“The Season of Forgiveness”
Posted by: danhartland on: December 24, 2008
I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season.
"You are the very man!"
Christmas is a time of year held together by traditions large and small. One of my small ways to mark the holiday may at first (and, to be honest, probably at second) seem odd: every Christmas Eve, I read the same 7886 words – year in, year out. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle is the only explicitly festive of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, taking place on December 27th and featuring a Victorian winter and a Christmas goose. It is a singularly comedic Holmes story: the great detective shows off a bit, the villain is a bit hopeless, and there’s a pretty happy ending. The plot is not particularly complex, and the solution to the mystery almost handed to us; but in that happy ending lies the story’s particular joy.
Even in the preceding pages, Holmes takes several opportunities to prove what his readers already know about him: he can be cold and unforgiving, aloof and arrogant. He belittles working people, shows modish distaste for urban living, and insults his best friend’s intelligence. Yet, in choosing to let the petty criminal go at the close of the case, he gives in to the good feeling of the season: “This fellow will not go wrong again. Send him to gaol now, and you make him a gaol-bird for life.” There’s a humanity there, a liberality even, which leaves an indulgent smile on the face of any Holmes reader.
And a Holmes reader I am, although in recent years one reduced to this annual visit to an old friend – perhaps that’s one reason I’ve upheld the tradition. Next year, though, I’d like to read one of the 56 Holmes stories a week, and see where it takes me. I’ll post about them here in a bid to keep me honest.
In the meatime, whatever your Christmas traditions, I hope you enjoy each and every one of them. As we said below, we wish you all the very best of the season.
10 Responses to "“The Season of Forgiveness”"
December 27, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I am working my through ALL the Jeremy Brett Holmes- es. They are splendid productions, and Jeremy Brett is the best Holmes, period.
I wish wish wish Study In Scarlet had been done with Brett as one of those stand-alones.
Thank goodness there are so many Brett Holmes’s productions. They are always a pancea for whatever ails.
Happy wishes to you and yours in this particularly hectic year of a season that usually is hectic. It’s as though with the economy dead everywhere those who can are making party after party to help us through or something.
Love, C.
December 31, 2008 at 1:15 pm
C, there’s no doubt that Brett is the finest screen Holmes – particularly the hour-long adaptations (the later TV movies never quite made it for me). I had a DVD of the Return collection, and though dated they remain rivetting thanks to that central performance.
And I think that’s pretty much the charm of the stories themselves – Conan Doyle can be as hackneyed and unconvincing as he likes, but that central character, and that central pairing, invest even the unlikeliest case with something rather more.
Happy new year to you!
[...] instances of Holmesian impatience (”Oh, tut, tut! I have no time.”), and, as in The Blue Carbuncle, a welcome grace note of humane mercy at the close (though here, perhaps, the culprit is more [...]
[...] the interest of his case.” We have previously seen Holmes disparage the King of Bohemia and a Covent Garden poultry seller alike, and here he is far from enamoured of his client, Lord St. Simon. (”It is very good of [...]
[...] reflections are by way of avoiding the story itself, which is a shameless recycling of The Blue Carbuncle, a story which remains a far tighter, more interested and multi-faceted a narrative. This is a [...]
[...] it recycle the old dummy-in-the-window trick from The Empty House; it has significant shades of The Blue Carbuncle to boot. And yet still the maneuver by which Holmes sneaks, via a heretofore unknown secret passage [...]
[...] double bill of Holmes this week, because Christmas Eve means, of course, the Blue Carbuncle. The stone from which the story takes its name is a symbol of greed, [...]
[...] chronological order): 1. A Scandal In Bohemia [also ACD and BSJ] 2. The Boscombe Valley Mystery 3. The Blue Carbuncle [also BSJ] 4. The Beryl Coronet 5. Silver Blaze [also BSJ] 6. The Naval Treaty 7. The Dancing Men [...]
[...] performers. In between, there are all sorts of other references: the detailed knowledge, as with Henry Baker’s hat, of men’s accessories and their seasons; an enthusiasm for cryptography which matches that in [...]
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‘We’ are Anna French and Dan Hartland. The Story and the Truth is a sort of inadequate catch-all term for what goes on here: we tend to talk about novels, history, food and fashion, politics and music, but there may also be photographs of soft toys and musicians. Stick around and see.
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Words We Like
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
An astounding work of collecting-as-art, this compendium of 800,000 weird words is easily one of the most consistent genre anthologies I have read. Heterodox yet focused, it is fated to be the canonical text of weird fiction studies for some time to come - and deservedly so. The first-rank stories here - and there are many, not a few - are not excellent weird fiction. They are simply some of the best 20th century writing available in any mode. Not without its faults - but that is, ahem, the nature of the beast. Essential.
Sounds We Like
Sonik Kicks, by Paul Weller
I haven't paid much attention to Weller - an artist who hangs heavy in my musical tutelage - since 2000's Heliocentric, an album of diverse interests which felt like a shot of crisp elegance in that year of Steps and 'N Sync. The records that followed it - particularly Illumination - were enough, however, to make those achievements a distant memory. There have been rumblings of a renaissance - 22 Dreams got great reviews - but only the sounds of Sonik Kicks have brought me back. Energetic, fierce and, best of all, creative, this sounds like a record from a much younger man. Weller has a lesson or two in him yet.
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December 25, 2008 at 8:44 pm
A young friend,who still thinks Tim Buckley rules, went to the trouble of purchasing Leonard Cohen’s ‘ Book of Longing’ for my Christmas gift.He insisted that I open it at my desk to see me smile. He was not disappointed. I wish you the compliments of the season Dear boy