III. The Case of the Portuguese Sonnets
1
In the archives of Sherlock Holmes few papers have been more jealously guarded than those which touch upon blackmail or extortion. How strange it is that these should include a small collection of literary manuscripts and rare first editions acquired in the course of an investigation in 1890. They are items which Oxford ’s Bodleian Library or the British Museum or wealthy collectors like John Pierpont Morgan might have fought over in the auction rooms of the world.
To the present day, most of these treasures remain unknown to literature or scholarship. In the Baker Street files repose such lost works as the manuscript of Lord Byron’s Don Juan in the New World, in the poet’s own hand. Its stanzas confirm the great romantic rebel’s ambition to make his home in the land of Thomas Jefferson. Among other manuscripts is The Venetian Nun: A Gothic Tale, written in 1820 by the notorious William Beckford, creator of the short-lived extravaganza of Fonthill Abbey. A further portfolio contains the monologue of a famous heretic facing the flames in fourteenth century Florence, “Savonarola to the Signoria,” apparently omitted by Robert Browning from his collection of Men and Women in 1855.
A shelf of rare editions, which Holmes acquired during the same investigation, was equally remarkable. He was particularly fond of a small octavo volume in pinkish wrappers. It bore the simple title of “Sonnets By E. B. B.” At the foot of the cover was printed, “ Reading: Not For Publication, 1847.” Such was the first appearance of Sonnets from the Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett to express her love for her bridegroom, Robert Browning, at the time of their elopement and marriage in the previous year. No more than three or four copies of the private 1847 edition have survived. It was intended for intimate friends, the printing arranged by Miss Mary Russell Mitford. Sherlock Holmes’s copy bore a pencil inscription on the fly-leaf “For Miss Mitford, E. B. B.” It was Mrs Browning’s reminder that this copy had been set aside for her friend.
How odd that half a century later such a treasure should find its way into the pocket of a dead blackmailer.
2
The case occurred almost ten years after my first meeting with Sherlock Holmes. It followed a visit from our Scotland Yard friend Inspector Lestrade on 24 April 1890. He was now in the habit of calling upon us of an evening, once a week, sharing a glass or two of single malt and passing on the detective gossip of the day.
In the course of conversation on this occasion, he mentioned that a man in a plaid overcoat was reported to have been found dying in a Chelsea gutter. The man in question was known to the police as Augustus Howell, of whom I had never heard. It appeared that he had been suspected from time to time of demanding money with menaces but nothing had ever been proved against him. Lestrade now told us that shortly before he left his office that evening, a report of the man’s death had come in. It seemed that the gutter in which he lay was outside a bar in Kinnerton Street, Chelsea, and that the victim’s throat had been cut. Between his teeth was wedged a gold half-sovereign coin. Several years later I was to learn, in our investigation of “The Red Circle,” that in the underworld of Naples this is the traditional reward of a blackmailer or a police informer.
Our detective agency, as Holmes now liked to call it, had rarely received a complaint of blackmail. I had found this surprising at first because blackmail is surely one of the most common causes that drive a man or a woman to seek advice from a confidential investigator. However, the details that Lestrade gave us on that April evening suggested that the more robust victims of extortion may scorn the services of a private detective and employ those of a professional assassin.
Lestrade ended his brief summary of the message received by Scotland Yard with an important nod, as if to say, “So there!”
Holmes looked back at him and intoned, almost accurately, a line of Shakespeare from Macbeth.
“He should have died hereafter! Indeed, my dear Lestrade, in Howell’s case I can assure you he probably will continue to do so, as he has done many times before!”
“I don’t think I follow you there, Mr Holmes. How could the man be dead before this?”
Holmes lay back in his chair and began to guffaw with delight. Then he composed himself.
“A hint to you, Lestrade. In a case that involves Augustus Howell, steer well clear of the matter. Let some other poor devil at Scotland Yard beat his brains out over it.”
“I do not follow your drift, Mr Holmes, but I should not have thought this was a matter to be made fun of.”
“Then you quite evidently do not know your man. Have you any idea how many times Augustus Howell has died in the last thirty years of his disgraceful career? At least four, to my knowledge. Notice of his death is generally followed by a post-obit sale of his effects at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. His announcement of his own death is a convenient method by which he escapes his creditors from time to time. However, if what you are told is true, it seems that someone may have settled accounts with him in a more conclusive style. Or perhaps he has merely performed his usual stunt with a little more melodrama, a touch more grand guignol, than usual.”
“It can’t be done, Mr Holmes. Surely?”
“Can it not? No more than a year or two back, there was an obituary auction-sale of ‘Howell deceased’ at Messrs. Christie’s in King Street, St James’s. It included paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, as well as several by the late Mr Dante Rossetti, whose agent Howell had been. That agency ended when Rossetti discovered that the man was pocketing money from collectors by mortgaging paintings which Rossetti had not done and would probably never do. Naturally, the purchasers all came upon the artist for the money that had been borrowed and spent by his agent. Gussie Howell had also purloined from the painter’s studio Rossetti’s sketch for the ‘Venus Astarte.’ By imitating Rossetti’s monogram on the canvas, he sold it as the definitive work at a handsome price to one of his more gullible connoisseurs.”
Lestrade was now paying attention.
“And the Reynolds, Mr Holmes? And the Gainsboroughs?”
“For some time Howell lived as man and wife with a woman in Bond Street, Rosa Corder. By profession she was a painter of horses and dogs. He trained her as what he called a facsimilist-in plain English, a forger. Between them they also produced copies of pictures for clients of questionable tastes. Some rather objectionable paintings by Fuseli were copied for sale, which was the cause of their landlord giving them notice.”
“Well, I never did!” said Lestrade thoughtfully. “I can tell you confidentially, Mr Holmes, we do have records at Scotland Yard of Mr Howell as a young man. A sympathiser with Orsini, he was, in the conspiracy to blow up the Emperor Napoleon III outside the Paris Opera. As the law stood then, there was nothing criminal in sympathising with an attempt. That was soon altered. I also remember from our Home Office records, in the time of Lord Aberdare, that Mr Howell was the person who arranged for Mrs Rossetti’s coffin to be dug up from Highgate Cemetery. It was done at the dead of night in order that Mr Rossetti’s poems might be retrieved. Very rum business all round. Born in Portugal of an English father, was Mr Howell.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes with a chortle, “and brought to England in the nick of time at sixteen, following a nasty outbreak of card-sharping in Lisbon and threats made with stiletto knives. I know him only at second hand but even I have heard him called, with whatever justification, an arrant rascal, a filthy blackmailer, an impudent trickster, a ruffian, a polecat, a libeller and a congenital liar. Take your pick, my dear Lestrade! I once heard Mr Rossetti recite a poem which he had composed after dismissing his former agent. It went something like this.