The Confabulannotated Sherlock Holmes, Chapter 2.12

Featuring Old El Paso edits, baby mobiles and sickly cousins

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Previously on my confabulannotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Mortimer prepared to offer more details

And now, the story continues…

BAD AI IMAGE OF: Holmes on the case

“The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter¹ Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist², there are no other men of education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the chance of his illness brought us together³, and a community of interests in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information from South Africa⁴, and many a charming evening we have spent together discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot⁵.

“Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles’s nervous system was strained to the breaking point⁶. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart⁠—so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night⁷. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family⁸, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him⁹, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated¹⁰ with excitement.

TO BE CONTINUED

1. An erroneous spelling of ‘laughter’ which signified that the merriment within this hall was founded on lowbrow comedic techniques such as slapstick, fart jokes and the erroneous spelling of words.

2. The secret identity of a ‘supernaturalist’.

3. ‘May the chance of an illness bring us together’ was a common way to end one’s correspondence, particularly when penning a letter to a sickly cousin who you fancied.

4. A ‘science Boer’, to use the parlance of the era.

5. Modern readers will obviously tend to read suggestive undertones into the idea of an anatomy comparison between ‘Bushmen’ and ‘Hottentots’, but it should be noted that this was, in fact, a perfectly innocent pastime which consisted of nothing more outrageous than a gentlemanly and British discussion of the two tribes’ average penis length.

6. Medical practitioners of the time believed that the human body’s nervous system consisted of a complicated set of gears, rivets, springs and crankshafts (women only), and that without regular checkups and the judicious use of supportive oils and controlled deformation, it could buckle under repeated strain.

7. Less moor time, more or less.

8. In lieu of baby mobiles containing figures of clouds or animals or astronomical bodies, parents in the late nineteenth century would instead dangle visual representations of their most grave fears (eg social disorder, poverty, bumping into a fog-concealed horse) over their infants, to better prepare them for their unhappy lives. Dreadful fates overhanging one’s family was therefore more commonplace than Holmes’ incredulity would have you believe.

9. In original versions of this story, Watson interrupts here to question whether the haunting is due to a ‘ghastly’ presence or a ‘ghostly’ presence. ‘Why not both?’ is Mortimer’s response, which was therefore removed in 2009 when the taco brand Old El Paso trademarked that question.

10. Much like Whitney Houston, one imagines.