The Voice of Science - Arthur Conan Doyle - 135 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Voice of Science

This story appeared in the popular Strand magazine in March 1891.
This is a predominantly comical story though it was innovative to mention the remarkable achievements of the supporting character Mrs Esdaile. In that time in England, women were not very active in the professional field, leave alone in matters of science. Mrs Esdaile was the source of envy of not just the gossip women who were idle but also of men who thought that royal science clubs were exclusive admittance only to men.

Physician Mary N. Crawford worked at the Serum Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 1962, she discovered that she was one of a few people in the world with the rare blood type Lu (a-b-) and that her blood might be donated to a patient in Great Britain.
Source - Flashback



In Lindens, Birchespool, Mrs. Esdaile is the secretary of the ladies' branch of the local Eclectic Society. A lover of all things innovative and adventurous, she organizes a scientific exhibition in his home with the help of her daughter Rose and her son Rupert. The highlight of the exhibition is a new invention called here as an apparatus of 'wood and steel' or now commonly called gramophone which would play a lecture from an eminent professor. Shortly before the guests start to come, Rupert talks to his sister about a certain Captain Beesly and he advises her not to be courted by him. Rupert is dominating and mischievous, though he has his sister's interests and welfare at heart. Rose disagrees and argues with him. When the mother and sister momentarily leave the room, Rupert is alone with the 'apparatus'.



He decides to do a little trick and tinkers with the gramophone. The exhibition goes on smoothly much to the delight of Mrs. Esdaile. The gramophone is brought out to impress the guests and for the speech. Instead of an elderly man speaking on mundane matters of facts and theory, a voice announces all the former conquests of Captain Beesly and also questions his penchant for cards. Ashamed, the Captain flees the place. 

Illustration of Beesly fleeing - by Walter S. Stacey in The Strand Magazine (March 1891)

Shocked and dejected, Rose doesn't have any suspicion on who did the trick. Some years later she is married to Mr. Stares, a most respectable scientist. Yet she can never be sure of how the gramophone could do a trick like that! The voice finally guided the little sister to a better marriage choice.

The Colonel's Choice - Arthur Conan Doyle - 134 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Colonel's Choice

A story about patience, perseverance in the face of unfortunate gossip and an army man' s enduring promise to love. In Birchespool, England, an esteemed army general Colonel Percy Bolsover is besotted by a lady twenty years his junior. But that is not what is keeping the provincial town unhappy.

Hilda Thornton is popular in the aristocratic English society as a great beauty and sought after by many generals and army officials. Naturally the common people make her the subject of unnecessary gossip, associating her with this Tom and many Harrys.

 

Despite all these baseless rumors, Bolsover gets engaged to Miss Thornton and marries her soon.

Almost two happy blissful married years later, an old friend of Hilda emerges. Captain Tresillian of the Madras Staff Corps is an attractive man and seems to take a rather keen interest in the married Mrs. Bolsover. This is noticed by the Colonel at a house party but he ignores it. His magnanimity, gracious self and kind behaviour is what is really the key part of the story.

Even the rumor tongues across the provincial towns have started wagging. Yet he trusts his wife completely and doesn't read much into the whole matter.

Some days later he finds that his wife and Tresillian meet in ambiguous situations. Though the Colonel does not want to question Hilda and insult her, the actions of Tresllian and abrupt behaviour of his wife starts to drill a hole in his mind. Finally he questions her with as much gentleness and hesitation that an upright gentlemanly husband can.


Hilda confesses she knew Tresilian before her marriage and gives a blank answer when questioned by the now despairing Colonel if she loves that man still. The poor Colonel is crushed internally but doesn't express it. Ofcourse he has lost his trust in her but doesn't go about talking ill of her, drinking himself in melancholy or giving into bitterness. He asks the War Office to be incorporated in India as he wants to keep a distance between them as well as to probably give her freedom quietly before the town sings of her.

But very soon after, during an unfortunate fire in the house, he gives the ultimate sacrifice for her. Though I am still confused whether he killed himself out of sorrow or ended his life in happiness in order to give her her choice. 
Bolsover succeeds in evacuating the maids and his wife by the upstairs window, but he decides not to jump and stays in the flames and perishes. That was the Colonel's choice.

Illustrations from PostPics

His Last Bow - Arthur Conan Doyle - 133 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

#TreezShort

Penguin Classic edition

“His Last Bow” is a short story from the anthology His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (1977). It’s the last work in Conan Doyle’s mystery series about the legendary detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Unlike the other Holmes stories which focused on the detective's talents and investigative abilities, this story is a spy based one. The story could have been written at the time of the First World War, because of its portrayal of British and German spies and to boost morale of the British army as well of the public.

Two German agents - von Bork and von Herling - are standing talking outside an English country house. The two men discuss the positions of the United Kingdom and Germany relative to the impending First World War. They both are confident that Germany will win the war based on the tactics employed by their armies.


