The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II - By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Kyle Freeman Page 0,450

charismatic Sudanese leader claiming to be the Mahdi (the Muslim Messiah) raised a rebellion against British and Egyptian rule, Gordon was sent to suppress the uprising. He was besieged at Khartoum, called for reinforcements that never came, and was slaughtered when the city fell. Public outrage over lack of support for him forced the fall of the government. As an old soldier, Watson would naturally feel indignation at Gordon’s betrayal.

13 (p. 382) Henry Ward Beecher: Beecher (1813-1887) was a Congregationalist minister and orator who became influential in the United States before the Civil War. His trip to England in 1863 to persuade the English of the moral right of the Union cause was initially met with hostility, but he won over many audiences with his eloquence. Watson, as a fair-minded man, a believer in progress, would have been sympathetic to Beecher’s antislavery message.

14 (p. 389) purchased his own Stradivarius ... for fifty- five shillings: Antonio Stradivari (c.1644-1737), a pupil of violin maker Nicolò Amati, made violins, violas, and cellos in Cremona, Italy. The two were pre-eminent in making Cremona synonymous with great stringed instruments. A Stradivarius violin at the time cost about 200 times more than Holmes paid for it at the expense of the unknowing pawnbroker.

15 (p. 416) the most jealously guarded of all government secrets: Dry humor obviously runs in the family. The most jealously guarded of all government secrets is something Mycroft assumes everyone has heard of. Exactly what sort of irony this implies is open to debate.

16 (p. 430) Polyphonic Motets of Lassus: Orlando Lassus (1532-1594; there are lots of versions of both his names, but this one is the most common) composed more than 500 motets, musical compositions for two to twelve voices based on sacred texts and sung without accompaniment. Holmes’s achievement is the more impressive when one learns that these motets can’t be meaningfully recreated by other instruments. To study them Holmes had to “hear” them, to paraphrase Hamlet, with his mind’s ear.

17 (p. 483) Duke of York’s steps: The first-born son of the English monarch inherits the title prince of Wales; the second-born son is the duke of York. The steps mentioned are a series carved in granite on the Island of Herm commemorating Frederick, the second son of George III.

18 (p. 533) Negretto Sylvius: An Italian word for “black” and the Latin for “woods” together make the name literally “Blackwoods,” which was the name of a magazine that was a competitor of the Strand. Blackwood’s once rejected one of Conan Doyle’s early works. This, plus the too-cute-by-half address of “Moorside” for a black man, suggests to me that an editor at the Strand had a large hand in this story. Conan Doyle didn’t need any revenge after forty years of prosperity. It is more likely a relative newcomer to the magazine, feeling a rivalry with Blackwood‘s, thought this in-joke would be oh so funny.

19 (p. 539) the long-drawn, wailing notes of that most haunting of tunes: No one who knows this piece could possibly characterize it this way; although it’s a fine piece, it’s neither wailing nor haunting, and if a musical piece had legal rights, it would sue for defamation for being la beled a “tune.” It’s another reason to suspect the authenticity of the story. Conan Doyle mentions many composers throughout the stories, but this is the only specific piece cited, and therefore the only one characterized.

20 (p. 553) belle dame sans merci: This French phrase means “beautiful woman without pity”; originally the title of a poem by French poet Alain Chartier (c.1385-1433), it is better known from a poem of the same name by John Keats (1795-1821).

21 (p. 567) a queen in English history: Eleanor of Castile (c.1245-1290), wife of King Edward I (1239-1307), was reputed to have sucked poison from her husband’s arm; the story is most likely apocryphal.

22 (p. 617) surds and conic sections: Surds are sums of numbers at least one of which contains an irrational root of another number—for example, the sum of the square root of two and the square root of three. A conic section is the two-dimensional area obtained when a plane intersects a cone.

23 (p. 639) in the days of the Regency: The Regency was the period between 1811 and 1820, when the prince of Wales, later George IV, was appointed regent to rule England because of the insanity of his father, George III.

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