Sherlock Alive

Books Alive, 1948 “Considering the evidence without prejudice,” wrote Christopher Morley in a memorable enquete d’amour, more than a decade ago, “the idea that Sherlock Holmes was at any rate partly American* is enticing.” Later investigators have labored the point with enthusiasm— American investigators, that is to say; the British, I believe, find the notion intolerable and reject it with equal enthusiasm. It is not inconceivable that one, at least, of the detective’s parents was American, and there is some reason to believe there was a distant connection with the Holmeses of Cambridge, Mass., whose distinguished scion, the late Justice Holmes, is known to have read the “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” with unconcealed pleasure. One welcomes, therefore, the discovery by Allen Robertson, of Baltimore’s “Six Napoleons,” of an early American Holmes who may be part of the missing record. In a letter notable for a fine frenzy of unrestraint, Mr. Robertson reports that, in 1839, the Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, then in need of a pastor, “called” the Rev. S. Holmes of New Bedford, Mass., who, for a reason that is not revealed, declined the honor. Obviously it will be awkward if further research shows the clergyman’s given name to have been Samuel or Samson, and I urge Mr. Robertson to quit while he is ahead; but for the moment I understand his excitement. If the name proves to have been Sherlock, I shall send Mr. Robertson a medal suitable inscribed and a sedative recommended by my doctor. Mr. Robertson’s strongest point, he believes, is that when the Rev. S. Holmes declined the Indianapolis pulpit, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was called, and accepted. Scholars will recall the Beecher incident in the Holmes saga and the unframed portrait of that clergyman in the Baker * Christopher Morley’s essay “Was Sherlock Holmes an American?” was first published in The Saturday Review of Literature, July 21 and July 28, 1934. It was reprinted in the anthology Starrett edited, 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes. New York: Macmillan, 1940, reissued in a limited edition of 350 copies by The Baker Street Irregulars, Inc., Morristown, New Jersey, 1956. It was reprinted in Morley’s collection Streamlines. Garden City, New York: Doubleday Doran, 1936, in Steven Rothman’s anthology The Standard Doyle Company: Christopher Morley on Sherlock Holmes (1990), and in The Baker Street Reader. 105 106 S h e r l o c k A l i v e Street rooms. I regret that I cannot share Mr. Robertson’s imaginings at this point. Whatever he may be thinking of the episode of the rival clergyman it appears to be based on the assumption that the Beecher portrait belonged to Sherlock Holmes; but as I read the relevant paragraphs the portrait was Watson’s. (The Chicago Sunday Tribune, February 1, 1948) * * * * * Two recent additions to the Sherlockian bibliography are noted in “An Irregular Chronology of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street,” by Jay Finley Christ (Fanlight House), and “Client’s Case-Book,” edited by J.N. Williamson and H.B. Williams, a symposium privately printed for the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars. Both brochures are limited editions and once out of print will be difficult to obtain. Mr. Christ’s “Chronology” is a new and devilishly ingenious attempt to establish a time-table of the cases attributed to the great detective by his biographer, an exercise that has taxed the wits of Sherlockians in number. Watson’s carelessness in the matter of dates is one of the soundest of our certainties; it has produced a literature that is completely fascinating to students of the Saga and completely mad, I fancy, to readers who prefer Proust, Henry James or the “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” “I have not forgotten,” says Mr. Christ, “that Watson was not too good at arithmetic, so that his figures may not be valid; if none of them can be accepted, all speculation is idle. But even then I should not be too sorry, for it is upon his very shortcomings (which the Sherlockian work pretends to deride) that our world is chiefly supported. Irregularity is planted in and thrives upon the blessed carelessness of Dr. Watson.” That is a tribute to John H. Watson that should warm a Sherlockian heart to its deepest cockle. * * * * * S h e r l o c k A l i v e 107 “Client’s Case Book” is an amusing miscellany of fantasy and conjec- ture, in prose and verse, with an introduction by the editor of this column that is somehow not as amusing in print* as it looked on the typewriter. (The Chicago Sunday Tribune, February 15, 1948) * * * * * A notable