Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 602
And is either of them?
Oh, yes, Sherlock is.
Then what does the man do next?
He heaves a deep sigh and is about to collapse.
What do they do for that?
They give him whiskey.
Do they take any themselves?
Yes; Watson needs it because he got hit by an Afghan bullet in the heel seven years before. So they both take some.
Does the man then make an astounding disclosure?
He does; Holmes thinks it’s the most astounding one they’ve struck since the case of the Prince of Belgravia and the lost hunting flask.
And what does Watson say?
He reminds Holmes of the case where Moriarty stole one of the hotels off the Rue de Rivoli.
What do they do about this disclosure?
They solve it.
Then what?
Holmes plays the violin.
And Watson?
He takes some more whiskey; his Afghan wound is hurting again.
Can anyone wonder at the number of adaptations and parodies that have grown about the Sherlock legends? Among the cleverest is Sir James Barrie’s, quoted with delight by Conan Doyle in his Memories and Adventures. Among the conspicuous failures are Mark Twain’s parody, deserving only to be forgotten; and equally notable in its failure the attempt made by O. Henry.
But perhaps one of the best of the parasitic Sherlock Holmes themes is the little story told by Conan Doyle himself which needs to be reproduced in his own words.
“There are certain Sherlock Holmes stories,” wrote Sir Arthur in the Memories and Adventures, “apocryphal I need not say, which go round and round the press and turn up at fixed intervals with the regularity of a comet.
“One is the story of the cabman who is supposed to have taken me to an hotel in Paris. ‘Dr. Doyle,’ he cried, gazing at me fixedly, ‘I perceive from your appearance that you have recently been at Constantinople. I have reason to think also that you have been at Buda, and I perceive some indication that you were not far from Milan.’ ‘Wonderful! Five francs for the secret of how you did it.’ ‘I looked at the labels pasted on your trunk,’ replied the astute cabby.”
But all of the parodies and adaptations and such are thrown into the shade by the new Critical Studies of Sherlock Holmes, started in England a few years ago, and now turning into a sort of field of research. As humor — meaning always the humor of amusement and not the higher humor that mingles tears with laughter — I know of nothing on so high a plane. Here are:
F. Knox, Essays in Satire; S. C. Roberts, Dr. Watson: (1931); H. W. Bell, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: (1932); T. S. Blakeney, Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction: (1932); V. Starrett, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes: (1934); and Baker Street Stories: (edited by H. W. Bell: 1934).
All these books start with the whimsical assumption that Holmes and Watson really lived; that their adventures really happened. Consequently, if there are any seeming discrepancies in the narrative, we must investigate them with the same industry and patience as modern scholarship applies to the text of Shakespeare or to the New Testament. We must feel convinced that truth is truth and everything will come right if we only apply to it earnest thought and diligent investigation.
Now as a matter of fact Conon Doyle wrote the stories over a period that lasted thirty years and more. As they multiplied, not even their creator could keep track of them. They are full of discrepancies — which, of course, in point of art, don’t matter a particle. Watson is called John in one story and James in another. His wife dies and gets resurrected — and much else. All of which serves as a background for the most wonderful and delightful humor. To enter into it is like passing through a wall into a garden. It is like stepping into Alice in Wonderland.
Take the case of Watson’s wound. When he is first introduced to the reader he is a retired Army surgeon, knocked out in the Afghan War (in 1880) by a jezail bullet in the battle of Maiwand. What a jezail bullet is I do not know, but it sounds just the thing to be knocked out with. At any rate one of them wounded Dr. Watson in the shoulder and “shattered the bone.” Then in a later story Conan Doyle, quite naturally forgetting the details, in the accumulating mass of Sherlock stuff, wounded Watson in the leg. At least Watson is made to tell us that he sat “nursing his wounded leg.” It seems he “had had a jezail bullet through it” some time before. Later on Conan Doyle gave him another nasty crack, this time in the heel. Naturally the effect of these three jezail bullets — or one hitting him three times — was to make Watson limp pretty badly. We read of the discomfort he suffered on one of their expeditions which to him was a “six mile limp.” Then a little later Conan Doyle apparently forgot about Watson’s limp and has him running at full speed. In fact Watson even boasts of the pace he can make. “I am reckoned fleet of foot,” he says; and we read of such further feats as Watson “rushing madly from the room,” and “dashing through the Arcade.” Jezail bullets couldn’t stop a man like that.