Von Bork refers to the other gentleman about an Irish-American man called Altamont whom he has hired as an informer against the British. Altamont is supposed to be bringing an important file. Once von Bork receives it he intends to leave England for his home country. Herling leaves and Altamont soon arrives in a chauffeur-driven car. He turns out to be Holmes and the chauffeur is Watson. Holmes had been duping Bork. Soon he sedates Bork and collects the papers. He had been giving false information to Bork so that he could know what action they would take for the attack on England. He also mentions that he plans to retire to the South Downs and engage himself in his new hobby of bee-keeping.

Illustration of Holmes sedating Bork -by Alfred Gilbert as it appeared in Strand magazine

Trivia -Sherlock Holmes' undercover name, Altamont, is also the middle name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's father, Charles Altamont Doyle.

Front cover of Strand where the story appeared

The Lonely Hampshire Cottage - Arthur Conan Doyle - 132 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The story first appeared in Cassell's Saturday Journal (2 may 1885)

This is a story about a family breaking up even when second chances are given because of ego, greed and anger getting in the way.

John Ranter, gruffy old Englishman went bankrupt because of his violent temper. He doesn't have friends and no one wants to be his enemy. He lost clients, thrashed his son to the extent that the lad ran away.

now fifteen years later, Ranter and his meek wife has retired to a drooped down equally sad cottage in Hampshire. 

 One day a smart American looking sailor meets him and explains that he is looking for a safe place to sleep for the night. Without directly saying so, he hints that  he is carrying a large amount of silver and gold on him. Ranter slowly makes plans to loot the guest and so offers to host him at his house. He plans to kill him to take his gold and start a new life, as he misses the old life of plenty and riches. After supper, he waits several hours to ensure that the sailor is sleeping. His wife disapproves of his evil ideas and faints out of fear and alarm. Indifferent to her condition, he goes upstairs the rackety stairs to the guest's room.

Armed with a large knife, he slowly climbs the stairs, opens the door of the guest room. Only to find himself in front of a loaded gun. and looks into it. The sailor was waiting for him, aware and wary.

 He explains that he is his son, John, and that he intended to give him all the money, but changes his mind after the intention of his father is revealed. Underneath John's anger is sadness that all the years of poverty has not made his father humble. Ranter, shocked and shameful, has a heart attack and dies instantly. John leaves with his mother to the United States and gives her the peaceful and luxurious life she truly deserves. 

The First Operation - Round the Red Lamp - Arthur Conan Doyle - 130 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The First Operation - Round the Red Lamp - 1894



Round the Red Lamp is a collection of 17 short stories, all of which centers on physicians and the life and community of doctors. Conan Doyle’s detective stories often refer to forensic evidence and medical principles. The plots of many stories often seem like extended medical analyses, moving from hypothesis to diagnosis through the accumulation of facts and Holmes’ characteristic deductive reasoning.

Conan Doyle’s connection with medicine is made most explicit in these stories, in which he fully explores his love for his former profession. While his stories initially garnered praise and widespread popularity when published in the magazine Strand, he decided to leave medical career to become a full-time writer. even then the medical field did not leave his psyche. Traces of that white coat community lingered on and can be seen in his future writings. Readers can see that in the character of Dr. Watson with his helpful suggestions to Holmes' conclusions in various cases, but also in Holmes’s deductive methods, which were famously inspired by Conan Doyle’s former professor of surgery, Dr. Joseph Bell.



Artist's image of Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle in his student clinic.
(From the Stark Munro Letters, A. C. Doyle, 1895)

In a letter to a friend, which was later used as the preface to the collection, Conan Doyle suggests that medicine and fiction could generate similar palliative effects: “A tale which may startle the reader out of his usual grooves of thought, and shocks him into seriousness, plays the part of the alterative and tonic in medicine, bitter to the taste but bracing in the result”. In an interview given to The Idler magazine, also in 1894, Conan Doyle uses another medical metaphor to describe the practice of writing: “To get an idea to penetrate to the masses of the people you must put fiction round it, like sugar round a pill. No statesman and no ecclesiastic will have more influence on public opinion than the novelist of the future will have”.


The First Operation is a comical story about a first year student and his first day at surgery. The student as well as his senior, who guides him, remains unnamed. I think it was a deliberate genius by Doyle to emphasize on the nature of relationship between the two - one a novice and a learner as well as the other a seasoned learned person of practice, as well as to show that in professions such as medicine, there is a need to have gradual and systematic accumulation of practice and theory. Thus throughout the story there is student and a teacher.


The young man is nervous at the moment and is about to witness a surgery, along with some other classmates. The patient is a woman who has a tumor at the throat. The tumor itself is described quite animatedly. Blue veins with purple skin and creamy background. I think we commoners see these things as ugly or fancy but for nurses and doctors this is second skin (pun not intended).


When the senior doctor starts a lecture on the clinical description of the lady's health and tumor situation , the young man is affected by the whole atmosphere in the room - the tumor, the heaviness of the mood and the lecture. Promptly he faints. When he is about, his classmates have a good laugh at the exact reason of his faintness.