contribution to Sherlockian scholarship appeared recently in Punch,† the English humorous weekly, which I am happy to pass on to students of the Holmes cycle. Under the deceptive title “A Ramble on Dartmoor,” E.V. Knox—writing over his familiar pseudonym “Evoe”—asserts his considered belief that the well-known criminal romance called The Hound of the Baskervilles was originally written in verse, and may even have been intended for grand opera. Why we have the narrative in its present form he is unable to say; possibly, he conjectures, the author despaired of success too soon or, perhaps, he could find no suitable composer. As a piece of realistic fiction, Mr. Knox contends, the story will not bear a moment’s scrutiny. Obviously the choice of a disused tin mine on the moors as a place of concealment for a dog kennel is a fancy that belongs to the “highest realms of poetic imagination rather than to the pathway of credible romance”; and even more operatic is the conception of a gigantic phosphorescent hound. But apart from all such consideration, the critic shows that many traces of the original poetic form of the composition remain unchanged. For example, the magnificent words uttered by Mrs. Stapleton about her husband after the great peripety‡ of the drama: * Jerry Williamson was reluctant to let the material in Client’s Case Book out of his hands. In those days before Xerox machines, he had only one copy of the essays he wanted to publish. Starrett, therefore, had to write an introduction to a book whose contents he had not seen. He wrote “In Lieu of a Foreword” in which he gave a short Sherlockian pastiche, which he had published in “A Line O’Type or Two” on September 9, 1946 (included in this book and later reprinted in Book Column as “The Adventure of the Lost Pants”). Starrett ended his foreword with this paragraph: Kind friends and gentle Sherlockians: This was to have been an introduction, based on a reading of the printer’s proofs of this first Case-Book of the Illustrious Clients, Indianapolis scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars; but a stubborn deadline interfered with the plan, and I have been unable to see the contributions intended for publication. The table of contents is exciting. I look forward to the book with pleasure and with confidence. † E. V. Knox’s essay “A Ramble in Dartmoor” appeared in Punch in the issue of January 21, 1948. ‡ a “peripety” or “peripeteia” is a sudden change of events, especially in a literary work. 108 S h e r l o c k A l i v e “How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I,” which may be compared with “In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea-banks and waft her love ...” It is upon the actual rhyming portions of the narrative, however, that Evoe rests his case; for instance, the poet’s description of the eccentric Frankland: “The least appearance of opposition Struck fire out of the old aristocrat. His eyes looked at me malignantly And his grey whiskers bristled Like those of an angry cat.” The rhythm there is admittedly a bit sprung,* but in other instances it is faultless. Toward the close of the tale, for example, when Holmes is smacking his lips over his meditated coup, the following memorable couplet occurs: “I hope before the day is past To have the upper hand at last.” And a little later Watson carols: “The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright. While a half-moon bathed the whole scene In a soft uncertain light.” In certain isolated lines—such lines as “Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again,” and “Down in the foul slime of the huge morass,” and the inimitable “It is our friend Sir Henry’s missing boot”—the critic finds an arresting power and beauty that seems to him to establish his * “Sprung rhythm” was a term coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) in his preface to Poems 1876–89. Essentially, this is poetry which counts stresses rather than syllables. In this poetic scheme, feet consist of from one to four syllables, with the stress always on the initial syllable. The resulting poetry has an irregular feel, much closer to spoken language than to poetry with a more regular meter. In such poems as “The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord” (written in 1918) Hopkins actually indicated some of the syllables he wanted stressed. That poem, probably Hopkins’s most famous, is in sprung rhythm with five stresses to a line. Hopkins’s poetry was given to the world thirty years after his death by Robert Bridges (1844–1930), a poet and colleague of Hopkins at Oxford University, who published the poems of Hopkins in a slim volume in 1918.

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