-
-
Hi Sherlock and Andy,Originally posted by andy1867 View Post
Yes, it was a greyhound and judging from the 'contemporary American sketch of Tumblety, prior to his arrival in Britain' it wasn't very big! (This sketch is in 'Jack the Ripper. First American Serial Killer' by Stewart Evans and Paul
Gainey).
CarolComment
-
Forgive me if it's already been mentioned but if not I thought the person who started the thread might be interested in this if they haven't already seen it.
Conan Doyle, Dr Browne and a few others on a Ripper Walk April 1905.
http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/rps.collins.html
This might help as well but read the text in the link above first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalibanLast edited by Ozzy; 09-30-2012, 06:20 PM.These are not clues, Fred.
It is not yarn leading us to the dark heart of this place.
They are half-glimpsed imaginings, tangle of shadows.
And you and I floundering at them in the ever vainer hope that we might corral them into meaning when we will not.
We will not.Comment
-
Too bad Stevenson didn't write on JtR (or have I missed something ?). I think he was in America in 1888.Comment
-
K453,
i do not believe that a real felon would give any heed or patients to a fictional detective, as most do not give heed or credit to the real life ones. Human nature doesn't change it is and has always been this way, only the technology around it changes.
S.H.
No the good Sherlock would have most definitely not solved these crimes, because the police did everything that there was to cover whether by ignorance or other choice most of the evidence that was to be seen or gathered. His powers of Inductive Reasoning (which was how he came to his conclusions, NOT deductive reasoning, as Phil stated) could only prevail if the clues were laid as they were and not in a tampered with way. So because of the bumbling of the MPD and the Yard Sherlock would have found Jack better an opponent than the Diabolical Professor was.It is not in the heart that hate begins but in the mind of those that seek the revenge of creation. Darrel Derek StiebenComment
-
"Holmes, that guardsman appears to be high on ganja!"
"A mellow sentry, my dear Watson".
GWe are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture and hypothesis. - Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure Of Silver BlazeComment
-
Hi all,
I just saw this thread, so I apologize for being late on it. Thank you Robert for recalling my e-mail.
When I was a contributor to that Jack the Ripper book I did that essay about the "Rache" clue in A STUDY IN SCARLET. The thing I found fascinating about it was that "Rache" by itself is German for "revenge" (as Holmes points out to Lestrade - and as the killer admits was a clue he borrowed from a New York murder). But as Lestrade happened to point out it is also the start of the name "Rachel". Also the clue is written on a wall (although one in a building and near the body, not in the street on a wall, far away from the murder site).
The way that book essay was written we were limited to 1000 words, and I had to restrain from fully examining that clue (I concentrated on that clue because I had no suspect for the Jack the Ripper identity, as most of the others in the book did, and I was always fascinated by the similarity of that clue of a 1887 story (first published in December 1887) to the Goulston Street graffito of 1888. Moreover I had done some research and found Conan Doyle based the clue on an 1882 murder of a police officer in Dalston, England by one Thomas Orrock. A burglar's chistle was found near the dead body with the letters "R O C K" on it. The police first thought it was the word "rock", but two years later they were building a case against Mr. Orrock, and using closer magnification found a faint "O R" before the last four letters.
So here you had an 1882 situation of a real name partly hidden into an apparent descriptive noun, changed into a 1887 fictional German noun possibly hiding a real name!! I suggested that in the infamous graffito, the key word of "Juwes", being either a mispelling of "Jews" or a reference to a Masonic term, was actually the result of a literate Jack picking up an idea from Conan Doyle by reading his novel.
I never pursued the matter as fully as I wanted to. Yes, Holmes became more famous after 1890 when THE SIGN OF FOUR was written and published (by Lippincott's, by the way), and then by the series of tales in the Strand Magazine beginning in 1891. However, A STUDY IN SCARLET was not a dismissable work. Published in Beeton's Christmas Annual (a magazine) in December 1887, it was putlished the following year as a novel. It would not have been if response had been tepid.
The expense of the Christmas Annual may not be such a problem either - it could have been noticed by Jack who borrowed the magazine and read it. Anything is possible.
JeffComment
-
Is it not a myth that 'Juwes' is a masonic term?So here you had an 1882 situation of a real name partly hidden into an apparent descriptive noun, changed into a 1887 fictional German noun possibly hiding a real name!! I suggested that in the infamous graffito, the key word of "Juwes", being either a mispelling of "Jews" or a reference to a Masonic term, was actually the result of a literate Jack picking up an idea from Conan Doyle by reading his novel.I won't always agree but I'll try not to be disagreeable.Comment
-
More on the Conan Doyle issue
To continue, I said just now that I had more to say (had the essay length in the book not been restricted) on the "Rache" clue. It dealt with dear old Lestrade's claim that the letters on the wall were part of a name.
