way of settling disputes, what the episode really suggested to Doyle and to its early readers was not the nobility of Henry Ward Beecher's public career but the sordidness of the adultery case that brought him great notoriety. In the late 1880s, wrote Robert Keith Leavitt in the first article to raise the subject, "there was only one thing that anybody would think of in looking at a portrait of the late pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church of Brooklyn, N.Y. That was the famous TiltonBeecher scandal and adultery trial of 1874."30 John Dardess, pursuing the subject, concedes that Watson might think of the American Civil War: "But Watson's reaction is equally consistent with a recollection of the juicier testimony at the trial," which concerned Elizabeth Tilton's ankle, the same part of the body where Watson was wounded and so the one toward which his "hand crept" in "The Cardboard Box."31 Samuel Rosenberg (whose theories are discussed at length in Chapter IX) takes the idea still further. He examines "The Cardboard Box"32 as part of his discussion of "the Conan Doyle syndrome," a juxtaposition, which he says is found again and again in the Holmes stories, of the three elements of books or other written material, murder or mass slaughter, and illicit or perverted sexuality. Rosenberg writes: In this story I have found that he [Doyle] has clearly associated two very famous contemporaries with his obsessive theme: the disasters which befall those who engage in either normal or abnormal sexuality. One of these men embodies the fate of illicit heterosexuals; the other personifies Conan Doyle's haunting theme of the punishments inflicted upon individual men and vast multitudes because of one individual's love for a person of the same sex.33

The first man is of course Beecher, who never entirely escaped the taint of the Tilton scandal even though he was legally cleared. (Of course, many people have been accused of adultery in the course of public careers; more obviously connected with "The Cardboard Box" is an incident in which Beecher's sister, the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, received a severed ear in her mail.) The second man is the other figure whose picture Watson had on his wall, General "Chinese" Gordon, who was, according to Rosenberg, a compulsive pederastic homosexual. It is easy to dismiss these observations as irrelevant 36

Chapter II — Looking for Miss Rachel

to Doyle's story, especially as Beecher and Gordon had many other more admirable qualities and did many other things more likely to have drawn Doyle's attention (or Watson's). And yet the sexual explanation has the great merit of explaining why this long and, on the surface, unrelated passage is in the story at all. (It perhaps also explains why the passage sits so awkwardly in "The Resident Patient" in those editons where it ends up in that story instead: even the season of the year is wrong, as various scholars have observed.) Rosenberg would say that illicit sex necessarily summoned up in Doyle's mind images of mass killing—in this case, the American Civil War and Gordon's battles in China and the Sudan. An evaluation of that suggestion can best be deferred for the moment. For all his efforts to put a Freudian interpretation on 'The Cardboard Box" and many others of Doyle's stories, Rosenberg does not attempt to find phallic symbols in them. The cutting off of an ear can certainly be interpreted as a transferred castration—yet if one calls the ears phallic symbols, one must then qualify the statement, since there was unlikely to be anything phallic about Mary Browner, and in any case an ear, by its natural shape and by traditional use, is rather a female symbol than a phallic one. (In mediaeval art, for example, the Virgin Mary is often shown being impregnated by a ray or some similar penetration of the ear.) To be less extreme, one can at least compare the mutilation of a dead body34 in this way, to prove death and powerlessness, with the sexual domination that has its strongest expression in castration. The sexual imagery in this story is strong, then, whether or not its events include any actual adultery. If a piggery is for pigs, and adultery is for adults, then "The Cardboard Box" after all is not for boys. The juxtaposition of "The Cardboard Box" with A Study in Scarlet, which has already been justified by their similar plots and themes, can also be justified by the strong possibility that the later story had its genesis in the earlier. There is no one source for a story, naturally, and among the many sources of "The Cardboard Box" it is inevitable that one list the incident of the ear that was sent to Harriet Beecher Stowe (if, at least, a case can be made that Doyle had to know about that incident). But it seems clear that another source is the passage in Part I, chapter v, of A Study in Scarlet, in which the bogus Mrs. Sawyer tells Holmes and Watson about her daughter Sally and her marriage to Tom Dennis. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that when he created the Dennises, Doyle had the germ of an idea that later became this full short story. Tom Dennis does not kill anybody, but one sees the distinct possibility. He is a ship's steward, like Jim Browner, and, like him, he drinks. His wife is apparently seeing another man, since, the night before, she went to the circus "along with—' someone, and could hardly have dropped her wedding ring if she was wearing it respectably. The doting mother in this case is easily replaced with the doting sister in "The Cardboard Box." Can there be any doubt that Doyle's story developed from this early incident? Two other early short stories deserve some attention at this point. Neither of them involves either murder or a love triangle, but they belong with A Study in Scarlet and "The Cardboard Box" because they are about crimes whose motive is sexual. One is "Silver Blaze," and the other is "The Beryl Coronet." Of "Silver Blaze" not much need be said here. The missing horse, the dog in the nighttime, Holmes's words with Colonel Ross, and the quick conversion of Silas Brown provide enough drama that there is little attention left for the reason why the trusted trainer, John Straker, tried to make his own horse lose the great race by laming it. He stood to gain money, of course, and he needed the money to indulge the "somewhat 37

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

expensive tastes" of a lady. (She passed by the name of Madame Derbyshire for the purpose of milliners' bills, but since Straker was not really Derbyshire, there is no reason to think that the lady was either.) "Straker was leading a double life and keeping a second establishment," says Holmes, though it is not clear why he insists on the whole "establishment" rather than simply a mistress who wants elegant dresses from time to time. And elegant they certainly were: Holmes does not exaggerate when he says that "one can hardly expect" servants to be able to buy "twenty-guinea walking dresses for their ladies." In purchasing power, in a time when a glass of sherry at an expensive hotel cost eightpence, those twenty guineas were something like $1,200 in North American money of 1984. Perhaps the most intriguing question is how a man who was not out of place as a horse trainer managed to pass as the lover, let alone the keeper, of a lady whose dresses came from the equivalent of Saks Fifth Avenue. As for "The Beryl Coronet," there are two points of interest. One is the parallel between it and "The Illustrious Client," and specifically between Sir George Burnwell and Baron Adelbert Gruner. In this story the affair between the tilted roue and the foolish aristocratic young woman has led to still more dangerous consequences, for besides jeopardizing her own reputation and happiness, Mary Holder commits a crime that puts her father and brother in a desperate situation (not to mention the effect on "one of the highest, noblest, most exalted names in England," who from his imprudent behaviour may well be the illustrious client, the Prince of Wales, once more). Burnwell is, Holmes says, "a man of evil reputation among women," and of Mary Holder he warns that "whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient punishment." Doyle has, it seems safe to say, been recycling a little of his Gruner and de Merville material here, even to the man's "personal beauty." The other matter that deserves mention in connection with "The Beryl Coronet" is the contrast between the two love affairs it mentions: Mary Holder's passionate involvement with Burnwell, leading to an elopement, and the flirtations of Lucy Parr, the "second waiting-maid." Holder grumbles that "She is a very pretty girl and has attracted admirers who have occasionally hung about the place." He calls that a "drawback," although there is no reason to picture the only suitor mentioned, Francis Prosper, "the green-grocer who brings our vegetables round" and has a wooden leg, as anything but a sober and upright man who would make the maid a good husband. The fact of the matter seems to be that servants' love affairs are not taken seriously by the upper classes. (Holmes himself gives a clear and not altogether praiseworthy demonstration of this point in Charles Augustus Milverton, discussed in Chapter V.) And to reflect the unimportance of the affair, its role in the story is as a blind; it has nothing to do with the theft. Still, the motive for the theft is love, or what passes for passionate—and, one assumes, sexual—love. The evil deeds to which love brings people are discussed more fully in Chapter VIII. In the intervening chapters, attention is first given in some detail to the love lives and possible sexual behaviour of some central figures: Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and indirectly Arthur Conan Doyle himself.

38

Chapter III Love, Detection, and Adventure

hen he was persuaded, two years after the appearance of A Study in Scarlet, to bring back Sherlock Holmes, Doyle still did not know that he was writing "a Sherlock Holmes story;" he was simply writing a novel, and the one he produced for "You know the story of the hound? 1 ' publication in February 1890, The Sign of the Four,1 The Hound of the Baskervilles. is not at all a formula detective story. It requires Holmes to share attention with Dr. Watson, and with Watson not as assistant detective but as an actor in his own right—to be precise, as lover. Not much has been said about love in the two preceding chapters. Prostitution has been much in the news, and the jealousy induced by polygamy, and various sexual crimes and perversions; but of love there has been little, save for the happy ending to the story of Lady Frances Carfax. And perhaps it is significant that the latter story, like The Sign of the Four, involves Dr. Watson in more than a supporting role. When the focus is on Holmes, whose business after all is the suppression of crime, the sexual elements tend to be violent and exploitive. When it is on Watson, there is a chance for them to be decent and gentle, for love to lead to marriage and the "vanilla sex" that supposedly follows. As will be observed later in this chapter, Holmes is often shown teasing Watson about being a ladies' man, but what he chiefly is is a domestic man. At the beginning of The Sign of the Four, however, his domesticity is with Holmes, and in the famous opening scene, bowdlerized out of so many school editions of the story, he is nagging Holmes rather as a wife would do about his drug-taking. Holmes returns the criticism as quickly as he can, complaining, in a hint of what is to come in the rest of this short novel, that Watson's (that is, of course, Doyle's) previous narrative, A Study in Scarlet, has been written too luridly. "You have attempted," he says, "to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid." (As Father Raymond "Vic" Holly has perceptively noted, the fifth proposition is not named at random. The fifth is, he says, "the first proposition that refers to a naturally occurring pair—the base angles of an isosceles triangle."2) Working the love story into the present narrative begins a few pages later with the arrival of "a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste." Her name is Mary Morstan and she comes as a client to Holmes, but

W

39

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

expresses an interest almost immediately in Watson ("If your friend would be good enough to stop, he might be of inestimable service to me") even as Watson is giving her a close and favourable look himself. Doyle has him describe her with the detail over women's clothes that is in fact characteristic of all the stories,3 and he gives this assessment of her person: Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and sympathetic. In an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature.

That last sentence demands to be scrutinized carefully, for throughout The Sign of the Four (and by implication all the rest of the stories as well) Watson is portrayed as a man of the world; and yet it is hard to resist the impression that he is showing off here. How even can the boast of "three separate continents" be true? (The word "separate" is an immediate giveaway. Either it means nothing, in which case it is there to make the claim sound more impressive, or it implies that Watson is so vastly experienced that he need not distinguish Europe and Asia in his reckonings, and that is absurd.) In his book, Sherlock Holmes Detected, Ian McQueen takes Watson as real, and says this: His experience in Asia and Africa must necessarily have been exceedingly limited, but he probably had some spare time available for amorous excursions in such places as Bombay and Peshawur, as well as in Egypt, while on the way to join his regiment. In his early years, before the ruin of his health in Afghanistan, Watson seems to have been the sort of young man who was not slow to indulge such opportunities as came his way. In his confession to Holmes on the occasion of their very first meeting in the chemical laboratory, Watson admitted that, when he was well, he had "another set of vices," and sexual encounters were probably not excluded.4

If such a character did have any experience during a stopover or two in Africa and his brief months in India—spent mostly in being shot at, fleeing from the battle, having his wounds dressed, and suffering so severely from enteric fever that his life was despaired of, all activities that take pretty well one's full attention—it must have been casual rather than serious, a visit to a judiciously chosen prostitute rather than any dealings, let alone a romance, between equals. Jon L. Lellenberg does argue that Watson's "vices'—alcohol and gambling as well as women—are the likely reason his medical career was so undistinguished. With an outstanding medical degree, he took an obscure army job; his military career consisted of "disaster and misfortune;" his later civil practice never amounted to much. Lellenberg adds it up to scandal and "moral decay."5 But standing "hand in hand like two children" with Miss Morstan, as Watson does in chapter v of this novel, is not the behaviour of a roue. It is the behaviour of a young man (the conventional image is of stout, middle-aged Watson, but if born in 1858 he was about thirty at this time) whose life as a medical student, a soldier, and a convalescent has kept him so busy that he has less, not more, experience of women than the average, and who has just fallen in love for the first time. The Sign of the Four, with all its drama and tragedy, also has a comic side, produced largely in its picture of confused, lovestruck Watson, for the first time falling seriously among women and at the end of the novel becoming engaged to marry. But is it the first time? Some would-be biographers have maintained that it was not even Watson's first marriage, let alone his first love affair. Apart from complicated webs 40

Chapter HI — Love, Detection, and Adventure

of chronology, the evidence for that theory is mostly derived from a play by Doyle titled Angels of Darkness, in which Watson—but not Holmes—encounters Lucy Ferrier and gets involved in what amounts to the plot of A Study in Scarlet. The play has never been published, but a few scholars have seen it and hinted at what it contains. John Dickson Carr was the first of them;6 his coy hints perhaps induced William S. BaringGould to saddle Watson with a definite first marriage, to a lady named Constance Adams, who set the pattern for his subsequent marriages by dying young.7 Harlan L. Umansky, who has provided more information about Angels of Darkness than has appeared anywhere else so far, makes no mention of Miss Adams. After a series of incredible adventures filled with severe hardships [he writes], Jefferson Hope arrived at the rooming house in San Francisco, a dying man whose life Dr. Watson tried to save even though Watson knew that Hope was the man whom Lucy loved. Hope learned of Watson's immaculate love for Lucy. With his dying breath, he urged Lucy and Dr. Watson to marry, and he died. As the curtain falls, we may grieve because of the absence of Holmes from the play, but we are certain that Lucy will soon become Mrs. Watson.8

How proud Doyle was of this version of the story, and how reluctant to provide Watson with a wife before Mary Morstan, may be inferred from his refusal ever to have the play published or performed, a refusal that his heirs continue to honour.9 But the fancies continue. If not in San Francisco, perhaps elsewhere in America? Winthrop Wetherbee has made the case that in fact Watson was an American who had his earliest romantic experiences on this side of the Atlantic.10 Other scholars have argued for Australia, on the strength of Watson's comment, at the time of the hand-holding episode, that "I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Ballarat, where the prospectors had been at work."11 In any case, W.S. Bristowe, who endorses the American theory, stresses that Watson was always honourable in his relations with women, even in such distant parts.12 When Doyle's undoubted Watson does at last meet Miss Morstan, the falling in love does not happen all at once. Before the hand-holding episode, there have been several hints that something of the sort is happening, and there will be more hints before the major love scene of the book, which occupies a good half of chapter xi. At the very end of The Sign of the Four, Watson tells Holmes formally that "Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective." In a scene the significance of which becomes much clearer in retrospect, Holmes observes that Miss Morstan "is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing," but that he is opposed to marriage for himself and less than enthusiastic about it even for Watson. At the end of the novel he already seems to be alone. In what is first and last a novel of Sherlock Holmes, a novel of detection, the importance of Dr. Watson and love grows just as the love itself grows. At that introductory mention of "a love-story or an elopement" working itself into another detective tale, namely A Study in Scarlet, there is no reason for the first-time reader to think that love will obtrude itself on this one. But at the end of the first chapter the heroine is introduced, and eleven chapters later Watson is about to marry her and make a bright future, while Holmes sinks back into the solace of cocaine. That development comes gradually, with a craftsmanlike—and very regular—alternation of the two themes that deserves a close examination. It might be added that in this respect, as in so many others Doyle 41

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

started a custom. As Dennis Porter observes: . . . the classic detective novel often couples the solution of a crime with an engagement or a wedding, although only exceptionally does this involve the Great Detective himself. From The Moonstone on, the British detective novel confirms its links with the comedy of manners by the relative frequency with which it ends by promising a wedding. . . . Once the crime has been solved, the house party can go on and young love find its mate. Since the elimination of the evil criminal marks the return to health and normality, it invites the ritualistic celebration of life that is, in fact, a literary wedding.13

Five main passages in the book are about the romance of Dr. Watson and Miss Morstan: their meeting under Holmes's auspices, their flirtation as they go to see Thaddeus Sholto, their parting after the tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge is discovered, their visit while Holmes waits for word of Jonathan Small, and their interview as the treasure chest is opened. Watson's final conversation with Holmes may be counted as a sixth, though Miss Morstan does not herself appear.14 It can therefore be said that the structure of the novel is rhythmical, with passages of Holmes (and action) alternating with passages of Watson (and love). These are further set off by introductory and concluding passages, and two breaks in which the tone is restful rather than either active or passionate. Chapter i obviously begins with the introductory restful passage—indeed, is entirely taken up with it, until the last paragraphs, introducing Miss Morstan, sound a call that may be to love or to adventure, or to both. The beginning of chapter ii, with Watson's lyrical description of Miss Morstan, suggests that it is the former, but then her narrative and the production of the pearls introduce mystery, at least to Holmes. Watson is busy offering "fervently" to be of any service and labelling the lady "a very attractive woman," and as soon as she is gone, with adventure suspended for the moment, he is enjoying, but trying to banish, "will-oLthe-wisps of the imagination." At the end of chapter ii thus comes the first of the restful interludes. There is action in chapter iii, with Holmes "bright, eager and in excellent spirits," but there is love, too: this chapter is a microcosm of the whole novel, with Holmes asking questions about Major Sholto and watching the route of the cab, while Watson devotes himself to the lady and tells her the famous anecdote about the double-barreled tiger cub with which he drove off a prowling musket. Chapter iv sees the three of them at Thaddeus Sholto's "oasis of art," and here the central action of The Sign of the Four begins, although Watson manages to interrupt it with occasional attentions to Miss Morstan and a striking passage just at the end of the chapter in which he recounts his distress at hearing that she may soon be rich (and thus beyond his grasp). Action dominates chapters v and vi; the former is interrupted only for the handholding episode, and the latter returns to love only at its end, when it becomes Watson's pleasant task to take Miss Morstan home away from the excitement. At the beginning of chapter vii he does so, and with the excitement of following a scent across London and identifying the Aurora, there is little more thought of her (only a second passage in which Watson reproaches himself for wishing her poor but eligible) until the end of chapter viii. Here Watson dreams of the lady, then goes to visit her, and before long pays her a second visit during Holmes's evening of chemical analysis—a pause in the action that can be considered the second restful interlude of the narrative. By this stage of the relationship, Mary Morstan is calling Watson and Holmes "knight-errants" and disclaiming any interest in the treasure; the doctor's stock as a suitor is clearly on the rise. The interlude goes on, with a conference among Holmes, Watson, and Inspector 42

Chapter HI — Love, Detection, and Adventure

Athelney Jones, and a meal during which Holmes speaks of a series of subjects far removed from either murder or love. Then, in chapter x, comes what is generally considered the best scene in The Sign of the Four: the twilight chase down the gleaming Thames, the death of Tonga and the capture of Jonathan Small and his treasure chest. The chest is opened by Watson and Miss Morstan in chapter xi, and there under the adrenaline of receiving it at last, then the shock of finding it empty, they speak their minds and the reader is given the longest, and of course decisive, love scene. "The treasure is lost," Miss Morstan says, but she and the doctor discover that they have each other instead: "Whoever had lost a treasure," Watson writes, "I knew that night that I had gained one." After that, everything is anticlimax, though the narrative of Jonathan Small in that extraordinarily long final chapter has many peaks of suspense and blood. (And in it Small reveals that in a sense sex was at the root of this side of the story as well: a paternity suit in his home village is what led him to join the army and go to India in the first place.) The reader's attention may even waver as all the detail is unfolded, for Watson and his fiancee do not appear. The story ends with the engagement announcement, already described, and Holmes's quotation of a not particularly romantic couplet from the romantic poet Goethe. From the foregoing summary it should be clear that the love episodes in this story occur chiefly at the ends and beginnings of chapters. Even when a chapter has not been mainly concerned with that side of the story, it tends to be introduced in the final paragraph; conversely, a chapter about love generally ends with a bugle call. The book reads as though it had been written for serial publication, a circumstance that would make it essential for each chapter to end with something that would compel a reader to look for the next one. But it was not published serially: it all appeared in a single issue of Lippincott's Magazine, and indeed it was deliberately written for that use.15 If the love of Dr. Watson and Miss Morstan is so important in this novel, one naturally wants to know what sort of people they are meant to be. Of Watson, the reader gets a clear impression, not only from The Sign of the Four, but from all the other tales; and one of the chief elements of the picture is that Watson is fond of the opposite sex, particularly in contrast with the ascetic, almost asexual Holmes. It is Watson with whom most male readers of the stories, at least, can best identify themselves; and Watson is not only the reader's favourite other self but also the author's. Doyle the doctor, Doyle the patriot, even Doyle the moustached, drew himself as Watson. Carr insists that Doyle was Holmes, of course, and in some ways that is true.16 But not only the medicine and the fact that Watson is the narrator makes him more definitely a projection of Dr. Doyle. There is the joy in domesticity,17 and there is a long series of similarities to Doyle's love life and his two marriages. That sequence of marriages and its importance in the stories is the chief subject of Chapter VII, but its earliest stage, the happy days of Doyle's first marriage, requires attention at this point. Is the love story of John H. Watson and Mary Morstan a convincing one? My answer is yes, on the strength of its little human details such as his brave anecdote about the tiger cub and the musket. Such a detail might well fit into Doyle's non-Sherlockian book about young love and marriage, A Duet with an Occasional Chorus, which, as Carr says, is "not autobiographical" in the literal sense, but "funny because . . . profoundly and even painfully true to life."18 It was, indeed, written later than The Sign of the Four, and after an important change in his personal circumstances, but in both books Doyle clearly portrays young love as he knew it perfectly well. When he was writing The Sign 43

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

of the Four, Doyle had been married for just about four years to the former Louise Hawkins. Pierre Nordon, on page 175 of his biography of Doyle, describes the situation this way: "The young doctor had so far escaped the storms of passionate love, and he found with Louise the warm and glowing sweetness of home life." Nordon goes on: "The somewhat facile pleasure he took in the early years of his married life may have been a sort of pilgrimage to the lost paradise of his childhood. And his wife's delicate health and gentle character aroused an ever watchful protective instinct.19 Such a description clearly suggests Watson's affection for Mary Morstan, even to the childlike hand-holding. There is more. Mary Morstan is, like Louise (Hawkins) Conan Doyle, a tiny woman and a gentle one—and perhaps a sickly one; she pales and comes close to fainting, as Ebbe Curtis Hoff observes in his speculation that she is tubercular.20 (Louise Conan Doyle's illness and death are discussed in Chapter VII.) Like Louise also, she is blonde and blue-eyed,21 and Louise seems clearly to be her original.22 Nordon says that Louise "has left very little trace in Conan Doyle's writing,"23 but I think he is wrong. I think she is immortalized as Mary Morstan, Doyle's first love become Watson's first love. And in case there is any lingering doubt, let it be noted that when Arthur Conan Doyle and Louise Hawkins were married in 1885, Louise's age was the same as Mary Morstan's in the novel: twenty-seven. "A sweet age," Watson calls it. If Mary Morstan is a picture of Louise Conan Doyle, then one comes back with renewed conviction to the statement that Watson is Doyle's picture of himself—and thus that Watson's is meant to resemble Doyle's own satisfying and respectable married life. Though Doyle's first marriage was not life-long, there is no doubt that he loved his wife and that the pleasures of home were always important and comforting to him. (And, like Watson in "A Scandal in Bohemia," he put on seven pounds after his marriage.24) Watson's first marriage is not his only marriage either, readers have generally agreed, although that is as far as agreement has reached. That early marriage in San Francisco has been dismissed, but there is evidence of a later marriage as well, the one to which Holmes refers in "The Blanched Soldier," when he says rather churlishly that "The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association." Sir Sydney Roberts, in his early "biography" of Dr. Watson,25 has been given credit for pointing out that Mary Morstan Watson cannot be the wife to whom Holmes is referring, although it appears that Christopher Morley made the same discovery.26 It was Roberts's contention that the wife is Violet de Merville, the young lady who had been besotted with Baron Gruner in "The Illustrious Client." Another candidate, already discussed, is Lady Frances Carfax; and there are other possibilities. It has been proposed by some speculative chronologists that there were still more marriages; H.W. Bell suggested three, without even involving the San Francisco maiden,27 and in an essay that summarizes the classic tongue-in-cheek arguments on the subject, Trevor H. Hall argues for no fewer than five.28 At the opposite extreme are those who maintain that Mary Morstan is the only wife, separated from Watson at least once and later reconciled to him.29 Whereas the relationship between Dr. Watson and Mary Morstan is an important part of an important story, any later marriage is essentially speculation about that least solid of worlds, the life of a literary character beyond his home pages. It is in fun, after all, that one of the canonical toasts drunk by the Baker Street Irregulars (a Sherlockian group discussed further in the next chapter) is to "Dr. Watson's Second Wife"; and one would not want to lose this quatrain offered by Robert Keith Leavitt in proposing that

44

Chapter HI — Love, Detection, and Adventure

toast on January 9, 1953: Plover-freckled or Gruner-crazy, I leave to learned Holmesian strife: I give you that mysterious daisy— Dr. Watson's Second Wife!30 Such arguments are made partly for chronological purposes, as part of a whimsical exercise, assigning historical dates to Holmes's cases, which is quite outside the range of this study, and partly in documentation of Watson's qualities as a lady killer. Holmes certainly pretends to believe in the latter, and Watson's interest in women is perhaps less striking in absolute terms than in contrast to Holmes's apparent indifference to them. Certainly, as the instances of girl-watching already cited indicate, Watson has a keen interest in some qualities of the opposite sex.31 P. Stephen Clarkson writes: It's interesting to note that very seldom does Watson, who placed great value on domesticity . . . remark upon the wifely virtues of the ladies who appear in his stories. Why? Simply because they exhibit qualities which to him—a typical Victorian gentleman, if ever there was one—are more noteworthy than domestic virtues.32

It is clear that Doyle himself had an eye for women through most of his life, though he kept it in decent check. Carr reports him as a student being in love with five girls at once, and falling heavily for Miss Elmore Welden. Much later in life he admired the same trait in his first son Kingsley: "he can be really eloquent when he writes to all his girls."33 Most telling of all is this comment after the arctic whaling voyage on which the young Doyle tried out his medical skills: "To appreciate a woman one has to be out of sight of one for six months."34 Watson's eye for the ladies, specifically for the pretty ones, is made apparent in story after story. He is not seen wooing that second (or third) wife in the way he is seen falling in love with Mary Morstan, it is true. Still, there are hints of other romances, or at least the capability for them. In "The Retired Colourman," Holmes speaks of Watson's "natural advantages" and says that he could have coaxed information from "the girl at the post office, or the wife of the greengrocer . . . [or] the young lady at the Blue Anchor." But that story is a late one, as its mention of the telephone indicates, and one suspects Holmes to be teasing a Watson who is no longer young rather than seriously describing the situation. Then there is Holmes's comment to Watson, in "The Second Stain," that "the fair sex is your department'—but he is asking for observation, not action. And it does appear that observation of women is Watson's long suit: observation, and description afterward.35 He looks at pretty women; he looks at them, when he can arrange it, with the light behind them, the better to get an eyeful of what he modestly calls in several places the "figure." Indeed, that is the key word in Watson's description of women. It has already been remarked on in the case of Lady Frances Carfax; it appears also in the cases of Helen Stoner in "The Speckled Band," Lady Brackenstall in "The Abbey Grange," Beryl Stapleton in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Isadora Klein in "The Three Gables," and Grace Dunbar in "Thor Bridge." When Watson describes Annie Harrison in "The Naval Treaty," the first thing he says is that she is "a striking-looking woman, a little short and thick for symmetry," so he is clearly looking for the same quality; and when he catches Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope, in "The Second Stain," framed in a doorway, but passes over her figure in silence, one can only conclude that "the most lovely woman in London" was not Watson's type. But women are lovingly described in two of the early 45

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

stories, "A Scandal in Bohemia" and 'The Man with the Twisted Lip." In the former, the woman is, of course, Irene Adler Norton, who, Watson writes, "stood at the top [of the steps] with her superb figure outlined against the lights of the hall." In the latter story, Watson describes his first sight of Mrs. Neville St. Clair (a lady whose first name is never given—a matter for great regret): As we approached, the door flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing question.

By what one thinks of as Victorian standards, this is practically pornography—as well as clear evidence that Watson's taste is for small blonde women like Louise Doyle. (Irene Adler must be small, to pass as a boy the way she does; the colour of her hair is not stated.)36 But what of Mary Morstan herself? Watson's direct description of her has already been cited, along with some reason to believe that he is swept off his feet by her emotionally (if not quite "spiritually") as well as physically. One wants to know about her physical charms and her sexual behaviour, however. A valuable study in this respect is the tongue-in-cheek paper by Otis Hearn which calculates, from the probable size of her six pearls and their storage box, which Miss Morstan stored in her bosom presumably without a visible bulge, that . . . she had a bust of at least size 32 and at most size 34. While in comparison with over-opulent nymphs of that day like Lily Langtry this might be meagre, it is nothing to apologise for; it could hold pearls worth more than £3,000, and Watson liked it. Watson was not a leg man.37

More seriously—slightly more seriously—Hearn goes on to argue that The Sign of the Four is full of breast imagery, and that the choice of pearls themselves as Miss Morstan's gems is significant: "in ancient times pearls were sacred to Aphrodite, . . . in 1888 the notorious Cora Pearl was one of the most aristocratic servants of Aphrodite, and . . . in 1888 these lustrous ovoid gems often came in matched pairs." He traces what he calls "the real story" of The Sign of the Four: Watson's efforts to possess not the Agra treasure so much as the Morstan jewels, that is, the lady's charms: On almost every page his warm symbolism gives him away. He likes "twos" and "twins," something is "double-barreled," things run "in parallel," people have "bosom friends," and he finds matters "right on both points." . . . Watson gets another peek and finds that, figuratively, the treasure chest has a false bottom and the pearls are real.

— that is, boy wins girl, breasts and all.38 Now it is open to question that someone who is fixated on breasts rather than on legs or bottoms is likely to be satisfied for a lifetime with a woman whose bust measures at most thirty-four inches, however well-shaped it is within that limit. However, the proposition is compatible with Watson's enthusiasm, already noted, for seeing women against the light. Indeed, he reports seeing Miss Morstan that way; he does not use the key word "figure," but he speaks in chapter xi of seeing her "seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white diaphanous material," which no doubt showed her off to excellent advantage.39 Finally, it must be remembered that Watson is a figure of the Victorian age, in which feminine beauty consisted largely of small waists and large breasts. There is no reason to imagine that these respectable people engaged in sexual rela46

Chapter HI — Love, Detection, and Adventure

tions before their marriage. But one may picture them doing so afterward, and may hope that their hypothetical love life will be enthusiastic and rewarding. Of course none of the stories discuss Dr. and Mrs. Watson in bed (though two of them—"The Crooked Man" and "The Man with the Twisted Lip," a pairing that provides food for thought— indicate that they do not always go to bed together). Still, it is a speculation of interest. Sexual behaviour is hard to predict from behaviour in other contexts, notoriously so, but Watson's vaunted "experience" has already been shown to be largely bluster, so one may imagine a tender husband rather than a selfish roue. And Mary—self-supporting since the age of seventeen, and so composed in the face of mystery and danger that she earned the praise of Sherlock Holmes—is no stereotypical bloodless and fainting Victorian maiden. She has suffered, perhaps, in Sherlockian comparisons with Irene Adler (whose sex appeal is discussed in the next chapter); it must not be forgotten that she is beautiful and tough, a pair of qualities that together add up to sexy. One can see her nibbling Watson's ear and breathing heavily, rather than closing her eyes and thinking of England; and one can trust that Watson will respond to her satisfaction as well as his own.40 All things are relative, of course. "Any society which puts an inflated valuation upon virginity must inevitably resort to desperate measures to ensure its preservation," writes Fraser Harrison, and one would not want to forget Mary Morstan's virginity or to minimize the care with which Mrs. Forrester guarded it and every other vulnerable side of the young woman. Harrison goes on: By teaching their women to deny their very femininity, the Victorians locked the door of sex not temporarily but permanently, rendering many women psychologically incapable of accepting sex under any but the most functional circumstances. The conventional, twentieth-century joke image of the Victorian woman lying still on her wedding night and thinking of England implies that women were repelled by their husbands' sexual demands. The real tragedy, however, behind that cliche is that women were revolted and frightened not only by their husband's intrusion but also by the exposure of that part of themselves which they had hidden and felt ashamed of since the dawn of self-awareness. They had learnt to hate themselves.41

Given her age and social background, Mary Morstan is as self-confident and, apparently, psychologically healthy as any woman in the whole of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and she must logically be readier than most Victorian women to enjoy sexual activity, once she finds out what it is. If Daniel L. Moriarty is right in his appraisal of Mary Morstan as "cunning and . . . resourceful" in her "relentless pursuit" of Watson for a husband,42 it would be reasonable to expect initiative and enthusiasm from her after marriage as well. Still, it is hard to imagine her swinging from chandeliers, and hard to believe that the marriage bed of the Watsons saw anything beyond what has already been tagged "vanilla sex," conventional and unathletic intercourse without props or an audience. If a Victorian man wanted more from time to time, that was what prostitutes were for. (London was full of them; figures differ, and are in any case conjectural, but one estimate is that on the average every adult man visited a prostitute every ten days.) With a reasonably satisfactory sex life, a marriage has a good chance of being a happy one, and there is a comfortable tradition of "Watson domesticus," the married man toasting his slippers by the fire while his wife embroiders, which draws some support from allusions in the first few Adventures and which was given the status of holy writ by Sir Sydney Roberts. Yet a number of stories give hints that the marriage of John and Mary Watson is not entirely happy and peaceful. The most important clues are

47

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

Mrs. Watson's frequent absences to visit relatives ("The Red-Headed League," "The Five Orange Pips," and other stories) and Watson's "sad bereavement," usually assumed to mean her death, as mentioned in "The Empty House." The Sherlockian consensus is that Mary Morstan Watson is a most long-suffering wife. That she learned to love Watson is an absolute certainty [writes Moriarty in his long and thorough early study of the matter]. But, while she found it a comparatively easy matter to bring the young doctor to the altar,43 she had to struggle against great odds to keep him at home and at her side after they were married. Holmes never showed any consideration for her efforts to keep her home and husband. He thought nothing of dashing into her apartment at any time of the day or night, and dragging her husband away whenever he needed a dependable, unpaid bodyguard or a foil for stimulating his genius.44

Moriarty concludes that the marriage is a long record of separations and reconciliations. "For three years, while Holmes was away, the couple enjoyed the longest stretch of marital bliss together. A child was probably born during this time and died in infancy, explaining the 'sad bereavement'." Ebbe Curtis Hoff more conventionally suggests that is it Mary who dies some time during Holmes's three-year "great hiatus;" there is some evidence, says that Sherlockian and medical authority, that she is consumptive.45 The former proposal offers a convenient explanation for many difficulties of popular Sherlockian chronology, depending as it so often does on whether Watson was living at Baker Street or with a wife, but it offers psychological difficulties: Watson seems such a figure of stability throughout the tales that it is hard to see him as tangled in such on-again, off-again arrangements over a period of years. The Hoff proposal requires a suggestion of a second wife for Watson, or else heroic twistings of chronological data. Benjamin S. Clark writes: The truth is that we would rather have Mary Watson dead than alive and separated or even divorced from the doctor, if the alternative to death implied desertion by Watson. In other words, Watson's role as a loyal husband must be preserved at any cost. Leaving out all bias, let us take a fresh look at the married life, if you can call it that, of Mary and John.46

And he rehearses the negligence on Watson's part and the earlier-mentioned interference on Holmes's part. Ian McQueen marshals the same evidence: Watson leaving his wife alone so that he can go off adventuring with Holmes; Holmes and Watson eating Christmas dinner without Mary ("The Blue Carbuncle"); Mary going on long visits to her mother (or her aunt or Mrs. Forrester or somebody); Watson looking at other women with "obvious approval;" a medical practice with so few patients that Watson can abandon it whenever the whim strikes. A woman writer's summary of the situation: Mrs. Hudson and Mary Watson, of course, had never heard of Women's Lib, and must early on have given up all hope of any regularity in their domestic arrangements. Even for those days their patience was exemplary. . . . Poor Mary—let us hope that her calm, sweet face and her gift for finding words of kindly, womanly comfort stood her in good stead when she had to cope with anxious patients wanting to know when the doctor would be back.47

McQueen's proposal: . . . the relationship between Watson and his wife had steadily deteriorated and she had finally left him. . . . He must have been a difficult man to live with. . . . At 48

Chapter HI — Love, Detection, and Adventure

times of mental pressure and stress Watson's propensities for gambling and drink probably came to the fore, though whether they contributed to the broken marriage or were resorted to by Watson in his loneliness is unknown. We suspect that Watson was probably cruel, perhaps even violent at times, to Mary, especially when he was in drink. It was a family failing.48

Naturally enough, he concludes, the marriage breaks up; he portrays Watson throwing himself into the writing of the Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, in the early 1890s, to take his mind off his grief and guilt. There, of course, McQueen takes too far the pretence that Watson, not Doyle, was the author; but up to that point his conjecture is consistent. The breakdown of Watson's marriage may not have been entirely his fault [McQueen also writes]. With his great "experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents," Watson may have found the former governess too frigid a female for his sexual palate and have sought solace elsewhere.49

The conclusions already reached about Watson's lack of real sexual experience (despite his bragging) cast some doubt on that last point, and it must also be remembered that, for all of Watson's willingness to leave his wife at home and go off adventuring with the great detective, he is to be found at home whenever Holmes wanted him. There is no mention of Holmes having to scour the pubs or the brothels for his companion, and when he meets him once in an opium den, in 'The Man with the Twisted Lip," it is only because Watson has gone there to rescue a friend gone wrong. The scene at the beginning of the story is a particularly sweet picture of domestic happiness, husband and wife sitting together late at night; similar scenes in others of the early short stories give an impression of "Watson domesticus" much more than of a cruel, drunken, or philandering husband. And one could hardly expect a Victorian man to be so henpecked as to stay home every single night with even the dearest of wives when there is adventure to be had with Sherlock Holmes. That Watson comes back to her in due course with the same affection—that, indeed, he married her in the first place—makes him a characteristic figure of propriety and stability. No doubt Edwards is right when he observes that Doyle marries off Watson at the end of The Sign of the Four to "reassert" a domestic world against Holmes's instability.50 Not for what it tells about Watson so much as for its technique, its careful mixture of adventure and love, a much later story deserves consideration in tandem with The Sign of the Four. It is The Hound of the Baskervilles, published eleven years later and after many events both in Doyle's life and in the canon of Sherlock Holmes, but still the next of the novels. It has in common with The Sign of the Four its unusual emphasis on Watson and its unitary nature (rather than the division into two parts with different narrators which makes A Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear structurally complex), and it has both love interest and complicated sexual overtones. Rather than being a relief from the adventure story, as the growing romance of Dr. Watson and Miss Morstan is, this novel's erotic interest is directly connected with it, as part of the villain's plot. It consists of two triangles, both created deliberately by "John Stapleton" and both having him and his wife, Beryl, posing as his sister, as two of the three points. On one side the third point is young Sir Henry Baskerville, who falls in love with the lady— partly through Stapleton's machinations and partly in spite of his wishes. On the other side, the third point is Laura Lyons, made love to by Stapleton so that he could influence her and use her in his schemes. The story ends with no one happy, at least in a romantic sense, so that the mystery and adventure part of the plot is satisfactorily resolved, whereas 49

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

the sexual part is not. And it is reasonable to ask why not. Sir Henry Baskerville continues, at least after recovering his health and strength, to be a thoroughly eligible suitor. "Our friend's title, his fortune, his age, his character, and his appearance are all in his favour," as Watson comments in chapter ix. And the lady, Beryl Garcia (Baskerville, Stapleton, Vandeleur), not only survives but is free of the man who so mistreated her. There is every reason to think that she is tough enough to be fully recovered within a few months; it is clear that she admires Sir Henry, and of course she does not mourn her first and worthless husband; why then does she not marry the young baronet? "His love for the lady was deep and sincere," says Holmes in the final chapter, "and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her." But she does as little deceiving as possible, and indeed runs considerable risks to warn him and try to protect him. An open-minded Canadian might be expected, whatever a stuffy English squire might have done, to forgive her, marry her, and look to the future. In Chapter VIII will show that at the period when The Hound was written, Doyle had strong reason to be interested in love triangles without pat happy endings; for the moment the best that can be said is that the story's present minor-key ending is more in keeping with its general gloomy atmosphere and the cathartic collapse of everything within range of Stapleton and the baronet. The discovery of the lady, "tortured and defiled," is "the novel's true heart of darkness," says Edwards, "and that also is why the author resolutely rejects a happy ending." He also puts great and complimentary stress on the love interest in this story: Doyle very nicely balances Stapleton's readiness for lust and for avarice to enjoy sexual mastery of both women . . . against his ungovernable fury. . . . This question of Stapleton's emotional inability to control himself while basing a conspiracy on the emotions of others . . . is one of the things which lifts [sic] the book firmly into serious literature.51

Miss Garcia, as it is perhaps kindest to call her, is an interesting character, and an ambivalent one. She is both deceiver and protector of Sir Henry Baskerville. She is both hot-bloodedly Costa Rican and coolly English. (It is striking that she has been chosen as persona by two of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, among whom ordinarily a single character from the stories can be adopted by only one member. One Adventuress has assumed the name of Beryl Garcia; another, that of Beryl Stapleton. They seem almost to be different people.) She is the wife of Stapleton but she poses as his sister. She is assigned to let Sir Henry Baskerville make love to her—this after refusing to try to compromise the late Sir Charles—and yet Stapleton makes angry scenes when the love-making begins. She is the first in a series of ambiguous Latin, yet English, beauties who appear in the Sherlock Holmes stories of the later period: Maria Pinto Gibson of "Thor Bridge," Emilia Lucca of "The Red Circle," Mrs. Ferguson of "The Sussex Vampire," Isadora Klein of "The Three Gables," Senora Durando (Burnet) of "Wisteria Lodge." Evan M. Wilson argues that, from the appreciative descriptions of some of these women, Latin America "could be considered as having supplied some of the beautiful women" on whom Watson's three continents' worth of experience was based.52 And Russell Jultgren says it is significant that Doyle chose Costa Rica as the country that produced Miss Garcia, both because Costa Ricans are "predominantly white (and often blond)" and because of the traditional beauty and temperament of Costa Rican women: "she is the nightmare of the American feminist and the agony and ecsta[s]y of the male chauvinist."53 Clearly a woman who has erred, Miss Garcia is nevertheless a woman who attracts

50

Chapter III — Love, Detection, and Adventure

Watson's admiration as well as Sir Henry's love, a woman who demonstrated great loyalty to her husband and a willingness to take strange jobs in strange climates for his sake, and in the end a woman who sees that she has gone wrong, so that, as Holmes says, "Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred." She is strikingly beautiful, though not Watson's weak and fluffy type, and no doubt her "tropical and exotic" beauty gives her the right combination of attraction and foreignness to make her the perfect subject for that striking scene in chapter xiv in which she is found, beaten and whipped and "swathed and muffled" in sheets, tied to a post in a bedroom at Merripit House. As with the incident of Lady Frances Carfax in the coffin, the scholar is indebted for an imaginative study of this episode to Dean W. Dickensheet's article, "Upon the Victorian Reticence of John H. Watson, M.D."54 He calls Watson's reference to bruises on the arm and weals on the neck a "fine piece of periphrastic obfuscation . . . which Sidney Paget . . . reinforced with a Gibson-girl bodice whose high collar would have obscured even that single neck-weal." The facts of the matter, as Dickensheet reveals them: Stapleton, having bound his recalcitrant wife to the beam, stripped her to the waist (at least) and savagely beat her upon the back and (probably) breasts, exhibiting the diablerie of a man attempting to disfigure those desirable charms which he believes he has lost to another.

Tying the lady to a post, whipping her, and then wrapping her in an excess of sheets is indeed remarkable and beyond a doubt sexually driven behaviour, rather than either the casual violence of an angry man (who would simply have hit his wife with a fist or a bottle) or the necessary act of a schemer who has to keep her hidden and silent (and who would tie and gag her, perhaps, but not wrap her to the point that Watson and Holmes could not at first tell whether she was woman or man). This flagellation scene is the most explicit anywhere in the sixty stories, though there are others: Mary Fraser, Lady Brackenstall, in "The Abbey Grange," is abused (the marks on her arm may be taken as indication of greater marks on parts of the body that Holmes did not see) and ties herself up; Eugenia Ronder of "The Veiled Lodger" is tied up and whipped. Holmes threatens James Windibank with a whip in "A Case of Identity," and uses a whip to deal with the snake in "The Speckled Band'—a curious incident that is discussed in Chapter VI. But for a combination of gratuitous violence with a hint of sexual stimulation, this episode is unique. Incidentally, for Dickensheet's article Tom McGee makes good what Paget was too circumspect to include. The idea is not quite new with him, however: in 1949 Bantam Books published a paperback edition of The Hound with a now-famous cover illustration of "a bare-bosomed female whose general allure suggests not so much the word 'Master' as 'mistress'," as Edgar W. Smith grumbled.55 In fact, the lady's bosom is far from bare—decollete is the strongest word for her undress—but that cover is certainly of interest. "Notice," says a more recent assessment, "the long whip in the lower left corner, a bit of artistic fantasy suggested by a reference in the novel to a welt on Beryl's neck." And that assessment goes on to point out the Bantam cover blurb, saying that the publisher "projected through an illustration and a 'quotation' a theme of sadism and violence that is never attempted (let alone achieved) in the texte verite"56 Less bizarre but still worth a close look is the woman who with Mr. and Mrs. Stapleton makes one of the two triangles: Laura (Frankland) Lyons of Coombe Tracey. Watson describes her as being "of equivocal reputation," apparently because of Dr. Mortimer's comment that the fault for the collapse of her marriage "may not have been entirely on one side." But no evidence is ever brought forward, and in fact Laura Lyons 57

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

is portrayed in a generally favourable way. She has quarrelled with her obnoxious father, old Frankland of Lafter Hall, and supports herself by honest work, with as little help from him as possible. Having formed what would now be called "a relationship" with Stapleton, she looks forward to respectable marriage with him, and is properly outraged when it turns out that he has been deceiving her. Her standards appear to be as high in sexual matters as they are in others, for she refuses to consider a casual affair with a married man or even, apparently, a sexual involvement before marriage with what she considers an eligible suitor. In a revealing moment she explains why she could not go to visit Sir Charles Baskerville at the Hall late at night: "Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor's house?" She is loyal, even to a Stapleton whose good faith she has been beginning to doubt: "If he had kept faith with me I should always have done so with him." Forced by circumstances to ask for charity from Sir Charles Baskerville, she respects him without fawning on him. One can see in Laura Lyons a later edition of Mary Sutherland, the heroine of "A Case of Identity," still typewriting and still too easily bowled over by an even minimally attractive man, and still basically good. Why, then, is it suggested that she may have been partly to blame for the failure of her marriage to "an artist named Lyons," who "proved to be a blackguard and deserted her"? Of course, when a marriage fails there is generally fault on both sides, but the picture of Mrs. Lyons that the reader is given does not suggest that much of it was on hers. And, indeed, after the first page on which the circumstance is described, there is no further criticism of that kind; it is almost possible to conclude that Doyle made a mistake here, introducing a character in one tone but going on to find that she needed to be rather different. In 1901, when his novel was published, Doyle was not as deeply involved in the issue of divorce reform as he would be later in his career (that involvement is dealt with at length in Chapter VII), but no doubt it was beginning to interest him. Having introduced a character who was involved in a broken marriage and possible messy and expensive divorce proceedings, he may have felt inclined, or impelled, to paint her more and more sympathetically as the story went on. "I feel," writes Victoria Robinson, "we see here more of Conan Doyle's personal sympathetic view of a troubled woman desirous of a divorce than a look at the general Victorian attitude, which heartily disapproved of divorce, and especially divorced women."57 The ambiguity of Mrs. Lyons's marital position is, curiously enough, underlined by the way in which she is first brought into the story: through her initials, which are found at the bottom of a postscript to an almost-burnt letter. Dr. Watson spends a page or so of the story finding out who "L.L." might be, and as there is no obvious plot reason why he should do so, the conclusion is inescapable that Doyle had some reason for drawing attention to the initials. As it happens, "L.L." in a context of romantic intrigue—the letter appears to be making an assignation with the late baronet—must have suggested, to a reader of 1901, the famous and beautiful Lillie Langtry, to whom Watson's phrase "questionable reputation" might fairly have been applied. (Daughter of a Jersey clergyman, wife of squire and yachtsman Edward Langtry, she became a notorious society flirt, an actress, and the acknowledged mistress of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII; everyone knew her name and her sobriquet, "the Jersey Lily." It has been suggested that she was the original of Irene Adler in "A Scandal in Bohemia") The daughter of the litigious old Frankland, reduced to typewriting and genteel poverty in a Devonshire village, is of course a far cry from the world-famous Lily, but Doyle may well have chosen to use Mrs. Langtry's initials, and leave them hanging long enough 52

Chapter HI — Love, Detection, and Adventure

for the reader to think about them and stumble on the name in order to provide a hint of adultery or vice. Such an explanation is underlined by Watson's comment on his first meeting with the lady, in which he is first struck by her beauty but then notices, almost at the nagging of his conscience, "something subtly wrong with the face," the first sign, no doubt, of the ravages which would eventually bring Laura Lyons to the same state as Kitty Winter.58 Laura Lyons and Beryl Garcia Stapleton are the only significant female characters in The Hound of the Baskervilles. (One might perhaps add Mrs. Barrymore, especially since her weeping, and Dr. Watson's speculation that her husband was "a domestic tyrant," provide further evidence that Doyle was interested in marital disharmony and divorce at the time he was writing this book.) Finally, it must not be forgotten that the story takes its beginning from a sexual event: the attempt by seventeenth-century Sir Hugo Baskerville to ravish the unnamed daughter of a yeoman living nearby. That incident is, of course, "rape" in the traditional sense of the word; the manuscript that tells the story of Hugo and his companions provides no evidence that the young woman had been ravished, but the reader recognizes that she would have been gang-raped if the revellers had remained sober enough to carry out such an assault. Preferring, quite literally, death to dishonour, she escaped before any assault could take place; she is pursued across the moor in circumstances that not only introduce the hell hound of the Baskervilles but, more prosaically, foreshadow with the use of her "kerchief the use of Sir Henry Baskerville's stolen boot to put a quite real hound on a human scent. The yeoman's daughter has no name, and Mary Ellen Couchon, in a brief and striking tribute to her, has thus named her "Anonyma." Couchon associates Anonyma not merely with this unidentified woman, however, but with "the catalyst for so many adventures" throughout the Holmes canon, "slipping in to set the scene or providing the all important clue from which the truth is finally deduced. Even Watson himself could not fully realize her subtle influence."59 In the present case, says Couchon, the lady deserves high praise: We cannot neglect her audacity, proven by her determination to avoid a distasteful liaison with the local gentry. When overpowered by sheer physical force, she resorted to admirable gymnastic feats, heading out the manor window, down the ivy, and over the moors toward her humble, but clean, cottage. This was surely an escapade worthy of an Adventuress, proving her courage and breeding, and emphasized in her rejection of Sir Hugo, the cad whose rather primitive methods and base intentions were foiled by her devoted Labrador Retriever, Mephistophele, whose overzealous protect!veness became legendary. Thus began the case that stunned the world: a tale of lust, drunkenness, debauchery, cunning and evil; a tale, perhaps, of a girl and her dog.

It has been suggested, from a close analysis of the story as told in chapter ii, that the attempted rape cannot have taken place—in effect, that Sir Hugo was framed.60 That may be true, but it is not important either from Holmes's point of view or from the reader's. Whether or not the story was accurate, Sir Charles Baskerville believes it, Sir Henry comes close to believing it, and Stapleton builds his whole plot on the undeniable fact that it is the general belief of the countryside. The reader need not accept it as truth, but even as the property of "a collector of fairy tales," as Holmes at first scornfully says, it is important in setting the geographical and psychological mood for the story.61 As Couchon's tribute to Anonyma suggests, there is often a woman in 53

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the background, and the mood often includes, as it does in this story, sex as well as violence. When violence and sex are coupled, the result is often the abuse of women, acute or casual. One would not ordinarily think of "Black Peter" as a sexy story, but one could certainly build a pornographic scene on Stanley Hopkins's report that Peter Carey "has been known to drive his wife and daughter out of doors in the middle of the night and flog them through the park until the whole village outside the gates was aroused by their screams." Victoria Robinson has charged that such an atmosphere is widespread in the Holmes stories: We are given an oblique look at some less-than-happy family situations, and an indication of the obsolete laws and stringent Victorian attitudes which bound women into those situations. . . . Women tolerated beatings, adulterous husbands, drunken cruelty and desertion. Laura Lyons, Beryl Stapleton and Maria Pinto Gibson tolerated most of this between them.62

Robinson is not exaggerating; but she is on shakier ground in arguing that "Doyle's stories wholeheartedly present" an attitute of women as subservient, weak, and inferior. They do draw such a picture, in part, but certainly they do not condone it—in fact Holmes spends much of his effort (as Chapter VI, in particular, shows) fighting against such treatment of women. There are, besides, some women who are strong and independent, in particular the one who is the central figure of the next two chapters. It may even be argued that The Hound would be improved if Doyle had exploited violent aspects of his material more extensively: if, for example, Stapleton set the dog on Beryl, rather than whipping her and tying her up, not only would the scene be more dramatic (and less perverse), but the novel would be more complete and rounded in its structure, with nothing invoiced at the beginning which is not delivered at the end. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the Sherlock Holmes novels. By the time of its appearance in 1901, two dozen of the short stories had been seen, and this study has so far given those short stories little attention. It is now time to go back and examine several of them in some detail, beginning with the first of them, published a little more than a year after The Sign of the Four first saw print.

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t is a very pleasant thing to have an anima figure Imight handy — that being the technical term for what in ordinary speech be called a female sex symbol. "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman," Watson says at the beginning of the first short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia," and that has been good enough for Sherlockians ever since. The lady's name: Irene Adler. Her reputation: none too good, and yet it is generally acknowledged that there has never been another woman to touch her. This ambiguous beauty, her power all the stronger and more mysterious for her diminutive stature and "dainty" face, needs close consideration. Whether Holmes in fact falls in love with her is not a question to be answered at once, but there cannot be much doubt that Sherlockians have done so — Sherlockians who are male, that is, as most of them were at least until a decade ago; Sherlockians who are female have been inclined to identify with her. In the absence of social-scientific research into such reactions it is at least possible to look at a few examples of what has been written. And the volume of such writing is enormous, from scholarly articles to sonnets' and the following brilliant couplet: "Miss Gushing." The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.

