Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #20. Arthur Conan Doyle
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Edwards (The Valley of Fear). Perhaps some day the Irish and American adventures that Holmes merely sketches out in this story could receive a more complete treatment, similar to the second half of The Valley of Fear.
After two solitary years of acting a part, Holmes brings in Watson for the end-game. Surely this was not merely because he valued the doctor’s skills as a chauffeur. No, it was a tribute to their friendship, their many years as comrades in arms. And at the end they stand on the terrace for perhaps their last quiet talk together, and some of the most memorable lines in the entire Canon:
“There’s an east wind coming, Watson.”
“I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.”
“Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson, for it’s time that we were on our way. I have a check for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it if he can.”
The Basil Rathbone film Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror ends with this quote up to “when the storm has cleared.” It also features Von Bork as a Nazi agent. After the great critical success of Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in 20th Century Fox’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Universal acquired the franchise and in 1942 brought it into the 20th century. Bluntly stated, the first three Universal pictures—The Voice of Terror, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, and Sherlock Holmes in Washington, are World War II propaganda films. In The Voice of Terror, for example, a young woman named Kitty, reminiscent of Kitty Winter, gives a rousing appeal for help to a pub full of ruffians: “England’s at stake. Your England as much as anyone else’s! No time to think about what side we’re on—there’s only one side, England, no matter how high or how low we are.” The film was immediately followed by a pitch to buy war bonds.
David Marcum, writing in the winter 2013 issue of The Baker Street Journal, made the ingenious suggestion that these films were actually adventures of Solar Pons, the latter-day Holmes clone, and his Watsonian associate Dr. Parker. “Pons’s and Parker’s names were changed to Holmes and Watson for easier familiarity to the 1940s movie-going public.” Well, that would at least explain Rathbone’s bizarre hair-do in those three movies, the reason for which has been a Sherlockian mystery for more than seventy years!
Ouida Rathbone, Basil’s wife, in 1953 combined elements of all four canonical spy stories, plus “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Final Problem,” and “The Adventure of the Empty House” into a play called “Sherlock Holmes: A Drama in Three Acts.” It closed after just two evening performances and one matinee. This stitched-together Frankenstein of a work demonstrates that great source material—dialogue ripped from the stories—doesn’t necessarily make for a great play. You still need a plot. Mrs. Rathbone seems to have missed that1.
Spy stuff involving international intrigue and foreign agents was not the only opportunity Holmes had to serve the crown.
In “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” and “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client,” Holmes indirectly serves the interests of the same exalted personage. The clue to that connection, if you need one, is that Alexander Holder—the unhappy custodian of the Beryl Coronet—refers to “my illustrious client.” Surely the gentleman in question was then the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.
In both of these cases, as in the spy stories, Holmes’s task is to retrieve a McGuffin. The Beryl Coronet, a magnificent piece of jewelry, is “one of the most precious public possessions of the empire”—and yet the playboy prince pawns it to get ready cash! In “The Illustrious Client,” the object of the quest is the dirty diary of another playboy, Baron Gruner, which Holmes sees as the only way to tear Violet De Merville’s affections away from the scoundrel.
Unsurprisingly, Holmes turns to burglary once again to get his hands on the diary. And once again he gets away with it. The story closes with these words: “Sherlock Holmes was threatened with a prosecution for burglary, but when an object is good and a client is sufficiently illustrious, even the rigid British law becomes human and elastic. My friend has not yet stood in the dock.”
How illustrious? When Sir James Damery refuses to reveal the name, Holmes demurs: “I am accustomed to have mystery at one end of my cases, but to have it at both ends is too confusing. I fear, Sir James, that I must decline to act.” And yet, he does act—even though Sir James never gives up the name. But at the end of the case, Watson glimpses the armorial bearings of their ultimate client on the brougham that picks up Sir James. He tries to blurt out the name to Holmes, but the latter stops him. “It is a loyal friend and a chivalrous gentleman,” says Holmes. “Let that now and forever be enough for us.” We can be sure, though, that Miss De Merville’s friend was royal as well as loyal.
“The Adventure of the Illustrious Client” is a favorite story of many Sherlockians. “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” by contrast, ranks dead last on most lists. Its plot is onion-skin thin and much of the dialogue wooden. However, it is within the topic at hand because the case again involves royal jewelry. For a change, someone other than Holmes has committed a burglary—the hundred-thousand-pound burglary of the Crown Diamond, also called the Mazarin Stone. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, and a reluctant Lord Cantlemere hire Holmes to get it back by any means necessary.
Billy the page can get along with the Prime Minister and has nothing against the Foreign Secretary, but he can’t stand Lord Cantlemere. “Neither can Mr. Holmes, sir,” Billy tells Watson. “You see, he don’t believe in Mr. Holmes and was against employing him.” Holmes gets his revenge in the end by slipping the recovered Mazarin Stone into the politician’s own overcoat and pretending to find it there. Like a certain monarch, Cantlemere is not amused. In fact, he lives up to Billy’s description of him as “a stiff ’un.” But ultimately he is forced to acknowledge the nation’s debt to Holmes and to withdraw his skepticism about the sleuth’s professional powers. Holmes, not entirely mollified, twists the knife a bit as he dismissively refuses to explain how he got the diamond back:
“This case is but half-finished; the details can wait. No doubt, Lord Cantlemere, your pleasure in telling of this successful result in the exalted circle to which you return will be some small atonement for my practical joke. Billy, you will show his Lordship out, and tell Mrs. Hudson that I should be glad if she would send up dinner for two as soon as possible.”
Why did Holmes even take the Mazarin Stone case in the face of Cantlemere’s skepticism and their clear mutual dislike? Possibly an ego-driven desire to prove the skeptic wrong was a factor. But, surely, so was patriotism. For Sherlock Holmes was not a man to let “the folly of a monarch or the blundering of a minister” (“The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”) keep him from answering the call of duty. For no matter the personalities involved, he always stood ready to be of service… to crown and country.
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Dan Andriacco, a long-time Sherlockian, is the author of Baker Street Beat: An Eclectic Collection of Sherlockian Scribblings and nine Holmes-themed mystery novels and collections. His amateur sleuth, Sebastian McCabe, and brother-in-law Jeff Cody appear most recently in Bookmarked for Murder. A frequent contributor to SHMM, Dan blogs at www.DanAndriacco.com.
1 This is the author’s opinion. I have a copy of her play and mean to anthologize it; I find it rather charming. By the way, not only was Nigel Bruce too ill to play Watson but he died on the show’s opening night. —Marvin Kaye
|SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE
for crown and country |
|SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE
for crown