Donald Zaldin, BSI, ASH: The Sherlockian Durbar Room of Arthur Conan Doyle
Donny Zaldin is a member of The Bootmakers of Toronto (The Sherlock Holmes Society of Canada), the Baker Street Irregulars, The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Over the past quarter-century, he has contributed as author and editor to numerous Sherlockian books, journals and websites (including Canon Law, the Sherlock Holmes Journal, the Baker Street Journal, Canadian Holmes, The Magic Door, and “Sherlockian.net.” He is a retired barrister-at-law and is married to his own “certain gracious lady,” Barbara Rusch, with whom he shares six children and fifteen grandchildren.
The colonial history and geography of the British
Empire provided recurring “canon fodder” for locales and characters in the adventures,
exploits and memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Foreign countries included America,
Canada, Australia, South Africa and India.
The British East India Company
In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I created the Company by Royal
Charter, which granted a monopoly in perpetuity of all English trade to Asia. Led
by soldier and privateer Robert Clive, the Company turned its focus from trade
to territory and by 1803, the colossus boasted its own currency, a private navy
and a private army — allowing it to exercise military, political and economic
control over most of British India.
The East India Company extended its dominance over
the subcontinent for another half-century until the mid-1800s, laying the
foundation of British rule for a further 100 years. In the process, it annexed by
military means more territory than all of Napoleon’s conquests in Europe. During
that time, the interests of the company and country were placed head and
shoulders above those of India and its indigenous populations — which fomented the
development of Indian nationalism. In 1848, Governor General Lord Dalhousie was
quoted, “In India one is always sitting on a volcano,” which figurative geographic
feature erupted on April 14, 1857.
The 1857 Indian
“Mutiny” / ‘Rebellion”
After 250 years of exploitation, Indian soldiers and
civilians raised arms against the British. The armed struggle — which Britain
calls “The Indian (or Sepoy) Mutiny” and
India calls the “The Indian Rebellion”
— lasted fourteen months, concluding with the sound defeat of the native
inhabitants. About 7,500 British lives were lost versus a staggering 800,000
soldiers and civilians on the Indian side, in the uprising and ensuing famines.
Resultant Transfer of India from
the Company to the Crown
In the following year, 1858, direct rule by the
British Crown was substituted for that of the Company.
In the 1880s, High Court Justice Sir James
Fitzjames Stephen Q.C., formerly a Member of the Council of India, stated that
empire had to be “absolute” in order to achieve “its great and characteristic
task … of imposing [British interests] on Indian ways of life and modes of
thought” — which statement epitomised the government and civilian sentiment. However,
the Government moderated somewhat its political, social and economic rule via
consultation between the mother country and her colonial child; and India
benefited from this transfer of power from private to national hands, although
it took another century until Britain granted full independence to India, which
encompassed one-seventh of the world population.
“The Jewel in the Crown”
The 18th century saw India’s vast population
provide Britain with a plentiful source of cheap labour and an abundant supply of
soldiers for its military, raw materials for its industrial revolution, opium
for trade, cash crops for its economy, spices, jewels and textiles for British
consumers, and a burgeoning market for its manufactured goods. The British Empire
was transformed from relatively self-governing Atlantic communities to financially
lucrative Asian territories — laying the foundation of its modern colonial
empire, and producing an epochal shift in the balance of world power.
By the mid-nineteenth century, India was regarded as
“The Jewel in the Crown” of the British
Empire, known as the Raj. This gemmological
accolade was coined by British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who proclaimed
Queen Victoria by statute as “Empress of India” in 1876.
PM Disraeli offering Queen
Victoria
the Crown of India and title
“Empress of India”
Punch
Magazine, April 15, 1876
This prestigious title of the “Jewel,” due to India’s raw natural resources and its strategic
location, produced immense profits and wealth to the Empire upon which the sun
never set, and propelled Britain to become the
most powerful and influential country in the world. Maps showing its territory
coloured in a vivid, eye-catching red hung in schools at home and throughout the
empire.
