Susan Knight's Blog, page 5
December 14, 2020
Breakfast at Baker Street (3)
‘Well, Mrs Hudson,’ I asked as that good woman entered with a steaming pot of something that smelt different. Appetising enough, but certainly different. ‘How did your book launch go?’
‘Thank you for asking, Doctor,’ she replied. ‘It went very well indeed. A pity you couldn’t be present.’
‘Alas, I had an emergency to see to. A sick patient, don’t you know.’ Which was at least half the truth.
‘Yes,’ she continued. People took part from all over the world. From England, Ireland, the United States of America, Israel, Malaysia. It was amazing.’
Holmes let out a cynical chuckle. ‘Certainly too amazing to be true, Mrs Hudson. I suppose you waved a magic wand and they all appeared.’
‘Oh no, Mr Holmes. Not magic. Technology. The Internet, you see. It can connect people from all over the world.’
Holmes burst out laughing for real. ‘Mrs Hudson, now I know you are pulling our legs! This is 1895. Whatever are you talking about?… And what in heaven’s name is this?’ He poked distastefully at the bowl placed in front of him by our landlady. ‘Is that… is that a sausage?’
I looked at my own bowl. It seemed to contain a thick soup of some kind. A sausage was bobbing in it, a pale sausage.
‘I know how much you gentlemen have enjoyed tasting Irish dishes,’ she said (not quite accurately as previous readers of my accounts will know), a merry smile upon her face. ‘So I thought I would treat you to some Dublin Coddle.’
‘Dublin Coddle?’ I said. ‘Before we venture to eat it, please explain?’
‘Sausages, rashers, potato, carrots, onion and barley steamed in broth. It’s a way of using up leftovers before Friday when Catholics can’t eat meat, you know. But it’s also very tasty and nourishing on a winter’s day. It’ll put hairs on your chests, gentlemen. If you’ll pardon the expression.’
‘I don’t want hairs on my chest,’ Holmes said firmly, laying down his spoon. ‘This Irish business has gone on long enough, Mrs Hudson. Some boiled eggs and toast and marmelade, if you please.’
‘Just try it, Mr Holmes,’ she urged. ‘It was a favourite of Dean Swift’s, you know.’
‘Dean Swift, be d….d!’
Meanwhile I had taken a tentative spoonful to humour our landlady and pour oil on waters that looked to become somewhat troubled. ‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ I commented. ‘Not for every day of course, But certainly interesting for a change. And it IS a cold day.’ I looked out at the falling snow.
‘I’ll leave the rest of it here, in case you gentlemen feel like seconds,’ Mrs Hudson said. And as she went out the door, she turned. ‘Oh and I am surprised, Mr Holmes that you expressed disbelief at the international nature of my launch. Seeing that you were there yourself.’
I looked askance at Holmes. His jaw had, for once, dropped.
‘How the devil did you….?’
‘Why, didn’t your name pop up on my screen,’ she said laughing as she left the room.
‘Holmes?’ I asked.
But he was too busy lapping up his coddle to reply.
To watch the launch follow the link
https://mxpublishing.com/blogs/news/mrs-hudson-book-launch-live-from-dublin?fbclid=IwAR3RZIoGkq_U5WYQzHGeZ6sqn98zC44x4sO9yBvzQiiuciNdqVtL8btV480
‘Mrs Hudson goes to Ireland’ can be ordered from book depository (free mailing worldwide)
https://www.bookdepository.com/Mrs-Hudson…/9781787056275
And from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hudson-Goes-Ireland-Susan-Knight/dp/1787056279/
November 20, 2020
Tea Time at Baker Street [2]
‘I am most relieved to observe,’ said Holmes, regarding the tray of scones that Clara the maid had just brought in, ‘that Mrs Hudson seems to have abandoned her recent obsession with Irish cuisine.’
‘Indeed,’ I replied a little doubtfully, regarding the scorched edges of the delicacies in question. ‘Mind you, we both enjoyed her barm brack.’
‘Humph,’ rejoined Holmes, ever unwilling to concede a point. ‘Good heavens,’ was his next cry, having tried to cut one of the said scones in half, ‘this is as hard as a rock.’