In 1977 a book appeared that spurred on new interest on subtext in the Holmes stories. It was Samuel Rosenberg's NAKED IS THE BEST DISGUISE. Rosenburg found dozens of examples of subtext (mostly literary) concerning Conan Doyle's stories - linking them to subjects like the Emperor Napoleon, Oscar Wilde, Robinson Crusoe,etc. Here he zeroed in not on the "Rache" aspect of the double clue, but on the "Rachel" aspect that Lestrade comes up with. You see, if you read the section of the novel Lestrade starts calling the possible female he has conjured up "Madame Rachel". Rosenburg builds a case that actually Conan Doyle has thrown in this piece of false clue to remind the readers of 1887 of a long dead famous French tragedienne, Madame Rachel (died 1858). I recommend the reader of this message to read the Rosenberg book as a stimulator, and look at what he suggests.
But I found it is more complicated than Rosenberg made it. For one Conan Doyle's mind was wide ranging one. He was interested in crime, history, ships, boxing (he wrote a good novel about early 19th Century pugilism called RODNEY STONE), archeology, paleantology, invention, politics, international relations, warfare, and ... of course, spiritualism. His mind was generous and could twist things marvellously from different sources.
In THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE, Conan Doyle shows us this by his use of the name "Mathilda Briggs". It unites his interest in the sea with crime. "Mathilda Briggs" is the name of a ship, but Holmes tells Watson it is not a person. Actually Conan Doyle is lying. Sophia Mathilda Briggs was the daughter of Captain Benjamin Briggs of the ill-fated "Mary Celeste", and would vanish with him and his wife, and the crew in 1871. Conan Doyle had already dealt (very successfully) with that nautical mystery in a story published in 1884 "J. Habbakuk Jephson's Statement", which caused an uproar at the time because it seemed plausible, but was full of errors of fact concerning that evil voyage. What is frequently not noted is that "Mathilda Briggs' was also the name of one of the dubious witnesses used in 1889 to convict Florence Maybrick at her trial for killing her husband James.
I just used that to illustrate the real complexity of subtexting a mind like Conan Doyle's. I have other examples.
I noticed as I reread A STUDY IN SCARLET that over the years people noted how the tale (which is actually set in 1881-1882) has internal references to Gilbert and Sullivan's PATIENCE (which appeared that year), and Thomas Carlyle (who died that year). Well in 1882 a female convict died in prison. She was known as Madame Rachel, and had first been a clever marketer of dubious beauty products, then a swindler, and then a blackmailer. No doubt to me that when Lestrade was thinking of "Madame Rachel" from that clue, it was a kind ot signal to the reading audience of 1887 to recall "Madame Rachel Levinson", notorious swindler and blackmailer, who died in 1881, the year the novel was written.
You can see now how much more to that original idea of mine there was to write about.
JeffComment
-
Hi Brideswell,Originally posted by Bridewell View Post
It may be a myth...I wrote that piece in WHO WAS JACK THE RIPPER? in the 1990s, and there was a lot of discussion on the subject of "JUWES" since then - indeed there has been a discussion of whether it was even "JUWES" or "JUIVES". Right now I am just trying to concentrate on this issue of Conan Doyle.
Thanks for noting.
JeffComment
-
Apologies. I wasn't trying to disrupt the thread.Originally posted by Mayerling View PostI won't always agree but I'll try not to be disagreeable.Comment
-
Arthur and Oscar, a Strange but Understandable Tale
Well, now you see what I was bound to reveal in a larger than 1000 word essay. But we cannot squeal about spilt milk twenty years later or so. I was grateful that I got part of my ideas down on paper. Even if now they may date a little.
I once intended to write an entire book on Jack the Ripper, ripping off Conan Doyle a bit by calling it STUDIES IN SCARLET AND WHITECHAPEL. It was to be at least 21 essays on different aspects of the case. I never really completed the plan - Maybe five essays saw the light of day - one on Deeming published in two parts, one on Cream, one (partially) on Conan Doyle and that graffito, and one on my curiosity on the choice of Whitechapel for the murders (that saw the light of day in THE RIPPEROLOGIST in an essay about the 1875 murder of Harriet Lane by Henry Wainwright in Whitechapel, and the dismemberment of her body and hiding it in a building in Whitechapel for a year before Henry fumbled the plan). There was also the essay about Sir Charles Warren and how he got selected for his Scotland Yard appointment due to solving what happened to Professor Edward Palmer and his ill-fated 1882 expedition in Egypt.
One of the essays was dealing with Conan Doyle and a peculiar friendship that he developed but dropped like a hot potato. This was his friendly relationship (from 1889 - 1895) with Oscar Wilde. Quite a pairing that one.
