“At the same time,” he remarked after a pause, during which he had sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire, “you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I endeavored to help the King of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.”
“The end may have been so,” I answered, “but the methods I hold to have been novel and of interest.”
“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial. I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!” He tossed a crumpled letter across to me.
It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and ran thus:
“DEAR MR. HOLMES,
I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten to-morrow if I do not inconvenience you.
“Yours faithfully,
“VIOLET HUNTER.”
“Do you know the young lady?” I asked.
“Not I.”
“It is half-past ten now.”
“Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring.”
“It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this case, also.”
“Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question.”
As he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.
“You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure,” said she, as my companion rose to greet her, “but I have had a very strange experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what I should do.”
“Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything that I can to serve you.”
Reading Sherlock Holmes is a tremendously satisfying distraction from NLP revision! In fact, as I convince myself, the expertise of Holmes’ calibration of characters and seemingly inexplicable situations, anticipates NLP by nearly a hundred years! As someone who only yesterday discovered BBC Five’s The Mentalist through the concerted recommendation of my mother, Holmes seems an unbiquitous inspiration this week! I was riveted to The Mentalist and the Holmes’ tale this morning framed the day in a very engrossing yet oddly detached way. Conan Doyle is fascinated by the movement from illegibility to legibility, and he has a predilection for the symbolic that insinuates itself powerfully within a very short space of time.
In this particular tale, we re-encounter Holmes and Watson exchanging views over the ‘sensationalist’ manner of Watson’s reediting of all their adventures. This short debate reminds us once again, that Holmes exists because Watson creates him. Holmes is thus Watson’s ‘Frankenstein’ in a strange way and the metafictional aspect of all the tales draws attention to the perceptual acuity of Watson in terms of his recreation of Holmes’ character. There is a sensationalist aspect to all Watson’s titles for each episode, and of course each episode feeds into other episodes engendering a sense of continuity and relationship. Fog is everywhere both literally and metaphorically and the cast list of strangers who stray into Baker Street is Dickensian enough to amuse and terrify. In the Copper Beeches’ tale, a lone, impoverished yet eductaed woman seeks the advice and protection of the master bachelor and his ‘staunch companion’ Watson. Naturally the mystery is unravelled through the perspicacity of the detective and the world, with its confusing words, returns temporarily to stability. Perhaps the titles retain the delicious alarm and uncertainty of their original mystery, so that even in retrospect, the residue of enigma remains. I am sure that the titles elevate the banality of mere detail to a symbolic level.
Makes me want to turn the page and read another whilst eating chocolate in front of a fire scented with cherry wood!