I tried one myself and had to agree, ‘It reminds me of something one would find as part of a dry stone wall in Connemara.’
‘Very droll, Watson,’ Holmes continued. ‘But whatever is wrong with the woman? Ever since she imagined a degree of success with her little book, she has become quite impossible. And now it seems her cookery skills have flown out the window as well… Mrs Hudson,’ he called out as that person entered the room. ‘Please explain your scones!’
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‘I’m so sorry, Mr Holmes,’ she said, although I must say not looking particularly repentant. ‘With all that’s going on, I’m afraid I haven’t had time to do any cooking. I sent Phoebe to the shop this morning to buy some scones but I am afraid the silly goose came back with yesterday’s bake because they were cheaper.’
Phoebe is the little scullery maid that Mrs Hudson, from the goodness of her heart, keeps on for the sake of the girl’s mother, a poor woman oppressed with a ne-er do well husband, a very little income and a vast number of children. Unfortunately, Phoebe is slow of intellect and notoriously clumsy to boot. A trial to us all.
‘Bought scones!’ exclaimed Holmes. ‘Yesterday’s bake! Really Mrs Hudson, this will not do at all. What, pray is “going on” as you put it, to such an extent as to take you away from your usual duties?’
‘It’s the launch, Mrs Holmes. I am launching my book, Mrs Hudson goes to Ireland, next Thursday November 26, do you see, and it has put me all of a flutter.’
Holmes was not impressed.
‘I am well aware by now of the title of your book, madam. You have told us of it often enough… But a “launch”. What is that? I hope it means you are going to throw the d…..d thing into the River Thames and that will be an end of it.’
Mrs Hudson pursed her lips tightly. Her nostrils quivered. She looked about ready to throw a scone at Holmes’s head, the which I feared might quite knock him out.
‘I think Mrs Hudson means,’ I explained, trying to calm the atmosphere, ‘that people will be invited to come together to celebrate the publication of the book.’
‘Yes, indeed, Doctor,’ concurred our worthy landlady, subsiding somewhat.
‘Is that a fact? Well, I have to say I have never heard of such a thing.’ He frowned at me. ‘I may be wrong and correct me if I am, Watson, but I do not recall having had a “launch” for any of those books of yours books recounting my many cases and adventures.’
To cover my confusion, I thoughtlessly took a large bite of my scone. The dentist later said he hoped to save the tooth.
Here’s the link to the zoom launch, It’s a free event and everyone attending will get a code from MX publishing for a free Sherlock Holmes audio book:
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ErXLfNWjQQ6wyHjpt8qX2A
Mrs Hudson goes to Ireland can be ordered from book depository (free mailing worldwide)
https://www.bookdepository.com/Mrs-Hudson…/9781787056275
And from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hudson-Goes-Ireland-Susan-Knight/dp/1787056279/
November 6, 2020
Teatime at Baker Street
‘Happy Halloween,’ said Mrs Hudson brightly, bringing in an unusually delectable tray of cakes and biscuits.
‘What!’ said Holmes, looking up from his paper.
‘It’s October 31st,’ explained our landlady. ‘When the dead walk the earth, you know.’
She poured out the tea.
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‘Mrs Hudson, what new superstition is this?’ Holmes reached for a slab of fruit cake. ‘Some foolish notion you brought back from that benighted Ireland of yours, I suppose.’
‘I believe it is indeed a Celtic feast,’ I said, partaking of the delicacies as well.
Holmes gave me a crushing look.
‘I surmise from your sparkling eyes and merry gait, Mrs Hudson,’ he went on, ‘you have more “good news” to impart about your book.’
His ironic tone was quite lost on that worthy woman.
‘Yes indeed, Mr Holmes. How very very kind of you to mention it.’
Suddenly I had misgivings. Mrs Hudson’s tone showed she understood perfectly how Holmes felt about it all. That there was even perhaps the tiniest smidgeon of envy… I should not like my dear friend to know it, but I had secretly read the manuscript of Mrs Hudson Goes to Ireland and was well impressed with the lady’s adventures in the Emerald Isle and the lively style with which she described it. The woman was no fool.
