In “The Valley of Fear” Holmes investigates a murder at Birlstone Manor in Sussex involving his enemy Professor Moriarty. The description of the manor is very loosely based on Groombridge Place, near Tunbridge Wells, where Conan Doyle often visited to take part in seances with the owners Louisa and Eliza Saint. There are many ghost stories at Groombridge Place. Doyle claims to have seen the ghost of an ostler, reported to have drowned in 1808, standing in the doorway of a cottage that backs onto the moat. He describes his encounter in his book “At the Edge of the Unknown.”
Here is the detailed description of Birlstone provided by Doyle in the VALL novel:
“About half a mile from the town, standing in an old park famous for its huge beech trees, is the ancient Manor House of Birlstone…The Manor House, with its many gables and its small, diamond-paned windows, was still much as the builder had left it in the early seventeenth century. Of the double moats which had guarded its more warlike predecessor the outer had been allowed to dry up, and served the humble function of a kitchen garden. The inner one was still there, and lay, forty feet in breadth, though now only a few feet in depth, round the whole house. A small stream fed it and continued beyond it, so that the sheet of water, though turbid, was never ditch-like or unhealthy. The ground floor windows were within a foot of the surface of the water. The only approach to the house was over a drawbridge, the chains and windlass of which had long been rusted and broken. The latest tenants of the Manor House had, however, with characteristic energy, set this right, and the drawbridge was not only capable of being raised, but actually was raised every evening and lowered every morning. By thus renewing the custom of the old feudal days the Manor House was converted into an island during the night - a fact which had a very direct bearing upon the mystery which was soon to engage the attention of all England.”
The history of Groombridge and the fictional history of Birlstone are actually quite different and Groombridge has a stone bridge, but no drawbridge. Today its extensive gardens - including Doyle’s favorites, “the drunken garden” and a “secret garden” are a popular tourist attraction.
“Pride and Prejudice,” starring Kiera Knightly, was filmed there.
First photo: The manor house as it is today
Second photo: The door on the moat, set in the oldest part of the manor, which more closely fits Doyle’s description of Birlstone.
Third photo: The haunted cottage, where Doyle claims to have seen the ghost of the drowned ostler.
It is refreshing to watch a Doyle adaptation that was created by people who truly love Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and are not just using the names to cash in on a well-known franchise.
Moffat, Gatiss and Thompson not only know canon, but also seem familiar with a lot of the Sherlockian mythos that has built up around it in the past 135 years.
BBC Sherlock is Holmes written by geeks, for geeks.
Take, for example, the opening scenes of The Reichenbach Fall.
Here we see Sherlock being lauded for the safe return of Turner’s painting of the Reichenbach Falls. For this service, he is rewarded with a pair of diamond cufflinks.
“All of my shirts have buttons,” he mutters.
“He means ‘Thank you,’” John says.
I have searched Conan Doyle’s stories and can’t find a reference to diamond cuff-links.
However, there IS a reference to them in the work of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (pen name Michael Innes), the Scottish novelist, academic and rabid Sherlockian.
Innes writes mysteries that are Holmes homage, perhaps his best-known character being Sir John Appleby. In an Appleby tale titled “A Family Affair,” he references Sherlock Holmes and diamond cuff-links.
His friend Oswyn, in comparing Appleby to Holmes, says:
“You remember how, every now and then, he’d receive an emissary from an Exalted Personage, who would ask him to save the Empire, or preserve the reputation of a Personage more Exalted still.
“And finally Watson would ask him where he’d been one day. And he’d produce a pair of diamond cufflinks and murmur modestly that he’d been to Windsor and received them from the hand of a Very Gracious Lady. That sort of thing.”
I think this was a mis-recollection on Innes’ part. What “The Very Gracious Lady” gave Holmes in Doyle’s story “The Bruce-Partington Plans” was not diamond cufflinks, but an emerald tie pin:
Watson tells us that Holmes:
“…spent a day at Windsor, whence he returned with a remarkably fine emerald tie-pin.
“When I asked him if he had bought it, he answered that it was a present from a Certain Gracious Lady in whose interests he had once been fortunate enough to carry out a small commission. He said no more, but I fancy that I could guess at that lady’s august name.”
And of course the next gift bestowed upon Sherlock in the BBC version is a tie pin!
After restoring a banker to his family, the banker’s son slips him a gift, which he guesses is a tie pin.
