SherlockHolmesSocietyofIndia : Message: Re: [sherlock holmes society of india] Further...

Hi Sherlockians,

Mr. Roy and others, please let me know if there is anything to substantiate the
original name of the tangled skein ? If it was originally printed, my guess is
that some Sherlockian somewhere must have a copy / snapshot of it.... hoping to
see this sometime in this life....just talking about it and knowing that there
are so many fans of the World's first consulting detective...is great....

To keep things going on this yahoo group ... here is one more thing that has
fascinated me from a long time about the canon and would love to have the
opinion of all of you.... i posted this on the other orkut forum a while back
..... so here goes.....

A repetition in the Canon which always perplexed me was the of Holmes reading
Watson's mind in 2 tales.... often wondered if i would ever meet Sherlockians
and discuss this one too... before the internet, it seemed like a dream that i
would be able to talk to like minded fans...

The tales are the "Cardboard Box" and "ResidentPatient"

----------------------------------------------------------------
"You are right, Watson," said he. "It does seem a most
preposterous way of settling a dispute."
"Most preposterous!" I exclaimed, and then suddenly realiz-
ing how he had echoed the inmost thought of my soul, I sat up in
my chair and stared at him in blank amazement.
"What is this, Holmes?" I cried. "This is beyond anything
which I could have imagined."
----------------------------------------------------------------

However, i request all to do a double check....

IT IS IN SOME VERSIONS OF THE PRINT OF THE CANON ONLY !!!!

you will not find it in some versions such as the "WordsworthEditions"

The online set in http://www.citsoft.com/holmes3.htmlhas this repetition.....you
will also find this in a old 50s-60s Penguin Version of printand it's
derivatives...

I too was under the old penguin edition and .... finally decided to read the
original canonor the oldest one that i could lay my hands on ..... to find the
same error as I was certain that "Conan Doyle could not dothis to his readers!!!
" he did not know copy/paste and i found that he hadnot !!

Now when and where did this copy paste fit in ?? this is my question to all

Cheers....

P.S : How many of you have THE "Original Stories" ???? ;-)

----- Original Message ----
From: pinaki roy <monkaroy@...>
To: sherlockholmessocietyofindia@...
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 7:32:40 PM
Subject: [sherlock holmes society of india] Further...

Dear Sherlockians,

Tim has raised an important question – about Arthur Conan Doyle’s initially
calling his first Sherlock Holmes story “A Tangled Skein” after a phrase from
one of William Shakespeare’s plays. William S. Baring-Gould, in the first volume
of “The Annotated Sherlock Holmes” (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1967) has
specified the word to be ‘skein’ (pp. 11), and I am sorry that I spelt the word
erroneously in my earlier post. But Baring-Gould himself has not had provided
any details regarding how “A Tangled Skein” was changed within a month to “A
Study in Scarlet.” I am waiting for the valuable suggestions of other
Sherlockians regarding why the name was so abruptly changed. As for Tim’s
suggestion, it was easy and natural for Doyle, a much-read person, to be
influenced by Shakespeare. However, in the Second Act of “Macbeth”, Shakespeare
has not exactly used the term ‘tangled skein’; he has actually used, through
Macbeth,
‘ravell’d sleave’ (as a metaphor for the kind of
frustration human beings experience when they have so many problems that they
cannot see the end to any of them). May be Doyle was intending to write a story
with so many twists and mysteries that the investigators would feel helpless.

Interestingly, the concepts of both the ‘tangled
skein’ and ‘study in scarlet’ exist within the text of the first Sherlock Holmes
story. In the fourth chapter of “A Study in Scarlet”, subtitled ‘What John Rance
had to Tell’, Sherlock Holmes lectures to Dr. John H. Watson about his
murder-investigatio n being a ‘study in scarlet’. To quote Holmes – that is,
Doyle – “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless
skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every
inch of it.”

As Sridhar has already pointed out, “The Tangled Skein”
is also the 1907 altered title for “In Mary’s Reign” (1901), the second novel
written by the Hungarian-British litterateur Emma M.R.M.J.B.O. de Orczi
(1865-1947), better known as ‘Baroness Emma Orczy’. Orczy’s stirring novel is
distinguished from Doyle’s initial Sherlock Holmes adventure by just an article.
In her novel, Orczy does not actually paint Queen Mary in her supremely negative
self. Rather, the queen is passionate and loving; she is a woman of strong
emotions. But the ‘tangling of the skein’ occurs due to her pretentious love for
Robert d’Esclade, fifth Duke of Wessex.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,

(Pinaki Roy, Ph.D.)

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