THE SITUATION WAS FULL OF PERIL

First manuscript page of A Study in Scarlet

 

When I first ventured out to join a Sherlockian society (The Sound of the Baskervilles, Seattle, 2007) I found out to my relief that I was not the first newbie-Sherlockian that failed to enjoy (or, in all honesty, failed to completely read) the so-called American section of A Study in Scarlet. The SOBs even had an all-in-good-fun name for that part of the book, the LBP (the Long Boring Part). Since then, I've read parts of the novel several times but always gave that LBP less than full attention. After all, I reasoned, how could that part possibly compete with the origin story of the Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson friendship?

However, this week my Sherlockian friend J. mentioned that he was rereading A Study in Scarlet in preparation for a Sherlockian meeting. He then said he planned to read the non-Holmes part of the book first as if it were a stand alone novel. He wondered if he would find it interesting and valuable if read with no consideration of Holmes and Watson.  I decided he was on to something and I wanted to read it that way as well.

We recently read Daniel Stashower's Teller of Tales together and discussed how our understandings of Doyle and his work have changed. I wondered if I could finally appreciate Part II: The Country of the Saints, Chapters I-V?

To my surprise, I did not tire of it and Doyle's deft prose pulled me right along. John Ferrier, Lucy Ferrier and Jefferson Hope are sympathetic characters, and, as in some of Doyle's best work, the location is so vividly drawn as to become a character in the story.

I did not find it perfectly constructed. I did yell "Oh, Doyle, why didn't you have an editor?" when reading the part when Jefferson Hope meets Lucy Ferrier:

Unfortunately the horns of one of the creatures, either by accident or design, came in violent contact with the flank of the mustang, and excited it to madness. In an instant it reared up upon its hind legs with a snort of rage, and pranced and tossed in a way that would have unseated any but a skilful rider. The situation was full of peril. Every plunge of the excited horse brought it against the horns again, and goaded it to fresh madness. It was all that the girl could do to keep herself in the saddle, yet a slip would mean a terrible death under the hoofs of the unwieldy and terrified animals.  Unaccustomed to sudden emergencies, her head began to swim, and her grip upon the bridle to relax. Choked by the rising cloud of dust and by the steam from the struggling creatures, she might have abandoned her efforts in despair, but for a kindly voice at her elbow which assured her of assistance. At the same moment a sinewy brown hand caught the frightened horse by the curb, and forcing a way through the drove, soon brought her to the outskirts.

'You're not hurt, I hope, miss,' said her preserver, respectfully.
She looked up at his dark, fierce face, and laughed saucily. 'I'm awful frightened,' she said, naïvely; 'whoever would have thought that Pancho would have been so scared by a lot of cows?'
'Thank God you kept your seat,' the other said earnestly. He was a tall, savage-looking young fellow, mounted on a powerful roan horse, and clad in the rough dress of a hunter, with a long rifle slung over his shoulders.  'I guess you are the daughter of John Ferrier,' he remarked; 'I saw you ride down from his house. When you see him, ask him if he remembers the Jefferson Hopes of St Louis. If he's the same Ferrier, my father and he were pretty thick.'
'Hadn't you better come and ask yourself?' she asked, demurely.

An editor would have told him that he didn't need to tell me the situation was full of peril, and an editor would have done something about all those -ly adverbs stacked one upon the other. I also thought something was missing in the description of how Jefferson Hope knew where to look for Drebber and Strangerson. Doyle tells us:

Among these had been Drebber and Stangerson; and no one knew whither they had gone.  Rumour reported that Drebber had managed to convert a large part of his property into money, and that he had departed a wealthy man, while his companion, Stangerson, was comparatively poor. There was no clue at all, however, as to their whereabouts.
Many a man, however vindictive, would have abandoned all thought of revenge in the face of such a difficulty, but Jefferson Hope never faltered for a moment.  With the small competence he possessed, eked out by such employment as he could pick up, he travelled from town to town through the United States in quest of his enemies.

The United States is huge, and he certainly didn't have social media or the internet to help him. Even more improbably, he then goes on to tracking them city to city in Europe. How?

Possible plot holes aside, this story is interesting and compelling. Doyle was a young man in his twenties when he penned A Study in Scarlet over a period of several weeks in 1886 but his craftsmanship is already on display here, even in the part formerly known as the LBP.  This paragraph has the same poetic tones I've admired elsewhere in his work:

In the gladness of his heart he put his hands to his mouth and made the glen re-echo to a loud halloo as a signal that he was coming. He paused and listened for an answer. None came save his own cry, which clattered up the dreary, silent ravines, and was borne back to his ears in countless repetitions. Again he shouted, even louder than before, and again no whisper came back from the friends whom he had left such a short time ago.

Jefferson Hope had his heart broken a moment later, and so did I. The situation was full of peril and I'm glad I finally gave Doyle a chance to tell me about it.