Tag: ILLU

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On September 26th…

Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (May, 1893)

September 26, 1879: At 2:00 am, Reginald Musgrave found Brunton reading the family ritual. [MUSG]
[This is one of my favorite cases. I love the family ritual. It appeals to me, “the man who is half a boy”. -Chips]

Brunton, the butler, was in the library. He was sitting, fully dressed, in an easy-chair, with a slip of paper which looked lake a map upon his knee, and his forehead sunk forward upon his hand in deep thought. I stood dumb with astonishment, watching him from the darkness. A small taper on the edge of the table shed a feeble light which sufficed to show me that he was fully dressed. Suddenly, as I looked, he rose from his chair, and walking over to a bureau at the side, he unlocked it and drew out one of the drawers. From this he took a paper, and returning to his seat he flattened it out beside the taper on the edge of the table, and began to study it with minute attention.

Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (August 1901 – April 1902)

 

September 26, 1900: An anonymous warning letter to Sir Henry Baskerville arrived at the Northumberland Hotel. [HOUN]

Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran: “As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.” The word “moor” only was printed in ink.

“Now,” said Sir Henry Baskerville, “perhaps you will tell me, Mr. Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?”

 

September 26, 1902: The Morning Post announced the de Merville-Gruner marriage would not take place. [ILLU]

I do not know how the incriminating book was used. Sir James may have managed it. Or it is more probable that so delicate a task was entrusted to the young lady’s father. The effect, at any rate, was all that could be desired.

Three days later appeared a paragraph in The Morning Post to say that the marriage between Baron Adelbert Gruner and Miss Violet de Merville would not take place.

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On September 23rd…

Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett), Kitty Winter (Kim Thomson), and Baron Adelbert Gruner (Anthony Valentine) in “The Illustrious Client” (Granada Television, 1991

September 23, 1902: Kitty Winter threw acid into the face of Baron Gruner. [ILLU]

It was done in an instant, and yet I clearly saw it. An arm —a woman’s arm—shot out from among the leaves. At the same instant the Baron uttered a horrible cry—a yell which will always ring in my memory. He clapped his two hands to his face and rushed round the room, beating his head horribly against the walls. Then he fell upon the carpet, rolling and writhing, while scream after scream resounded through the house.

“Water! For God’s sake, water!” was his cry.

I seized a carafe from a side-table and rushed to his aid. At the same moment the butler and several footmen ran in from the hall. I remember that one of them fainted as I knelt by the injured man and turned that awful face to the light of the lamp. 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.

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On September 22nd…

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock for The Strand Magazine (February/March, 1925)

September 22, 1902: Holmes had the stitches resulting from the attack on him removed. [ILLU]

For six days the public were under the impression that Holmes was at the door of death. The bulletins were very grave and there were sinister paragraphs in the papers. My continual visits assured me that it was not so bad as that. His wiry constitution and his determined will were working wonders. He was recovering fast, and I had suspicions at times that he was really finding himself faster than he pretended even to me. There was a curious secretive streak in the man which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend guessing as to what his exact plans might be. He pushed to an extreme the axiom that the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone. I was nearer him than anyone else, and yet I was always conscious of the gap between.

On the seventh day the stitches were taken out, in spite of which there was a report of erysipelas in the evening papers. The same evening papers had an announcement which I was bound, sick or well, to carry to my friend. It was simply that among the passengers on the Cunard boat Ruritania, starting from Liverpool on Friday, was the Baron Adelbert Gruner, who had some important financial business to settle in the States before his impending wedding to Miss Violet de Merville, only daughter of, etc., etc.

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On September 16th…

September 16, 1889: Mary Sutherland and Hosmer Angel went for their first walk. [IDEN]

“It was most suggestive,” said Holmes. “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?”

“He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was gentle. He’d had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare.”