Here's to Irene Adler, the woman who was a pip; He almost fell for a petticoat, but she managed to give him the slip.2

It is notable that a good deal of the Irene Adler literature is somewhat masochistic, putting great emphasis not only on the lady's charm and verve but on her triumph over Sherlock Holmes. That triumph is somewhat doubtful, since it is not in fact clear who wins what game in "A Scandal in Bohemia," but it is widely accepted that when Holmes says in "The Five Orange Pips," "I have been beaten four times — three times by men, and once by a woman," the woman in question is Irene Adler. Much has been written about the reputation of Irene Adler [writes Paul H. Brundage], with many Sherlockians referring to her as an "adventuress," a Victorian term for an unscrupulous woman who tried to become rich and socially accepted by exploiting her charms. In addition, many feel that Sherlock Holmes felt some emotional

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involvement with Irene Adler, since Watson tells us twice that to Sherlock Holmes she was always the woman. Further, the subject of this trifling discourse has been alleged to have borne a child to Sherlock Holmes, as well as to have returned to the operatic stage. Worst of all, her figure has been slandered and her chest deflated. I submit that all of the aforementioned allegations are false.3

That "much" has been written is a colossal understatement. Especially in North America has Irene Adler been a major figure in Sherlockian scholarship, parody, and folklore. In England, or at least in English writings, she seems to figure much less largely; I suspect that the reasons include the mixed membership of the parent Sherlock Holmes Society of London (in contrast with the traditional men-only rule of the Baker Street Irregulars, to be discussed in a moment) and perhaps the greater interest, because of greater proximity, in Doyle as creator and Holmes as a literary, not living, figure. Before I describe the Irene Adler phenomenon in North America, it is useful to look briefly at the undeniable facts about the lady, those reported in "A Scandal in Bohemia" itself. Ms. Adler, one of the most remarkable of all Doyle's characters, is said to have been born in New Jersey, to have sung (contralto) at LaScala and then at the Imperial Opera of Warsaw, and at the time of the story to be living retired in London. "Holmes later infers from what the King of Bohemia has said," Brundage nicely puts it, "that she must be blackmailing the King for their liaison five years earlier." Holmes is supposed to recover compromising papers from her; he fails, but the danger to the King is eliminated when Ms. Adler marries a deus ex machina (Godfrey from a machine) in the shape of a London solicitor. Watson describes the lady as beautiful; Holmes does not do so, although he quotes other men's opinions to that effect. There are other small indications, such as her taste for men's attire and the King's certainty that she would have made a good queen, that the lady is meant to be something out of the ordinary. But the same statement might be made about many women in many stories — Grace Dunbar of "Thor Bridge" is a good example — and none of them has received anything like the attention that Ms. Adler has. It can all be blamed on those opening and closing paragraphs, in which Watson describes the special place that Ms. Adler held in Holmes's heart, even as he denies that "he felt any emotion akin to love" for her. Irene Adler was singled out for special attention in Rex Stout's famous 1944 article "Watson Was a Woman,"4 but the cult she has inspired really had its beginning with the first issue, in 1946, of The Baker Street Journal. Within the first dozen pages of that initial issue, Esther Longfellow was looking at that topic of perennial fascination, Holmes's attitude to women, and on page 13 she had him married in later life to the widow Norton, who helped to tend his bees and his garden in Sussex.5 In the second issue of the BSJ Helene Yuhasova had her "Sonnet: Sherlock Holmes to Irene Adler," reprinted in A Lauriston Garden of Verses later that year.6 In the third issue Miss Longfellow was back, this time with a poem, "And Did You Once See Sherlock Plain? LA. to S.H."7 And in the fourth issue came this fatal image in a "Rondeau" by Belden Wigglesworth: I wonder what your thoughts have been, Your inmost thoughts of him, Irene, Across the years? . . . Did you forget? Did Baker Street quite lack a Queen? I wonder.8

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In 1947 Edgar W. Smith contributed a "lovingly and beautifully written essay," in Ronald De Waal's phrase, in which he traced Ms. Adler's thoughts on her deathbed. He had her recall the opera career, and the romance with the King, and the "solid" figure of Godfrey Norton. But come the morning, she thinks, the sun's rays will strike a portrait on the stand beside the bed. "And the figure it would illumine was not the figure of a barrister, nor yet the figure of a king . . . ."9 The name of Sherlock Holmes appears nowhere but in the title, but the reader is left in no doubt. Scholarship, or a Sherlockian parody of it, was of course appearing as well as such works of the imagination. One landmark of its kind is an article by Stanley McComas that appeared in the BSJ in the first issue of its new series, in January 1951: "Lhove at Lhassa."10 In it, he presented the theory that "Irene accompanied Holmes on his Asiatic sojourn," his visit to Tibet and other Eastern points as reported in "The Empty House," having in fact married her immediately after his disappearance and supposed death at Reichenbach. Such a theory obviously took the fancy of Sherlockians, for it has come up many times since, in various forms — though not generally with Tibet as the setting. * ! Crighton Sellars picked up the idea of a marriage in "A Visit to Sherlock Holmes" in 1952;12 Ralph Ashton took it a step further in 1958, claiming that the wedding of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler was in fact the event at St. Monica's that Holmes describes to Watson in "A Scandal in Bohemia" itself.13 Such an analysis is made less absurd than it might otherwise appear by the inconsistencies in Holmes's description of that wedding: the statement that a witness was required to make "responses" and vouch for facts, for example.14 In 1962 came the great idea that has corrupted the Sherlockian idea of Irene Adler forever after. William S. Baring-Gould established it in his monumental "biography" of the detective, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, in chapter xviii, "Meeting in Montenegro;" but in fact it was first put forward seven years before that by John D. Clark. 15 The suggestion is that Holmes met Ms. Adler in early 1892 in Montenegro, and that they there created the child who became Rex Stout's detective Nero Wolfe. The idea has a certain whimsical attraction: why should not one fictional detective beget another, especially when, as Baring-Gould sets out, they have so many traits of character and taste in common?16 But such an idea runs far away from what even an imaginative and sympathetic reading of Doyle's text can justify. No matter: nowadays when a figure of history or literature is found to have much in common with Holmes, it has become not merely possible but normal to suggest that Holmes was his or her father.17 Generally the mother in any such case is or was Ms. Adler, married to Holmes or not as the case may be. And if Montenegro is not considered a suitable place for such a liaison, there is always Paris.18 Or Hoboken.19 "These sensational claims," says the (in other ways even more sensational) author of 221 A Baker Street, "fail to conform to Watson's chronology, Holmes's professed celibacy, the knowledge which the double helix now lends to atavism and hereditary aptitudes, and common sense."20 One cannot disagree. It is thus true, as it was when Dean Dickensheet made the observation in 1967, that "Irene Adler is considered primarily in the context of her amatory relations, or lack of them, with Sherlock Holmes."21 Sometimes the speculations have been fairly crude, as with these suggestions of liaisons and children; sometimes they have been ineffably sweet, as in this poem by C. E. Lauterbach: . . . And like a spectre, Mister Holmes, Amidst your bees and honeycombs, 57

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That voice — ah, yes! — you'll hear it oft In tender mockery, and soft: "Good night, Mister Sherlock Holmes!"22

Indeed, the hypothesis that the relationship is or might become, romantic has led to sensitive interpretations of the stories. James E. Schranz, for example, imagines that Holmes waxes philosophic at the beginning of "A Case of Identity" because he has just been thinking of the Adler case, which is mentioned a moment later. Here Holmes had encountered a woman on the same intellectual plane as himself, someone to match wits with and never be sure of the outcome . . . . someone from much the same mold [as himself] had suddenly entered and touched his life, and just as suddenly was leaving it [.] . . . which put him into this reflective and melancholy mood.23

H.B. Williams detects that melancholy love in Holmes's later choice of reading: Petrarch and Meredith are both mentioned in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery."24 And Theodore C. Blegen puts it this way: "I do not insist that Mr. Holmes fell in love with Irene Adler, but I suggest that it was more than sheer intellectual respect for her that made him ask the King of Bohemia for her portrait."25 It may be coincidental, but it is also symbolic, that the first article ever to appear in Baker Street Miscellanea, which is now probably the most respected of Sherlockian journals, was one that proposed a romantic relationship between Holmes and Ms. Adler. Its author, Michael Felong, examines details of the story, as so many other articles have done, points to the inconsistencies and improbabilities, and concludes that the detective and the opera singer have known one another, indeed been in love, since before the King ever came on the scene. From a point of view that takes Doyle as the author of a story, rather than as the chronicler of historical events, one of Felong's points is particularly striking: "Holmes's first conversational sally upon Watson's arrival refers to the state of wedlock."26 Evidently Doyle is preparing the reader for a story that will confront Holmes with issues related to marriage. So much for Ms. Adler's relationship with Holmes, and for her motherhood of his alleged children, which, it will be recalled, were the second and third of the points that Brundage listed as having preoccupied Sherlockian writers. His first point remains: that Ms. Adler was an "adventuress," which is to say, something between a social climber and a high-class tart. Neither Holmes nor Watson uses the word "adventuress" in the story; it comes from the King of Bohemia, who might have been expected to show more grace in discussing a woman he loved (in several senses) and admired, and it has provided a useful label for a certain view of the lady ever since. "To any earnest reader of the Canon, Irene Adler never looked like an adventuress," J.N. Williamson wrote in 1951. "She was polite, educated, and gentle—and a fine figure of a woman."27 Is the label inconsistent with that description? The answer requires some discussion of "the original of Irene Adler'—a touchy phrase to use, and yet one that at least permits some consideration of Arthur Conan Doyle, his methods of working, and his effects on his readers. Ms. Adler is, of course, a character in literature, and the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries does include a number of similar "women of vaguely glamorous reputation and style of living, independent and living on their wits," as L.W. Bailey points out.28 It is worthwhile also looking for an original in real life, although there is rarely if ever a single "original" for a character— the Holmes canon is not a roman a clef. As has been shown by Donald Redmond and 58

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various other scholars in a succession of studies of Doyle's sources for particular people or incidents, this author was a man with a powerful memory for details and a strong ability to combine and recombine them. It is thus fair to ask what details he may have been combining and recombining in the case of Ms. Adler. And it is possible, too, to ask whether he may have hoped with this character to remind the reader of a particular person or class of persons in the real world. To the second part of the second question the answer is obviously yes. There were women like Irene Adler in the world of 1891, the readers were well aware of them, and the word "adventuresses" was sometimes used to describe them. Michael Harrison in his lively book Fanfare of Strumpets has other names for them. Indeed, as Harrison tells it, their golden age was over well before the time of this story, though their daughters (of the spirit and indeed of the flesh) were carrying on their trade and tradition very well. They were the "grandes horizontales," women too peripatetic—too short-term— to be called mistresses, but much too stylish, too attractive, and too rich to be grouped with the tuppenny drabs of Whitechapel under the label of prostitutes. They moved in society, indeed were looked up to in matters of beauty and style, much as television sex goddesses are in the 1980s: that was how women wanted to look, although one couldn't quite condone their sexual behaviour. After all, they had sexual intercourse with men for money. Laura Bell (mentioned in Chapter III) was labelled in the 1850s "the Queen of London whoredom," and her appearance was of such interest that on one occasion, Harrison says, "when she visited the Opera, the whole house rose to watch her departure." Cora Pearl, who set up her principal menage in Paris in the 1860s, "brought over from England a squad of grooms, known throughout Paris as 'the men who never smile'."29 In 1862 a gentleman wrote to The Times to complain about the traffic congestion caused by the admirers, envious and female as well as lustful and male, of "a young lady whom I must call Anonyma, for I have never been able to learn her name."30 Everyone else in London knew her name: she was Catherine Walters, or "Skittles," who a year or two later invited a group of gentlemen to dinner and had herself served up on a giant platter, dressed only in a little parsley. Like these queens of their profession, and such others as Hortense Schneider and Caroline Otero and the rest whom Harrison and other chroniclers describe, Irene Adler lived at least to some extent by what she could extract from rich men. (Whether they were suitors or customers, it would perhaps not be chivalrous to ask.) Like them, however, she also had a career on the stage—she was a contralto; Caroline Otero, who has left a magnificently amoral autobiography, was a dancer, of what would probably now be called the "exotic" variety; some writers have included the great actress Sarah Bernhardt in the roll call.31 Like some of the grandes horizontales, and many of that lesser class the full-time mistresses, Ms. Adler lived in a certain section of London. Cyril Pearl describes it: In St. John's Wood—the Grove of the Evangelist, smart people called it—the moneyed men of the 'sixties decreed their sprightly pleasure domes. A new suburb arose, dedicated to Cytherea, of pretty little villas, screened from Victorian gigmanity by shrubs and trees and convent walls. Here, the pretty horsebreakers rested after the fatigues of Rotten Row [where fashionable women rode their horses], and here the bachelor refugees from Belgravia and [the] errant husbands of Mayfair, dined on sugar candy with their Aspasias and Loribelles and Mabels and Nellies and Kates.32

It is perhaps true that by 1891 the type Doyle was describing in Irene Adler was not as often seen, or as keenly followed, as it had been twenty years before, but authors 59

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are generally a little out of date, and there can be no doubt that he was writing in the expectation that readers would recognize the lady for what she was. Harrison seizes on the expression "young person"33 that Holmes uses, in Beyond Baker Street and makes this comment: Kept women belonging to the stage were invariably referred to as "young persons of the theater" (or footlights), and no one in Victorian times, reading Watson's account of the case, could believe that any but a high-class tart was the subject of the King's call on Holmes.34

He says elsewhere that . . . this introduction of a harlot qua harlot into a Holmes story is a little late, for by the end of the century (and the Holmes tales belong to last decade of all), the Grand Harlot had done her work: women were now well on the way to that complete release from old duties that the uprising of the harlots in the Golden Age had promised.35

But Doyle was a little old-fashioned in matters of morality and society: he always opposed women's suffrage, for example, and he imposed on himself a stringently high standard of sexual conduct. He was quite capable of pitting the upright Holmes against a woman who was immoral in a slightly old-fashioned way. That he was thinking of the great adventuresses as he wrote "A Scandal in Bohemia" is perhaps confirmed by Watson's mention, in the second paragraph, of "the mission which he [Holmes] had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland," a mission that Harrison himself says suggests the disentanglement of King William III from adventuress Cora Pearl.36 Doyle may have done even more: he may have modelled Ms. Adler, more or less exclusively and more or less consciously, on one of these women. (Morris Rosenblum, perhaps not aware that he is doing so, hints at another possible original: Phryne, the ancient Greek courtesan, who is said to have spread a false alarm of fire in order to make the sculptor Praxiteles betray the secret of which of his works he prized most. Holmes turned the trick around to use against Ms. Adler.)37 Pierre Nordon has no doubt that Doyle did use one of them as a model, and he offers one of the few thoroughly sensible analyses of Irene Adler when he says that she was modelled on Lola Montes: Born in 1818, this adventuress had appeared on the London stage before she became the mistress of Louis of Bavaria. . . . Why should the romantic legend of Lola Montes have induced Conan Doyle to make Irene Adler the incarnation of the eternal feminine in Sherlock Holmes's eyes? Of course the story of Lola Montes would have made an impression on him as an adolescent, and it will be remembered that at seventeen he was in Austria in the Jesuit school at Feldkirch. It is permissible to suppose that in this small world and in this small town the amazing story of Lola Montes could still be the subject of conversation in 1876, particularly among school-boys: and in 1891 Conan Doyle and his wife spent the winter in Vienna. This new taste of Austrian life may well have revived his adolescent memories, and Scandal in Bohemia was probably written in Vienna. In any case the story was published a few weeks after his return.38

The identification is all the more likely if Conan Doyle knew that in her California days, circa 1854, Lola Montes had had as a lover "a German baron named Kirke Adler . . . [whose] interest was in hunting and horticulture."39 There are, however, other candidates, one of them being Lillie Langtry, mentioned

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in Chapter III in connection with Laura Lyons. Apart from chronological arguments, which are irrelevant to a scholar who is looking for influence on Doyle, rather than a historical figure stepping through the door of 221B Baker Street, there is one principal point that Julian Wolff advances in favour of Mrs. Langtry as the original of Ms. Adler:40 she was the mistress of the Prince of Wales, who makes a convincing original for Wilhelm, the King of a non-existent Bohemia. (Of course, he had a number of other mistresses as well, though not all were, as Wolff points out that Mrs. Langtry was, "trained as an actress and . . . quite at home in male costume.") Wolff also notes that Irene Adler was born in New Jersey, a nice hint, if Doyle chose to use it, toward Jersey, the origin of Mrs. Langtry "the Jersey Lily." Indeed it is puzzling to see why else he selected New Jersey, a distant and unromantic state (he had then never been there), as the birthplace of his heroine. It is puzzling; but a circumstance not previously suggested in connection with Irene Adler, as far as I know, may explain it and indicate that there was yet a third "original" for this character. That circumstance is the career of Eliza Cook, who began her working life as a barmaid, not quite in New Jersey but across the river from it in New York, and wound up a millionaire in circumstances that Irene Adler would certainly have admired. Harrison again tells the story: Prince William [1840-1879], heir to the throne of Holland, had been sent to England to ask for the hand of Princess Mary of Cambridge, mother of Queen Mary, wife of George V. This proposed marriage not suiting the plans of Napoleon III, that intelligent but devious monarch asked his mistress, Countess le Hon, to find Prince William a diversion. This was found, in the person of the American ex-barmaid Eliza Cook. . . . (She afterwards shared the bed and the purses of both Prince William and his royal father.) Prince William fell for the diversion, and soon Eliza was installed in a splendid mansion in Paris, and was seen driving round in a bright yellow landau with the royal arms of Holland on panel and hammercloth. The news was reported to England, and the proposed alliance between the Royal Houses of Great Britain and Holland broken off. 41

(The millions came when the king tried to buy off Miss Cook with the deed to a lead mine, which proved to be much richer than he had thought it was.)42 The existence of a royal "diversion" who, in addition to being American, was the occasion of breaking off a royal engagement, exactly like the engagement of Wilhelm (that name again!) of Bohemia to Princess Clotilde of Scandinavia, strongly suggests that she was the adventuress, or one of the adventuresses, Doyle had in mind when he depicted Ms. Adler.43 Of course, Doyle made Irene Adler an unusual adventuress. It is not unusual that she is a singer, but it is striking that she was so good a singer that she performs at La Scala and becomes prima donna of an Imperial Opera. In general, the grandes horizontales maintained stage careers chiefly as an excuse to display themselves and get paid for it. In fact, this aspect of Ms. Adler is so striking that it is possible to consider another partial original for her, one who is an opera singer rather than one of the great tarts. She is Nordica, nee Lillian Norton of Farmington, Maine,44 who made her Covent Garden debut in 1887 and became Europe's leading Wagnerian artiste. Her string of unsuccessful marriages and her support for the suffragist cause may suggest Ms. Adler to some readers. Samuel Feinberg suggests that she is the singer Holmes mentions as "Carina" in "The Retired Colourman," and that in fact she was Holmes's "carina," his "darling".45 The conventions of Sherlockian writing bar him from suggesting that Doyle had anything to do with the details of the stories, but it is startling that he does not even note the

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coincidence of Nordica's original surname being the same as that of Ms. Adler's husband. In sober fact it seems quite possible that Doyle had her in the back of his mind when he portrayed Ms. Adler, and borrowed her name for the lawyer who marries his contralto. Perhaps, too, he was aware of the operatic career of Pauline Lucca, who was noted for her flirtatious stage manner and for her use of male costume, and who precipitated a small scandal by having a perfectly innocent photograph taken of herself with the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck.46 Ms. Adler is an unusual figure in other ways as well. It is not unusual that she should have a lover of high station, but a king is rather exceptional. It is not unusual that she gives up her career to be married—many great courtesans of the nineteenth century did so—but it is striking that she marries a solicitor who shows no evidence, as far as the reader is aware, of riches or exceptional style. He must be presumed to have other qualities of which, perhaps, only his bride can be fully aware. And the marriage suggests that Ms. Adler is not utterly a gold digger. Since Doyle gave the story that ending, with both Holmes and the King accepting absolutely that the lady is married to Godfrey Norton, will stay married to him, and poses no further threat of blackmail or embarrassment, it is remarkable (and significant) how many Sherlockian articles and daydreams have wiped away that marriage, either by proposing that it never took place or by imagining that divorce or death soon ended it. Any such assumption of course makes Irene Adler a free woman again, free either to conduct a bittersweet romance with Sherlock Holmes, assuming that he had any taste for such dalliance, or to resume the career of an adventuress. The importance of Ms. Adler's free status has been pointed out in an unusual and penetrating article by Michael Atkinson in which he examines "A Scandal in Bohemia" as a story of "virginity, assailed from all corners." The virginity of Irene Adler is obviously not literal: Yet traditionally virginity has been a social, religious and literary condition rather than a strictly biological one. . . . Indeed, it is precisely her independence—her freedom to consent to a marriage of her choice—that Irene Adler seeks to maintain in protecting the symbol of her virginity, a bit of film hidden in a recess of her sitting room. . . . She is struggling to save her power to assert or determine her own identity, the humanness of her being as a person, rather than accepting a designation as the king's castoff whore.47

Such an attitude can be called "liberated" even in a 1980s sense, even though it leads, as such brave attitudes often do in the 1980s, to a marriage that may prove to be less exciting and less satisfactory than the lady deserves. Atkinson goes on to observe that Holmes, too, is a virgin, . . . and here, too, the virginity is threatened, or at least tested. . . . she is the woman of his life, and yet he loves her not—or at least will not admit expression of love. This emotional tension or ambivalence is central to the pleasure of the story, and to its connection to the tradition of romance. . . . [Holmes] makes her marriage to another possible, in that very act denying her forever to himself. This is the stuff of purest romance, chivalric or domestic, medieval or modern. . . . Holmes is eternally monogamously faithful to Adler.48

It would anticipate the discussion of Holmes's "chivalry" and love life in Chapter VI to speculate on whether that attitude is something drawn out only by Ms. Adler or something habitual to Holmes. But the self-sacrifice that he displays in this case (and 62

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the sentimental lapse when he asks for a picture of the lady, perhaps to moon over) certainly seem to appeal to readers. It has already been suggested that to some extent the male Sherlockian attitude to Ms. Adler is masochistic—that there is a delight in the image of this beautiful, sexually powerful, financially rapacious, and very independent woman on the loose. Nowhere is the image clearer than in the hypothesis of "Aunt Clara," which first saw print in 1950. The creator of this durable myth was James Montgomery, of Philadelphia, who "discovered" one day that his mother's runaway sister Clara, born in New Jersey and last heard of living in sin on the French Riviera, was in fact Ms. Adler. He reported the news in a song that he performed at a number of Sherlockian events starting about 1950; its text was published that year49 and two recordings of it became available in 1961.50 "It was Jim Montgomery," wrote Julian Wolff, "who discovered that his Aunt Clara was really Irene Adler, the woman, and added an entirely new annexe to the Canon. As a result, he undoubtedly contributed more to our enjoyment than any other Sherlockian has ever done."51 On February 21, 1952, Montgomery sang "all twenty odd verses" of his song at a dinner of the Sons of the Copper Beeches, a Sherlockian society in Philadelphia.52 The source that makes that statement further says that he had often given the same performance to the Baker Street Irregulars in New York. If so, some of the song has been lost, since the recorded version that is now heard, and the 1950 published text, consists of six stanzas with choruses.53 Whatever its length, the song made a powerful impression on Sherlockians, and particularly on the Baker Street Irregulars, a group that must now be briefly described. The BSI, which takes its name from the gang of street urchins who assist Holmes in A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, was founded in New York circa 1934 by novelist Christopher Morley and one or two cronies.54 It was the first Sherlockian society in North America, and for a time the only one. As branches, or "scions," were established in other cities, the New York society became a nominal parent rather than an actual society, and for thirty years its principal activity has been a dinner meeting on a Friday in early January. Sherlockians come hundreds, in some cases thousands, of miles to attend that dinner and other celebrations on the same weekend. Since early days, membership in the BSI has been elective, based on Sherlockian activities in local societies and in publications, and some 350 people have now received the "investiture" that represents membership; of them perhaps 250 are now living. An important characteristic of the BSI, especially with regard to its interest in Irene Adler, is that membership is open only to men (there have been two exceptions—one in 1958, reportedly by accident, and one in 1982, which was not considered by observers to be precedentsetting), and that attendance at the annual dinner is restricted to members, together with as many male guests—generally prospective members—as there is room for in the opinion of the society's benevolent dictator, who since 1960 has been Julian Wolff, M.D., of New York. The obvious results of this restriction are, first, that there are a sizeable number of prominent Sherlockians to whom the prestige and possible privileges of BSI membership are not open; and, second, that the BSI dinner each January amounts to a black-tie stag party. It is thus interesting to note the enthusiasm with which the BSI have consistently greeted Montgomery's song about Aunt Clara; Montgomery died in 1955, but a recording of his rendition of the song continues to be played for the BSI each January.

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Here is how Montgomery tells the story of his supposed aunt: We never mention Aunt Clara; Her picture is turned to the wall. Though she lives on the French Riviera, Mother says that she?s dead to us all. She used to sing hymns in the old village choir, . . . Those dear days are over, alas! At church on the organ she'd practice and play, The preacher would pump up and down; His wife caught him pumping the organ one day, And that's why Aunt Clara left town. . . . They said no one cared if she never came back, When she left us, her fortune to seek, But the boys at the firehouse draped it in black, And the ball team wore mourning that week. They told her the wages of sinners was death; But she said since she had to be dead, She'd just as soon die with champagne on her breath, And pink satin sheets on her bed. . . . They say that she's sunken, they say that she fell From the narrow and virtuous path, But her formal French gardens are sunken as well, And so is her pink marble bath. My dear mother's life has been pious and meek; She drives in a second-hand Ford. Aunt Clara received for her birthday last week A Rolls-Royce, a Stutz and a Cord. My mother does all of the housework alone; She washes and scrubs for her board. I've reached the conclusion that virtue's its own, And also its only, reward. We never mention Aunt Clara; But when I grow up big and tall, I shall go to the French Riviera And let Mother turn me to the wall!

Several things are at once obvious, starting with the fact that any connection with Irene Adler must be based entirely on imagination. This song is rooted in small-town America, its prudishness yet its fascination with extravagant sin. The cliches are those of 1920 rather than of 1950, or of Ms. Adler's 1890. Most startling, the song is more appropriate in the mouth of a woman than in that of Montgomery or any other man; no man can hope, or even pretend to hope, to follow in Clara's footsteps as the final chorus suggests. It has been generally assumed that Montgomery created it, and as late as 1974 Ronald De Waal in his World Bibliography gave him the credit. However, the subsequent International Sherlock Holmes gives an earlier listing for "Aunt Clara" than any of the ones in the first volume, dated 1952, and attributes the song to "Ruth and I. Eugene Willis."55 There is clearly more to the story than has so far been told. In any case, on the recording Montgomery sings it with relish, and the Baker Street Irregulars have, as Wolffs comment suggests, loved it. 56 64

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Aunt Clara's story is exactly that of many of the grandes horizontals, who started as home-town party girls and graduated to high society, ending up in incredible luxury at their lovers' expense. She seems to have started from an enjoyment of sex for its own sake, and only later discovered that there was good money in it. Whether prostitutes, even call girls of the highest class, really do begin their careers in this way is open to some doubt, although Caroline Otero includes in her autobiography, My Story, clear statements that she was boy-crazy from childhood. But there is a traditional and comforting belief that they do,57 and to think of Clara with "the boys at the firehouse" in her younger days makes her less intimidating in her later, richer (and no doubt sexually demanding) life. The song makes sin attractive (the word "sin" is used in the sense that the persona in the song would understand; I do not, of course, accept that sin is only or chiefly sexual, or that sex is only or chiefly sinful), but a man would hesitate to get into Clara's clutches. And Irene's clutches? The reader of "A Scandal in Bohemia" has already seen what happens when the King ends up there, and Chapter V explores that matter in more detail. With all that said, it becomes clear why Clara appeals to the members of quite a different Sherlockian society, one that consists of women. The group is the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, which of course takes its name from Ms. Adler's profession (and from "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." Oral tradition says that it was suggested by Julian Wolff, who has been firm in refusing to consider admission of women to the BSI), and which was established in 1965 by a group of students at a women's college in Connecticut.58 In January 1968 six members mounted a picket line outside Cavanagh's Restaurant on West 23 Street, New York City, on the night of the BSI annual dinner to protest the exclusion of women from that event. There was no picket line in 1969, but a small group of women were still excluded. "Some creative suggestions were brought forth for future attempts at breaching the Dinner," writes Linda Patterson Ripley in an unpublished history, "such as getting hired as waitresses or seeking entrance as a band of nuns coming to inquire about Cardinal Tosca; the most spectacular involved being wheeled in inside an 800-pound cake." In the event, the Adventuresses began to hold a rival dinner on the same evening, also in a New York restaurant; from 1979 men have been welcome at that event as guests, though they remain barred from membership in the society itself. "We Never Mention Aunt Clara" has become a favourite at Adventuresses' functions, being rendered first in unison with a recording of Montgomery's own version, later a cappella, and in January 1982 with flute and violin accompaniment. Members belt it out with enthusiasm, although by the end some of them are laughing too hard to make much of a musical contribution. There is no evidence that any members of the Adventuresses actually support themselves in the way Aunt Clara did,59 but it is at least possible to imagine them wondering why they did not choose that lucrative life. In a letter to me in December 1981 Evelyn Herzog, one of the co-founders of the Adventuresses and now its acknowledged leader, explained Ms. Adler's attraction for her colleagues in the following way: First, there is to me no question that it is Holmes' unequivocal admiration for her . . . that makes Irene The Woman to Sherlockians; that is, if she had been precisely the same woman, but acting off-stage so that Holmes never knew her and never expressed his regard, we wouldn't give her much thought. And we must and do concur in his grounds for praise: her intelligence and daring and (inferable from Holmes' "quite another plane" exchange with the King) her genuine emotions.

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Then, to some extent, we admire her "job" as an adventuress not absolutely but within the context of her time; though she lived in a social system that left much to be desired (as we pretty much all do, when all is said), she found a way to make it work for her. If, as a woman, she must be an object, better to be a romantic ornament than a household appliance. . . . We feel that Adler is an independent woman, which again is not precisely due to her role as an adventuress but to her handling of that role; she doesn't seem to be a trickster, a clinger, or a whiner; she might be a man's mistress, but not his "little woman." (It is the beating-society-at-its-own-game attitude, put in its most extreme and humorous form, that gives the charm to "Aunt Clara"; in cold blood we might not care for her but, like The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, she appeals to the devil-may-care spirit in us.) Although I've just spoken about Irene's allure as an adventuress, we have only hearsay evidence that she deserves that epithet. Her profession was that of opera singer; it was thus that she appeared in Holmes' reference book. . . . Now, I don't want to get into writing a scenario wherein Irene appears as a broken blossom . . . but she certainly behaves herself within the confines of this story. . . . I guess I'm trying to make two points: that she gets our respect for being an independent artist; and that she might deserve our sympathy for keeping her cool under persecution.

A letter purporting to be from Irene Adler herself, published in an early issue of the Adventuresses' magazine, makes similar points: The word "adventuress" . . . though it may rightly be taken to mean a woman who adventures through life, living by her wits and luck, usually connotes a woman who supports herself by skillful use of her sexual allure. I have, in my day, been each sort of adventuress, and am prepared to say that the former life is preferable. To limit one's area of expertise to the sexual arena is a waste of woman's talents (or at least, I found it a waste of mine). Politics, the arts, even criminology (!) provided me with many opportunities to shine, and no field I ever entered was devoid of opportunities for romantic intrigue, when I chose. I hope that you all will not confine the honorable title of Adventuress which you have chosen to its circumscribed and, may I say, supine meaning.60

It has now been seen at length that Irene Adler is a character of special interest for Sherlockians. Few other figures from the canon have attracted more scholarship— Holmes himself, and perhaps Watson and Moriarty—and none save for Holmes has been the subject of more fantasy, poetry, and daydream. It seems, indeed, that for many Sherlockians Ms. Adler has gone beyond being the character who appears in "A Scandal in Bohemia," and has become an archetype, the absolute incarnation of femininity. Christopher Morley recalled that at the social gatherings, circa 1933, which preceded the foundation of the Baker Street Irregulars, "There were on that upper floor two retiring rooms, which we persuaded [the proprietor of the restaurant] to label as Sherlock and Irene. This puzzled some customers, but was effective for segregation.61 Even at that early stage, then, Irene Adler was the symbol of womanhood. In this context it may be significant that when many Sherlockian societies toast the lady, they do so not by name but simply as "The Woman."62 And it is not unknown for a male Sherlockian to refer to his wife or lady-love as "my Irene."63 Irene Adler has in fact become an archetype. She is, writes Kelvin I. Jones, "a woman elevated to the level of the ideal, and for Holmes, the unobtainable. This is a romantic attitude, but it is also to be found in mediaeval ideas of courtly love."64 In fact Ms. Adler is that most mediaeval of figures, a love goddess turned into a madonna. 66

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(And so it is not surprising that she can be simultaneously condemned as a tart and adored as an unattainable beauty, or that the attitude is simultaneously one of affection and one of hostility.) In her brilliant book Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, Marina Warner has examined this sort of process as it has applied through the centuries to St. Mary "the Virgin," the mother of Jesus. She looks at the ways that theology, art, and psychology have collaborated to expand a few ambiguous lines in the New Testament into a complicated figure, central to Roman Catholic theology in particular, who is at once virgin and mother, queen, bride, rescuer, sorrower, and even (when conflated with St. Mary Magdalene) "penitent whore." That glorification, in which great reasoners like St. Bernard of Clairvaux have collaborated with Raphael and all the other great names of Western art, has managed to create a Mary for whom there is almost no hard evidence, but who nevertheless obviously meets a need in many worshippers. "I have avoided explanations arising from Freudian psychology," Warner unfortunately says in her Prologue: I do not think it is adequate to say that men will always yearn for a pure mother who will never let them down. . . . Nor does the Jungian archetype explain the myth of the Virgin Mary, for such figures are not innate, but cultural and historical products. I do accept, however, as the Jungians maintain, that such a symbol exercises a sway over our unconscious lives.65

Sure enough, Sherlockians have seized on Irene Adler, the one female character in whom their demigod, Sherlock Holmes, showed any particular interest, and have elaborated the figure out of all recognition. It is difficult to make her a virgin, but bride and mother have been managed; queen was the obvious metaphor from the beginning; and of course she has much in common with Mary Magdalene, who, as Warner says, "leads a Christian company of harlot saints."66 Freudian explanations do in fact seem to be needed in order to explain why neither traditional Christians nor many Sherlockians have been content with a male figure at the centre of their cult, needing to create a female counterpart out of whatever material was available. "The Virgin Mary," says Warner, "is a manifestation of the principle the Chinese call yin and represents the quintessence of many qualities that east and west have traditionally regarded as feminine: yieldingness, softness, gentleness, receptiveness, mercifulness, tolerance, withdrawal."67 She is quite right to point out that ascribing all those qualities to all women, and only to women, is absolute perversion of the facts; but tradition has frequently done it, and one can see Sherlockian tradition doing what Christian tradition has already done. (I do not of course mean that the image of Irene Adler has been shaped by the image of Mary. What I mean is that the same psychological process has been at work to increase the importance of both figures in their respective spheres.) That there is in fact some connection between Ms. Adler and St. Mary, and that Doyle was'subconsciously aware of it, is suggested by the date at which "A Scandal in Bohemia" is said to have taken place: the third week of March. That week marks, of course, the beginning of spring, the season at which a young man's fancy is generally said to turn toward love; it also includes the chief festival of Mary during the liturgical year, the festival that is called in the Roman Catholic church the Annunciation and in the Anglican tradition Lady Day. The feast falls, in fact, on March 25, and Doyle sets the beginning of the story on March 20, but Lady Day is the principal feast of that season for Roman Catholics (Doyle was raised in that faith) and also, as one of the English quarter-days, a mark on the calendar that cannot have escaped Doyle's attention. (The

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only saint mentioned in the story is St. Monica, patron of the church where the AdlerNorton wedding took place. Monica is known to hagiography as the mother of St. Augustine, who, appropriately enough, was grieved at his youthful sexual flings. The only St. Irene on record is a fourth-century martyr whom the governor of Macedonia ordered to be stripped and exposed in a brothel; when the sentence was carried out, no one molested her.) It is striking that, while Mary has been the chief image of Christian art through the centuries, Irene Adler has been drawn very infrequently by Sherlockians. What then does Irene Adler look like? Like Mary, like any goddess, she is open to individual interpretation, and an empirical study of Sherlockians' images of her, still to be carried out, will tell more about contemporary images of beauty than it will about Ms. Adler. From the evidence available in the story itself, it is clear only that she is beautiful ("the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet" is the verdict of the local grooms, who are likely to have spent as much time looking at women and comparing them as any group of judges one might find). Brundage, in the article quoted near the beginning of this chapter, complained that "her figure has been slandered and her chest deflated." He was referring to a paper by A.C. Roberts and Gene A. Leeb which noted that Watson sees the lady's figure outlined against the light, but also sees her dressed as "a slim youth in an ulster." Their conclusion: "Since it is not possible to eradicate a full figure in order to appear slim, but in fact easy to perform the opposite transformation, we [conclude] that Irene Adler wore the Victorian equivalent of falsies." She has, in Holmes's phrase, "a face that a man might die for," and of course what one finds under the bonnet is the face; but the body is open to criticism, they said.68 Brundage of course countered that the lady's figure is intended to be superb: "To attain such fame an operatic contralto must have practiced voice for years, performing both breathing and vocal exercises," and thus developing the chest in a most satisfactory way.69 The two schools of thought do manage to agree that Ms. Adler is petite, possibly on the grounds that she can masquerade as a "youth" and also on the aesthetic basis of providing the maximum possible contrast with the giant king. Sherlockians are not unanimous on that point of view, however, judging from the results of three informal polls conducted in connection with the writing of this chapter. In one poll Sherlockians of both sexes, members of The Bootmakers of Toronto, were asked, "What do you imagine that Irene Adler looked like? Please give, if you can, height, weight, colour of eyes, colour of hair, body measurements." Of sixteen usable responses, there were three votes for a height of 5'2," three for 5'4," six for 5'6," two for 5'7," one for 5'8," and one for 5'11." (All the suggestions of heights above 5'6" came from men.) Estimates of the lady's figure ranged from 32-18-28 to 36-28-38. Her eyes were blue, brown, or green, and her hair brown, auburn, or blonde. When a similar question was put to the members, all male, of Hugo's Companions of Chicago, there was an even larger range in suggested heights (5'0" to 6'0") and a similar variation in suggested hair and eye colours, but large breasts were more often suggested than small ones. In a third survey, members of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes were asked simply: "What do you imagine that Irene Adler looked like?" and while some of the fourteen respondents gave specifics, others were more general: "Slender, voluptuous." "Small, dark haired, blue eyes, round and petite." "Just like me. Gorgeous!" "Dark hair, blue eyes, sharp intelligent features." "She was a redhead." "Beautiful, about 5'5." "Dark of hair, fair of face, slight of build, small of stature." "Tall, stately, red-haired, full-bosomed, slender." "Blond, light complexion, blue eyes, tall and thin." There is 68

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obviously room for research about the correlation between the respondents' own appearance—or those of the women they love, in the case of the men—and their descriptions of Ms. Adler. In any case, one is left to marvel at the power that is packed into the smallest woman's little finger, the power by which Ms. Adler has such an effect on the King of Bohemia, on Sherlock Holmes himself, and on thousands of readers of their story through the years. It was said early in this chapter that much of the (male) writing about Ms. Adler has a masochistic tone; and it might be added that there are Sherlockians who not only dissent from the enthusiasm for her, which this chapter has documented, but indeed deny that any romantic element in Holmes's life was either possible or (in some sense) desirable. Chapter VI shows that, in my opinion, there were at least the makings of a lover in Holmes as Doyle portrayed him over the years. I think both the masochism and the denial arise from an attitude on male readers' part that mingles love of women and fear of them. Ms. Adler's appeal certainly depends as much on her hard heart as on her soft curves, although there is too little description of the latter to offer a clear basis for prurience. (Nor, of course, is there in this story—or anywhere else in Doyle—an explicit bedroom scene; the action is all in the mind.) What makes Irene Adler fascinating, it seems, is that rather than cuddling up to Sherlock Holmes she fights him, and she wins.70 Her accomplishment is, as has also been said, in keeping with various stereotypes and some realities of women's and men's behaviour. Canadian psychologist Hilary Lips describes the general situation thus: In relating to women, men can often use physical strength and/or money as a power resource. A woman frequently is cut off from use of these resources because she is often physically weaker than and financially dependent on the man. Thus, she is more dependent than he on other power resources such as sexuality. In the case of young, attractive, single women, a dependence on sexuality may not be looked at as a disadvantage. Indeed, such women may feel very powerful relative to the men who court their favor. However, with rare exceptions, this sense of power tends to fade somewhat as the woman becomes defined as less sexually attractive with age. At the same time, the man's sense of power, based on income, status, and expertise is probably growing. Clearly, a total long-term reliance on sexuality or any other single power source puts a person at a disadvantage relative to others with more diverse power resources.71

In that context, "A Scandal in Bohemia" is the story of Ms. Adler getting the most from the physically strong and rich King at the time when her "power resources," chiefly sexual, are at their greatest. Not surprisingly, women have enjoyed reflecting on her success. "When a woman conquers a famed misogynist and also pulls the wool over the eyes of royalty, well, a little boasting is only natural," writes Linda Patterson in the guise of Ms. Adler herself.71 But men seem to like it, too. Much sexual stimulation does depend on violence, real or symbolic, and it is said that the best sexual encounters come after a fight, as a truce in the war between the sexes. "A Scandal in Bohemia" provides a juicy battle in that war; no wonder Sherlockians have found such delight in imagining the peace talks afterward.

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Chapter V Be Very Careful When You Say It In Ink /^~A IjapterlV, about Irene Adler and the impression v^she has made on Sherlockians over the past thirty years, can be summarized in a single sentence from an article by Mollie Hardwick. "Irene towers "Really, sir, this is a very above all other women in the Canon; no frivolous extraordinary question." plaything she, but a fine feminine flower of the late The Hound of the Baskervilles. nineteenth century, above criticism or condescension, like her mighty opponent." A few sentences earlier, Hardwick calls Ms. Adler an "archetype," and says that another character in the canon is the "type" of her: "Sherlock Holmes's type, the woman who could match him intellectually, arouse his curiosity, return him blow for blow, entertain him with her humour and dazzle him with her beauty."1 The character who merits that description: Isadora Klein, the villainess of "The Three Gables." That story, published in 1926, has much in common with "A Scandal in Bohemia," published in 1891, and interesting results emerge when they are considered together. The last chapter touched briefly on what is really the key question about "A Scandal in Bohemia:" whether Irene was an adventuress coldbloodedly out for blackmail, or something else, such as just possibly a wronged and scorned woman of the kind whose fury is proverbial. One can begin, as of course Holmes and Watson themselves do, with the King of Bohemia himself, whose herculean frame makes him all the more laughable when it is realized what great power little Irene Adler has over him. (It can of course be argued that he compromises his own masculinity—and with it, at least for Watson, his claim to being in the right—by his bizarre and rich attire, "rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste." Whether Doyle based the King on the Grand Duke Rudolf of Austria, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Wilhelm von Hohenzollern of Prussia, or Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, is not significant for present purposes; what matters is the character Doyle gave him, and the light that throws on the events in the story. The King, of course, considers himself in the right, and Holmes, hearing of the matter for the first time, is inclined to accept that point of view. The King speaks of "the well-known adventuress Irene Adler," but Holmes does not seem to know the name. When he has skimmed her biography, this is his reaction: "quite so! Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some compromising 70

Chapter V — Be Very Careful When You Say It In Ink

letters, and is now desirous of getting those letters back." A moment later he speaks of Ms. Adler's possible use of the letters "for blackmailing or other purposes." He is contemptuous of Ms. Adler at this point. The King goes on: besides letters there is a photograph, and "We were both in the photograph." He explains his motivation for getting so entangled: "I was mad— insane. . . . I was only Crown Prince then. I was young." The lady will not sell the documents, and Holmes undertakes to retrieve them before she can send them to the family of Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen, to whom the King is about to be betrothed: "Rather than I should marry another woman, there are no lengths to which she would not go—none." Holmes checks out the situation and organizes his famous false alarm of fire to make Ms. Adler reveal where she keeps the documents. He finds out, but when he returns to claim them, they are gone and she with them; there remains a letter from the lady addressed to Holmes, and a photograph of herself in evening dress, which is intended for the King but which Holmes begs from him as a souvenir. The romantics, of whom there are a great many among Sherlockians, take this incident as a proof that Holmes holds Ms. Adler dear in his heart (and presumably wanted to put the photograph under his pillow). But Richard Asher is almost certainly right that he wants it for his files, if not actually his rogues' gallery; a photograph is a practical object, useful for identification, as well as an emotional artifact, and the practical approach is typical of Holmes as he is usually portrayed.2 The plot as so far described would make absolute sense, but that is by no means all. For before Holmes ever starts his ruse with the smoke-rocket to find out where Ms. Adler keeps her dearest treasures, he has been present at her wedding to a "dark, handsome, and dashing" solicitor, Mr. Godfrey Norton. "But she could not love him?" is the response of the King when he hears the news—it is significant that he is asking, not declaring—and Holmes replies that he hopes she does, since "If the lady loves her . . . husband, she does not love your Majesty . . . there is no reason why she should interfere with your Majesty's plan." It is with Norton that she has fled, leaving the letter for Holmes and the photograph for the King, of whom she writes: "I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly wronged." As Brundage points out in the article that is mentioned frequently in the last chapter, there is no evidence that Ms. Adler has ever tried to blackmail the King in the sense of asking him for money.3 "Her reason for threatening to reveal the photograph," he writes, "was to ruin the King's engagement and return the hurt he had caused her." Brundage further points out that a look at Ms. Adler is enough to make Watson feel ashamed of himself, that only the King calls her an adventuress, that the admiring comments of the horsy men in the neighbourhood are nothing like as lewd as a "high-class tart" would have elicited, and that she would not have engaged a solicitor "if her reputation was less than honourable." From this point of view, Irene Adler the adventuress disappears and is replaced by Irene Adler the plaything of a playboy crown prince, vengeful when she is unfairly cast aside, and giving up her hope of revenge only when she is caught up in love and marriage with a good man. "Would she not have made an admirable queen?" cries the King of Bohemia when he finds out how the lady has outwitted Holmes. Why, then, did he not marry her and make her one when he could? The obstacle cannot have been her unchastity—there is no way, in even the most generous interpretation of the facts, to describe her previous relationship with the King himself

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as chaste—since it did not deter Godfrey Norton, likely a stodgier man by far than any Balkan king, and since kings and nobles did routinely marry women far less respectable than she.4 Nor was her social status an insuperable difficulty: again, royalty did sometimes descend.5 "In rigidly patriarchal societies," writes Marina Warner, "like contemporary WASP U.S.A. or Victorian England, a gentleman can marry a chorus girl because women, having little independent status, possess great social mobility according to their husband's position."6 Perhaps there is a limit, just short of the throne; but one is inclined to imagine two other reasons for the King's reluctance. One is that dynastic and political factors may press him to marry the Scandinavian heiress; the latter is that, egotist that he obviously is, he thinks he can play with fire and not get burnt, take his pleasure and then walk away. And he could never admit that a sexy little opera singer could wrap a rich six-foot-six king around her little finger. This understanding of the matter does some damage to the interpretation of Irene Adler as a sex symbol. Evidently she is a woman who knows what she wants and has the character to demand it—not from the King, in the tradition of "what Lola wants, Lola gets," but from life, in a no-nonsense fashion. Colin Prestige put it this way: Irene Adler might have been Wilhelm Gottreich's legal Queen; But preferring law to courtiers' talk She went on living in King's Bench Walk.7

It is not quite true that she might have been the queen, of course, but the point is that she is able to give up her high society life (and her operatic career also, one wonders? The times would perhaps have expected as much) when the right man comes along— and she does it without a murmur. It is clear that Holmes admires her at the end of the story: "she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to your Majesty," he tells the King "coldly," apparently meaning that she is above him in some moral quality, if below him socially. Of course, he must admire her cleverness in keeping the papers away from him even after he discovers her hiding-place for them; but one suspects that he admires other qualities as well, including the ability to write a king out of one's life. Mike Clark may just be right when he interprets the story as meaning that Holmes, respecting Ms. Adler more than he does the King, makes a private deal to let her escape.8 And indeed that explains why he leaves the lady alone for more than twelve hours after she knows that someone has identified her hiding-place, a curious slip for him to make accidentally. It must not be forgotten that at the end of the story Ms. Adler still has the letters and the photograph of herself and the King—the photograph that comes into Holmes's hands shows only the lady. What is not clear is whether she keeps them in case blackmail, or less mercenary pressure, should ever become necessary in the future, or because there is still a soft spot in her heart for the King. In either case, Norton must be a tolerant man, unless of course he is not permitted to find out about the documents' existence. It is intriguing, too, to speculate about the photograph itself. Who might have taken it (this is an age before the cable-release shutter) and did it show the lovers in flagrante or merely in the parlour? It has been observed that there is nothing wrong with a king having his picture taken with a prima donna; one concludes that this photograph, if potentially embarrassing, must have been very improper, indeed erotic.9 But James Montgomery's publication of "the actual photograph,"10 which in spite of his amusing documentation must be classed as fiction, provides a most respectable pose. 72

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This story of high life and sex is, at first look, very different from a story that it has already been said parallels it closely, "The Three Gables." In that story, Holmes's client is a Mrs. Maberley, who cannot understand why an anonymous purchaser wants to buy not only her unattractive suburban house but literally everything in it. Holmes finds out eventually that the would-be purchaser is Isadora Klein, the beautiful and amoral widow of a millionaire, and that what she wants to get hold of is the manuscript of an unpublished novel by Mrs. Maberley's son Douglas, who recently died heartbroken because Mrs. Klein loved and left him. The novel tells the whole sordid story, and of course Mrs. Klein wants to prevent its getting to the publisher. She is about to marry a young nobleman, and a scandal would finish the matter. It sounds rather like the King of Bohemia's problem: a former lover has a piece of paper (a manuscript in this case, a photograph and secondarily some letters in the King's case) that has to be recovered by strong-arm methods, trickery, whatever it takes. There are two main differences: one is that the sexes of the main figures are reversed; the other is that the King is Holmes's client, having come to ask for his help in getting the photograph back, whereas Isadora Klein is the enemy, since Holmes has been hired by Douglas Maberley's mother, the person who, without knowing it, has the manuscript in her house. It is difficult to resist wondering how the story of "A Scandal in Bohemia" might read if Doyle had sent to the door of 221B Baker Street not the King of Bohemia but Irene Adler's mother, or Godfrey Norton, worried about all the robberies and attacks that Ms. Adler was suffering from the King's thugs. The reversal is the more striking because Isadora Klein, who plays in the second story the part that the King plays in the first, is so much like, not the King, but Irene Adler. "She was, of course, the celebrated beauty," Holmes tells Watson. Her beauty is somewhat in the past by the time of the incident in which she crosses Holmes's path, but the story is a later one and she can be seen as Ms. Adler's contemporary. Or is she Ms. Adler herself? The initial "I"11 and the short German surname are repeated, and Holmes's next remark to Watson, "There was never a woman to touch her," does sound like an echo of his label for Ms. Adler: "The woman." Then there is the identity of Mrs. Klein's late husband, not a German-speaking king but a "German sugar king." And the lady herself is modelled on any or all of half a dozen celebrated fin-de-siecle "beauties" for whom husbands and lovers were both chiefly means toward money. Mrs. Klein is "pure Spanish," and Watson describes her: "tall, queenly, a perfect figure, . . . with two wonderful Spanish eyes'—one thinks of, if not Lola Montes again, then Caroline Otero, the Spanish countess (or more likely peasant orphan) who used her height and her perfect figure to earn a fortune of perhaps twenty million turn-of-thecentury dollars, some of it on the stage and the rest in bed.12 Mrs. Klein is, like Ms. Adler, both beautiful and clever (Holmes says as much). And, like Ms. Adler, she is ostensibly the villain although she may just be the character who deserves sympathy. Holmes does, indeed, soften toward Mrs. Klein at the end of the story, even using the word "dainty" of her, a word previously associated with Ms. Adler and perhaps more suitable to her than to the tall Mrs. Klein. She has asked him to "look at it with my eyes" and described herself as "a woman who sees all her life's ambition about to be ruined at the last moment," and he, agreeing to "compound a felony as usual," becomes in fact a blackmailer himself, taking a cash payment instead of seeing to her arrest and conviction on charges of theft and assault. He does not turn against his client in this case, as he may be said to do against the King of Bohemia, refusing even to shake his hand, but neither does he appear to take any steps to stop Mrs. Klein's criminal career 73

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or to punish her on behalf of the dead Douglas Maberley. The £5,000 he extracts for Mrs. Maberley is a mere trifle to this millionare; the warning that she "can't play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands" is a mere rhetorical flourish. Pierre Nordon pointed out the similarity between these two stories in a chapter headed "Sherlock Holmes: The Origin and Structure of the Cycle." He notes the reversal of roles that has just been described, and goes on thus: Moreover the story is bathed in an extremely changeable atmosphere, at times almost scabrous, at others frankly improbable. It is as if Sherlock Holmes's dwindling stature had thrown the story out of balance, with the result that these last stories do not have the eminently reassuring quality his resplendent presence conferred on the Adventures of the great period.13

Certainly the consensus has been that "The Three Gables" is not a great story; Edgar W. Smith put it "at the very bottom of the list."14 One would like to know whether by "scabrous" Nordon means rough, or difficult, or risque; "The Three Gables" is certainly not the last, though it may be the others, and certainly Holmes is not shown to advantage in his encounters with Steve Dixie or Susan the maid. The language is often awkward, and the incidents seem patched togethe^, so that the story is literally a pastiche, and "A Scandal in Bohemia" is one of the chief patches. (Another is perhaps "The Illustrious Client": Holmes's interview with Isadora Klein is somehow reminiscent of his meeting with the icy Violet de Merville.) "The Three Gables" is a late story, written by Doyle substantially for an American audience, and perhaps its difficulty is that it tries to blend the British elegance of "A Scandal in Bohemia" with the raciness that American audiences of the 1920s wanted. It is as uneasy a mixture as Douglas Maberley's novel within it. And that is particularly striking because the superior and early "A Scandal in Bohemia" also has the style of the art form discussed in it, namely opera. There is mention in several stories that Holmes enjoys opera, but only in this story does someone from the operatic stage actually play a part. The contralto lead, so to speak, is of course Irene Adler; and when there strides into the room at Baker Street "a man . . . with the chest and limbs of a Hercules," dressed in a style of "barbaric opulence," one can hardly resist identifying the King of Bohemia as the principal basso. Indeed, it is easy to imagine the story transferred to the operatic stage—presumably with Holmes singing tenor, Watson baritone, and Clotilde von Saxe-Meningen soprano. It would be a threeact opera (unusually, the story itself is divided into three parts), with such irresistible scenes as the King's duet with Holmes about the notepaper and photograph, the balletic fight outside Briony Lodge while Ms. Adler stands upstage silhouetted against the light, the chorus of ostlers in the Serpentine Mews, and the contrasting weddings in St. Monica's and in the cathedral of Stockholm. No such opera has ever been written, but the mere comparison makes clear how carefully crafted the structure of this story is. "The Three Gables" almost belongs to another genre. Both these stories are about what happens when the more powerful partner in a sexual relationship breaks it off in order to marry someone more socially acceptable. When the plot is stated so simply, it becomes clear that these stories take place where sex and money meet. "The penetration of sexuality by money was the factor which determined the character of relationships between middle-class men and women," says Fraser Harrison in beginning to analyze Victorian sexual life, 15 and though some of these characters are above the middle class, they display the same sort of behaviour. The women in particular can be seen as having economic motives; the King of Bohemia has so much 74

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money that he can ignore the subject, and Douglas Maberley puts himself beyond middleclass judgement by dying of love, but Irene Adler and Isadora Klein are more practical.16 They are not explicitly after cash, to be sure—it has already been made clear that they are not blackmailers—but the circumstances of their lives compel them to seek financial security. Ms. Adler has retired from a (perhaps lucrative) operatic career, no doubt giving it up early for the sake of the the King's love; Mrs. Klein has become accustomed to a luxurious life as the wife of the sugar king, and now has reached the age when "even the proudest beauty finds the half light more welcome." It is little wonder that they both grab at marriage, Ms. Adler with a lawyer and Mrs. Klein with a duke. It is not unreasonable to wonder how much love, how much passion, there is meant to be in those marriages. Certainly Mrs. Klein never claims to love the young Duke of Lomond; she says rather that the marriage amounts to "all her life's ambition." That is a calculating and mercenary phrase, suggesting that the title and perhaps the further fortune of the young man are what she is after. What will he get from her in return? Sex, one might say; she is twice his age, but there may yet be a spark of what attracted old Klein and bewitched the red-blooded Douglas Maberley. Still, it does not seem much of a basis for a marriage. Love is more apparent in Ms. Adler's marriage to Godfrey Norton, for she uses the word herself, and dull though a solicitor may be in comparison with a king, Norton is at least "dark, handsome, and dashing," not to mention attentive. One does not have to strain to see a strong sexual attraction in both directions there, and if marriage provides financial security as well for Ms. Adler, so much the better. Of course, there is no doubt that sex is a principal factor in the relationships that lead to the present state of affairs: Ms. Adler's with the King and Mrs. Klein's with Douglas Maberley. In the former case one can assume that money is also a factor, that the affair is not a sexual partnership of self-supporting equals but a typical arrangement under which the King pays the household expenses, and a little over for trinkets, in exchange for sex. At least, it must have started that way, and it could end that way, with good will on both sides, if Ms. Adler had not chosen to spoil it all by saying something foolish like "I love you." In the case of the sugar tycoon's widow and the attache at Rome, probably no money changes hands; Mrs. Klein herself calls Maberley "penniless." He seems to have loved her as well as lusted after her; she must have been in it for amusement and sex. In the dealings between the aging beauty and the lovestruck youth, one suspects a good deal of fumbling by the man, much patience and initiation by the woman, but no feats of sexual athletics. What Ms. Adler and the King may have been doing, on the other hand, is a challenge to the imagination to set out. If she is in fact a grande horizontale with half the talents of, say, Caroline Otero, one assumes whole days and weeks spent in the bedroom, erotic gymnastics in which the lady did most of the work and the emphasis was on oral sex, something the King could not expect to enjoy with his Scandinavian princess. Speculations along this line have already been made about the exact scene in that photograph which the King wanted to recover from his former mistress; similar speculation is possible about the content of Douglas Maberley's lurid novel. No one save Mrs. Klein herself seems to have read anything but the last page, which the solemn police inspector labels "mighty poor stuff." Earlier pages might presumably have been racier; strong pornography was extensively written and read among the late Victorians,17 and a Maberley whose mind had virtually come unhinged because of the way a woman had treated him might possibly have produced some of it. It must be stressed, however, that it did not take X-rated material to make the stuff 75

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of embarrassment or blackmail for a respectable Victorian. A careless or completely innocent note or assignation could destroy a reputation or a marriage. Writes L.W. Bailey: . . . what seems to us a perfectly innocent message could at that time be construed as a confession of guilt. Lax though the standards of actual behaviour were, the outward appearance had to be rigidly correct, and an appointment between a man and a woman . . . to meet alone was considered sufficient evidence of a "guilty" association.18

That statement of a high standard is the background not only for the stories discussed in this chapter, those which touch on blackmail, but for such other small pieces of behaviour, odd by modern standards, as Laura Lyon's coyness in The Hound of the Baskervilles. One must bear it in mind in any speculating about "the relations . . . between Alec Cunningham, William Kirwan, and Annie Morrison" which lead to the murder in "The Reigate Puzzle" ("The Reigate Squires"). Certainly the photograph of Ms. Adler and the King of Bohemia, with its accompanying letters, and the Maberley novel may be very nearly as tame as the "foolish" letter whose possession by a blackmailing spy leads a lady astray in another of the Holmes tales, "The Second Stain." This story differs from the two discussed so far in this chapter in that blackmail is not its central plot, though Holmes learns in its final pages that blackmail set the events in motion. The blackmailer, Eduardo Lucas, is dead; the victim, Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope, no longer has to fear exposure, and her only problem is undoing what the blackmailer has forced her to do. She has stolen a state paper from the dispatch box her husband keeps in his bedroom, and it is all Holmes can do to get her to admit it—whereupon he manages to return it in such a way that the lady is shielded from suspicion. Lady Hilda and her predicament are of interest chiefly because of a long passage in which Holmes reasons with her. One would not have expected him to be so patient with a very silly woman; the scene here, however, gives some indication of how he might have talked with Violet de Merville in "The Illustrious Client." "I am not often eloquent," he tells Watson about that later interview. "I use my head, not my heart." With Lady Hilda he seems to use both, and eventually he prevails, displaying a compassionate heart and yet keeping a level and busy head against the lady's hysteria. When she first appears in the story, Watson describes her as "the most lovely woman in London," though it is notable that he omits the usual mark of his real favour, the reference to her "figure." (The author does, however, present her framed against the light first in a door and then in a window.) Watson is tight-lipped about her merits even when Holmes prompts him with the famous observation that "the fair sex is your department." There does not seem to be much in Lady Hilda's favour besides her beautiful colouring and sensitive mouth. She is an exaggerated feminine type. In most instances people matter more to [women] than things [says Robert May in a study of sexual stereotypes], and they will put a faithfulness to human ties above dedication to "principle" or pure "independence" of judgment. It is a testament to the male bias of our society that such qualities are often referred to with the demeaning names of "dependence" or "conformity."19

May might have been thinking of Lady Hilda, who explains her theft of the document thus: ". . . in a matter of politics I could not understand the consequences, while in a matter of love and trust they were only too clear to me." This passage and the character it illuminates are all the more striking because they are the work of a woman: about 1,200 words of "The Second Stain," essentially this 76

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scene between Holmes and Lady Hilda, are apparently not the work of Arthur Conan Doyle but that of Jean Leckie, at that time an intimate friend and later to be his second wife. That startling fact was discovered when the editors of Baker Street Miscellanea consulted Dame Jean Conan Doyle about the manuscript of "The Second Stain," now held by Haverford College in Pennsylvania: could she identify the handwriting, apparently not her father's, in which this passage appears? She replied that it was that of her mother, the former Miss Leckie. It was Dame Jean's opinion that Doyle had not dictated the passage to Miss Leckie: "much more likely to be a gesture on his part to involve her with his work."20 As Evelyn Herzog observes: . . . she did a nice workmanlike job. The pages in her hand are compatible with Doyle's own style and pace. . . . The author confines herself to Lady Hilda and her narrative and does not introduce any fancy touches (and so, no false touches) in dealing with Holmes and Watson.21

It appears, however, that Doyle made several small changes to what Miss Leckie wrote,22 and two of them are of importance in the present context. The first: Doyle inserted the sentence 'Take your husband into your confidence," Holmes's suggestion of what Lady Hilda could have done, into Miss Leckie's text.23 The second: he added the phrase "written before my marriage" into Lady Hilda's description of the letter with which Lucas was blackmailing her. That second insertion is striking and poignant since "The Second Stain" was written, by him and Miss Leckie, quite literally before their marriage, and in touching circumstances that Chapter VII explores more fully. The two changes together have the effect of giving the passage a more masculine tone than it would otherwise have—of making it less flattering to Lady Hilda. What, after all, is this stolen letter? "It was a letter of mine," the lady says, "an indiscreet letter written before my marriage—a foolish letter, a letter of an impulsive, loving girl. I meant no harm, and yet he would have thought it criminal. Had he read that letter his confidence would have been for ever destroyed." By "he" Lady Hilda of course means her husband, the Right Honourable Mr. Trelawney Hope, an honourable, "keenly sensitive," aristocratic, and slightly pompous cabinet minister. One would like to be able to say that Lady Hilda is being silly and hysterical in her assumption about his reaction if he saw the letter; but it may be that she reflects the mores of her time and class accurately, and that disgrace and the end of her marriage really are the only alternative to stealing the state document that the blackmailer demanded. And yet it seems likely that the letter is even milder than Lady Hilda says, especially since it was written before her marriage, a qualification that weakens her grounds for panic considerably. Letters as innocent as that no doubt make up a good deal of the stock-in-trade of Charles Augustus Milverton, the eponymous villain of a story about blackmail that was published nine months before "The Second Stain," in March 1904. This story is significant in several respects, and illuminates as perhaps no other story does both Holmes's attitude toward women and the role of sexual relationships in the society that existed around the great detective. Holmes is acting for Lady Eva Black well, "the most beautiful debutante of last season," whose imminent marriage to the Earl of Dovercourt is threatened because the notorious blackmailer Milverton has in his possession "several imprudent letters—imprudent, Watson, nothing worse—which were written to an impecunious young squire in the country." Lady Eva is obviously very young, her letters can be assumed to be really only the relics of a teen-age flirtation, but the rules of society are implacable and so is Charles Augustus Milverton. 77

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The events of the story can be told quickly. Holmes tries, but fails, to buy the letters cheaply from Milverton, and then to get them away from him with a gun. He dresses as "a rising young plumber," courts Milverton's housemaid, and thus learns the lay of the land at his house, Appledore Towers. Holmes and Watson together burgle the house, but are forced to hide when Milverton appears unexpectedly. They watch as a mysterious woman shoots Milverton dead—in revenge, she says, for the death of her husband after Milverton sent him some document compromising her. She escapes, and so do Holmes and Watson, but not before putting into the fire all the papers they find in the blackmailer's safe. Russell L. Merritt seems to have justice on his side when he says that Holmes handles this case with a stunning lack of skill.24 Certainly it appears that without the arrival of the unidentified beauty who kills Milverton, he might well have failed to recover Lady Eva's letters and save her future. Merritt does what Sherlockians have loved to do: explain the surface facts of the story in a new way. He concludes that Holmes knows that the lady was going to show up and shoot Milverton, indeed that he is in league with her; and if that is assumed, Merritt says, Holmes's actions make more sense. He was not acting for just one lady, but for hundreds. He realized that taking only one letter from Milverton was like taking a thread from a blanket. Even burning all the letters in Milverton's safe would be no more than a delay for Milverton. Soon his safe would be bristling again with more ill-gotten gains, and his money-bags would swell as ever. There was only one way in which the foul criminal could be permanently stopped.

