Sherbet & Spice, The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts, by Mary Işin. I.B. Tauris. 2013. Turkish cuisine is placed in the highest category of cuisines, alongside French, Italian, Indian and Chinese.
A British Borderland, Service And Sport in Equatoria, by Captain H. A. Wilson. John Murray, 1913. A vivid account of life in deepest East Africa between 1902 and 1906, mostly on the Anglo-German Boundary Commission sorting out where British and German East Africa lay.
Allan Quartermain. The wildly-popular protagonist of H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines and its sequels.
Heart of Darkness (1899). A short novel by Polish novelist Joseph Conrad about the character Charles Marlow’s life as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa. It was a best-seller almost from the start, and Watson would certainly have read it, along with William Clark Russell’s sea stories, the latter author described by Swinburne as ‘the greatest master of the sea, living or dead’.
The Adventure of The Bruce-Partington Plans. Set in 1895. The monotony of smog-shrouded London is broken by a sudden visit from Holmes’s brother Mycroft. He has come about some missing, secret submarine plans. ‘You may take it from me,’ said Mr. Holmes’s brother in speaking of them, ‘that naval warfare becomes impossible when in the radius of a Bruce Partington operation.’
The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service’ by Erskine Childers. Published in 1903. The book enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I and is an early example of the espionage novel, extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. Childers’s biographer Andrew Boyle noted: ‘For the next ten years Childers’s book remained the most powerful contribution of any English writer to the debate on Britain’s alleged military unpreparedness’. It was a notable influence on John Buchan and, much later, Ken Follett.
The Rifle Rangers by Captain Mayne Reid. ‘Captain’ Mayne Reid’s first boys’ story, extremely popular in Victorian times. At one point the hero is to die by hanging by the heels over a precipice in south Mexico. At another he and his companions are attacked by a pack of snarling bloodhounds.
The Final Problem. Includes the weird description of Moriarty: ‘...his face protrudes forward and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion.’ - early stages of Shaky Palsy?
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge. A lengthy, two-part story consisting of The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles and The Tiger of San Pedro, which on original publication in The Strand bore the collective title of A Reminiscence of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Set around 1894 and published in 1908. Of the entire collection of Holmes stories by Doyle, this is the only story in which a police inspector (specifically Inspector Baynes) is acknowledged as competent as Holmes. Contains insights into Holmes’s methods, for example, ‘There are no better instruments than discharged servants with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck, but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it.’
Lexicon
Achates. The Sultan was displaying his considerable depth of reading in the Classics. In the Aeneid, Achates (“good, faithful Achates”, or fidus Achates as he was called) was a close friend of Aeneas; his name became a by-word for an intimate companion. He accompanied Aeneas throughout his adventures, reaching Carthage with him in disguise when the pair scouted the area.
Aconite. A powerful plant, used in the past as a medicinal herb, a poison and in potions for incantations. Until the 20th century it was the deadliest toxin known. The leaves and root yield its active ingredient, an alkaloid called Aconitine, frequently used to tip hunting darts or javelins. The poison takes effect quickly. In late-Victorian times the poison was made famous by its use in Oscar Wilde’s 1891 story Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.
Abus gun is an early form of artillery created by the Ottoman Empire. They were small but heavy to carry. Many were equipped with a type of tripod.
Aristolochia. A genus of evergreen and deciduous woody vines and herbaceous perennials known to contain the lethal toxin aristolochic acid. The plants are aromatic. Their strong scent attracts insects.
Borsalini. Hat company known particularly for its fedoras. Founded by Giuseppe Borsalini in 1857, the felt hats were produced from Belgian rabbit fur at a factory in Alessandria, Italy. When Giuseppe Borsalini died in 1900 his son Teresio succeeded him.
British Empire. Like most Britons of his class and background, Watson was unquestioningly proud of an Empire which comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by Whitehall. The Empire originated with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and for over a century the foremost global power. By 1922, but by then overstretched, the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world’s population at the time, covering more than 33,700,000 km2 (13,012,000 sq mi). This was almost a quarter of the Earth’s total land area.
Camarilla. A group of courtiers or favourites who surround a ruler. A word used more in Edwardian times than now. Usually, they do not hold any office or have any official authority at court but influence their ruler behind the scenes. Consequently, they also escape having to bear responsibility for the effects of their advice. The term derives from the Spanish word, camarilla (diminutive of cámara), meaning ‘little chamber’ or private cabinet of the king.
‘Chapeau!’ The French for hat. I.e. ‘Hats off to you!’
Crape (anglicized versions of the French crêpe). Silk, wool, or later polyester fabric of a gauzy texture, with a particular crimpy appearance. Silk crape is woven of hard spun silk yarn in the gum or natural condition. There are two distinct varieties of the textile: soft, Canton, or Oriental crape, and hard or crisped crape.
Dog-dung. The pavements of Constantinople were covered with dung from the hundreds, perhaps thousands of street dogs permitted to live by a quirk of the Sultan’s affections. This was very useful to the tanning trade which used dog-dung extensively, hence the many apprentice tanners walking around collecting it.
Dreadnought. HMS Dreadnought revolutionised naval power from the moment of her launch in Portsmouth on 10 February 1906 by King Edward VII at a construction cost in Sterling of £1,783,883 (over GBP£200 million in 2015 terms). She was christened with an Australian wine in a bottle that famously failed to break on its first brush with the ship’s stern. With this ritual, HMS Dreadnought was launched into the Solent, stirring up waves which would be felt around the world. Though Britain had intended to use Dreadnought to overawe potential rivals with her naval power, the revolutionary nature of its design immediately reduced Britain’s 25-ship superiority in battleships to 1. She was broken up for scrap in 1923.
East Wind. Harbinger of unfavourable events. An east wind is referred to in Bleak House by Charles Dickens. The character Mr Jarndyce uses it several times. Sherlock Holmes mentions the east wind in His Last Bow (published in 1917 but set on the eve of the First World War) where clearly Arthur Conan Doyle expresses his own feelings: