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12 issues of Sherlock Holmes adventures brought to you by Stanford University in 2007.

Sherlock Holmes,

Consulting Detective

February 5 23 of 12 2007 A Sherlock Holmes Adventure: “The Greek Interpreter” Dear Readers and Friends, When Stanford's serial reading series began in 2002, we had no idea how popular it would become. Many talented and dedicated people at Stanford have http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu helped bring this project into its fifth year. Stanford VISIT OUR WEBSITE Continuing Studies, with the support of Charles Junkerman, Dean and Associate Provost of Continu- ing Studies, has assumed the bulk of the considerable answered every email and voicemail message from financial responsibility of this project, with the ad- friends and readers. ditional support of the Stanford Alumni Association We would also like to thank you, our faithful read- and Stanford University Libraries. ers, who have brought to this project your enthusiasm Mary Eichbauer, Ph.D., researched and wrote for these precious 19th-century texts from Stanford’s the notes. John Mustain, Rare Books Librarian in Special Collections. We may have dreamed this proj- Stanford's Special Collections, has lent his expertise ect up, but you’ve allowed it to continue. We hope and his personal collection of Sherlockiana to our you are enjoying this second year of the best stories of undertaking. Janet Sakai, Larry Scott, Stu Snydman, Sherlock Holmes. Wayne Vanderkuil, and Peter Whidden made sure that every text and image survived its transition to digital format. Anna Cobb, designer, has brought style and balance to the text you read in paper issues and on the website. Woody Lewis, Diana Nemerovsky and Linda Paulson, Associate Dean and Director, Christine Soldahl coordinated all electronic aspects Master of Liberal Arts Program of the project. Jason Hopper, a Stanford senior, has Director, Discovering Sherlock Holmes

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lette was a pioneer in creating some of the stage ef- William Gillette: fects that became a staple of melodrama. By rewrit- The Man Who was Sherlock Holmes ing Conan Doyle’s play, Gillette made a vehicle that uring Conan Doyle’s first years at Under- incorporated elements of several Holmes stories, but shaw, Sherlock Holmes was dead—lost, made Holmes himself a more conventional hero. In as far as the world knew, in a watery grave Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty appeared, guns at the foot of Reichenbach Falls. Conan were drawn on stage, and—yes, there was a heroine. DDoyle professed to be ecstatic The critics hated it, but the pub- at the prospect of never hearing lic, predictably, didn’t. of Holmes again, but, privately, Conan Doyle thought that perhaps he missed his creation, Gillette made a splendid Hol- whose popularity had paid for mes, and artist Frederic Dorr Undershaw’s construction. A Steele, an American illustrator few years after writing “The of the Holmesian canon for Col- Final Problem,” Conan Doyle liers, used Gillette as a model for started work on a Sherlock Holmes. “It is not enough to say Holmes play that ended up in a that William Gillette resembles desk drawer for a while before he Sherlock Holmes,” Orson offered it to an American pro- Welles is supposed to have said. moter. Enter William Gillette. “Sherlock Holmes looks exactly American actor William like William Gillette.” Gillette (1853-1937) made a (More in the next issue….) career out of playing brooding, complicated heroes, but the crowning role of his career was Sherlock Holmes. A shrewd William Gillette, from The Strand judge of popular opinion, Gil- Magazine, December 1901

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Save the date! Marco Barricelli of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival & the American Conservatory Theatre will offer a free dramatic reading of “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” on the evening of April 17, 2007, on the Stanford University Campus. More Details Later!