So at least Holmes is taking blackmail seriously now. As D. Martin Dakin points out,25 the detective is flippant in his first encounter with the details of compromising documents, telling the King of Bohemia in "A Scandal in Bohemia" that photographs can be stolen, letters forged, and so on. "Suspicion can be damaging enough without cast-iron proof," as Dakin puts it. In this tale set later in Holmes's career, the detective is acting to destroy not only the proof but even the suspicion that Milverton's holdings may throw on those "hundreds" of ladies. He works, too, with a level of emotion and rhetoric that one would not expect from him. He tells Watson: I've had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow. . . . I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen moneybags?

It is no wonder that Watson catches the enthusiasm, and with an unwonted poetic touch describes Milverton's safe as "this green and gold monster, the dragon which held in its maw the reputations of many fair ladies." This story was originally titled "The Adventure of the Worst Man in London," reports Edgar W. Smith from an examination of its manuscript.26 In so labelling Milverton, Doyle seems to endorse Holmes's surprising passion against him. That passion is even more striking when one realizes how unusual a blackmailer Milverton is. He has, let us say, hundreds of "ladies" in his clutches, but from the available evidence he does not trouble to blackmail men at all. Of course it is true that the threat of exposure and ruin for each of these ladies is a threat to the happiness of at least one man as well, but Doyle, Holmes, and Watson do not acknowledge that point.27 Holmes acts entirely 78

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for the sake of the women he supposedly despises and distrusts. He tells Watson that "a gentleman should not lay much stress" on personal risk "when a lady is in most desperate need of his help." It has been suggested28 that Doyle borrowed some elements of this story—burglary of a blackmailer's house on the night when someone else has chosen to murder him— from the story "Wilful Murder" in the original Raffles collection, The Amateur Cracksman, by his brother-in-law E.W. Hornung. If he did so, he made a significant change; for Hornung's Angus Baird confines his blackmail to young society men with money problems (or, as in the case of Raffles, with illicit careers to hide), whereas Milverton, as has just been pointed out, shuns male victims entirely. Raffles and his friend Bunny may be brave and noble, but they are not demonstrating the characteristic chivalry of Holmes and Watson. As has been said, Holmes gets to know the layout of Appledore Towers, in order to burgle it, by making love to Agatha, the housemaid, in the character of "a plumber with a rising business, Escott, by name." He becomes engaged to her in the course of a few evening walks and talks ("Good heavens, those talks!") and once he has the information he wants, and the assurance that the dog will be locked up, he jilts her—at least, there is no indication that "Escott" ever goes to see Agatha again. Now it is true that he has a rival, so that Agatha29 is not being left utterly alone, but still such treatment of a fiancee does seem rather cavalier. H.C. Potter calls her an "unrequited innocent,"30 and Dakin criticizes Holmes strongly for trifling with Agatha's affections in order to get Lady Eva Blackwell out of a tight place, which she had, after all, created herself. He asks if the happiness of a housemaid is not just as important as that of the most beautiful debutante of the season: No doubt Victorian society did not think so; but we might have hoped that Holmes, with the unconventional attitude he so often displayed, would have been above showing himself such a snob as that. He appears to have felt some twinges of compunction himself, since he informed Watson that he rejoiced to say that he had a hated rival who would cut him out the instant his back was turned. But this remark, based as it is on the Victorian tradition that domestic servants' love affairs are something comic, and not to be taken seriously, only adds insult to injury. No one had less right to take such a view, considering he was acting for a client who was seeking a marriage of convenience with a husband to whom she did not even dare to tell the truth about herself. The despised Agatha comes out well by comparison.31

That Victorian attitude toward servants' love affairs can also be seen in a much earlier Holmes story, "The Beryl Coronet." And Holmes's callous treatment of Agatha strikingly echoes the behaviour of the villain in another early story, "A Case of Identity," which is examined at length in the next chapter. Not only does Holmes woo a young woman under a false identity for a nefarious purpose, as James Windibank does in that story, but he assumes the guise of a plumber; one cannot doubt that Doyle here was remembering the importance of the gasfitters' ball in the earlier story.32 Windibank, of course, deceives Mary Sutherland for purely selfish reasons, and incidentally restricts his love-making to very modest advances, which, however, lead the lady to accept his proposal of marriage. Holmes, as Escott, accomplishes the same feat within a week, and it is natural to wonder just how he does it, since there is little evidence in other tales that the character Doyle gave Holmes includes much skill—or interest—in romance. (That point is also pursued in the next chapter.) Maria Von Krebs, who describes Agatha as "pretty, though rather empty-headed," says it would be "naive" to think that only a 79

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little walking and talking would sweep even a love-starved housemaid off her feet in a week, and concludes that between her and "Escott" there was a full-scale sexual affair.33 David Galerstein, in an unpublished paper touching on Holmes's sex life, comes to the same conclusion. Alan Wilson goes still further, speculating that Agatha has a son by Holmes.34 If Holmes does take advantage of the lady in her little attic bedroom, is he justified in doing it? For Lady Eva's sake alone, perhaps not; for the sake of all those other women as well, perhaps so. As Ray A. deGroat says, "other men have done far worse and for a far less worthy cause!"35 And no doubt the ethical question is still more complicated if one assumes that he does it, but doesn't enjoy it.36 There remains, in consideration of this story, the question of the woman who shoots Charles Augustus Milverton—Lady X, as she has become known to Sherlockians. It takes Holmes some time after his brief look at the lady to realize who she is, and when he does he runs down to Oxford Street, almost star-struck, to show Watson her picture in a shop window. The scene is the opposite of the one at the end of "The Illustrious Client," when Watson makes the identification and tries to reveal it to Holmes. Of course Sherlockians have enjoyed speculating about the identity of Lady X: she is the blackmailing victim mentioned in The Hound of the Baskervilles\ she is Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope of "The Second Stain"; she is Edward VII.37 L.W. Bailey avoided such speculations in his study of "The Dark Lady of Appledore Towers,"38 concluding from the text that she is married to a peer, is probably Jewish, and hence not quite accepted by the snobbish aristocracy, and will be "comforted" by attentions from persons in high places, including the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. His suggestion carries the ring of truth, in spite of a sharp response from Nathan L. Bengis to the effect that she should not be labelled Jewish on the strength of her physical appearance.39 Patricia Dodd Flynn has produced the best examination of Lady X, however, starting with Dakin's helpful suggestion that she is posing as a maid in Milverton's household (and so is able both to learn the lay of the land and to escape after the shooting). There is evidence in the story [Ms. Dodd writes] that Lady X was both an ex-actress and of lower-class birth. . . . All of her speeches are almost unbelievably melodramatic, beginning with "It is I—the woman whose life you have ruined," and culminating in "Take that, you hound, and that!—and that!—and that!"40 Her gestures are also borrowed from the old-fashioned stage, especially the grisly treatment of Milverton's dead face. . . . The most telling incident . . . is the demise of Lady X's husband, who "broke his gallant heart and died" when Milverton sent him some of Lady X's letters. . . . The letters must have detailed a gross infringement of the Victorian moral code—an illegitimate child, a history of illicit love, or involvement in some criminal act. It is highly probable that a woman with a sordid history was originally from the lower classes. . . . An actress would be exactly the woman who might meet and captivate a young aristocrat, and this true nobleman must have discerned the lady's natural courage, loyalty, and force of character.

Ms. Dodd goes on to propose that Lady X and Agatha are one and the same woman, and to remark on the "respect and admiration" which he must feel for her.41 Charles Augustus Milverton is, then, a story with a special importance for the study of (or fantasy about) Holmes's love life. It is, when looked at closely, a racier story than most of those in the Holmes canon, with Holmes's implied seduction of Agatha complemented by the implied sexual misdemeanours that lead various ladies into Milverton's power. His exclusive blackmailing of women must be attributed to a deliberate or accidental decision by Doyle. It fits well with the author's apparently general attitude that the supreme duty of gentlemen is to defend the virtue and reputation of women—an 80

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attitude expressed well in the "damsel-in-distress" stories to which the next chapter turns.42 This story makes very clear what opinion of blackmail Doyle gives Holmes, and so by implication makes it clear that Holmes thinks sexual peccadillos are tolerable, or at least the lesser of two evils. But what he thinks about sex and love on their own, and especially about their place in his own life, is not much clearer after examination of this story than it was when "A Scandal in Bohemia" first came under consideration. The group of stories in the next chapter puts Holmes in close contact with women, chiefly as clients, and examines how he reacts to them there.

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>nphe story which matches Holmes with Irene X Adler was recent news when "A Case of Identity" came along. It appears from the text, in fact, that "A Case of Identity" should be the immediate "My friend took the lady's ungloved hand and examined it." successor of the Irene Adler case, although as the The Adventure of the Solitary cases were actually published it came third, with Cyclist. "The Red-Headed League" intervening. For "The Red-Headed League" includes a mention of "the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland," which is "A Case of Identity," and in the latter case Watson, recollecting his experience with Holmes, mentions A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and "A Scandal in Bohemia," but not the case of the encyclopaedic pawnbroker. It seems clear, then, that "A Case of Identity" was written first, and one can conjecture that the editor of the Strand Magazine chose to hold it for a month and publish "The RedHeaded League" in the issue of August 1891 in order not to juxtapose these two tales, which are largely about Holmes's relationships with women. For that is certainly what "A Case of Identity" is about, and in its rightful place, second in line among the short stories, it sets off "A Scandal in Bohemia" most interestingly, both in the extreme difference between the women in the two stories and in the light it sheds on Holmes himself. In the earlier story, Holmes is made to take a high moral tone with all parties; in this one he is sympathetic with the victim and outraged to the point of violence with the villain; and, as Bill Schweickert has perceptively pointed out,1 this story provides a standard for dealings between the sexes that he later conspicuously fails to live up to. "A Case of Identity" is, besides, the first of the so-called damsel-in-distress stories, the stories in which Holmes's role is to rescue a female victim. Mollie Hardwick, in a report on women throughout the Holmes tales who might be called "victims," does not limit her attention to the heroines of these few stories, it is true. "It strikes me, by and large," she writes, "that all the women of the Canon were Victims—of the times they lived in. ... there was no need to be actually a Victim, in 1895; it was quite enough to be a Woman."2 That statement is somewhat strong, but it is striking how full the Holmes stories are of women who need rescuing or helping. Perhaps it is not surprising that they are neither upper-class women—duchesses and ladies would hardly find themselves in a middle-class detective's sitting-room—nor the most victimized of all

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Victorian women, the outcasts and prostitutes, who could not aspire to Baker Street respectability (and about whom Doyle's readers would not be eager to hear anything). It is more remarkable, however, that there is "a singular absence of the women who were changing the face of the women's world," as Pat Dalton puts it: "the doctors, the teachers, social workers, reformers." Rather, she says, "our girls are working in the same professions that their mothers could have worked in, the same respectable callings for which they needed the minimum of training and which they could leave the moment a gentleman offered marriage as an alternative." She lists the main occupations: "governesses, typists and music teachers."3 Of course, the reason is clear enough. Such women were respectable (therefore Doyle could write about them); unlike domestic servants, they were interesting to middle-class readers; and yet they were economically and socially vulnerable enough to have problems that Holmes can solve while Watson frets and consoles. In short, they are the perfect damsels to fall into distress, and the early years of the canon are particularly full of damsel-in-distress tales in which Holmes the knight-errant and Watson the squire ride out to right the ladies' wrongs. This first of such stories begins with the words "My dear fellow," which may be said to suggest a return, after the exotic and heterosexual flights of the Irene Adler business, to the cosy bachelor life of Holmes and Watson at Baker Street. (It appears that in fact Watson is married at this period, and living away from Holmes, but that estrangement does not affect the atmosphere of the two men's relationship in the least.) Within a paragraph Holmes offers the startling image of himself and Watson "fly [ing] out of that window hand in hand" to observe London life from above—a fairy conceit that seems as unsuitable to Doyle as to the stolid Watson. There is no denying that some of the Sherlock Holmes tales are packed with homosexual metaphor, and a later chapter explores that proposition. If there is any such overtone in "A Case of Identity," however, it does not last long, for even before the real plot starts to unfold there are two separate mentions of heterosexual relationships. The first is to the "Dundas separation case," described in Watson's newspaper as "A husband's cruelty to his wife." Contrary to the doctor's immediate assumption, Holmes points out that "there was no other woman," but the Dundas marriage can hardly be described as a happy one since the husband "had drifted into" (how one can "drift" into such deliberate behaviour is an interesting question) "the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife." The Dundases had one sort of unsatisfactory love life, then; Holmes promptly mentions "the Irene Adler papers" and recalls the uneasy triangle, or quadrangle, of the contralto, the King, the Princess, and perhaps himself. And then the action of the present story begins, an action that Holmes recognizes, even before meeting his client, as unquestionably involving "an affaire de coeurT For someone to whom love is "abhorrent", as Watson puts it, Holmes seems well-informed about the subject. "She would like advice," he says about this client, "but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire." The client arrives, and proves to be a large woman by the name of Mary Sutherland, whose fiance has unaccountably disappeared on the way to the church. Of course it does not take Holmes long to find out, and to prove, that the fiance is a fraud: Miss Sutherland's stepfather in disguise, scheming to tie up her emotions and thus her income. Considering that his disguise involves false whiskers, tinted glasses, a whispering voice, and a refusal to let his handwriting be seen, one is inclined to agree

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with Holmes's assessment of the problem as "trite." The interest of the story is in Miss Sutherland, and in Holmes's and Watson's attitude toward her. The doctor, depicted so far as very much a ladies' man (and many subsequent stories will only deepen that impression), shows no interest in Miss Sutherland. She is not, from the description he gives, very prepossessing. She is large—he compares her to "a full-sailed merchant-man'—and he likes petite women, such as his own Mary Morstan (or, later, Mrs. Neville St. Clair, or, indeed, Irene Adler). She is shortsighted; she has a "vacuous" face; Watson remembers her clothes pretty well, but describes her hat as "preposterous" and her general style as being "fairly well-to-do in a vulgar, comfortable, easygoing way." He is not much taken with her and he makes no effort to play the chevalier. But Holmes, who claims in The Sign of the Four that "Women are never to be entirely trusted," and who "never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer," falls hard for Mary Sutherland. It is not the last case in which Holmes will take an intense interest in the troubles of a woman client, not only solving the problem but soothing the lady in a way that would have amazed Neil Gibson or the King of Bohemia. But it must surely be the only story in which he three times refers to his client as a "maiden," a word that of course emphasizes her naivete (a trait without which the Windibank-Angel plot would never have worked) but also carries a connotation of sexual eligibility. Beyond that, however, something must be read from the pitch of Holmes's indignation. "Seldom," writes Schweickert (in the article cited on page 82), "have we heard Holmes so indignant and at no other time in the Canon does he attempt to horsewhip a guilty party." Seldom indeed: he is sympathetic to Miss Sutherland ("You have been very shamefully treated"), outraged to James Windibank ("there never was a man who deserved punishment more"), indignant later when he sums things up for Watson ("There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!"). And then, with reliefer self-consciousness or some mixture of emotions that does not seem entirely justified from the surface narrative, Holmes laughs. Two names in this story add something to its sexual meaning. One is that of Mary Sutherland herself; the reference, according to Redmond,4 is to Mary, Duchess of Sutherland, who at the time the story was published had recently acquired that title after her first husband, an infantry officer, was shot dead. Evidence for the derivation is the mention of the lady's "coquettish Duchess of Devonshire" hat. (If it was so, it was the only coquettish thing about this dear cowlike woman.) Redmond further observes that the duchess's behaviour—'remarrying soon after her husband's death in mysterious circumstances'—would surely have labelled her disreputable to at least the more straitlaced Victorians. No one could call Mary Sutherland disreputable, and yet she does wind up in something like a marital scandal, just as the bizarre story of the Dundas separation case suggests. The other name of interest is that of the ephemeral Hosmer Angel. No doubt Vernon Goslin is right that Doyle took "Angel" from Angel Court, which lies near two thoroughfares mentioned in the story, Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street;5 but a psychological source also seems likely, a depiction of the weak-eyed, weakvoiced suitor as Mary Sutherland's angel; and it allows the old Sherlockian joke that here is one story in which an Angel proves to be a devil. Two stories pass before Holmes has a woman client again. It is worth remarking that as "The Man with the Twisted Lip" is about to begin, there have been seven published adventures, and of the five brought to Holmes by private clients rather than the police, two come from women and three from men (and, indeed, it is not clear whose interests 84

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Holmes really represents in "A Scandal in Bohemia"). Women are losing the plurality they had at the beginning of the canon. After "The Man with the Twisted Lip," a story that can best be deferred to a subsequent chapter, it is only a short jump to "The Speckled Band," the second and in some ways the most startling of the damsel-in-distress stories. "The Speckled Band" has much in common with "A Case of Identity," although it is a tale of action whereas its predecessor requires only ratiocination and talk. For it, too, is the story of a young woman whose stepfather covets her income so that he is prepared to go to great lengths to prevent her marrying. He is a more violent man than James Windibank has so far shown himself and he stoops not to imposture but to murder and attempted murder. The lady is somewhat more attractive than Mary Sutherland, and it is notable that as Watson seems more drawn to her (as he does often, he remarks almost immediately on Helen Stoner's "figure") Holmes is less so: he questions her relentlessly and comforts her in only a perfunctory way. (It is not clear what to make of Holmes's remark to her that "my friend and I must spend the night in your room," unqualified by any comment that of course she need not be present. He may simply be coming to the point in his usual blunt way, but it is hard to resist the impression that he is teasing Miss Stoner, or Doyle the reader.) This story begins as well as ends in a bedroom—begins, indeed, with an ambiguous sexual reference, or at least one that can be interpreted so, and has been, by Sherlockians of the Watson-was-a-woman and roommates-must-be-lovers schools. Watson wakes up to find Holmes in his bedroom. A North American, unfamiliar with the British idiom "to knock up," finds the dialogue even more suggestive than it is. The reader is not told what clothes Watson sleeps in, either here or in the similar scene at the beginning of "The Abbey Grange" (though in the latter case Holmes urges him to hasten "into your clothes and come"), but he remarks on the fact that Holmes appears "fully dressed" at so early an hour. James Edward Holroyd has commented on that fact as well: if things are so urgent, why does Holmes stop to dress, rather than throwing on one of his customary dressing-gowns?6 Holroyd proposes modesty before Miss Stoner; one might also infer embarrassment before Watson, an effort to avoid any physical intimacy, however indirect. ^ After the bedroom exchange, Holmes tells Watson that "A young lady has arrived, in a considerable state of excitement." The excitement is not, of course, sexual, nor are her shivers the result of cold: she is terrified, and events unfold quickly from there on, through the visit of the enormous Dr. Grimesby Roylott, Holmes's inspection of the bedrooms at Stoke Moran, and the night infiltration of the house. A remarkable passage appears at this point in the story, when Dr. Roylott's baboon is heard — a figure that of course suggests the animal brutality (with a hint of sexual violence) of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." "Holmes was for the moment as startled as I," Watson writes in the original Strand Magazine version of the story. "His hand closed like a vice upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low laugh, and put his lips to my ear." For a man to grab a friend by the wrist, and then in effect kiss his ear, is curious behaviour, made positively startling by the appearance of the word "vice," with its primary meaning of perversion. A North American would write "vise," a clamp, and indeed the 1930 Doubleday omnibus and subsequent North American editions do have that spelling of the word. British dictionaries endorse the spelling "vice" in the machine sense, and the John Murray omnibus and other British editions perpetuate it. The long night vigil begins (one remarks that Holmes and Watson never feel any need to excrete as these hours-long waits drag on), and at the story's climax it is revealed 85

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that the "speckled band" with which Dr. Roylott killed Julia Stoner, and is now trying to kill her sister, is a deadly Indian swamp adder, a snake that reaches the sisters' bed through a convenient ventilator and down a dummy bell-rope. Holmes drives off the snake with a whip—the same weapon, a sexually charged one it might be said, with which he threatened James Windibank, and incidentally a rather peculiar one for dealing with a snake. Detailed scholarship has been expended around such issues as what kind of snake this adder was, whether snakes drink milk, whether snakes can hear whistling, and so on.7 After all, the details in this story, and perhaps in any of the Holmes stories, do not hang together, neither the time sequence (just when in the predawn hours does Helen Stoner get Holmes's address from Mrs. Farintosh?) nor the physical evidence (how can Julia Stoner, dying of snake venom, unlock her door and grope around for help while holding a match in one hand and a matchbox in the other?). (Such aspects of "The Speckled Band" have been thoroughly demolished by Dr. Paul Beam, in an unpublished and probably unpublishable presentation to A University Weekend with Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle, held at Queen's University in 1980. But as Beam suggested in that presentation in strong terms, the artistic validity of the story does not depend on the details of its content.) For present purposes a more interesting question is this: why did Doyle choose a snake to be the instrument of the attacks on the two women? The answer must be that a snake is a phallic thing. That statement should require no particular defence to readers who are familiar with Adam and Eve's snake, the snake that bit Eurydice, the snakes of Hermes the fertility god, and so on. It is easy enough to label something a phallic symbol—Any thing's a phallic symbol if it's longer than it's wide," one of Janis Joplin's songs mocks—but there does seem to be ancient authority as well as common-sense support for a close connection between a questing penis and a living, searching, thrusting snake. Roylott's snake makes its way through a small opening into the bedroom of a nubile woman; no wonder, then, at Helen Stoner's near-sexual hysteria, or indeed at Holmes's own. With his whip he repels this assault on the lady's virtue, and the maiden (though he never uses the word of Miss Stoner as he three times did of Miss Sutherland) is safe to marry her Percy Armitage. Kelvin I. Jones stresses the importance of Roylott's barely veiled sexual aggressiveness: Sexual aggression simply oozes from the doctor's physical self and, as if this is not sufficient, a "hunting-crop" swings "in his hand," thus emphasizing the phallic threat. . . . He seizes the poker and bends it with his hands. Holmes' symbolic castration at the hands of a doctor is soon righted. . . . Roylott is evidently a sadist. The sexual overtones of his presence at Stoke Moran are made clear when we learn from Miss Stoner that "We had no feeling of security unless our doors were locked."8

And he describes the snake as "the embodiment of Roylott's phallic violence." Armitage, it might be added, is remarkable in this story for his absence at a time when his fiancee is in terror of her life. He is, as Holroyd says, "as shadowy a figure in the adventure as either the cheetah or the baboon."9 His existence makes Miss Stoner respectable, but his absence or weakness leaves the field open for Holmes's decisive masculinity. Indeed, he might as well not exist, and one Sherlockian scholar, treating the stories as history according to the usual convention, speculates that perhaps he does not, and that what really goes on in "The Speckled Band" involves Holmes conspiring to kill Dr. Roylott for the sake of Miss Stoner's money.10 So extreme a reinterpretation of the plot does at least confirm that Miss Stoner's exaggerated feminine qualities and 86

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Holmes's macho behaviour contribute to the story's effectiveness. It is worth a mention that Samuel Rosenberg (whose efforts to find perverted sexuality all through the Holmes canon are discussed, and in part endorsed, in a later chapter) does not describe the speckled band as primarily phallic. He connects it with Nietzsche, who had his Zarathustra bitten by an adder, and with Dionysus, whose priestesses were accustomed to wear snakes about their heads.' [ I see no particular merit in this interpretation, though Rosenberg does make the interesting point that the Reichenbachreborn Holmes has a lot in common with the dying-and-reviving Dionysus; but it is as well to note that the snake is a complicated symbol. "The Speckled Band" was published in February 1892. Four months later came the third of the damsel-in-distress stories, 'The Copper Beeches," a story that has attracted considerable attention from Sherlockians as being important in the revelation of Holmes's love life. Once again the plot involves a young woman's income, which will move away from her guardians (in this case her father and stepmother, rather than her stepfather) if she marries, as she plans to do. In "The Copper Beeches," however, Holmes's client is not the heiress Alice Rucastle, who does not appear in the narrative at all, but Violet Hunter, who has been lured into impersonating her to discourage Miss Rucastle's fiance. As in "The Speckled Band," Holmes manages to see through the plot and to stop it in time; again the villain is attacked by his own beast, and again the outcome is a happy marriage for the heiress. If "The Speckled Band" offered hints of the gothic horror one likes to associate with a half-ruined old house deep in the countryside, "The Copper Beeches" does it thoroughly. The Rucastle house, five miles from anywhere, takes on the atmosphere of Carfax or Castle Otranto by the time Holmes has warned of "the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places," and Miss Hunter has described the "large square block of a house, whitewashed, but all stained and streaked with damp and bad weather," not to mention the savage watchdog and the padlocked room in the deserted wing. Montague Summers, in a gothically rambling book about the gothic novel, lists some of its essentials in this way: . . . the heroine, supposed of humble (or at least not of noble) birth; the separated lovers; the wicked rival, a malignant and licentious woman of quality who upon being rejected by the hero involves him through her acts in trouble and captivity; the imprisonment of the heroine in a lone convent with secret dungeons and the tenebrous in pace; her persecution by the wicked monk . . . ; the tyrant abbess; castles, adventures in forests and at midnight; and finally the reconciliation of all parties and the nuptials of the gallant hero and the peerless heroine of the tale.12

The effect of all these features—which can almost all be found in "The Copper Beeches" with a little imagination—is in part sexual, though the content need not be as explicitly sexual as that of, say, The Monk. A story that is merely "romantic" does still work on the sexual feelings of its readers, even in a time when the sexual implications of a helpless woman's struggle to escape from a strong man in a deserted house are "unliberated" and somewhat disreputable. The effect of "The Copper Beeches" is exactly that, providing as it does the right combination of fear and excitement even in the stout-hearted Violet Hunter. The fear comes from the deserted rooms and the unexpected life behind the barred door, from the vicious Rucastle and his nasty child, from the drunken groom and his savage dog Carlo. The excitement comes from subtler causes: Miss Hunter's isolation in this male household (the only other woman is "a nonentity"), the rape-of-the-lock sacrifice of her magnificent chestnut hair,13 the obsession with her 87

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putting on and taking off a dress, the general impression of restraint and enforced passivity, an impression that does not dissipate even though in fact Miss Hunter is perfectly free, at least during the daytime, and can even travel to Winchester to confer with Holmes. There is no threat, in fact, to Miss Hunter's virginity. Jephro Rucastle tells her at their first interview that he will offer only "such commands as a lady might with propriety obey," and he keeps his word; if anything it is Miss Hunter who is in the wrong, prying into drawers and rooms that are locked against her. Nor indeed is Alice Rucastle's virtue threatened, despite her gothic imprisonment. The sexual excitement in this story is entirely in the imagination. So, as it turns out, is the love interest, apart from the eventual happy marriage of Alice Rucastle and Mr. Fowler. That has not, however, stopped Sherlockian speculation about it, based chiefly on the last sentence of the tale. "As to Miss Violet Hunter," writes Watson, "my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems . . . " Why should he have done anything of the kind? Clearly Watson is presented as playing matchmaker here, and Doyle has intended at least a playful hint that Holmes might have looked at Miss Hunter with a speculative eye. At the beginning of the story Holmes is certainly reluctant to take on the lady's problem; on reading her note he grumbles that he has reached the "zero point" in the history of his criminal practice. But he is "favourably impressed" almost as soon as she arrives at Baker Street, and pays long attention to a story that on the surface is every bit as trivial as his original reference to "lost lead pencils" predicts. He worries over it afterward for hours, "muttering that no sister of his should ever have accepted such a situation" and leading the close reader to the impression that it is Miss Hunter herself, not her problem, that is on his mind. Summoned to Winchester by the lady's imperious telegram, he is strikingly deferential, calls her to her face "a quite exceptional woman" and acts briskly to deal with what is finally beginning to look like a real problem. This sort of behaviour does not prove love, but it does indicate admiration—an admiration that one must infer Watson shares. Christopher Morley, writing under his less-than-serious pseudonym of Jane Nightwork, offers this explanation of Watson's wish that Holmes would take to Miss Hunter: "how delightful, the Doctor thought naively, if he and Holmes should both marry governesses—and alumnae of the same agency, for undoubtedly Mary, too, had been a client of Westaway's."14 The conjecture is at least psychologically accurate. For a couple of reasons governesses are the ideal women to be damsels in distress whom Holmes can rescue and whom Watson, if not Holmes, can marry. One reason is, as mentioned early in this chapter, that they are the perfect independent-yet-vulnerable women to whom dreadful things can happen; surely Doyle had read Jane Eyre. The other reason is that at least two of Doyle's own sisters, Annette and Caroline (Lottie), were working as governesses,15 and when Holmes says that "no sister of mine" should face such hazards he is saying it in Doyle's own voice. Indeed, governesses were a presence in Doyle's family life from the beginning: Edwards has learnt that at about the time of his birth his maternal grandmother was formally "running lodgings for governesses" in Edinburgh.16 The family knew firsthand, then, about the difficulties, the sometimes humiliating pressures, facing such women. Doyle, says Edwards, was influenced by his mother in his moral judgement of poor Miss Hunter's "hopeless dependence on the employer and his testimonial."17 Decades later, Doyle was listing "the indigent governesses with £30 a year" among the classes of people whose plight indicated "something deeply, deeply wrong" in society.18 No wonder, then, that the 88

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emotions in this story run high and that it is a favourite of women Sherlockians. It was in fact the creation of a woman: Doyle's mother proposed a tale that should "concern a girl with beautiful golden hair: who, kidnapped and her hair shorn, should be made to impersonate some other girl for a villainous purpose."19 She was, Edwards believes, "probably led to the idea" by reading Jane Eyre (he sees several echoes and inversions of Bronte's novel in the story20) and at any rate it is not absurd to use, as Edwards does, the word "feminism" to describe its tone. According to Isaac S. George, whose close analysis of "The Copper Beeches" does ring true, the possibility that Holmes would take to Miss Hunter and marry her is more than a sentimental hope of Watson's: it is Miss Hunter's own intention and the reason for her consulting the great detective about whether she should accept a job, a decision she should have been able to make on her own and indeed a decision that is, by her own admission, already made.21 George points out that Miss Huner spares no effort to make herself look good in Holmes's eyes, with particular emphasis on the "luxuriant" hair that "has been considered artistic" but is soon to be sacrificed. She seems to snare Holmes; after a fortnight she pursues him by sending a "masterpiece" (George's word) of a telegram, which brings him promptly to her side. "Surely," he writes, "if she has enkindled the slightest spark of sentimental interest, it will burst into flame at the thought of her personal peril!" She gets him up to the house, stands "smiling on the doorstep" at his arrival—and discovers that Holmes is only interested in solving the mystery. "Then," writes George, "ensues the tragedy, the real tragedy for Violet the Hunter. For she knew that her plan had collapsed when Holmes said, coolly and impersonally, 'I think, Watson, we had best escort Miss Hunter back to Winchester with us.' Note the WE." Even if George is overdoing it and the reader is meant only to see Miss Hunter moderately attracted to Holmes after becoming his client for perfectly respectable reasons, then "The Copper Beeches" provides a striking picture of his resistance to even very suitable women.22 A story written eleven years after "The Copper Beeches" is virtually its twin, and needs to be considered as the last of these damsel-in-distress tales. It is of course "The Solitary Cyclist," in which the central figure and Holmes's client is Violet Smith, "tall, graceful, and queenly," who has a problem much like Miss Hunter's. She has been hired as a governess—more accurately, a music teacher—at the remarkable salary of £100 a year, and she is uncomfortable about certain events in and around the household where she is employed. So far the situation matches that in "The Copper Beeches." But in the former story Miss Hunter was simply a red herring; in this one Miss Smith herself is the object of a vile plot. And, as attractive as Miss Hunter might be, Miss Smith is still more so, both physically and in her character and behaviour, for she is "spiritual" and musical, athletic and courageous, and blushingly devoted to a young engineer who, however, is far away and not involved in the action. She is one of the "four Violets" in the Holmes tales, who might be divided into the two major (Miss Smith and Miss Hunter) and the two minor (Miss de Merville in "The Illustrious Client" and Miss Westbury in "The Bruce-Partington Plans"). Pierre Nordon comments that "most of the women in Holmes's world are in fact very insipid and incredibly innocent. The author does not seem to want to interest us in them. They merely perform the dramatic function of being 'young girls in danger', and Conan Doyle shows his casualness about differentiating them even in the choice of their Christian names. . . . This name is as common in the stories as dukes in Shakespeare's comedies."23 That seems a very harsh judgement; it has already been shown that Miss Hunter in

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particular is a complex character, and a reading of "The Solitary Cyclist" shows that Miss Smith is not without features of interest. However, it is certainly striking that Doyle comes back again and again to the word "violet," especially as other examples can be found in and around the damsel-in-distress tales. There is the smear of violet ink on the finger of Mary Sutherland in "A Case of Identity;" there are the violet eyes of Mary Turner in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," another tale from the early period in which the narrator puts some stress on the happily concluded love interest. When Doyle turned "The Speckled Band" into a three-act play, first produced in 1910, he gave the name Violet (Stoner) to the murdered elder sister who in the short story is named Julia (Stoner).24 It is perhaps no wonder that William S. Baring-Gould gave the name Violet to Holmes's mother,25 or that there was joy among Sherlockians when a real Violet Holmes was found—leading the Rockette chorus line at Radio City Music Hall.26 There is no record of a Violet in Arthur Conan Doyle's life,27 so one wonders just what the source of this motif might be. Violet Smith in "The Solitary Cyclist" is the object of a plot between Bob Carruthers and Jack Woodley, who play cards to see which of them is to marry her. The object is less her body than a fortune in South Africa that she (unknown to herself) stands to inherit. But the story is about the pursuit of the lady on a physical and erotic level: she is followed by bicycle on a lonely road, grabbed and kissed, and eventually forced into a bogus marriage from which Holmes and Watson rescue her—in the nick of time, since one assumes that the next stop after the "glade" where the wedding ceremony takes place will be a bedroom for the consummation of the supposed marriage. In fact, this story might be classified as being about attempted rape, and Holmes is not wide of the mark but simply being delicate when he shouts to Watson that the affair involves "abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what!" From the beginning of the story Miss Smith has been described, and incidents have been emphasized, so that the reader must think of her in sexual terms. Watson describes her and calls her a "beautiful intruder;" Holmes teases her by repeating her awkward phrase about the location of Farnham and by picking up her unintentional allusion to her fiance; he asks her about "admirers" and tells Watson that "It is part of the settled order of Nature that such a girl should have followers;" and then the events of the story really begin, with Watson observing the solitary cyclist as he follows Miss Smith. "That a man should lie in wait for and follow a very handsome woman is no unheard-of thing," he says, "and if he has so little audacity that he not only dared not address her, but even fled from her approach, he was not a very formidable assailant." He seems rather to be tolerating what would now be called sexual harassment. But he cannot tolerate kidnapping, forced marriage, and the sort of sexual savagery that Miss Smith's gag and Woodley's brandished riding-crop suggest. The scene is strongly sexual, and would no doubt be made more explicitly so in a story written in the present day. These damsel-in-distress stories date mostly from Doyle's early period. In later stories one thinks of Holmes's dealings with Edith Presbury in "The Creeping Man," to take an example almost at random, or of course with Eugenia Ronder in "The Veiled Lodger." He is infallibly kind when a woman needs kindness, and can speak of Violet Smith as "that little woman" to whom he and Watson have a duty. S.C. Roberts in 1934 summarized this attitude as "a quick and intuitive sympathy;"28 other writers have called it "chivalrous." Carr writes: "We can scarcely dip into the stories anywhere without finding Holmes telling us how unemotional he is, and in the next moment behaving more chivalrously—especially towards women—than Watson himself."29 Dennis Porter

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sees the attitude as being so important that it sets a precedent: "And from Doyle on, the Great Detective of the classic tradition has been chivalrous in the treatment of women, assuming they are ladies until shown otherwise. Holmes's view of relations with the opposite sex is close to the classic one of the Victorian clubman."30 Says Karl KrejciGraf: "Holmes associated himself willingly with the intellectual or at least reasonable types of women; he had compassion for the intermediate type; and he was kind to stupid women."31 (He goes on, endorsing the sort of observation made in Chapter III, to note that "to Watson, beauty was much more essential than character. . . . His point of view is a sentimental one, and he extended his sentimentality to all and sundry, exaggerating the beauty, helplessness and recklessness of the women.") It should not, incidentally, be thought that this chivalry is restricted to women who are Holmes's clients—it is a trait of the man, not a part of his professional equipment. Emilia Lucca in "The Red Circle" is hardly his client, for example. A striking example of his casual kindness is found in "Silver Blaze:" apparently he does not crush Mrs. John Straker with the news of her husband's infidelity, since it would cause her pain and do no one else any good.32 It is not unrealistic to see such chivalry as a self-portrait, if not a sermon, introduced by the always-chivalrous Doyle. Rodin and Key draw attention to a characteristic incident, immortalized in The Stark Munro Letters: on his first day in Portsmouth the young Doyle got involved in a street fight on behalf of an abused woman.33 One author, Nancy Talburt, goes further in her assessment of the attitudes behind Holmes's crusty exterior: Holmes was so far from distrusting women that we have incontrovertible proof that he favored the progress of Women's Liberation. . . . Sherlock Holmes met and approved of, shielded and praised, confronted and was confounded by, a legion of liberated women.34

For all that there were suffragettes and other agitators for women's rights in Doyle's and Holmes's time, the anachronism does weaken Talburt's argument, but one can accept the simple statement that Sherlock Holmes is drawn as liking women even when he pretends that he does not. At the minimum, he listens to women and goes far out of his way to deal with their concerns, making efforts he probably would not make for men. Watson puts it this way at the beginning of "The Dying Detective:" ". . . he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women. He disliked and distrusted the sex, but he was always a chivalrous opponent." Perhaps "opponent" is indeed the key word. As the previous chapters have shown, the woman most commonly cited as Holmes's lover is rather an enemy than a friend (it is true, of course, that hostility as well as sympathy can bring on sexual passion). In reality, through the sixty stories there is barely a hint of a love interest involving Holmes, and it is therefore usual to conclude that he was by nature uninterested in love—to accept at face value Watson's statement in "A Scandal in Bohemia" that "All emotions," and particularly romantic love, "were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind." In "Charles Augustus Milverton," Holmes says to Watson, "You would not call me a marrying man?" and the answer is immediate: "No, indeed!" In story after story, Holmes is made to deny, to protest perhaps too much, that he could have an emotional interest in the opposite sex. "Whatever is emotional," he says in The Sign of the Four, "is opposed to that true, cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment." In "The Lion's Mane:" "Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart." In The Valley of Fear: "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind." He

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can say all such things, and annoy Watson in The Sign of the Four to the point that he stalks out of the Baker Street flat to go and visit Miss Morstan and Mrs. Forrester.35 But such a pose is too extreme to be plausible; and it is the considered opinion of S.C. Roberts that "A Scandal in Bohemia," where Holmes appears at his most coldly misogynistic, gives that impression only by contrast with The Sign of the Four and the afterglow of Watson's marriage to Miss Morstan.36 A vital passage in this connection is the one in "The Blue Carbuncle" that sees Holmes deducing the character and circumstances of Henry Baker from his hat.37 "When I see you, my dear Watson," he says, "with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection." Realistically describing the role of the Victorian wife, Holmes is at the same time losing any claim to a liberated attitude — or even to much of an interest in women as people. Perhaps he is, as Michael Harrison suggests, jealous of the "feminine instinct" to which he can never aspire,38 and so puts up a defensive front of contempt even toward so unthreatening a woman as Miss Morstan. Of course it must be remembered that Holmes helps to bring that marriage about. "It was Holmes who introduced the pair, and Holmes again who kept throwing them together," says Evelyn Herzog in a paper assigning Holmes the unfamiliar role of matchmaker. He helps threatened marriages take place happily in "A Scandal in Bohemia," Herzog notes, and in "Charles Augustus Milverton." "In quite a number of additional cases, Holmes was hired to save one member of a couple from being killed, after which the pair might be trusted to see to their own wedding plans." (He is absolutely patronizing about it in the case of Violet Smith and Cyril Morton; one can almost see him proposing a toast at their wedding, while the bride squirms and blushes.) Herzog says: In addition to these [cases] Holmes also took on several cases for clients whose spouses were behaving erratically, to the point of endangering the marriages. . . . Holmes concealed a respect, even a fondness, for love and marriage (other people's, that is), and he was willing to do a good deal to further the romantic and marital happiness of his clients.39

She does not remark, as J.N. Williamson did much earlier, that Holmes "evidently did not often attend weddings, for he was ill at ease" at the Adler-Norton event in "A Scandal in Bohemia;"40 but she is in agreement that he is no misogynist — just, by choice, not a marrying man. The fact is that Holmes is much less unemotional than the character himself pretends. Philip A. Shrefiler analyzes Holmes and Watson in a shrewd article that destroys the traditional stereotypes: Perhaps Holmes's most memorable opinion on women as the objects of emotional involvement is his darkly cynical assurance that "the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money." This last comment is typical of Holmes's rather perversely taking delight in needling Watson with unseemly statements and behavior. . . . Such occurrences point up Watson's emotional posture. They certainly seem to place Watson at that disadvantage that Holmes so enjoys, and yet at the same time they tend to belie Holmes's cold rationality since he derives so much pleasure from them. In this sense, a twofold observation can be made: First, Holmes is not as intractably emotionless as he pretends to be; and second, it is Watson's very emotionalism that often draws emotional behavior from Holmes. But again, just as one cannot make Watson too much like Holmes,

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one cannot pretend that Holmes is a seething cauldron of hidden emotion either. . . . Sherlock Holmes is the rational man of science with an understated inclination toward the emotionalist posture: Dr. Watson manifests principally as a romantic author who tends toward the world of science because of his moderately successful medical practice.41

Shreffler does not go on to say so, but it must be obvious to the reader that either description could be applied to Arthur Conan Doyle, in whom science and emotion were both powerful forces, and who clearly drew himself in both the major characters of his stories. Even about romantic love, which was of great importance to Doyle (as Chapter III suggests and Chapter VII shows in more detail), the author put more of himself into Holmes than one assumes at first glance. Holmes knows a great deal about women and about love,42 as he indicates in a single sentence in "The Beryl Coronet:" "There are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves." Whether out of personal interest and experience, or simply because he needs such knowledge in his profession, he is more aware of the subtleties of women's lives than are most men even nowadays — although not always less critical in his conclusions. "The motives of women are so inscrutable," he says in "The Second Stain." "Their most trivial action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin or a curlingtongs." And his casual observation in The Hound of the Baskervilles that he can recognize seventy-five principal perfumes certainly speaks to an acquaintance, however impartial, with woman's intimate affairs.43 Similarly, he knows enough about milliners to recognize that William Darbyshire in Silver Blaze is keeping a very expensive woman.44 He has enough of an eye for women to tell Watson after a single glance at Emilia Lucca in "The Red Circle" that she is "no ordinary woman." His disguise as an old woman (in "The Mazarin Stone") surely would not have been convincing unless he had a thorough understanding of how women think as well as how they dress and walk. Most important, as the preceding chapter notes, it appears that when Holmes wants to play the lover to get information from Agatha the housemaid, he knows how to do it.45 One concludes that what bars Holmes from romance is neither lack of information nor lack of skill. Nor is it impossible for him to imagine himself in love: "Should I ever marry," he says in The Valley of Fear, "I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her." The problem is simply a lack of desire, an emotional block of some kind.46 Holmes is drawn as a cold man with almost no libido. Patrick Drazen, in a two-part study that betrays impatience at anyone who would attribute the softer emotions to Holmes, analyzes the detective and his companion in terms of Dorothy Tennov's theory of "limerence," concluding that Watson is strongly limerent (that is, apt to fall desperately in love) and Holmes not a bit so.47 Sherlockians as far back as the earliest days have speculated about why the character might have such a block — although only one very brief article, as far as I am aware, has made the obvious suggestion that Ms. Adler is the cause rather than the victim (or beneficiary) of Holmes's misogyny.48 "Surely," writes James Pascoe, "Holmes's supreme Romanticism demands that there be one . . . brief, tragic episode. This would account for his great distrust of women and of love."49 S. C. Roberts thirty years before had made the same point, postulating a beautiful sister of Victor Trevor who died young.50 Elmer Davis has amplified that point in two articles, noting in one of them that "Holmes seems to have been a one-eruption man; and the nature of that volcanic upheaval, which 93

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left him with nothing but jibes and sneers for the softer passions, may perhaps be inferred from his tremendous and unique admiration for Irene Adler." In the other he blames Holmes's frigidity more coldly on a disastrous youthful experience with "some blameless nitwit" of a girl.51 That has been a popular theme, Violet Trevor or not. Touching stories of the sort have been written by Marlene Aig and Susan Dahlinger.52 A Freudian studying a real Holmes would, of course, look further back to a somehow unsatisfactory relationship between the man and his mother.53 Donald K. Pollock, indeed, explains Holmes's infatuation with Irene Adler in such terms: she unconsciously reminds him of his mother, while the King of Bohemia represents his father.54 At any rate, Holmes may be from a home where middle-aged parents were less romantic and demonstrative than newly-married couples tend to be.55 Using the classification developed by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, Kelvin I. Jones calls Holmes "compulsive" and "phallic-narcissistic," and says that his attitude to women is "an apparently impartial one. But it is the sexual element that puts him on his guard. That this should be so indicates a layer of repression in the detective pointing to the classic childhood motheridentification."56 There is, of course (though Jones does not say so), nothing surprising in the appearance of a mother fixation in a character who is so much a self-portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle, who was dominated all his life by his mother, turned to her constantly for guidance, and told her all his secrets. The cult of motherhood was widespread among Victorians, but Doyle was extreme even for his time and class. In any case, as Christopher Morley puts it, "the undignified horrors of male and female procreation were too much for [Holmes's] cold precise mind."57 Or perhaps, suggests Kevin John, he is all too aware of a susceptibility: "Holmes's misogynistic attitude could be seen as a Reaction Formation against love or tender feelings towards women . . . love or softness is rendered unconscious and kept unconscious by the overemphasis of hardness and distrust towards women."58 Beverly Wolov similarly observes that . . . the intensity of Holmes' sexuality . . . is expressed through a variety of defences, primarily intellectuality, the symbolism of his relationships, and sublimation via his detective work and creativity. This does not absolutely eliminate conventional sexual relationships; however, his general distancing of others suggests resistance to forming open, socially traditional, time absorbing liaisons. . . . His mistress is mystery.59

Doyle did not, of course, always repress all sexual feeling in favour of "mystery" or any other sort of work, but (as the next chapters show) he deliberately suppressed sexual activity for a decade, for the sake of honour, and half-consciously channelled the pent-up energy into certain kinds of writing. The sublimating Holmes may thus be (among other things) a self-portrait of one aspect of Doyle. Such a devotion to mystery (and work) might be a considerable handicap in romantic love, but it must be repeated that Holmes is not shown as altogether devoid of emotion. Theodore C. Blegen, in an encyclopaedic article in 1957, examines a full range of his emotions.60 It is hard even to agree with Gordon R. Speck in his observation that "The single-minded pursuit of logical analysis so necessary to Holmes and to his work made him tend to ignore or fail even to perceive a range of emotional nuances unless they directly concerned his investigation."61 Holmes is much less of a reasoning machine than either Watson or many recent critics have insisted — less of a machine, and clearly more of a male human being, for whom (then as now) the cultural norm is an emphasis on reason and work rather than on softer matters. 94

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It takes two to tango, of course, and it is appropriate to ask whether the other party would have been available. If Holmes should suspend or outgrow his misogyny; if he is heterosexual; if he should, ever, look favourably on any woman — if all those conditions were fulfilled, would any woman want him? For all his moods, his messiness, and his eccentricity, the answer seems to be yes, both in the pages of the stories and outside them. Within the stories, one can see a number of women attracted to Holmes — Violet Hunter and Mary Morstan, for example. And there has been a persistent effort to link him with Mrs. Neville St. Clair of "The Man with the Twisted Lip." About Holmes's apparent manoeuvres to be alone with her, Bernard Davies writes that "This odd arrangement has aroused numerous speculations, most of them ribald."62 It is only fair to add that he comes to an eminently respectable conclusion: "The claims of friendship were strong, and he felt more than usually protective toward his friend's wife whom he genuinely liked."63 Above all, there is the amazing devotion that Mrs. Hudson the landlady shows to Holmes over a period of years. Much would be explained if that relationship were personal as well as business.64 As for Holmes's attractiveness outside the stories, Doyle himself recorded that he had received "virtually an offer of marriage" with Holmes from at least one lady reader of the stories,65 and other women who had "contemplated a possible marriage with Sherlock" wrote to protest his apparent death in "The Final Problem" while their brothers reacted to the same event by wearing mourning bands in the London streets.66 More recently, one young woman Sherlockian has spontaneously told me, "I feel sorry for men Sherlockians, because they don't have Sherlock Holmes to fall in love with."67 What male Sherlockians do instead, as Chapter IV shows, is fall in love with Irene Adler, and insist whenever they can that Sherlock Holmes do the same. Jerome Coopersmith, who wrote the book for the musical Baker Street, brought in a modest love interest, and defended his doing so in an article entitled "The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes, the Lover." He argued that love is implicit in "A Scandal in Bohemia": "I am sure that a tremor was felt in London the day that Holmes encountered Irene Adler. Their attraction must have been cataclysmic." By comparison with such an earthshaking affair, his own work is mild: "Baker Street is above all a musical adventure in which thrills take precedence over frills. . . . I gave Sherlock Holmes a girl friend, and that is as it should be."68 Of course, Coopersmith was not the first author to do such a thing. The tradition of having Holmes fall in love on the stage dates back to William Gillette and the famous telegram which he sent Doyle in 1899 as he was working on the stage play that made him famous. "May I marry Holmes?" he cabled from America, and Doyle's response was brusque: "You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like with him."69 The play does not in fact end with Holmes married to its heroine, Alice Faulkner, but in the reading text70 the two of them are in a clinch as the curtain falls. There are other versions, including the usual acting text,71 in which the ending is ambiguous. It is notable that early critics were not all enthusiastic about the love interest. "If Sherlock was bound to make his way into the theatre, we submit that he ought not to have fallen in love there," wrote the critic of The Times, going on to say that "he does somewhat redeem his character by expressing his passion in a stony glare."72 One suspects that Gillette and Coopersmith alike made Holmes fall in love not because they thought it true to his character but because they thought it would make a more saleable play. The producer who hooked Holmes up with Genevieve Bujold in Murder by Decree presumably had the same motive.73 Shreffler describes the introduc95

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tion of such elements in general as . . . a major difficulty with many of the Sherlock Holmes pastiches that have appeared in the past few years, both in print and on the motion picture screen. In books like The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and films like Murder by Decree, there is a strong inclination to try to "humanize" Holmes by drawing from the caverns of his psyche an impossible progression of traumatic emotions. What this must inevitably cause is a severe disruption of the balance between Holmes and Watson . . , 74

—a balance that Shreffler is quite right in calling essential to the stories. In a wittily done piece for the Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Lee Duigon sends up the modern inclination to create love interests for Holmes, putting the criticism in Holmes's own mouth: "a hundred years ago, you wouldn't allow me so much as a kiss from Irene Adler, a truly fascinating woman. You led me on and on, and nothing ever came of it. Now you want to pair me with a go-go dancer!"75 The subtlety with which the original stories hint at a romantic involvement has been lost. And it must be remembered that all the hints about Holmes and romance in all the sixty stories are nothing more than that: hints. Doyle made Dr. Watson something of a ladies' man; Holmes he made something of an ascetic, interested more in justice and logic, and in certain other pleasures of the flesh (fine food, music, and especially tobacco), than in emotional attachments or sexual relations. Perhaps both are elements of himself: solid Watson who loved women and steely Holmes who loved what was right. "Several quotations support belief in his dislike of the fair sex," Julia Carlson Rosenblatt says with some understatement, pointing out however that Most spring from the earliest part of Holmes's detecting career. . . . Women of today can be expected to bristle at words or actions reflecting the popular Victorian view of women as weak and dependent. From today's perspective, for example, it is easy to impute misogyny to his patronizing treatment of Mary Sutherland. . . . Holmes no doubt fell into the sexism of his era, but we might have expected better from him. He was more intelligent than the rest.76

She goes on to describe some of the incidents this chapter has already touched on, indicating the more favourable side of Holmes's attitude to women, and goes on to this remarkable statement: If, then, Sherlock Holmes did not really dislike and mistrust women, he must have been able, indeed quite ready, to give in to "the softer passions" in his retirement. He no longer worried about his emotions interfering with his remarkable powers of detection. Settled in his Sussex cottage, he needs a wife, she speculates, and finds one: "Holmes wrote "The Lion's Mane" as a discreet declaration of love for Maud Bellamy." Miss Bellamy is not a central character in "The Lion's Mane," being rather a diversion from the mystery and Holmes's solution than a part of them. The man who is dead, Fitzroy McPherson, was secretly in love with her, and Ian Murdoch is nearly charged with his murder, the supposed motive being that he also loved her. When Murdoch is cleared—when, in fact, it is revealed that there was no murder at all—he explains to Holmes that like John Alden for Myles Standish he "was well content to stand aside and act as their go-between. . . . I hastened to tell her of my friend's death, lest someone should forestall me in a more sudden and heartless manner." Murdoch comes out of the story an admirable character, for all his supposed or former temper and his fondness for "some high, abstract region of surds and conic sections," and it seems psycholo96

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gically most plausible that if Miss Bellamy is to form any new attachment, it should be with him. There was no gainsaying [Holmes says with a flourish of rhetoric more typical of Watson] that she would have graced any assembly in the world. Who could have imagined that so rare a flower would grow from such a root and in such an atmosphere? Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart, but I could not look upon her perfect clear-cut face, with all the soft freshness of the downlands in her delicate colouring, without realizing that no young man would cross her path unscathed. . . . She listened to a short account from my companion, with a composed concentration which showed me that she possessed strong character as well as great beauty. Maud Bellamy will always remain in my memory as a most complete and remarkable woman.

All this is high praise, as Rosenblatt observes: "Never before had he confessed such regard for a woman. . . . Can anyone who reveres Holmes deny that even in his fifties he would be a splendid husband to a lovely young woman?" Such a theory is attractive, and Rosenblatt is not alone in giving Maud Bellamy a special place. Edward F. Clark, Jr., calls her "the woman who best combines beauty, grace, and character of any in the Canon. . . . There is a [Sherlockian] Society which now offers a toast to The Women,' meaning of course Maud and Irene."77 When in 1979 the Baker Street Journal published some entries from a competition on "The Most Appealing Woman in the Canon,"78 Clark was there nominating Miss Bellamy, and so was James A. Cole, who said this in part: "With admiration and praise of this sort coming from the Master himself, I have no doubt that on those dreary, cloud-covered days on the Downs Maudie helped fill the long hours from dawn to dusk, and perhaps from dusk to dawn. I hope so."79 Rosenblatt says that Miss Bellamy would make the ideal wife for Holmes. She quotes him from "The Blanched Soldier:" "A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate." Her conclusion: he would choose a wife "like Watson: one who was faithful, one who exhibited a strong character, one of those who 'without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it'."80 In short, one like Maud Bellamy. There is one other reason for thinking that such a match makes psychological sense, but consideration of it must be deferred until more has been said, in the next chapter, about Arthur Conan Doyle himself.

