[Sherlockian]

The Gloria Scott was first published in the Strand Magazine in April 1893, with 7 illustrations by Sidney Paget.


I have a few question:


1. When did the case take place? Holmes is in college at that time and assuming that he was born in 1854, can we say that GLOR took place around the first half 1870s? Probably around 1873-74? What do you guys think?


2.

"He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college..."

Why do you think he left college after two years?


3.

"Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows..."

What do you think was Holmes's line of study that was quite distinct from that of other fellows?


4. How did Holmes deduce that Victor Trevor's dad had done a good deal of digging and also been in New Zealand and Japan?


5.

"All this occurred during the first month of the long vacation..."

What kind of vacation do you think this was?


6. what are finger-glasses?


7.

Underneath is written in a hand so shaky as to be hardly legible, 'Beddoes writes in cipher to say H. has told all. Sweet Lord, have mercy on our souls!'

But Victor Trevor's dad had a stroke right after he got Beddoes' letter. So then how did he manage to write this last sentence?


For links to the discussions on other stories, visit this thread:
http://www.holmesian...p?showtopic=717

[Silver Blaze]

Nobody seems to want to post in your thread. What do you deduce from that?

I can tell you that finger-glasses are small bowls filled with water that you dip your fingers in to clean them off during a meal. The other questions, I'll hold off on until I think deep thoughts about them.

[Sherlockian]

Nobody seems to want to post in your thread. What do you deduce from that?

I deduce that nobody likes me or my threads/posts. *Goes in a corner and sulks*

[Silver Blaze]

I deduce that nobody likes me or my threads/posts. *Goes in a corner and sulks*

*hands Sherlockian a chocolate chip cookie*
Feel any better?

[Sherlockian]

*hands Sherlockian a chocolate chip cookie*
Feel any better?

Slightly better.

[Lady Halle]

I wrote about the chronology of GLOR in my Holmes blog, which has been sadly languishing for over a year. It was my first Holmes essay and so far my longest - and consequently the most pompous in tone. To the best of my knowledge no one has proof-read it, so watch out for flaws of logic.

Anyway, here's "A Few Trifling Words On the Matter of Holmes's Age, Or A Demonstration That A Birth Year of 1861 Is Not Entirely Improbable."

http://holmesianramb...of-holmess.html

The jist of it is, I dated it to around 1880. But I also think Holmes was born in 1861.

[Captain Basil]

Why do you think he left college after two years?

For quite some time I have been interested in the ways of universities in Victorian England, but I can't seem to find any definitive data.

How long was a normal university career? What was the normal curriculum? How many 'credits' did a fellow take per term?

I thought I read somewhere that there were three vacations per year, one being Michelmas (did I spell that correctly?), but it will take someone with a good deal more savvy than I to answer the question as to which was the 'long' vacation.

[Lady Halle]

The long vacation was, if I'm remembering properly, the summer vacation.

[BakerStreetBabe]

7.
But Victor Trevor's dad had a stroke right after he got Beddoes' letter. So then how did he manage to write this last sentence?

Well, it would depend on the severity of the stroke. Not all strokes would debilitate a person's ability to write. I think that it was probably just a mini stroke.

I deduce that nobody likes me or my threads/posts. *Goes in a corner and sulks*

Stop that sulking!!! *hands milk to go with the cookies Silver Blaze sent*

[TKR9]

I do know in those days university wasn't the same thing it is now. It was done to go, but then you didn't need to if you wanted to get ahead. In 1870 the large majority of Members of Parliament in the House of Commons had never been to university. It was more normal to join the army, be apprenticed to a businessman, or a lawyer, or a banker, as their assistant and then develop from there. Kind of like graduate fast-tracking these days but without having to graduate. One just sort of sent one's hopeless child to be personal secretary for the Honourable Member of Parliament for Little Piddlington and hoped that one day the Honourable Member would be caught en flagrante and quit and leave the seat to his hapless assistant. Holmes might have gone to University simply to get a grounding in whatever subject he liked, like chemistry, and then pursue his studies independently. He wouldn't need to finish the degree to get ahead as he would now.