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock for The Strand Magazine (February-March, 1925)

 

September 16, 1902: Holmes was attacked outside the Café Royal. [ILLU]

We learn with regret that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known private detective, was the victim this morning of a murderous assault which has left him in a precarious position. There are no exact details to hand, but the event seems to have occurred about twelve o’clock in Regent Street, outside the Café Royal. The attack was made by two men armed with sticks, and Mr. Holmes was beaten about the head and body, receiving injuries which the doctors describe as most serious. He was carried to Charing Cross Hospital and afterwards insisted upon being taken to his rooms in Baker Street. The miscreants who attacked him appear to have been respectably dressed men, who escaped from the bystanders by passing through the Cafe Royal and out into Glasshouse Street behind it.

No doubt they belonged to that criminal fraternity which has so often had occasion to bewail the activity and ingenuity of the injured man.

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Limerick Corner: IDEN and ILLU

In honor of the ongoing Canonical events this week, two more limericks from Sandy Kozinn (JHWS “Roxie”):

On the sidewalk poor Mary did dither,
As her thoughts flew hither and thither,
Why did Angel disappear?
Was he dead? Oh, the fear!
Holmes knew Windibank’s? Love was just blither.

With china the man was an ace,
That Baron, he took the first place,
But with femmes he was mean,
The worst to be seen,
So revenge got him right in the face.

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On September 14th…

Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (September, 1891)

September 14, 1889: The Gasfitters’ Ball was held. [IDEN]

“I see. Then at the gasfitters’ ball you met, as I understand, a gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel.”

“Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if we had got home all safe, and after that we met him—that is to say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that father came back again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house any more.”

 

 

 

 

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock for The Strand Magazine (February-March, 1925)

September 14, 1902: Holmes and Kitty Winter pleaded with Violet de Merville. [ILLU]

“I was about to answer when the girl broke in like a whirlwind. If ever you saw flame and ice face to face, it was those two women.

“‘I’ll tell you who I am,’ she cried, springing out of her chair, her mouth all twisted with passion—’I am his last mistress. I am one of a hundred that he has tempted and used and ruined and thrown into the refuse heap, as he will you also. Your refuse heap is more likely to be a grave, and maybe that’s the best. I tell you, you foolish woman, if you marry this man he’ll be the death of you. It may be a broken heart or it may be a broken neck, but he’ll have you one way or the other. It’s not out of love for you I’m speaking. I don’t care a tinker’s curse whether you live or die. It’s out of hate for him and to spite him and to get back on him for what he did to me. But it’s all the same, and you needn’t look at me like that, my fine lady, for you may be lower than I am before you are through with it.'”

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On September 13th…

September 13, 1889: James Windibank left for his first trip to France. [IDEN]
“[…] At last, when nothing else would do, he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went, mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel.”

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock for The Strand Magazine (February-March, 1925)

September 13, 1902: Sir James Damery consulted Holmes. [ILLU]

Sharp to the half-hour, Colonel Sir James Damery was announced. It is hardly necessary to describe him, for many will remember that large, bluff, honest personality, that broad, clean-shaven face, and, above all, that pleasant, mellow voice. Frankness shone from his grey Irish eyes, and good humour played round his mobile, smiling lips. His lucent top-hat, his dark frock-coat, indeed, every detail, from the pearl pin in the black satin cravat to the lavender spats over the varnished shoes, spoke of the meticulous care in dress for which he was famous. The big, masterful aristocrat dominated the little room.

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock for The Strand Magazine (February-March, 1925)

September 13, 1902: Holmes visited Baron Adelbert Gruner. [ILLU]

He is an excellent antagonist, cool as ice, silky voiced and soothing as one of your fashionable consultants, and poisonous as a cobra. He has breeding in him—a real aristocrat of crime with a superficial suggestion of afternoon tea and all the cruelty of the grave behind it. Yes, I am glad to have had my attention called to Baron Adelbert Gruner.

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On September 12th…

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock for The Strand Magazine (February-March, 1925)

September 12, 1902: Sir James Damery wrote to Holmes asking for an appointment. [ILLU]

“Sir James Damery presents his compliments to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and will call upon him at 4:30 to-morrow. Sir James begs to say that the matter upon which he desires to consult Mr. Holmes is very delicate and also very important. He trusts, therefore, that Mr. Holmes will make every effort to grant this interview, and that he will confirm it over the telephone to the Carlton Club.”