The far-reaching lands which formed 19th and early
20th century India comprised about one-third in area of the British Empire,
which would constitute almost one-quarter of the world’s land mass and
population following World War I.
Influence of India upon Britain
The geo-political relationship between Britain and
India was described by Welsh historian Jan Morris:
… India
meant something to everybody, from the Queen herself with her Hindu menservants
to the humblest family … India was the brightest gem, of the Raj, and part of
the order of things: to a people of the drizzly north, the possession of such a
country was like some marvel in the house … some fabulously endowed if distant
relative. India appealed to the British love of pageantry and fairy-tale, and
to most people the destinies of the two countries seemed not merely intertwined,
but indissoluble.
Indian Independence
In 1947, a war-weary Britain partitioned the vast
colony into two separate, sovereign nations, India and Pakistan, based on
religious lines: Hindu vs Muslim — with Britain ceding political
self-determination, financial ownership and management of India’s natural
resources and economy.
Queen Victoria and the Koh-i-Noor
Diamond of India
Mined in Golconda, India, the 186-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond (“mountain of light”
in Persian) transitioned from a thing of beauty to a symbol of political potency.
In 1849, this irresistible symbol of prestige and power was acquired by force
by the British East India Company as war compensation. One of the oldest,
largest and most famous diamonds in the world, it has carried a deadly curse
through the male line: “He who owns the diamond will own the world, but will
also know all its misfortunes. Only G-d, or a woman, can wear it with
impunity.”
The Company formally presented the priceless gem to
Queen Victoria on July 3, 1851 and it was displayed in the Crystal Palace at Hyde
Park, London, where it took pride of place at The Great Exhibition. Her Majesty
wore the precious jewel in a brooch and a circlet before it was mounted in 1853
and subsequently remounted in 1858 and again in 1911. Finally, in 1936, it was
transferred to the Coronation Crown of Queen Elizabeth (later the “Queen
Mother”), consort to King George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II. This Crown
Jewel is on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. After achieving
their independence in 1947, India and Pakistan each claimed title of the Koh-i-Noor,
but all demands for its return have been rejected by Britain, lest it “suddenly
find the British Museum … empty.”
The Durbar
The Durbar was the term used for the place where
Indian and other eastern rulers held their formal and informal meetings —
equivalent to a King’s or Queen’s Court in the European context.
The Delhi
Durbars of 1877, 1903 and 1911
Indians were such enthusiastic subjects of the
British Monarchy that they held three royal Durbars at Delhi: in 1877 for Queen
and Empress Victoria; in 1903 for King Emperor Edward VII and Queen Empress Alexandra;
and, in December 1911 — to commemorate the coronation of King Emperor George V
and Queen Empress Mary, both of whom travelled to India to attend the ceremony
in person. Practically every ruling prince, nobleman, landed gentry and other
person of note in India, and over 500,000 of the common people came out to
greet them and pay obeisance to their new sovereigns.
Delhi Durbar, India, 1911 Coronation of
King Emperor George V and Queen
Empress Mary
Queen
Victoria, the “Munshi,” and her love of “all things Indian”
Her Majesty’s beloved husband, Prince Albert died
in 1861, from which loss she never recovered. Her Scottish Highland servant
John Brown became her personal attendant and faithful friend. Four years after
Brown’s 1883 death, the “Widow of Windsor” became similarly attached to an
Indian servant, Abdul Karim (1863-1909), who served as her personal attendant
and “Munshi” (clerk or teacher) for the last fifteen years of her life. He
taught her Hindustani and Urdu and introduced her to a world that was
fascinatingly foreign and alien to her, creating an inextricable connection to
India and its exotic culture and customs. The aging Queen elevated the Munshi to
the position of her “Indian Secretary” and in in 1899, she appointed him to the
rank of Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, intermediate between Member and
Knight, contrary to the wishes. and to the consternation of, her government and
family.
