As I Hear HOLMES’S PIPES

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32304, 23 May 1970, Page 8

As I Hear HOLMES’S PIPES

<Bu J.H.E.S.) I would be abrogating a duty I have assumed for two or three years, if I did not comment on the several photographs of graduands of [Canterbury University in a recent issue of “The Press.” I shall not labour—"belabour” is the current error —the point but say shortly that the neckband of the graduate’s hood is indeed a neckband and not intended to draw down the folds of the hood, so that their colours are displayed over the shoulders, by fastening it with a pin over the lower breast. Charming as may be the display of colour so I drawn into frontal view, a neckband is a neckband is a neckband, to adapt Gertrude Stein’s famous statement. So all I can say (without a twinge of regret) is

that my preaching has been in vain. There they are, or were, dozens of them in the J pictures, hundreds of them in fact, well pinned down, including five doctors of philosophy, well pinned down and showing their colours over their shoulders. But I do not forget, as I said a year ago, that the new Canterbury hoods are so designed as to trail very low, inconveniently low, unless the neckband is drawn down and pinned to save the tail from draggling in the dirt. If that is so, I excuse the graduands: but I do not excuse the council which has reduced them to this necessity. They might have been saved from it by the advice of an expert in academic costume and from the charge of a regimental sergeant-j major, “Improperly dressed [ on parade”: a very serious! one, I assure you. 4s * *

I have just read the “N.Z. Listener’s” prolegomena to a

new television series of Sheri lock Holmes stories. Peter i Cushing, who plays the lead, : observes that the meerschaum 1 pipe commonly attributed to ’ Holmes is to be derived, not i from the text but from Gillette’s impersonation in • the Broadway stage produc- ■ tion: to which 1 may add that, ■as I recall them, Paget’s i “Strand” drawings showed J what was then called a calaI bash pipe Not a meerschaum. I But I go on to say that this : | question of Holmes’s pipes I has long puzzled me. Lord forbid that I should invade jthe territory of Professor -Roberts, of Vincent Starret, i and so on, who have so i closely examined the evi- ; dence relating to Holmes and ■ Watson. I wish only to add •an amateur’s questions to those raised by the records : and pursued by these

searchers, to whom I should jadd Monsignor Ronald Knox. (My questions relate to Holmes’s pipes. It happens that I have very! lately read the four long stories and the omnibus collection of the short stories; and I recall only one reference to meerschaum, as to the stem of a pipe, not to a meerschaum as such. Everybody knows that some briars were fitted with a meerschaum stem; and (so much for that. But, for the rest, Holmes’s pipes are described as a blackened clay, otherwise as a briar, but for one reference to a “long cherry wood,” described as his ■ favourite resource when devoting himself to a long session of (thought. 1 find no other referjence to this long cherry wood. One other puzzle. I find in a late story a referjence to Holmes’s favourite , loaded hunting crop as a Iweapon. I do not recall [earlier references to this Iweapon. As for revolvers, I I recall many occasions when (Holmes advised Watson to | pack his on one of their! expeditions: but I recall several occasions when Holmes put his own pistol in his pocket: none, when he furnished himself with his loaded crop. So there you are.

But I am reminded of Holmes’s monographs on such questions, to which he attached great professional importance, as the ash of different kind of tobacco. No doubt the monograph on this subject was as precise as it (should have been; but Watson’s memoirs raise a doubt. In “A Study in Scarlet" I Holmes comes on “a little .pile of grey dust” and packs it away in an envelope, identifying it as that of a Trichinopoly cigar. In “The Sign of Four” he comes on some 'more cigar ash. “To the trained eye,” he observes, (“there is as much difference (between the black ash of a (Trichinopoly and white ash iof bird’s-eye as there is (between a cabbage and a I potato.” But grey dust from [a Trichinopoly and black ash [from a Trichinopoly: and yoti (must take your choice. Either [the famous monograph 'wobbled or Watson wobbled, as, indeed, there is

• plenty of evidence to suggest ■ he did. There is, for example, , the excellent story of the i Priory School, in which the > young Lord Saltire, son and I heir of the Duke of Holderi nesse, disappears from Dr i Huxtable’s establishment. In ■ a later story Watson refers—- , I use my erratic memory—to > the affair of the Abbey I School, from which another ■ boy vanished, the son of the • Duke of Greyminster. I give > Watson a belief just this side • of idolatry; but I shrink from I believing in disappearances ' from a Priory School and an Abbey School and in two ■ bereft Dukes and throw 1 myself back on the theory ■ that Watson confused the two stories and was helped to do 1 so by his notes on the case 1 of the Abbey Grange. ! * * ♦

I began on an academic note and may end on it. It gave > me special pleasure to read in “The Press” that the UniI versify of Canterbury had ; awarded the Margaret Cond- ■ liffe Memorial Prize to Dr D. W. Beaven. This is an unusual ■ award and it should be; for 1 the founder, Dr J. B. 1 Condliffe, a former professor ■ of economics in the univer- ; sity, designed it to recognise not a career and achievement I already fulfilled but the evident promise of an achieve- ' ment yet to be fulfilled. Condliffe made this very clear in his correspondence on the subject and I, then receiving it, fully agreed with him. It dismayed me, and I have no doubt Condliffe, that the university, either ignoring his- direction or failing to understand it, made its first award to Sir James Hight, whose career and achievement were complete. Thereafter the prize seemed to be forgotten. But, upon a little prodding, it was recalled, the files were searched, and Canterbury revived in awarding (the prize to Dr J. C. Beaglehole, so anticipating his award of the O.M. for his work on James Cook. I know nothing of Dr Beaven and his work beyond what I have read in these columns; but that is enough to assure me that the award has been well merited. To begin with, Mr Francis Shurrock was commissioned to design and strike a memorial medal. The inscription will no longer be valid. Then what has been done to substitute another plaque or medal?