Chatterbox: Literature Edition

I suppose part of my reaction lies in how large she looms in Holmes mythos, or at least in the mythos that exists in the minds of Holmes fans through the ages, when she doesn't really do much.

And Holmes's behavior, if he's not giving her a chance to get away, is weird. I mean, Holmes can't run in and grab the letters right when he discovers where they are because a coachman is watching him, but his plan after that is to wait until the following day, take a coach to her home in broad daylight, and bluntly demand the letters from her; considering the situation, this just seems nuts.

I think her place in the mythos has a lot to do with people wanting Holmes to have a female love interest and she's the character that's easiest to fit into that role.

Regarding Holmes' behavior, I kind of "like" it in the sense that the story shows a more "realistic" or at least gritty aspect of the private detective profession.

Because at the end of the day, it's basically a story about Holmes doing a little breaking and entering to get his hands on some sexually explicit photos that embarrass his client. Even though the story itself is coy about the nature of the photos.

Regarding your quibble, at least from Wikipedia, I think the idea is that Holmes needed to deduce where the photos were hidden, and used stealth for that. But once he found that part out, there wasn't a need for stealth. It probably helps that his client in this case is basically a head of state.

There are lots of stories from the Victorian and Edwardian (up through the 1950's, even) eras that involve men needing to get letters or photos back from a woman they had previously been in a relationship with (sometimes it's a woman who needs to get the material back from a former lover, or from a blackmailer who got hold of it). Armed with such photos and/or letters, the woman in question could bring a "breach of promise" action against the man, essentially suing him because he led her to believe he loved her and would marry her, then dumped her. The letters/photos didn't need to be especially explicit (though of course, they might be), they only needed to indicate a close relationship between the man and the woman. In such stories, it's apparently considered acceptable for the man (or his family, or whatever) to hire someone to steal the material back. The old notion apparently used to be that letters you wrote were actually your property, and that the proper thing to do if a relationship ended was to give any letters your paramour wrote to you back to them (or to destroy them); so at least by the mores of the time, there's some slight justification for arranging to have what was essentially your own property taken back.

This plot could qualify as a trope if it was still in use. As I said, you see it crop up a lot until about the '50's.

Edited by Robbery on Aug 19th 2022 at 11:20:47 AM

Thank you for the info. That's very interesting.

I guess maybe I have a dirty mind in terms of assuming that the photos were sexual. Although in my "defense", I think it's reasonably clear that Irene Adler was the King's mistress, given that she's described as an "adventuress" (granted, by the King who is unreliable) and she lives in St. John's Wood, which was stereotypically where the mistresses of prominent men lived.

I realize that these details don't rule out that the incriminating materials rule out the scandalous photos relate to a breach of promise and aren't explicit.

I'm not sure whether explicit photos or a promise of marriage would be more likely to sabotage the King of Bohemia's arranged marriage.

On one hand, I realize that sexual scandal typically is not an impediment to dynastic marriages (Citation- Pretty much every nobleman). However, wouldn't generally think a commoner would get very far in claiming that a head of state promised to marry them. I do know George IV had a scandal about that as well as one about marrying a Catholic.

However, I feel like if the issue was that Irene Adler could claim that the King married her or promised to marry her, then his ministers would just pay her a large bribe.

I should think that in the 1890's it would have been difficult to get a sexually explicit photo of anyone without their knowledge. I believe for cameras at the time the subject had to hold still for about 20 seconds or else the image would come out blurred. I grant you, it's hard for us to imagine what kind of photo the Duke or his fiancee would have a problem with if it wasn't sexually explicit in some way, but the 1890's was a different era. It was common knowledge that powerful men had mistresses, but it wasn't something that most people had specific knowledge of; I expect having a woman come forward, identify herself as the former mistress of the heir to the throne of Bohemia, and have evidence to prove it would have been considered embarrassing to the Duke and his prospective fiancee.

Here's a fun bit of trivia. You may have heard that you can sing all of Emily Dickinson's poems to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." This is actually true, for the most part anyway, but there's a reason for it. Dickinson wrote most of her poetry in ballad stanza. In poetry, a ballad stanza is a type of a four-line stanza, known as a quatrain, most often found in folk ballads (British and American folk ballads, anyway). The ballad stanza consists of a total of four lines, with the first and third lines written in the iambic tetrameter and the second and fourth lines written in the iambic trimeter with a rhyme scheme of ABCB (sometimes assonance is substituted for rhyme). "The Yellow Rose of Texas," being a traditional ballad, is also written in ballad stanza, and so naturally you can sing pretty much anything written in ballad stanza to the same tune. You can also sing "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (also written in ballad stanza) to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

That is amazing.

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.

How often do you guys read picture books? They are often seen as "childish" or "for kids" - Animation Age Ghetto even descibes an "Illustration Age Ghetto" in the Literature section. But I still enjoy reading them whenever I can, whether in a library or a bookstore.

Well, it doesn't really help that the topics of those books are often rather childish to start with. But I do enjoy good literature with illustrations, yes, and I think they should be used more often.

If you are into Dutch comics, the Bommel comics are a very interesting mix of novel and comic book that you might enjoy.

Just started reading Fahrenheit 451.

I'm not even halfway through the first chapter, but holy shit I'm already mindblown by how amazing this book is. I really regret that I never read this book earlier.

"We made everyone build completely fireproof houses just so we can burn your books right then and there! Clearly we have money to burn as well as books!"

Just finished reading Fahrenheit 451. It's a short book, but my ADHD got the better of me and ended up taking much longer. XP

What an absolutely phenomenal book! Just like with The Divine Comedy, though, the beginning was the most powerful and it gets weaker by the end.

I had known that Arthur Conan-Doyle had swiped from Edgar Allan Poe; it's pretty well known that Poe's detective August Dupin influenced the creation of Sherlock Holmes, and that Poe's "Murders at the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" influenced two specific Holmes stories (Conan-Doyle swiped the "monkey with a razor" from "Rue Morgue," and the letter hidden in plain sight from "The Purloined Letter"). I recently read a 1898 story by Conan-Doyle called "The New Catacomb" that shamelessly rips off Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." I must say, I'm a mite disappointed in Conan-Doyle. By 1898 he was an experienced, successful writer of popular fiction; he was more than capable of coming up with his own stuff.

you know what they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery!

Has anyone else read any work by Nahoko Uehashi? The Beast Player and Guardian of the Spirit, Guardian of the Darkness, and Guardian of the God of the Moribito series have been among the best fantasy stories I've ever seen.