BENNY GREEN
A few days ago, while performing the desper- ately vital act of putting as much space as possible between me and what is sometimes a feu years ago; ,be. was4 massive,-- laughingly.oalled the new Euston Station, I
the forthcoming epic, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. As Holmes never had any private life, I was intrigued to see what the stills might reveal, with particular reference to the way London had been treated. For reasons best known to the hankers, mythical Lohdon always ends up getting built by Americans who never have the remotest idea what the town is supposed to look like, and in gazing at the Holmes stills, I recalled George Cukor's obstinate refusal to include in the screen version of My Fair Lady what Cecil Beaton referred to as 'the opal skies of London'.
Billy Wilder, the man responsible for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, has been wiser, but it remains to be seen whether he has managed to come anywhere near to the cosy clutter of Conan Doyle's unique metro- politan dreamworld. where the rain drips on shrubbery - laurels and a fast train to the west stands forever snorting at Paddington Station. In fact, it comes as something of a disappointment to discover precisely how little of the town is specifically defined in the Holmes stories. But then. Doyle was no Londoner, and claimed years later that he did not believe he had ever been in Baker Street in his life. Examination question for aspiring Sherlockians: Explain in your own words how, summer after summer, Doyle could move from his home in South Nor- wood to his favourite club. Lord's without ever going through Baker Street. But more surprising, and much more gratifying than any of this, is the fact that so many of the locations Doyle does bother to mention are still with us.
An exception is the St James's Hall, where during the Jabez Wilson case. Holmes went to hear his fellow-violinist Sarasate. This was almost certainly the concert at which the Saturday Review critic, a Mr Bernard Shaw, remarked, 'Sarasate left all criticism behind him. He also left his accompanist behind him by half a bar, the unpremeditated effects of syncopation resulting therefrom being more curious than delectable.' Indeed, it seems that whenever Shaw and Holmes attended the same performance. the result was disastrous. When, after much cerebral straining over the Baskervilles, Holmes goes to Covent Garden to see the De Reszkes in Les Huguenots—this would be in May 189I—Shaw breezily ob- serves that the production is without any doubt the outcome of an act of musical butchery.
One other lost landmark is the most fam- ous in the entire Sherlockian canon. Some years ago an oak plaque was placed on the outer wall of the Criterion Hotel whose in- scription read, 'This plaque commemorates the historic meeting early in 1881 at the original Criterion Long Bar of Dr Stamford and Dr John H. Watson which led to the introduction of Dr Watson to Mr Sherlock Holines'. It was bad enough that the Long Bar should have vanished, but much worse was to come.On Derby Day.1956, the plaque vanished too. Seven years later it turned up again, in Hong Kong of all places, and its travels remain the most exasperating of all the unsolved mysteries in the Holmes saga.
For the rest we are on firmer ground. In 'Thor Bridge' Watson discloses that accounts of the untold cases reside 'in the vaults of a hank in Charing Cross', and whenever the two men take a walk in the park. it is surely Regent's Park that Doyle is thinking of. But the surest way of retracing the steps of the sage is to stand at the third pillar outside the Lyceum Theatre, as Holmes and Wat- son did in 'The Sign of Four.' Being Holmes
d Wrfkorin`v in% –se"CTO tuts rarrafirtfci ng due south in a hansom, while Holmes pre+ sents his credentials as a Londoner by in toning the litany of the streets they are racing through, from Vauxhall Bridge Road to Coldharbour Lane.
But it is the dining habits which are the most tantalising. One fragment of concrete evidence turns up in 'The Dying Detective,' when Holmes breaks a long fast by dining at Simpson's in the Strand. But on the night of Les Huguenots he suggests to Watson that they 'stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way'. I have never been able to trace Marcini's, but have come to the conclusion that it is none other than the restaurant where the Three Men in a Boat celebrated their final escape from the river. The evid- ence is overwhelming. Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome often dined out together. And Jerome's description of a dark and dirty night seen from the sanctity of yet another cosy interior might be Watson himself at work. 'It glistened darkly in the wet, the dim lamps flickered with each `gust, the rain splashed steadily into the puddles and trick- led down the waterspouts into the running gutters.' Observe also the curious incident of the disclosure of the restaurant's address. But, you object, the address is never dis- closed. Exactly. That is the curious incident. Good Londoners always keep such details to themselves. It is only your provincial who writes a syndicated column about it and spoils everything.
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