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.
Bee wrote: ↑Wed 14 Dec, 2022, 7:08 pm
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.