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\ fter all has been said about the love lives of xAJWatson and Holmes, the reader must remember that they are fictional characters, Doyle's creations, and must return to take a close look at the author "I am the wife of Sir Eustace and his reasons for creating those characters as he Brackenstall." did. Some such reasons were presumably conscious, The Adventure of the Abbey Grange. even calculating: he wanted figures and incidents that would appeal to contemporary readers, and so he confronted them with a good-natured doctor who falls in love all too easily, and an ascetic genius whose relations with the opposite sex are either nonexistent or unusual and intriguing. But other reasons were less deliberate. Doyle made Watson and Holmes the way they are because he could best write about the kind of people, if not the precise situations, with which he was familiar. It has been said several times in past chapters that Holmes and Watson are projections of aspects of Doyle's own personality. It follows that a study of Doyle's personality should provide a rich context for the understanding and appreciation of the detective and the doctor. One can in fact go further. Not merely the two central characters, but many of the peripheral characters, as well as the plots in which they become entangled, either directly portray or indirectly reflect the people and the events around Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as the workings of his own mind. "It cannot . . . be escaped," writes Colin Prestige, "that there is a good deal of what I might call pseudoautobiographicalisation in the canon."1 He cites "The Abbey Grange," which will be discussed shortly, as well as many examples of proper names and personal descriptions drawn from Doyle's acquaintances. This chapter undertakes to show that such a process operates particularly clearly with respect to Doyle's love life and his two marriages. Chapter III has already shown that The Sign of the Four, written when Doyle was a newly wed in his early thirties, presents in its heroine, Mary Morstan, a picture of Doyle's young wife, Louise Hawkins. At that time life looked good to Doyle, who had just left behind the dark days of impecunious doctoring and could see a career of authorship ahead. He would soon achieve fame as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, but in the meantime he was writing other kinds of fiction as well, including the so-called "domestic" novels, and one loosely organized novel that was clearly autobiographical. That was The Stark Munro Letters (1894-95), in which the character of Winnie La Force is unambiguously Louise Hawkins Conan

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Doyle. And later there would be A Duet, With an Occasional Chorus (1899), which, though the work of an older man whose purposes include a little gentle mockery of young lovers, is still, as Higham says, "filled with sweet glimpses of his marriage to Louise."2 It may be true, as John Dickson Carr says, that Doyle "had never been in love with Touie [Louise] in the sense of a great love which that term implies,"3 but in the early 1890s he would never have believed it himself. The disintegration of that early love and the events that both tortured and enriched Doyle's life are of course told at length in his biographies,4 and need be stated only briefly here. Late in 1893 Louise Conan Doyle fell ill; it quickly became clear that she was suffering from tuberculosis. There followed a series of crises and remissions and tours to dry climates; the lady lived, increasingly an invalid, until the summer of 1906. The day of her death was "the darkest day in her husband's life. . . . he was as fond of her as he had ever been of any person; and to say this is to say much."5 But Doyle was not then alone. For a decade he had been enjoying a loving but not sexual friendship with another woman. In March 1897, as Higham tells it, Doyle . . . wrote to his mother to say that something extraordinary had happened. He had fallen in love with an exquisite young woman in her twenties. Jean Leckie lived in Glebe House, Blackheath, in London, with her parents. . . . She had soft brown hair, an exquisite forehead, a long, grave, delicately chiseled face, with sadly reflective, tender eyes that often seemed to be looking at something far away. Her nose was straight, her mouth soft, her jaw line firm and rounded. Her neck was one of her loveliest features; it was long and slender, and her shoulders sloped beautifully. She had a delightful speaking voice, and a strange, magnetic attraction for animals and birds. In character, she was warm, dedicated to her work, quiet, and reserved. She was discreet and hated gossip. She was practical and sensible, and lacked, at that time, Conan Doyle's mystical bent and leaning toward spiritualism. Unlike Louise, she had an exceptionally fine intellect, read extensively, and was a skilled conversationalist. At the same time, she was emphatically feminine, and despite the fact that she was a quintessential Victorian woman in believing that men should be worshiped, she was not uncritical or entirely bland.6

The love became romantic. But their relationship had to survive great suffering [Higham goes on]. From the very first moment, he told her that he would not divorce his wife. He would never hurt the sweet, simple, and devoted Louise, and emphatically would never betray her sexually. For the rest of Louise's life he would neither marry nor sleep with Jean.7

And the rest of Louise's life lasted for nine years. She died in July 1906; in September 1907 Arthur Conan Doyle and Jean Leckie were married. Two sons and a daughter were born to them, joining a daughter and a son from Doyle's first marriage; Lady Jean Conan Doyle, as she became, outlived her husband, who died in 1930. Most of the stories discussed in previous chapters were written during the early period of Doyle's first marriage. Louise Conan Doyle was healthy when her husband put her on paper as Mary Morstan, and healthy when he wrote those damsel-in-distress stories in which Sherlock Holmes meets attractive young women (the one exception, "The Solitary Cyclist," not appearing until 1903). Whatever elements of his romantic experience and his personal life Doyle put into the first two dozen stories had to come from his love and marriage with Louise, or from whatever dealings with women he had before his marriage (or, logically, during his marriage—but Doyle was so upright in 99

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his dealings with Miss Leckie that one is reluctant to admit the possibility of improper relations with other women), when he was unquestionably a ladies' man. Publication of the stories now grouped as the Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ended at just about the time that Louise Conan Doyle's illness was diagnosed: 'The Final Problem" appeared in the Strand Magazine for December 1893. When publication of new stories resumed, with The Hound of the Baskervilles in the late months of 1901 and "The Empty House" in September 1903, the author was still married to Louise, but his relationship with Jean was now firmly established. Then comes another neat break: when the last of the stories that now make up The Return of Sherlock Holmes was published ("The Second Stain," December 1904), Louise was still alive; when publication resumed ("Wisteria Lodge," August 1908), she was dead and Doyle was married to Jean. Accordingly, while the first two novels and the Adventures can only reflect Doyle's first marriage, the Return (and The Hound, to the extent that it has sexual and romantic elements) draw also on his love for Miss Leckie, and the stories of His Last Bow and The Case-Book, as well as the final novel, come from the period of his happy second marriage. Chapter III points to the evidence that Doyle has, without ever going into detail, given Dr. Watson two (or possibly more) marriages, the one with Miss Morstan having apparently been terminated by a "bereavement." The hints that not all is well with the Watson-Morstan marriage do start in the early stories, but clear indication of Miss Morstan's death comes only in "The Empty House," written in 1903, by which time Louise Conan Doyle's illness was far advanced, and the strongest evidence for a later marriage appears in "The Blanched Soldier," published in 1926, almost twenty years after Doyle's own second marriage. Obviously the author is projecting himself once again on the character who is the most like him; and it is not hard to find sympathetic the suggestion of Ebbe Curtis Hoff that Miss Morstan, like Louise Conan Doyle, died of tuberculosis.8 It is clear that Miss Leckie took an interest in Doyle's writing—something Louise Conan Doyle may never have done. Indeed (as Chapter V notes), Miss Leckie is the author of more than 1,000 words in one of the short stories ("The Second Stain") written during the Return period, between the beginning of the romance and the death of Louise Conan Doyle. There is no reason to assume that she did not write similar passages in other stories; many of the manuscripts have not been examined by scholars or are lost.9 Short of that, her influence was apparently considerable. I remember my father writing those stories when I was a schoolgirl in the mid-1920s [writes Dame Jean Conan Doyle, the author's daughter, in 1979]. He used to announce at luncheon that an idea for a new story had come to him in the early hours and that he had been working on it ever since. He'd then read us the half-finished story and invite criticisms. I can't remember my brothers or myself ever managing to come up with any, but, very occasionally, my mother did and they were always acted upon.10

She may have provided more than a "criticism" in the case of "The Empty House;" Doyle wrote to his mother that "The plot, by the way, was given to me by Jean; and it is a rare good one."11 That was in 1903, before Doyle and Jean Leckie were married. Later, Carr says, "Wisteria Lodge" and "The Bruce-Partington Plans" were written "[m]ainly to please Jean."12 (However, the pleasing may have involved only the existence of the stories, not their content.) Those were the first two tales published after Doyle and Miss Leckie were married.

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And then there is the influence of Doyle's marital situation, and of the ladies themselves, on the characters and plots that Doyle's own mind produced. As Mary Morstan has been suggested as a portrait of Louise, so, for symmetry, one is inclined to suggest Maud Bellamy of "The Lion's Mane" (who could have become Sherlock Holmes's wife) as a portrait of Jean. More surely, one can see Jean in Violet Smith, the spiritual and musical heroine of "The Solitary Cyclist." Jean Leckie was a Europeantrained mezzo-soprano (perhaps Doyle in retrospect regretted that he had made Irene Adler a contralto), and perhaps Doyle enjoyed writing a story in which he could have his alter ego, Sherlock Holmes, ride up like a knight in shining armour and rescue her from the villains. To give Miss Smith an absent lover, so that she is ineligible for any romantic advances from Watson or Holmes, is a convincing touch.13 The triangle in which Doyle found himself for those nine years is both an unusual situation (for most men undoubtedly would have behaved differently; that is, conducted a sexual liaison with the second woman) and a powerful one. "For some years," Carr says of this period, "the outer surface of his nature was at times as hard and unyielding as basalt, because he was under a strain which only the Ma'am understood."14 It cannot but have influenced his writing. Now it must be understood that the situation was not the conventional adulterous triangle, because of Miss Leckie's immense patience (Louise Conan Doyle may or may not have known what was going on) and because of Doyle's own noble determination. He was putting the pressure on himself. As Nordon says: This woman who might have been the heroine of a novel by George Meredith aroused in the mature Conan Doyle an intensity of passion he had never before experienced. For ten years she was his mystical wife, and he her cavaliere servente and her hero; they were years of sometimes painful emotional tension for him, providing a test of his chivalry which he was better fitted to meet than any man of his generation, and which he may even have desired. . . . A physical relationship would not only have been a betrayal of his wife but an irreparable personal degradation. It would have destroyed the mystical basis of his passion; it would have signified total failure in his own eyes; it would have transformed his life into a sordid adventure.15

That "painful emotional tension," coupled with whatever special energy a decade of physical chastity gives to a healthy man, naturally burst out into some of the Sherlock Holmes stories written during that period, and is just as naturally recalled in some of the stories written later. Several of those stories are about love triangles, including "The Dancing Men," "The Abbey Grange," "The Devil's Foot," "The Red Circle," "Thor Bridge," "The Veiled Lodger," and "The Retired Colourman." (One deals with another aspect of the situation: "The Sussex Vampire," about a man in his second marriage.) As will be seen as those stories are examined one by one, it is more commonly a woman than a man whom Doyle puts at the point of the triangle; only in "The Devil's Foot" and "Thor Bridge" does a man have to choose between two women, while in the other five stories a woman is torn between two men. One can speculate on whether the use of a woman as the pivotal character—in that place which Doyle himself occupied in real life—is better attributed to "artistic distance" or to an attempt at denying the situation in which Doyle found himself. It is equally interesting to wonder why so many of these stories have foreign backgrounds: three involve America, one Australia, one Africa. Perhaps in some way Doyle is suggesting that the introduction of outside elements is what causes trouble in a settled relationship; but of course that is not what happened in his own life at all. 707

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Constantine Evans suggests that the presence of foreigners means more than just the appearance of an outside agitator. Dealing specifically with 'The Dancing Men," she says that Hilton Cubitt, the injured husband, . . . represented to Watson that noblest of creatures, the English Gentleman. . . . the only thing that lends credibility to such a story as Mr. Hilton Cubitt's is that Elsie Patrick is not English, or even Irish, but rather American; and, therefore, she is quite capable of any act, however low. To reinforce Watson's contemptuous portrait of American Women, we have a criminal, Abe Slaney, Elsie's erstwhile lover and fellow American. . . . when Slaney is finally captured, Watson always refers to him as the 'American" rather than Abe, or Slaney, or Abe Slaney. This emphasis on Slaney's nationality seems purposely redundant; it stresses the notion of the American as villain.16

Arthur Conan Doyle loved the United States—'He would have made a good American, under other circumstances"17—and one can take that assessment as an exaggeration. Nevertheless, there are evidences all through the Holmes stories of foreigners, American and otherwise, behaving with less decorum than might be expected of the English: from Enoch Drebber in A Study in Scarlet to Holy Peters in "Lady Frances Carfax." Regardless of nationality or of the balance of the sexes, of course, the emotional conflict is much the same. In "The Dancing Men," the lady loves the man to whom she is married, and the man whose arrival precipitates the crisis is a cast-off former lover. Spurned, he kills the husband, and the lady is injured in the crossfire. It is the lady, Elsie Cubitt, who is portrayed in the position in which Doyle found himself at this time, caught between a spouse and a lover.18 But it would be overreaching to say that she is a self-portrait of Doyle. Indeed, one sees him more clearly in Hilton Cubitt, her husband, the tall and athletic squire without much money to spare (one recalls Doyle's pride in ancestry and his penurious early years). The effect of his personal life on this story is seen chiefly in the repeated emphasis on how loyal Mrs. Cubitt is to her husband, and in Watson's curious observation, surely paralleled nowhere in the other stories, that "Both she and her husband had occupied the bed." One almost concludes that Doyle was trying to convince himself that he was being faithful to his wife. (This story contains another specimen for the substantial Sherlockian collection of violets—one that has not been noticed previously, to the best of my knowledge. Watson comments on seeing "the violet rim of the German Ocean'—that is to say, the North Sea. It seems a curious word to use of a body of water.) "The Abbey Grange" needs consideration at more length. Sherlockians have a special affection for this tale because of both its first scene and its last—that opening early on a "bitter" morning when Holmes rouses Watson with the immortal cry, "The game is afoot," and that solemn ending when Watson as "a British jury" declares Jack Crocker not guilty of murder and Holmes as the judge who is above the law sets him free. Between those two gems is a brilliant setting. It offers railway journeys (and perhaps the only scene in all the tales in which the energetic and punctilious Holmes is forced to sit in patience until a train should happen to come by). It offers Holmes sparring with Hopkins of the Yard; it offers an elegant country house ("high life," as Holmes says); it offers the single enigmatic but decisive clue. It presents one of the best examples anywhere of the "floor-walk," Holmes crawling over a room inch by inch to seek and find the tiny details that will show what has really occurred. It presents in the end the ideal solution: the crime was no byproduct of a random burglary (one almost expects the "passing tramp" theory to be put forward by somebody) but the consequence of 102

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individual personalities and lives. The story even presents an occasion for Watson to refer admiringly to the "graceful . . . figure" of the heroine, Lady Brackenstall. It is Lady Brackenstall who gives this story its importance, both speaking and acting the story's message, a message that grows out of Doyle's own life. As has just been suggested, Sherlockians value this story chiefly for its shining example of a Holmes not afraid to defy law in the interest of justice, not reluctant to set a killer free because his killing is—for himself and his intimates and society—a good deed. But one must look at exactly why Jack Crocker does right in bringing the poker down on Sir Eustace Brackenstall's head and through it "as if he had been a rotten pumpkin." The answer is not merely that Brackenstall is a bad man. He is, of course, and the neighbourhood is well rid of him. Nor is Crocker the only killer whom Holmes lets go free. One thinks of Turner in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," or Sterndale in "The Devil's Foot." But Holmes here does more for Crocker than he did for Turner or Sterndale; Turner is about to die, Sterndale to return to Africa (that is, to leave the civilized world forever), and the most Holmes does is decline to molest them. Crocker he virtually commends, and invites him to "come back to this lady in a year" and make a respectable English life with the widow of a prominent squire. Clearly to Holmes there is something special about the action that Crocker has taken, the (in the captain's own phrase) "real good night's work." The explanation is that Crocker has not only eliminated a bad man but eliminated a bad marriage, and created the possibility of a good one in its stead. Such an action could only be commended by Doyle, who clearly used his character Holmes to act on his behalf. And, as already observed, he used his character Mary (Eraser) Brackenstall to speak his message. "Sir Eustace was a confirmed drunkard," she tells Holmes. "To be with such a man for an hour is unpleasant. Can you imagine what it means for a sensitive and highspirited woman to be tied to him for day and night? It is a sacrilege, a crime, a villainy to say that such a marriage is binding. I say that these monstrous laws of yours will bring a curse upon the land—God will not let such wickedness endure." (She can refer to "these laws . . . of yours" because she is Australian, not English, a point that shortly will be shown to be of importance.) "The Abbey Grange" was published in 1904, toward the end of Louise's life; Doyle had now been in love with Jean Leckie for seven years without taking steps to divorce his wife. He must have considered the possibility of doing so, however, and surely his personal position was a leading reason as he became a prominent figure in the movement for the reform of English divorce laws. He would shortly become president of the Divorce Reform Union (formed in 1906; Doyle held its presidency for about a decade), as well as write extensively on the subject. His pamphlet Divorce Law Reform: An Essay19 briefly summarized the arguments for liberalizing the laws that then existed in England. It "was used," says the Gibson and Green bibliography, "as the basis for the preface to Divorce and Morality by C.S. Bremner."20 There were many other pamphlets, speeches, and letters to the editor. The state of the law was certainly primitive: A man could get a divorce merely on the grounds of the unfaithfulness of a wife, but for a woman to obtain legal satisfaction adultery had to be coupled with something else, preferably brutality. Brutality was an ambiguous phrase; men were allowed to "chastise" their wives for shortcomings, real or imagined. Even when there were grounds, women were reluctant to go to law, for the cost of a divorce was rarely less than £700 (£10,000 in present-day money).21

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Doyle would say in speeches that "The foundation of national life is not the family. It is the happy family. And that, with our obsolete divorce laws, is what we haven't got."22 In his autobiography, Memories and Adventures, he wrote: I am quite alive to all the arguments of our opponents, and quite understand that laxity in the marriage tie is an evil, but I cannot understand why England should lag behind every other Protestant country in the world, and even behind Scotland, so that unions which are obviously disgusting and degrading are maintained in this country while they can be dissolved in our Colonies or abroad.23

(The significance of Lady Brackenstall's origin in Australia is now obvious, as is the character of her marriage as a model of the "disgusting and degrading.") In his preface, already noted, he asks rhetorically what reader "does not personally know some example of a woman crushed by a man's brutality or a man desperate from a woman's vices." For the lack of reform, he blames "the indifference of those who are unaffected by it" as well as "the honest objection" of some people on social or religious grounds. He proceeds to argue against the social objections on the grounds that one need not adopt "Nevada license" in order to make essential reform, and against the religious objection on the grounds that a church should not legislate for those who are not its voluntary adherents. Doyle proposes that the grounds for divorce should be the same for men and for women, and should include adultery, cruelty, "any obstinate and incurable form of mania—including dipsomania," penal servitude, and desertion. Doyle did not live to see such reforms made, even to a modest degree; and not until 1971 did it become possible in England to obtain a divorce on grounds "that the marriage has irretrievably broken down," which in practice means desertion for two years or separation for five. (A similar provision came into effect in Canada at about the same time; neither country has adopted the "no-fault divorce" provisions now familiar from many American states.) Doyle says in Memories and Adventures that the subject of divorce law reform "preoccupied me much in the years before the war."24 Those were the years after his marriage to Jean Leckie; but there cannot be much doubt that the subject was of interest to him sooner than that, partly as a result of his personal situation. "The Abbey Grange" can thus be seen as an early tract on the subject. And it is a powerful one, for the author entirely enlists the reader's sympathy on the side of Mary, nee Fraser, chained to a husband who drank heavily and attacked her—not to mention calling her "the vilest name that a man could use to a woman," a euphemism that offers some interesting possibilities. Again in this story, as in "The Dancing Men," sexes are reversed, with a woman caught between two men. It is not, of course, meant that Doyle saw his own life as being intolerable in the way that Lady Brackenstall's is; Louise Conan Doyle was a good woman, whom he loved, and her illness was not her fault. Nevertheless, his predicament must have made him sensitive to the worse predicaments of women such as Lady Brackenstall, or men in similarly loveless marriages who could not within the law escape to find love elsewhere. Perhaps his strong feelings about divorce were tempered by feelings of guilt, for in "The Abbey Grange" Doyle has drawn a more complicated situation, and a less admirable persecuted heroine, than this first reading suggests. Several shrewd reports by Sherlockians have made that clear enough, starting with a hard look at the premarital conduct of Mary Fraser. Setting off to travel as she does with only a maid to accompany her brands her as "clearly an adventuress," charges Jennifer Chorley,25 and evidently she is in search of a man. She finds one fast enough, in the person of Captain Jack 104

Chapter VII — The Man Behind the Characters Crocker, who qualifies for her attentions in social class26 and temperament as well as in personal attractiveness. But she quickly moves on to bigger game, marrying Sir Eustace Brackenstall for his money in defiance of his reputation as a drunk and a tyrant. Or perhaps, writes H.W. Starr in a first-rate paper about the case, he had no such traits until she drove him to them. "If so, after his marriage, Sir Eustace may well have discovered that he had acquired a frigid wife who wanted only his money. . . . So unhappy a marriage may well have brought out a vicious side to Sir Eustace's character."27 Starr goes on to propose that Lady Brackenstall has planned the whole murder ahead of time as the next step in gratifying her own desires. She must be a beauty, as well as a schemer, to pull it all off. "By denying her love, she could drive Sir Eustace to drink and violence," writes L.E. Fredman; "and by promising it, retain the affections of a handsome man absent for long periods."28 There are crude terms for such a woman, but it will suffice for the moment to say that Doyle seems—presumably unconsciously—to have drawn a belle dame sans merci and to have manipulated events, and the judgements of Holmes himself, to be entirely sympathetic to her. One can easily imagine that in the summer of 1904 the involuntarily celibate Doyle was feeling rather in the grip of such a belle dame or two. In the later stories, those written after Doyle's marriage to Jean Leckie, one finds other stories of triangles, similar situations that reflect Doyle's human experience. "The Devil's Foot," for example, is the story of Leon Sterndale, an African explorer whom Doyle the outdoorsman portrays favourably except for a hot temper, and his hopeless love for Brenda Tregennis. When Miss Tregennis is murdered by her brother, in a quarrel over money, Sterndale in turn kills him; and Holmes makes no effort to bring him to justice. What makes this story a triangle, and relevant to Doyle's personal life, is the reason Sterndale could not have married Miss Tregennis years before, so that the tragedy need not have taken place: "I have a wife who has left me for years and yet whom, by the deplorable laws of England, I could not divorce. For years Brenda waited. For years I waited. And this is what we have waited for." There are hints of Doyle in this story quite apart from the bitter reference to the divorce laws29 and quite apart from the description of the tall and powerful Sterndale. There is the medical incident that caused Holmes to be at Poldhu Bay at the time of the tragedy; there is the research he was doing there into "those Chaldean roots which are surely to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech." Such philology has been mocked; but whatever its justification in fact, it is the case that Doyle himself began such a study of old Cornish when he once took a holiday in Cornwall to recover from an illness. Such circumstantial detail, and the effort to point a moral with Holmes's acquittal of Sterndale at the story's end, incline the careful reader to think that there was something in this story of special importance to Doyle. Just what that feature is was pointed out by Julie Maynard in a pair of articles that report a single brilliant insight. Buried in the middle of "The Devil's Foot" is a date: "Tuesday, March the 16th," the year being 1897. (And the date is correct: March 16, 1897, really was a Tuesday. Such accuracy, far from common in the dates given for the stories, suggests that Doyle took special pains on this occasion.) The point is that March 15, 1897, is the day on which Doyle first met Jean Leckie, and he was not likely to have forgotten it, since they celebrated the anniversary for the rest of their lives. "Could it be," Maynard asks, "that Doyle [introduced this date] as a hidden message to Jean Leckie?"30 Or, one might better call it, as a gesture of affection? The appearance of the 16th rather than the 15th is a little puzzling, but since the story begins at breakfast 105

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time it may be that the allusion is to "the morning after." If Doyle intended that reference to the day, thirteen years before the story's publication, when he met the lady who by this time was his wife, then one would expect that the rest of the story was intended to have some meaning to her. At a minimum, the eloquent words of love that Sterndale uses in it may be assumed to represent Doyle's feelings for his own lady, and his willingness, if not to commit murder, at least to fly in the face of convention for her sake. And he makes Holmes condone such behaviour. There is in this story no rival who must be eliminated; the wicked brother is extraneous to the love interest, and the third party in the triangle is a long-departed wife—gone from the scene as, perhaps, Doyle had often wished his own invalid first wife might be. The liaison of Leon Sterndale and Brenda Tregennis is, furthermore, tolerated—one might even say blessed—by the local vicar, the Reverend Mr. Roundhay, one of the few favourably portrayed clergymen in the whole canon. Percy Trevelyan rightly observes that "any form of open liaison—in the Cornwall of 1897—between so flamboyant an already-married man as Sterndale and his spinster kinswoman would have been socially quite impossible," and goes on to "exhibit some surprise that the vicar is portrayed as privy to the affair."31 The explanation seems to be that Doyle is using the clergyman's presence (as he did, according to one reading, in "A Scandal in Bohemia") to signal something like divine approbation. Pointing to this date, Maynard also observes that "The Abbey Grange" is likewise set in the late winter of 1897, though its exact time is not explicitly fixed. "Holmes's repeated involvement with cases concerning a man or woman in love with someone else's marriage partner," Maynard writes, "indicates that someone (either Holmes the detective, Watson the writer, or Conan Doyle the editor) maintained a persistent fascination with the theme."32 Again: "Doyle may have dealt with his sense of guilt, making his daydreams 'public' and living out in print what his unbending chivalrous nature would not allow in private life."33 Maynard goes on to suggest that Doyle censored the early story on such a theme, "The Cardboard Box," because he "at that time had not contracted an almost morbid interest in the theme and saw only the sordidness of the infidelity involved," but allowed its publication later when the subject had become important to him. "The Red Circle," published three months after "The Devil's Foot," is yet another story of a person, a woman this time, caught between two men, a husband whom she loves and a former admirer whom she loathes. The story of Gennaro and Emilia Lucca, which, like the story told in "The Dancing Men," is given an American background, has, unlike it, a happy ending: Holmes intervenes in time on this occasion, and the married couple is reunited in safety. "The Dancing Men," written during Doyle's years of trial, and "The Red Circle," written during his happy second marriage, make a striking contrast. Doyle has sometimes been criticized for using the same plot more than once in the Holmes tales, and in this instance he is clearly guilty of the charge, but the change in endings is not only a mitigating circumstance but a hint that changes in his own life were allowing him to mellow as a writer. (And Emilia Lucca is drawn, Italian mannerisms and all, as a lively human being, in contrast to Mrs. Cubitt, who appears only as an invalid fighting for her life—Jean Conan Doyle, one may think, in contrast to Louise. Incidentally, this story offers yet another canonical "violet:" Mrs. Lucca's violet pencil.) Most striking of the triangle stories is "Thor Bridge," published in 1922, the sexual elements of which have already been exposed in a pair of fine Sherlockian papers. 706

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That of Dana Martin Batory came first, in 1979,34 and served to demonstrate the presence in this story of the "Conan Doyle Syndrome," first presented by Samuel Rosenberg, with which Chapter IX deals in some detail. Bill Schweickert does not use the Rosenberg paradigm, simply demonstrating that, as he says, "Doyle either consciously or unconsciously wove his own love triangle into the story."35 The figure in the middle is a man this time: Neil Gibson, a retired United States senator. The two women are his wife and the children's governess—the wife whose beauty is gone and who has lost Gibson's love, though she is still madly in love with him herself, and the governess who has replaced her in Gibson's heart. The wife is found shot dead; the governess apparently did it; and it takes Sherlock Holmes to discover that the death was a suicide, planned by the wife in order to end her own misery and at the same time destroy the governess, Grace Dunbar. Schweickert explains the parallel: Like Neil Gibson, Doyle was married to a formerly attractive woman, now afflicted with incurable illness. [Louise] Doyle was tubercular, Maria Gibson was insane. . . . Both husbands fell deeply in love with young women who subsequently entered their lives. Both women were exceptionally beautiful. . . . Both women were strong characters and influenced their men for the better.

And, most important, the relationship between Neil Gibson and Grace Dunbar is, like the one between Doyle and Miss Leckie, entirely mental and spiritual. Holmes accepts Gibson's and Dunbar's word that there is nothing sexual in the relationship—a quick acceptance of an apparently improbable claim, which Doyle's experience may have told him would not always be received with such faith. (Indeed, the acceptance of that assertion, and of Miss Dunbar's improbable story in general, so strikes Nathan Bengis that he suggests that Holmes is bowled over by the lady herself.)36 There is of course a major difference between this story and the reality: when Maria Gibson finds out about the "spiritual" relationship she flies into a murderous frenzy, whereas Louise Conan Doyle accepted the existence of Miss Leckie calmly. But there can be little doubt that this story does describe the triangle that Doyle remembered, and that the emotions and words he attributes to Neil Gibson are his own emotions and the words he would have liked to say. (It is striking that, once again, the background to this triangle story is American; it is equally striking that, perhaps in self-reproach, Doyle makes Gibson a generally unpleasant man, "an Abraham Lincoln keyed to base uses.") A story published two years later, in January 1924, is based on a situation even more closely tied to Doyle's personal life—although it must be stressed again that personal experience was at most the starting point for the exercise of his authorial imagination, and it would be quite wrong to imagine that his own life included the hostility and violence that appears in the stories. (There is every reason to believe that Doyle's home life was both happy and peaceful. "If only all men were like him," Jean Conan Doyle, by then his widow, wrote, "in the homes, women's lives would be a very different thing."37) The story in question is "The Sussex Vampire," and it is of special interest as bringing out Holmes's famous rationalist posture—"The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply'—in sharp contrast to the spiritualism that by this time was attracting most of Doyle's attention. The effects of that spiritualist interest on the stories of The Case-Book are, however, beyond the scope of this study. What is of interest here is the appearance in the story of a man who is coping with the difficulties of a second marriage. The man in question is not Dr. Watson himself, although by this late date one assumes that Watson, like Doyle, is well established in his second marriage. He is, however, 107

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closely associated with Watson: an old football acquaintance, Robert Ferguson, "always a good-natured chap" and, one gathers, solid and dull like Watson. He is like Doyle, too, athletic and chivalrous, in despair over the inexplicable behaviour of "the one woman whom [I am] bound to protect and help." She has, it seems, been sucking the blood from the neck of the couple's infant son: hence the story's melodramatic title. Holmes does almost no detecting of the conventional kind when he goes to the family's home at Lamberley; instead he looks at the people and the situation—the domestic descriptions are prolonged—and he realizes what has in fact been happening. Jacky, Ferguson's crippled fifteen-year-old son by his first marriage, has been poisoning the baby, and Mrs. Ferguson, so far from doing the baby any injury herself, has been sucking the poison out of the wound. "I think a year at sea would be my prescription for Master Jacky," says Holmes; one can imagine Doyle, a whaling ship's surgeon in his youth, offering the same prescription (that telltale medical word) in such a situation. By 1924 Doyle did have children by both his marriages, of course. They were somewhat older than Jacky and the baby: of the first family Mary Louise was thirty-five (Kingsley, who would have been thirty-two, had been dead six years), while of the second family Denis was fifteen, Adrian fourteen, and Lena Jean twelve. He could, however, think back to a time when he had a teen-age son and a baby who were half-brothers, and he was rediscovering what it was like to have a teen-age boy in the house. It need not have taken much exercise of the imagination to see what tortures it would bring to both the father and the stepmother if the older son conceived a violent hatred for the younger. Ferguson's loyalty to his wife in this story is even more remarkable than the loyalty exhibited by Hilton Cubitt in "The Dancing Men," for in that case the circumstances were puzzling, while in this one the only reason for Ferguson's not doubting the lady's murderous intent is his absolute faith in her character. Such powerful faith does seem to reflect the loyalty that Doyle forced himself to maintain toward Louise as long as she lived. It is not exclusively a reflection of that experience, since the same motif appears in "The Yellow Face," a very early story; that, however, is a weaker story and the test of the loyalty is a mere matter of money, not external menace or bloody violence. (And one can see a similar loyalty from a wife toward a husband in "The Man with the Twisted Lip.") Only eight Sherlock Holmes tales were first published later than "The Sussex Vampire." Of those, several have already been discussed: "The Illustrious Client," "The Three Gables," "The Lion's Mane," and none of those shows much trace of Doyle's personal crisis, unless indeed Maud Bellamy is a portrait of Jean Leckie. There remain "The Veiled Lodger," published in January 1927; "Shoscombe Old Place," which followed it in March; and "The Retired Colourman," which although it first saw print in December 1926 has considerable claim to be called the last of the sixty tales, the position in which it appears when the stories are published in book form. "Shoscombe Old Place" offers little that is of interest from a sexual or romantic point of view, but it is striking that the other two of these final stories return.to the subject of sexual triangles. "The Veiled Lodger" is as odd a story as the one with which this book began, "The Illustrious Client," for Holmes does not solve any mystery in this story; in fact, he does not do much besides listen and then give a tortured woman some unwontedly mellow advice. He is called to visit Eugenia Ronder, almost to hear her confession, one might say, and the story he hears is of a bloody incident at Mrs. Render's husband's circus some years before. Ronder had been abusing his wife, who found solace in the arms 108

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of Leonardo, the strong man, and together they planned to murder Ronder in such a way that Sahara King, the circus lion, should seem to be to blame. As Leonardo was killing Ronder, the lion got loose; excited by the smell of blood it attacked Mrs. Ronder, disfiguring her horribly, and Leonardo ran away instead of defending her. The lion, of course, took the blame for everything, and Mrs. Ronder has ended up hiding her scars behind a veil—"A poor wounded beast that has crawled into its hole to die." The plot is a little out of the ordinary, but the characters are stereotypes. Ronder is "a human pig, or rather a human wild boar . . . Ruffian, bully, beast." Leonardo has "a magnificent physique" and "the self-satisfied smile of the man of many conquests," of women presumably. Mrs. Ronder is, in Holmes's phrase, "a very magnificent woman"; she inspires "lust" in Ronder; Watson observes, with his usual key word, that "Long years of inaction had coarsened the lines of her figure, but at some period it must have been beautiful, and was still full and voluptuous." What remains of her face is beautiful as well, and her voice is "well modulated and pleasing." One is inclined to wonder why Doyle cast this little melodrama in the form of a Holmes adventure. The answer may of course simply be that that was the kind of story he could sell most easily and most profitably. On the other hand, he may have started to write a Holmes adventure, based as this one is on a murder committed at a circus, and found it taking this unusual shape in his mind and on paper. It is at least possible to identify two of the important sources of "The Veiled Lodger," two items that appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1891. One is an article entitled "Wild Animal Training,"38 and the other, a few pages away, is Doyle's own early Holmes story, 'A Case of Identity," which is examined at some length in Chapter VI. 39 The eleven-page article on wild animal training is primarily a report of an interview with John Cooper, the leading lion tamer of the period, though it also provides some historical background and mentions some of Cooper's predecessors and contemporaries. There is mention of tigers and bears and elephants, too, but lions are the chief feature. To a Sherlockian the subject of lion-taming naturally suggests "The Veiled Lodger," and the article also contains a number of details that suggest specifics in this story. It does not mention Ronder's circus, naturally, but it does mention the quite real circus of George Wombwell, whose rival Ronder is said to have been. And it mentions several incidents startlingly similar to the affairs in "The Veiled Lodger:" the death of the drunken Macarthy at the claws of a group of lions in Bolton, in particular, and the death of a Miss Blight at Chatham when a tiger opened her jugular vein. There is naturally a temptation to say that this article is "the source" for 'The Veiled Lodger," published thirty-six years later, but that would be going too far. No doubt many other articles on relevant subjects came to Doyle's attention in the intervening decades, for it could certainly be said of him, as Eugenia Ronder says of herself, that "I miss little which passes in the world." Besides, as D. A. Redmond has shown, other possible sources are in some respects closer to the published plot: a lion-taming story, published in 1889, which "includes a plea for the lion to escape;" a story about a woman who lets herself become disfigured by smallpox; a weapon shaped like a tiger claw, reported in 1904.40 However, it is attractive to speculate that this article, which Doyle surely read since it appeared almost adjacent to one of his early works, remained in his mind all those years. And it is entirely possible that he reread it just before writing "The Veiled Lodger," for there is reason to believe that he had in his mind "A Case of Identity," which he might well have looked at in its original Strand appearance. The parallels between the two Doyle stories are in small details as well as in more 109

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important, if less specific, features. There is, of course, the Hafiz quotation at the end of the early story, relevant enough to Mary Sutherland's disillusionment but more literally applicable to the late Mr. Ronder, "him who taketh the tiger cub." Balancing that is Mrs. Render's curious phrase to describe the strong-but-weak Leonardo: "the angel Gabriel." (Speaking of lions, one is inclined to think that giving the strong man the name "Leonardo" is carrying coals to Newcastle.) One recalls that Hosmer Angel, Miss Sutherland's lover, turned out to be anything but angelic. Then there is the importance of the whip in both stories: Holmes tries to apply it to James Windibank in the first story and Ronder uses it on his wife in the second (although the reader is not given the explicit picture of flagellation which The Hound of the Baskervilles provides, as Chapter III noted). More important are the larger parallels. In both cases Holmes's client is a woman; in both cases what he unravels is a story of the lady's infatuation with an unworthy lover; in the first story he has to report to his client that the case cannot be solved, although of course he and Watson know the truth, and in the second case there is in fact no puzzle to be solved, only a story to be heard. It rather seems that the pitiful Mary Sutherland has been repeated as Eugenia Ronder, who dared not a stepfather but a lion for the sake of her lover and was cruelly betrayed. In this story about triangular passion and murder, the obvious villain is dead; the man who was supposed to be the hero, but proved too weak for the role, disappeared for years, and by the time Holmes encounters him the case is dead also; and the woman caught in the middle might as well be dead, for her disfiguring injuries and her veil keep her from all human society. Holmes himself tries to draw a lesson or a word of comfort from Mrs. Render's narrative, and can barely do so. Dana Martin Batory, using the Rosenberg technique, finds in the story "the heterosexual 'crimes' of the principals, the drastic punishment of the lovers, and the unique images of that punishment."41 The story provides evidence for theories about Holmes's philosophy and religion; it can be made to provide evidence for a long-ago love affair between Holmes and Mrs. Ronder.42 And of course it is prime evidence in any study of the effect of Doyle's spiritualist beliefs and interests on his fiction. But as far as adultery is concerned, all the judgement one can make is that the subject still interested Doyle—and seemed to him tragic—as late as 1927. Finally there comes "The Retired Colourman" —"finally" because it is the last story in the book editions, although first published a month ahead of "The Veiled Lodger," in December 1926, and because its theme and tone provide a natural end to the Holmes saga. It is difficult to believe that this story is set, as most Sherlockians have concluded, as early as 1898, for in 1898 Holmes would still be in the prime of middle age, healthy and busy and most unlikely to be led by one client's tragedy to conclude that all human life is "pathetic and futile."43 The case is about an old man, indeed a "retired" man (and it is hard to think of any other retired person in all the stories), whose life is thrown into confusion by the proximity of livelier, more loving, and younger people. A look at the old and broken man seems to leave Holmes feeling old himself, for his reflections are those of an old man both in the story's first sentences and later when he invites Watson to the Albert Hall, not for inspiration or indeed for love of music, but as an "escape from this weary workaday world." Aside from such comments, Holmes gives a number of indications that he is not the young and energetic man he once was, and that he is slowing himself down, quite possibly with an eye to his own retirement. He sends Watson out to "understudy" him at the beginning of the case, putting off any personal examination of the scene of the 110

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crime for as long as he can. He uses an "agent" rather than direct action to have Watson and Amberley drawn away from the city. He eats a sizeable breakfast before going out to work—no more coffee-and-tobacco vigils. He omits the traditional floor-walk in search of microscopic clues, and he observes no tattoo or cuff of Amberley's that may tell anything about his early life, not to mention his recent venture into murder. Holmes even lets himself be collared by a man who has been watching "for some days" and whom in his prime he would surely have seen and evaded. One might well see here a picture of a man who is going through the motions—solving the mystery in the end, but without the flair of his youth. And, of course, one might say the same about Doyle, aged sixty-eight when this story was published, still enthusiastic and energetic about spiritualism but probably not so about Sherlock Holmes. The mystery brought to Holmes is a disappearance: Josiah Amberley has lost his wife, his life's savings, and his good friend Dr. Ray Ernest. "The old story, Watson," says Holmes, for it is evident that the friend and the wife have run off and taken the money with them. At once the story has a sexual theme, and so it is of special interest to note the remarks that Holmes makes along the way about the relations between the sexes. He teases Watson about his "natural advantages" and his missed opportunity for whispering soft nothings to some Lewisham barmaid in return for "hard somethings," but he must be aware that Watson is not growing any younger any more than he is. "It can still be done," Watson tells him gamely, but the barmaid must be young enough to be his daughter, and perhaps the twice-widowed old soldier is just as glad that Holmes has obtained his information in other ways. Holmes himself looks at the photograph of Mrs. Amberley and pronounces her "a good-looking woman" though she must be in her forties at least—a valid enough comment for an elderly Holmes, but something that could not have come from the Holmes of an earlier day, more susceptible to the charms of a "young person" like Irene Adler. An elderly Doyle here gives Holmes his own attitudes. It develops, of course, that Ernest and Mrs. Amberley have not run away at all; Amberley has trapped them and murdered them. Holmes forces him to admit it; the old man tries to poison himself, but is prevented and taken away to the police station. In the final pages of the final Sherlock Holmes story, the detective explains his reasoning to Watson and a police inspector. What he does not do is draw a moral from the case, though he might well apply the comments that he made in "The Veiled Lodger." If adultery and murder were exciting long years before, they are simply sad at this late date. Elements of this final case would remind Holmes and Watson of their first months together and their first shared case, A Study in Scarlet, which is to say, Doyle has reused some elements of that early tale in this late one. A Study in Scarlet, like "The Retired Colourman," involves a stolen lady, a white pill of poison, and words written on the wall of a murder room. Both cases see Holmes use a bogus message to lure a criminal, and both end with press reports in which Scotland Yard gets the credit for brilliant deduction, while Holmes gets only personal satisfaction. The victory over Josiah Amberley, the Lewisham miser, recalls the quotation from the miser at the end of A Study in Scarlet, to the effect that cash in hand is better than public acclaim. Surely by the time of his retirement Holmes had plenty of cash in hand; Doyle the author had a fortune, which he was rapidly spending to advance the cause of spiritualism, and he had worldwide acclaim, too. He also had what neither Holmes nor Amberley has: love, the solid love of a loyal wife. Why, then, these two sad triangle stories at the end of all 777

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his written work? One suspects that the answer involves perspective and regret: perspective on the life he had lived, and regret that things had not somehow gone differently. There had been much happiness in Doyle's life, of course. "Truly," Jean Conan wrote, "in each other's heart we found the most wonderful possession Life has to offer to Humanity—the Holy Grail of a perfect love."44 A few of Doyle's poems deal with love, most strikingly "December Snow," about love in old age.45 And yet he must have remembered the anguish of his middle years intently, and wished that some of his experiences had been spared him. Doyle cannot have forgotten that the most powerful experience of his life had been being in love with one woman while he was married to another.

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^TAhough elements of sex and love permeate the JL Sherlock Holmes stories, there is no "pattern" o f secret allusions, any more than real life shows such a pattern; there is simply the constant presence of men who love women and women who love men, "That's all right, my lass,' said I." 77?^ Adventure of the Cardboard successfully and naturally or perversely and in ways Box. that lead to heartbreak or violence. Some of the incidents are apparently patterned on incidents in the life of the stories' author, Arthur Conan Doyle, or on thoughts that must have passed through his mind as a result of the life he led. Others show no such origin and are just the consequence of his imagination, his reading, or his calculation as an author of what would intrigue his readers and contribute to the effectiveness of his tale. In real life it is hard to find any large sequence of events in which sexual relationships and motives are of no importance at all, although they may not be central. And so it is with the Holmes tales. A few are entirely without sex—"His Last Bow," "The Five Orange Pips'—but they are fewer than one might think, as Chapter IX seeks to demonstrate. This chapter turns its attention to half a dozen stories that have not so far been discussed, showing what sexual and romantic elements operate in them and how they contribute to the effectiveness of a story that is supposedly about an asexual detective. The Man Who Lost His Wife The title of "The Noble Bachelor" gives away the solution of the mystery. At the beginning of the story Watson, which is to say Doyle, is careful to refer to the "Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination," but the title refers to what Holmes discovers and reveals at the end: there was never any marriage, the supposed bride being already married to Francis Hay Moulton; and so Lord Robert St. Simon remains a bachelor throughout. The case is exceptional, Holmes tells Watson at an early point, chiefly because the bride disappears so early. She runs out from the wedding breakfast (the precursor, in a day when one at least nominally went to church fasting, of what would now be called the wedding reception). And so, whatever other improprieties are revealed, one is at least sure that St. Simon (as he is called for convenience; the question of his proper title as son of a duke is outside the scope of this study) and Mrs.

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Moulton did not enjoy a wedding night. When Holmes tells Watson early in the story that he has encountered such cases before, the reader naturally thinks of "A Case of Identity," published eight months before "The Noble Bachelor" and dealing with not a vanishing bride but a vanishing groom. No doubt there are other precedents, but one can discount as bombast the supposed case of the King of Scandinavia. (If the case had been genuine, Holmes's concern for "secrecy" in "the affairs of my other clients" would lead him to keep the client's name confidential, even if he revealed some of the events, rather than vice-versa.) The real precedent for this story, however, is "A Scandal in Bohemia," and it is hard to resist the conclusion that Doyle wrote "A Noble Bachelor'—which he himself is reported to have ranked as among the poorest of the Holmes tales—to exploit for a second time the themes and situations that had made that first short story such a success. That does not mean that Holmes is placed in any situation in which he might fall in love. The lady in this story has to choose between two men, as Irene Adler does in the earlier story, but there is no suggestion that she also has a yen for Holmes, or he for her. And for all of St. Simon's stuffy description of her as a "tomboy" with a "volcanic" nature, she is strikingly sensible, and loyal to her first love, who proves to be still her husband. Her social behaviour lacks something, since she rushes off to join Moulton without explaining herself to the man who thinks he has just become her husband, but there is no criticizing her moral fibre. On the other hand, there is the little matter of bigamy, which is a criminal offence and which she has unquestionably committed. "It would have to be straightened out," observes T.F. Foss, "if only to allow St. Simon to re-enter the marriage market (if he could)."1 Not surprisingly, Doyle has chosen to make the possessor of these qualities and the committer of this offence an American, and an American from free-and-easy California at that (the last chapter noted the frequency with which Doyle's love triangles involve people from the United States). It should be noted that Doyle does not have Watson take the opportunity to describe the lady, "figure" or otherwise, when she actually appears at Baker Street, though he does give a brief description based on the picture in St. Simon's locket. The adventure is a straightforward one; in spite of Watson's routine puzzlement, it does not call for much detection on Holmes's part, only the brief examination of the hotel bill being of any interest in that regard. "The Noble Bachelor" is really a story of manners. Its key sentence is the utterance of Mrs. Moulton when she recalls being accosted by Flora Millar: "Some woman came talking something or other about Lord St. Simon to me—seemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little secret of his own before marriage also—but I managed to get away from her and soon overtook Frank." Although Holmes's concern in the story, and thus the reader's, is entirely with St. Simon's loss of his bride (in the person of Mrs. Moulton), the position of Miss Millar should not be forgotten. D. Martin Dakin makes this observation: Watson thought Lord Robert very ungracious in his refusal to forgather with Mr and Mrs Moulton, but Holmes was willing to make allowances for him. Neither seems to have thought of censuring him for his abominable treatment of poor Flora Millar, whom he had discarded after allowing her to become "devotedly attached" to him, and whom, with the insolent assumption of the Victorian aristocrat that the lower orders have no serious emotions that cannot be soothed by money payments, he thought he had treated not ungenerously.2

That double standard has been clearly noted in the cases of "The Beryl Coronet" and especially "Charles Augustus Milverton." It is less clear here.

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One must assess the moral position of Miss Millar not by the standards of the 1980s but by those which Doyle must have assumed his readers would share. Miss Millar is no ill-treated housemaid; she is a "danseuse at the Allegro," that is, a chorus girl, one of the class whose intrigues with the aristocracy are virtually a cliche, and who (as noted in Chapter IV) were, frequently with good reason, generally considered to be actual or potential prostitutes. If Mrs. Moulton resembles Irene Adler in her position between two men, and in her tomboyish and assertive personality, Miss Millar resembles her in profession and to some extent social class. Miss Millar is not, of course, a prima donna, but then St. Simon is not a king. She is socially as far below this aristocrat— however far she may be above him in natural merit—as Ms. Adler is below Wilhelm of Bohemia. The man in each case naturally considers the woman a plaything, to be treated generously in financial terms but otherwise cast aside. It appears that the lady in "The Noble Bachelor" is portrayed as making the same mistake Ms. Adler made: instead of treating the affair as a mercenary one, she has fallen in love. Ms. Adler at least gets the love of Godfrey Norton, but Miss Millar is left with nothing. Whether she returns to the stage, turns to prostitution, or is somehow able to establish or retain a respectable life after this series of incidents is a question that the story does not, of course, answer. Just what sexual relations existed between any of these couples is equally open to the imagination save that, as has been mentioned already, there is no time after the wedding for St. Simon and his supposed wife to go to bed. What they may have done beforehand is not recorded. One suspects that in any case St. Simon has had sexual relations with Miss Millar, an intimacy that he describes to Holmes as "a friendly footing for some years—I may say on a very friendly footing."3 In other words, in all likelihood, he has been keeping her in a nest in St. John's Wood; it must be remembered that St. Simon is neither a young man nor a poor one. As for Mrs. Moulton and her husband, finally, it must be remembered that they are married, and though Mrs. Moulton at once says that "then Frank went off to seek his fortune," it is unreasonable to think that he did so without the intervention of a few hours or days at least. This incident is strongly reminiscent of the parting of Lucy Ferrier and her fiance Jefferson Hope in A Study in Scarlet. One other matter sheds some light on this story: the name of one of its principal characters, Francis Hay Moulton. He is apparently named for one of the principal figures in the 1875 scandal involving Henry Ward Beecher (discussed in Chapter II in connection with "The Cardboard Box"). That real-life figure is identified by Christopher Morley as Francis D. Moulton and by Robert Keith Leavitt as Francis H. Moulton;4 either way, he was apparently a "go-between" in some of the events that led up to the scandal. Doyle's use of the name in this story, written in 1892, five years after Beecher's death, links it at least tenuously with the topic of adultery. Six years later he apparently had the name still echoing in his mind, for it emerged as "Frances Morton" in the short story "The Black Doctor," which also deals with a broken engagement.5 (What neither Morley nor Leavitt mentions is that "The Noble Bachelor" also uses the name of Gordon, a name Doyle and Watson will link with that of Beecher in "The Cardboard Box" less than a year later.) Although the name of Moulton links this story with the theme of adultery, it must be stressed that no adultery takes place, and the story deals with bigamy rather than any other sexual impropriety. Mrs. Moulton does not, of course, know that her husband is living when she agrees to go through a form of marriage with St. Simon, and so 775

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she must be acquitted of any deliberate wrongdoing. But no one in this story seems to behave very well, with the possible exception of Moulton himself; no wonder then that Holmes treats him and his wife to an epicurean dinner. Death Under the Flagstones When readers think about the story "The Musgrave Ritual" they are likely to concentrate on the questions and answers of the ritual itself, the trigonometric and architectural puzzles raised by the layout of the Manor House of Hurlstone, and the ancient English crown and other relics the location of which the ritual reveals. It is easy to forget that this story also involves a murder and a sexual relationship. With them, however, the story begins. Reginald Musgrave, bringing his affairs to Holmes, tells first of all about his butler Brunton and the entanglements of this "bit of a Don Juan." "That," he says, "was our first drama at Hurlstone; but a second one came to drive it from our minds." The second "drama" involves Brunton's midnight scrutiny of the family Ritual and his subsequent disappearance, followed by that of Rachel Howells, the housemaid he had loved and jilted.6 As Holmes solves the Ritual puzzle, most of the story of Brunton and Miss Howells also becomes clear, but they remain virtually separate stories; the latter involves love, jealousy, and murder entirely independent of the greed and the history that surround the hiding and finding of the ancient crown of England. This duality is unusual, for in the general way of things it turns out at the end of a Holmes story that all the apparently separate events were in fact intimately connected. To find two quite separate motives is both unusual and artistically unsatisfactory. And yet this story is generally praised—perhaps because of its wealth of details about Holmes's early life, because of the royal glamour that it reflects onto Holmes, and of course because of the appeal of the Ritual itself.7 One is driven to look for a thematic connection between the story of the hidden crown and the story of the jilted housemaid, and such a connection is not easy to find. E. Butler Richards has observed that the story echoes, even imitates, "A Scandal in Bohemia:" "Both concern a man who searches for a hidden, valuable object connected with the fate of a king. The object is in a house, and its location is eventually discovered by Holmes. However, its recovery is thwarted by a woman who had had an affair with the original seeker. She removes the object and flees to an unknown place of safety."8 Such a summary suggests Freudian possibilities, of the kind that the next chapter explores, but does not otherwise shed much light. (A further note: "Hurlstone" reflects both parts of the plot, for Miss Howells does hurl "pebbles" into the lake on the estate, hiding the evidence of the crown, and throws or drops the flagstone trapdoor that seals Brunton in the cellar, where he dies.) It appears, then, that the love-and-murder element in "The Musgrave Ritual" is gratuitous, put there to add length, intrigue, and complication to the real story. It is, however, not without its points of interest, chiefly because there are so few other women killers in the Holmes tales. Indeed, Nancy Talburt in an article on "Sherlock Holmes and the Liberated Woman"9 is able to list just five: Maria Gibson in "Thor Bridge," Mme Henri Fournaye in "The Second Stain," Sophy Kratides in "The Greek Interpreter," Anna Coram in "The Golden Pince-Nez," and the anonymous lady who shoots Charles Augustus Milverton. That Talburt overlooks Miss Howells entirely is further evidence that the love-and-murder aspect of "The Musgrave Ritual" does not make much of an impression on the reader. "Of these five women who kill" Talburt writes, "only one is English; the others are foreign." Mrs. Gibson is Brazilian; Mme. Fournaye, French; Miss Kratides, Greek; 776

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and Mrs. Coram, Russian. The lady who shoots Milverton is presumably English, although, as Chapter V suggests, there has been strong scholarly support for giving her a background other than ethnic English: perhaps Jewish. "It is a continuing theme in the Canon," Talburt goes on, "that women from other cultures are freer, more natural, and less inhibited, as a rule, than native Englishwomen." (This is the same point that has already been made with regard to adultery: frequently outsiders, especially Americans, are involved.) Sure enough, Rachel Howells is not English either; she is Welsh, with an "excitable Welsh temperament." There is no one else Welsh in the entire canon of Holmes tales, unless one can on a technicality count the Duke of Holdernesse in "The Priory School." The people of Wales were often looked on with contempt by the English of the nineteenth century, and a great number of Welsh girls did become housemaids. It should also be observed that her rival in love, Janet Tregellis, is by her name clearly of Cornish extraction, and of course the Cornish are also virtual foreigners in southeastern England. "That the Welsh and Cornish girls should be rivals has both a racial and an amorous basis," says Redmond.10 It is a little disappointing that Doyle, though he gives Miss Howells a brief and melodramatic mad scene,11 does not have her attack Miss Tregellis as well as Brunton. But then it is equally disappointing that Doyle did not treat this incident of murder motivated by jealousy in a story of its own, rather than touching on it in confusion with the story of the noble family and its royal secret. Perhaps, of course, Brunton (a remarkable man, with intelligence equal to Holmes's own, and quite out of place as a butler) is intended to parallel in some way Charles I, whose downfall was in part attributable to a foreign woman in the shape of Queen Henrietta Maria. But that is stretching Doyle to the breaking point. The love relationship has so far been taken as a triangle, but perhaps it is rating the honour of Reginald Musgrave too highly to assume that he never trifles with any of the pretty maids (not to say exercises the droit de seigneur). Matthew Lawfield, carrying on the popular Sherlockian exercise of resolving a case with a different villain, not only accuses Musgrave of murder but makes him Brunton's rival in love. His known treatment of his butler "hints at deep animosity, perhaps with an element of jealousy," says Matthew Lawfield, and this passage follows: Contrast his harshness towards Brunton with his solicitude for Howells. He advised her to go to bed and rest, hinted that a doctor would be called, and provided a nightnurse for her. While in another man this might be routine, in the somewhat haughty, aristocratic Musgrave, it suggests a deep emotional relationship. At any rate, she was sufficiently close to him to be able to confide her dreadful secret to him. In order to protect her, he started a cover-up, and this underlines the depth of this relationship with her.12 Rachel Howells may not be the most attractive female figure in the Canon [writes Mollie Hardwick, but] she is undoubtedly one of the most single-minded and daring. Perhaps, in that land beyond the seas to which she escaped, she became a Sultan's favourite by reason of those black Welsh eyes which glittered so alluringly above a yashmak, and proceeded to demolish the harem system in his province by the very uncompromising treatment she meted out to his other wives. It is a speculation not without interest. 13

Indeed not, though perhaps it lacks something in relevance to what Doyle actually wrote. 777

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David Strayed a Little There is no more horrible story among the sixty than "The Crooked Man;" Henry Wood's betrayal, torture, and enslavement are the stuff of nightmares. The reader must sympathize with him (to use a feeble word), and certainly Sherlock Holmes does so, allowing him to disappear rather than be involved in the investigation of James Barclay's death, even though there is no doubt that he has caused it. "There is," Holmes tells him, "no object in raking up this scandal against a dead man, foully as he has acted"— and yet that is a curiously tepid way of telling Wood that he is the wronged man in the whole affair and Barclay the villain. "You have at least the satisfaction," he adds, "of knowing that for thirty years of his life his conscience bitterly reproached him for his wicked deed." But all one can really be sure of is that when Barclay saw Wood he keeled over, hit his head on the fender, and was dead. His attack is likely to have been caused by fear of revenge, and shock at seeing Wood alive though crippled, rather than by anything like guilt. It has been thirty years since, during the Indian Mutiny, Barclay wronged Wood, and for all his nighttime fears he can hardly have been expecting that Wood (whom he assumed dead) would appear to take any sort of vengeance. Wood's reappearance in Barclay's life is thus somewhat melodramatic, the sort of thing one would expect in an old-fashioned stage play rather than a sophisticated short story. "The Crooked Man" is the work of a young Doyle (he was thirty-four), a Doyle whose first wife had not yet fallen ill, a Doyle who was early in his writing career though already receiving acclaim for the Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps most significantly, this gaudily painted story was appearing at a time when The Sign of the Four was wildly popular in the United States as well as in England.14 For it draws heavily on The Sign of the Four, and on the earlier novel A Study in Scarlet, and one suspects that through Doyle's mind there passed ideas of reusing the formulas that had proven successful in those two books. What happens in the story, in brief, is that Colonel James Barclay is dead, and his wife Nancy raving with "brain fever," that psychosomatic ailment so beloved of Victorians with weak nerves, as the result of an altercation at which Holmes quickly determines that a third person must have been present. He traces that third person, and it is Wood, a hideous cripple with a permanently twisted spine, who tells his story and is implicitly believed. Thirty years ago, he and Barclay were both suitors of Nancy Devoy, who was inclined to favour him on account of his good looks; they were with a British garrison in India, and found themselves besieged by rebels at the time of the 1857 Mutiny. Barclay, Wood's superior, sent him to get help, but betrayed him into the hands of the rebels, who tortured him and enslaved him so that he was not able to escape until long after the Mutiny had been put down and Barclay had married the lady. When Wood reappears in front of the two of them so many years later, the shock kills the one and sends the other out of her wits. What "The Crooked Man" draws from The Sign of the Four is the background of the Indian Mutiny. One might say that Henry Wood, like Jonathan Small, is cheated out of a treasure through the betrayal of an Englishmen who should have been on his side against the savage mutineers. For Small the treasure is literal: emeralds and pearls; for Wood of course, it is the lady. And like Small, Wood leaves India, after a period of imprisonment, with a permanent injury—not the loss of a leg but "with my back like a camel and my ribs all awry," as he tells Holmes and Watson. As Dakin observes, Barclay "must indeed have been jealous to sacrifice the man who was to bring hope-for 118

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relief to the entire party, including Nancy and himself. Much good it would have done him to have got rid of his rival, if he and Nancy had both been killed by the mutineers.15 Paul Beam comments further: "One would be hard pressed to express villainy on this scale anywhere but in India, especially during the mutiny."16 Doyle needs the crimson background to give the later events, which take place in dull Aldershot, any element of interest. And yet it is true, as Thomas L. Stix points out,17 that there is nothing in the circumstances of the case to justify the excitement that Holmes shows from the very beginning of the tale. From A Study in Scarlet, the story draws the motif of a man whose woman is stolen by a rival through the use of secular authority—military rank in this case, Mormon priesthood in the earlier novel—and many years later gets his revenge.18 That plot, in combination with the garish Indian setting, ought to make "The Crooked Man" a brilliantly successful story. Indeed, Doyle was proud of it, ranking it fifteenth among the stories when he was asked (in 1927, when the stories in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes were not yet eligible for consideration).19 But Sherlockians have been less enthusiastic. In 1946 it received "no votes for listing among the twelve best,"20 and in 1954 it placed fortieth of sixty (with, again, no votes for placement in the ten best).21 Rather than any weakness of plausibility or construction, which after all might be charged against the best of the stories, one is inclined to blame the depiction of character. No one in this story comes to life except Henry Wood himself, and in looking at him the reader is persuaded (as so often, even in real life, with disabled people) to concentrate on the physical imperfections rather than on the inner man. James Barclay and his wife do not appear, save indirectly—he, of course, is dead when the story begins, and she is incommunicado. Miss Morrison is seen only in Holmes's cold description, not through Watson's eyes. There are no sneering police inspectors. In this story there are scarcely any human beings at all. One can, of course, speculate about the three figures of the central triangle as they were at the time of the story's real action, thirty years before and half a world away. As Wood tells it, he was "the smartest man in the One Hundred and Seventeenth foot," his long suit being good looks, his behaviour "harum-scarum" and "reckless." Barclay by contrast was already respectable: "he had had an education, and was already marked for the sword-belt," that is, an officer's rank. The lady, then Nancy Devoy, is described as "the belle of the regiment—ay, and the finest girl that ever had the breath of life between her lips." Of her beauty there may be no doubt—Holmes testifies to it, calling her "queenly" at the age of perhaps fifty—and her interest in the charitable work of the Guild of St. George can be taken as some indication of her goodness. She must have had strong character, too, to cope with the "little social friction" that arose from Barclay's rapid change in status in his youth. On the other hand, there is some doubt about her intelligence. Stix asks: What kind of daughter of a colour-sergeant is a woman who loved a man for his good looks? Also, what kind of woman locks herself up with her husband, grabs the key and says: "I will never breathe the same air with you again! You coward!"22

One might add: what kind of woman lives for thirty years with a husband who killed her lover but never notices any unpleasant elements in his character?23 There is no physical description of Mrs. Barclay beyond Holmes's vague compliments, but it seems clear that anyone who wanted to portray the lady for the stage could do worse than make her a stereotypical, stunningly sexy, dumb blonde. There remains her cry of "David!" when she realizes what Barclay did to Wood 779

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all those years ago. The reference is, as Holmes says, to "the first or second of Samuel'—to II Samuel 11-12, to be specific. In those passages David, king of Israel, covets Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and gets her pregnant while Uriah is off righting a war for him. David calls Uriah home, then sends him off to war again, to a more dangerous part of the battle where he is sure to be killed. Indeed he is; and only later does David, excoriated by the prophet Nathan, realize what a wicked thing he has done. The comparison "seems almost too recondite to come naturally to an angry woman," complains Dakin, "especially as the parallel, although close, is not quite exact. It is to be feared that a modern wife wishing to rebuke her husband would use terms of a very different nature.24 That criticism seems sound, unless of course it is assumed that she knows the truth all along but is not moved to scream about it until the day she sees the still-living Henry Wood. Its presence in the story seems—to borrow a word that Holmes himself uses about some of Watson's effects—meretricious. And yet it serves to point up the story's apparent moral: that, as in any good detective story, the most respectable character of all, James Barclay or David the king, can be the villain, and that many a good man's downfall is lust for a pretty woman. Unhappiness in Married Life "The Priory School" is the story of a ten-year-old boy, the son of a nobleman, who runs away from his boarding school. One does not, perhaps, expect much knowledge of children from Holmes,25 but it seems somehow surprising that Doyle (whose son Kingsley was eleven when this story was written) never has anyone offer the suggestion that young Lord Saltire was abused at school, or thought himself mistreated in some way. Holmes and indeed everyone else look exclusively at external factors that may have led the boy to run away, or be carried off against his will, and the latter turns out to be the true explanation. Lord Saltire has been kidnapped on the instructions of his older, illegitimate half-brother, who intended to use him to force their father, the Duke of Holdernesse, to "break the entail'—change the inheritance of his property in favour of the older son, who (being illegitimate) would not normally inherit. The murder of a schoolmaster who saw the crime in progress and tried to stop it is merely a complicating factor. The sexuality of the boy does not enter into the story (its unpleasantnesses do not include pederasty26) and, interestingly, neither does that of the duke's illegitimate son, who passes as his secretary, James Wilder. However, sexual relationships are what set it all in motion. The duke tells Holmes: When I was a very young man, I loved with such a love as comes only once in a lifetime. I offered the lady marriage, but she refused it on the grounds that such a match might mar my career. Had she lived, I would certainly never have married anyone else. She died, and left this one child [who of course is Wilder]. His presence had something to do with the unhappy issue of my marriage.

