Interesting that nowhere in staff report or comments did I notice a reference to the very real Sigmund Freud’s use of opiates. Was it just one of the pasttimes of the era, or was it to blunt the pain of jaw cancer? Dunno!
It’s been a long time since I read the canon, so I can’t say for sure either, but I think you’re right that it was first in the shoulder and then in the knee.
But the injury was sustained in Afghanistan, not the Boer War. The latter didn’t start until 1899, well after Doyle wrote the first Holmes book.
Watson’s mysterious traveling wound has always been a subject for speculation amongst players of the Game, some even daring to suggest that the good Dr. himself might have invented a leg wound to get out of, you should pardon the expression, “leg work”. I suspect that they were weaned on Nigel Bruce! More charitable hypotheses suggest that Watson was wounded twice in the Afghan war, and the leg wound, although initially less serious, would occasionally give a twinge in the notorious London weather.
I happen to have my copy of “A Study in Scarlet” at hand; here’s the quote from page 1:
“…I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery”.
Here’s a link to Gray’s Anatomy (which is almost contemporary) showing the part in question: http://www.bartleby.com/107/illus520.html
Another mooted question is whether "Jezail" is a kind of bullet, or a description of the person who fired it--I'll look that up later, it's nap time.
--Alan Qrcell, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, glad to have you here.
You ask: << Harry Flashman? Would Cecil care to defend this statement? >>
Please note that Cecil doesn’t write the Staff Reports, he only writes the weekly column that he’s paid for. Us unpaid Staff do the Staff Reports. And of course Flashman is real. He appears in TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS, and we have the Flashman papers and all. Why, he’s as real as … as … Sherlock himself. (I originally had listed Flashman lalong with Tarzan as fictional, but a friend of mine suggested it would be more fun to list Flashman as real. He called it a “joke”, a wee bit late for April 1, but not by much. I agreed.)
A “jezail” is a type of weapon (similar to a single-shot rifle, I believe) that was used by the Afgani army at that time.
I tried posting on the other thread, but I hadn’t noticed that Dex had locked it, so the Board ate my reply.
I just wanted to note that I have long thought (and Dex’s column makes it clear) that Holmes fans are the original “Trekkies” – obsessed by the subject material, lining up and clamoring for the newest releases, memorizing trivia and minutiae, writing their own stories about the characters, and trying to rationalize the errors and inconsistencies.
As the owner and reader (and re-reader) of all the books in Dex’s post (and many more), I’m proud to be among them.
I have seen it defined as both “an Afghani musket” and “an Afghani rifle”. No reason it can’t be both – there is no special reason that the rifled musket had to change its English name to “rifle”.
“Eureka!”, he cried.
(Hope this works).
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/CollectionsDetail.cfm?ID=AAA2546
caliber .75in? Ouch–
–Alan Q
While some of the points below touch on a statement in the column, they shouldn’t be taken as a quibble - I’m sure Dex is aware of the niceties involved. It is however necessary to make the distinction ahead of the topical observation I want to make.
The column links to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at “221b Baker Street”. While any mail addressed to 221b will be delivered to them and they have a blue plaque on the wall outside saying it’s where Holmes lived, this is a recent invention. Most of the terrace is as it was during the period Doyle was writing, but several houses were subsequently replaced by the headquarters of the Abbey National building society. Since this included the original 221, for many decades this was regarded as the site and they dealt with the letters addressed to 221b. They hosted a reconstruction of Holmes study during the 1951 Festival of Britain and there’s also an old plaque outside it marking the building as the location of 221b. Only once the museum opened up the street did anybody start pretending that it’s 221b or add the unofficial blue plaque. In fact, numbers 231, 233, 235 and 237 still lie between its position and the Abbey National building.
The topical point ? Having moved to a big new HQ about half a mile away on Euston Road, the Abbey National have vacated their building. The place is thus currently up for sale. If you’ve ever fantasied about owning 221b Baker Street, this might be your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Interesting fantasy, bonzer.
For the record, we did say in the staff report that there was no 221 when Doyle was writing. The Holmes museum, as you say and as the staff report implies, got the address “221B” much later – like in the last decade or so.
So the Abbey National no longer employs someone expressly to answer Sherlock Holmes’ mail? (They did, for many years.)
Not only did Holmes not live in #221, he didn’t even live on Baker Street!
Maybe.
In Holmes’ day, there was a Baker Street, but with typical London perversity it suddenly became York Pl. and then resumed its way as Upper Baker Street. (map, p. 74, A Sherlock Holmes Compendium, edited by Peter Haining.) Not until 1930 did London get rid of the superfluous names and call the whole stretch Baker Street. (Gavin Brand, My Dear Holmes.)
The building that today is 221 was on Upper Baker Street, but nobody believes that was Holmes’ home.
