Our narrator (Dr. John Watson) describes Holmes: (1) He's a coldly rational guy. (2) Because of this, he's not super popular with the ladies. (3) He really, really admires this one woman, Irene Adler.
Since Watson got married (to Mary Morstan, in Conan Doyle's second Holmes novel, The Sign of Four), he hasn't been seeing as much of Holmes.
Watson's happy at home, and Holmes is still living it up as a bachelor in their old apartment in Baker Street—as both a detective and an addict.
Watson refers to several fictional cases that he's vaguely heard about in connection with Holmes: "the Trepoff Murder, [...] the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and [...] the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland" (Bohemia.1.2). The Trepoff murder brings Holmes to Odessa, Ukraine. (P.S. Trincomalee is a city in Sri Lanka.)
This brings us to March 20, 1888, when Watson is walking home after seeing a patient.
Watson's stroll takes him past his old apartment in Baker Street, where he sees Holmes pass twice in front of the window. Watson can tell from Holmes's energy that he's excited about a case—and off the drugs (for now).
He rings the bell and is let in to Holmes's flat. Holmes doesn't seem all that psyched to see Watson, but Watson thinks he's glad anyway.
Holmes comments that Watson's looking good; he's put on weight.
Watson gets kind of defensive, but Holmes isn't kidding: "'I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you'" (Bohemia.1.5).
He also comments that Watson's working again as a doctor. (Holmes uses the words "'into harness'" [Bohemia.1.7], analogizing Watson's work with that of a cart or plough horse, i.e., a working animal.)
(Watson was an army doctor in Afghanistan during the Second Afghan War from 1878-1880 before he came back to London and became roomies with the great detective in the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet. Watson couldn't practice as a doctor at the time because of health issues from a leg wound from the war, but in this story, set several years after the first book, Watson appears to have gone back to treating people in private practice.)
Watson asks how Holmes knows all these details; Holmes says he observes it from Watson's appearance, just as he sees that Watson's been getting soaked lately and that his servant girl is clumsy.
Watson is all, "What?! He did get wet on a country walk that Thursday; and his servant girl, Mary Jane, is so terrible that his wife has fired her. But how can Holmes have guessed?" (Yeah, we're paraphrasing.)
Holmes laughs and answers. He tells Watson his left shoe has six almost-parallel cuts caused by the hands of someone awkwardly trying to scrape mud from the sole—hence, the walk in wet weather and the clumsy Mary Jane. Also, he smells like iodoform (a disinfectant) and nitrate of silver (a treatment for eye infections and gonorrhea), and his hat has a bulge from where Watson's carrying his stethoscope. In Holmes's mind, he would have to be an idiot not to know that Watson's a practicing doctor.
After Holmes describes his creative process, Watson expresses amazement: his eyes are as good as Holmes's, and Holmes's deductions seem obvious after they've been described; yet Watson can never seem to recreate Holmes's method on his own. Ugh.
Holmes says (and we paraphrase) "Well, how many times have you gone up the stairs to this apartment?" "Hundreds of times," replies Watson. "How many stairs are there?" asks Holmes. "I dunno," says Watson.
Holmes replies that this is proof of the difference between the two men: Watson has seen the stairs, but Holmes has observed them. And there are seventeen steps, by the way.
Holmes has received an undated, unsigned letter informing him that someone's going to come at 7:45—possibly with a mask on.
The two guys brainstorm about who the author of the note could be. He's got to be (a) rich and (b) German (the paper itself is from Bohemia, which used to be part of the Austrian empire and is now the greater part of the Czech Republic).
The obvious wealth of the visitor's carriage, or "brougham," as he pulls up to 221 Baker Street proves Watson's point that he's probably got a lot of cash: his pair of horses are worth a cool 150 guineas each. (A guinea was worth 1.05 pounds. That'd make the amount 157.50 British pounds, or the equivalent of around 12,538 pounds today—or, in American terms, $20,141 dollars each. So it makes sense that Holmes is all excited about how much money is probably going to come out of this case.)
In comes the visitor. He's 6'6", dressed richly (almost too rich to be tasteful, comments Watson reprovingly), and "appears to be a man of strong character" (Bohemia.1.42). In other words, he looks stubborn and tough.