Of course the explanation is as obvious as it is amusing. Conan Doyle regarded the whole thing as fiction and didn’t waste time in looking up inconsistencies.
But the reviewers go solemnly to work with mock gravity and mimic scholarship, piecing it all together as if it were a concordance of the Gospels. Thus Mr. H. W. Bell “examines the data” in regard to Watson’s wound; concludes that he was hit twice, not three times, the bullet in his heel affecting his leg. In spite of his earlier despondency about himself he made a marvelous recovery, was able to run, leap, and dash. But, with British reticence, he kept it to himself.
Equally good is the vexed problem of Watson’s second wife. One critic devotes a whole book to her. Her case stands as follows:
In the book called the Sign of the Four Conan Doyle, following the unfortunate tradition of English fiction, brought in a heroine and a love story and in the end married Watson — jezail bullets and all — to Miss Mary Morrison. He set him up in practice and no doubt thought he was done with him. But the relentless Sherlock Holmes saga refused to let go of its interpreter. The stories had to go on. Watson had to keep leaving his practice, often for days at a time. Mrs. Watson became a nuisance and had to die. So Watson becomes a widower, with lots of time to deduce things. But later on, by a slip of memory, Conan Doyle makes Watson and Sherlock refer to Watson’s wife as if still alive. The critics at once seize on this, and prove from it that Watson has married again, and reconstruct from internal evidence the time and circumstance of his second marriage.
Best of all perhaps is the case of Holmes’s journey to Tibet. Readers of the Holmes stories will remember how Conan Doyle — thoroughly tired of Sherlock whom he felt to be an incubus on his work — got rid of him by having the arch-criminal Professor Moriarty throw him down a gorge in Switzerland. When Holmes is resurrected later on — being indestructible — he tells Watson that he has spent the two years of his disappearance in a journey to Tibet.
Of course Conan Doyle only sent him to Tibet because it sounds like the end of nowhere. Beyond that it has no significance whatever. But the critics of the new school solemnly discuss the date of Holmes’ journey, assigning it to 1892 and 1894. The climax of absurdity is reached by Mr. T. S. Blakeney in trying to work out by what route Holmes entered Tibet. He expresses surprise that he hadn’t “attracted attention.”
“Possibly he approached that isolated country from some other direction than India, where the chances of being recognized would be greater than elsewhere, and where the obstacles to penetrating into the Forbidden Land were likely to be prohibitive. Perhaps he obtained permission from the Russian authorities to travel through Central Asia, thus anticipating General Waters in his journeyings in Transcaspia and Samarkand three years later, and being the fore-runner of Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan. We incline to think he may have entered Tibet from the northwest, with Charklik, perhaps as his starting point. Had he approached from Kashmir, he would almost certainly have attracted attention, as Captain Bower was then commencing his travels from Ladak to China. Similarly, Mr. Rockhill would surely have heard of Holmes, had the latter approached from the northeast. A journey from Charklik through, say, the Tsaidam basin, skirting the Koko-shili mountains to the east, and thence south to Lhasa, would break new ground, M. Bonvalot having taken a more westerly route to Tengri-nor via the Chi-chang-tso a year or two before. It is likely that Holmes returned via Khotan to Kashgar, and thence via Persia to Arabia, and eventually Khartoum.”
