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| "High Cove Typical Cornish rocky cove, with small sandy beach" by Mike Hancock, 1995 via geograph.org.uk at Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 license |
Thus it was that in the early spring of that year we found ourselves together in a small cottage near Poldhu Bay, at the further extremity of the Cornish peninsula.
It was a singular spot [...] From the windows of our little whitewashed house, which stood high upon a grassy headland, we looked down upon the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay, that old death trap of sailing vessels, with its fringe of black cliffs and surge-swept reefs on which innumerable seamen have met their end. With a northerly breeze it lies placid and sheltered [...]
I realized afresh when I read this passage in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventure of the Devil's Foot, that one of the charms of the Sherlock Holmes tales is its perhaps semi-journalistic survey of Britishness. His stories are of their time, too, and feel at least to me very Victorian and very Edwardian. But I think that less time-specific aspects of England peep out, even if it is the description of an Atlantic-battered holiday getaway — Sherlock Holmes leaves London at the beginning of the story, so that he can recruit his health by the seaside — in western Cornwall.
Alongside a far from bashful self-advertisement of the short story — Watson claims that this adventure is a problem 'more intense, more engrossing, and infinitely more mysterious than any of those which had driven us from London' — Doyle also enumerates his set of characters with well-practiced celerity. For example, Mortimer Tregennis is introduced in this sketch: "his lodger strangely reticent, a sad-faced, introspective man, sitting with averted eyes, brooding apparently upon his own affairs."
Mortimer Tregennis and the vicar, Mr. Roundhay, are the ones who request Sherlock Holmes's professional assistance in this story. Tregennis's sister has died and his two brothers descended into madness, for no apparent reason, seated in the dining room after an evening game of cards. (What happened wasn't common knowledge. The housekeeper was the one who found the victims the next day, hours after the mysterious catastrophe had occurred.)
Watson, never one to dilute drama, writes that as he and Holmes — having accepted the request — were walking with the others to investigate the death scene, a carriage drives by to transport the maddened brothers to an institution. "As it drove by us I caught a glimpse through the closed window of a horribly contorted, grinning face glaring out at us. Those staring eyes and gnashing teeth flashed past us like a dreadful vision."
That morning, Sherlock Holmes sifts the evidence at the Tregennis house. He wants to know amongst other things what might be behind the tale that a face had peeked in through the window, the previous night, at the card-players. There are no footprints near the window. Also, the night was too dark and a card-player in the room could not have seen very much. Eventually, Holmes leaves the Tregennis home again for his cottage, without pointing fingers at any culprit. But in his mind, the links have formed in a strong chain of evidence.
Later, that afternoon, a neighbour of the Tregennises enters the scene, calling on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and wishing to keep informed about their investigation. He happens to be the Edwardian equivalent of a celebrity:
I don't know why this gruesome tale is the first one I think to post on Valentine's Day; but in a way I think the mystery, once resolved, doesn't make it an entirely undeserving candidate for this day. Loyalty and love, although mangled and lost under the violence of fictitious and sensational tragedy, are still at the emotional centre of the story.
***
"The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" is a later Holmes story, in The Last Bow, and was published in 1910.
The quotations are from the Project Gutenberg edition, here, and this is the Wikipedia article: here.
Alongside a far from bashful self-advertisement of the short story — Watson claims that this adventure is a problem 'more intense, more engrossing, and infinitely more mysterious than any of those which had driven us from London' — Doyle also enumerates his set of characters with well-practiced celerity. For example, Mortimer Tregennis is introduced in this sketch: "his lodger strangely reticent, a sad-faced, introspective man, sitting with averted eyes, brooding apparently upon his own affairs."
Mortimer Tregennis and the vicar, Mr. Roundhay, are the ones who request Sherlock Holmes's professional assistance in this story. Tregennis's sister has died and his two brothers descended into madness, for no apparent reason, seated in the dining room after an evening game of cards. (What happened wasn't common knowledge. The housekeeper was the one who found the victims the next day, hours after the mysterious catastrophe had occurred.)
Watson, never one to dilute drama, writes that as he and Holmes — having accepted the request — were walking with the others to investigate the death scene, a carriage drives by to transport the maddened brothers to an institution. "As it drove by us I caught a glimpse through the closed window of a horribly contorted, grinning face glaring out at us. Those staring eyes and gnashing teeth flashed past us like a dreadful vision."
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| "Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (1910), Illustration by Gilbert Holiday, in The Strand Magazine" via Wikimedia Commons |
That morning, Sherlock Holmes sifts the evidence at the Tregennis house. He wants to know amongst other things what might be behind the tale that a face had peeked in through the window, the previous night, at the card-players. There are no footprints near the window. Also, the night was too dark and a card-player in the room could not have seen very much. Eventually, Holmes leaves the Tregennis home again for his cottage, without pointing fingers at any culprit. But in his mind, the links have formed in a strong chain of evidence.
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| Ibid., here |
Later, that afternoon, a neighbour of the Tregennises enters the scene, calling on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and wishing to keep informed about their investigation. He happens to be the Edwardian equivalent of a celebrity:
The huge body, the craggy and deeply seamed face with the fierce eyes and hawk-like nose, the grizzled hair which nearly brushed our cottage ceiling, the beard--golden at the fringes and white near the lips, save for the nicotine stain from his perpetual cigar--all these were as well known in London as in Africa, and could only be associated with the tremendous personality of Dr. Leon Sterndale, the great lion-hunter and explorer.All of the dramatis personae are introduced to the story at that point; and Holmes speedily resolves the mystery. Retelling it would require many spoilers, which I won't mention here.
*
I don't know why this gruesome tale is the first one I think to post on Valentine's Day; but in a way I think the mystery, once resolved, doesn't make it an entirely undeserving candidate for this day. Loyalty and love, although mangled and lost under the violence of fictitious and sensational tragedy, are still at the emotional centre of the story.
***
"The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" is a later Holmes story, in The Last Bow, and was published in 1910.
The quotations are from the Project Gutenberg edition, here, and this is the Wikipedia article: here.
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