So, dear listener, we escape occult detectives only to find that we haven’t, not quite. We thought we’d have a look at the Sherlock Holmes themed issue of Mystery Weekly, share a 1904 parody by P G Wodehouse and mention more Conan Doyle trivia than you could possibly want, but in the process we found that one of the Mystery Weekly Holmes stories is itself an occult detective tale. There is a joyous doom upon us, we fear (see also our earlier article on pastiches – shades of sherlock holmes ).
Yes, we’re entering the world of strange connections once more, starting (obviously) with cricket. Regulars will know that we often refer to the Flaxman Low supernatural investigator stories, written by the remarkable Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard and his mother. Hesketh-Prichard, like many of his contemporaries, was a devil for the thwack of willow on leather. He also liked cricket, and knew Arthur Conan Doyle.
A great adventurer in the classic mode, he travelled the world recording or shooting things, sometimes both. A rarely mentioned fact is that he had a sub-species of South American grass named after him, poa alopecurus prichardii, though there is no record of whether or not he shot it afterwards. Despite the fact that some say the character Lord John Roxton (The Lost World) was modelled on another of Doyle’s associates, Roger Casement, we see a fair chance that Hex was in fact the original model for Roxton.
It was Doyle who recommended Hex to play for Hampshire, which he did with some success. Doyle was also a cricket lover, and played cricket at one point for J M Barrie’s team, the Allah-akbarries. The name seems to be a deliberate mix of the expression Allahu Akbar (God is Great) and Barrie’s surname. Other players included included Rudyard Kipling, A E W Mason, H G Wells, G K Chesterton, Jerome K Jerome, A A Milne – and P G Wodehouse.
An aside: We should probably do a cricketing ghost stories/horror post one day, but that’s for another time. H Russell Wakefield has a rather neat one, Not Quite Cricket, in The Clock Strikes Twelve.
P G Wodehouse, though much younger than Arthur Conan Doyle, was a lifelong enthusiast of the man and his work. In his twenties he wrote a number of Sherlock Holmes parodies including The Strange Disappearance of Mr. Buxton-Smythe and The Adventure of the Split Infinitive starring Burdock Rose and Dr. Wotsing (he also wrote The Adventure of the Missing Bee, and we’ll come back to that later in this article).
Which warps us on to Holmes, and Mystery Weekly. This is a monthly e-magazine (just to fool you, though there is a weekly newsletter), widely available, and edited by C F Carter and K Carter. It presents:
“Crime and mystery short stories by some of the world’s best established and emerging mystery writers. The original stories we select for each issue run the gamut from cozy to hardboiled fiction”.
Sot it’s not occult, though it does include period tales. We don’t read much of this sort of thing nowadays – it’s a time problem, not a taste problem – but we were intrigued when we found out that they’d done a themed issue which focussed on the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. So we had to have a look.
As greydogtales is not a review site as such, we decided to look only at the Holmesian elements of the fiction, and were pleasantly surprised. We’ll leave you to judge on their merits, as we usually do, but give a hint or two as to content. The themed issue contains three Holmes pastiches:
- The Adventure of the Missing Princess by Michael Mallory
- The Case of the Masticated Hand by Jaap Boekestein and Roelof Goodriaan
- The Mystery of the Bee’s Egg by Eric Cline
The first tale is an interesting crossover with the life of Joseph Merrick, sometimes rather sadly called The Elephant Man because of his congenital medical condition, and the surgeon Frederick Treves, both of whom appear in the story. Crossing over with other historical events, it’s quite nicely constructed.
The third tale, The Mystery of the Bee’s Egg, is engineering-themed, set in Scotland, and seems to be a blend of historical iron-working truths and fiction – we’re not familiar enough with the subject and location to commit ourselves. It has classic, canonical aspects, certainly, but we can’t give away much without spoiling it.
The second tale, The Masticated Hand, however, falls into that twilight realm which we ourselves explore occasionally – the pastiche which includes supernatural or mythic elements whilst not quite challenging Holmes to face the possibility of occult entities directly. It would have been an interesting entry for the forthcoming Occult Detective Quarterly.
