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Botany in Literature - 51- Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge' 35
BOTANY IN LITERATURE - 51
Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge' - eine
kleine Botanik - (and very few plants ... )
MARGOT E. SODCHIER, 26A Dryden A venue, London, W7 1 ES
'The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge', the first of
the Sherlock Holmes stories in the volume His
Last Bow* (1917), was completed by Conan
Doyle on the 17 th of April 1908, with a view to
its being published in the Strand Magazine
Summer issue of that year, but, instead, it was
kept back, appearing in two parts in the
September (1. The Singular Experience of Mr
John Scott Eccles) and October (2. The Tiger of
San Pedro) issues. Set deep in the Surrey
countryside, between Esher and Oxshott, it is A
Study in Scarlet (see Conan Doyle 2001a;
Souchier, 2007a) type of adventure, entering
into the Conradian world of immigrants and
their policies, and thereby telling of an act of
revenge being carried out for crimes and injustices
committed in distant lands. This time the
tyrant, Don Murillo, hails from Spain, as does
the avenger, Garcia, although he is acting at the
bequest of an Englishwoman, the governess,
"Miss Bumet", whose proper name, as widow
of a Spaniard, is Signora Victor Durando. In
creating his characters, for what Holmes admits
to Inspector Gregson is "on the face of it" a "not
very complex" case, Conan Doyle drew on
details from his own personal life. John Scott
Eccles, the staunchly Conservative Englishman
coming from Lee, an area of Blackheath where
Conan Doyle's second wife, Jean Leckie, had
family, and the name of Durando, being derived
from the Italian runner Dorando Pietri, whose
case of disqualification from the Olympic
Games held in London in July 1908 Conan
Doyle took up. Thus, whether from casualness,
or a deliberate attempt to hide the origin of the
name, Conan Doyle gave an Italian name to a
Spaniard, and, changing the name, as he did, in
proof [seemingly] misspelt it (Lycett, 2007).
Wisteria Lodge itself, as we learn, is an old
tumbledown fair-sized house "standing back
from the road, with a curving drive which was
banked with high evergreen shrubs". In a
marked state of disrepair, with a grass-grown
drive, and a "blotched and weather-stained
door", it is hardly the grand English manor, so
it is perhaps not surprising that it is in actual
fact sans the Wisteria (or at least no mention
is made of it). Garcia, the tenant of the lodge,
all too rapidly befriends Eccles, and invites
him to stay at the lodge, in order, it later turns
out, to provide himself with an alibi. The
story is told conventionally enough by the
narrative of Watson, but it is due to the lack of
any striking action on the behalf of Holmes,
which perhaps marks it, if one is to be candid,
as a less than satisfying Holmes adventure.
This may be due to the fact that Holmes goodnaturedly
shares the limelight with Inspector
Baynes of the Surrey Constabulary, "a stout,
puffy, red man, whose face was only
redeemed from grossness by two extraordinarily
bright eyes, almost hidden behind the
heavy creases of cheek and brow", who
chuckles and flushes with pleasure when
Holmes praises him for his methodical and
clever work. Thus, although Holmes actually
solves the mystery, it is simultaneously done
so by Baynes, with the result that Holmes is
somewhat compromised and the reader
deprived not only of Holmes's glory, but, as it
is, in a sense, we who sit comfortably in Baker
Street, "competent and assured", and "it is
ourselves who are there, full of a tremendous
capacity for wisdom, complacent in the
presence of our humble Watson", (and it is
therefore "our tobacco in the Persian slipper")
with the "swirling fog without and the acrid
smoke within" (Edgar W. Smith quoted by
Anonymous in Conan Doyle, 1976), we too
are deprived of the glory.
There is also, as already intimated, a certain
lack of precision, which, as the following
extract shows, makes the story less convincing
(although no less of "a tangled skein"), and