‘As of today,’ she continued, ‘we are 293 per cent funded through Kickstarter with just four days to go. It is most gratifying.’
‘Well done,’ I exclaimed. ‘And might I add that this cake is absolutely delicious.’
‘Thank you Doctor,’ she replied.
‘It isn’t bad,’ conceded Holmes, reaching for another slab. ‘Some new recipe, I detect.’
‘It’s even better with a smear of butter,’ she told us.
Holmes spread a pat on the dark fruity cake
‘Four days, you say, Mrs Hudson. I trust then that will be the last we hear about the whole dratted business.’ He took a big bite of the confection.
‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘That is just the beginning, you know.’
Holmes shook his head in exasperation and then let out a cry. ‘Good heavens! What is this! I nearly broke my tooth.’
He withdrew an object from his mouth and placed it on the plate.
‘Oh, Mr Holmes,’ exclaimed Mrs Hudson. ‘You got the ring!’
‘What! Are you trying to kill me, woman!’
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‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘The cake is called barm brack. It is served at Halloween in Ireland and whoever gets the ring baked inside it,’ her eyes twinkled, ‘will be wed within the year. Congratulations, sir.’
To spare everyone’s blushes, I shall not relay what Holmes said in answer to this, but just that Mrs Hudson and I had a great laugh over the matter.
Find Kickstarter for this project at: http://kickstarter.com/projects/mrshudson/mrs-hudson-goes-to-ireland?ref+ksr
October 22, 2020
Breakfast at Baker Street [2]
‘Hey ho, Mrs Hudson!’ Holmes said jovially. ‘I suppose commiserations are due.’
Our landlady put down the tray she was carrying on a side table, preparatory to serving us our breakfasts.
‘Whatever do you mean Mr Holmes?’
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He chuckled. ‘Your book,’ he replied. ‘Mrs Hudson Goes to Ireland, or whatever it’s called. I believe you were trying to get people to pledge money to support it through something called… What was it again, Watson?’
‘Kickstarter,’ I said.
‘Ah yes. Presumably you couldn’t find anyone interested enough.’ He shook his head sympathetically. ‘That’s a pity but after all, let’s be realistic. Who’d be interested in a landlady’s adventures?’
Mrs Hudson placed two steaming dishes on the table on front of us.
‘On the contrary, Mr Holmes. I am delighted to say that after less than two weeks, we have already raised double what we were asking for. Over 1000 instead of 500.’
‘That’s wonderful news,’ I exclaimed. ‘Congratulations, Mrs Hudson.’
She looked down modestly.
‘Yes, it is most gratifying… Now gentlemen, eat your breakfast before it gets cold.’
‘What’s this?’ asked Holmes, gazing with some distaste at the dish before him. ‘It looks like porridge.’
‘It’s called stirabout,’ replied Mrs Hudson. ‘A recipe I picked up in Ireland.’
‘Stirabout!’ exclaimed Holmes. ‘What kind of a name is that?’
‘Presumably,’ I replied, ‘it is so called because it is stirred about when you prepare it.’
‘Exactly,’ said our landlady.
I laughed at the expression on Holmes’s face.
‘It hardly requires the insightful brain of the world’s greatest detective to work that one out,’ I added.
‘It’s a silly name and I don’t like porridge.’
‘Just try it, Mr Holmes,’ Mrs Hudson urged. ‘It’s not it all like your regular boiled oatmeal.’
My friend still refused to pick up his spoon, so nothing loath, I plunged in.
‘It’s really quite good,’ I said, and had another taste. ‘In fact, it’s delicious.’
‘What at those black things suspended in it?’ Holmes asked, poking about in the dish.
‘Those are raisins, Mr Holmes. Dried fruit, you know.’
‘I know what raisins are, Mrs Hudson.’
‘Go on, man. Just taste it,’ I said. ‘It won’t kill you.’
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With a deep sigh, Holmes raised his spoon to his lips and allowed a small amount to pass into his mouth. We both looked at him expectantly. He took another larger spoonful.
‘I grant it is not entirely unpleasant,’ he allowed at last. ‘In fact, it is considerably better than I expected.’
Our landlady watched, a little smile on her lips, while we demolished the lot.
