The Italian Secretary

Although widely and justly considered second–rate works, the library of this legendary sleuth's  further adventures has been growing by leaps and even greater leaps the last forty–odd years.  A staggering number of these books, of course, wallow in that corner of chilly obscurity especially reserved for epigones.  Even an authoritative collection penned by Arthur Conan Doyle's youngest son and Agatha Christie's most heralded contemporary and based on unsolved Holmes cases never fleshed out in print suffers from the ingenious self–limitation of recycling actual Doylean plot lines.  Thus, if you are more than superficially acquainted with the original stories, you will see the guilty party marching towards you from the other end of Baker street.

Not so with the American author Caleb Carr, who comes up with an entirely new adventure and one not remiss in its Holmesian eccentricities.  Carr is the author of this other bestselling novel, which I cannot recommend, as well as a noted military historian.  His training in that field must definitely have imbued the villain's weapon of mass devastation (I shall not describe it further) with a certain  authenticity, although that is again not my business to judge.  What I may say, however, is that the historian finds Victorian dialogue to be a rather delightful affair and, while generally refraining from archaic constructions, dispatches a convincing Watson (no story is complete without him) to lead the reader from room to darkened room in search of, well, a ghost.  The ghost has been biding its time for a while now:  the Italian secretary in question is none other than this murdered gentleman, once a member of the court of  Mary, Queen of Scots, and now still very much bounding about this old palace.

Mycroft, Holmes's older brother always described by Sherlock as having the better brain of the two, if beset by irreparable indolence, summons the dynamic pair to Scotland to investigate the evisceration of an architect and a mason.  Along the way, a few belligerent Scottish terrorists decide to ventilate the train that the two visitors happen to be riding.  We are to gather that this small piece of action will be a foretaste of the revolt awaiting the detectives in the North, although the extreme violence of the novel (a very modern addition) is tempered by the cozy whispers of ghosts and goblin–like baddies from every crevice and crack of  Holyrood.  Once there, the usual chain of events ensues: Holmes becomes moody and finds the whole operation either tedious or hilarious, while Watson drifts from one shady character to another, inspecting each of them with severe medical thoroughness.  Holmes of course knows exactly what's going on and just has to test out a few of his theories to substantiate his peerless intuition; Watson, on the other hand, is tasked to play the role of the silly goat.  This thankless assignment involves irrational fears of the supernatural, excessive politeness (especially to the fairest and most distressed of Europe's damsels), and an unerring tendency for absurd deductions based on a hint or a sniff of a clue (or the hint of a sniff of a clue).  This is both the trademark of the Holmes stories and its cardinal shortcoming, and Carr smartly chooses not to tamper with a proven product.

I cannot say I like the end of The Italian Secretary, neither what happens nor how and why it happens.  The history of Rizzio's murder is a nice backdrop, but how many Holmesian solutions do we have that truly involve the otherworldly?  Despite this obvious straw–man, on most pages Carr offers a flattering and sincere imitation of Watson's unique cadence.  More impressively, the reader's attention is held even though the vast majority of the novel are lengthy dialogues: Holmes and his foil, or the Brothers Holmes, or Watson and the young woman he finds wandering the castle.  Yes, it's always Watson who finds the woman.  Holmes found a woman once, in this, his first short story.  Conan Doyle immediately recognized the schmaltzy path that his beloved creation would be taking if he continued in this vein and wisely concluded that some artists should remain monks, or at least keep bees instead of grandchildren.  Had he not, it would have been one of the most disastrous decisions in literary history.  But perhaps still not as bad as this one.

The Holmes Classification and Jeremy Brett

Many winters ago I offended an acquaintance when, in a moment of unforgivable cavalierness, I declared the Sherlock Holmes stories to be "works written for children."   Rarely have I made a comment that I so regret.  In point of fact, I had loved the stories as I suppose all young boys do, and was particularly taken by the magnificent screen embodiment of Holmes by the late and sensationally talented Jeremy Brett.  If you have never seen these productions, which ran on PBS's Mystery! from 1984 to just before Brett's death in 1995, I cannot possibly recommend them more highly.   Of the 56 stories and four novellas, rediscovered and readored by me the last few years, 41 episodes (with one episode combining elements of two stories) were filmed and are viewable on 21 discs.

1) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 1, 1984): “A Scandal in Bohemia”; “The Dancing Men”; “The Naval Treaty”; “The Solitary Cyclist”
2) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 2, 1984): “The Crooked Man”; “The Speckled Band”
3) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 3, 1984): “The Blue Carbuncle”; “The Copper Beeches”
4) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 4, 1984): “The Greek Interpreter”; “The Norwood Builder”
5) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 5, 1984): “The Resident Patient”; “The Red–Headed League”; “The Final Problem”
6) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1984) 
7) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 1, 1986): “The Empty House”; “Abbey Grange”
8) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 2, 1986): “The Second Stain”; “The Six Napoleons”
9) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 3, 1986): “The Priory School”; “Wisteria Lodge”
10) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 4, 1986): “The Devil’s Foot”; “Silver Blaze”; “The Bruce–Partington Plans”
11) The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 5, 1986): “The Musgrave Ritual”; “The Man with the Twisted Lip”
12) The Sign of Four (1987)  
13) The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 1, 1991): “Lady Carfax”; “Thor Bridge”
14) The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 2, 1991): “Shoscombe Old Place”; “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”
15) The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 3, 1991): “The Illustrious Client”; “The Creeping Man”
16) The Eligible Bachelor (1992, based on the story “The Noble Bachelor”)
17) The Last Vampire (1993, based on the story “The Sussex Vampire”)
18) The Master Blackmailer (1993, based on the story “Charles Augustus Milverton”)
19) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 1, 1994): “The Three Gables”***; “The Dying Detective”
20) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 2, 1994): “The Golden Pince-nez”; “The Red Circle”
21) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Disc 3, 1994): “The Mazarin Stone***/ The Three Garridebs”; “The Cardboard Box”

For now I will spare you the disquisition, but the spurious (***) authorship of both "The Three Gables" and "The Mazarin Stone" has long been a topos for Sherlockians.  All these discs are available for rental or purchase from the usual suspects.  Brett's performance in My Fair Lady also reminds me that I saw a fine version of the same classic the other night at the Kennedy Center.

An Open Letter on A Grammar of Assent

Dear Friend 

 

You have asked me what is religious experience, a topic I cannot hope to explain in any detail because religious experience is precisely what we sense that does not lend itself to explanation.  I can say, however, that having premonitions of what is about to happen is not a religious experience, because life is either a religious experience or it is not.  Knowing or seeing something beforehand might be nothing more than an example of braille on the plain surface of time, but it certainly does not qualify as anything profound.

The approach I can suggest for your other questions is that it is not about understanding anything at all, but by experiencing.  The formulation of the intercourse of one mind's experience of something beyond what one can see and touch may be termed an aesthetic expression.  Sustaining that expression over a whole canvas, or page, or series of euphonious instruments, might be termed an artistic work.   Seeing the world in this way  may then be termed as artist's perspective and is not a choice but a vocation bereft of any higgedly–piggedly religious epiphany.   An epiphany implies that there is a break in consciousness that allows the subject to enter a higher plane.  But there are no breaks from my perspective, because the viewpoint is as constant as the firmament itself is starry and black.

In short, one either sees the world this way or one doesn't, and there is really nothing one can do about it.  Time and again common sense has tried, in gruff impatience, to pull me away from the exotic beauty of some magnificent exhibit to show me the spoils of man's discoveries, only to have me resist and shake myself loose each time.    Answers are not to be found, but to be lived, and perhaps when we are sad and grey and life's glow has dimmed, we will derive a certain thread of understanding from this bedlam.  Until then I will remain as enlightened as a dolmen amidst the sylvan scene.

The title of this post is one of the most remarkable texts ever written.  It is, in a few words, a proof of proof, and one that goes beyond contemporary thought by virtue of both its openness and its tightness. It is by a man appropriately called Newman, whose style and logic are so incontrovertible that they could corral the staunchest pagan (he was a Cardinal) and make the most ardent of disbelievers twitch.   I will leave you, however, with a quote from another famous book, which will perhaps express something my abilities cannot:

"He [Maximov] was as reliable as iron and oak, and when Krug mentioned once that the word 'loyalty' phonetically and visually reminded him of a golden fork lying in the sun on a smooth spread of pale yellow silk, Maximov replied somewhat stiffly that to him loyalty was limited to its dictionary denotation.   Common sense with him was saved from smug vulgarity by a delicate emotional undercurrent, and the somewhat bare and birdless symmetry of his branching principles was ever so slightly disturbed by a moist wind blowing from regions which he naively thought did not exist.  The misfortunes of others worried him more than did his own troubles, and had he been an old sea captain, he would have dutifully gone down with his ship rather than plump apologetically into the last lifeboat."