Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 2. Whole No. 363, February 1974

The Rape of the Sherlock Being the Only True Version of Holmes’s Adventures by A. A. Milne[2]

From AUTOBIOGRAPHY, by A. A. Milne (Dutton, 1939): “Meanwhile my first free-lance contribution had been accepted. Sherlock Holmes had just ‘returned’ in The Strand Magazine after his duel with Moriarty. I wrote a burlesque of this, which I sent to Punch. Punch refused it, and I sent it to Vanity Fair.” A. A. Milne was paid 15 shillings for his “first story” — but remember, this was in 1903.

We are indebted to Jon L. Lellenberg of Arlington, Virginia, for this “discovery.” It was he who not only found the clue in Mr. Milne’s autobiography but finally tracked down the text in the October 15, 1903 issue of Vanity Fair (London). Mr. Lellenberg, one of the most ardent of Sherlockians, with a penchant for parodies of The Master, recently published SHYLOCK HOMES: His Posthumous Memoirs, by John Kendrick Bangs, Edited and Introduced by Jon L. Lellenberg (The Dispatch-Box Press, Box 302, 1621 North Ode Street, Arlington, Virginia 22209, $3.50).

Is it really so surprising that the first published fiction by A. A. Milne, famous the world over for his verses and stories about Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh, should be a parody of Sherlock Holmes? Pastiche no, parody yes...

It was in the summer of last June that I returned unexpectedly to our old rooms in Baker Street. I had that afternoon had the unusual experience of calling on a patient, and in my nervousness and excitement had lost my clinical thermometer down his throat. To recover my nerve I had strolled over to the old place, and was sitting in my arm-chair thinking of my ancient wound, when all at once the door opened, and Holmes glided wistfully under the table. I sprang to my feet, fell over the Persian slipper containing the tobacco, and fainted. Holmes got into his dressing-gown and brought me to.

“Holmes,” I cried, “I thought you were dead.”

A spasm of pain shot across his mobile brow.

“Couldn’t you trust me better than that?” he asked, sadly. “I will explain. Can you spare me a moment?”

“Certainly,” I answered. “I have an obliging friend who would take my practice for that time.”

He looked keenly at me for answer. “My dear, dear Watson,” he said, “you have lost your clinical thermometer.”

“My dear Holmes—” I began, in astonishment.

He pointed to a fairly obvious bulge in his throat.

“I was your patient,” he said.

“Is it going still?” I asked, anxiously.

“Going fast,” he said, in a voice choked with emotion.

A twinge of agony dashed across his mobile brow. (Holmes’s mobility is a byword in military Clubs.) In a little while the bulge was gone.

“But why, my dear Holmes—”

He held up his hand to stop me, and drew out an old cheque-book.

“What would you draw from that?” he asked.

“The balance,” I suggested, hopefully.

“What conclusion I meant?” he snapped.

I examined the cheque-book carefully. It was one on Lloyd’s Bank, half-empty, and very, very old. I tried to think what Holmes would have deduced, but with no success. At last, determined to have a dash for my money, I said:

“The owner is a Welshman.”

Holmes smiled, picked up the book, and made the following rapid diagnosis of the case:

“He is a tall man, right-handed, and a good boxer; a genius on the violin, with an unrivalled knowledge of criminal London, extraordinary powers of perception, a perfectly enormous brain; and, finally, he has been hiding for some considerable time.”

“Where?” I asked, too interested to wonder how he had deduced so much from so little.

“In Portland.”

He sat down, snuffed the ash of my cigar, and remarked:

“Ah! Flor — de — Dindigul — I — see, — do — you — follow — me — Watson?” Then, as he pulled down his “Encyclopaedia Britannica” from its crate, he added:

“It is my own cheque-book.”

“But Moriarty?” I gasped.

“There is no such man,” he said. “It is merely the name of a soup.”