The guy announces himself in a thick German accent. He says his name is Count von Kramm and that he has a story to tell them—one that absolutely must stay a secret.
He also asks that Holmes and Watson excuse his mask. The Count's being employed by an important person who doesn't want the great detective to trace his identity. In fact, the Count acknowledges, his own name (von Kramm) is made up.
Masks, however, are no match for Sherlock Holmes! Holmes tells the Count that he knows that the Count is in fact Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and hereditary king of Bohemia.
The "Count," now king, throws off his mask. He says that he shouldn't have bothered trying to hide, but he's in an extremely delicate position that he has to deal with himself... and he's not used to such dealings.
The king's problem is this: five years before, during a visit to Warsaw (now capital of Poland, then under Russian control), he met a pretty lady and "adventurer" named Irene Adler.
(As a side note, Holmes inserts some info on her, taken from his own records on notable persons: Adler was born in New Jersey in 1858, sings contralto, has retired from the opera, and now lives in London.)
The king is freaked out because he needs to recover some sexy-times letters he wrote to her before it gets out that the two had a fling. But that's not the worst piece of evidence against him: he also allowed himself to be photographed with her, thus proving their affair.
The king's tried hiring people to burgle her house, take her luggage during her travels, and hold her up directly, but he still hasn't been able to get the photograph back.
He needs it because he's engaged to the daughter of the king of Scandinavia, who's strict about conduct and wouldn't be pleased to hear about the king's earlier indiscretions.
Adler herself has threatened to send the photograph because she doesn't want the king to marry another woman. She has warned him that she will give the picture to his betrothed on the day when their engagement becomes public—a.k.a. three days from now.
And now, for music to Holmes's ears: the king tells Holmes that money is no object, and he hands over three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in bills. ($128,149 in today's cash. Nice.)
The king provides Adler's address in London and confirms that the photograph was "a cabinet," a type popular for portraits in the 1870s and 80s, of around postcard size.
The king departs in his carriage, and Watson takes off to return at 3:00PM the following day.
Part 2
Watson turns up right on time at Baker Street the next day, but Holmes is out. According to his landlady, Holmes left the house just after eight that morning.
As Watson settles in to wait, he mentions that he hadn't even considered the possibility that Holmes would fail; he's just waiting for the pleasure of seeing how Holmes will close the case.
Just before four, the door opens: a "drunkenlooking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes" walks through the door.
Even though Watson knows how good Holmes is at disguising himself, he still has to look three times to be sure it's his friend.
Holmes (still in costume) collapses into a chair and laughs.
He's just been visiting Briony Lodge, where Irene Adler lives in a "bijou" (French for "jewel") villa that's well-furnished.
Holmes has found a great source of information on her life: the guys who work at the "mews," or row of stables, in the lane behind her house. A bunch of them are cabbies (these would've been horse-drawn cabs since we're back in olden times), so they've had the chance to bring her only regular male visitor, Mr. Godfrey Norton, to and from the house.
After finding all this out and wondering who this "male visitor" could be (lawyer? buddy? lover?), Holmes sees a well-dressed, handsome guy (clearly Norton) turn up in a hansom (read: two-wheel horse-drawn) cab.
Norton rushes into the house, stays for half an hour, comes out again, and demands that his cabdriver take him to the Church of St. Monica in Edgeware Road. (By the way: Edgeware Road and the whole Marylebone district in London are known for being two things: a place with awesome, diverse night life, and the home of the real life 221 Baker Street, made famous by these very stories. See how life imitates art imitating life?)
So then a beautiful lady comes running out of Briony Lodge to meet her coachman (in a "landau," a kind of carriage); she tells the driver to go to the Church of St. Monica and step on it.
Our detective follows suit, arriving at the church in time to see Godfrey Norton, the lovely lady, and a clergyman. Holmes quickly starts pretending to be just some guy hanging around the church.
Suddenly, these three whirl around to look at Holmes (not recognizing, of course, that he's the great detective because he's still in disguise).
Norton grabs him and asks that Holmes be his best man—without a witness, his marriage to the lovely lady (Irene Adler) won't be legal because there's some issue with their marriage license.