For Holmes has already learned that . . . the Duke's married life had not been a peaceful one, and the matter had ended in a separation by mutual consent, the Duchess taking up her residence in the south of France. This had occurred very shortly before, and the boy's sympathies are known to have been strongly with his mother.

Holmes winds up the affair by finding Lord Saltire and bringing him home, letting Wilder off lightly (he is to start a new life in Australia while his accomplice in the kidnapping 720

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faces a murder charge), and advising the duke to "make such amends as you can to the Duchess, and . . . try to resume those relations which have been so unhappily interrupted." In fact, it is not clear where he puts the blame for any of the things that have happened; a cynic would conclude that a £6,000 cheque from a duke buys a great deal of acquiescence.27 Certainly no word of reproach for the duke's sexual or social conduct is put in his mouth. Doyle thus suggests a broadmindedness unusual for its time with respect to such matters as premarital love affairs and illegitimate children. "The Priory School" is one of the stories written during the years in which Louise Conan Doyle was an invalid and Doyle was in love with Jean Leckie. It is intriguing to speculate on what identifications he made with the characters in this story. Is the duke's lost love perhaps Louise, who might not have needed a successor in Doyle's affections if she had remained strong? Does the duchess's departure for the south of France, leaving the duke alone, picture the destruction of Doyle's first marriage? Or could both identifications be true at once? Always a Noble Woman "The Golden Pince-Nez" is another story in which the murder proves to be peripheral, and the real matter of interest is a conflict caused by sexual attachments. Willoughby Smith, the dead man, was secretary to an elderly and retiring professor; it turns out that he was killed, accidentally in a scuffle, by the professor's estranged wife, who was there for a showdown with her husband. The two of them were "reformers—revolutionists—Nihilists," she tells Holmes in the final confrontation, and she reports the professor's villainy, many years before, in betraying the cell of comrades, including her and "the friend of my heart," Alexis, to the secret police. Yet now she forgives him, asking only that the papers he has that will procure Alexis's release from Siberia should be turned over to the Russian authorities. There are, as previous chapters have shown, other women in the Sherlock Holmes stories who side with their lovers against their husbands (some even to the point of violence, in contrast to the forgiveness shown by Anna Coram in this story). But it is difficult to think of a woman in any other Holmes story who is a political activist; and so "The Golden Pince-Nez" naturally invites consideration of Doyle's attitude toward the women who were politically active in his time—that is, the suffragettes, the campaigners, often using extreme tactics, for women's right to vote. When this story was published, in July 1904, that campaign had not yet reached its height, but it had begun. (The same might incidentally be said about the Nihilist agitation, which eventually led to the Russian Revolution of 1917, so that on both counts Doyle was dealing with current affairs, not history.) Women could not vote in elections for Members of Parliament when Doyle (unsuccessfully) stood for election in 1900 and again in 1906; the suffragette campaign of what would now be called civil disobedience accomplished little, and it was really women's participation in the work of World War I that led to the passage of the Representation of the People Act in 1918. That law gave the vote to all men over the age of twenty-one—it must be remembered that there had been restrictions on men voters as well as the exclusion of women—and to women over thirty. Women twenty-one through twenty-nine were given the vote only in 1930. It is commonplace to say that Doyle was opposed to the campaign of the suffragettes, whom he calls "window-breaking Furies" in the story "His Last Bow." But that is exactly the point: he disliked their shrill tactics, and he cannot have been appeased when some of his public statements incited militants to pour vitriol into the letter slot 727

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of his house (a standard suffragette tactic.)28 He even said, when he visited the notorious Tombs prison in New York, that it was "just the place for the suffragettes."29 But statements he made during his Canadian tour in 1914 seem closer to his true opinion. Referring to the latest outrages, he said that "the cause of suffrage is now lost completely," and he told an interviewer that "the suffragettes had the sympathy of many people until they adopted their lawless and intolerable tactics. They have not now the interest of the people, and they have themselves to blame."30 When he opposed women's suffrage, Higham says, he "made a reservation for women tax-payers," no small concession in a time when some adult men who were not taxpayers could not vote either.31 And it is perhaps fair to say that he maintained his opposition not because he thought women were inferior to men in importance or judgement, but because he thought they were very different. (One must remember that this is the Doyle whose life was dominated for six decades by his mother's word.) Carr writes: It was not a matter of political principle. What he disliked was [the suffragettes'] behaviour. He considered it grotesque, a reversal of roles, like men dressing up as women and doing needlework. Jean, like most women at that time, had no wish to vote and said so without any prompting from him.32

Doyle's daughter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, is even kinder in her speculation: I shall always regret that I was not older than seventeen when he died; there would have been so much to talk about, including the suffrage of women. I only heard him discuss this in the context of the possible effect within a marriage and his criticism of some of the actions of Suffragettes; but he had an open mind and admitted past misjudgements, so perhaps he had accepted the justice of their cause by then. My mother may have influenced his early views—she was so very feminine and gentle and they were so devoted. He certainly didn't underestimate women's intelligence; he encouraged his young Mary to become a journalist and often discussed possible careers for me.33

Further light on the subject is shed by Doyle's non-Sherlockian novel Beyond the City, which has recently been republished with an insightful Afterword by Howard Lachtman. He observes that the central figure of the novel, the muscular and comic feminist Mrs. Westmacott, . . . is a double-barrelled attack on sexual inequality in the England of Doyle's day and upon the prevalent fictional convention of the Lady. . . . Beneath the laughter, we can sense a deeper, more sympathetic interest on the author's part with the aspirations (and frustrations) of the late Victorian woman. . . . We can laugh at her excesses, but we may be sure that Mrs. Westmacott has her creator's full approval when she refuses to immolate herself on the altar of father, husband, and home. . . . Here, then, is Conan Doyle's self-improvement plan for the Victorian woman. She should, he says, attend less to household duties, qualify for some trade or profession, and be allowed free entry into previously closed job markets. . . . Such enlightened arguments are sure to provoke a nervous reaction on the part of Victorian gentlemen who do not share the author's own powerful sympathies.34

The politically active Anna Coram is not described in any very flattering way; Mrs. Westmacott is "very handsome," Doyle writes in the novel, mentioning the inescapable "figure" as "magnificent," but the lady of the pince-nez has round shoulders and a "long and obstinate chin." She scores high, however, on loyalty and magnanimity, and there is the point that when she was "a foolish girl of twenty" she was apparently much 722

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admired by the "noble, unselfish, loving" Alexis. So perhaps in her youth she was as attractive as is the young and perky Dr. Verrinder Smith in Doyle's short story "The Doctors of Hoyland,"35 with whom the hero, Dr. James Ripley, falls hopelessly in love. That story, dating from early in Doyle's career, is feminist in that it solidly demolishes any belief that women cannot be doctors (and still womanly by educated standards). Owen Dudley Edwards points out the relevance of one incident in this story to Doyle's own life,36 without stressing that the subject of Dr. Ripley's pamphlet and of Doyle's own doctoral thesis, locomotor ataxia, is a specifically sexual disease. More generally, Edwards writes: "Conan Doyle was to ridicule male attempts to block the advance of women in the professions fairly savagely. He may have arrived at his position from knowledge of the squalid basis such arguments could have,"37 meaning apparently "avarice and alcohol." Holmes does not have to decide whether to turn Anna Coram over to the police, since she kills herself in his presence, but he does appear at the end of the story on his way to the Russian embassy to carry out the rescue mission she had started.38 It is just possible that Anna is the sort of woman, like tax-payers and those over thirty, to whom Doyle would at least grudgingly have conceded the right to vote. A Visit to Bohemia "The Creeping Man is almost pure sex," says O.F. Grazebrook,39 and he is quite right, although one may see little value in his censorious conclusion (he cites this story, "The Three Gables," and "a loosening of the moral fibre" in "The Retired Colourman" as evidence that the beloved, respectable Watson did not write these late stories). The story is about Professor Presbury, a physiology professor in late middle age who makes love to (in the sense of wooing, not copulating with) Alice Morphy, the charming young daughter of a colleague. He begins to act strangely in various ways; his daughter Edith and her fiance Trevor (Jack) Bennett, who is Professor Presbury's secretary, become concerned and appeal to Holmes; and Holmes eventually discovers that the professor has been injecting himself with a serum extract of "black-faced langur," which was supposed to restore his youth and has incidentally provoked his temper and induced langur-like behaviour: walking on all fours, climbing the walls, and teasing the dog. No one specifically says that the serum is intended as an aphrodisiac, but it seems clear enough. Holmes speaks of "that untimely love affair which gave our impetuous professor the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man." Bennett and Miss Presbury think the whole effort to gain Miss Morphy's love is somewhat distasteful; it is not quite clear whether Holmes shares that opinion or is maintaining that an older man can quite properly woo a younger woman, but ought to do so without trying to be young. (Doyle, when this story was published, was sixty-four years old; Presbury is described as sixty-one and Doyle's wife of sixteen years was fifty.) Says Grazebrook again: "The Creeping Man" is an exposure of the dangers inherent in attempting rejuvenation in elderly men. Fascinating as it may have been to audiences in March '23, to elderly readers who looked back with the regrets inseparable from old age, it is a subject which needs a delicate touch—even more than Tristan and Isolde. It must be again a matter of individual taste if the description of an Oxford professor morbidly anxious to recover his powers is suitable for general discussion, but it is a matter of fact that the story reeks of the consulting room, and should have been recorded in The Lancet rather than The Strand.40

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But many Sherlock Holmes stories equally reek of the consulting room; "The Engineer's Thumb" is more tolerable than "The Creeping Man" only to readers who like bloodshed better than hormones. And this present story is told with considerable delicacy as regards the sexual purposes and effects of Presbury's medication. A striking omission, indeed, is any mention of whether the langur extract makes Presbury a more aggressive lover, or one more acceptable to Miss Morphy. The propriety that surrounds the university households presumably bars the oddly assorted couple from any physical love-making, so it is unnecessary to wonder whether the serum helped to cure any impotence from which Presbury may have been suffering. Yet one cannot overlook Bennett's description of Presbury's character as "very virile and positive," a phrase that suggests a concern for sexual potency on the part of the characters and perhaps also the author. Delicate as the subject of this story may be, it must be conceded that Doyle tells it very sparely in comparison with the way he handled the same subject thirty years before in the novelette The Parasite. In that earlier work the central male character is also a professor, though a young one rather than an old one; he is certainly virile, almost carnal, but he is saving his affection for the virtuous Agatha until another woman begins to work on him with techniques unknown to science, in this case hypnotism rather than monkey glands. From the nature images of the tale's first page ("The twigs are stiff with their sap") to its climactic scene in Agatha's boudoir, The Parasite is about sex. And so is "The Creeping Man." In this story, as in "The Golden Pince-Nez" with regard to the issue of women's suffrage, Doyle uses a background involving an issue of interest to readers at the time the story was published. A fascinating paper by J.C. Prager and Albert Silverstein traces the scientific background of endocrinological research, which had been going on since about the turn of the century, was vaguely known to the general public by the 1920s ("Oh, yes, I know, monkey glands"), but became accepted in respectable scientific circles only in 1926 at the Berlin Congress of Sexual Research. Prager and Silverstein identify the original of H. Lowenstein, the Prague scientist who provides Presbury's serum, as Eugen Steinach, who about 1900 was experimentally injecting castrated animals with hormones, and by 1912 was looking at "the influence of the sex hormone" in adolescence and then "the downward curve of life." Any hint of hormonal experiments on human beings would in 1903 have produced exactly the "ugly rumours" mentioned in the first sentence of "The Creeping Man"; but it is also true, as Prager and Silverstein say, that if any such experiments were being done as early as that, it is most likely that they would have been done by a prominent Oxford or Cambridge physiologist like Presbury, and on his own person.41 As has already been said, Holmes calls Presbury's actions in pursuing Miss Morphy "untimely;" and he is critical of the scientists' efforts to restore youth and prolong life chemically. In his warning that "the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives; the spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher," one of course sees the thoughts of Doyle the spiritualist. Is the story then to be taken as a warning against the physical aspects of love? Certainly not in its entirety; against the unhappy love of Professor Presbury must be set the cheerful young love of Bennett and Miss Presbury. The comment that Holmes makes when the young man attempts to identify his fiancee—'We were gradually coming to that conclusion, were we not, Watson?'—is reminiscent of nothing so much as his remark when Violet Smith in "The Solitary Cyclist" speaks of her fiance: "Oh, Cyril is his name!" His attitude in this story, when he is an older man, might be called patronizing though it was labelled flir124

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tatious in the earlier one; in any case his smile suggests approval. As a matter of fact, one rather wishes that Edith Presbury were named Violet instead. The description of her as "a bright, handsome girl of a conventional English type" suggests Miss Smith, and even more Violet Hunter of "The Copper Beeches," a story that is not only mentioned in "The Creeping Man" but echoed in it in several ways. There is, of course, the comparison Holmes makes in that mention: his inference from the behaviour of a small child in the earlier case, from that of an animal in this one. There is, as Grazebrook points out,42 the climactic scene in each case in which a man is mangled by his own dog. And there is the general atmosphere of country-house horror, with the gothic elements of a mysterious face at a window and a plucky young woman menaced by an older man. The half-dozen stories considered in this chapter are very different from one another, and of course they were published over a period of more than thirty years. What they have in common is that in their mysteries and adventures—in three of the six cases, their murders—elements of sex and erotic love set the characters about their business and attract or hold the interest of the reader.

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>Hphe sexual activities and motives discussed so far .1. have been heterosexual. One would not call them all normal, extending as they do to rape, flagellation, and other antisocial behaviour, but they are all "We strolled about together." derived from the originally normal attraction of men The Adventure of the Resident for women and women for men. Homosexual matPatient. ters are much less obviously present in the Sherlock Holmes stories, but since homosexuality is a part of human life, and the stories are meant to be a reflection of human life, some evidence of it is likely to be found there. The obvious place to look for homosexual elements is in those Sherlock Holmes tales in which all the characters are men. There are surprisingly few such tales—the actual number is eight,1 although when one thinks of the Sherlock Holmes saga over-all the impression is that it is chiefly a male world.2 In at least three of those eight stories, plus one other ("The Three Garridebs") that only barely escapes being all-male,3 a marked pattern of homosexual imagery can be found. It is striking that three of these nine stories have the same plot: "The Red-Headed League," "The Three Garridebs," and "The Stock-Broker's Clerk." Similarities between the first two stories mentioned were noted as early as 1946; Russell McLauchlin described "The Three Garridebs" as "nothing but a re-writing of "The Red-Headed League;" merely disjecta membra of that magnificent story, assembled with something short of Watson's typical skill."4 Similar comments have been made repeatedly since then. (On the other hand, D. Martin Dakin calls "The Three Garridebs" "a story told in Watson's best manner."51 am inclined to agree that it is vintage Doyle.) More recently it was pointed out6 that "The Stock-Broker's Clerk," published in 1893, has the same basic plot as "The Red-Headed League" (1891) and "The Three Garridebs" (1924). In each case Holmes is consulted by a respectable Londoner to whom something extraordinary has happened. Jabez Wilson in the first story has had, and now lost, a sinecure for which his brilliant red hair qualified him. Hall Pycroft in the second one has thrown up a dull job for an exciting and highly paid one, but begun to wonder about his employer's bona-fides. And Nathan Garrideb in the third one is being asked to disrupt his quiet routine in order to find another man who shares his unusual surname, and thus qualify for one-third of a fortune. Holmes's investigation in each case reveals that the scheme in which his client is involved is a fake, concocted to use some quality of the innocent

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man (Wilson's hair, Pycroft's profession, Garrideb's name) to lure him out of his way so that the criminals can get at something (the bank that abuts on Wilson's cellar, the safe in the premises of Pycroft's legitimate employer, the counterfeiting apparatus left under Garrideb's rooms by the previous tenant). And, as has been said, these stories are peopled entirely by men. (In "The RedHeaded League" there is mention of a fourteen-year-old housekeeper; in "The Three Garridebs" there is Mrs. Saunders the concierge; but neither of these people is of the slightest importance to the narrative. Indeed, Holmes makes a point of ruling the fourteenyear-old out of consideration as a woman, and Mrs. Saunders's only function is to depart, leaving the coast clear. If anything, the absence of women is being stressed.) The absence of any love interest, either as motive or as subject, is unusual in a Sherlock Holmes tale, as the previous chapters have shown; the absence even of women characters not involved in love affairs is so rare as to be strongly suggestive. It does not, of course, prove the presence of homosexuality—there are times when, and situations in which, even the lively and normal heterosexual turns the mind to something else, such as money or murder—but it does justify a close look. For that purpose one must consider the opinions of Samuel Rosenberg, the frequently reviled pioneer of Doylean criticism to whom nothing is sacred and all is Freudian. His full-length study of Doyle, Naked Is the Best Disguise, has already been mentioned several times. Not all his speculations and farfetched associations need be endorsed, of course, but it will prove worthwhile to look at some examples of the way he looks for, and finds, suppressed sexual elements in Doyle's stories. "The Red-Headed League" is one story that he considers at great length. He finds great significance in the scene that has Fleet Street clogged with men all bent on a single object, and he uses the first name of pawnbroker Wilson (Jabez is the town where lived the scribes—I Chronicles 2:55) to connect the encyclopaedia-copying redhead with a scene in the Old Testament (Genesis 19:4-11) in which men converge not to apply for a job but to attempt homosexual rape on two exquisite creatures who are in fact angels. Rosenberg goes on to stress the "womanly" character of John Clay: Watson actually uses that word, and there is mention of pierced ears and other effeminate characteristics. Finally, he identifies the pawnbroker's shop and its three hanging balls as "a symbolic arena of unhappy heterosexuality" and the bank's vault as a "cloacal cellar filled with fecal gold." The result: the planned robbery is symbolically a homosexual rape, and Holmes thwarts the perversion as well as preventing the theft. This analysis, though it may sound both far-fetched and distasteful, is supported by many details in the story, from Holmes's affectionate reference to Watson early in the story as "my partner and helper" to the gratuitous reference to the sexually ambiguous George Sand at its very end. And, as already mentioned, there is the absence of women even in supporting roles, to which Holmes draws particular attention: "Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question." It will certainly appear far-fetched to use it as the basis for an allegation that Holmes is drawn as homosexual, or that Doyle deliberately wrote a story with homosexual motifs. Neither of those claims is being made; I doubt that Rosenberg would suggest them. What is true is that the subconscious contains both hopes and fears, and that the subconscious drives an author's fingers to express various parts of its contents in many codes and guises. Support for the theory that "The Red-Headed League" expresses an image of homosexual intercourse, associated with the more socially acceptable offence of attempted 727

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bank robbery, comes from the observation that "The Three Garridebs," which parallels it in so many other ways, parallels it in sexual imagery as well. One can begin with the few paragraphs at the end of the story in which Watson is wounded by the bullet of Killer Evans. "I felt a sudden hot sear," Doyle writes in Watson's persona, "as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh." In context the description is innocent enough; looked at alone it seems a sexual description, especially from the Watson whose ambiguous wound during the Afghan campaign seems to have instilled a lifelong fear of injury, amputation, castration.7 Within a moment after the wounding, Watson goes on: . . . my friend's wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair. "You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!" It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. . . . For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as a great brain. All my years of humble but singleminded service culminated in that moment of revelation. It can be called nothing but a love scene. For years, of course, Sherlockians have enjoyed the joke that Watson was a woman8 or, perhaps, Holmes was.9 Aside from such comic suggestions, do the characters, after all, emerge as active or latent homosexuals? The author of The Sexual Adventures of Sherlock Holmes seized on that conceit with delight, treating the characters of Holmes and Watson with considerably more scholarly knowledge, if no less indecency, than one would expect from the writer of a pornographic paperback of its kind. Among Sherlockian scholars only Leslie Fiedler has come close to insisting that Holmes and Watson are portrayed as lovers. His arguments are worth quoting at length: Holmes was thin, Doyle fat. . . . But what most completely differentiates the two are their attitudes toward women. Doyle, for all his occasional outbursts against the more violent feminists of his time, lived always in the shadow of the other sex: his mother first of all, . . . two wives . . . and finally a daughter. But Holmes inhabited a bachelor apartment, presided over only by a housekeeper who seems never to have tidied up its masculine clutter, and he was—as far as the text tells us—apparently not even born of woman. . . . If his consulting detective represented any aspect of Doyle, it was precisely that aspect which his whole public life and stance denied: his shadow self, which is to say, not merely the thin man that popular wisdom tells us persists inside of every fat man, but the diabolical antimask ordinarily released only in nightmares of madness. . . . Watson is not a creature of that interior gloom, like Moriarty or Colonel Moran, the declared villains of the tales, or even like Holmes who more resembles such villains [than] he does his ingenuous comrade-in-arms. The point is that Watson functions within the fiction as Holmes' author, whereas Holmes plays the part of his daemon, the Heathcliffe to his Catherine. To be sure, they are both projections of Doyle; but the dependable and obtuse doctor represents everything that Doyle suspected he had—choosing the road of respectability—become; while the "bohemian" detective stands for what he might have become had he chosen otherwise, or rather, had he been able to so choose. The relationship of such masturbatory complementary fantasies is typically rendered in novels (as the comparison with Wuthering Heights suggests) erotically. And there have always been a few readers who have suspected that Holmes and Watson, after those dinner and theater dates, nights out together at the Turkish Baths, or the long smoking bouts which followed the completion of some breathless adventure, may well have ended up in bed together. But if Doyle, in the darkest recesses of his "inner

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consciousness," imagined them in so supremely antibourgeois an embrace, he does not confess it. We are not given, as a matter of fact, very precise information about the sleeping arrangements at 221b Baker Street10 and so in a sense are left free to fantasize as we will. But we do know from Conan Doyle's autobiography how thoroughly he disapproved of homosexual relationships.11

That Doyle disapproved is, of course, no proof that he did not write about such things, and especially not if, as Fiedler suggest, he was exorcising, rather than preaching, in his depiction of Holmes. But for all his concentration on Doyle, Fiedler is coming close to the Sherlockian fallacy that Holmes and Watson can productively be taken as real people, with a life apart from the words Doyle put on the page. The bald fact is that the detective and his partner are not portrayed as homosexuals—not in the way in which, say, the characters in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray are. A still-closer body of work that can usefully be contrasted with the Holmes tales is the Raffles stories by Doyle's brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung. Edwards writes: The achievement of the Holmes-Watson association is that it explicitly excludes a sexual content, and yet is shown over the years to be based on a very tender emotional association. . . . Hornung produced in Raffles and Bunny an imitation of Holmes and Watson which is very obviously homosexual, and a mawkish, cloying, stifling business it is.12

One can certainly see the difference, but it will be as well to reserve judgement about the purity of Holmes and Watson. It may be that, if not Doyle's deliberate intention, then his subconscious conflicts, and the very milieu in which he was working, made some homosexual overtones inevitable. A useful piece of background is provided by Fraser Harrison, a commentator on Victorian sexual mores, especially as they are portrayed in art and literature. In a chapter saliently entitled "Fear of Women," Harrison discusses the fiction of the late nineteenth century, with special attention to Kipling's The Light That Failed and Du Maurier's Trilby. It is reasonable to suppose [he writes], that men will place an especially high value on the emotional satisfaction to be derived from male friendship during periods when they feel that their prowess is being threatened, rather than flattered, by women. Undoubtedly the late 'eighties and 'nineties was such a period, and it can be no coincidence that books which featured male trios and duos acting as collective heroes enjoyed great popularity during those years. A desire to celebrate the joys of male companionship and to glorify the code of male solidarity may be clearly discerned in such novels as King Solomon's Mines . . . , A Study in Scarlet, etc. . . . , and Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman.131

That Holmes and Watson are such a duo is obvious from even the titles of some Sherlockian books,14 and certainly from a perusal of their contents. "Here dwell together still two men of note," says the first line of Vincent Starrett's famous sonnet "221B,"15 which generally leaves no Sherlockian eye dry. No mention is made of other men, let alone of women; and this context suggests the importance of Irene Adler, the woman who bested Sherlock Holmes, as the woman to whom readers of Holmes have traditionally given the most attention. For all Doyle's experience of women, in a life which was full of women, perhaps he did feel "threatened" by them and wrote these tales to create a world where women need not intrude. Traditional Sherlockians, including the present-day Baker Street Irregulars who do not generally admit women to their doings, 129

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have apparently been happy to read the stories in that way. Such exclusion of womensuch "male bonding" in the now popular anthropological phrase—does not seem particularly healthy; it may even beg for the label "defensive;" but it cannot be taken as proving homosexuality. What then, of the bald comment made by Jerry Neal Williamson? He writes: In The Priory School, when Watson is about to perform an errand boy's duties and carry a note to the police, Holmes cries: "But I need your company and assistance." . . . There are other examples of Holmes's dependence upon Watson. The pages of the canon are polka-dotted with references to Watson's marveling, highly complimentary, almost awestruck praise for Holmes's brilliance. In short, Watson's relation to Holmes, a bachelor, is that of an admiring wife. 16

Well, it all depends on how one sees the normal dynamics of a marriage.17 No doubt it is true that equal partnerships are rare; at best, the partners alternate in which dominates. The pattern of a brilliant active husband and a dumb "admiring" wife was the norm of the 1950s, but is less so now; whether it was the norm of the 1890s is irrelevant, since the issue here is how the relationship of Watson to Holmes strikes the reader of today in comparison to normal human behaviour. Holmes dominates Watson, it is true, but it is quite possible to see the pattern of their relationship as one of a shrewish wife and a henpecked husband. Neither of them can do without the other—that at least this relationship has in common with a successful marriage. But again there is no reason for assuming that the model extends to sexual behaviour. It would be easy enough, after all, to collect tidbits of "evidence" from the canon that suggest physical closeness as well as emotional links between Holmes and Watson. The several "love scenes" have already been mentioned, and to them the reader can add the "double-bedded room" which the two are to share in "The Man with the Twisted Lip" and also in The Valley of Fear, as well as the several famous scenes in which Watson wakes up in his bed at Baker Street to find Holmes standing beside him. But no more importance really need be attached to those than to Holmes's preference for a "bachelor," which is to say free-and-easy, household in "The Reigate Squires." Character traits are more important than such details. Herman Lieberman discusses the psychology of Holmes and Watson at length, primarily tracing incidents and character traits but coming at last to conclusions that include these: Watson's . . . profession of medicine epitomises a feminine devotion to the care of others. His simpering over the purity of women places them on the maternal, untouchable pedestal, while he pursues his real crush, Holmes. Our conclusion from this evidence is an unavoidable portrait of Watson as a rather passive, inept, feminine adolescent, in contrast to his portrait of Holmes as the epitome of decisive competent masculine aggressiveness.18

It is again possible to ask how much this dichotomy reflects the real characters of the sexes rather than popular stereotypes. Relevant in the present context are not just the stereotypes of "real men" and "real women," but also those of real homosexuals. If Watson is "passive" and "inept," but obviously not female, is he then to be taken as a pansy? One rather expects to start hearing the cliches of hair dryers and interior decoration, or their Victorian equivalent, Wilde's ostrich feathers and brocades. No matter that in real life only a few male homosexuals conform to that image (or to the alternative stereotype, the crew-cut stud with leather clothes and ostentatious keys). Not every retiring personality is attached to a homosexual. (And how many personalities would

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not be retiring in contrast to that of Sherlock Holmes?) Karl Krejci-Graf, in his massive paper "Psychoanalysis of Sherlock Holmes and Co.,"19 makes some comments that support those of Lieberman. Watson and Holmes are in many respects "as different as possible," he reasonably observes. He speaks of "the feminine character of Watson . . . shown in his love-like relation to Holmes," and calls him "a feminine type who longed to be taken for a he-man, for a protector of feeble women, a knight-errant." And he hints that there was indeed a sexual attraction, but one that was always repressed: they both . . . fought hard against such possibilities even in their unconscious minds, keeping each other at arm's length or more so. Watson calls Sherlock Holmes "Mr." in [twenty cases], i.e., during all the time of the partnership. . . . Sherlock Holmes uses the title "Dr." for the last time in ["The Blue Carbuncle"], in the year 1889. At that time, long acquaintance had shown to Holmes that there was no danger from that side, while with Watson the unconscious fear of a complication endured until the end of the partnership.20

It seems, then, that homosexuality between Watson and Holmes is not to be taken as a described fact, and as a threat or promise below the surface it is hypothetical at most. It does not follow, however, that no Holmes story can involve homosexuals or use homosexual imagery. As to the former, one need only note that Holmes can be involved with murderers and prostitutes without being accused of murder or prostitution; as to the latter, let it simply be said for the moment that a plain man like Doyle can still be a complex writer. It is time to return to the several stories without women that were under discussion earlier in this chapter, to see whether in this new sense they may involve homosexuality. In "The Three Garridebs," it is noteworthy that when Mrs. Saunders goes home to leave the scene clear, she departs from an "abode of Bohemian bachelors" of whom the chief is Holmes's client, Nathan Garrideb. A "confirmed bachelor" is often accused of homosexuality, in tastes if not in behaviour, and it is not at all difficult to read "effeminate" into the adjective "Bohemian," which had changed considerably in meaning since the appearance in Baker Street of that only too heterosexual bachelor the King of Bohemia some forty years previously. (And the preceding chapter observed the use of Bohemia in another sexual context.) The only one of the bachelors described is Garrideb himself, who is "not too strong," who "had a brother, but he is dead, and female relatives are disqualified," who to put it briefly does not overwhelm the reader with masculinity. Then there is the house itself, which its tenant maintains is Georgian but which Holmes identifies with barely a glance as coming from the time of Queen Anne. It is a trivial point, but—as Holmes might remark—a suggestive detail for Doyle to have inserted. This story, like "The Red-Headed League," begins with protestations about the close relationship between Watson and Holmes; there is also the throwaway observation, innocent in itself but suggestive in context, that Holmes has just spent several days in bed. Then is introduced the odd name of Garrideb, a group of letters that indeed contains "bed" and which strongly suggests "bugger" to the anagrammatist. It is easy to make a group of letters into whatever one wants; but since Doyle apparently created the name himself—it would rather have spoilt the effect of the story if there had turned out to be large numbers of Garridebs living in the Albanian expatriate colony in Brixton— one is entitled to make observations on the elements out of which he may unconsciously have made it. 131

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Finally in this story there is Killer Evans, alias John Garrideb, whom Watson describes as having "the round, fresh, clean-shaven face characteristic of so many American men of affairs." There are of course dozens, hundreds, of clean-shaven men in the canon, but Watson remarks on them rarely, commonly pointing out beards or moustaches rather than their absence. Interestingly, one of the few times he does mention a "clean-shaven" man is when John Clay appears in "The Red-Headed League." Is Killer Evans then also to be considered effeminate (and, by implication, homosexual or potentially so)? There is no compulsion to think so, and yet he is seen, as is John Clay, making a desperate effort to get at the cellars, the privy parts of the house; if the one assault is a model of a homosexual act, the other may as well be so too. Small pieces of data begin to accumulate. The pattern that they make becomes still more striking when a third story proves to carry it on: "The Stock-Broker's Clerk," in which the plot is largely the same as that of "The Red-Headed League" and "The Three Garridebs," and in which once again all the characters are men. In this tale, again, criminals lure an innocent man out of his usual path not for the sake of his presence but in order to take advantage of the space he leaves behind—not his premises, this time, but a job that he has accepted and that someone else will be able to take up in his name. It must be conceded that there are no obvious hints of homosexuality in this story, unless one counts Watson's going out of his way to admire young Hall Pycroft, a "wellbuilt, fresh-complexioned young fellow," or the keen interest that Harry Pinner shows in matters French ("Their system is different from ours"). One might, however, note the "affection," Holmes's own word, that drives the captured Beddington's brother to attempt suicide. That can be seen as a parallel to the brief scene of intimacy between Watson and Holmes at the end of "The Three Garridebs," and to John Clay's curious shout when he is captured: "Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it!" To swing is of course to be hanged; Clay is apparently telling his friend to save his own neck.21 Thus all three stories end with strong expression of love between men. Beyond the basic plot there are links that connect "The Stock-Broker's Clerk" with "The Red-Headed League." Young Pycroft is kept busy in Birmingham, so busy that like Jabez Wilson he cannot return home and perhaps spoil the plot, by doing what is essentially pointless clerical work: in his case, copying entries out of a street directory. His plaint that "by Monday I had only got as far as H" certainly recalls Wilson's encounter with Armour and Architecture and Attica. And the bare rooms in Corporation Street, Birmingham, certainly recall those in Pope's Court, even to the "deal" furniture. Then there is the "French gold" in "The Red-Headed League"; in "The StockBroker's Clerk" gold provides a major clue and French, as has been noted, a key element of the blind. The parallels continue: both Wilson and Pycroft are offered salaries of £4 a week, for example. Of course, such details are of no importance in themselves. The major parallels may indicate the working of the subconscious; the smaller ones may do the same, if Doyle's subconscious memory was as prodigious as some of the other details in his work suggest; or they may be coincidence; or they may indicate that he had reread the earlier story (earlier by only about eighteen months) before writing the later one. Whether it was deliberate, as that last explanation suggests, or an accident of the unconscious mind that this story resembles "The Red-Headed League," the similarities justify a look at a curious word near the end of "The Stock-Broker's Clerk." That word is "clay-coloured," used to describe the complexion of Harry Pinner when he is cut down from an attempt to hang himself. The word is curious first of all because it 132

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appears only in certain editions—in the original Strand publication and in the Doubleday omnibuses, for example, but not in the first book edition and not in the British (John Murray) omnibus or the Annotated Sherlock Holmes, which reproduces it. In those latter editions the word is instead "slate-coloured." Which reading is better? Probably "slatecoloured," since grey or black slate is indeed the colour of a hanged man's face ("livid" in the primary meaning of that difficult word). A North American reader may also think of clay as grey, which could be why the Doubleday editors have accepted the "claycoloured" reading; but citations in the Oxford English Dictionary make it clear that "clay-coloured" in fact means dark or brick red. That Doyle interpreted the word in that way is clear from his description of Pope's Court in "The Red-Headed League," clogged with men whose hair was variously "orange, brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay," all shades of red. And it is "The Red-Headed League" that pits Holmes against an effeminate villain named Clay. What is the relationship between the plots of these stories and their sexual subtext? A possible answer is that just as the innocent victims are lured out of their proper places by unscrupulous use of their hair colour or name or good employment record, so homosexuality is a distortion of the proper order of things. Doyle is not, of course, preaching that comparison—if he were being more deliberate, he would presumably be more explicit, so that the reader would find the moral without having to hunt for it—but writing about one kind of disordered world may have induced him to think about another, so that disquieting images and unwholesome characters crept into the text. Certainly one sees such a comparison of subterfuge with unhealthiness in a fourth Holmes story about women: "The Resident Patient." This story deserves closer study than it has yet received for the light it may somehow shed on Doyle, because it is the most medical of all the Holmes stories, and in fact Doyle puts its doctor, Percy Trevelyan, in a position that must have been his 1893 idea of paradise. Trevelyan is able to practise the kind of medicine he wants (a specialty in nervous diseases; Doyle had recently abandoned an unsuccessful practice as an eye specialist) with the support of a rich resident patient who pays all the bills.22 But of course wickedness and murder spoil this idyllic arrangement, just as Doyle may have felt that his own orderly life, or anyone's, could be threatened by immorality or illness. (Three months after this story was published, his wife's fatal tuberculosis was diagnosed.) "The Resident Patient" does not have the same plot as the last three stories that have been considered, although there is the same element of misdirection in that a bogus patient is brought to see Dr. Trevelyan to keep him busy while someone else does the dirty work in another part of the house. What it does have, apart from the absence of women, is a hanging. Hangings, other than those implied at the end of the judicial process, are rare in the canon, but here are two, in stories published just five months apart: one that is a suicide and one that is meant to be taken as one, but revealed as murder when Holmes examines microscopic clues. This hanging takes place in a bedroom; and although bedrooms are primarily used for sleeping, when kangaroo courts are not being held in them by released convicts, one is entitled to suspect a sexual subtext when an effeminate man is surprised, gagged, and tied up in his bed. Blessington, or Sutton as he proves to be, is effeminate from his "reedy" voice to his "long night-dress." He also has red hair—one thinks back to Duncan Ross of John Clay's red-headed league. And of course his name, Blessington, suggests Beddington of "The Stock-Broker's Clerk," just as Tobin, the "care-taker" killed by the bank gang in this tale, suggests Tuson, the police officer involved in "The Stock-

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Broker's Clerk." (Beddington also suggests, as Donald Redmond points out in Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Sources, the name of Beddoes in "The 'Gloria Scott'," a story with a plot suggestive of that in "The Resident Patient" but which is outside the present examination. It is noteworthy for present purposes that its first syllable is "bed.") "His secret was a shameful one," Holmes says of Sutton at the close of this adventure. But shameful in exactly what way? It seems a curious word to use in describing a record of coldblooded robbery and murder, and from Holmes the guardian of justice it is surely an indefensible word to describe having turned informer. It is understandable that Sutton wanted to hide his identity, simply to protect himself, but it is difficult to explain Holmes's use of such a word as "shameful," rather than "dangerous," and his reference to Sutton as a "wretch." One is tempted to think that Holmes knows more of Sutton's secret than Watson reveals: detects a sexual bond, or the possibility of one, among some of the Worthingdon bank gang. Presumably Dr. Trevelyan himself is not tied by any such bond; he is the physician, not the patient. In fact his specialty in nervous diseases (which in Victorian times were not much distinguished from mental illnesses and perversions) makes him exactly the right clinical observer for this situation. His monograph on "obscure nervous lesions" has reminded readers23 of a monograph by an "alienist" in another Doyle story, "A Medical Document" in Round the Red Lamp. Its title there: "Obscure Nervous Lesions in the Unmarried." Obviously its subject is sexual frustration or that unflagging Victorian interest, masturbation. The mere absence of women in a story, or in a group of men, does not prove the presence of active homosexuality. Even in a prison—where Biddle and Hayward and Moffat had spent some years, where the Beddingtons had recently been, where Killer Evans had spent five years, and where John Clay at the end of his tale can expect to wind up—even in a prison, where men are confined at close quarters and without the company of women, not everyone becomes homosexual. But many do, and Doyle surely knew it and portrayed Holmes as enough of a realist to recognize the results when they presented themselves. Watson spares his readers the details, if there were any overt details; even if there were none, surely Holmes can recognize or sense the potential and take it into account. As Rosenberg points out in Naked Is the Best Disguise, a riding crop is a curious weapon to use against "John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger," but somehow Holmes considers it appropriate—and he proves to be right: one cut of the whip disables Clay. From his long discussion of "The Red-Headed League," Rosenberg proceeds24 to a consideration of homosexual elements in some of the other Holmes stories. In particular, he finds reference to Oscar Wilde, the great scandalous homosexual of the 1890s, in The Sign of the Four25 and "The Empty House." Throughout his book Rosenberg uses techniques of word play, free association, leaping to conclusions, and— occasionally—close reading of the text, all in a breathless mixture that has tended to infuriate Sherlockians.26 "I have never seen anything to match the slipshod reasoning, impertinence for impertinence's sake, and general humourless [expletive deleted]27 of Naked Is the Best Disguise" howled John Linsenmeyer.28 He objected not only to the tone but to such Rosenbergian conclusions as the essential similarity of Colonel Sebastian Moran and Friedrich Nietzsche, the sexual meanings of religious rituals echoed in "The Empty House" ("blasphemous"), General Gordon's pederasty, and so on.29 Certainly it is difficult to read Rosenberg without becoming distracted and annoyed by the typographic shrieks as the author stumbles upon what he claims are references to

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Nietzsche, Dionysus, Browning, Melville, and Catullus. There remains, however, Rosenberg's central argument: the existence, indeed the omnipresence in the Holmes tales, of what he calls the Conan Doyle Syndrome. That syndrome, he says, consists of "obsessive idea and image clusters . . . in an obligatory or climactic scene in tandem with other obsessive elements, all of which were irrelevant to the stories in which Doyle had implanted them." In more detail: This "sin-drome," so called because of its central theme of illicit love or sexuality linked to a set of unique Doylean images and ideas, is expressed with the following elements: (A) After using his superlative reasoning and detective powers to penetrate the mystery brought to him, Sherlock Holmes generally anticipates the criminal's plan of action and goes to the scene of the intended crime. In other instances he sets a trap for the suspected malefactor. (B) There, with Watson and sometimes others as well, he conducts a vigil at night or in a dark room for the (C) arrival of the unknown person (or one known only to Holmes) or of a dangerous criminal or murderer. (D) Before or after, sometimes before and after, the arrival of the expected "man of violence" one or more printed or written word references will be made (books, words written on paper, walls, etc.), usually by the all-revealing Sherlock Holmes, which evoke the already mentioned heterosexual or deviant sexuality, which is then linked to some form of drastic punishment and the private and legal murder of individuals and masses of people. (E) When the expected "unknown violent man" does finally appear after the long night vigil, another uniquely Doylean surprise will occur: There is a sudden reversal, switching or confusion of the sexes. Instead of a man, a woman will appear, or a man dressed as a woman. Or he will prove to be effeminate or weak. Conversely, a suspected woman will appear as a man. . . . Sometimes the confusion or switching of the sexes is expressed . . . in verbal terms: by the verbal manipulation of names or by means of allusions to literary works in which transvestism plays a very important part. (F) A hand-to-hand combat will follow. . . . (G) . . . In every story Sherlock Holmes is the unquestioning, incorruptible guardian of the Victorian criminal and moral codes. As such his unvarying role is that of the detector, preventer, judge, and punisher of every larcenous or immoral act, especially those that are sexually deviant.30 Or as he summarizes the idea later in the book: . . . a personified fraction of Doyle's multiplex personality emerges from his psychic inner room to commit a forbidden, sexual, antisocial act. But in every story, that other psychic component named Sherlock Holmes arrives to prevent its consummation or to punish his sibling malefactor.31 Rosenberg demonstrates the appearance of this syndrome in "The Red-Headed League," "The Cardboard Box," "The Empty House," "The Illustrious Client," and to a lesser degree other stories. The reader can, however, be excused for not demonstrating unqualified enthusiasm for it, for two reasons. One is that it seems a serious charge to lay against the respectable Doyle; the other, curiously enough, is that such a "syndrome" is surprisingly easy to find once you are looking for it. One would expect to find allusions to murder in a detective story, and clues must often take the form of the printed word, so that Rosenberg's "obsessive elements" are not so surprising. Similarly, the

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essence of a detective story is that a person on the side of law and order should intercept and punish a wrongdoer. Perhaps it is more helpful to ask why Doyle's personality led him to write detective stories at all—although it must be remembered that he also wrote historical romances, among other things, and liked them better than the Holmes tales. Is it then a harsh or scandalous thing to say of Doyle that his detective stories meet this syndromic pattern? I say no. The subconscious of anyone, and most of all anyone with the magpie mind and complex soul of a literary creator, contains many incompatible traits, including no doubt some that would horrify that person if he had to face them on a conscious level. Scholars' success in finding them in the writings, or at least in speculating about their appearance there, is no impeachment of the author's character; if anything it is a testimonial to his talent as a writer, his ability to make good stories out of the workings of his unconscious as well as his conscious mind. There has not been a stampede to use the Rosenberg technique on other Holmes stories, although a casual reference to it is pretty likely to draw a laugh in Sherlockian circles. (Thomas Dandrew presumably was looking for laughs when he combed "The Man With the Twisted Lip" for homosexual double entendres.32) Dana Martin Batory has tried it seriously several times on stories whose surface sexual elements have been considered in previous chapters: "The Sussex Vampire," "Thor Bridge," and "The Veiled Lodger."33 Patrick Drazen has looked at "The Red Circle" in a similar light.34 Once you have the knack, it is easy enough to apply the formula to any story—especially the part of it which, in Batory's summary, "occurs when the printed or written word, in any form, is accompanied by allusions to some form of debased sexual behaviour— either heterosexual, homosexual, or both."35 The opening paragraphs of "The Devil's Foot" provide a striking example, for in this story, which as noted earlier is about adultery, the author goes out of his way at the beginning to talk about printed matter (Holmes's telegram and his researches into the Cornish and Chaldean languages) and mass death ("innumerable seamen have met their end" in Mounts Bay). And in this story the climactic scene is certainly the one in which Holmes and Watson, together in a room, solve the question of the murder method just before the arrival of the man of violence, Leon Sterndale. "The Six Napoleons" is another story with excellent possibilities for the disciple of Rosenberg. Certainly written material is of importance in this story—indeed, Watson makes some fun of Horace Harker, the fussy journalist who has trouble writing a story about his own adventure—and so is mass death in the form of Napoleon's bloody sweep across Europe and history. The climactic scene takes place, again in a room and this time at night, when Holmes and Watson and Lestrade wait for the arrival of a man and his Napoleon; but it is difficult to see what reversal of the sexes there is. Nevertheless, "The Six Napoleons" has a good deal of sex in it. As Mary Ann Kluge points out, "flat-chested, respectable and most unromantic," a phrase used about houses in this story, would be more apropos as a description of women. "We are fairly sure that in 1900 Watson was unattached and perhaps he is more concerned with a possible romantic involvement," she writes.36 More importantly, this story was published in 1904, during the period when Doyle was married to one woman and in love with another, so that sexual matters may have been much to the fore in his unconscious. As Kluge further points out, much of the story—the red herring that distracts everyone except Holmes—is about " 'idee fixe,' a singularly Freudian concept of the time." In describing and speculating about the idee fixe, Watson gives an important further clue to just what is really going on. He speculates that the busts of Napoleon are being smashed

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by someone who has become unhinged, perhaps through reading about the Napoleonic wars. Or, he goes on, it could be someone "who had possibly received some hereditary family injury through the great war." Hereditary injury must be a euphemism for venereal disease, which it seems is one of the hazards of war and which does affect the sufferers' children at times. Perhaps it is being suggested that something is being punished (whether that something is immorality or war) by sexual dysfunction—which in literal terms, as one of the classic social diseases, was an incurable terror to the Victorians, and which in a psychological sense still frightens. That is only a single reference, although it does suggest what may have been on Doyle's mind. But there is more. Beppo has, as it turns out, lost something in one of those busts of Napoleon, the black pearl, which he must search for even at the risk of his life. When one observes that the name of the firm that made the busts is Gelder's, it is hard not to conclude that what he has really lost is his virility. Doyle never uses a name, or makes an allusion, without some reason, and of course to geld is to castrate. So it appears that this curious story, which on the surface has no sex in it, nor even a love interest, is in fact strung through with an idee fixe — not the one Watson suggests but a sexual one, an anxiety about the loss of manhood. That tone supplies the sexual reversal that is required for the operation of Rosenberg's syndrome.37 One more example can be added to the list of stories in which this complex of sexual motifs can be found—at least by someone who is eagerly looking for it. Of course, castration anxiety is not a specifically homosexual problem—if anything, it is more likely to appear in a heterosexual who is for some reason intimidated by women or afraid of being unable to rise to the occasion with them. Appropriately, then, there are hints of that neurosis in various places throughout the canon in which characters and situations are absolutely heterosexual. The key to finding them is recognizing that castration anxiety can present itself as concern about other kinds of mutilation: the loss of the engineer's thumb, the loss of Alec Fairbairn's ear (as suggested in Chapter II), or some other amputation. Donald Redmond has perceptively pointed out38 that a whole series of one-legged men hobble through the canon, "or through John H. Watson's nightmares," Redmond adds. He lists Jonathan Small in The Sign of the Four, Josiah Amberley in "The Retired Colourman," the grocer's man in "The Beryl Coronet," and such twisty-legged men as Hugh Boone (he of the twisted lip) and Henry Wood (the crooked man), and he notes the maker of "artificial knee-caps" in "The Red-Headed League." Doyle's Watson, says Redmond, "suffered a real enough shoulder wound, which left long-term problems of mental confusion upon occasion. He suffered culture shock . . . so that he had a horror of amputations, and occasional confusion about his own aching leg." He does not actually label this neurosis "castration anxiety," but in a ladies' man like Watson the diagnosis is evident enough. So it is in the case of Jonathan Small, who joined the army in the first place to get away from a paternity suit and was punished with the loss of a vital member. And Francis Prosper, the grocer's man, whose role in the story is as a red herring, is specifically presented as a lover. (As far as I know, no Sherlockian has pointed out that Francis Prosper, created in 1892, is echoed in Doyle's story "The Club-Footed Grocer," published in 1898 [so that its central figure is one of the last of his kind to appear] and found in the collection Round the Fire Stories. "The Club-Footed Grocer" has no sexual element in it whatever; its plot in fact is much the same as that of such conspicuously male stories as "The 'Gloria Scott'" and "The Resident Patient.") Surely it is significant, too, that in both of the passages in which Watson tells firsthand about receiving a wound, he also talks about close emotional 137

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relationships with men: the "devotion" of his orderly, Murray, on the first page of A Study in Scarlet, and the love scene with Holmes, already discussed, in "The Three Garridebs." Something about bloodletting makes Watson turn romantic. It is not only in the Holmes stories, by the way, that Doyle lets the blood run pretty freely. Sir Nigel is full of mayhem, for example, and the humour does not altogether hide the slaughter in the Brigadier Gerard stories. Of course every part of the body is involved, not only the legs (and the short story "The Retirement of Signor Lambert" is a gruesome re-use of "The Cardboard Box" motif); but in any catalogue of mutilation in Doyle's writings, a place of honour must go to the narrative of The Rev. Ignatius Morat, the Jesuit in The Refugees whose legs have been deliberately blown apart with gunpowder by the Iroquois. Gavin Lambert perceives a rather different pattern of references to mutilation in Doyle's stories, a "curious link between sexual desire and physical disfigurement" he calls it in an exposition that would delight Rosenberg.39 He points to "The Illustrious Client" and "The Veiled Lodger" in particular, as well as the miscellaneous horrors found in "Wisteria Lodge," "The Sussex Vampire," "The Devil's Foot," and "The Creeping Man." He notes that these are all stories from Doyle's later years; erroneously he also includes the displaced early story "The Cardboard Box." "Severed ears, squashed heads, dissolved and ruined faces, the academic capering wildly from branch to branch of a moonlit tree," writes Lambert, "— the cycle closes with some terrible and grotesque symbols that ironically recall their author's remark about unconscious literature." These late allusions all are more or less to do with faces, and one could add others, such as the shattered and unrecognizable face of the corpse in The Valley of Fear, or the busts (ersatz faces) in "The Empty House," "The Six Napoleons," and "The Mazarin Stone." True, there are hideous faces in earlier stories too—that of Drebber as early as A Study in Scarlet, that of little Lucy in "The Yellow Face," and of course that of "The Man With the Twisted Lip'—but such images do seem to concentrate in later stories. The missing and twisted legs, on the other hand, belong largely to the earlier years, with only two (the news vendor in "The Illustrious Client" and Josiah Amberley in "The Retired Colourman") coming after the turn of the century, after Holmes's return from Reichenbach. In a remarkable recent article in the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Andre Gabriel examines Holmes himself from the point of view of Freudian psychology. He describes Holmes as a voyeur, who "enjoys watching people as they perform wrong, forbidden acts" (and he suggests interestingly that "voyeurism may well be the essence of the detective story"). Gabriel goes on: Scoptophilia (voyeurism) is generally considered a symptom of castration anxiety. Indeed, Holmes craves risk. . . . Holmes's superego is too strong to let him become a criminal, so he contents himself with watching criminals. What I conclude, then, is that in the father-mother-son triangle, the young Holmes received a sadistic view of the world. . . . Holmes's dread of women is linked to his fear of castration, which makes him ignore penisless beings. He only notices women who behave like men. . . . The voyeur has a triple preoccupation: he wants to see how someone is castrated, how he can castrate someone else, and how he can be castrated himself. . . . Holmes endeavors to negate his castration anxiety through exhibitionism.40

It cannot be stressed enough in this sort of context that such words as "castration," "voyeur," and "exhibitionism" are technical terms in the psychologist's vocabulary, not to be taken, except in pathological cases, for their apparent meaning.41 A man with

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castration anxiety does not walk around clutching his testicles and looking nervous; rather, he feels his self-esteem and perhaps virility threatened in subtler ways; he fears violence or "punishment" for his supposed misdeeds, and yet somehow courts them by taking risks. A voyeur does not necessarily peep into windows, but makes a life of looking into things (such as crimes, perhaps) that people want to hide. An exhibitionist does not necessarily take off his clothes, but may disguise himself, dress as a member of the opposite sex, or behave flamboyantly and enjoy drama. Clearly, all such descriptions can be applied to Holmes as he is seen throughout the canonical stories. Gabriel's point is that Holmes "is the materialization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fantasies," and one can say the same about the other aspects of the stories that have been previously discussed, from Watson's fear of one-leggedness to the frequent appearance of mangled faces. Why do such phenomena appear? In some way, presumably, the prosthesis fixation and the castration anxiety are Doyle's own. One cannot blame battle fatigue for Doyle's traits as one can for Watson's; Doyle saw very little military action and participated in none, something he always rather regretted. The sexual conflicts that were a major influence in his life from 1897 until at least 1906 might, of course, be expressed in the form of castration anxiety, but it will be observed that the one-legged and twisty-legged men, at least, are concentrated in the period before Doyle met Jean Leckie in 1897. One looks for some other source of anxiety and repression in the straitlaced Doyle. At a minimum, one sees in the move from legs in the early stories to faces in the later ones some shift in Doyle's subconscious, perhaps from a concern with virility to a concern with the public looks of things. What caused the manifestation of these repressed urges or concerns to take the exact form they did remains, of course, to be determined. An encounter with a particular mutilated individual is the most obvious explanation, and of course Doyle as a physician had plenty of exposure to amputations and other such horrors. Indeed, Dr. Joseph Bell, his teacher at medical school and the putative model for Sherlock Holmes, walked with a limp. And Edwards puts great stress on Doyle's 1882 encounter with Henry Highland Garnet, the black orator who was briefly the United States minister to Liberia. Garnet had lost a leg in an industrial accident, and Edwards, who convincingly expounds the influences of Garnet's abolitionist career on Doyle's writings, connects that loss with the mutilation of Septimius Goring, the central figure in Doyle's "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement."42 It is entirely possible, if Garnet made as great an impression on Doyle as Edwards thinks, that his obsession with damaged legs sprang from that encounter. Doyle's unconscious passive sexual attitude, one of Holmes's traits that I have noted, can also be traced in his narrative technique [Gabriel writes]. One cannot avoid noticing Doyle's obsessive interest in the spatial introduction of Holmes's new clients. . . . quite often their appearance is rather violent. . . . Doyle is also fascinated with eyes.43

(This last is not surprising—as Donald A. Redmond has sensibly reminded me—for a physician who had trained to be an eye surgeon. For what it is worth, it must be recalled that Freudian analysis sees eyes as a common symbol for testicles.) Here is Gabriel's conclusion, drawing from the Freudian belief that personality troubles are the result of sexual learning in young childhood: Doyle is involved in a triple proxy: through Holmes, he watches people who are engaged in evil but nonsexual activities. He can comfort himself, therefore, by saying that he does not wish to make love to his mother or anyone else, nor does he even wish to watch his parents making love. Instead, he writes about Holmes, a

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defender of what is right, watching people perform nonsexual, evil deeds such as murder. Thus, through his artistic creation, Doyle establishes his loyalty to his father.44

This is all surprisingly convincing to the scholar who knows something about Doyle—as Gabriel apparently does not, for he passes over the important sexual conflicts of Doyle's life with the curious remark that he was "a very balanced man who married twice." Indeed, he does not take any of those conflicts from Doyle's adult life into account in his analysis. (What an effect ten years of voluntary celibacy might have on the unconscious mind of a man already troubled in some partly sexual way!) More directly relevant to Gabriel's hypothesis would be some reference to Doyle's well-known obsession with his mother, who was his closest friend until she died in 1920, and to the weakness and unimportance of his sporadically alcoholic, sporadically unbalanced father. It would come as little surprise to have it certified by a Freudian analyst that Doyle's unconscious mind was desperate to complete that father's overthrow and marry that mother. Small wonder if elements suggesting those desires should surface in his writings about Holmes. As the first chapter of the present book said, "Freudian" readings are not popular with many readers, who prefer all the meaning of a story to be on its surface. Often, too, they prefer its meaning to exclude anything sexual. But there is no reason beyond prejudice for such an attitude to persist in the face of accumulated evidence that sexual meanings are there, and that details are piled up in a way the meaning of which would be clear to Freud. This chapter has found motifs of homosexuality and effeminacy in half a dozen stories that are not, on the surface, about anything of the kind. Such a conclusion should not lead to any disgust, or to an impression that there is a powerful strain of homosexuality in Doyle's writings, let alone in Doyle himself. That would not be true. What is unquestionably true is that Doyle used characters, and set scenes, to express human life in all its complexity. The final chapter turns from the less pleasant sexual topics of this chapter to the most pleasant sexual topic of all: successful, even sometimes happy, heterosexual love and marriage.

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£4>T~Mie Missing Three-Quarter" is generally con±. sidered to be an undistinguished story, in spite of such merits as the comic appearance of Lord Mount-James, the rich man who travels on the Bays"He never looked up until Holmes's hand was on his shoulder." water bus, and the fine cameo portraits of Cyril 77?^ Adventure of the Missing ThreeOverton the rugby skipper and Dr. Leslie Armstrong Quarter. the distinguished scientist. The plot lacks those features that Holmes likes to call "recherche" and "outre:" orange pips, mobs of redheaded men, kings in vizard masks. Holmes himself does not appear to good advantage, both in that he jumps to a conclusion (Armstrong's guilt) absurdly wide of the mark, and in his awkward methods of investigation—following a carriage across open country on a bicycle, for example, in the hope that he will not be seen.1 Artistically, the tale has such defects as an incomprehensible title2 and a reliance on a fuzzy reproduction of Arthur Conan Doyle's handwriting.3 But for the purposes of this book "The Missing Three-Quarter" is an important story, for none provides a better example of its central thesis. For most of this tale, which was published in 1904, Holmes is investigating the disappearance of a young man, a star athlete at the University of Cambridge. Kidnapping is feared, even murder. But the explanation proves to be quite different: no crime at all, but voluntary disappearance by Godfrey Staunton, who was even willing to miss his team's most crucial game to be at the bedside of his dying wife. The reader is given a touching description that suggests strongly the work of one of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, such as Sir Edward Burne-Jones: A woman, young and beautiful, was lying dead upon the bed. Her calm, pale face, with dim, wide-opened blue eyes, looked upward from amid a great tangle of golden hair. At the foot of the bed, half sitting, half kneeling, his face buried in the clothes, was a young man, whose frame was racked by his sobs.