That rapidly changed as incomes and education improved and the monied classes suddenly had to compete for places with the best businesses and chambers with a burgeoning, educated middle class. By WW1 parents were sending their sproggets to university as paying for a full degree was a sure fire way of ensuring a job afterwards. Ironically now, because so many people go to university, people with degrees AND work experience doing apprenticeships with business, law-firms or banks, are more highly prized than people who only have a degree or experience.

It's like a mathematical ratio of population size to education and job opportunities...

Some scholastic holidays here are mega-long. My school did nine week holidays over the summer. At university the holiday was something like eleven weeks.

[BakerStreetBabe]

Some scholastic holidays here are mega-long. My school did nine week holidays over the summer. At university the holiday was something like eleven weeks.

Now why doesn't my college do something like that????

[Chalumeau]

Regarding Armitage's end, it strikes me as odd that he would die of a stroke, when he himself noted his weak heart. But then again, the two conditions are not mutually exclusive, as this website shows: "If you have...a weak heart muscle, you may be at higher risk for a TIA." A TIA is a mini stroke.

But this is puzzling too. Mini strokes are more of a warning sign of future stroke troubles, and the vast majority do not result in death. The symptoms, including paralysis, usually disappear within an hour, but can persist for a full day.

So what did Armitage die of? It's possible he had either an ischemic stroke (what we think of as a typical stroke) or a hemorrhagic stroke.
*Ischemic stroke: a blood clot blocks blood flow to the brain, starving the brain of oxygen
*Hemorrhagic stroke: blood vessels bleed within the brain, causing increased pressure and tissue damage

But there's another tidbit in Trevor's account. He says "My father read it [the letter], clapped both his hands to his head, and began running around the room in little circles like a man who has been driven out of his senses." If Armitage was experiencing a headache, a symptom of hemorrhagic strokes, then that may be what did him in.

Have any of you seen this article at SherlockPeoria.net about Holmes's parentage? From the description of Prendergast, he does bear a strong resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. Maybe Mycroft takes after his mother?

[the painter]

I've always been curious about Victor Trevor. He seems rather similar in personality to Watson. Holmes says that after the events of the Gloria Scott, Trevor leaves England for Terai to grow tea. Terai is located in Nepal at the very base of the Himalayas. I wonder if Holmes visited his friend during his wanderings after the Final Problem and before the Empty House? Between Tibet and Persia, Holmes could have easily diverted to Nepal for a while.

[MAHibbard]

I hope this weekend to pull out my annotated SH and see if Mr. Baring-Gould has anything to say regarding the discussion questions. It's been a while since I've read GLOR, and this is as good a reason to refresh my brain as any.

[Clare Hart]

I've always been curious about Victor Trevor. He seems rather similar in personality to Watson. Holmes says that after the events of the Gloria Scott, Trevor leaves England for Terai to grow tea. Terai is located in Nepal at the very base of the Himalayas. I wonder if Holmes visited his friend during his wanderings after the Final Problem and before the Empty House? Between Tibet and Persia, Holmes could have easily diverted to Nepal for a while.

It was interesting to me that Holmes had kept track of his old school friend. I have thought that the Persian slippers may have been a gift sent from Trevor when he took his daddy's ill gotten gains and wandered east.

It turns out that Terai is a geographical description for the vast fertile plains south of the Himalayas rather than a place name. The great tea growing region is around Darjeeling in India. It seems even more likely to me that Holmes would have gone to see his old friend on his way to Tibet. Currently the Tibetan Government in Exile is in nearby Dharamsala. If Victor Trevor had made some Tibetan connections it may have helped Holmes enter that forbidden realm.

[BakerStreetBabe]

Have any of you seen this article at SherlockPeoria.net about Holmes's parentage? From the description of Prendergast, he does bear a strong resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. Maybe Mycroft takes after his mother?

That is a very intruiging article.....You know, I always thought that Prendergast reminded me of someone.....
Thanks for sharing it!