‘Not so bad then?’ she asked.
‘There’s cream in it. And honey,’ Holmes said thoughtfully. ‘Along with a strange flavour that I cannot quite identify.’ He reluctantly put down his spoon. There was nothing left on his plate to scoop up.
‘I agree,’ I said. ‘A pungency of some sort. What is it, Mrs Hudson?’
She burst out laughing. ‘Just a little secret ingredient,’ she said.
‘Come tell us. You must.’
‘A dash of something you won’t get on this side of the Irish sea,’ she told us at last. ‘It’s called poteen.’
Something stirred my memory.
‘Home-made spirit made in illicit stills!’ I was horror-struck.
‘I only added the merest drop,’ she said. ‘Something I brought back with me, along with memories of my adventures. You must admit it gives a nice kick.’
And with that she swept out of the door.
We looked at each other.
‘I dread to think,’ said Holmes shaking his head,’ what else she may have brought back from that benighted country.’ And he ran his forefinger round his dish to pick up the very last smidgeon.
Find Kickstarter for this project at: http://kickstarter.com/projects/mrshudson/mrs-hudson-goes-to-ireland?ref+ksr
October 11, 2020
Breakfast at Baker Street
‘Well, here’s a fine how do you do, Watson.’ Holmes was meticulously cutting his buttered toast into soldiers to dip into his morning eggs.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, envisaging yet another knotty problem to unravel.
‘It’s Mrs Hudson,’ Holmes replied.
‘Mrs Hudson?’ Had she burnt the toast? Overcooked the eggs? Forgotten the marmalade?
‘Hasn’t she gone behind our backs, Watson,’ Holmes said, ‘and written another book.’
He gave me what I can only describe as a searching look.
‘Remember those stories she published last year?’
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‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘ “Mrs Hudson Investigates”. As I understand it, she’d had some lucky chances to solve a few mysteries. She asked me to write them up for her but I told her I was far too busy.’
‘Quite right too, only then didn’t the woman go and write them up herself. Some reviewer chap even described them as “a triumph”.’ He frowned deeply. ‘And now, if you please, she has produced a novel.’
He chopped the top off an egg with rather more force than warranted.
‘A novel?’
‘Indeed, Watson, a novel of 80,000 words or more. You’d think she had nothing better to do.’ He shook his head. ‘She even has an editor of her own these days. Someone called Susan Knight. And a publisher too with the cryptic name MX. Has to be a code of some sort, don’t you think? ’ He put down his knife. ‘And they’re employing something called Kickstarter to get it going. Kickstarter. Do you know what that is?’
‘Sounds like a boot up the…’
‘No, Watson. It’s a way of encouraging people to support the publishing enterprise, “to help bring creative projects to life”.’
‘Sounds like a good idea.’
‘Oh, you think so, do you? Anyway, Watson, that’s hardly the point. The point is when have you ever written up any of my adventures in more than 80,000 words?’
‘Er…’
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‘She took flagrant advantage of my absence, Watson, thinking me dead and the coast clear after the contretemps at Reichenbach, to go off on some adventure of her own. And this is the result! “Mrs Hudson Goes to Ireland!” ’ He shook his head and sprinkled salt onto the decapitated egg. ‘Women, Watson. You can never tell what they’re going to get up to. Ha! They’ll be asking for the vote next!’
We both laughed merrily at that.
‘But really, Watson, what are you going to do about this?’
‘What can I do, Holmes?’
He picked up a soldier and plunged it into the yolk.
‘As you know, we are going to Devon shortly, to sort out this business of the Baskervilles. I expect a novel, Watson. A novel do you hear?’
And he popped the eggy soldier into his mouth.
Find Kickstarter for this project at: http://kickstarter.com/projects/mrshudson/mrs-hudson-goes-to-ireland?ref+ksr
September 26, 2020
‘The Speckled Band’ Revisited
In an interview a while back, I was asked which was the first Sherlock Holmes story I ever read. Thrown by the question, I replied The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was certainly one of the first. However, it was only afterwards that I recalled exactly.