12 Notes and ILLUstrations

…the causes of the change in the obliquity of the eclip- “His weight is against his being a sapper. He is in the tic…. (1) artillery.” (3) The earth’s orbit stays in a plane called the “ecliptic.” A “sapper” is a combat engineer, who, in Conan An imaginary axis passing through the earth’s north Doyle’s time, was expected to dig fortifications quickly and south poles is not perpendicular to this plane, under combat condition. Such a man would presum- but tilts at an angle of just over 23 degrees. This tilt ably need to have a sturdy, muscular build. Artillery- is known as the “obliquity of the ecliptic.” At various men were part of a crew tending cannon. times in earth’s long history, the angle has changed, as evinced by “…my poor man with the sticking- the orientation of magnetic miner- plaster upon his face.” (4) als in geologic strata. “Sticking-plaster” is the common British term for a small adhesive …the question of atavism and he- bandage. reditary aptitudes. (1) “Atavism,” or the idea of the “…a suit of Japanese armour….” (5) “throwback,” no longer is given Such an artifact would not have ex- credence by today’s scientific es- isted in England before Anglo-Japa- tablishment. In contrast, the idea nese trade relations began in 1854, one that some aptitudes can be inher- year after Japan was opened to West- ited now has a strong basis in the ern commerce by the United States. science of genetics. Nineteenth- In the area between Piccadilly and century Italian scientist Cesare Pall Mall, many clubs occupied for- “…and his lips and eyelids were con- Lombroso believed that criminal mer mansions. From Ralph Nevill, tinually twitching like a man with St. “types” were “throwbacks” to an London Clubs, Their History Vitus's dance.” (7) earlier stage of evolution. and Treasures (London: Chatto & “St. Vitus’s Dance,” today called Windus, 1911) “Sydenham Chorea,” is character- “But, none the less, my turn that way ized by involuntary muscle move- is in my veins, and may have come ments following streptococcal infec- with my grandmother, who was the tion. In the Middle Ages, it was sister of Vernet, the French artist.” (1) ascribed to demonic possession and, later, to a host of There were three painters named Vernet: landscape other spurious causes. painter Joseph Vernet (1714-1789); his son Carle (1758-1836), painter of battle scenes and court life; “‘A similar reward paid to anyone giving information about and Carle’s son Horace (1789-1863), who became one a Greek lady whose first name is Sophy. X 2473.’” (8) of the most important painters of military subjects. “X2473” is a reference to the anonymous box number If Sherlock was born in 1854, as founding Sherlock- system for personal ads that most newspapers had ad- ian Christopher Morley has conjectured, then it is opted in Conan Doyle’s time. Anyone replying to the most likely Horace Vernet who was Sherlock’s great- box could do so to the number. The identities of both uncle. He would have been 65 at Holmes’s birth. parties were protected, and the poster could screen respondents before deciding whom to trust. “…in the Diogenes Club, for example.” (1) The Diogenes Club is a fanciful creation of Conan Both of them were blue lipped and insensible, with swol- Doyle’s. Diogenes of Sinope (?-320 B.C.) was a len, congested faces and protruding eyes. (11) Cynic—one who advocated self-sufficiency, moral Carbon monoxide, a molecule consisting of one car- excellence, and the rejection of luxury. Diogenes bon and one oxygen atom, has an affinity for hemo- was supposed to have wandered through the streets globin, the substance in red blood cells that binds with of his town with a lighted lantern, searching for an oxygen and carries it throughout the body. When a honest man. large percentage of the body’s hemoglobin is bound with CO instead of oxygen, the symptoms listed in the “Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the text are produced. corner into Whitehall….” (2) Pall Mall runs from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar …had drawn a life preserver from his sleeve…. (11) Square, where Whitehall also begins. Metaphorically, A “life preserver” is not the familiar ring thrown to “Whitehall” stands for the government, whose offices drowning sailors, but a weapon of self-defense, like line the street, starting with the Admiralty and ending the bludgeon drawn by Latimer at the beginning of with Parliament itself. the story. Discovering Sherlock Holmes Stanford Continuing Studies Presorted First-Class Mail 482 GALVEZ STREET U.S. Postage STANFORD UNIVERSITY Paid STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305-6079 Palo Alto, CA Permit No. 28

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