Vintage 1930 illustartion

caption partial courtesy by Nyumed Blog

The Field Bazaar - Arthur Conan Doyle - 129 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Field Bazaar - Doyle Short Stories

I never knew Doyle had written short stories featuring Holmes. And I was pleasantly surprised to see an entire collection on Internet archive. That is why I love reading projects which make you explore the rabbit hole of past books and authors. Beyond their obvious famous character creations, there are snippets of equally great works.



The Field Bazaar is a short story published on November 20, 1896 in an edition of "Bazaar Number" of The Student, which was a publication of the students' representative council at Edinburgh University. This background is interesting to read because just a few years ago, in December 1893, Doyle had unceremoniously made Holmes plunge to his death in Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem". The public outcry was severe, being such crazy followers of the detective. As a result of that, readers then and now popularly believe that the beloved English detective was 'resurrected' in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Which is what I believed too! But Holmes was brought back in this story The Field Bazaar". How fascinating for beliefs to be shaken like this.


Additional trivia is that the Craig Lockhart Pavilion in Edinburgh, Scotland was Built in 1897 partly with funds raised by sales of the issue of The Student. Its delightful that the structure still standing today, was part of history which has so much of quirky aspects to it.



The Field Bazaar is a first person narration by Watson. He is in conversation with Holmes about the subject of helping the Bazaar organized by the Edinburgh University. Thus the story is a reflection of Doyle's help to the publication. Inception or storyception?

Usually a story interests us because of its plot and character sketch or the writings style of the author. This is a unique story because the trivia and background behind it and the story mirroring the author's situation at that era, have all brought together an engrossing piece to read. Not to mention nostalgia of Holmes and the cultural legacy the detective has.

This week I will highlight some of Doyle's short stories in celebration of his upcoming birth anniversary on May 22nd.

The Week of Less Reading and more Podcasts

Another week gone by and yet I could not make much progress of my book reading. I am currently with Meri Teri Uski Baat by Yashpal. A pre-Independence Hindi book which is touching and interesting in ways.However,the seemingly easy week was peppered with little tasks and meal preps. If only books could make us full. :)

What I have been cooking

So I made Apple Pie Cake,yet another recipe from Laura Vitale. I can't believe how on point and perfect her recipes are and how easy to follow. I have made her Chicken Quesadillas, Chilli Mac and Cheese and now this. All ,as she says, FANtastic!

I also cooked up Beef Casserole and this was a recipe in learning so I am glad it came out well. I hope to have the method up soon on my food blog which is lying dormant for years which is why I am not giving the link here :)

Something New

I recently bought this Sherlock Holmes colouring book and I will not call it adult colouring book because a) I don't feel grown up and b) Its a weird term for such a fun book. And no, I did not get this because I am stressed or depressed, according to the popular reason why people buy these lovely things. 

What I have been listening

Yes I am guilty of indulging in podcasts and hence suffering on my book reading...but these are really really good ones. 

   You Must Remember This

    A site for podcasts related to old Hollywood. Though it  has a good variety of topics, the

    navigation might be a little painstaking. 

    I liked the idea of a page or site dedicated to old classic movies and art because they were brilliant. 

   It was an amazing era,the originality of which is unsurpassed. That is why I humbly write 

   about classic Hindi and Malayalam movies ,a place where my thoughts and love for classics

   described in the best way I can.

  The Real Food Podcast

   In my recent post, I had talked about how food podcasts are an important step ahead for 

   any foodie. In yet another episode of The Real Food Podcast, the topic being Leftovers, it had me 

   thinking how a subject so insignificant like leftovers is approached differently in some cultures.

  

What I have been reading

    Slovenia and Sikkim  

    I chanced upon some links about Slovenian culture and cuisine and this country is on my 

    travel list now. I like places which are relatively unique in what they offer to the world and that is

    even my quest to know more about the quaint Sikkim state of India was there.

Gangtok capital of Sikkim

    These are some short reads and video links, that I felt, give a condensed picture about the two 

    places. Whether you visit them or not, it is always refreshing to know about places and customs.

    Sikkim - Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F0426kz4bg

                   Pdf - http://www.thlib.org/static/reprints/bot/bot_1995_01_14.pdf

     Slovenia - read -http://www.ukom.gov.si/fileadmin/ukom.gov.si/pageuploads/dokumenti/Publikacije/kultura_web.pdf

Pictures from Incredible India site and toposophy 

What I have been watching/watched

   Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

   I am not going to review the movie (or maybe I will on a later date).  A good movie for a nice time

   on a weekend is how I will describe it. Worth watching? Maybe, as I felt it was a seemingly mature   movie ,a far cry from the typicalness of Bollywood. There is much better character formation of the

  actors and thankfully NO elaborate wedding saga.

  Kitaabnama series

  This is a books and authors based show aired on Doordarshan. I watch these off Youtube so I do not know if they are still broadcasted on Tv. For those who love Indian authors this is a good source of detailed literature analysis.

The week ended with a dinner at family favourite Bennigans and evening spent in the park, The feel of damp grass on bare foot is unmatchable right? 

And Happy Diwali friends!