Cool Comments

- some thoughts about ILLU

A few chilly coments to "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client" - a winters tale?

I couldn't help fantasizing a little after having read the words "remote as a snow image on a mountain" I am a glaciologist (and NO, I don't sell ice creams at McDonald !!), and my curiosity is roused each time I read something about snow.

Though Watson tells us, that the events take place in September 1902, the story is not published until November 1924. We don't know when he actually wrote it except that it probably was in 1912. Now he uses several chilly metaphors.

1. Miss Kitty Winter (obvious)
2. "Well, sir," said she in a voice like the wind from an iceberg, "your name is familiar to me."
3. Miss de Merville is a "cool" lady. She speaks coldly and is very calm.
4. Holmes says: "In a cold way I felt pretty furious myself, Watson" and later he says: "I took my leave with as much cold dignity as I could summon"
5. And not to forget (to repeat) the best of them: "remote as a snow image on a mountain" spoken by an *eloquent* Holmes. He also "listened to the news with a cold, concentrated look".
6. We also have contrast "All my hot words could not bring one tinge of colour to those ivory cheeks"

Do you feel the coldness?

Why these metaphors? Perhaps Watson was simply feeling cold, perhaps the weather was just horrible. Was there anything climatically special about the year 1912? Yes! I have went through the record of monthly temperatures in England back to 1659. In 1912 the month of August was extremely cold for that season, the mean temperature was 12.9 degrees C. And that is the lowest mean temperature there have been measured for August in 300 years !!!

Not having any other Sherlockian references by hand I'll say, that Watson writes this story in August 1912, there is (of course it should still be summer, right?) no heating and no fire and he is damned cold. Perhaps he was even holding the pen in a glowed hand !

"Stay cool!"