J A N E T I L I T Y

For more than a hundred fifty years after her death, the canon of Jane Austen inspired a memoir, a few works of literary criticism and a a quarter shelf-full of sequels and adaptations of her work, but in the past fifteen years or so, Jane Austen has become a literary star, generating everything from critiques and biographies to annotated editions, sequels, adaptations, character spinoffs, modern takes, graphic novels, and mashups.  Jane Austen has outlasted popular contemporaries like Mary Brunton, Sydney Owenson and Eaton Stannard Barrett, and touched off a market for derivative work comparable only to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and with a considerably smaller canon – talk about the six that keep on giving!

If you are thinking about writing a sequel, adaptation, or new novel featuring a minor Austen character as Austen might have done, it helps to decipher how Austen writes. It is more than a matter of knowing the period – in fact, knowing the period may be least important component. After all, Jane Austen did not write historical novels, she wrote contemporary novels, so it really is not important for an adaptive writer to explain how an entail works or the color of someone’s barouche. Writing like someone else can be tricky; if you have ever seen an impressionist, the good ones do more than getting the voice right – they get the inflection, the cadence, the body language. There is a book called What Jane Austen Ate, and What Charles Dickens Knew; to write like Austen, you have to grasp, not merely what Austen ate or knew, but what Austen did, not only regarding setting and  social order, but what techniques she employed as a narrator and wordsmith.

It helps (that is, it helped us in writing Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, and with our current project), to have a few key volumes on the Austen shelf (or shelves) in your home library. A few may be taken for granted – Deirdre LeFaye’s Jane Austen’s Letters, and perhaps something like LeFaye’s  Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. You may pick up an annotated book, or James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen or something fun like So You Think You Know Jane Austen?, and of course you have all of Austen’s fiction. Here are a few more that I think would be excellent additions to the Austen writer’s library.

I would consider Mary Lascelles’ Jane Austen and Her Art (Clarendon Press, 1939) to be an essential. Lascelles begins with a brief bio of Austen and the evolution of her literary taste, and then goes into a very clear study of Austen’s narrative style, with wonderful kernels of observation, such as Austen’s suggesting of her characters’ social variants in syntax and phrasing rather than vocabulary when they speak, or the pithy observation that a literary strategy – “What a young woman needs if she is to become a heroine of fiction is a little neglect and ill usage” – may have been extracted from experience. Of course some rules are meant to be broken and in Lady Vernon we did depart from two of Lascelles’ observations: that the marriage proposal of a lover is never verbally expressed (Mr. Collins doesn’t count; he cannot be considered an authentic lover); and a conversation exclusively between gentlemen (with a lady participating or at least being in the room), does not occur.

I had once remarked to an editor that Austen’s novels come down to two interconnected issues: marriage and money.  Except for Emma Woodhouse, none of Austen’s heroines are so well off or well connected that they can anticipate “marrying up”; a number of siblings, a neglectful or imprudent father, a reversal of fortune threaten to keep many of Austen’s heroines from that “… pleasantest preservative from want” and “…the only honorable provision” for a gentlewoman of modest means, which marriage certainly was. How a marriage was contracted, how a wife, a widow and children were provided for was as inextricably linked to material assets as to personal ones. It’s helpful to understand what Mrs. Bennet means when she exclaims “What pin money…” Lizzy will have, or how Mrs. Jennings comes by her jointure. Amy Louise Erickson’s Woman and Property in Early Modern England (Routledge, 1993) takes the reader only to the early 18^th century, but otherwise is a very clear, and clearly documented, study of women’s rights to ownership of money and property as unmarried women, as wives and as widows, and the precise meaning of terms like “dower” and “settlement”, with some interesting case studies. As a counterpart, Susan Staves’ Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660-1833, studies four categories of women’s property: dower; jointure; separate property and pin money; allowance for maintenance.

A profession common to Austen’s novels was one with which she was personally familiar: the country clergyman. The church may be the profession of choice for the hero – Edmund Bertram, Henry Tilney – or it may be the comfortable resort of the self-important and the ambitious – Mr. Elton or Mr. Collins – or it may be the prospect of securing nothing better than the lowly curacy, which limits the aspirations of a young man like Charles Hayter or Edward Ferrars. If you are writing Austen, it does help to be somewhat familiar with what livings were (and when they provided enough to live on) as well as what a clergyman’s obligations were to his patron and his parish. Irene Collins’ Jane Austen and the Clergy (Hambledon and London, 2002) takes the reader through the education, obligations and living situations of the country clergyman and links what Austen must have observed: that the English clergy represented a variety of individuals, from those who were genuinely called to the vocation to those who did not have the talent or ambition to distinguish themselves in the military or the law. There is even the suggestion that those clergymen who are particularly animated – Mr. Collins and Mr. Elton – may have been so well-drawn because Austen saw them as a more accurate representation of the clergyman’s covetousness for a good living; even in Persuasion, there are schemes to oust poor Dr. Shirley, who has “zealously” discharged his duties for more than forty years, from his post in order to free up the Uppercross parish.