My parents were not great readers but they had a bookcase, and, since a bookcase must have books, they purchased some of those volumes in nicely matching covers to put upon it. As a bookish and curious child, I revelled for instance in People of the World in Pictures, deliciously horrified by women who extended their necks by many inches with metal rings which, once on, must never be removed, or tribes who inserted large plates of wood into girls’ lips. Both allegedly signs of beauty.
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More fascinating to me, however, were two massive collections I returned to time after time, Tales of Mystery and Adventure and Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. It was there I first came upon M.R.James and that that flesh-creeper by W.W. Jacobs, The Monkey’s Paw. And it was there, as I now remember, that I read my very first Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Speckled Band. It made such an impression, I can still call to mind the illustration that accompanied it.
I must have been young, for I was a precocious reader and by the age of thirteen was into Dostoevsky and the like. But inspired by that first acquaintance, I gradually progressed to more and more Holmes, reading and rereading.
The Speckled Band remained a favourite, however. That villainous stepfather, that innocent young woman, that terrifying swamp adder! (Search learned treatises on snakes, my friends, and you will not find swamp adders listed. Holmesian scholars have expended vast energies into identifying the snake Conan Doyle had in mind. But I imagine he himself was not so bothered: he needed a venomous snake that would kill in seconds, and just made one up, something writers do and scholars don’t).
Interestingly enough, the inspiration for the story, according to Richard Lancelyn Green, was possibly an article in Cassell’s Saturday Journal of February 1891 (Doyle’s story appeared a year later). ‘Called on by a Boa Constrictor’ tells how a captain in West Africa was nearly killed by a snake which came through a ventilator above his bed in the night. Again let’s not be too fussy. There are no boa constrictors in Africa. It was probably a python.
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The Adventure of the Speckled Band isn’t just a favourite with me. There are scores of adaptations, from the dramatized version Conan Doyle devised himself in 1910, to films such as that of 1931 starring Raymond Massey as Holmes, through very many radio and TV versions, to animation and even a video game. As usual my favourite of these is the TV episode with Jeremy Brett as Holmes and a thoroughly terrifying Jeremy Kemp as the evil Dr Roylott. I even reference the story myself in my forthcoming novel, Mrs Hudson goes to Ireland, of which more very soon.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
Buy The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories XX at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=MX+book+of+new+sherlock+holmes+stories+XX&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
September 12, 2020
Herlock Sholmes meets Billy Bunter
Thumbing through Bill Peschel’s fascinating book of Sherlock Holmes parodies and pastiches: 1888-1930, I was startled to find one entitled ‘The Case of the Sinn Feiners’ first published in 1920, bang in the middle of the Irish War of Independence.
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It was even more surprising to discover that the author, named as ‘Peter Todd’, was in fact Charles Hamilton, or, as he is better known using another pseudonym, Frank Richards, creator of Billy Bunter. I was intrigued, and, apart from reading the story, of which more below, I wanted to find out something more about Hamilton. As a child I remember watching the Billy Bunter series on television, with thirty-year-old Gerald Campion playing the title role as a fat and greedy schoolboy, utterly obnoxious, though almost in an endearing way because he was such a loser, but didn’t know it.
I can’t say it was a favourite programme of mine, the doings of naughty public schoolboys being far from my experience or interest. In any case, if you are looking for naughty boys, then Richmal Crompton’s William was much more engaging, and still is. However, I was mildly diverted by Billy Bunter on TV, while not inclined to read the books.
Now I discover that Hamilton is regarded by the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific writer in the English language, being credited with having penned, mostly for cheap weeklies, around 100 million words. Wikipedia lists 25 pseudonyms he used for the various series – most featuring boy’s public schools – including one woman’s name, Hilda, and one ‘Sir’. The list, however, doesn’t include ‘Peter Todd’, even though Hamilton wrote 93 Sherlock Holmes spoofs under that name.
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‘The Case of the Sinn Feiners’ is riddled with British stereotypical attitudes regarding the Irish. References to a fondness of drink abound. ‘Sholmes’ and ‘Jotson’ arrive at Ballybooze en route for a village in the Tippleary mountains, where a trail of whiskey leads them to the rebels who have kidnapped ‘a distinguished official’. This is all rather tiresome and even offensive in view of the slaughter that was happening on this side of the Irish sea at the time, largely perpetrated against the Irish civilian population by the notorious Black and Tans.