But as if to show that not even the Tibet journey represents the climax, the critics are now working still more novel and audacious theories. Was Sherlock Holmes all that he pretended to be? Was Watson really as truthful and honorable as he makes himself out? Is it not conceivable that they were really a couple of crooks who planned the crimes, or at least some of them, themselves and fastened them on innocent victims by means of Sherlock’s diabolical talent? That affair of the Priory School — involving the abduction of the Duke of Holderness’s little son — looks at least pretty fishy. Indeed one might almost feel certain that it is a case of blackmail. Holmes’s mysterious brother “Mycroft” is easily shown to be a crook. Is Holmes perhaps the same man as “Professor Moriarty,” whom he is supposed to be hunting down?
And so on, endlessly; for thank goodness this vast piece of cheerful and wholesome nonsense seems only beginning.
Appended to this chapter on the technique of humor connected with the use and misuse of words, may be set the special instance of the humor of translation and mistranslation from a foreign language. Words when misused become “funny.” It is, as with the simple pun or misspelling, the primitive humor of degradation and destruction. But when words are misused to convey as it were by accident a new and appropriate meaning, the effect is of a higher class. So it is with translation. The simplest effects are purely verbal, with no particular meaning to them. Thus schoolboy mistranslations of Latin depend mainly for their fun on the degradation of the dignified text with a trivial parallel. Virgil wrote:
Conticuere omnes, intentique ora tenebant (Æneid. Bk. II. l. 1), giving us a picture of hushed silence and rapt attention. The schoolboy finds pleasure in the mock translation:
They were all County Kerry men and sat with their mouths open.
But there is nothing in this beyond the mere verbal effect, no real juxtaposition of the civilization and manners of Kerry County with those of Rome.
Compare similarly the well worn story of the English-speaking German in a London restaurant who announced to the waiter:
“After I have had my soup I will become a Welsh rabbit.”
The astonished waiter stood, watching for it to happen.
But of a higher range is the scene in the charming comedy called Ici on parle français in which some one inquires in a shop which bears that sign, “Qui est la personne ici qui parle français?” The young man behind the counter bows deeply and answers “Je!”
The error in the subtle idiom reaches further than words, and satirizes (crashes down) the pretense of foreigners to speak in idiomatic language.
Beyond such simple illustrations there opens up a great vista of errors, mistakes, false genders, wrong plurals, mixed suffixes — enough to fill a book. Here belongs similarly the humorous effect of all manner of mispronunciations of dialect, of nigger language and such things. Thus it is funny when a Jew says “vel! vel!” instead of saying “well! well!”
Similarly all mispronunciations are funny that arise from the foreigner’s inability to pronounce our sounds just as we do. I remember hearing a distinguished Italian soldier during the war time speak to the Canadian Club in Montreal. He asked rhetorically: “What has Italy done in the war? Italy has held for France the Bacador!” That is the way the club heard it. The members gathered that it must be one of those districts of which no one ever heard till the great War, such as the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, and Teschen and such. So when the general said that Italy “had held the Bacador,” there was great applause. But in reality he was only trying to say that Italy had “held the back door.”
“Nigger talk” is funny not so much in the single word as all through, in its general quality, each word and almost every syllable being a little off center. The effect of it is often heightened by an undercurrent of chuckling and clicking laughter, straight out of Equatorial Africa, a parody of our own articulation.
The humor of Negro talk moves on to higher ground when it turns not merely on sounds but on sense, or on the lack of it, and satirizes the Negro’s fondness for long words, by which he confuses length of sound with depth of meaning.
Taken by and large, however, practically all the effects explained above are quite elemental — mere confusion of sound — the humor of smashing up language. They offer but little interest in the way of the scientific analysis of humor.
But something much higher is attained when the humor of mere language is used to bring out the humor of character — the humor of national differences, the incongruities and contrasts existing (or supposed to exist) between opposed national types. This is beautifully illustrated in a scene in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. Here we see “a French Gentleman” conversing, at an evening reception, with the Super-British Mr. Podsnap. The fun is drawn, with equal good nature, from the peculiarities of both nationalities.
“Do you find, sir,” said Mr. Podsnap, “many evidences that strike you of our British constitution on the streets of the world’s metropolis, London, Londres, London?”
