Burlesque Conversations: Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard (article)
Burlesque Conversations: Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard is an article written by Christopher Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 7, 1996/7).
This article reproduces and comments on the humorous 1903 parody Burlesque Conversations: Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard in which Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard meet and debate their respective literary fates. The burlesque reflects contemporary reactions to the return of Holmes in "The Empty House" and Conan Doyle's differing treatment of his two famous characters.
Burlesque Conversations: Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard
The publication of Clifford S. Goldfarb's study of Brigadier Gerard, The Great Shadow is an appropriate occasion on which to remind ourselves that it is not only Sherlock Holmes who has attracted the attention of parodists over the years. The following short piece appeared in Tit-Bits on 3 October 1903, the issue in which an advertisement appeared announcing the long-awaited return of Sherlock Holmes in 'The Empty House'. The author is unknown.
SHERLOCK HOLMES, lounging on his shabby sofa in his yellow figured dressing-gown, was poking a charge of threepenny shag into his blackened clay pipe and gazing introspectively at the shot-punctured ceiling, when the door was thrust open and an old, white-haired gentleman strode into the room. Though his furrowed face evidenced extreme age, in his eye still gleamed the light of martial ardour, and he carried himself with the bearing of a soldier who had earned medals. Clicking his heels together on the mat, he raised one hand in a salute and struck himself on the chest with the other.
Sherlock glanced at him through the corner of his eagle eye and, striking a match, proceeded to fill the room with the pungent fumes of smouldering shag.
'Good morning, Brigadier!' he said. 'Take the arm-chair. After all you've gone through you must be very tired. Let me see, now. You left the Gare du Nord at 3 p.m. yesterday, caught the night packet at Dieppe, had a rough passage and a stiff dose of mal-de-mer, travelled up to London Bridge with a pretty brunette, got nearly run over at the Mansion House, wandered about Cheapside, Fleet Street, and the Strand, and, after being directed by three different policemen, finally took a cab at Charing Cross, and here you are. To what do I owe—?'
'Peste!' snapped the Brigadier, impatiently. 'I am not your biographical friend Watson. You cannot astonish Etienne Gerard with your inferential synthesis. Are we not both threads from the same Strand? I come to ask you why I, Gerard, am cut off thus abrupt, while you, Holmes, whom everyone thought spun out to a finish, are taken up and spliced into yet a longer yarn?'
'The doctor prescribes rest, Etienne. You are growing old,' remarked. Sherlock coolly.
'Old!' cried the soldier, springing from the chair in his indignation. 'Sir! Age cannot wither nor volumes stale the infinite variety of Etienne Gerard. I have but touched on the many incidents of my honoured and eventful career. In my last narration I did but say good-night. I am still very much alive, while, by all the canons of fiction, after that jump with Moriarty, you should be dead as a stone.'
Sherlock allowed himself to smile.
'Gerard,' he said, 'I gave you credit for more perspicacity. Did you think that vice would triumph over virtue? Moriarty was a tough nut, I won. The tussle with him it was that knocked me off my legs for so long. For some time the doctor himself gave me up as one dead. But my destined end was not then, and, thanks to his wonderful skill and the lengthy rest, Sherlock is now himself again. Holmes is Holmes once more.'
'It does not become me, Gerard, to boast, but I have been in some tolerably tight places myself and have survived to tell the tale,' said Etienne. 'That dive with the Professor, though, beats all I ever did. Everybody imagined you'd taken a drop too much at last. It was a glorious and fitting end to the career of the great Baker Street sleuth-hound,' they said. Aye, such an end as I, Etienne Gerard, would not have despised, had fate ruled it so. But there, you English—it is ever the same. You are wiped out utterly so and, hey presto! we find you at your old game somewhere where you are least expected. I could tell you of a score of incidents which happened in the Peninsular—'
'Save them, Gerard,' said Sherlock. 'They'll make good reading when I have had my final congé.'
'How many congés is it proposed you should have' queried the old soldier acrimoniously.
'Sir, do you take me for a professional singer?' cried the lynx-eyed unraveller. 'My life, be it short or long, is in the hands of the doctor. If you feel aggrieved, talk to him. Fact is, Gerard, you're getting garrulous. You've been at it now, my swashbuckling Gascon, on and off for nearly nine years, and the doctor thinks a change would be beneficial. The fiat has gone forth, and you must quit the stage
'You'll excuse me now, won't you? I am expecting my friend Watson every minute. There's an interesting little story connected with this pellet of Gorgonzola cheese I have caged under the tumbler which I have promised to give him. It was discovered in the hollow tooth of the dead man. He had mysteriously disappeared. Search was futile until I arrived on the scene. The secret, however, was solved as soon as I got on the scent. Au revoir, Brigadier. Be merciful to the ladies.'
'Sir,' said Gerard, with head uplifted proudly and hand on breast, 'the ladies will remember the gallant bearing of Etienne Gerard when the tales of Sherlock Holmes's police work has been forgotten, like the newspaper report of a week ago. I—'
His further utterance was choked by a paroxysm of coughing. Sherlock, with intent, had knocked over the tumbler. The gallant Brigadier, who had many a time led a forlorn hope, was compelled to beat a hasty retreat as the blended fumes of ancient Gorgonzola and threepenny shag pervaded the room.
'Ha, ha, ouh!' he spluttered, backing for the door.
'Mon—dieu—ouh, ha ha! This fellow—to supplant me—Etien——
His voice had died away down the stairs, and Sherlock, with a wink, replaced the tumbler and threw open the windows.
When Watson arrived with his notebook he found him playing Chopin's 'Funeral March' on his fiddle, with his eyes closed and the seraphic expression of a Christmas-tree cherub on his pallid face.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