Among my favorite books about Austen’s work is Peter J. Leithart’s Miniatures and Morals; The Christian Novels of Jane Austen (Canon Press, 2004). (Chapter One is titled: Real Men Read Austen. What’s not to love?) Leithart describes the “miniaturist” nature of Austen’s writing, proclaiming that “…she does more with less than any other writer in English.” Like Lascelles, Leithart observes the relationship between syntax and character in Austen’s dialogue. Unlike Lascelles, Leithart defends the theory that Austen’s Christian morality is the underpinning of her narrative style; he even concludes that Austen is “a humorist because she is a moralist”, noting that, like Elizabeth Bennet, Austen “never mocks what is genuinely good.” After the initial introduction to Leithart’s analysis of Austen’s style, a chapter is devoted to each of her major novels in relation to the moral principles that determine not only the content, but literary style: morals and manners in Pride and Prejudice, charity in Emma, restraint in Sense and Sensibility and so on. Beyond Leithart’s cogent, and good-humored, analysis of Austen’s novels, is a well-organized format with each chapter beginning with a synopsis and ending with both “review questions” and “thought questions”. Not only should this be an essential on every Austen writer’s shelf, it would be an excellent text for an upper high school study of Austen’s work.

So, if you’re writing an Austenesque work, what books do you keep on the Austen section of your shelves?

I am very happy to announced that Death of a DJ, Fruitcake, and Cheat the Devil — the first three books in my mom’s Jersey Shore-based mystery series — are now available on Kindle.  Get them in a bundle for $5.99.  I can personally attest that they are well-written and wonderful and suspenseful and funny and all of the things you are secretly looking for in a book but have never found.

It is an A+++++++++++++++

A brief overview, you ask?  Certainly.

Death of a DJ:  Cat Austen, a cop’s widow with six overly-protective older brothers (five cops and one priest), takes a freelance assignment to profile a pair of shock jocks. When one of them is gunned down, Cat teams with homicide cop, Lt Victor Cardenas to track down the killer.

Fruitcake: The discovery of a corpse donned in a Santa suit draws Cat Austen into a conspiracy involving an Atlantic City casino mogul and his fashion designer wife.

Cheat the Devil: A young woman’s death interrupts Cat’s getaway with Victor when she is discovered to be the most recent of several murder victims linked to an Atlantic City parish and its priest, Cat’s brother.

Check them out on Amazon today!

Not long ago, Nicholas Meyer – producer, director, screenwriter, and author of the Sherlockian pastiches The Seven Percent Solution, The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer– wrote a very thought-provoking article titled “Whither Holmes” for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The article addressed the dilemma of adapting a classical work or character – specifically, Sherlock Holmes – for what he called the “postliterate” audience. Mind you, I don’t think that Meyer meant “illiterate”, but rather an audience whose predominant (or only) exposure to a classical work comes by way of a derivative work. Meyer observes that: “In my years as a filmmaker in Hollywood, I’ve attended numerous meetings devoted to making Sherlock Holmes movies; invariably none of the producers in the room have ever actually read Doyle.”

How far does parsley sink into butter on a hot day?

 In an earlier blog, “Do Whatever You Like With Him” (http://janetility.com/?p=648), I had suggested that a bona fide adaptation (or pastiche, sequel, illustration) is one that correctly  identifies the source of Holmes’s timeless appeal, era and environment notwithstanding. You can discard the trappings – the dressing gowns, the gasogene, the bullet-pocked wall  – but if you want to ensure that the audience, particularly the “postliterate” are getting the genuine Sherlock, you can’t reduce the essence of what makes Holmes Holmes to quirks and conduct derived from something other than Conan Doyle.

Watson, don’t you think the peas tasted a bit off?

 Which calls to mind the 19^thcentury “Butter Wars.” In the 1880s, the growing “butter substitute” (oleomargarine) industry came up against the dairy industry. In some cases, the consumer opted for the substitute because it was cheaper and tasted okay, but in other cases, an imitation product was passed off as butter to “the great unobservant public.” By 1886, a number of “margarine acts” attempted to eliminate any possibility that imitation butter might be mistaken for, or labeled as, the legitimate product. In New Jersey, these laws stipulated that “No oleomargarine, butterine or suine, or any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of natural butter or cheese, or any substance that is rendered, made, manufactured or compounded out of animal or vegetable or mineral fat or oil not the product of pure milk or cream from pure milk shall be sold…except when contained in tubs, pails, boxes, firkins, vessels or other packages that are marked or labeled as follows: … on the outside thereof and midway between the top and bottom thereof a stripe or band at least three inches wide and extending completely around said vessel or package and said stripe or band shall be painted with black paint [and] have legibly branded and burnt in ..in two places as nearly opposite each other as possible the words ‘oleomargarine’, ‘butterine’, ‘suine’ or ‘imitation butter’.