If you add together the library of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a mysterious veiled woman, Sumerian mythology and Holmes chasing a disreputable and possibly fraudulent ‘scientist’, then you have the bare facts of the case. Watson experiences one or two things he doesn’t understand, and Holmes does his thing. Worth a look for all fans of this type of crossover.
The rest of the issue includes a couple of Holmes articles, and a number of twenties and contemporary mystery/detective stories for your perusal. So it’s not a bad buy at all. Nice cover by Penny Crichton-Seager as well.
The Sherlock Holmes themed issue is out in October. You can find other Mystery Weekly issues on Amazon, and those and other free stories via their website here:
mystery weeklyMeanwhile, back to the old days, the original Conan Doyle, and bees! In The Second Stain, Doyle had Watson write:
“So long as he (Holmes) was in actual professional practice the records of his successes were of some practical value to him; but since he has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs, notoriety has become hateful to him.”
The Strand Magazine Dec 1904
Curiously, in the same month, P G Wodehouse appears to have written his Holmes parody The Adventure of the Missing Bee, published in Vanity Fair, December 1904. Assuming that this is genuine, it implies either that Wodehouse wrote his tale very quickly, or that Doyle had already shared his apiarist plans with Wodehouse. Have a read:
The Adventure of the Missing Bee.
(Sherlock Holmes is to retire from public life after Christmas, and take to bee-farming in the country.)
“It is a little hard, my dear Watson,” said Holmes, stretching his long form on the sofa, and injecting another half-pint of morphia with the little jewelled syringe which the Prince of Piedmont had insisted on presenting to him as a reward for discovering who had stolen his nice new rattle; “it is just a little hard that an exhausted, overworked private detective, coming down to the country in search of peace and quiet, should be confronted in the first week by a problem so weird, so sinister, that for the moment it seems incapable of solution.”
“You refer——?” I said.
“To the singular adventure of the missing bee, as anybody but an ex-army surgeon equipped with a brain of dough would have known without my telling him.”
I readily forgave him his irritability, for the loss of his bee had had a terrible effect on his nerves. It was a black business. Immediately after arriving at our cottage, Holmes had purchased from the Army and Navy Stores a fine bee. It was docile, busy, and intelligent, and soon made itself quite a pet with us. Our consternation may, therefore, be imagined when, on going to take it out for its morning run, we found the hive empty. The bee had disappeared, collar and all. A glance at its bed showed that it had not been slept in that night. On the floor of the hive was a portion of the insect’s steel chain, snapped. Everything pointed to sinister violence.
Holmes’ first move had been to send me into the house while he examined the ground near the hive for footsteps. His search produced no result. Except for the small, neat tracks of the bee, the ground bore no marks. The mystery seemed one of those which are destined to remain unsolved through eternity.
But Holmes was ever a man of action.
“Watson,” he said to me, about a week after the incident, “the plot thickens. What does the fact that a Frenchman has taken rooms at Farmer Scroggins’ suggest to you?”
“That Farmer Scroggins is anxious to learn French,” I hazarded.
“Idiot!” said Holmes, scornfully. “You’ve got a mind like a railway bun. No. If you wish to know the true significance of that Frenchman’s visit, I will tell you. But, in the first place, can you name any eminent Frenchman who is interested in bees?”
I could answer that.
“Maeterlinck,” I replied. “Only he is a Belgian.”
“It is immaterial. You are quite right. M. Maeterlinck was the man I had in my mind. With him bees are a craze. Watson, that Frenchman is M. Maeterlinck’s agent. He and Farmer Scroggins have conspired, and stolen that bee.”
“Holmes!” I said, horrified. “But M. Maeterlinck is a man of the most rigid honesty.”
“Nobody, my dear Watson, is entirely honest. He may seem so, because he never meets with just that temptation which would break through his honesty. I once knew a bishop who could not keep himself from stealing pins. Every man has his price. M. Maeterlinck’s is bees. Pass the morphia.”
