Hello and welcome to Episode 25. We’re back to Baker Street to drop in on Holmes and Watson for one of their more peculiar later cases, ‘The Adventure of the Creeping Man’ from March 1923.
You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Adventure_of_the_Creeping_Man
Or listen to Greg Wagland’s reading here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctAFqZclNOQ
And listen to the podcast here:
A closed-caption version of the episode will appear two days
after the episode date at our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSy23ujzPCKpttfaUwceFfA
Synopsis
Presbury’s faithful dog, Roy, has recently conceived a violent
antipathy towards his master, who prowls at night. And then there are the
mysterious packages from Mr Dorak of the Commercial Road which Bennett is
forbidden to open.
Somehow it all seems to be connected to the ageing professor’s
engagement to the young daughter of his colleague, Professor Morphy…
Writing and publication history
Believed to have been written in late 1922, shortly after
Conan Doyle returned from a spiritualist lecture tour in America and after he
had taken a five-year lease on 15 Buckingham Palace Mansions.
Conan Doyle may have started writing the Case-Book in
1921 to fund his spiritualist mission. Not unrelated may by the revived
interest in Sherlock Holmes through the successful Stoll Picture series
starring Eille Norwood.
The stories in the Case-Book appeared as and when
Conan Doyle was inspired to write them. They appeared over the period
1921-1927.
First appeared in the Strand Magazine (UK) and Hearst’s International
(USA) in March 1923 and was collected in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
in 1927.
Magic, Gothic and the Occult
H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr Moreau (1896).
Rudyard Kipling, The Mark of the Beast (1890).
F. Marion Crawford, The Witch of Prague (1890).
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897).
Rudolph II (1552-1612), Holy Roman Emperor who made Prague
the centre of European alchemy and the occult.
Monkey glands!
Serge Voronoff (1886-1951)
Eugen Steinach (1861-1944)
Richard Brown, ‘Rejuvenation Therapy: Historical Background
to The Creeping Man,’ Canadian Holmes (Vol 43, No. 4, Fall 2020).
The strange case of Mr Alfred Plaistow (Daily Herald,
14 May 1921).
October 1922 connections: Voronoff’s lectures (Westerham Herald,
14 October 1922); West Africa monkey farm (various, including Belfast
News-Letter, 23 October 1922).
Sydney Lester’s musical comedy The Elixir (1920).
15-part movie serial The Screaming Shadow (US) (Iron
Foot in the UK).
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
(1928).
William Rutherford (1839-99) and the vivisectionists
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Rutherford’s clash with Ashdown is covered in Scotsman,
26 Jan 1887 which prints Rutherford’s apology.
Public demonstrations of vivisection by French physiologists
Francois Magendie (1824) and Eugene Magnan (1874) both attracted controversy.
Degeneration
Max Nordau (1849-1923)
Degeneration, published in two volumes (1892-3).
Holmes and Watson – so very tired
“We can but try – the motto of the firm.”
Mercer – Holmes’s general utility man who looks up routine
business (The Creeping Man).
Shinwell Johnson – Holmes’s valuable assistant in the first years
of the twentieth century (The Illustrious Client).
Langdale Pike – “the receiving station, as well as the
transmitter, for all the gossip of the Metropolis.” (The Three Gables).
Related stories
The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891) – https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2019/10/1-doings-of-raffles-haw.html
‘A Physiologist’s Wife’ (1891)
‘A Sordid Affair’ (1891)
The Land of Mist (1926)
The Maracot Deep (1928)
Next time on Doings of Doyle…
We travel underwater to explore The Maracot Deep (1928)
…
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