The brief explanation that follows only tidies up details: Staunton was not free to marry without offending his tightfisted uncle, but true love cannot be denied, and when he "became passionately attached to his landlady's daughter," who inevitably "was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good," of course he married her. Now consumption has claimed her. There has been no crime of any sort, and everyone, with

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the possible exception of old Lord Mount-James the miser, has acted for the best. This story is, in short, the perfect example of what the past nine chapters have been talking about. On the surface it is a detective story; underneath, when all the secrets are revealed, it is just as much a story of sexual passion and romance. "Our surprise at the denouement of The Missing Three-Quarter',' writes Nordon, "largely depends on our having grown accustomed to a very different sort of conclusion."4 That is quite true, and "The Missing Three-Quarter" is of course an extreme case, but still the reader who has been looking closely at the previous Holmes stories, rather than judging them by a preconception, should be used to love interests by now. This love interest does have something that the stories discussed in the previous chapters do not: it is a healthy and happy one, and although the story ends in a "house of grief," the grief is the result, not of adultery or rape or jealousy or sadism, but of an external factor beyond human control. This love brings good experiences rather than bad ones to the man and woman involved in it. But few of the love affairs chronicled anywhere in the Holmes tales lead to that sort of success; the romance of Dr. Watson and Miss Morstan in The Sign of the Four is one exception, and this chapter will look at one or two others, but there are not many. (The canon has, to be sure, peaceful households, but mostly in the background. It also has—what is often something quite different—a supply of docile wives. Brad Keefauver writes: These ladies seem incapable of independent criminal careers, yet go along with whatever their husbands are up to. Mrs. Rucastle ["The Copper Beeches"] and Mrs. Hayes ["The Priory School"] fall into this category, as their lack of known first names would seem to indicate.5

It would be a mistake to assume—especially in the context of Victorian domestic life, which could be brutal—that a compliant wife always means a loving marriage.) Even in the reciprocated love story of "The Missing Three-Quarter," happiness becomes despair; but Doyle can be forgiven for that since, if there were no evil day of any kind, not much of a detective story could be plotted. The "consumption of the most virulent kind" that kills Mrs. Staunton—she, too, has no known first name—is the villain here, and is of particular interest because of the consumption that killed Doyle's own first wife, Louise. In 1904 she was still alive (she died in 1906) but she had been suffering from the disease for eleven years, and Doyle must have known that it would claim her life before much longer. Clearly, that prospect was on his mind when he wrote "The Missing Three-Quarter," and it was himself whom he imagined "half crazed with grief and weeping at the bedside. Whether he foresaw that he would react in that way, or suspected that he would not but thought that he should, is a question about Doyle's emotions that it is impossible to answer. Staunton is certainly a self-portrait by Doyle, one of many (all partial, of course) self-portraits throughout the stories—Watson and Holmes are two of them, as earlier chapters have indicated. The "enormous young man, sixteen stone of solid bone and muscle," is if anything an understatement of Doyle himself, who is described by Nordon as "a giant, over six foot tall and weighing over seventeen stone."6 One does not see much of the polymath author in the football skipper's dumb innocence, although he was quite capable of self-mockery to that extent; but certainly one sees him in the fanatic of amateur sport. Strength, courage, speed and resource are great qualities to include in a single game [Doyle writes about rugby football]. I have always wished that it had come more my way in life. . . . I played for a short time as a forward in the Edinburgh University team, but my want of knowledge of the game was too heavy a handicap. After-

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wards I took to Association [another form of football], and played first goal and then back for Portsmouth, when that famous club was an amateur organization.7

Finally, it should be remembered that before he gave up medical practice and research Doyle had a special interest in tuberculosis, travelling to Berlin to investigate a new treatment and writing an article about it.8 This tragic story of young love has a parallel in one of the earliest Holmes stories: "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," published in 1891. In this fine story,9 as in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the love story has to do more with alibis and red herrings than with the motive and the crime itself. Young James McCarthy is accused of killing his father after a quarrel in which the older man urged the younger to marry their pretty neighbour, Alice Turner, and the younger man refused. Sherlock Holmes explains: This fellow is madly, insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office? No one knows a word of the matter, but you can imagine how maddening it must be to him to be upbraided for not doing what he would give his very eyes to do, but what he knows to be absolutely impossible. . . . It was with his barmaid wife that he had spent the last three days in Bristol [and so he has an alibi for the killing]. . . . Good has come out of evil, however, for the barmaid, finding from the papers that he is in serious trouble and likely to be hanged, has thrown him over utterly and has written to say that she has a husband already in the Bermuda Dockyard, so that there is really no tie between them.

The "barmaid" is much like the landlady's daughter in the story just considered: in each case the wife is socially unacceptable and the marriage must be kept secret from the family patriarch. The barmaid is apparently worthless, however, in sharp contrast both with Mrs. Staunton the good, beautiful and intelligent, and with Alice Turner. Miss Turner's "violet eyes" and general attractiveness, not to mention her frankness with Holmes about both the mystery and the love affair, strongly suggest Miss Hunter and Miss Smith of "The Copper Beeches" and "The Solitary Cyclist." Inevitably, after Holmes clears up the mystery (the killer was Miss Turner's father, but he is dying of diabetes, then an incurable disease, so no arrest need take place), the young couple get together. "There is every prospect," says the story's final sentence, "that the son and daughter may come to live happily together in ignorance of the black cloud which rests upon their past." One can practically hear the violins play — or see a cinematic actor and actress walk off hand in hand into the sunset. The books Holmes is reading in the course of this story are of particular interest, as Otis Hearn has perceptively pointed out.10 They are works of Petrarch and (apparently) George Meredith, both love poets11 — in fact, says Hearn, poets whose work is particularly suitable to be mentioned in this story. Petrarch is relevant, he says, because "the story would have in it a case of idealized unrequited love," that of James McCarthy for Alice Turner; Meredith is relevant because "the love affair would head toward the requited kind, for better or worse." (He cites characteristic passages from the poets.) Hearn, a true Sherlockian, gives Watson the credit for such subtle literary allusions, but of course they are the work of Doyle — whether deliberate or the result of subconscious processes. A third story that offers a happy love affair is "The Bruce-Partington Plans." Here again love is cut short by death; the young man, Arthur Cadogan West, is killed as he 143

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tries to prevent a dastardly deed of espionage, and is much mourned by his fiancee, the last of the "four Violets"of the Sherlock Holmes tales. Her name is Violet Westbury, and she shows the pluck that the reader has come to associate with the other heroines and damsels in distress (all except, of course, Violet de Merville of "The Illustrious Client"). "Arthur was the most single-minded, chivalrous, patriotic man upon earth," she says. "He would have cut his right hand off before he would sell a State secret confided to his keeping." From a fiancee, mention of a different organ might be still more telling, but her loyalty and honesty shine through. She does not persuade Holmes at once, however. "It was black enough before against this young man, but our inquiries make it blacker," he tells Watson afterward. "His coming marriage gives a motive for the crime. He naturally wanted money." There speaks Holmes the avoider of matrimony, as well as Holmes whose profession is to bring even the apparently respectable to justice. In due course he does bring the crime home to someone even more respectable than Cadogan West, and Miss Westbury12 is comforted by the restoration of her lover's honour, if not the restoration of her lover himself. As it happens, she last saw him on the street, amid a fog, when he apparently spotted a passerby, called out, and ran off. Or, as Mycroft Holmes puts it, "he took two tickets for the theatre, escorted his fiancee halfway there, and then suddenly disappeared." And when Inspector Lestrade calls the proceeding a blind, Mycroft Holmes rightly retorts that it is "a very singular one." At the end of the story, Sherlock Holmes is able to explain Cadogan West's actions to the real thief: He saw your theft, but could not give the alarm . . . Leaving all his private concerns, like the good citizen that he was, he followed you closely in the fog and kept at your heels until you reached this very house. There he intervened, and then it was . . . that to treason you added the more terrible crime of murder.

The comparison — unusual because treason is conventionally rated the most terrible crime of all — is made more effective by the pathetic picture of Miss Westbury standing alone in the fog while her dear Arthur is bludgeoned to death and his body disposed of on the railway line. As mentioned in Chapter VII, Carr asserted that this story, published little more than a year after Doyle's marriage to Jean Leckie, was written "mainly to please Jean." Although there is no reason to think that she suggested the plot or that it has any direct connection with her, one can at least imagine that Doyle's still-fresh love for his wife gave impetus to this small picture of the love of Arthur (his own given name) Cadogan West and Miss Westbury. It is even possible that Doyle thought of his Jean when he wrote in the story's final paragraph of "a certain gracious lady," who of course is meant to be Queen Victoria. There is a curious sexual significance to the name of the villain in this story, Colonel Valentine Walter. (Of course Valentine is the patron saint of romance, but that is probably only a coincidence.) The name has several originals, according to Redmond, among them being Valentine Walter Bromley, a painter and illustrator. Another one: Col. Valentine Baker (1827-87) had been a distinguished army officer, serving in the Kaffir War and the Crimea, a spectator in the Franco-Prussian War; but he had been convicted at the Croydon assizes in 1875, and then cashiered out of the Army, for assaulting — apparently kissing — a Miss Dickinson in a railway carriage.13

Not only are the names Valentine Walter and Valentine Baker similar, and uncommon, 144

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but there is the appearance of the railway carriage, in which the real-life colonel committed an impropriety and onto which the fictional colonel deposited a body. That the colonel in the story proves to be a bounder, and all the more so in comparison with the heroic young clerk, is probably all the significance one should try to find. It is interesting, though, that the vigil at the end of the story and the sudden appearance of Colonel Valentine Walter with his "soft, handsome delicate features" strongly recall the Rosenberg "syndrome" pattern described in the preceding chapter.14. There is a loving young couple in another, and earlier, Holmes story that has a natural tie to 'The Bruce-Partington Plans," for it, too, is about the theft of state documents. It is of course "The Naval Treaty," and in it the role of Cadogan West is taken by Percy "Tadpole" Phelps, a childhood friend of Watson's and now a young official in the Foreign Office who was in charge of a secret treaty when it disappeared.15 His fiancee is Annie Harrison, who at the time the story begins has been nursing him through ten weeks of brain fever (that is, a nervous breakdown) brought on by the strain of the theft and the fear of losing his job and reputation. He is essentially a weak man — Watson's recollection of his character as a youth and his behaviour as an adult make that clear; but Miss Harrison is "a woman of rare character," as Holmes infers from her handwriting and Watson confirms after meeting her. And Holmes adds that "she is a good sort, or I am mistaken." She was visiting her fiance at the time of the crisis, "and she stayed on to nurse her lover, while brother Joseph, finding himself pretty snug, stayed on, too." And indeed Joseph Harrison turns out to be the bad one in the lot: Holmes finds at the end of the tale that he stole the treaty, and he attacks Holmes with a knife. At the climax of this story, Holmes waits for Harrison, "squatting in the rhododendron-bush" in the small hours of the morning, in a scene strongly reminiscent of the vigil16 in "The Speckled Band," which in fact Holmes mentions as he tells of his adventure. The situations are in fact so similar that in both stories the heroine has been given detailed instructions about keys, doors, and her sleeping arrangements, so that the room where the excitement will come is left invitingly empty. In "The Speckled Band," Helen Stoner has been sleeping in the room where her sister died, and so her stepfather tries to kill her there. In this story, Annie Harrison has been occupying the room where the treaty is hidden almost continuously for ten weeks, and her brother takes the first opportunity of her absence, contrived by Holmes, to stalk in and retrieve it. It was suggested in the discussion of "The Speckled Band" (see Chapter VI) that there are some sexual overtones to Holmes's interest in the lady's bedroom; sexual implications can perhaps be seen here, too, since she has been spending long days alone in a bedroom with her fiance (who, however, was "unconscious" and "raving," an interesting combination, throughout). One wonders, and is not told, whether there is a sexual side to the relationship between Phelps and Miss Harrison. One wonders, indeed, whether their engagement survives the revelation of her brother's villainy. Neither he nor she is the sort of paragon sketched out in Cadogan West and Miss Westbury, or for that matter McCarthy and Alice Turner, but their devotion is strongly suggested. In all four stories discussed so far, the healthy romantic love was between young people. In cliches, lovers are supposed to be young, of course, but one might expect some portraits of mature and married love from Doyle as well, especially as Doyle was never happier than in the mature married love of his later years. One such portrait has, of course, already been described: the affair of Philip Green and Lady Frances Carfax in the story that bears her name, a story written about four years after the beginning of Doyle's second marriage. Another is to be found in a much earlier story: "The Yellow 745

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Face," published in 1893, at a time when Doyle was enjoying domesticity with his first wife. "I am a married man and have been so for three years," says Grant Munro (Doyle had been married eight years). "During that time my wife and I have loved each other as fondly and lived as happily as any two that ever were joined. We have not had a difference, not one, in thought or word or deed." Now Effie Munro is behaving suspiciously, and it takes Holmes to investigate and find out that she is not in the smallest way disloyal to her husband, but rather is keeping a secret that might have distressed him. (This plot was repeated thirty years later, of course, in "The Sussex Vampire.") Most Sherlockian scholarship about "The Yellow Face" has concentrated on irrelevant matters such as the genetic principles behind the colouring of Mrs. Munro's mixed-race daughter.17 More important now is the low-key picture of this loving suburban couple — and, incidentally, the implication that Mrs. Munro, an attractive woman in many ways,18 was sufficiently mature in her emotions to have loved before, and now to be able to love again. One is made to envy Grant Munro. A third example of married love is to be found in a story that for various reasons deserves close attention: the last of the four Holmes novels, The Valley of Fear. Published in 1914 and 1915, written in 1913-14,19 The Valley of Fear is the longest,20 most complex, and arguably best of the Holmes novels. Charles B. Stephens wrote in 1949 of its "apparently lack of popularity, particularly among American readers,"21 and indeed it placed last among the novels in a 1959 poll of Sherlockians.22 But it has its fans, too; also in 1949 Carr wrote that "the first part, a separate unit called The Tragedy of Birlstone, is a very nearly perfect piece of detective-story writing. . . . More than this, it is the clearest example of Conan Doyle's contribution to the detective story."23 Critics have, however, written far more about the second half of the book, The Scowrers, which performs the same function as the second half of A Study in Scarlet: that is, it explains the long-ago events behind the murder Holmes has solved in the first half of the book. As in A Study in Scarlet, those long-ago events are set in the United States. It is generally agreed that the Vermissa Valley, the grim coal and iron country where those chapters are set, is the Shenandoah Valley of Pennsylvania; the Scowrers are the Mollie Maguires, who flourished there in the early 1870s; and the brave deeds of Birdy Edwards, the Pinkerton detective, are modelled on deeds told in Allan Pinkerton's own lurid book, The Mollie Maguires and the Detectives (1877).24 Edwards is the central figure of both halves of the novel, although in both of them he passes under other names, and in the first of them he is thought to be dead until the final chapter. He is John Douglas, master of Birlstone Manor, shot to death in his own library; and when Holmes reveals that he is alive and in hiding, having killed the man who was out to kill him, he tells the story of his early life, in which he passed as Jack McMurdo to infiltrate the murderous lodge of the Scowrers. It is perhaps an indication of Doyle's craftmanship that he makes Edwards an appealing character to the reader even when, as McMurdo, he is passing himself off as a coiner and murderer and getting cheerfully involved in deep-dyed villainy — and that he makes him dominate the first half of the book, almost to the exclusion of Holmes, even though he is believed to be dead. As young adventurer and as middle-aged squire, he is an attractive man, attractive to male comrades (though, as Douglas, not very sociable, out of concern for his safety) and, inevitably, attractive to women. It is that aspect of The Valley of Fear which requires attention in this book. Taking matters in Edwards's life chronologically one must start with his days in Vermissa, where practically his first act is to make advances to 146

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Ettie Shafter, daughter of his landlord. Miss Shatter, "singularly beautiful," is . . . of a German 25 type, with the piquant contrast of a pair of beautiful eyes. . . . Framed in the bright light of the open doorway, it26 seemed to McMurdo that he had never seen a more beautiful picture; the more attractive for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy surroundings. 27 A lovely violet growing upon one of those black slag-heaps of the mines would not have seemed more surprising.

The reader who has made it to this point in the present study will not be surprised to see the word "violet" used about a young and pretty woman, or to note that the young woman appears in the situation Doyle uses so often: framed in a doorway. Edwards — McMurdo — is struck with her, and "his pretty, coaxing ways" as well as a "glamour of experience and of mystery" attract her, though she tells him that she is committed to somene else. Miss Shafter's father seems to approve, until he finds out that McMurdo is a Scowrer, one of that bloodthirsty gang, and it is his banishment of McMurdo from under his roof that precipitates open declarations from the lady as well as the young man. "Suppose I had been first," he asks her, thinking of his rival, "would I have had a chance?" Her reply: "I wish to heaven that you had been first!" In a moment he is calling her "acushla" and then she is in his arms and asking, "Could you take me away?" . . . if you would fly with me, Jack, we could take father with us and live forever far from the power of these wicked men." Then there is a confrontation in which McMurdo cuts out his rival, Ted Baldwin. The bodymaster of the Scowrers rules that Miss Shafter is free to choose for herself, and his comment is revealing: "These girls! These girls! To think that the same petticoats should come between two of my boys! It's the devil's own luck! Well, it's the colleen inside of them that must settle the question." For Bodymaster McGinty, women are beneath notice. For McMurdo, clearly, they are of great importance; and perhaps it is noteworthy that the songs with which he thrills the bloodthirsty men at the lodge gathering are Irish love lyrics. In a further love scene, McMurdo's jitters and Miss Shafter's urgency to escape from the Vermissa Valley emphasize the grimness of matters involving the Scowrers — clearly violence and disaster are imminent — and push the lovers to a commitment. "You're the only one woman on earth to me," he says, and she coaxes from him a promise that "within a year at the furthest we will leave the valley behind us." From there the events move swiftly, with more killings and the news that there is a police spy after the Scowrers. (McMurdo gets another chance to show his chivalry, protesting to Bodymaster McGinty that it is "hard" on two innocent women and three children to be killed along with a foreman who is marked for death.) Soon enough comes the crisis, preceded by desperate promises between McMurdo and Miss Shafter. McMurdo traps the Scowrer leaders and is revealed as being the police spy himself, and quickly he leaves Vermissa Valley, accompanied by his love. In the early hours of the morning a beautiful woman and a much muffled man boarded a special train which had been sent by the railroad company, and made a swift, unbroken journey out of the land of danger. It was the last time that ever either Ettie or her lover set foot in the Valley of Fear. Ten days later they were married in Chicago, with old Jacob Shafter as witness of the wedding.

That last passage is a little puzzling, first because the father of the bride does not usually act as witness to a wedding and second because there is no indication of how Shafter got from Vermissa to Chicago, if the "much muffled man" is McMurdo. He must have made the trip immediately, though, if he valued his life. More striking than 147

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such considerations is Miss Shafter's willingness to leave her home, and presumably her friends, to start a new life with someone whom she discovered to have lied comprehensively to her about his past, his allegiances, and even his name. Women do leave their homes to marry their lovers, but one suspects that Miss Shafter was a very unusual woman to go with him, for all his blarney about "the sweet valleys of County Monaghan" and the "hint of romance, the feeling that strange things had happened to him in" Chicago, now revealed as persiflage. Her father, an opponent of the Scowrers from the beginning, doubtless warms to Edwards as soon as his real identity is made known, and Miss Shafter shows some evidence of having shared his views. But she has been willing, before McMurdo's advent, to make an attachment to Ted Baldwin the Scowrer; one concludes that the factor that matters is McMurdo's, Edwards's, personal attractions. Those attractions may be in his storytelling, in his dashing bravery, in his pugilism, in his personal beauty ("humorous gray eyes . . . ready smile . . . firmness of jaw"), even in his style of wooing and bestowing any caresses Miss Shafter may have allowed. At any rate, she follows him and marries him, and that plot element is one of Doyle's chief innovations in The Valley of Fear, which in general, as has been noted, is based in remarkable detail on what happened between the Pinkertons and the Mollie Maguires in the 1870s in the Shenandoah Valley (or at least on what Doyle, relying on biased sources, thought had happened). James McParland the Pinkerton agent did indeed make love to a young woman during his months at Shenandoah. But he did not even try to take her away. Only once during the whole time [I was giving evidence in court against the Mollies] did I feel bad [he is quoted as saying]. That was when I looked down and saw Mary Ann sitting there. She was a fine, decent girl, and maybe if I'd been the marry in' type, or if we'd met under different circumstances, something would have come of it. As it was I hate to think of what I did to her pride. She must have thought all I wanted out of her was to use her to trap Kerrigan.28

Miss Shafter must have comparable qualms, but she goes with her Jack and marries him, taking the name of Edwards in Chicago and some other name, not stated, when after a decade the imprisoned Scowrers get on her husband's trail and chase him to California. There, says the final chapter of The Scowrers, "the light went for a time out of his life when Ettie Edwards died." The cause of her death is not stated and so is presumably irrelevant — it was not murder, that is, and there is no suggestion of children and death in childbirth. The light does not stay out of Birdy Edwards's life for long. He escapes to England under the name of Douglas, and in England, in Doyle's curious phrase, "John Douglas . . . for a second time married a worthy mate." Her name is Ivy (her maiden surname unknown) and she is described, not in Watson's voice but in that of a third-person narrator, as "a beautiful woman, tall, dark, and slender, some twenty years younger than her husband." (At a guess, then, she is in her early thirties.) She tells Inspector MacDonald how she came to marry Douglas after meeting him at a boardinghouse in London. When asked whether there was "any romance, anything secret or mysterious, about the wedding," she has this sweet and sensible answer: "There was romance. There is always romance. There was nothing mysterious." "He had no rival?" "No, I was quite free." It is the middle of chapter v before she appears directly in the narrative, in the character of widow; already her behaviour is in question, Inspector MacDonald having 148

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infuriated Cecil Barker, Douglas's old friend from California, with his questions about Barker's relationship with the lady. "He loved me to come there," Barker says of Douglas, "and yet if his wife and I talked together or there seemed any sympathy between us, a kind of wave of jealousy would pass over him." Watson is made to go out of his way to encourage such suspicions in his reporting of Mrs. Douglas's testimony. When she asks: "Have you found anything out yet?" Watson immediately senses "an undertone of fear rather than of hope in the question." When the wedding ring is mentioned, he suspects "the faintest shadow of a smile" on her lips. As she leaves, "I was again conscious of that quick, questioning glance with which she had just surveyed us." Watson the character is convincing himself that Mrs. Douglas is involved in the death of her husband; Doyle the author is teasing the reader, begging the reader to guess not that Mrs. Douglas is a murderer but that she has some lighthearted secret to keep—that, in fact, her husband is not dead at all. At any rate, Watson's suspicion comes close to turning into a certainty at the beginning of the next chapter, when he hears "a little ripple of feminine laughter" and spots Mrs. Douglas in a tete-a-tete with Barker. "Here within a few hours of the tragedy were his wife and his nearest friend laughing together behind a bush in the garden which had been his." Not surprisingly, Watson urges on Holmes in the strongest of terms that "there is an understanding between those two people" and suggests that they are the murderers. Holmes is inclined to agree. "She does not shine as a wife even in her own account of what occurred," he notes, and adds in one of those comments that shed light on his own relations with the opposite sex: I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are aware, Watson, but my experience of life has taught me that there are few wives, having any regard for their husbands, who would let any man's spoken word stand between them and that husband's dead body. Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her. It was badly stage-managed; for even the rawest investigators must be struck by the absence of the usual feminine ululation.

However, he notes that "the Douglases were very attached to each other," and there is the puzzling absence of the dead man's wedding ring. "If a woman and her lover conspire to murder a husband, are they going to advertise their guilt by ostentatiously removing his wedding ring after his death?" (The ring has already been the basis of another observation: "Was Douglas, from what we hear of his fearless character, a man who would be likely to give up his wedding ring at such short notice, or could we conceive of his giving it up at all? No, no, Watson") Holmes does solve the mystery, of course: Douglas is alive, and Barker and Mrs. Douglas have known it all along, so they have had no cause for mourning. The dead man is Ted Baldwin, one of those Scowrers from long ago. The Douglases live on, for a few months at any rate; but they take a ship for South Africa, and from Cape Town Mrs. Douglas sends Barker a cable to say that Douglas has been "lost overboard in gale off St. Helena. No one knows how accident occurred." Holmes has no doubt: it was Professor Moriarty's doing. He makes no comment either about Mrs. Douglas's apparent calm in the face of the tragedy (although reading moods from a telegram is risky) or about the irony of the loss occurring off the island where Napoleon was exiled, exiled just as Birdy Edwards had been. He is too concerned with the eventual undoing of Professor Moriarty. It must be clear from this summary of the narrative that Mrs. Douglas is a remarkable

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woman, even if her husband does find it necessary to protect her from the gory sight of Baldwin's mangled head. She is able to help him concoct the elaborate deception, to remain calm in the face of chaos, and—almost—to get away with it all: almost, because Sherlock Holmes finds out the truth. For most of this first half of the book, The Tragedy of Birlstone, Mrs. Douglas appears in a most unfavourable light, as the widow who does not grieve; but when it is made clear what she has been doing, she receives Sherlock Holmes's tacit praise. The pretence she carries on is, in fact, a close parallel to the pretence that Edwards carries on during the second half of the book. If the love story of Edwards-McMurdo with Ettie Shafter is of limited importance beside the story of the Scowrers, the love story of Edwards-Douglas with Ivy is only slightly more important beside the other events at Birlstone. Mrs. Douglas is a blind; the story could easily be constructed without her, but she provides a target for Watson's easily diverted suspicion and a plausible explanation for the "enigmatic clue"29 of the missing wedding ring. Douglas really need not have a wife, though it is true that there must be somebody to help him in his deception and a wife is perhaps the obvious choice. Then why is it not the same wife Edwards married first? Why does Doyle make Ettie Edwards die and John Douglas remarry? To some extent the answer is that the wife must not know the details of the danger that has been hanging over Douglas's head. Mrs. Douglas's vague answers about her husband's constant worry and delirious mutterings prolong the suspense, because Holmes and Inspector MacDonald cannot find out from them just who was after Douglas. The cloud is more ominous and the mystery is deeper because of her ignorance. But, after all, the detectives would not be much further ahead if they knew the Vermissa background, or even if they could put the name Ted Baldwin to the mysterious cyclist from Tunbridge Wells. And a wife who could lie and say that her husband is lying dead on the study floor surely could also lie and say that she did not know all the details of his scarlet past. I suggest that the real reason for the death of one wife and the appearance of a second wife is that Doyle was putting his own life into The Valley of Fear. Ettie Shafter, pretty and a little dumb and now dead, is Louise Conan Doyle; Ivy, feminine and strong and absolutely devoted to her husband, is Jean Conan Doyle, to whom the author had now been married for some seven years. The description of Douglas as "a remarkable man, both in character and in person," certainly could be applied to Doyle. "In age he may have been about fifty," the author continues—Doyle was at this time fifty-five—'with a strong-jawed, rugged face, a grizzling moustache, peculiarly keen gray eyes, and a wiry, vigorous figure which had lost nothing of the strength and activity of youth." One could do worse in describing Arthur Conan Doyle. "He was cheery and genial to all, but somewhat offhand in his manners, giving the impression that he had seen life in social strata on some far lower horizon than the county society of Sussex." And Doyle had by this time been living for several years in Sussex, in an old house, called Windlesham, which—like Douglas—he had not inherited but purchased. (It was a short distance from Groombridge Place, Kent, which is agreed to be "the inspiration—not the model—for Birlstone Manor."30) Putting himself into his book, Doyle changed his surname as little as he could, accurately pictured his first and second marriages, and incidentally made himself, quite truthfully, a man who, for all his derring-do and adventuring, was fond of women and comfortable in marriage. It is the only explanation of Douglas's two marriage, and it must have given the author and his wife a smile of satisfaction. This happy marriage, pictured in the last and maturest of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels, is as significant as the tortured love affairs he had been putting into his stories 750

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a decade before. At last the author's own domestic life was a source of happiness and security, something that it had not provided for many years—not, indeed, since his earliest childhood, for domestic trouble had not begun with Louise Conan Doyle's illness. Before that there had been the lonely grind of a penniless young doctor; before that, isolation at inhospitable schools; and before that, it is now becoming clear, a family and home in Edinburgh where affection and stability could not be taken for granted. The difficulties of Doyle's childhood home in Edinburgh have apparently not been known by Doyle biographers until very recently. The author's father, artist and architect Charles Altamont Doyle, was weak and ineffectual; so much even Carr, the authorized biographer, has admitted. The compensating strength of Mary Foley Doyle, who held her brood together and supported them on virtually nothing, meanwhile inculcating in young Arthur a detailed knowledge of heraldry and a sharp awareness of aristocratic descent, has become legend. In 1978 something like the truth about Charles Doyle appeared with the publication of his sketchbook under the title The Doyle Diary. In his Introduction, Michael Baker tells the story: the elder Doyle was not merely shiftless, not merely an epileptic (in a time before epilepsy was controllable), but possibly insane and definitely an alcoholic who ended his days in a series of institutions. Edwards, Doyle's newest biographer, has taken the unpleasant subject much further, describing Charles Doyle's condition and household where there is evidence and moving beyond it to speculate about the effect on young Arthur. He describes as "preeminent" the concern with drink in Doyle's writings, and observes, "His reasons for knowing it were simple enough: his youth from his birth in 1859 until his family quitted Edinburgh forever in 1882-83 was dominated by his father's conquest by alcohol."31 He goes on: Mary Foley Doyle had married her husband when she was seventeen, in 1855, and she was then faced with a deepening misery as she struggled to keep the house together, bring forth ten children, see the dwindling and ultimate disappearance of his income, and be dragged into Heaven alone still knows what labyrinth of endless sordid attempts to maintain some standards of decency."32

He hints, but does not say, that Mary Doyle suffered not merely these privations and burdens but physical abuse as well. Memories of such a household can be seen in several of the Holmes stones, as well as in Doyle's other writings, Edwards points out: the abuse of Mary Eraser, Lady Brackenstall, in "The Abbey Grange" is a strong example. Indeed, he speculates, it was a childhood with a slobbering father and busy mother that gave him a lifelong admiration for the strength and goodness of women (so much so that Edwards's second chapter is titled "The Hero as Woman"). That argument would be stronger if the Holmes stories were heavily populated with strong women; in fact, there are only a few, such as Irene Adler and Violet Hunter, the heroine of "The Copper Beeches" (a story that, as has been seen, is directly due to the suggestions of Mary Doyle). Certainly Doyle's mother was a dominating figure in his life, as biographers since Carr have been quick to recognize. But the surprise is not her omnipresence in his literary work but her absence from so much of it. Doubtless she is the original of Dame Ermyntrude, the grandmother of Sir Nigel Loring in Doyle's historical novels; but it is hard to find her in the Holmes tales. The important women there seem to be based, as previous chapters have shown, on the author's first and second wives, on his sisters, or (in Ms. Adler's case) on the reading and erotic imagination of a young man. At the same time, it is notorious that the way a man and woman court, marry, and 757

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keep house depends considerably on what their parents did: they may emulate their parents, or they may swing to the opposite extreme, but they can hardly ignore the environment in which they grew up. Presumably Doyle was anxious to do better by his own wife than his father had done by his, and in a tale such as The Valley of Fear one can see Doyle's self-portrait, the picture of a man who has come through difficulties of many sorts to settle in his later years in a happy marriage and stately rural home. The ten chapters of this book have looked in varying detail at most of the sixty Sherlock Holmes stories—all four of the novels and short stories from all five collections and from every period of Doyle's working life. In those stories have been found sexual and romantic elements ranging from the tame to the bizarre, from the essential to the peripheral. The survey has not been exhaustive: I have not, for example, speculated on why in his retirement Holmes is made to write a book on bee-keeping that emphasizes "the segregation of the queen," a possible late evidence of unease with the opposite sex. But I think I have demonstrated that sex is so universally found in these stories as to be an integral part of them, not just incidental. In some cases I think its presence is deliberate—"conscious" might be a better word— and in others not. Romance was certainly built into The Sign of the Four, where an examination of the structure finds careful alternation between adventure and romance, and sex into "The Illustrious Client," in which there would be no plot without excesses by some of the characters. And it seems likely that Doyle was deliberate in his choice of the date for 'The Abbey Grange" and in giving Birdy Edwards two wives and a grizzling moustache. On the other hand, it does not seem likely that Doyle set out deliberately to put homosexual imagery in 'The Red-Headed League" or 'The Six Napoleons," or (pace Rosenberg) to build in a sexual implication when he worked out a way to rescue Holmes from the Reichenbach. Nor in all probability did he work from a conscious plan when he associated Beecher and Gordon with a story of adultery in "The Cardboard Box." At an intermediate position, Doyle was of course working consciously and deliberately when he devised the plots of stories like "Thor Bridge" and "The Sussex Vampire," but he probably was not aware of how closely those stories reflected his own life and his hopes or fears, let alone deliberately making them do so. I do not argue that there is anything unique about sex and romance in this respect. Other subjects are vital to the stories: in most or all of them, for example, Doyle raises issues about law, justice, and social order. A study much like this book, showing how the author uses his characters (not always consciously) to air such questions, would be a very rewarding project. A detailed study of religion in the Holmes tales, and Doyle's spiritualism as a vitally important form of it, might also yield worthwhile results.33 And so would a study of England and the Anglo-Saxon spirit, which to Doyle were probably as important and pervasive as religion or sex itself. All these great subjects are of lasting importance, both to Doyle and to contemporary readers, and they are of a kind to appear in many guises and contexts. Studying them thoroughly can provide a real and new understanding of the stories and of Arthur Conan Doyle. By comparison, analyses of (say) haberdashery or numismatics in the canon, while entertaining to Sherlockians, are unlikely to bring great insights. For sex is a basic force, an aspect of life that does pervade; these chapters have shown some of the ways in which it does so. The Introduction attempted to say in a few sentences that sex can bring good things or bad ones, and that examples of both 752

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are generously provided in the Holmes stories. They must be so in any even halfway accurate portrayal of the way human beings are and act, or any artistic work drawn from human thoughts and fantasies. It remains to be asked how an author, or a critic, can explain the presence of this sexual element in what might seem to be a most inhospitable environment: a canon of detective stories. These are investigations of murder or theft or eccentricity; they are not even rape cases, let alone histories from some Psychopathia Sexualis. Or at least we are accustomed to thinking so, to considering the 660,000 words of the Sherlock Holmes canon as "detective stories" with nothing more to them than that. But a detective story is not a crossword puzzle; it is a narrative about ostensibly real human beings (however cardboard the portrayal of them), and in the lives of human beings sex is likely to be a factor. Certainly it is a factor in the life of the human author. Furthermore, there is a specifically "erotic" character to detective stories; at least so Dennis Porter argues in his book The Pursuit of Crime. "Although we may read a detective story compulsively in order to reach a conclusion/solution," he writes, "we paradoxically enjoy the obstacles scattered by an author in our path, both for their own sake and because they prolong the state of tensed expectation." Admittedly, he adds that "Although sexual pleasure may be regarded as the touchstone by which we measure all our pleasures, it is nevertheless true that we enjoy in our bodies a whole range of activities that should be regarded as substitutions for sex only in a metaphorical sense."34 But when such a substitution is made—certainly when the substitute is something as complex as a work of literature—it is no surprise to see sex of a more obvious kind make itself felt. A detective story written by a man with as much blood in him as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had can be expected to contain life and passion of many kinds. Where there is any strong emotion, there is likely to be sex; common sense and the reading of the newspapers suggest as much, and one thinks of Watson's comments in "A Case of Identity" as Holmes mentions what proves to be the Dundas separation case: "There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady." Of course, Watson proves to be wrong, as the never-mundane Holmes takes delight in explaining. What he (and Doyle) leave unconsidered is what sexual misadaptation lay behind Mr. Dundas's obsessive throwing of his false teeth at his wife. Sex as a motive for crime, as a feature of crime, as a complication or side issue in crime, have all been considered in these chapters. (Crime as an encouragement for sex—violence as an aphrodisiac—has been given less attention, though it, too, is present in the Holmes stories, as for Stapleton in The Hound of the Baskervilles.) At a late stage in the writing of this book, I found myself reading Michael Bradley's eccentric anthropological study The Iceman Inheritance, and in it I found him articulating points that seem to me possibly true and enormously relevant: "Love" is that middle ground between aggression and the ability to reproduce. "Love" is that place where we can feel unthreatened in sex, and the place where we can have sex without directing aggression toward our partner. . . . Our technological development has allowed the artistic expression of very primitive psychosexual confusions in very sophisticated media. In terms of purely psychobiological analysis, there would appear to be little difference between Degas' series of bathing nudes and sub-Saharan fertility figurines. 35

Bradley argues, then, that sex is a desperate temporizing with the aggression that is native to Western (at least) men (at least)—and, further, that the omnipresence of love and sex motifs in Western art, including no doubt Doyle's novels, is evidence of a con-

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tinuing ambiguity about that aggression and about sexual differences. Perhaps, then, Holmes the asexual is that rare human being who can rise above the ambiguity, the obsession with violence and with sex. In the tales of Holmes there seems to be a sharp contrast between logic and emotion, with Holmes representing the former and everyone else, from Watson to the criminals, the latter. To use Rosenberg's conception, then, the form of the story is the development of a "forbidden" act, either literally or symbolically sexual, and its suppression by Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps, however, the reader will concede that the sharp difference now seems blurred, that the emotional side of Holmes has been allowed to appear as well as the contradictions that make Watson and other characters come alive. The reader will no doubt agree, too, that when Holmes does appear as cold and loveless, he pays a terrible price for it: sex is not renounced easily by a real human being. The reader can always do what the characters never can: move on to another story, watch another forbidden act slouch toward Stoke Moran to be born, and relish the blood until Holmes once again intervenes. No one finds the Holmes stories sexually stimulating in a direct and crude way, despite the comment quoted in an earlier chapter that "I feel sorry for male Sherlockians, because they don't have Sherlock Holmes to fall in love with."36 There are, to be sure, many sexually provocative drawings and stories and articles and daydreams whose origin is the Holmes tales; but that only argues the complexity that this book has been trying to elucidate. The cold logic of Holmes and the dispassionate fog and cobblestones remain as a matrix for human passion. In the 1920s the editor of the Strand Magazine, which was still publishing the new Holmes stories, asked a number of prominent novelists for their answers to this question: "What character, in all literature, would you most like to have created, and why?" Among those answering was E. Phillips Oppenheim, whose thrillers were (for their time) on the racy side, and his choice was Sherlock Holmes. "At a time when our fiction seems a little too much imbued with sex questions and problems," he wrote in part, "it is a great thing to have fostered an interest in wholesome stories of adventure, which have been so widely read."37 Widely read, they certainly have been—but the reader who has come to the end of this book may be willing to grant that their appeal comes in substantial measure not because they lack a sexual interest but precisely because they have one, and treat it so well. Such a reader may also be inclined to complain that some illusions have been taken away. It will never again be possible to read a Sherlock Holmes story without looking for sexual intrigue? That's not so bad: Holmes himself looked for sexual intrigue as the most obvious explanation for odd behaviour, in a case such as "The Red-Headed League." It will never again be possible to think of Sherlock Holmes as a man without passions? All the better; Watson calls him a reasoning machine, but Watson is wrong then, as so many other times, and the fact is that Holmes is really drawn as a man with passions, sexual and otherwise, and a full set of the appropriate organs and reactions. It will never again be possible to face Sherlock Holmes at all? Then how will you face the complexities of real life? By all means go and read Sherlock Holmes, and do it soon. Do it with admiration, this time, not only for the detective's genius, not only for the gaslit London settings, not only for the cleverly plotted puzzles and the cleverly hidden clues, not only for the limpid prose style, but also for the portrayal of human beings in all their beautiful sexual complexity. Go and read Sherlock Holmes, and do it soon; but first, go and kiss somebody. Sex comes first; detective stories are only meant to model the way men and women really are. 154

Reference Notes

Introduction p. 10: 1. Hereafter cited as Quest. p. 11: 2. Hereafter cited as Annotated. p. 11: 3. p. xiii. 1969. p. 12: 4. Cyril Pearl, The Girl with the Swansdown Seat, p. 2. (Hereafter cited as Swansdown Seat.) p. 12: 5. Ibid., p. 5. p. 12: 6. It was pleasing to read reviews of Peter Gay's book Education of the Senses, published by Oxford University Press, just as this book was being completed. Subtitled "The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, Volume One," Gay's book apparently describes the sex life of bourgeois Victorians, concluding, as I do, that it was extensive and satisfactory. p. 12: 7. "The Aspiring Dolphin: The Letters of Oscar Wilde," The Nation (November 3, 1962), republished in The Unfinished Hero and Other Essays, pp. 182-86. p. 12: 8. Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, p. 22. p. 12: 9. Supplemental Nights to the Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night, VII, 404, 439, according to Fawn M. Brodie in The Devil Drives, p. 291. p. 13: 10. Quest, p. 114. p. 13: 11. The reader who wants to pursue the subject of Victorian sexuality and social context has many informal books to choose among: The Worm in the Bud is in my opinion the best of the lot. I have also relied on the books of Pearl, Harrison, and Skinner, already cited, and such other works as Eric Trudgill's Madonnas and Magdalens. Frequently cited, but of little value nowadays, is W.H. Holden's They Startled Grandfather. For the purposes of this book I have consulted biographies of specific individuals only occasionally, and primary sources not at all. p. 13: 12. Richard Barickman, Susan MacDonald, and Myra Stark, Corrupt Relations: Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Collins, and the Victorian Sexual System, pp. 17-18. p. 13: 13. Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar, pp. 29, 31. p. 14: 14. As pointed out in Quest, p. 59. The best study of Doyle's thesis has been done by Alvin E. Rodin and Jack D. Key, who published their findings first as "Arthur Conan Doyle's Thesis on Tabes Dorsalis," Journal of the American Medical Association 247:5 (February 5, 1982): 646-50, and then as part of their book, The Medical Casebook of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle, pp. 87-98. 755

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p. 14: 15. Christopher Morley was not far wrong when he wrote in his column that Trevelyan "was on the way to write the Kinsey Report of 1893." "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ n.s. 1:1 (January 1951): 9-14. p. 14: 16. As Rodin and Key point out in The Medical Casebook, p. 144. p. 14: 17. Rodin and Key, p. 222; H.R. Bates, "Sherlock Holmes and Syphilis," Canadian Medical Association Journal 113 (1975): 815. p. 14: 18. "Soldiers in London," The Times (London), February 6, 1917, and more explicitly February 10, 1917. p. 14: 19. Quoted in Pearsall, The Worn: in the Bud, p. 67. p. 14: 20. John Dickson Carr records in The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (hereafter cited as Life of Doyle), p. 112, that Doyle was furious when his gentle book A Duet was "attacked in the press on the grounds of immorality," largely because of the chapter in which the hero resists the blandishments of his former sweetheart ("mistress," Carr says). p. 15: 21. Ibid., p. 67. p. 15: 22. For example, Richard W. Clarke as long ago as 1952: "Certain Ladies of Baker Street," BSJ n.s. 2:1 (January 1952): 34-38. p. 15: 23. Quest, p. 50. Chapter I p. 16: 1. "Take That, You Hound!" Serpentine Muse 4:4 (Spring-Summer 1979): 10-12, 19. p. 16: 2. Conan Doyle, trans, by Frances Partridge, p. 238. p. 16: 3. "New Light on the Old Triangle," BSJ 31:4 (December 1981) 200-03. p. 16: 4. One can see the results in "To Shelve or to Censor," a paper by Shaw delivered to the Baker Street Irregulars on January 8, 1971, and published in Shades of Sherlock 18 (or 5:2) (August 14, 1971): 4-12. Or one can simply buy Shaw a couple of drinks and wait for results. p. 16: 5. "On My Knees!" Four Wheels to Baker Street pp. 1-3. p. 16: 6. W.M. Krogman discusses these anthropological peculiarities in more detail in "Anthropology in Tlie Hound of the BaskervillesT BSJ 20:3 (September 1970): 132-36. p. 17: 7. Examples are Alvin Sapinsley, Sherlock Holmes in New York, and Austin Mitchelson and Nicholas Utechin, The Earthquake Machine. Some observations on these parodies, and the appearance of a sexy Irene Adler and other stereotypes in them, are made in my article, "Pastiche, Patchwork and Plain Hash," Covert Notes 2:3 (September 1979): 4-9. p. 17: 8. The figure of Sherlock Holmes can, of course, be used for still more overt sexual purposes. A useful report on that subject is Brian R. MacDonald, "The Pornographic Holmes," Afghani stanzas 3:10 (August 1979): 7-9, which mentions such delights as "The Adventure of the Disappearing Dildo, by Dr. John H. Twatson" and the now-classic book by Larry Townsend, The Sexual Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which is simply a flaming homosexual rewrite of such tales as A Study in Scarlet and "The Greek Interpreter." It may be an indication of Sherlockians' general conservatism that they have been inclined to put the label "pornography" also on An East Wind Coming by "Arthur Byron Cover," which is certainly trashy and sexy, but too complex to be just pornography. Likewise, credit is due to David Maleh, "Sherlock's Bastard Daughter," Adam 20:9 (September 1976): 32-35, 56, for his canonically based speculations. p. 17: 9. But Doyle himself placed this story among "the six best Holmes stories." Annotated 2:690. p. 19: 10. Tlie Maiden Tribute: A Study of the White Slave Traffic of the Nineteenth Century, p. 222.

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p. 19: 11. The European Slave Trade in English Girls, quoted in Terrot, The Maiden Tribute, p. 29. p. 19: 12. Ibid., p. 43. p. 19: 13. Ibid., p. 91. p. 20: 14. Annotated 2:690. p. 20: 15. Conan Doyle, pp. 256-57. p. 20: 16. Does Kitty Winter have a specific real-life original, of the kind that is discussed for Irene Adler in Chapter IV? D.A. Redmond in Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Sources (hereafter cited as Sources} does not offer one, and certainly the reader gets the impression of a woman sufficiently low in social standing that a real-life original would not be well known to contemporary readers or to Doyle. However, Bob Jones in "It Was from the Carlton Club," BSJ 33:1 (March 1983): 19-22, draws attention to the noted demi-mondaine Kitty Fischer and suggests that "knowledgeable readers" of "The Illustrious Client" would have recalled her from mentions of Miss Winter. p. 21: 17. The print was reproduced in BSJ 26:1 (March 1976): 43 with a letter in which Robert G. Harris speculates on Miss Winter's throwing technique and the sort of container she used. The saucer in the print is echoed by the "soup-plate of vitriol," which a pair of terrorists in hiding, in London in 1892, were said to keep on hand to deter invaders (D. A. Redmond, "Sensational Literature," manuscript, p. 23). p. 21: 18. For information about sulfuric acid and its likely effect on flesh I am indebted to Dr. George Atkinson, department of chemistry, and Nick Ozaruk, director of safety, both of the University of Waterloo. p. 21: 19. "Sex and Sin in Sherlock Holmes," Calabash 2 (September 1982): 34-39. p. 22: 20. There are two possible exceptions: The Hound of the Baskervilles, in which a rape from 200 years in the past is reported (see Chapter III), and "The Solitary Cyclist," which is best dealt with in company with the other "damsel-in-distress" tales (see Chapter VI). p. 23: 21. The Maiden Tribute, p. 155. The information is credited to a twentieth-century history of the Salvation Army, but may well have been current through newspapers of the time. p. 23: 22. "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ o.s. 2:2 (1947) :141. p. 23: 23. "The Last Mrs. Watson," SHJ 6:2 (Spring 1963): 53-54. p. 23: 24. "Upon the Victorian Reticence of John H. Watson, M.D.," BSM 22 (Summer 1980): 16. p. 24: 25. Patricia Dal ton has other words for her in a few interesting paragraphs in her catalogue of canonical women: "hippy . . . puritanical . . . condemned . . . to a life of desolate uselessness." "Women of the Canon," SHJ 10:3 (Winter 1971): 86-89. p. 24: 26. Sources, pp. 189-90. p. 25: 27. Samuel Rosenberg presents this parallel in Naked Is the Best Disguise, pp. 187-93, the connecting link being the death and resurrection of Jesus and the Roman Catholic liturgy that commemorates them. (Hereafter cited as Naked.) The blessing of baptismal water is an important element of that liturgy; "The Font is compared to a Womb," says a reference work that Rosenberg quotes. And "the lowering of the Christ candle into the fount on Holy Saturday night is a definite phallic symbol," adds Sister Carol Karnitsky in a letter commenting on Rosenberg's analysis (BSJ 27:1 (March 1977):47). p. 25: 28. My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies; Forbidden Flowers: More Women's Sexual Fantasies; Men in Love: Men's Sexual Fantasies, The Triumph of Love Over Rage.

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Chapter II p. 26: 1. Richard D. Altick, Victorian Studies in Scarlet, p. 286. p. 27: 2. The name incidentally means "ewe," which reminds one of Heber C. Kemball's "heifers" in A Study in Scarlet, Part II, chapter iii. p. 27: 3. Conan Doyle, p. 228. p. 28: 4. p. 115. (Hereafter cited as Footsteps.) p. 28: 5. Hereafter cited as Doyle and Latter-Day Saints. p. 28: 6. Ibid., p. 60. p. 28: 7. Beadle, Polygamy, pp. 256, 591. p. 29: 8. Men in Love, p. 243. p. 30: 9. There was, says Harrison (Footsteps, p. 114) a belief in England that the Mormons "stole English servant-girls, to spirit them out of the country and to make them White Slaves in a Mormon harem." Thus, at this early date, just two years after the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, Doyle may have been playing on the fears that are reflected in the much later stories discussed in Chapter I. p. 31: 10. Andrew G. Fusco has argued convincingly that Drebber not merely grabs Alice Charpentier but rapes her and leaves her pregnant. It is a point of no great importance to the plot, but indicative of Drebber's character. "The Final Outrage of Enoch J. Drebber," BSJ 20:3 (September 1970): 150-53. p. 31: 11. One wonders what became of them after his departure from Utah; certainly none of them was still with him during his wanderings with Stangerson. One wonders, too, as Poul Arenfalk points out, how the police chief in Cleveland, to whom Holmes telegraphed, knew so much about Drebber's personal life—without, apparently, offering any information about Mormonism. "The Mormon Mystery and Other Mysteries in A Study in Scarlet," SHJ 4:4 (Spring 1960): 128-32. p. 31: 12. Martin Dakin has also raised this point, calling Hope's behaviour "baffling." A Sherlock Holmes Commentary, p. 19. (Hereafter cited as Commentary.) p. 32: 13. Paul Stephen Clarkson makes the case for a woman, largely on the basis of voice. "Another Case of Identity," BSJ 22:2 (June 1972): 84-86. p. 32: 14. Equally open, but less relevant to the present discussion, is the question of why Hope cheerfully took his cab round to 221B Baker Street, an address that he knew from the ring incident must be a trap. Several Sherlockians have tried to tackle that one (Annotated, 1:230). p. 32: 15. Strong evidence is thus provided for the contention, yet to be argued in full, that Holmes was a Canadian. p. 33: 16. A.B. Maurice, "Sherlock Holmes and His Creator," Collier's (August 15, 1908), quoted in BSJ o.s. 1:3 (1946) :312. p. 33: 17. Trevor H. Hall associates this transference, and the temporary suppression of "The Cardboard Box," with Doyle's adherence in 1893 to the Society for Psychical Research, which "would not care at all for the explanation of 'non-contact mind reading' in natural terms" that the passage provides. Sherlock Holmes: Ten Literary Studies, pp. 119-22. p. 34: 18. "Very Little Murder," BSJ 5:2 (April 1955): 69-76. p. 34: 19. BSJ 31:4 (December 1981):200. p. 34: 20. "The Devil's Foot Notes," Afghani stanzas 2:9 (No. 19) (Summer 1978): 6-9.

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p. 34: 21. BSJ n.s. 4:4 (October 1954):246. p. 34: 22. 77^ C/teflf's Second Case-Book, pp. 1-9. p. 34: 23. The Stark Munro Letters, p. 331. p. 35: 24. Winifred Christie, "Sherlock Holmes and Graphology," SHJ 2:4 (Winter 1955): 28-31. p. 35: 25. Roy Jenkins, Sir Charles Dilke: A Victorian Tragedy, pp. 332-43. p. 35: 26. Quest, p. 287. p. 35: 27. The former story appears in Round the Red Lamp. The latter one was originally published in Bow Bells (January 11, 1883) and is now available in The Unknown Conan Doyle: Uncollected Stories. p. 35: 28. Cornhill Magazine (January 1884) and various collections. Other facial mutilations appear in a number of stories, and Chapter IX comments briefly on mutilated faces as they figure in the Holmes tales. p. 36: 29. Quest, p. 32. p. 36: 30. "The Preposterously Paired Performances of the Preacher's Portrait," BSJ o.s. 3:4 (1948):404-17. This article does not pursue the present line of reasoning, arguing instead for a special relationship between Beecher and Watson. p. 36: 31. "It Will Just Cover that Bare Space on the Wall," BSJ 20:2 (June 1970): 103-09. p. 36: 32. Naked, pp. 160-69. p. 36: 33. Ibid., p. 163. p. 37: 34. Or a live body: as Rosenberg points out, Vincent Van Gogh cut off a piece of his ear and sent it to a prostitute; there is no denying the sexual submission in that act. Chapter III p. 39: I . I consciously depart from the Doubleday text in using this title, more common in North America than the Doubleday (and John Murray) version The Sign of Four. p. 39: 2. "Dubious and Questionable," Camden House Journal 1:3 (March 1979): 2-3 (hereafter cited as CHJ) and Mycroft's Messenger 19 (June 1980): 7-8. p. 40: 3. "Watson was couturier at heart," was the assessment of Jane Nightwork [i.e., Christopher Morley] in "Watson a la Mode," BSJ o.s. 1:1 (January 1946): 15-20. The article cites many instances of "Watson's specific interest in miladiana." But in fact all of Doyle's writings show a keen eye for women's clothes and accessories. p. 40: 4. Pp. 15-16. p. 40: 5. "SIW: A Study in Watson," The Holmesian Observer 4:1 (June 1974), republished in BSM 22 (Summer 1980): 13-15, 31. p. 41: 6. The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, p. 70. (Hereafter cited as Life of Doyle.} p. 41: 7. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, pp. 68, 70, 95. p. 41: 8. "An Adventure in 'Wild Surmise'," BSJ 32:1 (March 1982): 25-29. p. 41: 9. Jack Tracy, ed., Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha, pp. ix-x. (Hereafter cited as Apocrypha.) p. 41: 10. "The Third Continent: Further Light on Dr. Watson," BSJ n.s. 2:3 (July 1952): 125-34. p. 41: 11. That suggestion was first advanced by Sir Sydney Roberts in Doctor Watson.

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p. 41: 12. "The Mystery of the Third Continent, or Was Dr. John H. Watson a Philanderer?" SHJ 2:2 (December 1954): 27-39. p. 42: 13. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction, p. 186. (Hereafter cited as The Pursuit of Crime.) p. 42: 14. In Doubleday's 1930 edition of Complete Sherlock Holmes these passages appear at pp. 12-17, 20-26, 52-55, 77-79, and 102-106. p. 43: 15. The story was commissioned for the magazine at a lunch late in 1889, when the host was J.B. Stoddart of Lippincott's and the guests were Doyle, a member of Parliament named T.P. Gill, and the young aesthete Oscar Wilde. Charles Higham, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, pp. 80-81, tells the essentials of the story. (What Doyle and Wilde thought of one another is touched on in Chapter IX.) p. 43: 16. Life of Doyle, pp. 263-64, 276. p. 43: 17. J. Lamond, Arthur Conan Doyle: A Memoir, pp. 220-22. (Hereafter cited as Doyle: A Memoir.) p. 43: 18. Life of Doyle, pp. 109-10. p. 44: 19. Conan Doyle, pp. 175-76. p. 44: 20. "The Adventure of John and Mary," BSJ 9:3:150. p. 44: 21. Carr (p. 42) speaks of "brown hair" (and "blue eyes, shading to sea-green"). Higham's description of Louise's hair (p. 66) is "gold-brown" (and he mentions "gray eyes, and small wellrounded body"). But the available portrait (a miniature, "by courtesy of Brigadier John Doyle," reproduced in Julian Symons, Conan Doyle: Portrait of an Artist, (hereafter cited as Doyle: Portrait) p. 47, suggests ash-blonde hair (and blue eyes). p. 44: 22. Although Edgar W Smith, caught in possession of a copy of Playboy Magazine (February 1954) and claiming that he had bought it only because it contained a republication of "The Copper Beeches," joked that the centrefold beauty "wore only pearls and was probably Miss Morstan." (Robert G. Harris, BSJ 25:2 [June 1975]: 111.) p. 44: 23. Conan Doyle, p. 176. p. 44: 24. Carr, Life of Doyle, pp. 22, 43. p. 44: 25. Doctor Watson and variously reprinted and excerpted. p. 44: 26. Morley said as much in the Introduction to the 1930 edition of the Doubleday Complete Sherlock Holmes, as Hampton R. Bates points out in BSJ 26:1 (March 1976):44. p. 44: 27. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: The Chronology of Their Adventures. p. 44: 28. "There is a conspiracy a-foot to provide Watson with as many wives as Henry VIII," Dorothy L. Sayers grumbled as early as 1944 ("Dr. Watson's Christian Name," Profile by Gaslight, pp. 180-86). In fact, however, Henry had six wives, and Hall apparently holds the Sherlockian record for proposing five. "Dr. Watson's Marriages," The Late Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Other Literary Studies, pp. 40-63. p. 44: 29. This conservative theory was first advanced by H.W. Starr, "Some New Light on Watson," BSJ o.s. 1:1 (January 1946): 55-63. Wingate H. Bett endorses it in "Watson's Second Marriage." SHJ 3:1 (Summer 1956): 21-22. p. 45: 30. "The Fourth Canonical Toast," BSJ 3:2 (April 1953): 83. Of course it is just possible, as Francis Smith suggests in "The Only Selfish Action I Can Recall," SHJ 9:4 (Summer 1970): 134-35, that the "wife" for whom Watson deserted Holmes was not his own but somebody else's. p. 45: 31. James Edward Holroyd suggests in his column, "The Egg-Spoon," that the choice of the Criterion Bar as Watson's watering hole (A Study in Scarlet) reflects this taste, since it was

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well known as employing "about 20 barmaids, specially selected young women of great physical attractiveness." SHJ 14:1 (Spring 1979): 8-9, 14. Belden Wigglesworth suggests a physical reason for Watson's apparently constant lechery: "continued irritation" from a perineal incision, the thenstandard surgical technique for removing a bladder stone. Such an operation, he says, would also explain some of Watson's inconsistent remarks about his wounds and scars. "Many Nations and Three Separate Continents," BSJ o.s. 2:3 (July 1947) : 273-78. p. 45: 32. "Take That, You Hound!" Serpentine Muse 4:4 (Spring-Summer 1979): 10-12, 19. p. 45: 33. Life of Doyle, pp. 28-29, 229-30. p. 45: 34. Lamond, Doyle: A Memoir, pp. 13-14. The dictum is also rendered as, "it is only when you have not seen a woman's face for six months that you realize what sentiment means" (Edwards, Quest, p. 231). There is also Doyle's famous reproach to his adolescent son: "No woman is ugly!" But that represents gallantry more than connoisseurship. "That which is physically beautiful," Doyle once wrote, "stands in the main for that which is mentally sane and spiritually sound." But since the context was a proposal for compulsory public gymnasia, perhaps the remark should not be taken as dealing chiefly with sexual attractiveness. Doyle's foreword to E. Sandow, The Construction and Reconstruction of the Human Body, pp. ix-xi. p. 45: 35. It was Doyle's long suit, too; Lamond says (Doyle: A Memoir, p. 63) that A Duet shows "a knowledge of millinery . . . that is rather surprising," and the same could also be said of his other books. p. 46: 36. Benjamin S. Clark, in a thorough examination of "The Ladies in the Cases" from a point of view somewhere between lustful and absolutely male-chauvinist, comes to the conclusion that Miss Adler was the better-looking of the two women, on the grounds that Watson calls her figure "superb" but does not evaluate Mrs. St. Clair's. BSJ 29:2 (June 1979):77-80. p. 46: 37. "Thoughts on the Bust of Miss Mary Morstan," BSJ 20:4 (December 1970):210-14. p. 46: 38. "For one whose fondest hope at the beginning of the affair was to court Mary without regard to her inheritance, Watson betrays an embarrassing obsession with the stones," writes "Hapi" in 221A Baker Street: The Adamantine Sherlock Holmes, p. 29. (Hereafter cited as 227,4 Baker Street.) p. 46: 39. At the risk of making it clear where I get my attitudes toward such matters, I quote D.A. Redmond about Miss Morstan's costume: "The ladies don't dress for the weather, old boy, they dress for the game." He adds: "She'd have had a low neckline at that time of day." D.A. Redmond, "Initial or All Caps?" SHJ 9:2 (Summer 1969): 69-70. p. 47: 40. Charles Adams wrote: "So here's to Mary Morstan, . . . For her fervor and her dash, . . . she bolstered Watson's weapon . . . And straddled his moustache." "To the Second Mrs. Watson," verse read at the 1981 dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars and published in Prescott's Press, 4:2 (June 1982): 23-24. p. 47: 41. The Dark Angel, p. 55. p. 47: 42. "The Woman Who Beat Sherlock Holmes," BSJ 9:2 (April 1954). p. 48: 43. She had originally set her cap for Holmes, Moriarty suggests, and settled for Watson when it became clear that Holmes was not susceptible. She "showed enough womanly conduct to interest two men," J.N. Williamson agrees. "The Wiles of Mary Morstan," The Illustrious Client's Case-Book, pp. 21-25. Certainly Holmes unbent enough to call her "charming" by the end of the story, though he claimed not to have noticed her looks at their first meeting. p. 48: 44. Moriarty, "The Woman Who Beat Sherlock Holmes," op. cit., pp. 69-82. p. 48: 45. "The Adventure of John and Mary," BSJ 9:3 (July 1959): 136-52. p. 48: 46. "A Dog and a Dish," BSJ 22:4 (December 1972): 219-21.

