What I Learned Today

I recently discovered audiobook versions of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, through the lit2go project, via iTunes University. I was inspired to download these stories by my recent reading of “A Study in Scarlet”, and now I’m wondering how I ever missed out on the whole series as a kid! Or even as an adult! These stories are great fun to read, written in the most marvelous language (and, through lit2go, shared by an excellent British-accented reader).

The first story in this collection, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” tells of one of the very few times Holmes failed at his game… and in this case, he was bested by a woman. Read this opening paragraph, and I challenge you not to read the whole thing:

To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

From there we have a sequence of excellent mysteries, my favorite so far being “The Five Orange Pips.” I didn’t know that the Ku Klux Klan took its name from the distinctive sound of a rifle being cocked—although this may be a fanciful myth (wikipedia instead claims that “The name was formed by combining the Greek kyklos (κυκλος, circle) with clan”). I also didn’t know that they were in the habit of sending dried orange bits as a dreadful warning to their next victims. According to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

Its [the KKK’s] outrages were usually preceded by a warning sent to the marked man in some fantastic but generally recognized shape—a sprig of oak-leaves in some parts, melon seeds or orange pips in others. On receiving this the victim might either openly abjure his former ways, or might fly from the country. If he braved the matter out, death would unfailingly come upon him, and usually in some strange and unforeseen manner.

True or not (and this is of course fiction), it certainly creates a powerful image!

I’m now on to “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” eager to find out how the mysterious blue stone could have gotten into the craw of a Christmas goose. Keep up the good work, Holmes and amanuensis Watson!