Sherlock Holmes Short Stories Read Along!

[Bee]

Hey, friends, are we ever picking this back up or should I just start reading the next anthology on my own?

omg. i actually read the story and thought through a post and apparently never posted so i was waiting on someone else saying they were ready to read the next one because i'm a dumb

i'd like to if you're up for continuing, i can redo copper beeches by this weekend

Forgetting to post my replies is a very common occurrence tbh

[thiskurt]

Hey, friends, are we ever picking this back up or should I just start reading the next anthology on my own?

omg. i actually read the story and thought through a post and apparently never posted so i was waiting on someone else saying they were ready to read the next one because i'm a dumb

i'd like to if you're up for continuing, i can redo copper beeches by this weekend

Forgetting to post my replies is a very common occurrence tbh

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa.

Ok, let's do Copper Beeches this weekend?

[thiskurt]

I mean we shouldn't let the Year of Luigi in the Public Domain go to waste.

[InspectorCaracal]

Ok, let's do Copper Beeches this weekend?

Sounds good, you and me'll do it and we'll pretend B just posted hers

[Bee]

Ok, let's do Copper Beeches this weekend?

Sounds good, you and me'll do it and we'll pretend B just posted hers

I mean, I guess I could read it again and maybe this time say something?

[thiskurt]

Ok, let's do Copper Beeches this weekend?

Sounds good, you and me'll do it and we'll pretend B just posted hers

B did what? Who is this Sherlock Holmes you're talking about anyway? Is he some kind of realtor.

[Bee]

Yo

[thiskurt]

Another case that's basically "Why did I get hired for this weird job, Mr. Holmes," which I do love. People in Victorian London were just constantly being hired for a job based on their appearance as part of some ruse it seems. If you were ginger or wiling to have your hair cut, wear some arbitrary clothes or happened to live near a store you had more job opportunities than a web developer during the .com boom.

I imagine a modern revival of the stories written by Conan Doyle today would just be people writing Holmes about crypto opportunities all the time.

What do you know, I actually remember reading this one years ago?? At least, the parts of a woman having to cut her hair and wear a blue dress and stay by the window to impersonate somebody who had been sick.

Yes, I think that's the main thing of this story that I remember too, although I could not recall any of the other details, so it didn't affect the rest of the story as much. I kept wondering if the story was gonna turn out to be, *checks*, the Adventure of the Yellow Face, even though the plot is nothing like this one because for some reason I half-remember something about a weird figure in the window from that story, which I think it probably doesn't even have and this story is nothing alike.

"It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes célèbres and sensational trials in which I have figured, but rather to these incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province."

(...)

"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, (...) "in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing."

"Ooh, Watson, I do wish you didn't focus so much on the human element in these cases, but instead made it more about how much of a genius I am. That's really the only interesting thing about these cases."

It was not very long before my friend's prediction was fulfilled. A fortnight went by, during which I frequently found my thoughts turning in her direction, and wondering what strange side-alley of human experience this lonely woman had strayed into. The unusual salary, the curious conditions, the light duties, all pointed to something abnormal, though whether a fad or a plot, or whether the man were a philanthropist or a villain, it was quite beyond my powers to determine. As to Holmes, I observed that he sat frequently for half an hour on end, with knitted brows and an abstracted air, but he swept the matter away with a wave of his hand when I mentioned it. "Data! data! data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay." And yet he would always wind up by muttering that no sister of his should ever have accepted such a situation.

See Holmes may claim he thinks these cases are trivial an beneath him, but they clearly intrigue him more than he'd admit to after they're solved and he's obviously concerned about the 'young ladies from boarding schools.'

Also, as much as he might hope the writings of Watson are mostly instructional science, from all these people coming knocking at his door it seems the people of Victorian London understand that Holmes will help you out if you're in a weird bind even if it seems 'trivial' at first.

Then again he will drop you as soon as the case is over.

The telegram which we eventually received came late one night, just as I was thinking of turning in, and Holmes was settling down to one of those all-night chemical researches which he frequently indulged in, when I would leave him stooping over a retort and a test-tube at night, and find him in the same position when I came down to breakfast in the morning.

Man, I initially expected 'all-night chemical researches' to be a euphemism for morphine/cocaine use.

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"

No crime has ever been committed on an English homestead, and certainly not a murder.

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."

"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger. Still, it is clear that she is not personally threatened."

Holmes just explained decades of countryside murder fiction.

"'My dear young lady! my dear young lady!'—you cannot think how caressing and soothing his manner was—'and what has frightened you, my dear young lady?'

(...)

"'It is to keep people out who have no business there. Do you see?' He was still smiling in the most amiable manner.

(...)

"'Well, then, you know now. And if you ever put your foot over that threshold again—' here in an instant the smile hardened into a grin of rage, and he glared down at me with the face of a demon, 'I'll throw you to the mastiff.'

Mr. Rucastle's fake soothing and sudden turn to rage is genuinely creepy.

I did not see the whole bit about the dog biting Rucastle's neck and Watson "blowing his brains out" coming. I don't think of action scenes when I think of Sherlock Holmes, but there are more of them then I remembered.

[InspectorCaracal]

This story has a special place in my list of Holmes stories because it features one of the two Violets, who deserve much more attention than they get because everyone loves Irene Adler more, lol. I've read this one more than most, so there wasn't a whole lot for me to notice this time around that I hadn't already thought to death. I love Violet Hunter, tho, and how she basically takes charge of her whole situation and really just calls them in as back-up, and I enjoy the characterization bit of how Holmes feels morally obligated to help because Miss Hunter has no one else available, even though there isn't actually much of a mystery involved.

One of the things I find interesting about the story itself is how it's basically a classic gothic horror set-up, but virtually none of it is actually seen - it's all relayed through the sensible, pragmatic lens of Miss Hunter's descriptions. It's basically the opposite of the entirety of Northanger Abbey. Which has actually been interesting, revisiting the story again now that we've been watching the Sheldon Reynolds' Sherlock Holmes because I'd noticed there are quite a lot of gothic-esque episodes and I hadn't realized until just now, that's true of canon as well. Lots of the stories are basically gothic horror written as detective fiction - the Hound of the Baskervilles isn't nearly so out of place as I always thought.

(This story also has one of my favorite intro bits, where Holmes lectures Watson about making his stories too much like stories instead of lectures. I think he does this a few times in the series lol)

... the Adventure of the Yellow Face, even though the plot is nothing like this one because for some reason I half-remember something about a weird figure in the window from that story, which I think it probably doesn't even have and this story is nothing alike.

There is a weird figure in a window featuring heavily in that story, but yeah, it has nothing in common with this story other than "someone being seen from a window".

also:

I imagine a modern revival of the stories written by Conan Doyle today would just be people writing Holmes about crypto opportunities all the time.

omfg a crypto fraud scheme done as a good Holmes story would be amazing

[InspectorCaracal]

Tangentially: I enjoy how both of you latched onto the "the English countryside is a horrifying hotbed of crime" bit.