Discussion Post: Shoscombe Old Place

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

It's Sunday, and we're back at sherlock60 for another new canon story. This week, we're reading and writing about Shoscombe Old Place. What did you all think? Let's hear it! As always, here are a few thoughts and questions of mine to get you started. Please add your own!

- Sir Robert is a successful jockey despite him being "huge in stature". Surprising? Maybe his rough will and powerful need make up for his extreme size.

- How close were Sir Robert and Lady Beatrice? They supposedly were the best of friends, but Sir Robert seems awfully calm when she finally passes away. She had been ailing for a long time and it would make sense he would be prepared for the inevitable to some extent emotionally. And of course he had the fear of absolute destitution to push him along. But surely if he had truly loved her as we heard, it would have been more upsetting to discover her death, carry her dead body around twice, and have to give away her sweet, devoted dog when he would not leave her side. Was he honestly that cold a person at heart? Or just so desperate he was able to push his mourning aside to do it?

- There's something wonderful about Watson's selectively ornate way of speaking. Instead of just "fishing", he says "extirpation of the fish of the neighborhood". That is beautiful like fine filigree, decorative and intricate.

- Which one of them caught the trout for dinner?

- The casual racism about Jewish creditors is difficult for a modern reader. The lens of time isn't kind to everything in these stories. Overall they hold up remarkably well given the great distance between when they were written and now. But occasionally you get something truly incompatible with modern conventional ethics that was acceptable in its time. We see that here and we'll see it again next week in Sign of the Four with negative minority stereotypes. How much, if at all, do things like this detract from the story for you? Do they bother you or do you find them part and parcel of the time and therefore not a problem?

- Speaking of Sign of the Four, are you reading yet? We're taking on the whole novel in next Sunday, so everybody get to it! :)

Comments

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

I read Sign of the Four again a while ago, and I did notice the stereotypes. What I also noticed though was that there is a hint of breaking with them, which rather surprised me. The main villains in these stories are almost never foreigners, as far as I remember, even when foreigners are always the first suspects, and often described in a less than tolerant light. Which, sadly, isn't much different in today's world, the world of literature included.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

This is a really underrated story - but definitely a weird one, i mean the plot is one big WTF?! - which i only began to fully appreciate once i read it more neutrally (so to speak) in a collection called simply 'Sherlock Holmes Stories'.

also, i love the finding of the bones - a last hurrah for Doyle's occasional touch of the macabre. the last stories are definitely dark!

i agree about Watson's language use - it puts in me in mind of David Burke in The Solitary Cyclist (i hope, oh my fading memory) when he finishes his write up.

as for the stereotypes - i wish i could be more blasé but they do sting a bit, i realise that it would be ignoring historical context to expect an entirely modern sensibility of a writer from the 1880s to 1930s but considering some of Conan-Doyle's earlier writing - in the canon and elsewhere, it's difficult not to find it disappointing.

i can cope with it though on the whole - with the exception of The Three Gables which is just ugly.

trout fishing for beginners or shoscombe old sense

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

oddly enough (or not) i stumbled on a quote that sort of sums up the melancholy tone of the last couple of stories and particularly this one; it also seems apt for Conan-Doyle and how he saw himself - and features a Trout!

i know Doyle was fond of in-jokes but i doubt he read Ezra Pound - all the same:

"For three years, out of key with his time
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start -

No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait."

so, um, there you are then. er... yes. quite so.
ahem.

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

It's possible that Sir Robert was a jockey despite his current stature. Steeplechase jockeys are generally taller than those who ride on the flat, and someone who was a jockey as a young man may well broaden in later life.

I imagine that Sir Robert was rather more devoted to his sister in what she meant to him in terms of position and support rather than in pure affection.

I find that the racism jars, especially as although the story is set about 1900 it wasn't written until about 1927. And it's not just because it shows ACD's prejudices, but that of his reading public, who would understand that "The Jews" stood for money lenders.

The other thing that jars, and perhaps even more so, is that the events are all swept under the carpet and Sir Robert suffers no consequences for his actions.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

i just realised (or am perhaps just wondering);
is not the huge in stature and mightily moustachioed Sir Rob a cameo guest appearance at the last hurrah by ACD himself...

Sunday, 15 April 2012

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

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