I believe I detected the merest trace of caul fat.

 This may sound excessive until you learn that only a year or two earlier, half of what was sold as butter was reported to be an imitation product made from tinted caul fat derived from hogs. An ingenuous consumer might conclude that because the substance that they were spreading on their toast was pale yellow or lightly salted or tasty or oleaginous, or was labeled in a manner evoked butter (butterine) or was even combined with some butter, it was the real deal.

How far does parsley sink into margarine on a hot day?

 Unfortunately, there is little to prevent Meyer’s postliterate producers from passing off any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of Sherlock Holmes as the authentic character, and no requirement that the end product be labeled “imitation Sherlock”. The result is that the postliterate viewer may never appreciate how radically different Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes – the “chivalrous opponent” with his “cat-like love of personal cleanliness”, his fine balance of instinct with impartiality, and his embodiment of a great heart as well as a great brain – is from a spurious Holmes who presents as an ill-groomed, petty, socially inept vulgarian hopelessly afflicted with tachyphrasia.

 The success of any adulterated product, whether it is dairy or Doyle, will always be determined by what the consumer can be persuaded to swallow. There may be nothing at all wrong with suilline caul fat, unless you’re attempting to persuade people that it’s butter.

And don’t call me “Shirley.”

In glancing back at January’s focus on a few screen renderings of Sherlock Holmes adventures, I see that half of my subjects – The Blue Carbuncle and The Hound of the Baskervilles – addressed films adapted from Conan Doyle stories, and half – Murder By Decree and A Case of Evil – were original material incorporating the character of Sherlock Holmes.

Rathbone

Sherlock Holmes, as the subject of adaptations – pastiches, sequels, mash-ups, modernizations and assorted character cadging – has only one rival: Jane Austen, generally; Pride and Prejudice, particularly and Mr. Darcy, specifically. If Jane Austen derivative works outnumber Conan Doyle’s, it is only because some of Doyle’s property is still protected by copyright (in the US) and Austen’s work and characters are in the public domain. To an eager aspirant, “public domain” translates as “open season”; or, as Conan Doyle rather snappishly replied to William Gillette, when Gillette wanted to know if he might marry off Holmes in a stage adaptation, “You may marry him or murder him or do whatever you like with him.”

Williamson

Yet, given license to marry or murder or convert to vampires or transport to the twenty-first century, the nagging consideration is not, “What can we do?”, but “What should we do?” What license or should you take with a work or a character that was not of your own invention?

Cushing, as Holmes

In Edgar W. Smith’s cogent essay on the character of Sherlock Holmes- “The Implicit Holmes” – he asks, “What is it that we love in Sherlock Holmes?” and I think it’s that “what is it we love” that ought to define the limits of license. After all, haven’t Conan Doyle and Jane Austen – or, more specifically, Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Darcy – been singled out because they represent qualities that have a timeless appeal? And if that is true, should not special care be taken to retain those fundamental qualities even when the superficial trappings change?

Cushing, as Darcy

The first part of Smith’s essay defends the requisite of keeping Holmes in his era and place. Some may disagree; however, there was a social canon that shaped Holmes’s character (and Darcy’s) that risks appearing quaint, or alien or artificial when he is taken out of his time. Holmes and Darcy were gentlemen when “gentleman” described caste as well as conduct; when they are transplanted, their conduct may become irrelevant in the context of a modern setting, or is coarsened to adapt to a modern age. Even the Canon suggests this. In its most cringeworthy tale – The Adventure of the Three Gables – Holmes’s language and conduct are frequently appalling. So much so, that some scholars reject Conan Doyle’s authorship. The truth is more to the point – more to Smith’s point: The Three Gables was published in the late 1920s, when detective fiction inclined toward snappy dialogue and conditional morality. (Holmes could subscribe to conditional justice, but never conditional morality). In succumbing to the influence of a more modern style, Doyle’s Three Gables Sherlock is barely recognizable as the gentleman who was once prepared to commit an act that is “morally justifiable though technically criminal” because “a gentleman should not lay much stress upon [personal risk] when a lady is in most desperate need of his help”. Likewise, Darcy’s revulsion at the prospect of acquiring relations whose “condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own”, loses its credibility if he is taken out of his era, as does the extent of his chivalry when he lowers himself to “meet, to frequently meet, reason with, persuade and finally bribe” Wickham.

D'Arcy, as Holmes

Cumberbatch, as Holmes

For both characters, a re-imagining that cannot retain the fundamental blend of “Galahad and Socrates” (Smith’s phrase) risks losing what we love, however entertaining the substitute may be.