Wilde the colorful, brilliant exhibitionist and lover of art for art's sake, and Conan Doyle, the brilliant young short story and novella writer. It sounds impossible. It was impossible. Conan Doyle was closer to other people and writers than Wilde, but for that six year period there was some connection of note. But later events (some stretching into the 1920s) made Conan Doyle bury it.
Tis a three pipe problem indeed!
In 1889, while Londoners were wondering if that horrible nightmare was gone or not (and perhaps were wondering what had recently happened at that shooting lodge at Mayerling to Crown Prince Rudolf and Countess Vetsera), Arthur Conan Doyle, growing successful writer, got a letter inviting him to dinner at the home of the London representative of Lippincott's, the American publishers). He went and met there another guest: Oscar Wilde. Lippincott's wanted them both to write novels of the company to publish. It was impressed by A STUDY IN SCARLET, and was asking Conan Doyle for another novel of Sherlock Holmes. Wilde never wrote a novel but his short stories and tales were liked. Both men agreed, and Conan Doyle would write THE SIGN OF FOUR for Lippincott's, and Wilde would write THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY.
That sounds increadible because over a hundred years later both novels are still read, and their authors are fondly remembered. Rarely happens. What also rarely happens is that the two authors click at the dinner party. It seemed Oscar had read Arthur. Not (from what is known) A STUDY IN SCARLET, but another book that had been published in 1888, MICAH CLARKE. MICAH CLARKE is like Sabatini's CAPTAIN BLOOD, in that it deals with the aftermath of the Duke of Monmouth's ill-fated 1685 rebellion against King James II of Great Britain. Monmouth would be executed for treason, but there was a mopping up of "rebels" by his lordship, Sir George Jeffreys, the "hanging judge. Conan Doyle's characterization of the brutal judge was appealing to Oscar - Conan Doyle made Justice Jeffreys a type of "fallen angel". It fit Oscar's sentiments well.
So a friendship developed. And the fruits of it are in the character of Thaddeus Sholto, the man who helps set the plot of THE SIGN OF FOUR going by inviting Mary Morstan to his lodge to get her just share of an inheritance connected to the disappearance of her father Captain Morstan in 1878. The Captain died of a heart attack in an argument with Thaddeus' father, and his body was buried in a secret place. All this is connected in the plot with the theft of a great treasure in the Sepoy revolt of the 1850s. Holmes and Watson accompany Ms Morstan and they find that Thaddeus has a luxurious (perhaps overly luxurious home) and some good looking male attendants, and resembles Wilde.
Please note that "Sholto" is one of he family names of the family of Lord Alfred Douglas (technically "Sholto - Douglas").
One bets Oscar must have felt flattered by this use of these bits and pieces. One finds the relationship mentioned in Conan Doyle's memoirs, MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES (1925). As for the characterization of the home of Thaddeus Sholto the before mentioned Samuel Rosenberg's NAKED IS THE BEST DISGUISE goes into more detail.
It did not last - how strong it was is hard to say. In Conan Doyle's memoir he cuts the friendship down to about four pages, concentrating on the dinner party. Perhaps that was all there was. He shows later another meeting with Oscar where the latter behaves with too outrageous a pattern.
Then he suggests that Oscar may have been going insane, and that led to the tragedy of his fall in the libel and sodomy trials of 1895.
Well - it is all possible. Just not enough personal information such as letters and such. But there was another aspect to it. In 1925 Conan Doyle was in the middle of the spiritualist crusade, and he knew that many people who liked his writings were questioning his own mental condition. To have acknowledged any really close friendship with Wilde at that time would not have been sensible. So Conan Doyle may have wisely played it down.
JeffComment
-
-
The Odd Two Drowning Stories of 1891
The reason for my going into the matter of Conan Doyle's connection (whatever it was) with Oscar Wilde in the early 1890s is the odd mirror image situations they created in two seperate stories within three years of their meeting at the Lippincott's dinner.
First I must digress again. All writers are constantly thinking of real life material they come across or have heard about and how to recreate it into some type of fiction. Joseph Conrad hears a real tale told by a scoundrel of how he stole some valuable silver and gold in a revolution and turns it into NOSTROMO, and also hears of the 1894 attempt by Martial Bourdin to blow up the Greenwich Observatory that killed Bourdin, and turns it into THE SECRET AGENT. An anecdote about a fortune hunter who abandons (somewhat heartlessly) a homely and socially inept spinster in 1848 Manhattan is turned by Henry James into WASHINGTON SQUARE. Jules Verne reads about the eccentric millionaire George Francis Train racing around the globe in 1872 to prove a point and creates Phileas Fogg, Passepartout, and AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS.
The same was true about Conan Doyle. It was also true about Oscar Wilde.