So that's why Holmes has been laughing so hard since coming home. In the middle of his inv
Our narrator (Dr. John Watson) describes Holmes: (1) He's a coldly rational guy. (2) Because of this, he's not super popular with the ladies. (3) He really, really admires this one woman, Irene Adler.
Since Watson got married (to Mary Morstan, in Conan Doyle's second Holmes novel, The Sign of Four), he hasn't been seeing as much of Holmes.
Watson's happy at home, and Holmes is still living it up as a bachelor in their old apartment in Baker Street—as both a detective and an addict.
Watson refers to several fictional cases that he's vaguely heard about in connection with Holmes: "the Trepoff Murder, [...] the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and [...] the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland" (Bohemia.1.2). The Trepoff murder brings Holmes to Odessa, Ukraine. (P.S. Trincomalee is a city in Sri Lanka.)
This brings us to March 20, 1888, when Watson is walking home after seeing a patient.
Watson's stroll takes him past his old apartment in Baker Street, where he sees Holmes pass twice in front of the window. Watson can tell from Holmes's energy that he's excited about a case—and off the drugs (for now).
He rings the bell and is let in to Holmes's flat. Holmes doesn't seem all that psyched to see Watson, but Watson thinks he's glad anyway.
Holmes comments that Watson's looking good; he's put on weight.
Watson gets kind of defensive, but Holmes isn't kidding: "'I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you'" (Bohemia.1.5).
He also comments that Watson's working again as a doctor. (Holmes uses the words "'into harness'" [Bohemia.1.7], analogizing Watson's work with that of a cart or plough horse, i.e., a working animal.)
(Watson was an army doctor in Afghanistan during the Second Afghan War from 1878-1880 before he came back to London and became roomies with the great detective in the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet. Watson couldn't practice as a doctor at the time because of health issues from a leg wound from the war, but in this story, set several years after the first book, Watson appears to have gone back to treating people in private practice.)
Watson asks how Holmes knows all these details; Holmes says he observes it from Watson's appearance, just as he sees that Watson's been getting soaked lately and that his servant girl is clumsy.
Watson is all, "What?! He did get wet on a country walk that Thursday; and his servant girl, Mary Jane, is so terrible that his wife has fired her. But how can Holmes have guessed?" (Yeah, we're paraphrasing.)
Holmes laughs and answers. He tells Watson his left shoe has six almost-parallel cuts caused by the hands of someone awkwardly trying to scrape mud from the sole—hence, the walk in wet weather and the clumsy Mary Jane. Also, he smells like iodoform (a disinfectant) and nitrate of silver (a treatment for eye infections and gonorrhea), and his hat has a bulge from where Watson's carrying his stethoscope. In Holmes's mind, he would have to be an idiot not to know that Watson's a practicing doctor.
After Holmes describes his creative process, Watson expresses amazement: his eyes are as good as Holmes's, and Holmes's deductions seem obvious after they've been described; yet Watson can never seem to recreate Holmes's method on his own. Ugh.
Holmes says (and we paraphrase) "Well, how many times have you gone up the stairs to this apartment?" "Hundreds of times," replies Watson. "How many stairs are there?" asks Holmes. "I dunno," says Watson.
Holmes replies that this is proof of the difference between the two men: Watson has seen the stairs, but Holmes has observed them. And there are seventeen steps, by the way.
Holmes has received an undated, unsigned letter informing him that someone's going to come at 7:45—possibly with a mask on.
The two guys brainstorm about who the author of the note could be. He's got to be (a) rich and (b) German (the paper itself is from Bohemia, which used to be part of the Austrian empire and is now the greater part of the Czech Republic).
The obvious wealth of the visitor's carriage, or "brougham," as he pulls up to 221 Baker Street proves Watson's point that he's probably got a lot of cash: his pair of horses are worth a cool 150 guineas each. (A guinea was worth 1.05 pounds. That'd make the amount 157.50 British pounds, or the equivalent of around 12,538 pounds today—or, in American terms, $20,141 dollars each. So it makes sense that Holmes is all excited about how much money is probably going to come out of this case.)
In comes the visitor. He's 6'6", dressed richly (almost too rich to be tasteful, comments Watson reprovingly), and "appears to be a man of strong character" (Bohemia.1.42). In other words, he looks stubborn and tough.