The “Munshi”
Abdul Karim
The Durbar Room at Osborne House
In 1845, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought
Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, two miles south of Hampshire, in the
English Channel, for a summer home and retreat. A new, more spacious Osborne
House was built over the next six years and the main wing was added later. The
final addition was another wing built in 1890-91, which included an authentic
Durbar built for state functions, patterned on the magnificent Durbars of
ancient and nineteenth century India. The room was designed in an elaborate and
intricate style and decorated with splendorous Indian art, furniture and artefacts,
atop a carpet from Agra. It now
holds gifts Queen Victoria received on her Golden and Diamond Jubilees, and
other treasures.
Durbar Room
of Queen Victoria
Osborne House, 1890
Indian Ethnography in the
Sherlockian Canon
Ethnography is the systematic study of people and
cultures, designed to explore cultural phenomena from the point of view of the
subject group in order to represent its principles and systems. The frequency
and detail of references to India — from mainly British but also Indian
perspectives — in almost one-third of the sixty tales, especially in The Sign of Four, qualify as ethnographic in nature and are considered to be a
valuable source of the history and culture of India in the Victorian era.
References to India in the Canon
Arthur Conan Doyle was fascinated with pageantry
and heraldry and featured India in his literary works. Although he never
travelled there, he recognized the intertwining of the history and destiny of
the two nations. Over a Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian writing career spanning
a half-century, ACD often used the theme of the foreign culture of Britain’s
jewel in its Crown in his writings.
The Indian influence is a recurrent theme in the
Sherlockian Canon, especially in The Sign
of Four, “The Speckled Band,” and “The Crooked Man” - published in 1890,
1891 and 1893, respectively.
In The Sign,
ACD features the “Indian Mutiny,” providing readers with the jingoistic and
xenophobic mindset of the British Empire. Mention is made of: an Indian lunkah (cigar) and a Hindoo khitmutgar (lowly servant); the little savage,
Tonga from the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory; Watson’s first wife, Mary
Morstan, whose father served in India; Jonathan Small, an invalided enlistee
who loses his leg to a crocodile in the Ganges River; and, the Agra Treasure, which goes missing from the pretty and heavy treasure
box of Benares metal-work with a hasp wrought in the image of a sitting Buddha.
In “The Crooked Man,” Corporal Henry Wood serves in
The Royal Mallows (Royal Munsters in the American texts) army regiment in India
during the 1857 “Mutiny,” when he is betrayed by his superior, Sergeant James
Barclay, rival for the affections of the Colour Sergeant’s daughter, Nancy
Devoy. Wood is captured by the enemy, tortured and permanently crippled, and
subsists by becoming a conjurer and performer in India and then in England upon
his return home.
In “The Speckled Band,” Dr Grimesby Roylott was
stationed in India but returns to England, with his family and takes up
residence in the ancestral house at Stoke Moran. There he keeps Indian animals:
a cheetah, a baboon and a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India, which he
uses to kill his step-daughter Julia for her inheritance. When he tries to kill
Helen in like manner, Holmes takes action and causes the snake to turn upon its
master and inflict a deadly wound with its poison fangs. This tale lends its
name to the venerable American Sherlockian society, “The Speckled Band of
Boston.”
There are also numerous other Indian references, including those in:
·
A Study
in Scarlet, in which
Watson lands at Bombay to serve in the second Afghan war; and, later contracts
enteric fever, “that curse of [Britain’s] Indian possessions;”
·
“The Cardboard Box,” in which
Watson states that his term of service in India had trained him to withstand
heat better than cold;
·
“The Greek Interpreter,” in which
Sherlock and brother Mycroft look out the bow-window of the Diogenes Club, and compete
with each other to make out a small, dark fellow, who they deduce served in
India as a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Artillery;
·
“The Empty House,” in which
Holmes ensnares shikari Colonel
Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, and the best heavy game
shot England’s eastern empire has ever produced;
·
“The Three Students,” in which one
of the trio is Daulat Ras, an Indian student
of Mr Hilton Soames, tutor and lecturer at the College of St. Luke’s;
·
“The Second Stain,” in which the murder
of Eduardo Lucas is committed with a curved Indian dagger;
·
The
Valley of Fear, in which
Holmes deciphers a message by recognising printing dealing with the trade and resources
of British India.
