Issue 8 : Hound, Chapters 10 and 11

I shrugged my shoulders. "If he were safely out of the country it would relieve the taxpayer of a burden."
In Chapter VI of Hound, Selden is described as "the Notting Hill murderer." Watson adds:

I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct.

It seems strange that Dr. Watson and Sir Henry would be unconcerned about letting loose a vicious murderer on the unsuspecting population of South America, simply because his absence from Dartmoor Prison would relieve the English taxpayer from the burden of supporting him.

Conditions at Dartmoor had improved slightly since the previous century, but taxpayers' money was certainly not being wasted on frills. In Five Years' Penal Servitude By One Who Has Endured It (1877), the anonymous author describes life in Dartmoor prison at around the time of Selden's imprisonment. Sadly, he describes a merely comfortable hammock as a "luxury."

He also describes some of the men he was incarcerated with:

It has been my sad experience to have met at Dartmoor with creatures in human form who seem to be of a different species to ordinary men. They are mere brutes in mind and demons in heart. … The very worst of the characters I have been brought into contact with have generally belonged to a class known as roughs, and the worst of all are London roughs. This class appear to me to be almost irreclaimable, and not at all amenable to any ordinary moral influence. As a rule, they are as cowardly as they are brutal—their animal instincts and propensities predominate to the almost total exclusion of any intellectual or human feeling, and with them, I fear, there is but one mode of effectually dealing. Brutes they are, and as brutes only can they be punished and coerced, and that is by the Lash.

Like Watson—and many Victorians—this anonymous prisoner sees those who have committed heinous crimes as mere animals who are not entitled to human consideration. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent….
Watson feels that he is developing wisdom mixed with guile, characteristic of the serpent in folklore.

…and he and the baronet played écarté afterwards.
Écarté is a two-person card game that resembles euchre. It was much in vogue in England and France during the early 19^th century. Perhaps they are a bit behind the times in Dartmoor.

…a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter….
E. Remington & Sons, a firearms company, took up the manufacture of typewriters in 1816. In 1886, the typewriter component of the company was sold, becoming the Remington Typewriter Company. The original manufacturer continues to make firearms to this day.

…the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose.
Native to South America, the "sulphur rose" is the ancestor of modern yellow roses.

There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty.
Conan Doyle skillfully chooses adjectives to describe the lady’s face—"coarseness," "hardness," "looseness"—that contain a subtly negative judgment of her moral character.

I knew already that Sir Charles Baskerville had made Stapleton his almoner upon several occasions….
Sir Charles had asked Stapleton to distribute alms, or charity, to local people as his agent.

"My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor. The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility that he may force me to live with him."
Divorce laws in England specified the few conditions under which a woman could obtain a divorce. Without proof of extreme cruelty, a woman had little chance of being allowed to separate from her husband. Conan Doyle was a strong advocate for liberalization of these laws.

…and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor.
In fact, relatively few of the remaining moor huts are complete enough to serve as habitation or hiding place. Most are either ruined or reduced to mere circles, since the thatch and wood that made up their roofs, and all or part of their walls, disintegrated millennia ago.

"I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton's park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We'll teach these magnates that they cannot ride rough-shod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles."
On the same day, Frankland succeeded in having two contradictory judgments passed: one that exalted the rights of the commoner over the larger landholder, and another that reaffirmed the right of private property. No wonder that he is often burned in effigy by disgruntled townsfolk. …stood upon the flat leads of the house.
The telescope sits on the strips of lead used for roofing the house.

The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather.
At right, a rocky, desolate moor scene like the one Watson might have crossed in search of the mysterious stranger. From Samuel Rowe's A Perambulation of the Ancient and Royal Forest of Dartmoor (1848).

…a pannikin…."
A small pan.

"It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson," said a well-known voice. "I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in."
Conan Doyle—through Watson himself—has given us all the clues we need to figure out the identity of this mysterious "stranger." We have been told that he is a gentleman, that he is tall and slender, has Spartan habits, and is able to withstand difficult and trying conditions. Cleverly, Conan Doyle mixes clear hints about who he must be with mysterious innuendos. An example from Chapter 9, when Watson sees the stranger standing on a tor in the moonlight:

He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place.

Now, as the stranger speaks for the first time, we have our final clue—and yet Conan Doyle waits until the next issue to confirm the plot twist that he has just unveiled. Sherlock Holmes in Stamps

During the last 150 years, the image of Sherlock Holmes with deerstalker and magnifying glass has become a potent symbol, instantly recognizable the world over. Nearly a dozen countries have printed postage stamps representing the Great Detective, his constant companion Dr. Watson, or images from the stories they have appeared in together. See "The Philatelic Sherlock Holmes," by Steve Trussell, at www.trussel.com/detfic/sholmes.htm for more information.

First sold on May 13, 1997, this British stamp representing the Hound of the Baskervilles shows the flames dancing around his eyes and jaws as triangular white shapes.

Another British stamp commemorating Hound (October 13, 1993), appears with a selection of pictures from other stories. In each picture, a letter of the name "Doyle" can be found, not in order. Be warned—the letters are very small. You might need your magnifying glass.