April 3 1883: Grant saw his wife Effie leave the cottage. [YELL]
Maybe the cottage that concealed the Yellow Face looked like this?[Source A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes according to Ziesler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI.
April 2, 1883 Repairs were started at Stoke Moran [SPEC]
“Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of the building, and my bedroom wall has been pierced, so that I have had to move into the chamber in which my sister died, and to sleep in the very bed in which she slept.”
What is going to happen? We might do well to think of the quote from this case:
“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”
A Snake coils usually before striking his victim. Could Watson/Doyle have been attempting a pun using recoil and a snake?
Illustration by Josef Friedrich (1906)
There was little difficulty in entering the grounds, for unrepaired breaches gaped in the old park wall. Making our way among the trees, we reached the lawn, crossed it, and were about to enter through the window, when out from a clump of laurel bushes there darted what seemed to be a hideous and distorted child, who threw itself on the grass with writhing limbs, and then ran swiftly across the lawn into the darkness.
“My God!” I whispered; “did you see it?”
Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. 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.
“It is a nice household,” he murmured. “That is the baboon.”
I include this picture because I always imagined what this scene looked like but I never saw it pictured until now.
April 2 1883: Effie’s Munro daughter, Lucy, moved into the cottage [YELL]
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (1893)
“Well, last Monday evening I was taking a stroll down that way, when I met an empty van coming up the lane, and saw a pile of carpets and things lying about on the grass-plot beside the porch. It was clear that the cottage had at last been let.”
I have a quote from this case that I again have to put before dear readers:
“Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper `Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”
To me, proof that Holmes had been at least bested by two women in his cases when you put this one together with “A Scandal in Bohemia”.
Source A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes according to Ziesler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI.
April 1, 1890: Violet Hunter decided to accept Jethro Rucastle’s offer as governess [COPP]
Miss Stoper (Sheila Keith), Violent Hunter (Suzanne Neve), and Jephro Rucastle (Patrick Wymark) in “The Copper Beeches” (1965)
Sources:
A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes according to Ziesler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI.
More details about the 1965 BBC production of The Copper Beeches are available at IMDB.
Posted by Ron (JHWS “Chips”) and Beth (JHWS “Selena Buttons”)
March 30, 1894: The Honorable Ronald Adair was murdered. [EMPT] Paul Lacoux as the Hon. Robert Adair in The Return of Sherlock Holmes: The Empty House (1986)
Source A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes according to Ziesler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI.
March 28, 1895: Bannister denied that he revealed who had stole the Fortesque exam. [3STU]
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (1904)
March 28, 1895: Gilchrist confessed to copying the Fortesque exam. [3STU]
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (1904)
March 28, 1902: Don Murillo vanished, but Miss Burnett escaped. [WIST] Illustration of Murillo and Burnet by Arthur Twidle for The Strand Magazine (1908)
Source A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes according to Ziesler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI.
March 27, 1895: Gilchrist copied the Fortesque exam. [3STU]
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (1904)
“I have a letter here, Mr. Soames, which I wrote to you early this morning in the middle of a restless night. It was before I knew that my sin had found me out. Here it is, sir. You will see that I have said, `I have determined not to go in for the examination. I have been offered a commission in the Rhodesian Police, and I am going out to South Africa at once.’ ”
“I am indeed pleased to hear that you did not intend to profit by your unfair advantage,” said Soames. “But why did you change your purpose?”
Gilchrist pointed to Bannister.
Illustration by Arthur Twiddle for The Strand Magazine (1908)
March 27, 1902: Constable Downing was bitten by Cook. [WIST]
“It was about two hours ago. The light was just fading. I was sitting reading in the chair, I don’t know what made me look up, but there was a face looking in at me through the lower pane. Lord, sir, what a face it was! I’ll see it in my dreams.”
Cover illustration by Frederic Dorr Steele for Collier’s (1908)
“Chips” says: To me this picture represents Holmes inside a room working to Thwart Evil. While Evil is is outside waiting to overwhelm Good.
Source:A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes According to Zeisler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BS
Leonard Nimoy was born March 26, 1931 in Boston, Massachusetts.
