at him. “My dear fellow,” he began, but Dr Watson cut him off.
“The composition we heard last night was ‘The Dying Poet,’” he said, “not ‘The Dying Swan!’”
“I still say you are wrong,” Holmes rejoined.
“What does the programme say?” said Watson.
Holmes tossed it aside. “It is of no help whatsoever.”
“I have just come from the Royal Albert Hall,” Watson declared, “and they assured me that the piece Mr Balakirev played was indeed ‘The Dying Poet.’”
Mr Holmes looked unconvinced.
“If you don’t believe me, come along with me and hear it with your own ears,” Watson insisted.
“That will not be necessary,” Holmes replied stiffly. “I can rely upon your word.”
“What is this all about?” I said.
“We attended a concert last night,” Watson replied, “the second half of which was devoted to the music of—”
“Yes, yes, I know—Louis Gottschalk,” I interrupted. “What has a bet to do with all this?”
“In the back of the hansom cab afterwards Holmes insisted that the third piece was called ‘The Dying Swan,’ whereas I thought I recognized it as ‘The Dying Poet.’ So we made a bet on the spot—whoever was wrong would pay for dinner at the Savoy.”
Holmes turned to me. “Will you do the honour of accompanying us, Mrs Hudson?”
I felt my face redden. “Why, Mr Holmes—”
“Oh, do come along, Mrs Hudson,” Dr Watson said. “Otherwise I fear Holmes here will sulk the entire evening.”
“If you insist,” said I.
“Shall we say seven o’clock?” said Holmes.
“Very well,” I replied. “And now I’d best be seeing about some eggs and sausage for your breakfast.”
“Thank you, Mrs Hudson—I’m starving,” said Dr Watson.
“And you, Mr Holmes?”
“I’m not hungry,” he replied moodily.
I chuckled. “I daresay that will change when you inhale the aroma of a chive omelet and some lamb sausage.”
And with that, I hustled myself downstairs into the kitchen, where I prepared a rather splendid breakfast, if I do say so myself.
It was not as splendid as the meal we dined on that night, however—oysters and game cock and blueberry pudding, with copious amounts of wine, ruby port and brandy for dessert. I woke up with quite the headache the next day, but it was worth it. Dr Watson told some stories of his combat days—we also found out how he came to know the music of Mr Gottschalk so well. It seems he had an encounter in medical school with a charming young lady from New Orleans, what the Americans might call a “Creole,” and she played the piano quite credibly. ‘The Dying Poet’ was one of her favorites, and he declared he must have heard it a dozen or more times during the period he knew her.
None of this served to repair Mr Holmes’s bruised pride, however—it was some time before he went to another concert with the good doctor.
And that is the story in its entirety, my dear Mr Clennam. I rather doubt it will appear in one of Dr Watson’s tales, but I can still see the look of satisfaction on the good doctor’s face. He had so few victories over Mr Holmes, that I have no doubt he especially savoured this one, trivial though it was. I personally think Mr Holmes was still rattled after his encounter with the Professor, hence his lapse of memory, but I did not say so at the time, preferring not to raise the spectre of his recently dead nemesis. You will perhaps agree with me that some things are better left unsaid.
Yours very truly,
Martha Hudson
ELDRITCH, MY DEAR WATSON, by Darrell Schweitzer
The H.P. Lovecraft—Sherlock Holmes Connection
“As for ‘Sherlock Holmes’—I used to be quite infatuated with him!” wrote the horror master H.P. Lovecraft in a letter to his friend Alfred Galpin in 1918, “I read every Sherlock Holmes story published and even organized a detective agency when I was thirteen, arrogating to myself the proud pseudonym of S.H. This P.D.A. [Providence Detective Agency—DS]—whose members ranged between nine and fourteen years in age, was a most wonderful thing—how many murders and robberies we unraveled! Our headquarters were in a deserted house just outside of the thickly settled area, and we enacted, and ‘solved,’ many a gruesome tragedy. I still remember our labours in producing artificial ‘bloodstains on the floor!!!’”1
As S.T. Joshi remarks in his monumental biography of Lovecraft, I Am Providence, this letter gives us one of the most pleasing glimpses of the young author, before the nervous “collapse” of his later teens, playing detective with the neighborhood kids, perhaps with a little more brilliance and determination than most—it is clear that Lovecraft was the leader in all this—but nevertheless behaving very much like a normal boy for perhaps the first and only time in his life.
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Lovecraft went on in a letter to August Derleth in 1931:
“But I may remark that I, too, was a detective in my youth—being a member of the Providence Detective Agency at an age as late as 13! Our force had very rigid regulations, & carried in its pockets a standard working equipment consisting of police whistle, magnifying glass, electric flashlight, handcuffs (sometimes plain twine, but “handcuffs” for all that!), tin badge, (I have mine still!!!), tape measure (for footprints), revolver, (mine was the real thing, but Inspector Munroe (at 12) had a water-squirt pistol while Inspector Upham (at 10) worried along with a cap-pistol) & copies of all newspaper accounts of desperate criminals at large—plus a paper called The Detective, which printed pictures and descriptions of outstanding “wanted” malefactors…. We shadowed many desperate-looking customers, & diligently compared their physiognomies with “mugs” in The Detective, yet never made a full-fledged arrest. Ah, me—the good old days!”2
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It is just as well that Detective Lovecraft a.k.a. “S.H.,” did not show off his quite genuine pistol while stalking a suspect. Those were indeed more innocent times, when parents did not think too seriously about letting their 13-year-old play with a real pistol, even one which was (presumably) in less than working order.
This great fascination with Sherlock Holmes and with mystery fiction was, quite clearly for Lovecraft, a phase. In both letters, the larger context is a discussion of juvenile tastes and former habits. Lovecraft’s fascination with detective stories was not restricted to the Sherlock Holmes stories either. He read an enormous amount of general pulp fiction between about 1905 and 1914, including virtually every issue of Argosy and All-Story during this period, which contained much detective fiction. As a child he had been by all indication an avid reader of dime-novels and other juvenile mysteries of the period (some of which was published in a format similar to a modern comic book, although mostly text), following the exploits of Nick Carter, King Brady, and other largely-forgotten heroes. Many of his earliest attempts at fiction were detective stories of a sort, such as “The Mystery of the Grave-yard” (1898 or 1899, i.e., written when Lovecraft was eight or nine) which is nothing less than a miniature dime-novel, with very short chapters, some no more than fifty words.
But, certainly as he grew a little older, Sherlock Holmes was his favorite, and he definitely (as is clear from his letters) read the first three Holmes novels, and the collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes. He did not read the later Canon, as far as we can tell, ever. He read some of Doyle’s supernatural work, though affording