The guy announces himself in a thick German accent. He says his name is Count von Kramm and that he has a story to tell them—one that absolutely must stay a secret.
He also asks that Holmes and Watson excuse his mask. The Count's being employed by an important person who doesn't want the great detective to trace his identity. In fact, the Count acknowledges, his own name (von Kramm) is made up.
Masks, however, are no match for Sherlock Holmes! Holmes tells the Count that he knows that the Count is in fact Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and hereditary king of Bohemia.
The "Count," now king, throws off his mask. He says that he shouldn't have bothered trying to hide, but he's in an extremely delicate position that he has to deal with himself... and he's not used to such dealings.
The king's problem is this: five years before, during a visit to Warsaw (now capital of Poland, then under Russian control), he met a pretty lady and "adventurer" named Irene Adler.
(As a side note, Holmes inserts some info on her, taken from his own records on notable persons: Adler was born in New Jersey in 1858, sings contralto, has retired from the opera, and now lives in London.)
The king is freaked out because he needs to recover some sexy-times letters he wrote to her before it gets out that the two had a fling. But that's not the worst piece of evidence against him: he also allowed himself to be photographed with her, thus proving their affair.
The king's tried hiring people to burgle her house, take her luggage during her travels, and hold her up directly, but he still hasn't been able to get the photograph back.
He needs it because he's engaged to the daughter of the king of Scandinavia, who's strict about conduct and wouldn't be pleased to hear about the king's earlier indiscretions.
Adler herself has threatened to send the photograph because she doesn't want the king to marry another woman. She has warned him that she will give the picture to his betrothed on the day when their engagement becomes public—a.k.a. three days from now.
And now, for music to Holmes's ears: the king tells Holmes that money is no object, and he hands over three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in bills. ($128,149 in today's cash. Nice.)
The king provides Adler's address in London and confirms that the photograph was "a cabinet," a type popular for portraits in the 1870s and 80s, of around postcard size.
The king departs in his carriage, and Watson takes off to return at 3:00PM the following day.
Part 2
Watson turns up right on time at Baker Street the next day, but Holmes is out. According to his landlady, Holmes left the house just after eight that morning.
As Watson settles in to wait, he mentions that he hadn't even considered the possibility that Holmes would fail; he's just waiting for the pleasure of seeing how Holmes will close the case.
Just before four, the door opens: a "drunkenlooking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes" walks through the door.
Even though Watson knows how good Holmes is at disguising himself, he still has to look three times to be sure it's his friend.
Holmes (still in costume) collapses into a chair and laughs.
He's just been visiting Briony Lodge, where Irene Adler lives in a "bijou" (French for "jewel") villa that's well-furnished.
Holmes has found a great source of information on her life: the guys who work at the "mews," or row of stables, in the lane behind her house. A bunch of them are cabbies (these would've been horse-drawn cabs since we're back in olden times), so they've had the chance to bring her only regular male visitor, Mr. Godfrey Norton, to and from the house.
After finding all this out and wondering who this "male visitor" could be (lawyer? buddy? lover?), Holmes sees a well-dressed, handsome guy (clearly Norton) turn up in a hansom (read: two-wheel horse-drawn) cab.
Norton rushes into the house, stays for half an hour, comes out again, and demands that his cabdriver take him to the Church of St. Monica in Edgeware Road. (By the way: Edgeware Road and the whole Marylebone district in London are known for being two things: a place with awesome, diverse night life, and the home of the real life 221 Baker Street, made famous by these very stories. See how life imitates art imitating life?)
So then a beautiful lady comes running out of Briony Lodge to meet her coachman (in a "landau," a kind of carriage); she tells the driver to go to the Church of St. Monica and step on it.
Our detective follows suit, arriving at the church in time to see Godfrey Norton, the lovely lady, and a clergyman. Holmes quickly starts pretending to be just some guy hanging around the church.
Suddenly, these three whirl around to look at Holmes (not recognizing, of course, that he's the great detective because he's still in disguise).
Norton grabs him and asks that Holmes be his best man—without a witness, his marriage to the lovely lady (Irene Adler) won't be legal because there's some issue with their marriage license.
So that's why Holmes has been laughing so hard since coming home. In the middle of his inv
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