The Confabulannotated Sherlock Holmes, Chapter 2.9
Featuring Star Wars Day, shadow-stretching and the discouragement of stopwatches
NOTE: If you have received this via email, you may find it easier to read the confabulannotations online by clicking on the title above.
Previously on my confabulannotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Some details were provided on the death of Sir Charles Baskerville
And now, the story continues…
“The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley1 of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May2 Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage3. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At twelve o’clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open, became alarmed4, and, lighting a lantern5, went in search of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles’s footmarks were easily traced6 down the alley. Halfway down this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor7. There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some little time8 here. He then proceeded down the alley, and it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered. One fact which has not been explained is the statement of Barrymore that his master’s footprints altered their character9 from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking upon his toes10.
A ‘yew’ alley was an eighteenth century bowling alley designed especially for ‘youngsters, elders and women’, who were considered at the time to be of a demeanour ill-suited to rolling heavy balls at triangular arrays of standing pins. However, when Lady Amelia Higginbottom of Thornbridge bowled a perfect game in 1821, women were further excluded even from yew alleys, in favour of wigmakers (or, in some more hirsute counties, waxsmiths).
Sir Charles, it is assumed, was an early adopter of the concept of ‘Star Wars Day’.
Unprepared luggage was believed to be easily startled and prone to bursting open when the magnitude of their journey was revealed. It was Rudyard Kipling who first championed the cause of ensuring that one’s luggage was always prepared for any journey further than a hansom-dash (approximately thirteen furlongs).
More modern security protocol is to alarm your hall doors rather than your butlers.
It is, of course, much harder to smoke a lantern than a cigar, but this is precisely the kind of challenge for which a nineteenth century gentleman employed a manservant.
The children responsible for tracing the footmarks were, rightly, taken from their parents and punished by being forced to polish silverware in local dining halls and academies of cutlery arts.
In early drafts of this novel, Holmes and Watson perform a ‘Who’s On First?’ style routine here, in which much comic mileage is gained from confusion about whether the number of gates is one or more (moor).
While stopwatches were commonplace in France at the time, in England they were dismissed as ‘precision-peddling hogwash’. Indeed, it was not until 1981 that a record for the 100m dash was measured in terms other than ‘some little time’.
This is the only known example of character development in any of Conan Doyle’s works.
A particularly frightful prospect in this era, when walking on tiptoes was widely believed to stretch one’s shadow, resulting in poorly fitted headwear and undergarments, either of which might startle one’s unprepared luggage.
That's the funniest one yet, I reckon...love this idea :)!