Dr. Watson, A Yellow-Backed Novel, and A Frisky Matron

 

I tried to interest myself in a yellow-backed novel.

Tonight I found myself avoiding the real work by "doing research."  The rabbit-warren I fell into was entirely Dr. Watson's fault. While searching for something that might have actually helped me accomplish my real task, I stumbled across Watson trying to interest himself in that  yellow-backed novel. You know, the one he eventually flung across the room because:

"The puny plot of the story was so thin, however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the fiction to the fact..."

Of course I know what a yellow-backed novel is, but, in the spirit of my procrastination-fueled research, I took Les Klinger's annotated down from the shelf to review his note concerning Watson's reading in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery." As always, his work was interesting to consider:

A novel usually bound in vividly illustrated  yellow boards, intended for railway travellers. Also known as "sensation novels," books of this genre revelled in stories of adultery, bigamy, murder, and illegitimacy. For example, In Mary Elizabeth (M.E.) Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), the heroine abandons her child, murders her husband, and considers poisoning her second husband. Other very popular works were Wilkie Collin's The Woman in White (1860) and Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood's East Lynne (1861). Sensation novels were in many ways precursors to thriller and even detective fiction.

Now, I should have stopped right there and went back to the real work. But, no. In the spirit of my membership in the The Baker Street Guttersnipes: The Society for the Canonically Coarse, I started laughing at the use of the phrase "...through which we were groping..."; I wondered if he were feeling a little Canonically Coarse when he wrote it. And then I realized that I had never actually looked at a real yellow-backed novel from Watson's era. Time for a Google search. There was nothing else to do. (Well, other than going back to work.)

I quickly found a treasure trove of yellow-backed pages but I settled on viewing a nice collection at Emory Center for Digital Scholarship | Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

Some of the titles are an absolute delight: 

• Sir Harry and the Widows, or, Nothing hazard, Nothing Lose, a Love Story, Humorous and Pathetic
• Flower and Weed and Other Tales
• A Mental Struggle
• Princess Napraxine
• Moths
• Puck, His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies
• Uncle Ezekiel and his Exploits on Two Continents
• Gerard, or, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, a Novel
  

Sounds very much like life in 2024, yes?  I think my favorite though was the simply titled A Frisky Matron. I'm willing to bet A Frisky Matron would sell better on Amazon than most "literature." (It is probably already there. I didn't look.)

Maybe the Guttersnipes should sponsor a writing contest: Who can write the best short story inspired by the title "A Frisky Matron for Dr. Watson." I may go suggest it. 

 

Poor Watson, he didn't have the internet in his pocket to help him waste his time while he waited for Holmes to return. But if the internet had existed then he might never have written a word at all and my life would have been half as much fun as it is now.

 

 

 

 

WHEN I HAD GOT SO FAR IN MY LIST I THREW IT INTO THE FIRE

 

 

When I had got so far in my list I threw it into the fire in despair. "If I can only find what the fellow is driving at by reconciling all these accomplishments, and discovering a calling which needs them all," I said to myself. -- Dr. John H. Watson, A Study in Scarlet

Watson's perplexed list making of Sherlock Holmes's limits in the early pages of A Study in Scarlet is one of my favorite gifts from among the many gifts Arthur Conan Doyle extends to the Sherlockian within that book. In addition to providing endless fodder for discussion among those of us playing the great game, it is one part of the way A Study in Scarlet teaches us how to operate, Watson style: Think it through, make an itemized list of ideas, think it through some more, ask some questions, put yourself in the right place at the right time, take a chance at doing something new, do a little leg work, drink and smoke a little, and then write it all down in an engaging manner. 

Not too shabby of a modus operandi, yes? I like it and I've been thinking about how to emulate Watson's style as work begins on my next book, Sherlock Holmes: Into the Fire, due next year from Belanger Books. (And, yes, it is not lost on me that my last post prior to this one, in December, before my three-month hiatus, questioned whether I would do any more Holmes writing.) Things tend to work out as Derrick Belanger once told me: "About the time you think you're done with Holmes, Watson starts whispering in your ear."

The idea for this book actually originated with the brilliant Dr. Mark Jones several years ago; he mentioned it to me in conversation, and then we discussed co-editing the book along with the equally brilliant Nancy Holder. Sadly, busy schedules and too much real life kept getting in the way. The idea, to have an anthology of Arthur Conan Doyle's Round The Fire stories rewritten as Sherlock Holmes adventures, languished. This February, three or four years on, I had some time and some thoughts about what the book might look like--how it might be structured to meet Mark's vision and to best please readers.  Therefore, with his urging and with enthusiastic support from Belanger Books, I'm going to spend the next ten months working to bring it to life.

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his preface to Round The Fire that the stories were concerned "...with the grotesque and with the terrible." Mixing Holmes and these stories seemed to make sense to me when I considered two of his statements from The Hound of the Baskervilles:

The grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective.

The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.

Those two thoughts are now the underlying premise of the book.  A few of the stories have, of course, been adapted to Holmes and Watson before but that does not mean a skilled writer might not find something new to do with the inspiration. Finding the needed skilled writer (actually 17 skilled writers) became my first hurdle. And my first list: the names of skilled writers whose work would elevate the book if I should be so lucky to have them agree to write for it. I then made a second list, the 17 inspiration stories:

• THE LEATHER FUNNEL                     
• THE BEETLE HUNTER      
• THE MAN WITH THE WATCHES             
• THE POT OF CAVIARE 
• THE JAPANNED BOX                 
• THE BLACK DOCTOR  
• PLAYING WITH FIRE                
• THE JEW'S BREASTPLATE
• THE LOST SPECIAL                     
• THE CLUB-FOOTED GROCER 
• THE SEALED ROOM                  
• THE BRAZILIAN CAT 
• THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL            
• THE BROWN HAND 
• THE FIEND OF THE COOPERAGE             
• JELLAND'S VOYAGE 
• B. 24

Then I spent a week sending invitations, three or four at a time, asking the writers on list one to come on board by choosing a story from list two. The pairings were made within eight days. The response was stellar. 

I breathed a big sigh of relief and offered a toast to the good doctor. (I skipped the smoking, although I have wondered in the past if it is necessary to smoke in order to work with Holmes and Watson.) Watson might approve of my work. I had reconciled the accomplished writers with a calling that needed them all. And I did throw my list Into The Fire, but not in despair. 

Well, not yet anyway; we still have ten months to go. Anything can happen. At the moment, I feel very much like Watson did when he set out to find Isa Whitney:

And so in ten minutes I had left my armchair and cheery sitting-room behind me, and was speeding eastward in a hansom on a strange errand, as it seemed to me at the time, though the future only could show how strange it was to be.

How strange is this errand going to be? I don't know but I'm looking forward to finding out.