However, Hamilton was apparently a good egg, according to the standards of the time. The Billy Bunter stories gently attack racism and propound a sense of morality and fair play. And here, explaining the meaning of Sinn Fein, Sholmes remarks, ‘If you were a reader of the Daily Snooze, Jotson, you would know that Sinn Fein is the free and independent patriot party in the sister isle. If, on the other hand, you regularly read the Morning Ghost, you would be aware that Sinn Fein is the unpatriotic and traitorous party in Ireland. Like the little boy in the story, you pays your money and you takes your choice.’
And when they finally discover the kidnapped prisoner, Jotson says, ‘by his expression of vacant imbecility, we knew at once he must be a Government official.’
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
Buy The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories XX at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=MX+book+of+new+sherlock+holmes+stories+XX&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
August 30, 2020
Book Review: The Sign of Fear
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What a wickedly subversive book this is. Author Molly Carr knows her Sherlock Holmes’ Canon inside out and then proceeds to do just that – turn it inside out. Sherlock, we discover, is the real author of all those stories, which accounts for the many put-downs of poor Watson, who in turn isn’t a real doctor and has never served in Afghanistan but was a ward orderly before taking up with the detective. And actually there never has been much detecting, Sherlock preferring to laze about smoking his pipe, making up his adventures.
Moreover, not only did Sherlock not die at Reichenbach but neither did Moriarty, who pops up here to try and thwart the best efforts of the narrator of (punning alert!) The Sign of Fear. So who is the narrator then? None other than Watson’s wife, the erstwhile Mary Morstan, who isn’t quite the demure young lady we remember from The Sign of the Four, but who hints at a secret and scandalous past. At one point Watson apologetically says he will have to kill her. But only in the stories, since she is too much of a distraction.
Bored with domesticity, Mary starts hopping in dizzying fashion from one investigation to the next and from continent to continent, having teamed up with Emily Fanshaw, cross-dressing wife of Neville St Clair (The Man with the Twisted Lip). In fact the book is peppered with characters from the Canon and beyond. You will meet Raffles and Bunny, and even Hercule Poirot’s father and Jane Marple’s mother, both shockingly inclined to villainous criminality, while the young Maigret has a tiny cameo as a raw-boned baker’s boy.
The Sign of Fear, originally published by MX publishing in 2010 and available on Amazon, is the first in a series of books by Molly Carr, distinguished member of the John Watson Society. It’s a great romp. I’ll certainly be looking out for Mary’s further adventures.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
Buy The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories XX at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=MX+book+of+new+sherlock+holmes+stories+XX&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
August 27, 2020
Sherlock and the Lion’s Mane
As if one plague at the present time wasn’t enough to be dealing with, we who live on the east coast of Ireland have now been afflicted by a new menace in the undulating shape of the Lion’s Mane jellyfish. This vicious creature sports long reddish gold tentacles that can inflict powerful stings, and we have been warned not to go into the sea.
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Recently on the beach in Skerries, north of Dublin, I was called over by my grandson Jacob, to be informed with great excitement, ‘There’s a jellyfish in the water!’ I peered at what I thought at first was a mass of weed. But then a rolling wave turned the thing over and I saw the sinister globe of its back. It was big, though thankfully nothing like the two metres that have been reported elsewhere. We stood watching it, fascinated, for a while and warned a young woman paddling straight towards it, carrying her baby, to get out of the water immediately, which she did.
Of course, aficionados of the Sherlock Holmes’ canon will already be acquainted with the Lion’s Mane jellyfish as the villain of the piece in a late story from The Casebook. The tale is unusual in that it is related not by Dr Watson but by the detective himself now in retirement in Sussex, breeding his bees.
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Walking by the sea with a friend one day, Holmes encounters a young man in in his death throes, his body covered in angry weals, as if he had been savagely beaten by a cat o’ nine tails. Before he dies, the man manages to gasp, ‘The Lion’s Mane,’ which means nothing to his listeners. Suspicion instead lights on a rival in love until this man too almost succumbs to the deadly poison of the jellyfish.