From 1973 on, he played Star Trek‘s Mr Spock on television and in films, so he is best known for that role. But he also played Sherlock Holmes in a touring production of William Gillette’s play. Asked about Holmes, he said:
He’s an asocial man, hardly your average 9-to-5 worker with a family. Instead, he’s chosen a very special kind of life, and he has very little respect for most of the people around him who are also involved in his profession. He’s an outsider, in so many ways—particularly in his relationships, with women. Holmes is very much an alien, all right, and I felt that I could understand him the same way I understood Spock.
“Chips” was fortunate enough to see the show, and he writes:
I have been in love with Leonard Nimoy since Star Trek. I was so lucky to get tickets to see him in person when he came to Denver in the William Gillette play. I wish he could done more as Holmes. The oddball casting was Allan Sues, a off the wall comedian who overplayed Moriarty but was completely outdone by Nimoy’s serious acting ability. Nimoy only varied once into Spock once during the play and he did it so well it fit right in.
I still have the play souvenir program that I keep in a place of honor.
from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Source:
Information provided by A Curious Collection of Dates by by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”).
Posted by The Dynamic Duo of “Chips” (aka Ron) and “Selena Buttons” (aka Beth)
March 24, 1889: Irene and Godfrey Norton left for the Continent. [SCAN]
Portrait of Irene Adler in the Granada Television adaptation of “A Scandal in Bohemia”
March 24, 1889: Holmes received a portrait of Irene Adler. [SCAN]
“What a woman – oh, what a woman!” cried the King of Bohemia, when we had all three read this epistle. “Did I not tell you how quick and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity she was not on my level?”
“From what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes, coldly. “I am sorry that I have not been able to bring your Majesty’s business to a more successful conclusion.”
Another favorite Canonical moment from “Chips”.
Source A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes according to Ziesler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI.
Posted by The Dynamic Duo “Chips” (aka Ron) and “Selena Buttons” (aka Beth)
For today, “Chips” shares two favorite moments from “A Scandal in Bohemia” that show Dr Watson’s taste for adventure and loyalty to Holmes.
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (July 1891)
First, a bit of Canonical conversation:
“By the way, Doctor, I shall want your co-operation.”
“I shall be delighted.”
“You don’t mind breaking the law?”
“Not in the least.”
“Nor running a chance of arrest?”
“Not in a good cause.”
“Oh, the cause is excellent!”
“Then I am your man.”
“I was sure that I might rely on you.”
Second, the moment when Irene Adler determines whom she has been fooled by and cannot let the moment go without passing her compliments along to him.
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (July 1891)
We had reached Baker Street, and had stopped at the door. He was searching his pockets for the key, when someone passing said: –
“Good night, Mister Sherlock Holmes.”
There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the greeting appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by.
“I’ve heard that voice before.” said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit street. “Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been.”
Friday, March 22, 1889: The King of Bohemia visited Holmes. [SCAN]
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand magazine [July, 1891]
The man sprang from his chair, and paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. “You are right,” he cried, “I am the King. Why should I attempt to conceal it?”
“Why, indeed?” murmured Holmes. “Your Majesty had not spoken before I was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia.” [SCAN]
On episode three of Trifles, I made this comment to Scott Monty, dealing with this image: “You mentioned in this post the burger King of Bohemia. I saw an ad for a burger at Burger King. They were discussing a new product. So I think we could call Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia “The Bacon Burger King of Bohemia who also told Holmes quite a few whoppers”.
Scott thought it funny – any comments from any who read this? -Chips aka Ron
Source: A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes According to Zeisler and Christ by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI
Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand magazine [July 1891]
One night – it was on the 20th of March, 1888 – I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. [SCAN, emphasis added]
In A Curious Collection of Dates, Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”) write about this opening sentence:
“Although Watson is (atypically) quite clear on the date for ‘A Scandal in Bohemia,’ it’s a puzzling one. First, he describes a Lenten wedding – a Victorian faux pas. More bizarrely, however, he claims to be married, when – if the dating of The Sign of the Four is correct – he has yet to meet his wife.”
Over the years, of course, Sherlockians have tried to reconcile this puzzle in various ways. Baring-Gould puts the case in May of 1887, while Zeisler argues for March of 1889. Whenever it happened, I think we’re all glad that it did.
Source:
Information provided by A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”)
Posted by The Dynamic Duo: “Chips” aka Ron and “Selena Buttons” aka Beth.
