Discussion Post: The Second Stain
Apr. 8th, 2012 12:56 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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sherlock60Happy Sunday, all! It's time for 60s and time again for a discussion thread. This week, we're tackling a good one: The Second Stain. What did you think of it? I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it. As always, here are a few thoughts and questions of my own to help get you started. Please add your own!
- The Second Stain takes place "in a year, and even in a decade, that shall be nameless". But is it, really? Watson gives us a LOT of information on which to base a time estimate. We have the names of the Prime Minister (possibly not the current one at the time, however) and the current foreign minister, as well as the specifics of a certain murder that could easily be looked up in police and newspaper records. Why all the secrecy if it is for nothing?
- Similarly, Holmes goes through a great deal of effort to save Lady Hilda from exposure she was desperate to prevent, but doesn't Watson's narrative here do just that? If her husband was going to find her youthful indiscretion "criminal" then, is there any reason to believe things would have changed over the years? Maybe she and/or he are deceased and it no longer matters? Any better ideas?
- Any guesses about the real contents and writer of the foreign potentate's letter? We know it has something to do with English colonial business...
- Watson certainly is taken with Lady Hilda, isn't he? The superlatives he uses to describe her! He raves over "the beautiful colouring of that exquisite head." Wow. And when she refuses to admit Holmes has her cornered, he compliments her courage. Do you think he would be so quick to admire such a brazen and hopelessly futile refusal to concede defeat to Sherlock Holmes if Hilda were a man or an old, unattractive woman?
- Lord Bellinger is able to tell Holmes did something to make the envelope reappear and is now covering it up. After all that happened, do you think Trelawney Hope's career suffered anyway? Even if Holmes' "diplomatic secrets" are conveniently ignored or forgotten, Hope still looks like an incompetent fool for thinking he lost the envelope in the box.
- The Second Stain takes place "in a year, and even in a decade, that shall be nameless". But is it, really? Watson gives us a LOT of information on which to base a time estimate. We have the names of the Prime Minister (possibly not the current one at the time, however) and the current foreign minister, as well as the specifics of a certain murder that could easily be looked up in police and newspaper records. Why all the secrecy if it is for nothing?
- Similarly, Holmes goes through a great deal of effort to save Lady Hilda from exposure she was desperate to prevent, but doesn't Watson's narrative here do just that? If her husband was going to find her youthful indiscretion "criminal" then, is there any reason to believe things would have changed over the years? Maybe she and/or he are deceased and it no longer matters? Any better ideas?
- Any guesses about the real contents and writer of the foreign potentate's letter? We know it has something to do with English colonial business...
- Watson certainly is taken with Lady Hilda, isn't he? The superlatives he uses to describe her! He raves over "the beautiful colouring of that exquisite head." Wow. And when she refuses to admit Holmes has her cornered, he compliments her courage. Do you think he would be so quick to admire such a brazen and hopelessly futile refusal to concede defeat to Sherlock Holmes if Hilda were a man or an old, unattractive woman?
- Lord Bellinger is able to tell Holmes did something to make the envelope reappear and is now covering it up. After all that happened, do you think Trelawney Hope's career suffered anyway? Even if Holmes' "diplomatic secrets" are conveniently ignored or forgotten, Hope still looks like an incompetent fool for thinking he lost the envelope in the box.
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-08 08:12 am (UTC)Might be me, but wasn't there a remark in the beginning that enough time had passed so that Watson could write about this one? I guess there's been enough grass growing over all matters involved. :/
no subject
Date: 2012-04-08 09:26 am (UTC)i agree that Hope seems a buffoon - but then again the plot and the documents are but a maguffin (red herring).
this story has a tortuous history being lined up as a potential novel at one stage before becoming 'Return's' lucky 13 - and apparently the final realisation disappointed many fans - i am at a loss to explain why, except that it is rather similar to The Naval Treaty.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-08 12:10 pm (UTC)Narrowing down which part of the world was involved with British colonial business, at a time when the British Empire was at his greatest, probably doesn't rule out many nations! It may be significant that in 1904 (when ACD wrote the story) the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France was signed.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-08 08:00 pm (UTC)“The other, dark, clear-cut, and elegant, hardly yet of middle age, and endowed with every beauty of body and of mind, was the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope…”
Either Watson was in an exceptionally rhapsodic mood when writing this story, or one set of statements is counter-balancing the others, or...well, it's certainly open to interpretation, isn't it? ;-)
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