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p. 48: 47. Pamela Bruxner, "Is That Man Never Going to Come?" SHJ 14:1 (Spring 1979): 10-11. p. 49: 48. Sherlock Holmes Detected, p. 99. p. 49: 49. Ibid., p. 100. p. 49: 50. Quest, p. 246. p. 50: 51. Ibid., pp. 90, 91. p. 50: 52. "Sherlock Holmes and Latin America: An Identification and Some Lovely Ladies," BSJ 22:3 (September 1972): 148-52. p. 50: 53. Russell Jultgren in BSJ 31:2 (June 1981): 117. p. 51: 54. BSM 22 (Summer 1980) : 16-19, 38. p. 51: 55. "The Editor's Gas-Lamp," BSJ n.s. 1:4 (October 1951): 121-22. p. 51: 56. Donald K. Pollock, Jr., and Jon L. Lellenberg, "Packaging Holmes for the Paperbacks," BSM 31 (Autumn 1982): 11-17. p. 52: 57. "You've Come a Long Way, Baby," Holmeswork 7:1 (January 13, 1980): 1-4. p. 53: 58. This explanation of the name does not demolish, but reinforces, the theory advanced by John Marder in "Cricket and Sherlock Holmes," SHJ 11:2 (Summer 1973): 53-57, and given lukewarm endorsement by Redmond, that the name comes from J.J. Lyons, a cricketer. Given the initials "L.L.", Doyle would then have had to cast about for actual names, and could well have hit upon that of a sportsman he knew. Sources, p. 103. And why "Laura"? In the context of Lillie Langtry, one is tempted to point to Laura Bell, the courtesan who once collected £250,000 for a single night's work. p. 53: 59. "Woman of the Moment," The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes Newsletter No. 2 (July 15, 1975): 1. p. 53: 60. Glenn S. Holland, "On the Origin of the Hound," BSJ 19:1 (March 1969): 34-37. p. 53: 61. The mood of the story and Doyle's skill in setting it are well, though briefly, elucidated by Donald J. Watt in "The Literary Craft of The Hound of the Baskervilles," BSJ 22:4 (December 1972): 207-11. p. 54: 62. "You've Come a Long Way, Baby," loc. cit. Chapter IV p. 55: 1. One thinks particularly of "Sonnet: Sherlock Holmes to Irene Adler," BSJ o.s. 1:2 (April 1946): 118 (and subsequent publications). The author of this poem, which ranks well above the general run of Sherlockian verse, is given as Helene Yuhasova, but there is a continuing controversy over whether such a lady existed; she may have been a persona of Edgar W. Smith. p. 55: 2. Harry Hartman, "Sacred Litany," Baker Street Gasogene 1:4 [1962?]: 27-32 (hereafter cited as BSG); also in Harry Hartman, The Holy Quire, p. 9. p. 56: 3. "In Defense of Irene Adler," Vermissa Herald 2:2 (December 1980): 4-5; BSJ 31:4 (December 1981): 234-37. p. 56: 4. Profile by Gaslight, pp. 156-65. p. 56: 5. "The Distaff Side of Baker Street," BSJ o.s. 1:1 (January 1946): 9-13. p. 56: 6. BSJ o.s. 1:2 (April 1946): 118; Helene Yuhasova, A Lauriston Garden of Verses, also published in Baker Street and Beyond (1957). p. 56: 7. BSJ o.s. 1:3 (July 1946): 260.

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p. 56: 8. BSJ o.s. 1:4 (October 1946): 403. p. 57: 9. "Good Night, Mister Sherlock Holmes," BSJ o.s. 2:4 (October 1947): 415-19. p. 57: 10. BSJ o.s. 1:1 (March 1951): 43-51. p. 57: 11. Admittedly, the anonymous author of 221A Baker Street, pp. 17ff., omits Ms. Adler when he creates a Tibetan sex life for Holmes; he has the detective there studying tantric sex, a form of transcendental mysticism, with the assistance of an irresistible woman named Little Iron Hare. But Kelvin I. Jones, considering Holmes's putative Tibetan studies more seriously in "The Great Return," SHJ 14:2 (Winter 1979): 44-46, observes that "Holmes would have found these sex-yogic techniques utterly abhorrent" except perhaps "purely in [a] symbolic sense." p. 57: 12. BSJ 2:1 (January 1952): 5-17. p. 57: 13. "Forget St. Monica's . . . What Happened at Briony Lodge?" BSJ 8:3 (July 1958): 163-68. p. 57: 14. Such inconsistencies have been examined by many scholars, beginning with Humfrey Michell, "The Wonderful Wedding," BSJ 4:1 (January 1954): 22-23, and C.R. Andrew, "What Kind of Shenanigans Went on at St. Monica's?" BSJ (Christmas Annual 1956): 42-45. Among the best brief arguments to this effect is that by Fr. Raymond "Vic" Holly in "Dubious and Questionable," Mycroft's Messenger No. 19 (June 1980): 7-8, and CHJ 1:3 (March 1979): 2-3. p. 57: 15. "Some Notes Relating to a Preliminary Investigation into the Paternity of Nero Wolfe," BSJ 6:1 (January 1956): 5-11. p. 57: 16. David Murphy has treated the Holmes-Wolfe link with considerable imagination in "A Scandal in Montenegro," BSM 4 (December 1975): 1-5. p. 57: 17. For example, Felix Frankfurter (B. Abbott Goldberg, "A Case of Paternity," BSJ 30:3 [September 1980]: 144-50); Jeeves, the P.G. Wodehouse character (Manly Wade Wellman, "The Great Man's Great Son," BSJ o.s. 1:3 [July 1946]: 326-36); Dame Edith Sitwell (Edith Warner, "Holmes a Libertine?" BSJ 19:2 [June 1969]: 67.) p. 57: 18. Benjamin Grosbayne, "Sherlock Holmes's Honeymoon," BSJ 21:3 (September 1971): 143-50. p. 57: 19. Martin J. King, "Holmes in Hoboken?" The Scandal Sheet 1:2 (September 1971): 3-5. It must be recognized that in the 1890s, or even the 1930s, Hoboken was a romantic resort, not the industrial town of today through which one passes only if it cannot be avoided. Christopher Morley praised it lavishly in Seacoast of Bohemia, and his interest may account for some of the Sherlockian affection for it. But there are limits, or ought to be. p. 57: 20. Incidentally, Holmes also refers, in "The Beryl Coronet," to his hopes for "my own son . . . should I ever chance to have one." p. 57: 21. "A Last Word for Irene Adler" Shades of Sherlock 2:2 (December 1967): 5. p. 58: 22. "That Voice," BSJ 9:3 (July 1959): 153. p. 58: 23. "The Mere Commonplace of Existence," BSJ 25:1 (March 1975): 28-29, 32. p. 58: 24. "Then Falls Thy Shadow," The Illustrious Client's Case-Book, pp. 50-53. Harold Ryan later, but apparently independently, makes a similar case at least for Petrarch: "Sherlock and Francesco," SHJ 12:2 (Winter 1975): 47-48. (A more direct connection between these authors and the story in which they appear is discussed in Chapter X.) p. 58: 25. "Those Were Hidden Fires, Indeed!" Exploring Sherlock Holmes, pp. 9-26. p. 58: 26. "Eros in Baker Street: The Subterranean Sherlock Holmes." BSM 1 (April 1975): 1-5. Immediately following Felong's paper is a rebuttal by Donald Pollock, "Eros in Baker Street: A Reply to Felong," BSM: 6-7.

163

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p. 58: 27. 'A Scandal in Bohemia'," BSJ 1:4 (October 1951): 141-43. p. 58: 28. "The Scandal Behind The Scandal," SHJ 9:3 (Winter 1969): 82-85. p. 59: 29. Fanfare of Strumpets, pp. 20, 14. (Hereafter cited as Fanfare.) p. 59: 30. Pearl, Swansdown Seat, p. 131. p. 59: 31. Harrison discusses Bernhardt, though noting (Fanfare, p. 137) that "she was not a wholetime, dedicated strumpet." And Kelvin I. Jones, in "A Scandal in A Scandal," Canadian Holmes 5:4 (Summer 1982): 12-18, presses her claims to be the, or an, original of Ms. Adler. p. 59: 32. Swansdown Seat, p. 105. p. 59: 33. But "young person" is also a legal and technical term for a girl not yet of the age of consent; Holmes may as well be using it to deny her sexuality as to emphasize it. p. 60: 34. P. 147.

p. 60: 35. Fanfare, p. 211. p. 60: 36. "What Holmes Did for Holland," BSJ 23:4 (December 1973): 232-36; amplified in his book, The World of Sherlock Holmes, pp. 118-23. p. 60: 37. "Anticipating Sherlock Holmes," BSJ 2:3 (July 1952): 135. p. 60: 38. Conan Doyle, p. 235. p. 60: 39. Ishbel Ross, The Uncrowned Queen: Life of Lola Montez, p. 239. p. 60: 40. "The Adventuress of Sherlock Holmes," BSJ 7:1 (January 1957): 29-31. p. 61: 41. Fanfare, p. 133. p. 61: 42. Ibid., p. 82. p. 61: 43. It is only fair to note, as Nordon does (Conan Doyle, p. 235), that Lola Montes was involved in an intrigue—for political reasons she had to part from her beloved King Ludwig. On the other hand, Nordon claims that Ms. Adler, like Miss Montes, was "English by birth." p. 61: 44. Not in New Jersey, as J.F. Christ suggests in "Problems in A Scandal in Bohemia," BSG 1:2 (1961): 5-13. p. 61: 45. "Will the Real Carina Please Stand Up?" BSJ 26:2 (June 1976): 81-90. Anthony Boucher had made the equation of "carina" and "sweetheart" in "The Records of Baker Street," BSJ o.s. 4:1 (January 1949): 97-104. p. 62: 46. Paul S. Clarkson, "A Scandalous Case of Identity," BSJ 19:4 (December 1969): 230-34, tells the story and reproduces the photograph. p. 62: 47. "Virginity Preserved, And the Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes," Clues: A Journal of Detection, 2:1 (Spring-Summer 1981): 62-69. p. 62: 48. Ibid. Atkinson notes in support of his "spiritual marriage" theory that Holmes's disguises in this story are the attire of a "groom" and that of a clergyman (who can perform marriages). p. 63: 49. "Art in the Blood, and What Is This Thing Called Music?" Montgomery's Christmas Annual No. 1 (1950). p. 63: 50. A 45-rpm disk issued by The Sons of the Copper Beeches, Philadelphia, and a track on the 33-rpm album "Voices from Baker Street," issued by the Old Soldiers of Baker Street, Ferndale, Michigan. p. 63: 51. Note to "We Never Mention Aunt Clara," BSJ 18:1 (March 1968): 6-7. It must be added, first, that Montgomery also claimed to have discovered an ancient recording of the lady's operatic

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Reference Notes

voice (it can be heard on the album "Songs of Baker Street," issued by the Baker Street Irregulars in 1950); and, second, that there are at least two witnesses other than Montgomery to the existence of an "Aunt Clara," who may once have been Irene Adler, in the Riviera village of St. Jean de Luz. They are Bernard J. Van Dieren, "What Has Become of Them?" BSJ 4:4 (October 1954): 197-204, and Norbert Wiener, in Edgar W. Smith, "From the Editor's Commonplace Book," BSJ 5:1 (January 1955): 63. p. 63: 52. Thomas Hart, "A Word to the Sons of the Copper Beeches," Leaves from the Copper Beeches, pp. 1-8. p. 63: 53. The text published as "We Never Mention Aunt Clara," loc. cit., has an additional stanza. There are small textual differences between the published and recorded versions. p. 63: 54. No attempt need be made here to enter into the complicated controversies that surround the BSI's origins. A useful starting place, for anyone who cares, is Robert K. Leavitt, "The Origin of 221B Worship," BSJ 11:3 (September 1961): 135-49 and 11:4 (December 1961): 225-34. p. 64: 55. Item 2891b. p. 64: 56. Jim Montgomery's son Bruce wrote a song to the same tune which he called "Father's Folly, or, Great-Aunt Clara Revisited," BSJ 18:1 (March 1968): 8-9. The song mentions one or two more of Clara's peccadillos, and observes of the senior Montgomery that "My dad must have sprung from a twig that was crossed, / There was so much of Clara in him. . . . / He sang of Aunt Clara whose exploits were rife / From Trenton through all Europe too, / And she gave him the happiest years of his life, / And he owed them, my friends, all to you" (i.e., Sherlockians). The conclusion: "'twas Clara who helped dear old daddy / Put the BS in old BSI." p. 65: 57. Fraser Harrison, in Dark Angel, offers an interesting discussion on this point in his chapters on prostitution, especially on pp. 251-57. p. 65: 58. For information about the history of the Adventuresses I rely on typescripts in the files of the former editor of that society's magazine The Serpentine Muse (vis. my wife Kate Karlson Redmond), and on conversations with her and other Adventuresses. p. 65: 59. Although one of them (Susan Dahlinger) is an apprentice opera singer, and another (Paula Cohen) is author of a novel-in-progress whose heroine is a New York adventuress named Clara Adler. p. 66: 60.

kt

Under the Jack-Knife," The Serpentine Muse 3:1 (Spring 1977): 4, 7.

p. 66: 61. "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ o.s. 1:3 (July 1946): 286-91. p. 66: 62. "Among other business it appears that the matter of an official toast was discussed [by an early meeting of the BSI]. It was agreed that the first health must always be drunk to 'The Woman'." Saturday Review (January 27, 1934), "Bowling Green" column. In modern times a single woman, usually the wife or widow of a prominent Irregular, has annually been invited to be present for this portion of the programme and to receive flowers and compliments. p. 66: 63. "The members, naturally, were accompanied by their own personal 'Irene Adlers'." "The Scion Societies: The Amateur Mendicant Society of Detroit," BSJ 6:3 (July 1956): 179. p. 66: 64. "That Deep Romantic Chasm," SHJ 9:2 (Summer 1969): pp. 57-59. p. 67: 65. Alone of All Her Sex, p. xxiv. p. 67: 66. Ibid., p. 232. p. 67: 67. Ibid., p. xxiv. p. 68: 68. "First You See It, Then You Don't," BSJ 27:1 (March 1977): 44-45. p. 68: 69. "In Defense of Irene Adler," BSJ 31:4 (December 1981): 234-37. 765

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

p. 69: 70. There is not unanimity on that point. "What did she do?" asks Lisa Nazarenko. "She saw through his disguise (which wasn't so difficult, since she is an actress) and left earlier than she planned." Is that a great victory? "Why So Clever?" SHJ 9:1 (Winter 1968): 35. p. 69: 71. Hilary M. Lips, Women, Men and the Psychology of Power, p. 115. p. 69: 72. "Hum! ha! Quite so!" BSJ 17:4 (December 1967): 209-13. The author goes on to outline a plot for "A Scandal in Bohemia" even more devastating to Holmes and others than the one provided through Watson's eyes. Chapter V p. 70: 1. "Women of the Canon, 1: The Women of Influence," SHJ 10:1 (Winter 1970): 2-6. p. 71: 2. "Holmes and the Fair Sex," SHJ 2:3 (Summer 1955): 15-22. p. 71. 3. "In Defense of Irene Adler," BSJ 31:4 (December 1981): 234-37. p. 72: 4. Pauline Therese Lachman, described as "the greatest harlot of the century," married Count Henkel von Donnersmarck, governor-general of Alsace-Lorraine, in 1857, says Michael Harrison, Fanfare, p. 83. p. 72: 5. One thinks of Jerome Coopersmith's reinterpretation of Irene Adler and the King in the musical play Baker Street (p. 48): "My royal heart is in your hands. My royal fate is in your hands. I am unworthy and unfit, But say you'll take me and my little Balkan state is in your hands! For My line needs new blood—It's much too refined. Red blood with blue blood, The two bloods combined. My blood with your blood—The best blood I could find!" p. 72: 6. Alone of All Her Sex, p. 140. p. 72: 7. Results of a clerihew contest, in SHJ 1:4:28. p. 72: 8. "Did Holmes Fail in A Scandal in Bohemia?" Afghanistanzas 1:4 (February 1977): 6-7. p. 72: 9. Julian Blackburn draws attention to the possibility of a princely portrait coupled with an elegant mirror, to reflect "the most beautiful singer I know." "The Identity of the King of Bohemia," BSJ 21:2 (June 1971): 114-16. It is a charming concept, but it would take a very hot inscription to make it an object for blackmail. The King's point is that while notepaper can be stolen and handwriting forged, a photograph of two people together is unanswerable. p. 72: 10. Art in the Blood. p. 73: 11. Presumably Mrs. Klein's given name is an echo of Isadora Duncan, the brilliant and scandalous pioneer of modern dance, who when this story was published was living in obscurity and debt; she died in a freak accident the following year. p. 73: 12. Among the sources more reliable than Otero's own autobiography is Arthur H. Lewis, La Belle Otero. p. 74: 13. Conan Doyle, p. 242. p. 74: 14. "The Least of These. . . ," BSJ 3:3 (July 1953): 131-32. p. 74: 15. The Dark Angel, p. 22. p. 75: 16. I am much indebted to my wife Kate for drawing this aspect of the matter to my attention, in a paper which she delivered at the University Weekend With Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle, at Queen's University, in July 1981. p. 75: 17. Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians provides a fascinating survey of the subject, pg. 76: 18. "The Dark Lady of Appledore Towers," SHJ 4:4 (Spring 1960): 113-15. p. 76: 19. Sex and Fantasy: Patterns of Male and Female Development, p. 77.

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p. 77: 20. The discovery was reported in "The SECO Second Handwriting—Identified," BSM 16 (December 1978): 12-14. That report was republished in The Serpentine Muse 5:1 (Winter 1980): 4-5, 8, 14-15, with an "editorial afterword" by Evelyn Herzog, pp. 15-16. p. 77: 21. Herzog, loc. cit. And one must agree with Ms. Herzog in finding the discovery of Miss Leckie's authorship "an unanticipated gesture of encouragement. For some years, there has been a disparity of status between male and female Sherlockians. Tradition has given pride-ofplace to the gentlemen, and it has been suggested that Holmes, no whole-souled admirer of womankind, has been better served so. But there are other traditions, we see, of companionship and sharing. It is gratifying to think of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jean Leckie and to know that, when male and female Sherlockians consort in amiable intellectual fellowship, we, too, are following an honorable precedent." p. 77: 22. As indeed he did to his own work, as such manuscripts as are available for consultation quickly show. Ursula Moran and I found a large number of textual changes, corrections, and caret marks in the manuscript of "The Three Students," for example. p. 77: 23. So say the editors of BSM, although they do not make it clear just how the passage originally read; there must have been a corresponding change to Lady Hilda's speech. p. 78: 24. "Re: The Adventure of the Worst Man in London," BSJ (Christmas Annual 1959): 296-301. p. 78: 25. Commentary, pp. 45-46. p. 78: 26. "Substitute Titles," SHJ 3:2 (Winter 1956): 23. p. 78: 27. Perhaps, though, it lies as a psychological truth behind two authors' conjectures that Milverton held some letters compromising Holmes himself: Richard Asher, "Holmes and the Fair Sex," SHJ 2:3 (Summer 1955): 15-22, and Bruce Harris, "Did Sherlock Holmes Kill Charles Augustus Milverton?" BSJ 32:1 (March 1982): 45-47. p. 79: 28. "Ally Pally Mosis!" SHJ 5:1 (Winter 1960): 27. p. 79: 29. Agatha cannot be given the courtesy here that is accorded to Ms. Adler and Mrs. Klein because her surname is not known; housemaids generally got only a given name, and sometimes not even their own: "Mary Jane" of Dr. and Mrs. Watson ("A Scandal in Bohemia") may have been named Frances or Esmerelda. p. 79: 30. "The Case of the Unrequited Innocents," BSJ 27:2 (June 1977): 88-92. p. 79: 31. "Holmes's Bad Deed," SHJ 4:2 (Spring 1959): 77-78, quoted in Merritt in the BSJ Christmas Annual (1959). Dakin has made the same point in "Some Milvertonian Doubts," SHJ 7:2 (Spring 1965):v46-48, and then in Commentary, p. 180. p. 79: 32. Bill Schweickert, "Holmes' Hypocrisy," Prescott's Press 4:1 (January 1982): 37-42. He describes Holmes's behaviour to Agatha as "arrogant and self-serving." p. 80: 33. "Agatha Is Her Name," SHJ 4:2 (Spring 1959): 41-42. p. 80: 34. "Son of Escott," BSJ 10:3 (July 1960): 161-63. For a glimpse at just what Holmes's style as a suitor may have been, it would be hard to beat the skit in Cockney dialect which Nathan L. Bengis provides in "Sorry, Mr. Sherlock Holmes Is Engaged Just Now," SHJ 6:3 (Winter 1963): 91. p. 80: 35. "Sherlock Holmes: Humanitarian," Vermissa Daily Herald 3:1 (July 1981): 6-7. p. 80: 36. Ten years before this story, Doyle wrote in The Parasite about a hero engaged to a beautiful Agatha. The whole tale is soaked in barely hidden sex; it is one of those lily-and-rose tales in which Agatha is definitely the lily. "No doubt I am a materialist," Doyle makes Professor Gilroy write. "Agatha says that I am a rank one. I tell her that is an excellent reason for shortening our engagement, since I am in such urgent need of her spirituality." 77?^ Parasite, pp. 4-5. 767

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

p. 80: 37. Michael P. Malloy, "Notes on the Identity of Milverton's Murderer," BSJ 27:4 (December 1977): 198-200. Robert F. Roche, 'The Worst Man in London: Who Shot Him? and When?" BSJ 25:1 (March 1975): 25-27. This theory is contradicted by Michael P. Malloy in "Notes," above. The Rev. "Vic" Holly presented his theory to The Occupants of the Empty House, the Sherlockian society in Carbondale, Illinois, as reported in CHJ 4:1 (January 1982). p. 80: 38. SHJ 4:4 (Spring 1960): 113-15. p. 80: 39. "That Dark Lady," SHJ 5:1 (Winter 1960): 30. p. 80: 40. Toasts to Lady X should be drunk in "The Milvertonian," explained as follows in "Sherlockian Mixology," Serpentine Muse 3:3 (Fall 1977): 10-12: "Gunpowder tea in a shot glass. Drink that! and that! and that!" p. 80: 41. "The Mistress and the Maidservant," Serpentine Muse 4:1 (Spring 1978): 13-16, 20. p. 81: 42.1 am grateful to David Skene Melvin for remarks that helped to illuminate this point for me. Chapter VI p. 82: 1. "Holmes' Hypocrisy," loc. cit. p. 82: 2. "Women of the Canon, 4" SHJ 10:4 (Summer 1972): 115-19. p. 83: 3. "Women of the Canon, 2" SHJ 10:2 (Summer 1971): 44-47. p. 84: 4. Sources, pp. 272-73. p. 84: 5. "Further Identification," SHJ 9:4 (Summer 1970): 143-44. p. 85: 6. "The Egg-Spoon," SHJ 2:3 (Summer 1955): 13. p. 86: 1. Commentary, pp. 76-79; Annotated 1:263-66; BSJ 15:3 (September 1965): 167-73; etc. p. 86: 8. "Holmes and Women: A Reichian Solution," The Baker Street Chronicle 2:2 (MarchApril 1982) [n.p.]. (Hereafter cited as BSC.) p. 86: 9. "The Egg-Spoon," SHJ 6:4 (Spring 1964): 123-24. p. 86: 10. Vivian Darkbloom [pseud.], "Holmes Is Where the Heart Is," BSM 6 (June 1976): 9-14. Another paper has suggested that Miss Stoner deliberately killed Dr. Roylott, though it stops short of involving Holmes in the plot: T.F. Foss and J.M. Linsenmeyer, "Look to the Lady," BSJ 27:2 (June 1977): 79-85. p. 87: 11. Naked, pp. 43-44, 62-63. p. 87: 12. The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel, p. 129. p. 87: 13. It was originally to have been golden hair (Life of Doyle, p. 66); perhaps it was association with the "copper" beech-trees which made Doyle change it to that "rather peculiar tint of chestnut." Or perhaps he thought it was time that female as well as male redheads had a place in his work. Donald Redmond maintains that the "peculiar" tint was roughly that of a fire engine: "Who else but a redhead would have a face freckled like a plover's egg . . . ? Horses aren't actually red, but the British chestnut (unlike the North American horse chestnut) is a deep reddish tone." (Red Herring, March 1981.) And red hair would go well with the electric-blue dress and be recognizable at a distance by Mr. Fowler, if not indeed by Hosmer Angel. p. 88: 14. "Dr. Watson's Secret," in Vincent Starrett, ed., 2275: Studies in Sherlock Holmes, pp. 46-53. p. 88: 15. Carr, Life of Doyle, p. 39; Edwards, Quest, p. 162. p. 88: 16. Quest, p. 49. p. 88: 17. Ibid., p. 57.

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Reference Notes

p. 88: 18. The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, pp. 228-29, quoted in Nordon, Conan Doyle, p. 188. p. 89: 19. Carr, Life of Doyle, p. 66. p. 89: 20. Quest, p. 358. p. 89: 21. "Violet the Hunter" BSJ o.s. 4:1 (January 1949): 29-37. p. 89: 22. "Watson, however, kept himself informed, and may even have maintained a correspondence with her," writes H.W. Bell in what is probably the earliest note of his admiration of the lady. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, p. 68. As for Holmes, one theory that has been advanced is that his "no sister of mine" remark is to be taken literally, and that Miss Hunter was his half-sister. H.B. Williams, "Half Sister; Half Mystery," BSJ 8:2 (April 1958): 100-03; Robert Schutz, "Half Sister; No Mystery," BSG 1:2 (1961): 14-15. Gordon R. Speck contradicts such a theory in "Sherlock Holmes: An Augustan in a Romantic World," BSM 30 (Summer 1982): 29-31. p. 89: 23. Conan Doyle, p. 257. p. 90: 24. The Speckled Band: An Adventure of Sherlock Holmes', also in Jack Tracy, Sherlock Holmes, pp. 207-75. p. 90: 25. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, p. 13. p. 90: 26. Evelyn Herzog, "Violet Holmes Speaks," Serpentine Muse 4:2 (Summer 1978): 12-13. p. 90: 27. There are, however, other Violets in Doyle's writing. One of them is not a threatened heroine but an adventuress, or at least a lady with a tang about her; she appears in A Duet. And the heroine of Doyle's early story "Bones, The April Fool of Harvey's Sluice" (1882), and lately published in The Uncollected Stories, has violet eyes. p. 90: 28. S.C. Roberts, "Sherlock Holmes and the Fair Sex," in Baker Street Studies, pp. 177-99; also published as "Sherlock Holmes: His Attitude to Women," Holmes and Watson, pp. 28-44. p. 90: 29. Life of Doyle, p. 263. p. 91: 30. The Pursuit of Crime, p. 186. p. 91: 31. "Psychoanalysis of Sherlock Holmes and Co. " SHJ 11:2 (Summer 1973): 45-54. p. 91: 32. This instructive example is pointed out by Ann Byerly in "An Amnesty for Mrs Straker," Serpentine Muse 3:3 (Fall 1977): 14-15, 19. p. 91: 33. The Medical Casebook, p. 35. p. 91: 34. "Sherlock Holmes and the Liberated Woman," Canon Fodder, pp. 82-97. In a different context, a member of the other sex says this: "If Sherlock Holmes had the noble character that Sherlockians say he had, he would have wanted and fought for better treatment for the women who passed through his life." Thomas C. Mitchell, BSJ 29:4 (December 1979): 235. p. 92: 35. His dictum that women are "never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them" was not a serious conclusion but a "friendly and sly dig" at a Watson who was falling in love, says Ronald M. Hubba in "Holmes: The Potential Entrepreneur," in Cultivating Sherlock Holmes, pp. 31-38. p. 92: 36. "Sherlock Holmes and the Fair Sex," loc. cit. p. 92: 37. As Gordon L. Iseminger points out in "Sherlock Holmes: Victorian Archetype," BSJ 29:3 (September 1979): 156-59, 162-66. p. 92: 38. /, Sherlock Holmes, p. 20. p. 92: 39. "Holmes the Matchmaker." Unpublished paper read at the annual dinner of the Master's Class of Philadelphia, January 13, 1980.

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p. 92: 40. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes: Misogamist or Misogynist?" The Illustrious Client's CaseBook, pp. 45-47. p. 93: 41. "Dr. Watson Versus the Fifth Proposition of Euclid," BSM 25 (Spring 1981): 1-6, 10. p. 93: 42. And yet Christopher Morley wrote of his naivete in "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ n.s. 1:4 (October 1951): 136-39; and J.W. Sovine provided this beautiful but shortsighted summary: "Of the love of a man for a maid, he had only academic knowledge, but for his love of his fellow man he had only peers and no superiors." "The Adventure of the Command Performance," BSJ 8:1 (January 1958): 17-28. p. 93: 43. Katherine Karlson, "Promise Her Anything, But Give Her Bisulfate of Baryta," BSJ 28:4 (December 1978): 218-19. As Christopher Morley comments, while Holmes was cataloguing the perfumes, Watson was probably trying to collect "75 types [of woman] to match up with the 75 savours." "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ o.s. 3:1 (January 1948): 32-43. p. 93: 44. This point was raised by Colin Prestige in his column "The Jack-Knife," SHJ 15:2 (Summer 1981): 56-57. "Perhaps one day," he suggests, "we could have research on the dress styles and clothing bills of the woman." p. 93: 45. "Holmes certainly assumed successfully a character far removed from his natural one, and, to survive the test of courtship, that goatee beard must have looked natural—and felt natural too!" Guy Warrack, "Disguises in Baker Street," SHJ 9:3 (Winter 1969): 74-78. p. 93: 46. Elliott Kimball, observing that there is "no evidence" that Holmes "felt the erotic urgency so common in garden-variety XY males," suggests that Holmes was an XYY chromosome "intersex," a genuine though rare genetic phenomenon. "A Multiclarifacient," SHJ 7:2 (Spring 1965): 48-50. p. 93: 47. "Sherlock Holmes: Nonlimerent," CHJ 3:8 (August 1981): 2-5, and "Sherlock Holmes: Nonlimerent: Part Two," CHJ 4:11 (November 1982): 2-4. p. 93: 48. Barbara Paul, "Holmes, Wolfe, and Women." BSJ 18:4 (December 1968): 208. Of course plenty of writers have attributed faults and crimes to Ms. Adler, but no one else seems to have suggested that Holmes was cheerfully heterosexual until she came along. p. 93: 49. "So Many Enemies," SHJ 7:2 (Spring 1965): 50-51. p. 93: 50. "Sherlock Holmes and the Fair Sex," Baker Street Studies, pp. 177-99; republished in Holmes and Watson: A Miscellany, pp. 28-44. p. 94: 51. "On the Emotional Geology of Baker Street," 221B, pp. 37-45, and "The Real Sherlock Holmes," BSG 1:4 (1962): 65-73. p. 94: 52. Aig's story, "The Lufton Lady," is unpublished. Dahlinger's story was read at the annual dinner of The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, January 7, 1983. p. 94: 53. "From his lack of ... essential parental love could have sprung a genuine aversion from women and an aptitude which made it easy for him to assume that insensitiveness and callousness which so suprised his colleague," writes Anthony L. Williams in "Sherlock Holmes and Religion," SHJ 8:2 (Spring 1967): 44-46. In "The Case of the Missing Mother," Baker Street Cab-Lantern 11 (1973): 16-32, Bernhard Staedler suggests that his mother was the "winning" poisoner whom Holmes mentions in The Sign of the Four. One need not go so far to imagine some youthful trauma. It is striking that Miss Dahlinger also uses the "poisoner" reference as the peg for her speculations. p. 94: 54. "Oedipus in Baker Street," BSM 7 (September 1976): 1-5, immediately followed by Michael Felongs's refutation, "Oedipus in Baker Street?" pp. 6-7, back cover. p. 94: 55. Edgar S. Rosenberger, "My Ancestors Were Country Squires," BSJ 9:4 (October 1959): 197-204. 770

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p. 94: 56. "Holmes and Women: A Reichian Solution," The Baker Street Chronicle 2:2 (MarchApril 1982): [n.p.]. p. 94: 57. "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ 2:2 (April 1952): 81-84. Daniel E. Moriarty introduces yet another conflict with his speculation that Holmes had a crush on "Susan," the daughter of Professor Moriarty. "The Peculiar Persecution of Professor Moriarty," BSJ 10:1 (January 1960): 15-34. p. 94: 58. "Sherlock Holmes, the Napoleon of Crime?" BSJ 31:2 (June 1981): 75-76. p. 94: 59. "Holmes on the Couch," A Touch of the Class, pp. 87-93. Dennis Porter, more solemnly examining the whole detective genre, says much the same thing: "If Holmes does not turn to sex, it is not simply because of the constraints imposed by Late Victorian morality but also because celibacy is the condition of heroic single-mindedness and allows the alternate gratification of the chase." The Pursuit of Crime, p. 233. p. 94: 60. "Those Were Hidden Fires, Indeed!" loc. cit. p. 94: 61. "Sherlock Holmes: An Augustan in a Romantic World," BSM 30 (Summer 1982): 29-31. p. 95: 62. Such speculation was apparently first indulged in by Richard Asher in "Holmes and the Fair Sex," loc. cit. Roberta Pearson does it most thoroughly, proposing and convincingly documenting a dramatic sexual affair. "A Scandal in Kent," Serpentine Muse 6:1 (Summer 1981): 4-12. p. 95: 63. "Holmes and the Halls," SHJ 7:3 (Winter 1965): 68-73. p. 95: 64. This possibility is briefly set forward in Tom McGee, "Love Notes," BSJ 29:2 (June 1979): 83. And of course there is H.W. Starr's article "On My Knees!" referred to in Chapter I. p. 95: 65. Lamond, Doyle: A Memoir, p. 204. p. 95: 66. Ibid., pp. 54-55. p. 95: 67. On the other hand, as Agatha Christie says somewhere, "Women rather like bad lots." R.T. Staples in a hilarious narrative of the Sherlock Holmes Society's trip to Switzerland observes the "shy glances, furtive blushes and extremely deep breathing" which was the ladies' response to Moriarty, and their relative apathy to Holmes. "The Strange Case of the Almost Vanished Ladies," SHJ 16:1 (Winter 1982): 22-23. p. 95: 68. Life International (March 22, 1965), p. 73. p. 95: 69. This is the version of the telegram that Doyle quoted in a speech in 1921. "Sherlock Holmes on the Screen," in Arthur Conan Doyle on Sherlock Holmes. The familiar version, "You may marry or murder or do what you like with him," is from Doyle's Memories and Adventures, p. 97. p. 95: 70. William Gillette, Sherlock Holmes: A Play; "Sherlock Holmes: A Drama in Four Acts," in Sherlock Holmes, Tracy, ed., pp. 63-188. p. 95: 71. This is likely to become the definitive one since it has been recorded by the Home Box Office cable television system with Frank Langella in the title role. It has been published as Sherlock Holmes: A Comedy in Two Acts, by Arthur Conan Doyle and William Gillette. p. 95: 72. September 10, 1901, p. 4, as quoted by Charles B. LaBorde, Jr., in his useful article "Sherlock Holmes on the Stage: William Gillette," BSJ 26:3 (September 1976): 170-77. p. 95: 73. An Ambassador Films movie starring Christopher Plumber; screenplay by John Hopkins; novel ization by Robert Weverka. p. 96: 74. "Dr. Watson Versus the Fifth Proposition of Euclid," loc. cit.

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p. 96: 75. Lee Duigon, "Sherlock Holmes and the Obligatory Love Scene," Mike Shavne's Mystery Magazine, 46:9 (September 1982): 109-12; reprinted in The Commonplace Book, 3rd series, 6:2 (June 1983): 562-63. p. 96: 76. "The Secret Love of Sherlock Holmes;1 BSM 5 (March 1976): 1-7. p. 97: 77. "Lines on The Lions Mane," BSJ 28:4 (December 1978): 199-203. p. 97: 78. BSJ 29:2 (June 1979): 70-80. p. 97: 79. Outside the context of romance, Fred W. Spears has made the case for an emotional mellowing by Holmes in his later years. "Swifter Than the Years," BSJ 18:4 (December 1968): 232-39. p. 97: 80. Loc. cit. The final quotation is from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Chapter VII p. 98: 1. "Cases of Identity, Or, Do I Ring a Bell in Afghanistan?" loc. cit. p. 99: 2. The Adventures of Conan Doyle, p. 155. p. 99: 3. Life of Doyle, p. 93. p. 99: 4. Notably in Carr's biography, chapters vii, "Tragedy," and ix, "Romance," and in Higham's, pp. 147-49. p. 99: 5. Carr, Life of Doyle, p. 176. p. 99: 6. The Adventures of Conan Doyle, pp. 147-48. p. 99: 7. Ibid., p. 148. p. 100: 8. "The Adventure of John and Mary," loc. cit. p. 100: 9. The latest inventory of the manuscripts is Peter E. Blau, "It Is an Old Manuscript," BSM 14 (June 1978): 18-20. p. 100: 10. "Memories of My Father," SHJ 14:1 (Spring 1979): 34. She repeats the observation in "My Father as My Father," SHJ 14:3-4 (Summer 1980): 73-74. p. 100: 11. Carr, Life of Doyle, p. 163; the letter is also quoted in The Sherlock Holmes Exhibition Catalogue, p. 9, No. 41. p. 100: 12. Life of Doyle, p. 196. p. 101: 13. Perhaps one also sees Miss Leckie in Doyle's little domestic novel, A Duet, written not long after he fell in love with her. Carr (Life of Doyle, p. 110) attributes the book's "dreamworld" to Doyle's "state of mind when he wrote it", and certainly he was deriving his glow then from Miss Leckie, not from his invalid wife. p. 101: 14. Ibid., p. 103. p. 101: 15. Conan Doyle, p. 177. The reader may be forgiven for thinking at this point that the biographer protesteth rather too much. Documentary proof of the propriety of the Doyle-Leckie relationship has not been published and probably could not exist; the basis for accepting this propriety essentially is faith in Doyle's character. p. 102: 16. "The American as Villain," BSJ 22:3 (September 1972): 153-57. p. 102: 17. D.A. Redmond in a personal communication. p. 102: 18. The standard attitude has been acceptance of her protestations that the husband came first; but Clifton R. Andrew sees some evidence that she kept "a warm spot in her heart" for Slaney's "possible loving attributes." "The Closed Window Mystery," BSJ 11:3 (September 1961): 178-79. p. 103: 19. Divorce Law Reform Union [1909]. 772

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p. 103: 20. A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle, p. 273. p. 103: 21. Pearsall, The Worm in the Bud, p. 125. The figure of £700 can be interpreted as something on the order of $40,000 (1984 currency). p. 104: 22. Carr, Life of Doyle, p. 230. p. 104: 23. Pp. 231-32. p. 104: 24. Ibid., p. 231. p. 104: 25. "Some Diggings Down Under," SHJ 6:2 (Spring 1963): 49-51. p. 105: 26. James Gleason questions why Holmes should be so sure that Miss Eraser could fall in love only with an officer. Note in "Letters to Baker Street," BSJ 14:1 (March 1964): 59. The answer must be that she was not so much falling in love as casting Crocker for a part. p. 105: 27. "The Abbey Grange, or Who Used Eustace?" BSJ 21:4 (December 1971): 215-20, 223. p. 105: 28. "About Down Under," SHJ 6:3 (Winter 1963): 96-97. p. 105: 29. "Conan Doyle preferred not to make systematic use of Sherlock Holmes as a mouthpiece, and uses less important characters whenever he wants to express an opinion he has much at heart," writes Nordon (Conan Doyle, p. 283). "Lady Brackenstall and Dr. Sterndale reflect his ideas about the need for divorce law reform." But he does not elaborate. p. 105: 30. "New Light on the Old Triangle," loc. cit. p. 106: 31. Mr. Holmes in Cornwall. p. 106: 32. "The Devil's Foot Notes," loc. cit. p. 106: 33. "New Light on the Old Triangle," loc. cit. p. 107: 34. "The Syndromic Problem of Thor Bridge," SHJ 14:1 (Spring 1979): 12-14. p. 107: 35. "Holmes' Hypocrisy," loc. cit. p. 107: 36. "Sherlock Stays After School," Client's Second Case-Book, pp. 72-78. p. 107: 37. Lamond, Doyle: A Memoir, p. 277. p. 109: 38. The Strand Magazine 2 (September 1891): 291-301. p. 109: 39. I have previously set out this thesis about the origin of The Veiled Lodger in "The Lady and the Tiger: Trained Beasts in The Veiled Lodger,'" Covert Notes 4:2 (January 1982): 11-19. p. 109: 40. Sources, p. 224. p. 110: 41. "The Conan Doyle Syndrome in The Veiled Lodger," BSM 9 (March 1977): 1-2. p. 110: 42. H.C. Potter, "The Veiled Lodger Revisited," BSJ 22:3 (September 1972): 158-65. p. 110: 43. I have previously explored these aspects of this story in "What Is Left in Our Hands at the End," Wheelwrightings 3:2 (September 1980): 4-5, 28. p. 112: 44. Lamond, Doyle: A Memoir, p. 288. p. 112: 45. Ibid., pp. 122-23. Chapter VIII p. 114: 1. "A Minor Matter of Bigamy," SHJ 13:2 (Summer 1977): 45-46. The problem was earlier raised by S.T.L. Harbottle in "Sherlock Holmes and the Law," SHJ 1:3 (June 1953): 7-10. p. 114: 2. Commentary, pp. 86-87.

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p. 115: 3. Christopher Morley, irrepressibly writing as Jane Nightwork, suggests that the two were "friendliest of all when they got off their feet." "Some Hitherto Unpublished Notes," BSJ (Christmas Annual 1957): 31-33. p. 115: 4. Morley, "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ o.s. 1:1 (January 1946): 33-38. Leavitt, "The Proposterously Paired Performances of the Preacher's Portrait," BSJ o.s. 3:4 (October 1948): 404-17. p. 115: 5. That story was published in The Strand Magazine (October 1898), and collected in Round the Fire Stories. p. 116: 6. He seduced her, presumably. So said Adrian Conan Doyle, quoted by James Montgomery, who goes on to apostrophize Miss Howells as "Avenger of dishonored love—And lost virginity." "A Canonical Toast to Rachel Howells," Shots from the Canon, p. 23. p. 116: 7. "The story is generally highly rated: fifth and sixth in the two Baker Street Irregular lists of the '50s, and in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's top twelve (no. 11)." "The Musgrave Ritual: A Panel Discussion," SHJ 13:3 (Spring 1978): 77-81, which provides a good overview of the usual subjects of discussion about "The Musgrave Ritual." p. 116: 8. "Musgrave Musings," BSM 17 (March 1979): 16-19. Richards sees similarities to "The Beryl Coronet" as well. p. 116: 9. Canon Fodder, pp. 82-97. It should be noted at once that Talburt does not equate "liberated" with "murderous'—not quite. p. 117: 10. Sources, p. 83. p. 117: 11. The irresistible picture of her at this stage is of Ann Byerly playing the role, with vast amounts of white and black makeup, for the Red Circle costume party in 1980. p. 117: 12. "The Musgrave Ritual" SHJ 15:2 (Summer 1981): 40-43. p. 117: 13. "Women of the Canon. The Women of Influence," loc. cit. p. 118: 14. In fact, it appeared contemporaneously with the official first edition in the United States; but pirated editions had been appearing there since 1890. The bibliographies of Sign are less than satisfactory, but in the opinion of D.A. Redmond, editor of the Checklist of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection in the Metropolitan Toronto Library (2nd ed.; Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, 1977), many of the undated, pirated early Signs were published before the United States copyright laws were amended early in 1891 to require that every published book have a date in it—a law not immediately obeyed, so that pirates may still have been active in 1893. (Personal communication.) p. 119: 15. Commentary, p. 120. p. 119: 16. "The Indian Elements in the Holmes Tales," Canadian Holmes 5:4 (Summer 1982): 3-11. p. 119: 17. "Casual Comments on The Crooked Man," BSJ 12:2 (June 1962): 99-100. p. 119: 18. For this observation I am indebted to my wife. p. 119: 19. "The Twelve Best," BSJ o.s. 1:4 (October 1946): 457-59. p. 119: 20. Ibid. p. 119: 21. "The Ten Best' and the 'Ten Least,'" BSJ 4:2 (April 1954): 117-19. p. 119: 22. "Casual Comments on The Crooked Man," loc. cit. p. 119: 23. Of course, perhaps Thomas Frederick Foss is right when he says that there were none and that the betrayal was a fantasy of Wood's. "What he saw through the window was a normal husband-and-wife row such as occurs from time to time even in the best-regulated households.

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He rushed in to interfere, and the sudden sight of his horribly deformed body caused the colonel to have a heart attack and crack his skull on the fender." "Colonel James Barclay," BSJ 20:4 (December 1970): 231-33. p. 120: 24. Commentary, p. 121. p. 120: 25. Although he had the Baker Street Irregulars wrapped around his little finger; and see Bob Coghill's paper "A Sherlockian Tribute to Children," Covert Notes n.s. 2:4 (December 1979): 11-15. p. 120: 26. It is possible to read a hint of homosexuality into the choice of Horace as the poet on whom Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable is an authority: Horace is noted as the only Roman poet of importance who never married, and there are homosexual meanings in some of his verses. But the primary implication is of formality and stuffiness, Horace being a poet of establishment artifice in contrast to, say, Catullus. I am grateful to Dr. Phyllis Forsyth of the department of classical studies, University of Waterloo, for advice on this point. p. 121: 27. Among the cynics who have so concluded is the Marquess of Donegall, in "Kidnapping, Murder, Cycle Tracks, a Duke and His Cheque!" The New Strand 1:7 (June 1962): 810-12, republished as "Thoughts on The Adventure of the Priory School," Holmesian Observer 1:1 (March 1971): 10-14. p. 122: 28. Pearsall, Conan Doyle: A Biographical Solution, p. 125. p. 122: 29. Charles Higham, The Adventures of Conan Doyle, p. 242. p. 122: 30. The London Evening Free Press, June 5, 1914. p. 122: 31. The Adventures of Conan Doyle, p. 124. p. 122: 32. Life of Doyle, p. 229. p. 122: 33. "My Father as My Father," SHJ 14:3-4 (Summer 1980): 73-74. It should be noted that Dame Jean's title is not a hereditary one; she earned it in a distinguished career as a commander of military forces. p. 122: 34. Beyond the City, pp. 167-70. p. 123: 35. First published in The Idler (April 1894) and McClure's (August 1894) and later in Round the Red Lamp. p. 123: 36. Quest, p. 289. p. 123: 37. Ibid., p. 28. p. 123: 38. I have previously suggested that he was also on his way "to make a full report on the activities of The Brotherhood." The two are not quite incompatible. "Class Consciousness in the Canon," Serpentine Muse 4:1 (Spring 1978): 7-12. p. 123: 39. Studies in Sherlock Holmes, IV: The Author of the Case-Book, p. 20. (Reprinted as Studies in Sherlock Holmes, p. 154.) p. 123: 40. Ibid., p. 14 (p. 148). p. 124: 41. "Lowenstein of Prague," BSJ 23:4 (December 1973): 220-27. p. 125: 42. Loc. cit., pp. 14-15 (pp. 148-49). Chapter IX p. 126: 1. P. Stephen Clarkson, "Take That, You Hound!" loc. cit. p. 126: 2. In the spring of 1982, in research for this book, I asked two groups of Sherlockians, about thirty-five people in all, to estimate how many of the sixty stories had no women characters. 775

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Their answers ranged from zero to forty; the median was about three. But they were not asked how important those women characters are. p. 126: 3. The official list, according to Clarkson: "The Final Problem," "The Five Orange Pips," "The Gloria Scott" "The Mazarin Stone," "The Red-Headed League," "The Resident Patient," "The Stock-Broker's Clerk," "The Three Students." p. 126: 4. BSJ o.s. 1:4 (October 1946): 475-76. p. 126: 5. Commentary, p. 253. p. 126: 6. W.E. Dudley, "Dr. Watson's Triple Play," BSJ 23:1 (March 1973): 22-27. p. 128: 7. DA. Redmond, "The Prosthesis Fixation of Dr. John H. Watson," Canadian Holmes 5:2 (Christmas 1981): 15-19. p. 128: 8. It dates back at least to Rex Stout's hilarious article, "Watson Was a Woman," loc. cit. p. 128: 9. Bruce Kennedy, "Cherchez la Femme," A Curious Collection, pp. 19-22, accompanied by Jon Wilmunen's cartoon, "Elementary, Watson, my dear!" More recently a colour print has been on sale, with the caption "By Jove, Holmes, What a Remarkable Disguise." (I have also seen a cartoon: "Ah, my dear Watson, you've penetrated my little disguise.") Other suggestions of the sort: Stefan Ernstsson, "The Counterfeit Sherlock Holmes Unmasked," Baker Street CabLantern 10 (1972): 6-9; Colin Davies, "A Scandal in Baker Street," Alan Bradley and William A.S. Sarjeant, "The Woman," From the Mantelpiece 4 (1979). p. 129: 10. But Julian Wolff says of Sherlock Holmes's bedroom, "It is believed that its location adjacent to the sitting-room is so well established that there is no necessity of quoting all the textual references bringing this out. . . . The proposed location of Dr. Watson's bedroom may give rise to some controversy, but reference to the highest authority available leads to the inevitable conclusion that this room is located on the floor above the sitting-room. On at least five occasions Watson mentions descending from his room to the sitting-room." "I Have My Eye on a Suite in Baker Street," BSG o.s. 1:3 (July 1946): 296-99. p. 129: 11. Leslie Fiedler, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. p. 129: 12. Quest, p. 110. p. 129: 13. The Dark Angel, p. 129. p. 129: 14. Ronald Burt De Waal, The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and Christopher Morley, ed., Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Textbook of Friendship, a selection of the original stories with an introduction by Morley. p. 129: 15. Profile by Gaslight, p. 290, and many republications. p. 130: 16. "The Star-Crossed Personality of Sherlock Holmes," BSJ 12:3 (September 1962): 163-68. p. 130: 17. Virginia Johnson observes that "wifely comments and observations appear throughout the Writings. . . . Holmes himself utters more than a few completely husbandly words. . . . Upon occasion, the master calls Watson a 'helpmate.'" "The Adventure of the Misguided Males," BSJ o.s. 3:4 (October 1948): 501-05. There are other possible models: L.W Bailey suggests that of father and son in "The Psychology of Holmes and Watson," SHJ 4:2 (Spring 1959): 73-75. p. 130: 18. "The Mysterious Characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson," BSJ 20:4 (December 1970): 223-30. p. 131: 19. Loc. cit., pp. 45-54. p. 131: 20. All of Krejci-Graf s paper deserves close attention, but most of it is outside the scope of the present discussion. p. 132: 21. "John Clay knew as well as anyone that in England of those days, only traitors . . . and murderers were hanged," complains S. Tupper Bigelow. ("Two Canonical Problems Solved,"

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loc. cit.) But Clay is not necessarily predicting that he will hang for something he has already done; as readers of the comic strip Andy Capp know, among others, "I'll swing for yer!" is a hotblooded threat of homicide. p. 133: 22. I am much indebted to Dolores Rossi Script for pointing out this aspect of "The Resident Patient." p. 134: 23. First, Christopher Morley, in "Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient," BSJ n.s. 1:1 (January 1951): 9-14. p. 134: 24. Pp. 132-41 and passim. p. 134: 25. Wilde's presence there as Thaddeus Sholto has been generally accepted for decades; Vincent Starrett credits H.W. Bell with first proposing it. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, p. 10. For a summary of the state of Holmes-Wilde scholarship see my paper "A Study in Gray," Naval Signals 10 (March 16, 1982): 6-10. p. 134: 26. John Bennett Shaw good-humouredly called it "a fascinating book if you don't take it seriously." "The Cult of Sherlock Holmes," Cultivating Sherlock Holmes, pp. 11-26. The general reviews of the book were more favourable than its reception in the Sherlockian world, as reference to Book Review Digest will suggest. p. 134: 27. Deleted by Linsenmeyer himself or by Julian Wolff, then editor of BSJ, not by me. p. 134: 28. "Naked Is Not Much of a Disguise," BSJ 26:1 (March 1976): 18-20. p. 134: 29. It is only fair to Sherlockians in general to note that Linsenmeyer's paper was criticized the following year for "insult, distortion, and misrepresentation," in a brief counter-review, which adds: "Linsenmeyer's failure to understand how one character can be modelled on another reads more like an admission than a criticism. . . . Rosenberg has conducted what is essentially a structural analysis of sections of the Canon. Its validity does not rest upon the accuracy of a handful of facts, but upon the relationship among a wide range of facts." John Nieminski and Donald K. Pollock, "More on Naked Disguises," BSJ 27:2 (June 1977): 86-87. p. 135: 30. Naked, pp. 68-70. p. 135: 31. Ibid., p. 173. p. 136: 32. "Fooling Around at the Cedars," Naval Signals 11 (June 15, 1982): 117-19. p. 136: 33. "The Conan Doyle Syndrome and The Sussex Vampire," BSJ 26:4 (December 1976): 227-28, 230. "The Syndromic Problem of Thor Bridge," SHJ 14:1: 12-14. "The Conan Doyle Syndrome in The Veiled Lodger," BSM 9: 1-2. p. 136: 34. "Rosenberg and The Red Circle," unpublished paper delivered to The Occupants of the Empty House, Carbondale, Illinois, November 5, 1982. p. 136: 35. Several points in "The Red-Headed League" that Rosenberg neglects to mention are discussed in two anonymous articles in Naval Signals 4 (June 17, 1980)—anonymous but to be laid to the credit of editor Tom Dandrew: "The Two Black Clays of The Red-Headed League" and "William Morris: A Rosenberg Omission." p. 136: 36. "Breaking the Six Napoleons," CHJ 4:2 (February 1982): 2-3. p. 137: 37. This argument has been previously rehearsed in my paper "Most Unromantic? But Most Sexy Too!" CHJ 4:3 (March 1982): 2-3. p. 137: 38. "The Prosthesis Fixation of Dr. John H. Watson," loc. cit. p. 138: 39. The Dangerous Edge, pp. 31-63. p. 138: 40. "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: To See and Be Seen," Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 46:6 (November 1982): 530-38.