Illustration by Howard K. Elcock for The Strand Magazine (1923)

September 12, 1903: Professor Presbury was seriously injured by his wolfhound, Roy. [CREE]

And then in a moment it happened! It was not the chain that broke, but it was the collar that slipped, for it had been made for a thick-necked Newfoundland. We heard the rattle of falling metal, and the next instant dog and man were rolling on the ground together, the one roaring in rage, the other screaming in a strange shrill falsetto of terror. It was a very narrow thing for the professor’s life. The savage creature had him fairly by the throat, its fangs had bitten deep, and he was senseless before we could reach them and drag the two apart.

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Villainesses, Adventuresses, and Other Canonical Women

In front of him, in the full glare of the electric light, there stood a tall slim, dark woman, a veil over her face, a mantle drawn round her chin. [CHAS]
Last week, author Michelle Birkby [Elise Elliot (JHWS “Lucy”) has reviewed both The Women of Baker Street and The House at Baker Street as part of our Dr Watson’s Library] was featured in iNews with an article called “The Female Villains in Sherlock Holmes Were Ahead of Their Time”.

Comparing the women in contemporaneous works – like Collins’ Armadale, Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, and Dickens’ Bleak House – with some memorable Canonical women – like Sophy Kratides, Kitty Winter, and the unnamed mysterious lady who appears in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton” – she says:

The bad women of Victorian literature lose. They have to, or what’s the world coming to? They are hanged, or kill themselves to save their loved ones, or just go mad.

No matter what their crime, if they deviate from the perfect Victorian woman, they must be punished.

Except for the female villains of the Sherlock Holmes stories. They get away with it.

(Why was a certain obvious name left off that list of “memorable Canonical women”? Birkby states right off the bat that “Irene Adler, from A Scandal in Bohemia, is, despite nearly every screen adaptation ever, not a villain.” Her reasons for this assertion are very clearly laid out, just in case anyone needed convincing. And for more on the topic, see Esther Inglis-Arkell’s io9 post from 2013, “Why can’t any recent Sherlock Holmes adaptation get Irene Adler right?”)

A good number of Canonical women defy the Victorian ideal of femininity, whether they be villainesses, adventuresses, or something else entirely. Birkby offers some thoughts on why this might be. What do you think? Who is your favorite Canonical woman (villain or not!), and why?

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Quiz Results: Like an Animal

RESULTS: In order of submission, 5/5 to:

  • Margie Deck, “Gwen”, and Sheila Holtgrieve, “Daisy”
  • Michael Ellis, “Lobo”

Well done, everyone!

And, of course, the ANSWERS:

  1. Who is it?
    • Baron Adelbert Gruner
  2. What are the animals?
    • A Cat: “A purring cat who thinks he sees prospective mice” and “He’s a precise, tidy cat of a man in many of his ways.”
    • A Cobra: “He is an excellent antagonist, cool as ice, silky voiced and soothing as one of your fashionable consultants, and poisonous as a cobra.”
    • An Insect: “The Baron has little waxed tips of hair under his nose, like the short antennae of an insect.”
  3. In which story does the person appear?
    • “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”
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On September 26th…

September 26, 1879: At 2:00 am, Reginald Musgrave found Brunton reading the family ritual. [MUSG]

This is one of my favorite cases. I love the family ritual. It appeals to me, “the man who is half a boy”.

September 26, 1900: An anonymous warning letter to Sir Henry Baskerville arrived at the Northumberland Hotel. [HOUN]

September 26, 1902: The Morning Post announced the de Merville-Gruner marriage would not take place. [ILLU]

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On September 26th…

September 26, 1900: A warning letter from Beryl Stapleton to Sir Henry Baskerville arrived. (HOUN)

Sir Henry’s boot was missing. (HOUN)

John Clayton, the cab driver who drove Jack Stapleton, called at 221B St. (HOUN)

September 26, 1902: The Morning Post announced the de Merville-Gruner marriage would not take place. (ILLU)

September 26, 1879: At 2 AM, Reginald Musgrave found Brunton reading the family ritual. (MUSG)