The problem of identifying a real building with where Holmes lived, using the clues given in the stories, goes back a long way. It appears to have started in the 1920s by Dr. Gray Chandler Briggs. Walking on Baker Street he observed a building labeled “Camden House*.” This should be enough to rock any Sherlockian to the core, but for those who don’t remember, Camden House is the building explicitly stated to be opposite Holmes’ apartment in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” the return story. This is the building in which Holmes and Watson watch Mrs. Hudson turn the wax statue of Holmes to attract Col. Sebastian Moran’s bullet. The building across the street was #111. Q. E. D.
(Doyle, who claimed he had never been on Baker Street in his life, was “amazed” by this coincidence. Vincent Starrett, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.)
#111 remains the sentimental favorite, even though it would have been on York Pl. back in the 19th century. However, since Sherlockians (Americans) and Holmesians (Brits) make their reputations by refuting everybody else’s theory and putting forward a new one of their own, there are many other candidates.
H. W. Bell and T. S. Blakeney look at the grouping at 19/35-45/67 because those really were in the Baker Street in the old days. James Hyslop votes for #19; Maurice Campbell for #27. Gavin Brand likes #61.
Ernest Short swears that it is #109 and James Edward Holroyd, from whose Baker Street By-Ways these theories are taken, agrees with him.
But Holroyd is a fair man, and in his anthology Seventeen Steps to Baker Street reprints an essay by Bernard Davies that goes into the subject in such minutiae that I’m not ever going to reread it. But his conclusion is definitely, absolutely #31.
And that’s only up to the 1960’s, where my collection of classic Sherlockiana ends.
The Sherlock Holmes Museum is a fun place to visit. It was a required stop when I went to London a few years ago.
*Actually, it was Camden House School back in the 19th century, which would cause problems with some of the statements given in the story.
What did Doyle know? You should contact Dr. Watson.
I just read the OP, very good response Dex!
Dex neglected to mention another contemporary encountered by Holmes, as chronicled by Fred Saberhagen in the novels known as the “Holmes-Dracula Files.”
;)=
Anyway, Dex, that was a very nicely written column. I enjoyed it very much. Thanks.
In the Jeremy Brett TV series, Holmes kicked the habit in “The Devil’s Foot” by symbolically burying his syringe in the sand. According to the IMDB, Brett asked Arthur Conan Doyle’s daughter permission to have this scene added.
There is, by the way, one major mistake in the article. It says that “The 7% Solution” is fictional. That’s not true. It’s a real novel. I’ve read it.
“And of course Flashman is real”
In the Flashman Chronicles, Fraser once or twice refers to Sir Richard F. Burton (a contemporary of F’s who was by no means fictional, but who’s real-life exploits almost strain belief). I’d love to see Burton and Holmes together, but I can’t make it happen; “Ruffian Dick” died before Holmes went into practise, whereas Flashman lived to a ripe, ribald, cowardly and wealthy old age.
See George MacDonald Fraser’s “Flashman and the Tiger” for Flashy’s take on Col. Moran and “The Adventure of the Empty House”.
–Alan Q
Excellent post, Exapno.
While I devoured much of the Holmes canon as a teenager, my main interest here is in the history of London. While I hadn’t realised this, such a pattern of streetnaming isn’t terribly perverse, though there are puzzles. The shift from Baker Street to York Place is surely mere history. William Baker was a speculator, who started building the street northwards in 1755. One possible explanation for the sudden shift in names doesn’t apply, since it’s not an estate boundary; the whole area falls within the Portman Estate and Baker was leasing from them. My guess would be that York Place was built in the early part of the 19th century, in roughly the same period as Nash’s York Terrace and Gate, a couple of blocks away. The Duke of York was just a fashionable figure to flatter in the period.
The first puzzle is the reversion to Upper Baker Street. No idea, though it may be relevant that there was a better known York Place in Westminster. The second is why anybody bothered rationalising it all in 1930.
Calling the tube station plain Baker Street might be seen as a puzzle, but I don’t think it is, even though it was only on Upper Baker Street. They couldn’t call it York Place, because of the other street, and they couldn’t call it Marylebone Road, since all the other stations lay along it. It may even be that the tube station became the rational for the 1930 renaming.
While the resolution ain’t great, you can just see York Place via www.old-maps.co.uk. Use “528026, 182006” for Location and select the Middlesex option from the choices. This is dated 1874-82 and looks consistent with (but isn’t) the 1870 Ordnance Survey map of the area.
But presumably after Edward Bulwer Lytton had vacated the premises. Or were they sharing a stair ?
I can’t say for sure, but the Museum is using 221b as their postal address, which suggests that the post office is delivering all mail so addressed to them.
Though not quite mine. I would however quite fancy living round the corner, in one of the houses in the Nash terraces overlooking the park. Alas, barely as realistic as snapping up a 1920’s officeblock on the fringes of central London.