#1139: Little Fictions – ‘The Beryl Coronet’ (1892) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

/ JJ

The best Sherlock Holmes stories take unusual events and spin them into an interesting and unexpected pattern. And then there are the…less than best.

Firmly in that second category — ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

‘The Beryl Coronet’ (1892)

The Case

Having accepted from a too-prestigious-to-be-named client the eponymous crown as security against a loan of £50,000 — over £5,000,000 in today’s money — bank manager Alexander Holder take the coronet home, brags about possessing it in the company of his cash-strapped, wastrel son and the servants, and is then amazed when his son apparently tries to steal it, damaging the crown in the process. Can Holmes cover Holder’s arse and recover the damaged portion of the crown?

The Characters

Alexander Holder, bank manager; talks too damn much.

Arthur Holder, son of the above; spends too damn much, in love with…

Mary Holder, niece of the above; definitely not guilty, oh no.

Sir George Burnwell, cad-about-town; stronger than he looks.

The Timeline

All we know is that this takes place in February. An indication that Watson is still living with Holmes would make this pre-Morstan marriage, but there’s equally every chance this happened twenty years after everything in this collection and Watson happened to have a free day to sit around the rooms in Baker Street while Holmes was off investigating.

The Tropes

Holmes disguises himself as a “common loafer” in order to acquire a pair of discarded shoes — “With his collar turned up, his shiny, seedy coat, his red cravat, and his worn boots, he was a perfect sample of the class.”

“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” — HE SAID THE THING! HE SAID IT!!!1!

Points of Interest

Holder pays Holmes £4,000 in 1892 money for the damaged portion of the coronet — damn, just how well-paid were Victorian bank managers? True, £3,000 of this is Holmes reclaiming expenditure, but this still means he makes a cool £100,000 in today’s money for about half a day’s work. This also represents the first time I can remember Holmes being paid for what he does.

Nice to see the Golden Age trope of cousins being in love getting a firm footing here, too. And it’s not even like Mary needs to be Arthur’s cousin for any reason. Could Holder not have been willed the care of a child by a friend or something, so that this was less weird? The historical preoccupation with sexy cousins makes me think that the human race needs some serious therapy.

The footprints investigation is pure, wonderful humdrummery, and while it was less Doyle’s purview to go into these things — R. Austin Freeman would make that very much his own with the Dr. Thorndyke stories which would build on the Holmes archetype — it’s nice to think of Holmes actually doing some intelligent examination. Makes me which there was a diagram or two outlining who walked where.

Although, if wooden legs really did have just a rounded end, the deduction that someone with a wooden leg stood in the snow should hardy be the amazing feat it’s taken as. There’s a difference between making your detective a genius and making everyone around your detective an idiot.

I really hope Alexander Holder lost his job, too. What a pillock.

~

The Sherlock Holmes canon by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on The Invisible Event

A Study in Scarlet (1887)
The Sign of Four (1890)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [ss] (1892):

  1. ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (1891)
  2. ‘A Case of Identity’ (1891)
  3. ‘The Red-Headed League’ (1891)
  4. ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’ (1891)
  5. ‘The Five Orange Pips’ (1891)
  6. ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ (1891)
  7. ‘The Blue Carbuncle’ (1892)
  8. ‘The Speckled Band’ (1892)
  9. ‘The Engineer’s Thumb’ (1892)
  10. ‘The Noble Bachelor’ (1892)
  11. ‘The Beryl Coronet’ (1892)
  12. ‘The Copper Beeches’ (1892)

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes [ss] (1894):

  1. ‘Silver Blaze’ (1892)
  2. ‘The Yellow Face’ (1893)
  3. ‘The Stockbroker’s Clerk’ (1893)
  4. ‘The “Gloria Scott”‘ (1893)
  5. ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ (1893)
  6. ‘The Reigate Squires’ (1893)
  7. ‘The Crooked Man’ (1893)
  8. ‘The Resident Patient’ (1893)
  9. ‘The Greek Interpreter’ (1893)
  10. ‘The Naval Treaty’ (1893)
  11. ‘The Final Problem’ (1893)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)

6 thoughts on “#1139: Little Fictions – ‘The Beryl Coronet’ (1892) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”

  1. There seems to be a great gulf between Then and Now in terms of cousins marrying. The practice remains legal in much of the world, including half the United States. But it does seem (as you said) weird to modern sensibilities to fall in love with a close relative, with all the world to choose from. The difference, I guess, is that in earlier times a person DIDN’T have the world to choose from; people stayed in the town where they were born and were expected to marry within their social class, so options were more limited. (Sayers remarks on the welcome change in The Nine Tailors.)

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      • I just read Suddenly at His Residence for the first time and noticed (despite it being set during WWII, and Christianna Brand generally impressing me as being up-to-date in her attitudes) that one of the main characters is romantically involved with his first cousin. And while the others in the story object to his being unfaithful to his wife, nobody ever brings up the cousin thing as anything objectionable in itself.

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  2. Reading this story as a kid in a small town in Newfoundland, I had no idea what a Beryl Coronet was, other then that it was valuable.

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