“But Farmer Scroggins!” I protested. “A bluff, hearty English yeoman of the best type.”
“May not his heartiness be all bluff?” said Holmes, keenly. “You may take it from me that there is literally nothing that that man would stick at. Murder? I have seen him kill a wasp with a spade, and he looked as if he enjoyed it. Arson? He has a fire in his kitchen every day. You have only to look at the knuckle of the third finger of his left hand to see him as he is. If he is an honest man, why does he wear a made-up tie on Sundays? If he is an upright man, why does he stoop when he digs potatoes? No, Watson, nothing that you can say can convince me that Farmer Scroggins has not a black heart. The visit of this Frenchman—who, as you can see in an instant if you look at his left shoulder-blade, has not only deserted his wife and a large family, but is at this very moment carrying on a clandestine correspondence with an American widow, who lives in Kalamazoo, Mich.—convinces me that I have arrived at the true solution of the mystery. I have written a short note to Farmer Scroggins, requesting him to send back the bee and explaining that all is discovered. And that,” he broke off, “is, if I mistake not, his knock. Come in.”
The door opened. There was a scuffling in the passage, and in bounded our missing bee, frisking with delight. Our housekeeper followed, bearing a letter. Holmes opened it.
“Listen to this, Watson,” said Holmes, in a voice of triumph.
“ ‘Mr. Giles Scroggins sends his compliments to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, an’ it’s quite true, I did steal that there bee, though how Mr. Holmes found out, Mr. G. Scroggins bean’t able to understand. I am flying the country as requested. Please find enclosed 1 (one) bee, and kindly acknowledge receipt to
‘Your obedient servant,
‘G. Scroggins.
‘Enclosure.’ ”
“Holmes,” I whispered, awe-struck, “you are one of the most remarkable men I ever met.”
He smiled, lit his hookah, seized his violin, and to the slow music of that instrument turned once more to the examination of his test tubes.
* * * * *
Three days later we saw the following announcement in the papers: “M. Maeterlinck, the distinguished Belgian essayist, wishes it to be known that he has given up collecting bees, and has taken instead to picture postcards.”
P. G. Wodehouse.
We found a few copies of this on-line, though not the original Vanity Fair article. The above was culled from the very useful Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia site.
arthur conan doyle encyclopedia
We also have it on good authority that in “A Study in Sussex,” Sherlock Holmes in Orbit (1995), by Leah A. Zeldes, Sherlock Holmes links his mind to a swarm of bees, but we’d have to read it to tell you more.
Our Deep Trivia Section: Maeterlinck was a real person. Born Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (1862-1949), he was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who had a large following as a ‘thinker’, with books such as Twelve Songs and The Treasure of the Humble (1896). In 1901 he published The Life of the Bee, and in 1903 he received the Triennial Prize for Dramatic Literature from the Belgian government.
Despite his standing, over twenty years later his book The Life of Termites was accused of being rank plagiarism, the content drawn from The Soul of the (White) Ant, researched and written by the Afrikaner poet and scientist Eugene Marais.
Dont’ forget, Occult Detective Quarterly will be out towards the end of the year, and dear John Linwood Grant’s Holmesian A Study in Grey, concerning dastardly foreign espionage and a touch of the psychics, is now available. And what do the nice people say about it?
“This novel conjures up a great Edwardian London atmosphere. The dialogue, the settings, the little details, all well crafted to put the reader in the period persuasively. The story has wonderful twists and turns. The characters are human, with foibles, strengths, and odd gifts.” Amazon US
“A feature of the novella that I found particularly appealing was the seamless blending of the Holmes stories’ concrete, real-world setting with the contemporary but supernatural-drenched Carnacki tales of William Hope Hodgson – not to mention Conan Doyle’s post-Holmes fascination with spiritualism. The narrative steers a pleasingly skilled course between the two, with the nature of the central mystery kept uncertain until the climax of the story.” Amazon UK
Back to the grindstone. See you in two or three days, and don’t forget to subscribe (top left) if you want to be warned what we’re doing. It’s FREE!