The Adventure of

THE ENGLISH SCHOLAR

CONSIDERED SIMPLY as someone with whom to share chambers, my friend Sherlock Holmes could never have been described as ideal. An enthusiasm for conducting malodorous chemical experiments at all hours of the day and night is not, after all, the first quality one looks for in a fellow lodger. When not occupied in this or similarly unsavoury activities, he would often sit for hours in silent reflection, during which time he would do little save smoke enormous quantities of the strongest shag tobacco. Not infrequently, I would retire to my bed at night, leaving him busy with his chemical researches or simply engrossed in his own thoughts, only to find upon rising the following morning that he was in precisely the same position as I had left him the night before, the only difference being that the atmosphere of the room had deteriorated somewhat in the meantime. This was not, on the whole, conducive to a pleasant start to the day. No matter how good one’s breakfast may be, it is difficult to derive full pleasure from it when the air in the room is scarcely breathable.

Then there was his untidiness. In the early days of our shared tenancy in Baker Street, our chambers remained neat and uncluttered, and I could not have imagined then into what depths of disorder they would later descend, as towering piles of papers and documents accumulated in every corner of the room. It surprised me at first that a man so trim in his personal appearance and habits could allow his surroundings to degenerate in this way, but I soon came to understand the problem. When Holmes was engaged upon a case, his energies were devoted exclusively to its solution, and all other considerations were set aside. At the conclusion of a case he would fall at once into an exhausted lethargy, which might last for several days, during which time he would do nothing whatever, save move from one easy chair to another. Then, not infrequently, just as I had detected signs that his energies and spirits were recovering, and hope stirred within me that if I could dissuade him for a moment from his chemical researches he might at last address the confusion in our rooms, a new case would be brought to his attention and all other matters would once again be set aside. As his practice increased, and the time at his disposal between cases shrank accordingly, so did the condition of our rooms gradually deteriorate. But understanding the problem did not make it any the less bothersome. Once or twice I had offered to help put his papers in order, but he always rebuffed my offers, declaring that only he could arrange the papers how he wished them to be arranged.

In addition to these minor inconveniences, there was the less frequent, but more disturbing matter of the danger which my fellow lodger seemed to draw to himself like a magnet, and which was likely to fall, also, upon anyone who spent any time in his company. Though Holmes himself was among the most cultured and reasonable of men, his work brought him into contact with many who lacked his refinement, who cared little for the subtleties of argument, and whose first resort if thwarted was to violence. I could not begin to enumerate the many occasions upon which our prosaic little sitting room was the scene of heated quarrels, fisticuffs, violent assaults and, on at least two occasions, attempted murder.

These, then, were some of the chief disadvantages of sharing chambers with Sherlock Holmes. Hardly suitable lodgings, it might be supposed, for a retired Army officer on a wound pension, with generally uncertain health and few social contacts. And yet, for all that, I cannot in all honesty say that I would have wished to reside anywhere else. I could certainly have enjoyed a quieter existence elsewhere, but what a world of experience I should thereby have missed! Where else might I have descended to breakfast to find a baffling cryptogram propped up against the cruet stand, or a mysterious chart fastened to the corner of the mantelpiece with a thumbtack? Where else could I have learned all the details of the most intriguing crimes and mysteries of the day from the one man in the country who truly understood them? What other circumstances could possibly have provided such a thrill as when I was privileged to be present as Holmes’s clients told of the often strange, sometimes terrible events that had brought them to seek the help of the famous detective? Such intellectual pleasures were more than sufficient compensation for the practical inconveniences of life at 221B, Baker Street.

As to Holmes himself, he was a man of many parts and many moods. He could on occasion be taciturn and uncommunicative for days on end, but he could also, when he chose, be the most stimulating company imaginable. And although his sense of humour sometimes seemed a queer one, and could occasionally be caustic and harsh, he was nevertheless quite the sharpest, wittiest man I have ever known.

As the months of our shared residence in Baker Street passed, and we perhaps got the measure of each other more precisely, he began to speak to me more frequently of his work, occasionally recounting in detail some episode in which he considered that his theories as to the art of detection had been particularly well vindicated. On one occasion I ventured to suggest that if one or two of his more interesting cases were to be written up in a form designed to appeal to the general reader, it might make his views more widely understood.

“An excellent suggestion,” was his affable reply, “provided, of course, that appropriate emphasis is laid upon the methods by which the solution was reached. But if it is to be done, then it is you that must do it, Watson, for I certainly cannot spare the time.”

I said that I would make an attempt at the job, and would endeavour to do justice to his theories, and there, for the moment, the matter rested. But from that day forward, as if recognizing that I could perhaps perform a service for which he himself had neither the time nor the inclination, he began to involve me more intimately in his investigations, and even occasionally specifically requested my presence. It was then that I realized fully for the first time how frequently in the course of his work he placed himself in physical danger. Nor, as I soon discovered, was it ever possible to predict with any accuracy which of his cases might have such an outcome, for upon countless occasions an investigation which had appeared at first to be but a trifling matter would lead us ultimately into a situation of mortal peril. A case that illustrated this well was that which concerned Mr Rhodes Harte of Ipswich and the mystery of Owl’s Hill, and it is this that I shall now recount.

It was a pleasant morning in that period of late spring when the flowerbeds in the parks and gardens of London are full of colour and all but the tardiest of the trees have opened their buds and are covered with bright green leaves.

A telegram had arrived for Sherlock Holmes as we awaited breakfast. He had scribbled a brief reply, but passed no remark. After breakfast, however, after leafing through the newspaper in a desultory fashion for a while, he tossed it aside and asked me if I knew where Little Gissingham was.

“I have never heard of it,” I returned. “Why do you ask?”

“It was from the railway station there that the wire came this morning. A gentleman there, a Mr Rhodes Harte, wishes to consult me. He is arriving by the late morning train.”

“Does he give any indication as to the nature of the matter?”

“Only that it is ‘a perplexing problem’. But let us see where he is journeying from!”

He took down a gazetteer and atlas from his shelf of reference works, and turned the pages over for a few moments in that rapid, almost birdlike manner with which I was familiar. “Here we are,” said he at length. “It is in the county of Suffolk, Watson; very close to the border with Essex. ‘Little Gissingham’,” he continued, reading from the gazetteer. “‘A pretty little village. Parts of the church are Anglo-Saxon, and the porch is Norman. There are several fine half-timbered houses, and one inn, the Fox and Goose.’ That is the extent of our information.”