“First Edition Wines” from 221B Cellars (photo courtesy Ashley Polasek)
“They are not all successes, Watson,” said he, “but there are some pretty little problems among them. Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife.” [MUSG]
In A Curious Collection of Dates, Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”), dedicate this day to Arminius Vamberry, born March 19, 1832 (possibly). They write:
“According to Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Arminius Vamberry (German: Hermann Bamberger) was a wine collector. But the Hungarian language professor, who may or may not have been born on this date in 1832, was so much more.”
Their concise account of his adventurous life (including the reason he is featured on the day that might not have been his actual birthday) ends with this interesting speculation:
“In 2005, the British National Archives released a collection of late 19th-century secret service documents. There were several revelations, one being that Vamberry had served for over a decade as a foreign agent, providing information about the Turkish government and its relations with Austria-Hungary and Russia. Records reveal that he frequently asked for cash and was known for being ‘alarmist.’ One has to wonder if it was in this capacity that he ended up as one of Holmes’s ‘pretty little problems,’ sent to 221B by way of the Diogenes Club and a particular minor government official.”
Source:
Information provided by A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”)
Posted by The Dynamic Duo Ron (JHWS Chips) and Beth (JHWS Selena)
Illustration by Frank Craig for The Strand (July 1898)
At five o’clock on the evening of the 18th of March in the year [1892] a train left Euston Station for Manchester. It was a rainy, squally day, which grew wilder as it progressed, so it was by no means the weather in which anyone would travel who was not driven to do so by necessity. The train, however, is a favourite one among Manchester business men who are returning from town, for it does the journey in four hours and twenty minutes, with only three stoppages upon the way. In spite of the inclement evening it was, therefore, fairly well filled upon the occasion of which I speak. The guard of the train was a tried servant of the company – a man who had worked for twenty-two years without a blemish or complaint. His name was John Palmer. (from “The Man with the Watches”, emphasis added)
“The Man with the Watches”, a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, appeared in The Strand magazine in July 1898, with illustrations by Frank Craig. It could be inferred that the detective in the story is Sherlock Holmes (though he’s never named), so the story is considered by some to be an extra-canonical case. It is one of the stories collected in Jack Tracy’s Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha. A review of that book by James O’Leary (JHWS “Pippin”) is available via our friends at I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere: Classics of Sherlockiana: the Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes.
Sources:
Brought to our attention by A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”). The full text of The Man with the Watches is available online.
Posted by The Dynamic Duo of Ron (JHWS “Chips”) and Beth (JHWS “Selena Buttons”)
Denis Stewart Percy Conan Doyle was born on March 17, 1909, the third child of Arthur Conan Doyle, and the first child of his marriage to Jean Leckie. Arthur Conan Doyle originally suggested the name James Denis Pack Conan Doyle, honoring the baby’s maternal grandfather (James Blythe Leckie) and paternal grandmother’s family (the Packs). Arthur’s mother, however, insisted on the name Percy.
Arthur later wrote to his mother, “I have never seen so bright and intelligent a child. His head too is wonderfully formed. He will do deeds if he lives.”
Denis did live, marrying Georgian princess Nina Mdivani in 1936, working with his brother Adrian in managing the Conan Doyle estate, and enjoying motor racing and big game hunting. He died on March 9, 1955.
Source:
Information provided by A Curious Collection of Dates by by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”).
Posted by The Dynamic Duo of Ron (JHWS “Chips”) and Beth (JHWS “Selena”)
It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes’s iron constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own. In March of that year Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction to Holmes I may some day recount, gave positive injunctions that the famous private agent would lay aside all his cases and surrender himself to complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute breakdown. The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself took the faintest interest, for his mental detachment was absolute, but he was induced at last, on the threat of being permanently disqualified from work, to give himself a complete change of scene and air. Thus it was that in the early spring of that year we found ourselves together in a small cottage near Poldhu Bay, at the farther extremity of the Cornish peninsula. [DEVI]
According to Guinn and Mahoney in A Curious Collection of Dates, the Adventure of the Devil’s Foot begins on March 16, 1897.
But! In Dorn’s A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes, the Adventure of the Devil’s Foot begins on April 8, 1897.
These two listings are contrary to each other as to when this case started. It is an example of one of my favorite controversies in Sherlockian scholarly world: Figuring out when each case occurred, based on clues picked up from the case and our outlandish Sherlockian minds. So, on we go, and we shall see if the chronology of Leah Guinn and Jaime Maloney and their volume disagree in other cases with the chronology of William Dorn and his volume.
Sources: A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”) and A Day by Day Chronology of Sherlock Holmes by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI
Posted by Ron aka “Chips” and Beth aka “Selena Buttons”, proud columnists for the John H Watson Society.
Jean Elizabeth Leckie was born March 14, 1874 to James Blythe Leckie and Selina Leckie in London, England.
At age twenty-three, while studying voice, she met Arthur Conan Doyle. At the time, he was thirty-eight and married with two children. His wife, Louisa, was suffering from tuberculosis.
Reportedly, Arthur immediately fell in love with Jean, but he remained faithful to Louisa until her death in 1906.
Arthur and Jean married September 18th, 1907, and had three children: Denis, Adrian, and Lena Jean. She survived her husband by ten years, passing away on June 27, 1940.
Source:
Information provided by A Curious Collection of Dates by by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”).
Posted by The Dynamic Duo of Ron (JHWS “Chips”) and Beth (JHWS “Selena”)
Sir George Newnes was born March 13, 1851, in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire. In 1881, he founded a new magazine that would include small articles (“tit-bits”) reprinted from other publications. He called it, of course, Tit-Bits. (Or, to give it its proper full title: Tit-Bits from all the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World.)
Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”) write in A Curious Collection of Dates:
Tit-Bits from all the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World, Issue 1
The new magazine entered the marketplace at the perfect time: literacy rates had grown in England thanks to the Compulsory Education Act of 1870, and an increasingly urban, commuting public welcomed interesting train reading that did not require the commitment of a lengthy serial. It didn’t hurt that Newness was an expert promoter: Tit-Bits offered train insurance, contests for everything from cash to a house – even, in 1903, buried treasure.
He went on to found The Strand Magazine in 1891, which stated in its first issue, “It will contain stories and articles by the best British writers, and special translations from the first foreign authors. These will be illustrated by eminent artists.” The July 1891 issue contained the first appearance of “A Scandal in Bohemia”.
“Chips” notes: I think this is where the name of our column came from back when I
first joined this world of 1895 at about the age of 11.
Sources:
Information provided by the volume A Curious Collection of Dates by by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”). Digitized copy of the first volume of The Strand: An Illustrated Monthly held by the University of California available via Google Books.
Posted by The Dynamic Duo: Ron (JHWS “Chips”) and Beth (JHWS “Selena Buttons”)
Quotation from “The Outlook for the Flying Machine” by Professor Simon Newcomb [The Independent, 22 October 1903]Simon Newcomb was born on March 12, 1835, in Wallace, Nova Scotia, Canada.
One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars. [Simon Newcomb, The Reminiscences of an Astronomer, 1903
Who was Simon Newcomb?
[Illustration by Sidney Paget for “The Final Problem”, The Strand Magazine, December 1893]
Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid – a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it? [VALL]
In A Curious Collection of Dates, Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”) note:
Several men have the dubious honor of being considered models for James Moriarty, and eminent American astronomer Simon Newcomb is one of them.
Newcomb was a gifted mathematician who, like Moriarty, applied his genius to the field of astronomy. In 1861, his paper “On the Secular Variations and Mutual Relations of the Orbits of the Asteroids” was published in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It is possible that Arthur Conan Doyle came across Newcomb’s work in his own wide-ranging studies.
Another side of Newcomb
Also like Moriarty, Newcomb appears to have had a darker side. He studied mathematics under Benjamin Peirce at Harvard, later becoming friends with him. Newcomb did not become friends with Peirce’s son, Charles, a fellow mathematician four years Newcomb’s junior. In Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life, biographer Joseph Brent credits Newcomb with no less than the “successful destruction of” Peirce’s career. Among other moves to sabotage Peirce, and perhaps motivated by his profound disapproval of Peirce’s recent divorce and marriage to his mistress, Newcomb played a major part in the denial of Peirce’s 1902 application for a Carnegie grant.
It is highly unlikely that Conan Doyle was aware of these facts: however, the story of a mathematical genius with a dark side doing battle with an unconventional genius dedicated to logic sounds familiar all the same. [from A Curious Collection of Dates]
Sources:
Information from the volume A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”). Additional information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life by Joseph Brent.
Posted by The Dynamic Duo, Ron (JHWS “Chips”) and Beth (JHWS “Selena Buttons”)