In 1891 Wilde published a book of short stories entitled LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME & OTHER STORIES. I will get back to the title story soon, but first let me mention one of the other tales first. It is called THE MODEL MILLIONAIRE. It deals with the attempts of the hero to make enough of an income as a struggling barrister so he can wed marry his girlfriend and support her. His closest friend is a highly successful artist, and they discuss the problem but can't find a solution. One day the artist happens to be out when the young man comes to talk to him, and the only one present is a grey haired beggar who the hero assumes is a model. Looking at how sad and poor the man seems, the hero decides to be charitable. Before he leaves he gives the man a shilling. The beggar is amazed at this, and looks at the young man and says thank you.
Later the hero returns and sees the artist but not the beggar. He is right - the beggar was a model. There is a portrait of the beggar being done by his friend on the easel. But then he tells the artist what he did and the heartless artist starts laughing. It seems the "beggar"/model was the richest man in France, and a Baron to boot! The story ends when the "beggar" sends the hero a check for his one day "investment" which is like several thousand pounds. The hero is able to marry his girlfriend, and the "beggar" / model/ millionaire and the artist both attend the wedding.
It is a cute story at best - but the odd thing is it is based on a real anecdote. In Frederic Morton's THE ROTHSCHILDS, the story was told of the painter Delacroix doing a portrait of Baron James de Rothschild dressed as a beggar, and somebody (who did not know the Baron) giving him some alms. Wilde embroidered the story.
Well it was not the only possible story Wilde may have used in a novel way.
Wilde's title story in that collection was LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME. Lord Arthur is going to be married soon, but at a society occasion there is a noted palm reader. The palm reader is quite good at seeing the future. Lord Arthur makes the mistake of allowing his palm to be read, and soon regrets it. When alone with the reader, one Septimus Podgers, Lord Arthur is told he is going to commit a murder.
Lord Arthur is afraid he'll kill his fiance, so he looks for some victim. The story turns black comic, as one victim turns out to have not died of poison as planned (it was a heart attack), and another who was to receive a clock that was to blow up gets the clock, but the timing mechanism and release are badly made so that instead of coocooing on the hour black powder smoke is released in small quantities.
Savile is in total despair, and seriously thinking of moving away and abandoning his lifestyle and marriage plans. It is night and foggy. He is crossing the Thames on London Bridge when he sees Mr. Podgers standing at the railing looking into the river. Nobody is around but the two, and Lord Arthur gets his idea. He pushes Podgers over the side into the Thames.
The newspaper reports the next day suggest Podgers (who was somewhat depressed recently) committed suicide. Happy now, and safe, Lord Arthur goes on with his marriage plans and life.
Interesting story isn't it?
The same year that LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME appeared, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote (for the Strand Magazine) a new Sherlock Holmes story, THE ADVENTURE OF THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS. It is an interesting tale, set in 1887, and dealing with one John Openshaw, a new client of Holmes who has an odd tragic story to tell. A curse is on his family. Since 1883 his uncle, who had served in the South and lived there a few years after the American Civil War, and his father in 1885 both died in accidents (coroner conclusions). The uncle was always wary if strangers seemed to look at his home, and died after receiving an envelope with five orange pips and a message to leave the papers on a sundial in the garden. The envelope also has the letters K.K.K. on it. Instead the uncle burned the papers, and then got killed. John's father next (two years later) gets a similar message and demand. Same initials too. He thinks it is a joke and throws the message into a fire. And he dies in an accident too. And now John has received an envelope and shows it to Holmes.
Instead of dismissing the story Holmes is very it, and is distressed that Openshaw did not seek police protection. But Openshaw says he did, and Holmes comment is to call the police fools. He tells Openshaw to return to his home and carefully write a letter to these men and leave it on the sundial, explaining that his uncle burned his papers. He also tells Openshaw to be very careful going home.
Openshaw leaves. Watson can't make anything about the tragedies, but Holmes asks if Watson ever heard of the Ku Klux Klan. To Holmes that triple letter combination and the Uncle's connection to the Confederacy and the South explained the entire matter.
Unfortunately the next morning Watson reads that John Openshaw is dead. He apparently mistepped into the Thames River near the embankment (it was a foggy night) and drowned. The papers are already ruling this an accident. Holmes (furious that his client was killed while technically under his protection) goes to work, and traces the matter to a sailing ship called "The Lone Star" which comes out of a southern port and is under the command on a southerner named James Calhoun.
Holmes sends a message in an envelope to Calhoun with five orange pips in it, and the ship leaves London. But apparently it is lost at sea with Calhoun and his crew in the storms of 1887.
Interesting story isn't it?
Could Wilde and Doyle have discussed stories they heard with each other?
I think they could have - and both had connections to Scotland Yard. Wilde was a neighbor (on Tite Street) of Sir Melville MacNaughten. One wonders what story they might have both heard and discussed - about a young man who died under murky circumstances by drowning, around 1887 or so. Of course they could treat the story differently, but I find it rather intriguing to think about it.
JeffComment
Tweet
Comment