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p. 138: 41. I write as an untrained amateur on the subject of Freudian theory, as applied either to therapy or to literary criticism. Although I suspect that a careful Freudian reading of the Holmes tales would prove very rewarding, I have made no consistent effort to present one in this book. A useful starting point for such work is Morton Kaplan and Robert Kloss, The Unspoken Motive. p. 139: 42. Quest, pp. 255-76. p. 139: 43. Gabriel, loc. cit. p. 140: 44. Ibid. Chapter X p. 141: 1. Holmes's proceedings from beginning to end of this story have been efficiently demolished by Ian McLeod, "The Missing Three-Quarter Just Isn't All There." Canadian Holmes 6:4 (Summer 1984): 20-22. p. 141: 2. A three-quarter is, of course, the player of a specific position in rugby; but few North Americans know anything about the game, and Britons may be confused because the rules have changed since Doyle's day, so that the three-quarter, a vital player then, is now a peripheral one. The title's chief value has been in puns: in particular, it has been applied to Volume 4 of the Old Series of the Baker Street Journal, which ceased publication for financial reasons after issue Number 1. p. 141: 3. The Sherlockian scholar quickly comes to recognize Doyle's writing, also seen in "The Reigate Squires" and "The Priory School." (And drawings by Doyle appear in "The Dancing Men"; it is a curiosity, but perhaps a coincidence, that all these stories appear in the middle third of the stories as they are taken in chronological order.) Anyone curious can compare the telegram fragment with the manuscript of "The Missing Three-Quarter," reproduced in Annotated, II, 479, 490. p. 142: 4. Conan Doyle, p. 267. p. 142: 5. "A Handy Guide to Canonical Kidnappers," Wheelwrightings 4:3 (January 1982): 9-12, 34. p. 142: 6. Conan Doyle, p. 169. p. 143: 7. Memories and Adventures, pp. 269-70. p. 143: 8. Carr, Life of Doyle, p. 61; Rodin and Key, Medical Casebook, pp. 105-109. p. 143: 9. In the article "In Praise of The Boscombe Valley Mystery'," BSJ 31:3 (September 1981): 170-74, I argue that "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" "is just about the best of all the Sherlock Holmes tales, and . . . also the one which more than almost any of the others is responsible for our picture, our mental model, of Sherlock Holmes." p. 143: 10. "Undertones of Boscombe Valley," BSJ 28:1 (March 1978): 36-40. p. 143: 11. As previously pointed out by H.B. Williams, "Then Falls Thy Shadow," The Illustrious Client's Case-Book, pp. 50-53. p. 144: 12. A curiously apt name for the fiancee of a dead man named West. The name comes, says Redmond (Sources, p. 183), from Sir Richard Bethell, Baron Westbury, author of the Divorce Act of 1857, a law that of course was of interest to Doyle. p. 144: 13. Ibid. p. 145: 14.1 am grateful to Dayna Nuhn for pointing out this example of the Rosenberg syndrome in action. p. 145: 15. Redmond, Sources, p. 95. p. 145: 16. Both scenes, of course, suggest the Rosenberg syndrome pattern mentioned in Chapter IX. 778

Reference Notes

p. 146: 17. A complete bibliography would be tedious. An article that covers the subject well is Patrick Drazen's "Next Stop, Norbury," BSJ 29:1 (March 1979): 16-20. p. 146: 18. Thomas L. Stix thinks otherwise, writing in a brief polemic that she was "a cheat, a liar, a forger, a plotter—and a very poor one at that—a heartless mother, an opportunist." He is entitled to think so. And he does raise one question of interest: "Was she pretty? There are no statements to prove it one way or the other." "The Yellow Face," BSJ 24:3 (September 1974): 166-67. p. 146: 19. Carr, Life of Doyle, p. 231. p. 146: 20. By a small margin longer than The Hound of the Baskervilles: 185 pages versus 182, in the Doubleday edition. It is a third again as long as A Study in Scarlet, which in turn is longer than The Sign of the Four. p. 146: 21. "The Birlstone Hoax," BSJ o.s. 4:1 (January 1949): 5-11. p. 146: 22. "The Ten Best' Contest," BSJ 9:4 (October 1959): 237-40. p. 146: 23. Life of Doyle, p. 234. p. 146: 24. Major works that explore this aspect of The Valley of Fear include S.B. Liljegren, The Irish Element in "The Valley of Fear"; Andrew Jay Peck, "The Valley of Fear Revisited," BSJ 20:3 (September 1970): 142-49; Eric Silk, "The Valley of Fear and the Pinkertons," BSJ 27:2 (June 1977): 71-78. p. 147: 25. In later editions, "Swedish"; Germans were in bad odour when World War I began. p. 147: 26. Let it not be said that good writers never use dangling participles. p. 147: 27. Or sentence fragments. p. 148: 28. Arthur H. Lewis, Lament for the Molly Maguires, p. 225. p. 150: 29. A useful term offered by Carr, Life of Doyle, pp. 234-35. p. 150: 30. James Montgomery, "A Case of Identity," Montgomery's Christmas Annual No. 6 (1955). p. 151: 31. Quest, pp. 22-23. p. 151: 32. Ibid., p. 23. p. 151: 33. There have been some preliminary works along this line, in fact, notably Henry T. Folsom, "My Biblical Knowledge Is a Trifle Rusty," BSJ 15:3 (September 1965): 174-82, a paper whose conclusions I find attractive. p. 153: 34. Porter, The Pursuit of Crime, pp. 100, 110-11. p. 153: 35. The Iceman Inheritance, pp. 130, 150. p. 154: 36. James Ludovici, who was curator of the Doyle museum at the Chateau de Lucens in the 1960s, reports that one young woman "was ready to exchange her attractions for a single night 'in a real castle'," but it is not clear that Holmes is what she was after. "Curator's Egg," SHJ 12:1 (Spring 1975): 24-26. p. 154: 37. Quoted in Cornelis Helling, "From Amsterdam's Sage," SHJ 7:4 (Spring 1966): 131-32.

179

Appendix I Sherlock Holmes Reference List

The original Sherlock Holmes stories with dates of first publication. A Study in Scarlet

[December] 1887

The Sign of the Four

February 1890

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: "A Scandal in Bohemia" "The Red-Headed League" "A Case of Identity" 'The Boscombe Valley Mystery" "The Five Orange Pips" "The Man with the Twisted Lip" "The Blue Carbuncle" "The Speckled Band" "The Engineer's Thumb" "The Noble Bachelor" "The Beryl Coronet" "The Copper Beeches"

July 1891 August 1891 September 1891 October 1891 November 1891 December 1891 January 1892 February 1892 March 1892 April 1892 May 1892 June 1892

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: "Silver Blaze" "The Yellow Face" "The Stock-Broker's Clerk" "The 'Gloria Scott'" "The Musgrave Ritual" "The Reigate Squires" "The Crooked Man" "The Resident Patient" "The Greek Interpreter" "The Naval Treaty" "The Final Problem"

December 1892 February 1893 March 1893 April 1893 May 1893 June 1893 July 1893 August 1893 September 1893 October-November 1893 December 1893

The Hound of the Baskervilles

August-April 1901-2 180

Appendix I — Sherlock Holmes Reference List

The Return of Sherlock Holmes: "The Empty House" "The Norwood Builder" "The Dancing Men" "The Solitary Cyclist" "The Priory School" "Black Peter" "Charles Augustus Milverton" "The Six Napoleons" "The Three Students" "The Golden Pince-Nez" "The Missing Three-Quarter" "The Abbey Grange" "The Second Stain"

September 1903 October 1903 December 1903 December 1903 January 1904 February 1904 March 1904 April 1904 June 1904 July 1904 August 1904 September 1904 December 1904

The Valley of Fear

September-May 1914-5

His Last Bow: "Wisteria Lodge" "The Cardboard Box" "The Red Circle" "The Bruce-Partington Plans" "The Dying Detective" "Lady Frances Carfax" "The Devil's Foot" "His Last Bow"

August 1908 January 1893 March-April 1911 December 1908 November 1913 December 1911 December 1910 September 1917

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes: "The Illustrious Client" "The Blanched Soldier" "The Mazarin Stone" "The Three Gables" "The Sussex Vampire" "The Three Garridebs" "Thor Bridge" "The Creeping Man" "The Lion's Mane" "The Veiled Lodger" "Shoscombe Old Place" "The Retired Colourman"

November 1924 October 1926 October 1921 September 1926 January 1924 October 1924 February 1922 March 1923 November 1926 January 1927 March 1927 December 1926

181

Appendix II A Note on Sources

The most important source for a study of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales is, of course, the tales themselves, four novels and five volumes of short stories sometimes collectively called "the canon" by devotees. Except for special purposes, noted once or twice, the many textual variations are not important for this study. Accordingly, I have not cited references to the text by line or page number, but only by story title (and chapter number, where it applies, in the case of the novels). The text I have used for my authority is the "1930 Doubleday omnibus:" The Complete Sherlock Holmes, the A. Conan Doyle Memorial Edition, published by Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1930. From a bibliographical point of view, that is not in fact a particularly good text, and it is made maddening by jumbled pagination; on the other hand, it is solid and legible, and for me it has sentimental value. I have been even less punctilious about the texts of Doyle's other writings, most of which have been cited only by book title (for short stories I have generally given both first serial publication and the book collection in which the story is most commonly found). One edition is as good as another, for my purposes, and it is a pleasure to note that even Doyle's obscurer works are now becoming available again, especially through the Gaslight Publications series of his "domestic novels" and in the Seeker and Warburg The Unknown Conan Doyle. The bedrock of Sherlockian scholarship is The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 2nd edition, 1967). This two-volume work consists of a full text of the canon accompanied by hundreds of notes, and several explanatory chapters, by William S. Baring-Gould. His sidenotes, illustrations, comments, bibliographies, and other apparatus are frequently valuable even when their limited scope (Baring-Gould wrote as a traditional Holmes-was-a-real-person Sherlockian) and omissions lead a scholar to tear his or her hair. I have relied on the Annotated extensively, and it is quoted by that single word. I should, of course, acknowledge the extensive use of the other standard Sherlockian reference tools as well. In particular I mean Ronald De Waal's two bibliographies: the World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (New York: Bramhall House, 1974) and The International Sherlock Holmes (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1980). With these stands Jack Tracy's magnificent Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana (Doubleday and Company, 1977). For all its limitations, there is no better published index to Sherlockian sources than Bigelow on Holmes, edited by Donald A. Redmond 182

Appendix II — A Note on Sources

(Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, 1974). And as my work on this book was coming to an end there appeared the definitive A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle, edited by Richard Lancelyn Green and John Michael Gibson (Clarendon Press, 1983). Of special importance are biographies of Doyle, which must begin with his own Memories and Adventures (I have used the American edition, Boston: Little, Brown, 1924). There are a good dozen other biographies, but it is some measure of them that most are used rarely or not at all in this work. The standard for thirty years has been The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, by John Dickson Carr (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), which for all its faults—it is adulatory and, the scholar learns, unduly imaginative—is extremely detailed, and was written with much reliance on what other writers have been unable to consult, Doyle's personal papers, now tied up hopelessly in litigation. Two important books on Doyle appeared just in time for me to consult them: a scholarly biography, The Quest for Sherlock Holmes by Owen Dudley Edwards (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1983), and a study of Doyle's medical work and writings, The Medical Casebook of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle by Alvin E. Rodin and Jack D. Key (Malabar, Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co., 1984). Both are packed with valuable information, as Doyle suddenly becomes a figure generally recognized as deserving serious study. I must also mention Donald A. Redmond's Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Sources (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1982). All these works are cited repeatedly and in less than full detail. Scholarly writing about Doyle, both serious and frivolous, tends to appear not in the standard journals but in Sherlockian publications, including many newsletters and magazines too small and ephemeral to be listed in the standard sources; De Waal's bibliographies are the best key to them. A few major ones may be mentioned: The Baker Street Journal (published by the Baker Street Irregulars and latterly by Fordham University Press), cited herein as BSJ; The Sherlock Holmes Journal (published by the Sherlock Holmes Society of London), cited as SHJ; and Baker Street Miscellanea (published by the Sciolist Press with some support from Northeastern Illinois University), cited as BSM. Apart from these basic sources, I have of course used a considerable range of material, most of which is cited in footnotes. See also the Bibliography, which follows in Appendix III.

183

Appendix III Bibliography

Adams, Charles. "To the Second Mrs. Watson." Prescott's Press 4:2 (June 1982). Adler, Irene [pseud.]. Letter in "Under the Jack-Knife." The Serpentine Muse 3:1 (Spring 1977). Aig, Marlene. "The Lufton Lady." Unpublished. Altick, Richard D. Victorian Studies in Scarlet. New York: Norton, 1970. Andrew, Clifton R. "The Closed Window Mystery." Baker Street Journal 11:3 (September 1961). —. "What Kind of Shenanigans Went on at St. Monica's?" Baker Street Journal Christmas Annual (1956). Arenfalk, Paul. "The Mormon Mystery and Other Mysteries in A Study in Scarlet" The Sherlock Holmes Journal 4:4 (Spring 1960). Asher, Richard. "Holmes and the Fair Sex." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 2:3 (Summer 1955). Ashton, Ralph. "Forget St. Monica's . . . What Happened at Briony Lodge?" Baker Street Journal 8:3 (July 1958). Atkinson, Michael. "Virginity Preserved, And the Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes." Clues: A Journal of Detection 2:1 (Spring-Summer 1981). Bailey, L.W. "The Dark Lady of Appledore Towers." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 4:4 (Spring 1960). —. "The Psychology of Holmes and Watson." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 4:2 (Spring 1959). —. "The Scandal Behind The Scandal." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 9:3 (Winter 1969). Barickman, Richard; MacDonald, Susan; and Stark, Myra. Corrupt Relations: Dickens, Tackeray, Trollope, Collins, and The Victorian Sexual System. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. 184

Appendix HI — Bibliography

Baring-Gould, William S., ed. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. New York: Bramhall House, 1962. —. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. 2d ed. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1967. Bates, Hampton R. Letter in Baker Street Journal 26:1 (March 1976). —. "Sherlock Holmes and Syphilis." Canadian Medical Association Journal 113 (November 8, 1975). Batory, Dana Martin. "The Conan Doyle Syndrome and The Sussex Vampire'." Baker Street Journal 26:4 (December 1976). —. "The Conan Doyle Syndrome in The Veiled Lodger'." Baker Street Miscellanea 9 (March 1977). —. "The Syndromic Problem of Thor Bridge." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 14:1 (Spring 1979). Beadle, J.H. Polygamy. Philadelphia: National Publishing, 1904. Beam, Paul. "A University Weekend with Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle." Speech delivered at Queen's University, Kingston, Ont., 1980. —. "The Indian Elements in the Holmes Tales." Canadian Holmes 5:4 (Summer 1982). Bell, H.W. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: The Chronology of Their Adventures. London: Constable, 1932. Bengis, Nathan L. "Sherlock Stays After School." In The Client's Second Case-Book. Edited by J.N. Williamson and H.B. Williams. [Indianapolis: The Illustrious Clients, 1949]. —. "Sorry, Mr. Sherlock Holmes is Engaged Just Now." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 6:3 (Winter 1963). —. "That Dark Lady." Letter in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 5:1 (Winter 1960). Bett, Wingate H. "Watson's Second Marriage." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 3:1 (Summer 1956). Bigelow, S. Tupper. "Two Canonical Problems Solved." Baker Street Journal Christmas Annual (1959). Blackburn, Julian. "The Identity of the King of Bohemia." Baker Street Journal 21:2 (June 1971). Blau, Peter E. "It Is an Old Manuscript." Baker Street Miscellanea 14 (June 1978). Blegen, Theodore C. "Those Were Hidden Fires Indeed!" In Exploring Sherlock Holmes. Edited by E.W. McDiarmid and Theodore C. Blegen. La Crosse, Wisconsin: Sumac Press, 1957. Boucher, Anthony. "The Records of Baker Street." Baker Street Journal 4:1 (January 1949). Bradley, Alan, and Sargeant, William A.S. "The Woman." From the Mantelpiece 4 ([Autumn] 1979).

185

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

Bradley, Michael. The Iceman Inheritance. New York: Warner Books, 1981. Bristowe, W.S. "The Mystery of the Third Continent, or Was Dr. John H. Watson a Philanderer?" The Sherlock Holmes Journal 2:2 (December 1954). Brodie, Fawn M. The Devil Drives. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967. Brundage, Paul H. "In Defense of Irene Adler." Vermissa Herald 2:2 (December 1980). Reprinted in Baker Street Journal 31:4 (December 1981). Bruxner, Pamela. "Is That Man Never Going to Come?" The Sherlock Holmes Journal 14:1 (Spring 1979). Bryden, Ronald. "The Aspiring Dolphin: The Letters of Oscar Wilde." The Nation, 3 November 1962. —. The Unfinished Hero and Other Essays. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. Burton, Sir Richard. Supplemental Nights to the Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night. 6 vols. "Printed by the Kama Shastra Society [i.e. Burton] for Private Subscribers," 1886-88. Byerly, Ann. "An Amnesty for Mrs. Straker." Serpentine Muse 3:3 (Fall 1977). Carr, John Dickson. The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949. Chorley, Jennifer. 'Some Diggings Down Under." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 6:2 (Spring 1963). Christ, Jay Finley. "Problems In A Scandal in Bohemia." Baker Street Gasogene 1:2 [ca. 1961]. Christie, Winnifred. "Sherlock Holmes and Graphology." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 2:4 (Winter 1955). Clark, Benjamin S. "A Dog and a Dish." Baker Street Journal 22:4 (December 1972). —. "The Ladies in the Cases." Baker Street Journal 29:2 (June 1979). Clark, Edward F, Jr. "Lines on The Lion's Mane'." Baker Street Journal 28:4 (December 1978). Clark, John D. "Some Notes Relating to a Preliminary Investigation into the Paternity of Nero Wolfe." Baker Street Journal 6:1 (January 1956). Clark, Mike. "Did Holmes Fail in A Scandal in Bohemia'?" Afghanistanzas 1:4 (February 1977). Clarke, Richard W. "Certain Ladies of Baker Street." Baker Street Journal 2:1 (January 1952). Clarkson, Paul S. "A Scandalous Case of Identity." Baker Street Journal 19:4 (December 1969). Clarkson, P. Stephen. "Another Case of Identity." Baker Street Journal 22:2 (June 1972). —. "Take That, You Hound!" Serpentine Muse 4:4 (Spring-Summer 1979).

186

Appendix III — Bibliography

Coghill, Robert. "A Sherlockian Tribute to Children." Covert Notes 2:4 (December 1979). Cole, James A. "The Most Appealing Woman in the Canon." Baker Street Journal 29:2 (June 1979). Coopersmith, Jerome. Baker Street. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966. —. "The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes the Lover." Life International, 22 March 1965. Couchon, Mary Ellen. "Women of the Moment." The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes Newsletter 2 (July 15, 1975). Cover, Arthur Byron [pseud.]. An East Wind Coming. New York: Berkeley Books, 1979. Dahlinger, Susan. "The Adventure of Violet Tarleton." Prescott's Press 4:4 (December 1982). Dakin, Martin. A Sherlock Holmes Commentary. Newton Abbot, Devon: David & Charles, 1972. —. "Holmes's Bad Deed." Letter in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 4:2 (Spring 1959). —. Quoted in Russell, L. Merritt. "Re: The Adventure of the Worst Man in London." Baker Street Journal Christmas Annual (1959). —. "Some Milverton Doubts." Letter in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 7:2 (Spring 1965). Dalton, Patricia. "Women of the Canon, 3." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 10:3 (Winter 1970). Dandrew, Thomas. "Fooling Around at the Cedars." Naval Signals 11 (June 15, 1962). [Dandrew, Thomas.] "The Two Black Clays of The Red-Headed League'." Naval Signals 4 (June 17, 1980). —. "William Morris: A Rosenbery Omission." Naval Signals 4 (June 17, 1980). Dannay, Fred, and Lee Manfred, [Ellery Queen]. Introduction in The Client's Second Casebook. Edited by J.N. Williamson and H.B. Williams. [Indianapolis: The Illustrious Clients, 1949]. Dardess, John. "It Will Just Cover That Bare Space on the Wall." Baker Street Journal 20:2 (June 1970). Darkbloom, Vivian [pseud.]. "Holmes Is Where the Heart Is." Baker Street Miscellanea 6 (June 1976). Davies, Bernard. "Holmes and the Halls." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 7:3 (Winter 1965). Davies, Colin. "A Scandal in Baker Street." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 11:4 (Autumn 1974). Davis, Elmer. "On the Emotional Geology of Baker Street. "In 2275. Edited by Vincent Starrett. New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1969 [1940]. —. "The Real Sherlock Holmes." Baker Street Gasogene 1:4 [ca. 1962]. De Groat, Ray A. "Sherlock Holmes, Humanitarian." Vermissa Daily Herald 3:1 (July 1981).

187

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De Waal, Ronald. The International Sherlock Holmes. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1980. —. World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. New York: Bramhall House, 1974. Dickensheet, Dean W. "A Last Word for Irene Adler." Shades of Sherlock 2:2 (December 1967). —. "Upon the Victorian Reticence of John H. Watson, M.D." Baker Street Miscellanea 22 (Summer 1980). Donegall, E.A.D, Chichester, 6th Marquess. "Kidnapping, Murder, Cycle Tracks, a Duke and His Cheque." The New Strand 1:7 (June 1962). Republished as "Thoughts on the Adventure of The Priory School." Holrnescan Observer 1:1 (March 1971). Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. A Duet with an Occasional Chorus. London: Grant Richards, 1899, and New York: D. Appleton, 1899. —. "A Medical Document." In Round the Red Lamp. London: Methuen, 1894. —. Beyond the City. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1893. —. "Bones, the April Fool of Harvey's Sluice" London Society 41 (April 1892). Also published in Uncollected Stories. Edited by John Michael Gibson and Richard L. Green. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1982. —. "December's Snow." Poem in Songs of the Road. London: Smith, Elder, 1911. Quoted in Lamond, John. Arthur Conan Doyle. Port Washington, N.Y., and London: Kennikat Press, 1972 [1931]. —. Divorce Law Reform: An Essay. London: Divorce Law Reform Union [1909]. —. Foreword in Sandow, E. The Construction and Reconstruction of the Human Body. London: John Bale, Sons, 1907. —. "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement." Cornhill Magazine (January 1884). —. Memories and Adventures. Boston: Little, Brown, 1924. —. Quoted in Montgomery, James. "A Canonical Toast to Rachel Howells." Shots from the Canon. Philadelphia: privately printed, 1953. —. Quoted in "The Twelve Best." Baker Street Journal o.s. 1:4 (October 1946). —. Round the Fire Stories. London: Smith, Elder, 1908. —. "Sherlock Holmes on the Screen." In Arthur Conan Doyle on Sherlock Holmes. Edited by Richard Lancelyn Green. London: Favil Press, 1981. —. Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha. Edited by Jack Tracy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. —. Sir Nigel. London: Smith, Elder, 1906. —. "Soldiers in London." The Times (London) Feb. 6 and 10, 1917. —. "The Black Doctor." The Strand Magazine 16 (October 1898). —. "The Captain of the Polestar" and Other Tales. London: Longmans, Green, 1890. —. "The Doctors of Hoyland." The Idler 5 (April 1894). Republished in McClure's (August 1894); and Round the Red Lamp. London: Methuen, 1894. —. The Parasite. London: A. Constable, 1894. —. The Refugees. London: Longmans, Green, 1894. —. The Speckled Band: An Adventure of Sherlock Holmes. A play. New York: Samuel French, 1912. —. The Stark Munro Letters. London: Longmans, Green, 1895. —. The Wanderings of a Spiritualist. London: Hodder & Stroughton, 1921. Quoted in Nordon, Pierre. Conan Doyle. London: John Murray, 1966. —. "The Winning Shot." In The Unknown Conan Doyle: Uncollected Stories. Edited by John Michael Gibson and Richard L. Green. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1982.

188

Appendix HI — Bibliography

—. and Gillette, William. Sherlock Holmes: A Comedy in Two Acts. New York: Samuel French, 1976. Doyle, Charles. The Doyle Diary. Edited by Michael Baker. New York and London: Paddington Press, 1978. Doyle, Dame Jean Conan. "Memories of My Father." Letter in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 14:1 (Spring 1979). —. "My Father as My Father." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 14:3-4 (Summer 1980). Drazen, Patrick. "Next Stop, Norbury." Baker Street Journal 29:1 (March 1979). —. "Rosenberg and The Red Circle." Speech delivered to The Occupants of the Empty House, 5 November 1982, at Carbondale, 111. —. "Sherlock Holmes: Nonlimerent" Camden House Journal 3:8 (August 1981). —. "Sherlock Holmes: Nonlimerent, Part Two." Camden House Journal 4:11 (November 1982). Dudley, W.E. "Dr. Watson's Triple Play." Baker Street Journal 23:1 (March 1973). Duigon, Lee. "Sherlock Holmes and the Obligatory Love Scene." Mike Shane Mystery Magazine 46:9 (September 1982). Edwards, Owen Dudley. The Quest for Sherlock Holmes. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1983. Ernstsson, Stefan. "The Counterfeit Sherlock Holmes Unmasked." Baker Street Cab-Lantern 10 (1972). Evans, Constantine. "The American as Villain." Baker Street Journal 22:3 (September 1972). Feinberg, Samuel. "Will the Real Carina Please Stand Up?" Baker Street Journal 26:2 (June 1976). Felong, Michael. "Eros in Baker Street: The Subterranean Sherlock Holmes." Baker Street Miscellanea 1 (April 1975). —. "Oedipus in Baker Street?" Baker Street Miscellanea 1 (September 1976). Fiedler, Leslie. Introduction to Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Shocken Books, 1976. Flynn, Patricia Dodd. "The Mistress and the Maidservant." Serpentine Muse 4:1 (Spring 1978). Folsom, Henry T. "My Biblical Knowledge Is a Trifle Rusty." Baker Street Journal 15:3 (September 1965). Foss, Thomas Frederick. "Colonel James Barclay." Baker Street Journal 20:4 (December 1970). —. "A Minor Matter of Bigamy." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 13:2 (Summer 1972). —. and Linsenmeyer, J.M. "Look to the Lady." Baker Street Journal 27:2 (June 1977). Fredman, L.E. "About Down Under." Letter in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 6:3 (Winter 1963). Friday, Nancy. Forbidden Flowers: More Women's Sexual Fantasies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975.

189

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

—. Men in Love: Men's Sexual Fantasies, The Triumph of Love Over Rage. New York: Delacorte Press, 1980. —. My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. Fusco, Andrew. "The Final Outrage of Enoch J. Drebber." Baker Street Journal 20:3 (September 1970). Gabriel, Andre. "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: To See and Be Seen." Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 46:6 (November 1982). Gay, Peter. Education of the Senses: The Bourgeois Experience Victoria to Freud. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, 1983. George, Isaac S. "Violet the Hunter." Baker Street Journal o.s. 4:1 (January 1949). Gillette, William. "May I Marry Holmes?" Telegram to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1899. Quoted in Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. Memories and Adventures. Boston: Little, Brown, 1924. —. Sherlock Holmes: A Play. Santa Barbara: Helen Halbach, 1974. Gleason, James. "Letters to Baker Street." Baker Street Journal 14:1 (March 1964). Goldberg, B. Abbott "A Case of Paternity." Baker Street Journal 30:3 (September 1980). [Goodrich, William D, et al.]. "The SECO Second Hand-Identified." Baker Street Miscellanea 16 (December 1978). Republished in Serpentine Muse 5:1 (Winter 1980). Goslin, Vernon. "Further Identification." Letter in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 9:4 (Summer 1970). Grazebrook, O.F. Studies in Sherlock Holmes, IV: The Author of the Case-Book. London: privately printed, 1949. Reprinted as Studies in Sherlock Holmes. New York: Magico Magazine, 1981. Green, Richard Lancelyn, and Gibson, John Michael, eds. A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. Grosbayne, Benjamin. "Sherlock Holmes's Honeymoon." Baker Street Journal 21:3 (September 1971). Hall, Trevor H. "Doctor Watson's Marriages." In The Late Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Other Literary Studies. London: Duckworth, 1971. —. Sherlock Holmes: Ten Literary Studies. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970. Hapi [pseud.]. The Adamantine Sherlock Holmes. Brookline Village, Mass.: Kanthaka Press, 1974. Harbottle, S.T.L. "Sherlock Holmes and the Law." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 1:3 (June 1953). Hardwick, Mollie. "Women of the Canon, 1: The Women of Influence." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 10:1 (Winter 1970).

190

Appendix III — Bibliography

—. "Women of the Canon, 2" The Sherlock Holmes Journal 10:2 (Summer 1971). —. "Women of the Canon, 4." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 10:4 (Summer 1972). Harris, Bruce. "Did Sherlock Holmes Kill Charles Augustus Milverton?" Baker Street Journal 32:1 (March 1982). Harris, Robert G. Letter in Baker Street Journal 25:2 (June 1975). Harrison, Fraser. The Dark Angel. New York: Universe Books, 1977. Harrison, Michael. Beyond Baker Street. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976. —. Fanfare of Strumpets. London: W.H. Allen, 1971. —. /, Sherlock Holmes. New York: E.P. Button, 1977. —. In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Frederick Fell, 1960. —. The World of Sherlock Holmes. London: Frederick Muller, —. "What Holmes Did for Holland." Baker Street Journal 23:4 (December 1973).

1973.

Hart, Thomas. "A Word to the Sons of the Copper Beeches." Leaves from the Copper Beeches. Edited by Ames Johnston et al. Narberth, Pa.: Livingston Publishing, 1959. Hartman, Harry. "Sacred Litany." Baker Street Gasogene 1:4 [ca. 1962] Also published in Hartman, Harry. The Holy Quire. Culver City: Luther Norris, 1970. Haynes, George. "The Last Mrs. Watson." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 6:2 (Spring 1963). Hearn, Otis. "Thoughts on the Bust of Miss Mary Morstan." Baker Street Journal 20:4 (December 1970). —. "Undertones of Boscombe Valley." Baker Street Journal 28:1 (March 1978). Herzog, Evelyn. "Holmes the Matchmaker." Speech delivered to The Masters Class of Philadelphia, 13 January 1980. —. "Violet Holmes Speaks." Serpentine Muse 4:2 (Summer 1978). —. et al. "Sherlockian Mixology." Serpentine Muse 3:3 (Fall 1977). Higham, Charles. The Adventures of Conan Doyle. New York: W.W. Norton, 1976. Hoff, Ebbe Curtis. "The Adventure of John and Mary" Baker Street Journal 9:3 (July 1959). Holden, W.H. They Startled Grandfather. London: British Technical & General Press, 1950. Holland, Glenn S. "On the Origin of the Hound." Baker Street Journal 19:1 (March 1969). Holly, Raymond "Dubious and Questionable." Camden House Journal 1:3 (March 1979). Reprinted in Mycroft's Messenger 19 (June 1980). Holroyd, James Edward. "The Egg-Spoon." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 2:3 (Summer 1955).

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—. "The Egg-Spoon." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 6:4 (Spring 1962). —. "The Egg-Spoon." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 14:1 (Spring 1971). Hornung, E.W. "Willful Murder." In Hornung, E.W. The Amateur Cracksman. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902. Hubba, Ronald M. "Holmes: The Potential Entrepreneur." In Cultivating Sherlock Holmes. Edited by Bryce L. Crawford, Jr., and Joseph B. Connors. La Crosse, Wis.: Sumac Press, 1978. Hughes, Winnifred. The Maniac In the Cellar. Princeton University Press, 1980. Iseminger, Gordon L. "Sherlock Holmes: Victorian Archetype." Baker Street Journal 29:3 (September 1979). Jenkins, Roy. Sir Charles Dilke: A Victorian Tragedy. 2d ed. London: Collins, 1965. John, Kevin. "Sherlock Holmes, the Napoleon of Crime?" Baker Street Journal 31:2 (June 1981). Johnson, Virginia. "The Adventure of the Misguided Males." Baker Street Journal o.s. 3:4 (October 1948). Jones, Bob. "It Was from the Carlton Club." Baker Street Journal 33:1 (March 1983). Jones, Kelvin I. "A Scandal in A Scandal in Bohemia'." Canadian Holmes 4:2 (Summer 1982). —. "Holmes and Women: A Reichian Solution." The Baker Street Chronicle 2:2 (MarchApril 1982). —. "That Deep Romantic Chasm " The Sherlock Holmes Journal 9:2 (Summer 1969). —. "The Great Return." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 14:2 (Winter 1979). Jultgren, Russell. Letter in Baker Street Journal 31:2 (June 1981). Kaplan, Morton; and Kloss, Robert. The Unspoken Motive. New York: The Free Press, 1973. Karl son, Katherine. "Promise Her Anything, But Give Her Bisulfate of Baryta." Baker Street Journal 28:4 (December 1978). Karnitsky, Carol [Sister]. Letter quoted by Samuel Rosenberg in a letter to Baker Street Journal 27:1 (March 1977). Keefauver, Brad. "A Handy Guide to Canonical Kidnappers." Wheelwrightings 4:3 (January 1982). Kennedy, Bruce. "Cherchez la Femme." In A Curious Collection. Edited by William J. Walsh. [Suffern, N.Y.]: Musgrave Ritualists Beta, 1971. Kimball, Elliott. "A Multiclarificient." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 7:2 (Spring 1965). King, Martin G. "Holmes in Hoboken?" The Scandal Sheet 1:2 (September 1971). 792

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194

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Pearl, Cyril. The Girl with the Swansdown Seat. London: Frederick Muller, 1955. Pearsall, Ronald. Conan Doyle: A Biographical Solution. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1977. —. The Worm in the Bud. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Pearson, Roberta. "A Scandal in Kent." Serpentine Muse 6:1 (Summer 1981). Peck, Andrew J. "The Valley of Fear Re-visited." Baker Street Journal 20:3 (September 1970). Pollock, Donald K. "Eros in Baker Street: A Reply to Felony." Baker Street Miscellanea 1 (April 1975). —. "Oedipus in Baker Street." Baker Street Miscellanea 1 (September 1976). and Lellenberg, Jon L. "Packaging Holmes for the Paperbacks." Baker Street Miscellanea 31 (Autumn 1982). Porter, Dennis. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981. Potter, H.C. "The Case of the Unrequited Innocents." Baker Street Journal 27:2 (June 1977). —. "The Veiled Lodger Revisited" Baker Street Journal 22:3 (September 1972). Praeger, J.C., and Silverstein, Albert. "Loewenstein of Prague." Baker Street Journal 23:4 (December 1973). Prestige, Colin. "Cases of Identity, Or, Do I Ring'a Bell in Afghanistan?" The Sherlock Holmes Journal 14:1 (Spring 1979). —. "The Jack-Knife." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 15:2 (Summer 1981). Redmond, Christopher. "A Study in Gray." Naval Signals 10 (March 16, 1982). —. "Class Consciousness in the Canon." Serpentine Muse 4:1 (Spring 1978). —. "In Praise of The Boscombe Valley Mystery." Baker Street Journal 31:3 (September 1981). —. "Most Unromantic? But Most Sexy Too!" Camden House Journal 4:3 (March 1982). —. "Pastiche, Patchwork, and Plain Hash." Covert Notes 2:3 (September 1979). —. "The Lady and the Tiger." Covert Notes 4:2 (January 1982). —. "What Is Left in Our Hands at the End" Wheelwrightings 3:2 (September 1980). Redmond, Donald A. "Initial or All Caps?" The Sherlock Holmes Journal 9:2 (Summer 1969). —. Letter in Red Herring 11 (March 1981). —. Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Sources. Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1982. —. "The Prosthesis Fixation of Dr. John A. Watson." Canadian Holmes 5:2 (Christmas 1981). ed. Bigelow on Holmes. Toronto: Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, 1974. Roberts, A.C. and Leeb, Gene A. "First You See It, Then You Don't." Baker Street Journal 27:1 (March 1977). Roberts, Sir Sydney. Doctor Watson. London: Faber & Faber, [1931].

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Crawford, Jr. and Joseph B. Connors. La Crcsse, Wis.: Sumac Press, 1978. "To shelve or to Censor" shades of Sherlock 18 [also 5:2] (August 14, 1971). 797

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Shreffler, Philip A. "Dr. Watson Versus the Fifth Proposition of Euclid." Baker Street Miscellanea 25 (Spring 1981). Silk, Eric. "The Valley of Fear' and the Pinkertons." Baker Street Journal 27:2 (June 1977). Skinner, Cornelia Otis. Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Smith, Edgar W. "From the Editor's Commonplace Book." Baker Street Journal 5:1 (January 1955). —. "Good Night, Mister Sherlock Holmes." Baker Street Journal o.s. 2:4 (October 1947). —. "Substitute Titles." Letter in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 3:2 (Winter 1956). —. "The Editor's Gas-Lamp." Baker Street Journal n.s. 1:4 (October 1951). —. "The Least of These..." Baker Street Journal 3:3 (April 1953). [Smith, Edgar W] "The Ten Best and the Ten Least." Baker Street Journal 4:2 (April 1954). —. "The Ten Best Contest." Baker Street Journal 9:4 (October 1959). Smith, Francis. "The Only Selfish Action I Can Recall." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 9:4 (Summer 1970). Sovine, J.W. "The Adventure of the Command Performance." Baker Street Journal 8:1 (January 1958). Spears, Fred W. "Swifter Than The Years." Baker Street Journal 18:4 (December 1968). Speck, Gordon R. "Sherlock Holmes: An Augustan in a Romantic World." Baker Street Miscellanea 30 (Summer 1982). Staedler, Bernhard. "The Case of the Missing Mother." Baker Street Cab-Lantern 11 (1973). Staples, R.T. "The Strange Case of the Almost Vanished Ladies." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 16:1 (Winter 1982). Starr, H.W "On My Knees!" In Four Wheels to Baker Street. Edited by Bruce Kennedy. Fulton, Mo.: The Three Students Plus, 1968. —. "Some New Light on Watson." Baker Street Journal o.s. 1:1 (January 1946). —. "The Abbey Grange, or Who Used Eustace?" Baker Street Journal 21:4 (December 1971). Starrett, Vincent. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. —. "221B." In Profile by Gaslight. Edited by Edgar W. Smith. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944. Stephens, Charles B. "The Birlstone Hoax." Baker Street Journal o.s. 4:1 (January 1959).

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Stix, Thomas L. "Casual Comments on the Crooked Man." Baker Street Journal 12:2 (June 1962). —. "The Yellow Face." Baker Street Journal 24:3 (September 1974). Stout, Rex. "Watson Was a Woman." In Profile by Gaslight. Edited by Edgar W. Smith. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944. Summers, Montague. The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel. London: The Fortune Press, 1969. Talburt, Nancy. "Sherlock Holmes and the Liberated Woman." In Canon Fodder. Edited by Charles O. Gray. Little Rock, Ark.: The Arkansas Valley Investors, 1976. Terrot, Charles. The Maiden Tribute: A Study of the White Slave Traffic of the Nineteenth Century. London: Frederick Muller, 1959. Townsend, Larry. The Sexual Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Olympia Press, 1971. Tracy, Jack. Conan Doyle and the Latter-Day Saints. Rev. ed. Bloomington, Ind.: Gaslight Publications, 1979. —. Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. Trevelyan, Percy. Mr. Holmes In Cornwall. Redruth, Cornwall: Penwith Books, 1980. Trudgill, Eric. Madonnas and Magdalens. London: Heineman, 1967. Umansky, Harlan L. "An Adventure in 'Wild Surmise'." Baker Street Journal 32:1 (March 1982). Utechin, Nicholas, et al. "The Musgrave Ritual." A Panel Discussion. The Sherlock Holmes Journal 13:3 (Spring 1978). Van Dieren, Bernard J. "What Has Become of Them?" Baker Street Journal 4:4 (October 1954). Von Krebs, Maria. "Agatha Is Her Name." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 4:2 (Spring 1959). Warner, Edith. "Holmes a Libertine?" Baker Street Journal 19:2 (June 1969). Warner, Marina. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1970. Warrick, Guy. "Disguises in Baker Street." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 9:3 (Winter 1969). Watt, Donald J. "The Literary Craft of The Hound of the BaskervillesT Baker Street Journal 22:4 (December 1972). Wellman, Manly Wade. "The Great Man's Great Son." Baker Street Journal o.s. 1:3 (July 1946).

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Wetherbee, Winthrop. "The Third Continent: Further Light on Doctor Watson." Baker Street Journal 2:3 (July 1952). Weverka, Robert. Murder by Decree. New York: Ballantine Books, 1979. Wigglesworth, Belden. "Many Nations and Three Separate Continents." Baker Street Journal o.s. 2:3 (July 1947). —. "Rondeau." Baker Street Journal o.s. 1:4 (October 1946). —. "Wild Animal Training." The Strand Magazine, 2 (September 1891). Williams, Anthony L. "Sherlock Holmes and Religion." The Sherlock Holmes Journal 8:2 (Spring 1967). Williams, H.B. "Half Sister, Half Mystery." Baker Street Journal 8:2 (April 1958). —. "Then Falls Thy Shadow." In The Illustrious Client's Case-Book. Edited by J.N. Williamson and H.B. Williams. [Indianapolis: The Illustrious Clients, 1948]. Williamson, Jerry N. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes: Misogamist or Misogynist?" In The Illustrious Client's CaseBook. Edited by J.N. Williamson and H.B. Williams. [Indianapolis: The Illustrious Clients, 1948]. —. "The Star-Crossed Personality of Sherlock Holmes." Baker Street Journal 12:3 (September 1962). —. "The Wiles of Mary Morstan." In The Illustrious Client's Case-Book. Edited by J.N. Williamson and H.B. Williams. [Indianapolis: The Illustrious Clients, 1948]. Wilson, Alan. "Son of Escort." Baker Street Journal 10:3 (October 1960). Wilson, Evan M. "Sherlock Holmes and Latin America: An Identification and Some Lovely Ladies." Baker Street Journal 22:3 (September 1972). Wolff, Julian. "I Have My Eye on a Suite in Baker Street." Baker Street Journal o.s. 1:3 (July 1946). "The Adventuress of Sherlock Holmes." Baker Street Journal 7:1 (January 1957). Wolov, Beverley. "Holmes on the Couch." A Touch of the Class. Edited by Michael H. Kean. Wilmette, 111.: The Pondicherry Press, 1981. Yuhasova, Helene \pseud.]. "Sonnet: Sherlock Holmes to Irene Adler." Baker Street Journal o.s. 1:2 (April 1946). Reprinted in Yuhasova. A Lauriston Garden of Verses. Summit, N.J.: The Pamphlet House, 1946.

200

Index

Baker, Valentine (Colonel) 144 Bantam Books 51 Baring-Gould, William S. 57, 90 — see also Annotated Barmaid 143 Bed- names 134 Bed, double 102, 130 Bedroom 145, 176 — shared by Holmes and Watson 85 Bee-keeping 152 Beecher, Henry Ward 36, 115, 152 Bell, Joseph 139 Bell, Laura 59, 162 Bernhardt, Sarah 59 "Beryl Coronet, The" 37f, 79, 93, 114, 137, 163 Beyond the City 122f Bigamy 114 Bismarck, Otto von 62 "Black Doctor, The" 115 "Black Peter" 54 Blackmail 71ff, 76 "Blanched Soldier, The" 44, 97, 100 "Blue Carbuncle, The" 24, 48, 92, 131 Bohemia 131 — see also "Scandal in Bohemia" Bonding: see Male bonding Bootmakers of Toronto 68 "Boscombe Valley Mystery, The" 90, 103, 143, 178 Breasts 46, 51 Bromley, Valentine Walter 144 Browning, Robert 135 "Bruce-Partington Plans, The" 89, 100, 143ff Burne-Jones, Edward 141 Burton, Sir Richard 12

"Abbey Grange, The" 22, 32, 34, 45, 51, lOlff, 151, 152, 173 Acid-throwing: see Vitriol Adams, Constance 41 Adler, Baron Kirke 60 Adler, Irene, 15, 17, 45f, 55f, 70ff, 93, 101, 111, 115, 151, 165, 166 — appearance 67f Adultery 16, 34ff, 115 Adventuress 53, 55, 59, 66, 104 Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes 6, 63, 68, 166 Agatha, housemaid 25, 79, 93 Amateur Cracksman, The 79, 129 Americans as outside troublemakers 102 — see also Foreign backgrounds Amputation 25, 35, 38, 128, 137f Anagram 131 Angel (name) 84, 110 'Angels of Darkness" (play) 41 Anglo-Saxon spirit: see England Animal training 109 Anniversary date, Doyle's 105f Annotated Sherlock Holmes, The lOf Annunciation, Feast of the 67 Anonyma 53 — see also Walters Aphrodisiac 123ff Archetypal figure 66f 'Aunt Clara" (song) 63ff, 164f Australia 41, 120 "Baker Street" (musical play) 95, 166 Baker Street Irregulars 44, 56, 63f, 66, 129, 165 Baker Street, 221B 129

201

Index

Byerly, Ann 174

Dating (courtship) 144 David, King of Israel 119 "December Snow" 112 Degas, Edgar 153 Detective stories — as sexual 153, 171 — structure 41ff "Devil's Foot, The" 34, 101, 103, 105f, 136, 138 Devonshire, Duchess of 84 Dilke, Charles 35 Dionysus 135 Divorce 51f, 103f, 178 — see also Marriage breakdown Divorce Reform Union 103 "Doctors of Hoyland, The" 123 Doyle Diary, The 151 Doyle, Adrian (son) 108 Doyle, Annette (sister) 88 Doyle, Arthur Conan — anniversary 105f — boyhood in Vienna 60 — children 108 — domesticity 107, 146, 150f — family background 123, 151 — family members as governesses 88 — gallantry 161 — handwriting 141, 178 (see also Manuscripts) — home in Sussex 150 — knowledge of millinery, see Millinery — love in early years 45, 99f — love in middle age 23, 35 — love in old age 112 — manuscripts 77, 100, 167 — marriage, first 43f — marriage, second 99f - medical career 14, 108, 123, 133, 139, 143 — methods of working 58, 77, 173 — military experience (lack of) 139 — mother 94, 140 — opinion on divorce 51, 103f — opinion on homosexuality 129 — opinion on prostitution 14 — opinion on suffragism 121ff — opinion on the importance of sex 14 — personality, "syndrome", temperament 135f, 139f, 153 — purposes in writing 98 — religious beliefs 21 (see also Spiritualism) — self-portrait as Holmes 93, 94, 98, 105, 128f

Cafe Royal 12 Canadian, Holmes was 158 "Cardboard Box, The" 33ff, 106, 135, 137, 138, 152, 157 Carfax 24, 87 Carina 61, 164 "Case of Identity, A" 51, 58, 79, 82ff, 90, 96, 109f, 114, 153 Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes 107 Castration anxiety 137ff — see also Amputation Catullus 135, 175 Censorship 36f, 106 Chaldean and Cornish 105, 136 "Charies Augustus Milverton" 25, 80, 92, 114, 116 Chateau de Lucens 179 Children 175 Chorus girl 72, 115 Circus 108f Clara, Aunt 63ff, 164f Clay (substance) 133 Clergyman 106 Cloakrooms: see Washrooms "Club-footed Grocer, The" 137 Cohen, Paula 165 Conan Doyle: see Doyle Conan Doyle Syndrome: see Syndrome — see also Rosenberg Consumption 141 Cook, Eliza 61 Coopersmith, Jerome 95 "Copper Beeches, The" 87ff, 95, 142, 143, 151, 160, 168f Copyright law 174 Cornish — language: see Chaldean - girls 117 Costume, Victorian 12 Courtesans 52f, 59, 64 — see also Bell; Langtry, Pearl; Walters; Prostitution Courtship: see Dating "Creeping Man, The" 14, 90, 123ff, 138 Criterion Bar 160f "Crooked Man, The" 47, 118ff, 137, 174f Dahlinger, Susan 165 Damsels in distress 82ff "Dancing Men, The" 34, lOlf, 104, 106, 108, 172, 178 202

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

Fiance — absent 86, 90, 101 — not absent 124 Fiancee, not absent 144, 145 Figure (word often used) 24, 45, 68, 76, 85, 109, 114, 122, 147 "Final Problem, The" 25, 95, 100 "Five Orange Pips, The" 48, 55, 113 Flagellation 18, 51, 54, 110 — see also Whip Football 142f Foreign backgrounds to stories lOlf, 116f Frankfurter, Felix 163 Freud, Sigmund 140, 178 Friday, Nancy 25, 29 Frustration 134

— self-portrait as John Douglas 150 — self-portrait as Godfrey Staunton 142 — self-portrait as Watson 43, 98, 100, 128f — spiritualism 107, 110, 124, 152, 158 — street fight in Portsmouth 91 — weary in old age 110 Doyle, Caroline (Lottie) (sister) 88 Doyle, Charles Altamont (father) 140, 151 Doyle, Denis (son) 108 Doyle, Jean (Leckie) (second wife) 77, 99ff, 100, 105f, 107, 121f, 139, 144, 150, 167, 172 Doyle, Kingsley (son) 108 Doyle, Lena Jean (daughter) 99, 108, 122, 175 Doyle, Louise (Hawkins) (first wife) 44, 98ff, 107, 121, 142, 150, 160 Doyle, Mary (Foley) (the Ma'am) 88f, 94, 140, 151 Doyle, Mary Louise (daughter) 108, 122 Dracula 24, 87 Dresses: see Millinery Droit du seigneur 117 — see also Wedding night Du Maurier, George 129 Duet with an Occasional Chorus, A 99, 156, 172 Duncan, Isadora 166 Dundas separation case 83, 153 "Dying Detective, The" 91

Garnet, Henry Highland 139 Gerard, Etienne (Brigadier) 138 Gill, T.P. 160 Gillette, William 95, 171 "'Gloria Scott', The" 93, 137 Go-go dancer 96 Goethe, Johann 43 "Golden Pince-Nez, The" 116, 121ff, 124 Gordon, Charles (General "Chinese") 36, 115, 134, 152 Gothic elements 87, 125 Governesses 83, 88f Grandes horizontales: see Courtesans Grasset, Eugene Samuel 21 "Greek Interpreter, The" 116 Gruner, Baron Adelbert: see "Illustrious Client"

Ears, amputation of 35ff, 159 Economic pressures on women 74f Edward, Prince of Wales 12, 38, 52, 60, 70, 80 Edwards, Owen Dudley 10 Effemipate men 132 "Empty House, The" 16, 25, 48, 100, 134, 135, 138 Endocrinology 124 Engagement - broken 83f, 113 — see also Fiance "Engineer's Thumb, The" 25, 124, 137 England and Anglo-Saxon spirit 152 Escott: see Agatha Euclid, fifth proposition of 39 Exhibitionism 13 8f Eyes 139

Haberdashery (see also Millinery) 152 Hair 87, 168 Hanging 132, 176f Harassment, sexual 90 Hats: see Millinery Hawkins, Louise: see Doyle, Louise Herzog, Evelyn 63f "His Last Bow" 113, 121 Hoboken, New Jersey 57, 163 Holland, reigning family of 60 Holmes, Sherlock — alternative pleasures 96 — as Canadian 157 — as matchmaker 92 — as sex object 95, 154 — as woman 128, 176 — attitude to blackmail 78 — attitude to women 84, 169f

Faces, mutilated 35, 138 Fantasy, sexual 25, 29 Fellatio 18, 75

203

Index

— attitude to Irene Adler 57ff, 71 — attitude to Maud Bellamy 96f — attitude to Violet Hunter 87 — chivalry 79f, 90ff, 101 — disguises 164, 170 — early love life 93f — emotional life 91ff, 95ff, 154 — engagement to Agatha 79 — knowledge of women 93, 170 - mother 90, 93, 170 - portrait of Doyle 93, 94, 98, 105, 128f — possible offspring 57, 163 — possible sister 169 — virginity 62 Holmes, Violet 90 Homosexual overtones 83, 85, 126ff Homosexuality 36, 120, 127ff Horace 175 Hornung, E.W. 79, 129 Hound of the Baskervilles, The 10, 16, 45, 49ff, 80, 93, 100, 110, 143, 153, 157 Housemaids 167 — see also Agatha Hudson, Mrs. 16, 95 Hunter, Violet: see Copper Beeches Hypochondria 35 Iceman Inheritance, The 153

Idee fixe 136f Identity: see Case of Identity Illegitimacy 120 "Illustrious Client, The" 15, 16ff, 38, 44, 53, 74, 76, 89, 108, 135, 138, 144, 152, 157 Indian Mutiny 118f Irene, sobriquet 66 Irish love songs 147 "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" Jabez (name) 127 Jane Eyre 88f Jeeves 163 Jewish lady 80, 117

35, 139

Kidnapping 144 — see also Rape King Solomon's Mines 129 Kingsley, Charles 11 Kipling, Rudyard 129 Kiss somebody, author's advice 154 Knee-caps, see Amputation L.L., initials 52f, 162 Lachman, Pauline Therese 166

Lady Day 67 Lady Frances Carfax, The Disappearance of 22ff, 39, 44, 102, 145 Langtry, Lillie 52f, 60 Latin women 50 Leckie, Jean: see Doyle, Jean Leg: see Wooden-legged men Lesions, nervous 134 Liberation, see Women, rights of Liberia 139 Light That Failed, The 129 Limerence 93 Linsenmeyer, John 134, 177 "Lion's Mane, The" 91, 96f, 101, 108 Lola (what she wants, she gets) 72 Love, balancing aggression and reproduction 153 Loyalty to spouse 108, 149 Lucca, Pauline 61 Lyons, J.J. 162 Lyons, Laura 17, 60, 162 — see also The Hound of the Baskervilles Madness 35 Madonna: see Mary Male bonding 130 "Man with the Twisted Lip, The" 45f, 47, 49, 84, 95, 108, 130, 136, 137, 138 Marriage 62 - breakdown 47f, 83, 92, 103f, 120f — happy 141ff — patterns of 130 — see also Wedding Mary, Virgin 21, 37, 66f Mary Magdalene 21, 66 Masochism 68f Masturbation 134 Matchmaker, Holmes as 92 "Mazarin Stone, The" 93, 138 Medical Document, A 14, 134 Melville, Herman 135 Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes 33 Meredith, George 101, 143 Metropolitan Toronto Library 6 Middle age 145f — love in 23, 35 Miladiana: see Millinery Millinery 38, 40, 93, 159, 161 "Missing Three-Quarter, The" 141ff, 178 Mobility, social 72 Mollie Maguires 148 Money, value of 38 Monica 67

204

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

Picture of Dorian Gray, The 129 Pinkertons 146, 148 Platonic: see Spiritual Poisoner, "winning" 170 Political activism 121ff Polygamy 28ff Pornography 75, 128, 156 Potency 123ff Power relationships 69 Pre-Raphaelite art 141 Pregnancy 31 "Priory School, The" 117, 120f, 130, 142, 178 Prison homosexuality 134 Prosthesis fixation: see Amputation; Castration Prostitution 14, 16, 59 — see also White slavery Psychical research: see Spiritualism Psychopathia Sexualis 153

Monk, The 87 Monkey glands 124 Montenegro 57 Montes, Lola 60, 73, 164 Montgomery, James 63 Moriarty, James 149, 171 Morley, Christopher 63 Mormons 27ff, 119 Morstan, Mary 39ff, 46, 95, 98, 100, 160, 161 — see also Sign of the Four Morton, Frances 115 Motherhood, cult of 94 — see also Oedipus complex — see also Doyle: mother Moulton, Francis 115 Murder by Decree (film) 95f Murder, Victorian 26 "Musgrave Ritual, The" 116ff, 174 Napoleon 136f "Naval Treaty, The" 45, 145 Nervous lesions: see Lesions New Jersey 61, 163 Nietzsche, Friedrich 135 "Noble Bachelor, The" 113ff Nordica, Lillian 61 Norton, Lillian: see Nordica "Norwood Builder, The" 24, 27, 34 Nudity 24, 51 Numismatics 152

Queen, segregation of the (beekeeping) 152 Rachel 26 Raffles 79, 129 Rape 22ff, 53, 90, 157 — see also Seduction "Red Circle, The" 50, 91, 93, 101, 106, 136 Red Circle of Washington, D.C. 174 "Red-Headed League, The" 48, 82, 126ff, 132f, 135, 137, 152, 154 Redmond, Donald A. 6, 10, 161 Redmond, Katherine Karl son 6, 15 Refugees, The 15, 138 "Reigate Squires, The" ("The Reigate Puzzle") 76, 130, 178 Religion 152 Repression of sex 94 "Resident Patient, The" 14, 33, 133f, 137 Respectability 77 — see also Blackmail Restrooms: see Washrooms Resurrection 25, 87, 157 "Retired Colourman, The" 45, 61, 101, 108, HOff, 137, 138 Retirement HOf, 123 "Retirement of Signor Lambert, The" 138 Ring 31f, 149 Rosenberg, Samuel 25, 36, 87, 127, 134f, 152, 154, 177 — see also Syndrome

Oedipus complex 139f — see also Holmes: mother Old man HOf, 123ff Older woman 75 Operatic elements 74 Oppenheim, E. Phililps 154 Otero, Caroline 59, 64f, 73, 75 Otranto, Castle 87 Paget, Sidney 8 Parasite, The 124, 167 Pastiche and parody 17, 156 Paternity suit 137 Pawnbroker 127 Pearl, Cora 46, 59 Pearls 46, 137, 160 Pederasty 120 Perfume 93, 170 Petrarch 143, 163 Phallic symbols 37, 86, 157 Photographs 19f, 71f, 166 Phryne 60

Sadism 138 — see also Flagellation

205

Index

Sublimation of sex 94 Suffragettes 121ff "Surgeon Talks, The" 35 "Sussex Vampire, The" 50, 101, 107f, 136, 138, 146, 152 Sutherland, Duchess of 84 Swing (to hang) 132 Syndrome, Conan Doyle 107, 110, 135f, 145 — see also Rosenberg Syphilis 14, 123

St. John's Wood 59, 115 Sand, George 127 "Scandal in Bohemia, A" 17, 34, 45f, 55ff, 70ff, 82, 85, 92, 93, 95, 106, 114, 116, 166 Scarlet (colour) 32f Schneider, Hortense 59 Scowrers, The 146 ''Second Stain, The" 45, 76f, 80, 93, 100, 116 Seduction 17, 117 — see also Rape Servants' love affairs 38, 79 Seven-Per-Cent Solution, The 96 Sex — author's theory of 11, 152ff — definition 24-25 — role in fiction 13ff - Victorian 11, 74f, 155 Shaw, John Bennett 16 Shenandoah Valley 146 "Sherlock Holmes" (play by Gillette) 95, 171 Sherlock Holmes Society of London 56, 171 Sherlockians — defined 10 — male predominance 15 — women 55, 89, 95, 167 "Shoscombe Old Place" 108 Sibling rivalry 108 Sign of the Four, The 10, 11, 24, 33, 39ff, 84, 91f, 118, 134, 137, 142, 152, 174 "Silver Blaze" 37f, 91, 93 Sir Nigel 138, 151 Sitwell, Edith 163 Six Napoleons, The 136f, 138, 152 Smith, Edgar W. 162 Snakes 86 "Solitary Cyclist, The" 34, 89ff, 92, 99, 101, 124f, 143, 157 Sons of the Copper Beeches of Philadelphia 63 "Speckled Band, The" 45, 51, 85ff, 90, 145, 168 Spiritual (platonic) relationship 107 Spiritualism 107, 110, 124, 152, 158 Spouse, loyalty to: see Loyalty Spring, beginning of 67 Stark Munro Letters, The 91, 98 Starrett, Vincent 129 "Stock-Broker's Clerk, The" 126, 132f Stoddart, J.B. 160 Stout, Rex 56, 57 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 36 Study in Scarlet, A 14, 26ff, 34, 37, 41, 49, 102, 111, 115, 118f, 129, 138, 156

Tabes dorsal is: see Syphilis Tantric sex 163 "Third Generation, The" 14 "Thor Bridge, The Problem of 45, 50, 54, 56, 101, 106f, 116, 136, 152 "Three Gables, The" 45, 50, 70ff, 108, 123 "Three Garridebs, The" 126f, 127, 131f, 138 Threesomes 35 Tibet 57, 163 Toasts 168 Toronto: see Metropolitan Toronto Library Tragedy of Birlstone, The 146 Transvestism 139 Triangles 49, lOlff, 114, 119 — see also Adultery Trilby 129 Tuberculosis: see Consumption "221B" (sonnet) 129 Unattractive women, pattern of 35 Valentine 144 Valle^ of Fear, The 49, 91, 93, 130, 138, 146ff, 152 Van Gogh, Vincent 159 Vanilla sex 39, 46 "Veiled Lodger, The" 51, 90, 101, 108ff, 136, 138 Venereal disease 18, 137 Vermissa Valley 146 Vice, vise (homonyms) 85 Victims, women as 82 Victoria Regina 11, 144 Victorianism 11, 74f Violence against women 54 Violets 89f, 102, 106, 125, 143, 144, 147, 169 Virginity 47, 62, 87 — see also Droit du seigneur; Seduction Vitriol 20f, 157 Voyeurism 138f Walters, Catherine (Skittles) 59

206

In Bed With Sherlock Holmes

War between the sexes 69 Washrooms, door signs on 66 Watson, John H. — as woman 128 — attitude to women 23f, 45f, 84, 91, 96, 170 — bereavement 48f, 100 — domesticity 47ff — experience of women 40, 50 — falling in love 40ff, 92 — in role of wife to Holmes 130, 176 — marriage with Mary Morstan 44, 47ff — marriage, early 41 — marriages 44f, 160 — passive 130 — portrait of Doyle 43, 98, 100, 128f — vices 47f (see also experience of women) — wounds 137f, 161 Wedding 47, 92, 113ff, 147 — night, traumatic Victorian 47 — see also Ring Welsh girls 117 Westbury, Baron 178 Whip 86, 110, 134 — see also Flagellation White slavery 18ff, 22 White Company, The 151 Wilde, Oscar 13, 129, 130, 134, 160, 177 "Winning Shot, The" 35 Winter, Kitty: see "Illustrious Client" Wisteria Lodge 50, 100, 138 Wodehouse, P.G. 163 Wolff, Julian 63 Woman, The 56ff, 66, 97 — see also Adler Women — characters, stories without 16, 175f — killers 116 — rights of 15, 63, 91, 121ff, 169 — see also specifics, e.g. Latin women, Sherlockians: women Wooden-legged men 38 Worst Man in London, The Adventure of the 78 Wuthering Heights 128

Youth serum 123ff Yuhasova, Helene 162

X, Lady: see "Charles Augustus Milverton" "Yellow Face, The" 34, 108, 138, 145f, 179 Yin-Yang 67 Young person (terminology) 59f, 164 Younger man 75

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