Stalking the Stalker
Sherlock Holmes: A Biography. By William S. Baring-Gould. (Rupert Hart-Davis, 25s.) The Sherlock Holmes Companion. By
Michael
and Mollie Hardwick. (John Murray, 21s.) ON Friday, January 6, 1854, at Mycroft in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the wife of Mr. Siger Holmes, of a son. Surely the Twelfth Night after Christmas, 1853, was wild and stormy, with all available heights wuthering like anything, and the baby, William Sherlock Scott Holmes, as he was even- tually christened, was a very sinister-looking scrap indeed. He grew up to be the first and the realest consulting detective of all time. Did have that long thin nose and those piercing unforgettable eyes at birth? Perhaps it is better not to know. This is a very nice book. So many mysteries and discussion points are neatly and ingeniously cleared UP, for those of us who are not mem-
bets of the Sherlock Holmes Society or Baker Street Irregulars. For them, 1 imagine, the bio- graphy will provide arguing fodder for years to come. 'Does that blighter Baring-Gould really say that in 1899 . . ?' What fun they will have. For the outer circle, mostly great fun. The mystery of Jack the Ripper is solved. Whoever wculd have thought that the man Holmes caught on the verge of the act was who he was? Small wonder that it has been hushed up for so long.
We are told of the One Great Love of Holmes's life, the same Holmes who said in `The Devil's Foot,' 1 have never loved, Watson.' Mr. Baring-Gould tells us succinctly and touch- ingly of the lady and discreetly (no names, no pack-drill) of the love-child resulting from an idyll in the capital of Montenegro. I take issue with this piece of impertinence. If that gross, greedy, orchid-growing slob is . . . but there, doubtless Mr. Baring-Gould knows more about it than I do. The frontispiece is the only photograph ever taken of the great detective, a copy of the one Irene Adler treasured in Trenton, New Jersey. The deaths of Professor Moriarty and Colonel Sebastian Moran are recounted for us, as is the shocking affair of the Bruce-Partington Submarine plans, with its reward for. Holmes in the shape of a remarkably fine emerald tie- pin from the gracious hands of the Widow of Windsor Herself. We learn that Holmes, during an interesting stay in Tibet, discovered for him- self the Abominable Snowman and became, in the fulness of time, an Arhanta or adept of Lamaistic Buddhism (not Zen, Jack). Along about page 225, the mind begins to boggle. Did he start the First World War? Did he live to be one hundred and three? Did he discover the secret of Queen Bee Royal Jelly? How exhausting. The joke goes on too long, but until the penultimate chapter it's a lovely joke. The Sherlock Holmes Companion is more fact and less whimsy. It is almost a dictionary, charmingly compiled, with a Who's Who, plots of stories, a sampler of quotations (I thought them most interesting), a chapter about Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson and, finally, one about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—and by then, I felt it was high time someone mentioned him.
Both these books are ideal for the bedside and
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