“I don’t wear ties,” he mutters.
In one stroke Thompson, Moffgatt and Co. not only reference these two stories, but point out that a modern Sherlock would have no use for either gift!
Nor does the modern Sherlock have any use for the appallingly ridiculous piece of headwear that is presented to him next: The infamous deerstalker hat.
Apart from wearing one in an illustration by Sydney Paget in Doyle’s story “Silver Blaze,” the original Holmes didn’t routinely wear one.
Rather, the deerstalker became the trademark of actor William Gillette, who wrote the famous play “Sherlock Holmes” and starred in it for 36 years.
Forever after, Sherlock Holmes would never be pictured without the deerstalker, the Invernesse cape and the pipe.
Of course no modern man would wear such a getup except, perhaps, as part of a Steampunk co-splay and Sherlock BBC hilariously expresses his disgust in the third scene of The Reichenbach Fall.
“Why is it always the hat photograph!” He explodes, pounding his fist into the “death Frisbee” and then flinging it at John.
“This isn’t a deerstalker now,” replies John, picking it up. “It’s a Sherlock Holmes hat.”
Again, the team of Sherlock writers overlay their knowledge of Holmes lore onto how the modern versions of the characters would behave.
So my “ear-hat” is off to you, Thompson, Moffat and Gatiss, for weaving your inside humor deftly into your show and giving it such a clever, modern spin.
THE REAL “NAPOLEON OF CRIME” AND THE THEFT OF A FAMOUS PAINTING
What do Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty and a famous painting all have in common?
Very possibly a man named Adam Worth.
Sherlock Holmes called his nemesis Professor James Moriarty “the Napoleon of Crime,” but one wonders whether Conan Doyle didn’t use a real “Napoleon of Crime,” ie. Adam Worth, as a model for his fictional gang leader.
Police often referred to Worth as “the Napoleon of Crime.” He ran away from his poor Jewish family at age 10 and served honorably in the American Civil War at age 17 – but after that, his life took a wicked turn. In New York City he led a gang of pickpockets and masterminded robberies and heists.
After escaping from Sing Sing where he was sent for robbing an Adams Express wagon, he teamed up with a notorious lady gangster named Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum.
With her help he expanded into bank and store robberies and in 1869, with safecracker Charley Bullard, he tunneled from a neighboring shop into the vault of Boylston National Bank in Boston.
Sound suspiciously reminiscent of the plot in “The Red-headed League”?
As in Doyle’s last novel “The Valley of Fear,” a Pinkerton detective was set on his track. Worth got wind of him and fled to Europe, which already was rife with its own criminal networks. Worth headed one of these, organizing major robberies and burglaries in France and England.
Like Moriarty, he operated through intermediaries. Those who worked for him never knew his name.
With the wealth from his ill-gotten gains, Worth joined high society. Eventually Scotland Yard learned of his network, although initially they were unable to prove anything. Inspector John Shore made Worth’s capture his personal mission.
This is where the famous painting comes in, and it’s worth a story in itself.
During her years in the public eye, the glamorous Georgiana Cavendish, Dutchess of Devonshire, was painted by both by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds.
In 1785, Gainsborough painted her in a big black hat - a style she made sensationally fashionable. The painting disappeared for many years, turning up in 1830 in the home of an elderly schoolmistress, who had cut it down to fit over her fireplace!
In 1841 she sold it for 56 pounds to an art dealer, who gifted it to a friend. After he died in 1876, the painting was sold at Christie’s in London for the astronomical sum of 10,000 guineas.
Three weeks later it was stolen in a highly publicized theft by – it was later learned – the “Napoleon of Crime” Adam Worth.
It was Gainesborough, not Greuze
In Conan Doyle’s novel “The Valley of Fear,” which supposedly took place prior to “The Final Problem,” Holmes claims he knew Moriarty was worth more than he appeared because a painting by Jean Baptiste Greuze worth 40,000 pounds hung behind his desk.
Was this detail perhaps inspired by the theft of the Gainesborough?
In early 1901, through the American detective agency Pinkerton’s, Worth negotiated a return of the Gainesborough for $25,000. The Wall Street financier J. P. Morgan immediately paid $150,000 for it.
The painting remained in Morgan’s family until 1994, when it was put up for sale at Sotheby’s and bought by the 11th Duke of Devonshire for the Chatsworth House collection. So, after more than 200 years it returned to its place of origin!