I have to say, it takes Sherlock a while to figure it all out but once he does, he hastens to the beach, accompanied by PC Plod who has been on the point of arresting the wrong man, to reveal the culprit in vividly disgusting language:
“‘Cyanea!’ I cried. ‘Cyanea!’ (Sherlock of course knows the Latin name). ‘Behold the Lion’s Mane.’ The strange object at which I pointed did indeed look like a tangled mass torn from the mane of a lion. It lay upon a rocky shelf some three feet under the water, a curious waving, vibrating, hairy creature with streaks of silver among its yellow tresses. It pulsated with a slow heavy dilation and contraction.”
The fact that the stings in reality are rarely fatal must not detract from a rattling good yarn, but may console those of us thinking of taking a dip.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
Buy The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories XX at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=MX+book+of+new+sherlock+holmes+stories+XX&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
August 12, 2020
Sherlock and Wodehouse
Almost from the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, the character of the detective caught the public imagination so much that parodies and pastiches abounded. Many were written by journalists or students for magazines, and in some cases their authorship has not been recorded. Conversely, some were by people who went on to become famous, such as JM Barrie and the youthful PG Wodehouse.
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Conan Doyle must not have minded these gentle parodies for both these gentlemen became his friends. They all played cricket together. Wodehouse indeed said towards the end of his long life ‘Conan Doyle was my hero… I was a Doyle man and I still am.’ There are said to be hundreds of references to Sherlock Holmes in Wodehouse’s work. Moreover, Wooster and Jeeves might well be seen as a variation on the theme, while Wodehouse’s somewhat effete character Psmith, with his ‘Sherlock Holmes system’ actually voices the expression, ‘Elementary my dear Watson’, often erroneously attributed to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock.
The humour of these pieces – hardly subtle, let it be said – often resides in the detective’s preposterous deductions based on the most unlikely of evidence:
‘The visit of this Frenchman – who, as you can see in an instant if you look at his left shoulder-blade, has not only deserted his wife and large family, but is at this very moment carrying on a clandestine correspondence with an American widow, who lives in Kalamazoo, Mich.’… [The Adventure of the Missing Bee, from Vanity Fair December 1904]
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Wodehouse – Plum to his friends [right, aged 22 in 1903] – wrote other Sherlockian parodies, some concerning the detective Burdock Rose, residing in Grocer Square (geddit?) with his sidekick Dr Wotsing, whose mastery of deductive techniques begins to overshadow those of the great man, to the latter’s considerable annoyance. These include The Strange Disappearance of Mr Buxton-Smythe and The Adventure of the Split Infinitive, both published in ‘Punch’ and readily available to read on line via The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia and elsewhere.
When in 1903 Conan Doyle, succumbing to the demands of his readers, resurrected Sherlock Holmes from the waters of the Reichenbach Falls, parodists went into overdrive, foremost among them, Plum. He composed lyrics to be sung to the theme of Archie from The Toreador, if that particular ditty springs readily to anyone’s mind:
Oh, Sherlock Holmes lay hidden more than half a dozen years
He left his loving London in a whirl of doubts and fears
For we thought a wicked party
Of the name of Moriarty
Had dispatched him (in a manner fit to freeze one)
They grappled on a cliff-top, on a ledge six inches wide;
We deemed his chances flimsy when he vanished o’er the side.
But the very latest news is
That he merely got some bruises.
If there’s a man who’s hard to kill, why he’s one.
Oh, Sherlock, Sherlock he’s in town again,
That prince of perspicacity, that monument of brain.
It seems he wasn’t hurt at all
By tumbling down the waterfall…
Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Parodies and pastiches of the Canon continue to the present day. David Marcum in particular should be singled out for his work in assembling great collections of New Sherlock Holmes Stories (parodies NOT included), from MX publishing. I was honoured to be featured in Part XX, with my story The Case of the Short-Sighted Clown. More volumes will appear later this year. It doesn’t seem likely that the well will dry up any time soon.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
Buy The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories XX at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=MX+book+of+new+sherlock+holmes+stories+XX&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
