Siviter turned to my comrade-in-arms. ‘Mr. Holmes,’ he continued, ‘we are especially honoured by a visit from such a famous London specialist. For many years we have been gripped by newspaper reports of your adventures in Wapping and Whitechapel, the very heart of darkness.’
Our host was referring to the many forays Holmes and I made into the most desperate areas of the capital city during this Belle Epoque of crime. Not only Wapping and Whitehall but Mile End, Old Ford, Stepney and Bethnal Green. Every ‘-ism’ known to humankind sprang up in such unpromising soil - socialism, nationalism, secularism, communism, egalitarianism, Panslavism, Zionism, Nihilism, anarchism, pacifism, suffragettism, atheism, the flickerings of Fascism and at least one ‘non-ism’, free love, courtesy of the Hebrew Socialist Union, all the afterbirth of the Industrial Revolution.
With a light bow Siviter said, ‘We now look forward to your lecture.’
Holmes Gives Clues To His Deductive Methods
Holmes composed himself for a few seconds, with his lids drooping and fingertips together. Then he began. ‘Gentlemen, high praise indeed when my friend Watson refers to Charles Darwin and your servant Sherlock Holmes in a single breath. The Century which so recently went its way was dominated by the theory of Natural Selection. I can justly claim one notable similarity between Darwin’s work and mine. There is divination in both. In common with Darwin I suffered schooling to every conceivable intent both purposeless - except to tyrants - and worthless for any known profession. The fetters of prejudices from my early education lingered with me for many years. My scholastic career was never filled with promise. Often I was hit over the shins with a wicket. Unlike your literary Master, I was never filled with the joy of literature. Macaulay was not my hero though I was impressed by Edgar Allan Poe. Lack of Greek and Latin or fluency in French and German closed off access to the greater part of Western literature yet a great-uncle decided I should become a poet or author.’ He paused. ‘Though surely it would be a foolish or a less impecunious man who starts a working life by choosing ‘author’ for his profession. I learnt far more of substance and value in my short months in rooms on Montague Street, hard by the British Museum, studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient than in many years at school or two years at Cambridge and Oxford studying music of the Middle Ages and the derivation of the Celtic language. Darwin and I are confederate in one passion - for the facts. I use facts solely to serve my deductions, while Darwin stewed them to produce his magnificent general laws. He would have had nothing but contempt for the effete conventions and hypocrisies of our Edwardian England compared to the vitalising effect of the ruthless but straightforward life-and-death struggles of Nature.’
Holmes paused. He looked towards Siviter.
‘But to authors close to home. Who has not enjoyed the verses, sketches, skits and stories of our present host, so full of allusion and quotation, as well as those of your League’s namesake, his gift for phrase, the comic intervention, the delight in parody and imitation? Who has not read among Kipling’s works The City Of Evil Countenances, Abaft The Funnel, The Jungle Books - and Kim? Kim o’ the Rishti who went to the River of Healing, a master work of imperialism, the India of the imagination. Who could forget your literary Master’s evocation of Bombay -
Your President’s patriotism is beyond dispute - think of the tales and poems of the British soldier in India. Who has not visited the Mogul Saloon in Drury Lane to hear The Great MacDermott’s rousing rendition of the war song sold to him by Kipling for a guinea? I found his description of Lamaism invaluable. You can never know too much about magic, mysticism and demon worship. I have often addressed a Pathan with ‘May you never be tired’, a courtesy I learnt from a reading of Rudyard Kipling’s works. And might I say, your President and my good friend Watson and I hold to a principle in common - our concern to defend civilisation against brute Nature and the barbarian. One day, when his volcanic voice is stilled, they should name a crater Kipling on the planet Mercury.’
I nodded slowly with pleasure at these words. It was clever of Holmes to pay homage to the source from which he had learned the Pathan greeting.
Holmes’ disquisition was interrupted by the sound of voices on the stairs. A modest tattoo was followed by the door opening. The first and tumultuous entry was at floor-board level, a bubbling cauldron of excited, noisy Aberdeen terriers wriggling and rotating like giant brindle caterpillars. They were followed by two aristocratic men around five-and-fifty years of age. Sir Julius Wernher and Alfred Weit had arrived. Both men had been born in Leipzig but chose Queen over Kaiser and settled in England. Both stood about the middle height, dark, with foreign features, attired in the livery of their class, at once recognisable from the window of the Pathé Frères shop near Regent Circus filled with photographs of the celebrities of the day. They were termed, in the popular press, ‘Gold Bugs’. Together they held the greatest financial power in the world, their immense fortunes from determined activity in the Kimberley diamond market. They maintained their position through unsleeping vigilance for the affairs of the Rand. The two were mentioned frequently in the society pages of the Clarion and the weekly illustrated papers whose reporters so assiduously cull the pages of Debrett, following the lives of the rich, the aristocratic and the Royal, covering the grander dinner-parties in Delamere Terrace or Audley Square. In short, covering the territory in which our income was significantly to be found.
Sir Julius Wernher was the first to approach, radiating suavity, with a silver beard and full moustache. He lifted golden pince-nez to his eyes as he came to the centre of the room like a vieux marcheur, bringing with him a faint whiff of Roger and Gallet cologne. His clothing displayed a delicate touch of individuality, harking back to an older fashion except for the contrasting choice of strikingly fashionable lightweight hat. Made of green felt, the brim rolled slightly inwards on the side, a single crease running down the centre of the crown and pinches at the front.
Sir Julius owned a 3000-ton yacht, The Miloca, always at the ready in Cattaro. Weit’s and Sir Julius’ great ‘palaces’ in London were decorated, by all accounts, with imperial grandeur, in the sumptuous taste of Edwardian new wealth, heavily influenced by the Art and fashions of Continental Europe. Sir Julius’ Mayfair house was entered by a long flight of marble steps from the drive to the front door, a footman stationed on every third step in knee-breeches and with powdered hair which straggled when it poured with rain. Terracotta statues traced to the tomb of Qin Shi Huang Di, first emperor of China stood inside the entrance. It was reported the bedrooms were as palatial as the downstairs salons, in accord with the opulence and vulgarity of our plutocracy, each with Louis X1V suites picked out with an occasional pink electric light. He had assembled a fine Art collection, including one very large oil-colour by Pevensey. So quickly had he amassed the works they were almost certain to include both masterpiece and fake, like the Tsar’s famed collection in St Petersburg. The great names of our time wandered into his palatial homes: Prince Francis of Teck, Sir Thomas Lipton, Lady Sarah Wilson. The latter’s courage during the siege of Ladysmith had made her a heroine. The men wore rings on plump fingers and smoked cigars; not a few were owners of Derby winners. A photograph in Collier’s Magazine by Catherine Cooke showed great beribboned baskets of flowers, like oblations to a goddess, being delivered daily to Sir Julius’ home by horse-drawn vans, coachmen and attendants in livery. Orchids from three continents, malmaisons, and lilies for display in tall, cut-glass vases were scattered throughout the vast construction.