The foreign gentleman begged to be pardoned but did not altogether understand.
“The Constitution Britannique,” Mr. Podsnap explained, as if he were teaching an infant class. “We say British — but you say Britannique, sir. The constitution—”
The foreign gentleman said, “Mais, yees, I know eem.”
“I was inquiring,” resumed Mr. Podsnap, “whether you have observed upon our streets as we should say, upon the Pavvy, as you would say, any tokens—”
The foreign gentleman with patient courtesy inquired, “But what was tokens?”
“Marks,” said Mr. Podsnap, “signs, you know, traces—”
“Ah! Of a ‘orse’?” inquired the foreign gentleman.
“We call it ‘Horse,’ ” said Mr. Podsnap, “in England, Angleterre, we aspirate the H, and say Horse.”
“Pardon,” said the foreign gentleman, “I am always wrong.”
· · · · · · · ·
Mark Twain found means to heighten the amusement of mistranslation by multiplying it by two. His “Jumping Frog” is first translated into French and then retranslated back into English. The effect is quite unforgettable.
It is impossible here to quote more than the opening sentences of the “Jumping Frog” — as originally written in (Western) English, as translated into Parisian French in the Revue des Deux Mondes (July 15th 1872 — at least Mark Twain says so), and as re-translated by Mark Twain into literal English. Not even the triple inscription on the Rosetta Stone is of greater interest. The curious may find the entire story in the volume Sketches New and Old.
There was a fellow here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ‘49 — or maybe it was the spring of ‘50 — I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn’t finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiosest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn’t he’d change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him — any way just so’s he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn’t be no solit’ry thing mentioned but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and take ary side you please, as I was just telling you.
Il y avait une fois ici un individu connu sous le nom de Jim Smiley: c’était dans l’hiver de 49, peut-être bien au printemps de 50, je ne me rappelle pas exactement. Ce qui me fait croire que c’était l’un ou l’autre, c’est que je me souviens que le grand bief n’était pas achevé lorsqu’il arriva au camp pour la première fois, mais de toutes façons il était l’homme le plus friand de paris qui se pût voir, pariant sur tout ce qui se présentait, quand il pouvait trouver un adversaire, et, quand il n’en trouvait pas il passait du côté opposé. Tout ce qui convenait à l’autre lui convenait; pourvuqu’il eût un pari, Smiley était satisfait. Et il avait une chance! une chance inouie: presque toujours il gagnait. Il faut dire qu’il était toujours prêt à s’exposer, qu’on ne pouvait mentionner la moindre chose sans que ce gaillard offrît de parier là-dessus n’importe quoi et de prendre le côté que l’on voudrait, comme je vous le disais tout à l’heure.
This is then re-translated into English as follows:
It there was one time here an individual known under the name of Jim Smiley; it was in the winter of ‘49, possibly well at the spring of ‘50, I no me recollect not exactly. This which me makes to believe that it was the one or the other, it is that I shall remember that the grand flume is not achieved when he arrives at the camp for the first time, but of all sides he was the man the most fond of to bet which one have seen, betting upon all that which is presented, when he could find an adversary; and when he not of it could not, he passed to the side opposed. All that which convenienced to the other, to him convenienced also; seeing that he had a bet, Smiley was satisfied. And he had a chance! a chance even worthless; nearly always he gained. It must to say that he was always near to himself expose, but one no could mention the least thing without that this gaillard offered to bet the bottom, no matter what, and to take the side that one him would, as I you it said all at the hour.
Mark Twain may have got his idea for making this “Jumping Frog” version from a like performance that had been done in dead earnest a little while before. This was Senhor Pedro Carolino’s New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English. Carolino wrote it from a serious desire to come to the help of Portuguese and Brazilian youths who at that time had no decent textbooks to learn English from. Unluckily the author himself didn’t know English; but he pieced out his ignorance by using a book of Portuguese-French phrases and an English-Portuguese dictionary. The result is miraculous.