Military Service in India
As above set out, various tales reference military
service in India by assorted canonical characters, including Dr Watson, Captain
Arthur Morstan, Colonel Sebastian Moran, Dr Grimesby Roylott, Jonathan Small, Corporal
Henry Wood, and Colonel James Barclay.
Indian Geography
Places, such as Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Lucknow, Benares
and Pondicherry are interspersed throughout the Canon.
Cursed Indian Jewellery in the Canon
India is a major foreign backdrop in the Canon,
especially in The Sign of Four, which
features “the great Agra treasure,” consisting of gold and silver and a blinding
collection of precious gems.
Cursed Indian Jewellery in
Literature
In 1868, some nineteen years before Sherlock Holmes
made his literary debut in A Study in
Scarlet, English novelist Wilkie Collins wrote The Moonstone, an early detective novel. In it, a precious yellow
diamond inset in the forehead of an Indian god in a temple of a holy city is
stolen by a British soldier whose family is then cursed, until the sacrilege is
avenged by its recovery. The story incorporates elements of the legendary
origins of three fabulous, cursed and expatriated Indian diamonds: the Hope, the Black Orlov, and the Koh-i-Noor.
For centuries, jewels have been objects of fascination and many
cultures have at one time or another ascribed to them magical properties — for
both good and evil. In each case, their rarity, beauty and value have led
them to become objects of desire; and literature, particularly detective
fiction, abounds with stories of greed, envy and thievery, which is often accompanied
by a curse on the thief and his descendants.
While Holmes does not locate the Great Agra Treasure, prized jewels which
go missing in the Canon but find their way onto Holmes’s lost-and-found list include
the Blue Carbuncle, the Mazarin Stone, the famous Black Pearl of the Borgias, the
Beryl Coronet and the ancient crown of the Kings of England, which was last
worn by King Charles I — and presumably the Bishopgate jewels and the Vatican
cameos (two untold tales, mentioned in The Sign of Four and The Hound
of the Baskervilles, respectively).
In “The Blue Carbuncle,” Holmes investigates the theft of that valuable
blue garnet and gives his verdict on the powers of priceless gems:
Holmes
took up the stone and held it against the light. “It’s a bonny thing,” said he.
“Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of
crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits. In the larger and
older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed … In spite of its youth,
it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a
vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake
of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so
pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?
The Durbar Rooms of Queen
Victoria and Arthur Conan Doyle
In 1890, the same year that the Queen Empress built
her Durbar Room at Osborne House, ACD included a Durbar Room in The Sign of Four, the chamber in which Thaddeus
Sholto receives Holmes, Watson and Mary Morstan. In his “third-rate suburban dwelling-house,”
the trio are ushered “down a sordid and common passage, ill lit and worse finished,”
into Sholto’s little “sanctum,” which looks “as out of place as a diamond of
the first water in a setting of brass”:
A small place … but furnished to [his] own liking.
An oasis of art in the howling desert of South London … The richest and
glossiest of curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back here and
there to expose some richly-mounted painting or Oriental vase. The carpet was
of amber-and-black, so soft and so thick that the foot sank pleasantly into it,
as into a bed of moss. Two great tiger-skins thrown athwart it increased the
suggestion of Eastern luxury, as did a huge hookah which stood upon a mat in
the corner. A lamp in the fashion of a silver dove was hung from an almost
invisible golden wire in the centre of the room. As it burned it filled the air
with a subtle and aromatic odour.
Like “A Certain Gracious Lady”: Like
a certain “Knight, Patriot, Physician & Man of Letters”
Thus, Arthur Conan Doyle followed in the footsteps
of the beloved sovereign, that “certain gracious lady” whom Holmes honoured by
adorning the wall opposite his arm-chair at 221B “with a patriotic V.R. done in
bullet-pocks” (“The Musgrave Ritual”). ACD did so by simultaneously creating a
literary Durbar Room in The Sign of Four
in the style and manner of the magnificent Durbar Room which Her Majesty, the
Queen Empress built at Osborne: two cultural homages to India which each
survive to this day.
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