“Never, in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.”

That passage illustrates one of the two challenges that account for the fact that (and not for want of trying) there has never been a satisfactory film or television version of The Hound of the Baskervilles; that is, the difficulty in staging the appearance of the hound and its attack on Sir Henry Baskerville. Too often the scene is an unconvincing tussle between the actor playing Sir Henry and a non-threatening and/or animated creature that calls up the scene in Ed Wood where Bela Lugosi is thrown in a pond with a rubber octopus and told to “Shake his legs around, look like he’s killin’ ya.”

The second challenge, of course, is dealing with the absence of Sherlock Holmes for most of the tale; do you manipulate the screenplay to pull Holmes into the narrative, or do you pattern the screenplay after Doyle’s text?

Another issue – which applies to any adaptation of a celebrated tale – is how far one can alter and abridge the text without misrepresenting the author’s work to the audience. And lastly, there is the matter of casting: there is probably no other fictional character whose physical appearance is more specific than that of Sherlock Holmes, and fidelity to the Canon demands that the actor is the appropriate physical type.

Basil Rathbone as Holmes

In considering a few of the two dozen or so attempts at The Hound, I’ll start with one that did a creditable job of recreating the attack: the 1939 film starring Basil Rathbone. This film was the first of the series, and the only one that was set in the Victorian era. Rathbone really was an excellent choice for Holmes; the same cannot be said for the casting of Nigel Bruce that touched off a veritable Nigel Brucification of the role in too many subsequent Sherlock Holmes films.

Otherwise, there were some decent casting choices here, and some unfavorable lapses: Mortimer is an aged man with a wife, who is a medium (this plot line is used in the 2002/Richard Roxborough Hound as well). There is no Mrs. Lyons, Holmes is pulled into Dartmoor disguised as a peddler, the Stapletons are step-siblings and the Barrymores were re-named the Barrymans, in deference to the Barrymore clan who were still prominent in the theatrical community. The finale is staged as one of those Golden Age murder mystery reveals with everyone piled into the drawing room; Stapleton makes a clean getaway, without the actor having to roll about in the Mire (“… like it’s killin ya.”) In the ‘70s, the print and the censored closing line (“Oh, Watson, the needle!”), were restored.

In 1982, after playing Doctor Who for several years, Tom Baker was cast as Holmes in a BBC miniseries of The Hound. He is a fine actor. He was also the wrong choice – distractingly wrong; nothing in face or figure called up the orthodox representation of Holmes.

Tom Baker as Holmes

In other respects, the casting choices did an excellent job of matching Doyle’s description, particularly Henry Baskerville (Nicholas Woodeson), Mortimer (Will Knightley), Laura Lyons (Caroline John), and Stapleton (Christopher Ravenscroft). Of all the Hounds, Alexander Baron’s screenplay is the most faithful adaptation in the pack. Baron, whose list of dramatizations includes the Scandal in Bohemia episode in the Jeremy Brett/Granada series and the 1981 Sense and Sensibility supports the conviction that Doyle’s narrative can hold up without the addition of mediums and séances, that his plot sequence was sound, and his dialogue was crisp and natural.

Jeremy Brett as Holmes

The 1988 Hound of the Baskervilles was part of the Jeremy Brett series. The series had the advantage of an excellent Holmes, though this particular episode, and many of the later ones, Brett’s failing health was obvious. Brett admitted to David Stuart Davies, author of Bending the Willow, that he was “terribly unwell” during the filming; he looks it, and to the detriment of the film. It is almost a relief, for viewers who had become so attached to Brett’s more dynamic turns, that Holmes is absent for much of the case. Brett, however, is not solely responsible for the weakness of the episode; the screenplay, as he succinctly expresses it in an interview with Davies was “underconceived”. There are few tales that offer so much screen potential as The Hound of the Baskervilles, but realizing its iconic moments must come at a price, and one wonders whether Brett’s diplomatic “underconceived” was code for “cheap”.

A final problem with these versions – and with most of them – is the age disparity between Watson and Henry Baskerville. In the book, it can be inferred that they are roughly of the same generation (Sir Henry, as well as Mortimer, are around 30) and parity and confidence between the London general practitioner and the wealthy heir seems more credible if there is no disparity in age – as gentlemen of roughly the same generation, they would be more likely, in my opinion, to form the sort of companionable bond that is forged at Baskerville hall.

A tale that captures the imagination, whether The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pride and Prejudice, Hamlet or The Three Musketeerswill always invite one more remake, one more throwdown to film the version that will have viewers hunting up the book, and readers applauding its fidelity. And then there’s….

William Shatner as Stapleton in a '70s Hound

Which Austen character would have enjoyed The Hound of the Baskervilles? Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe, of course, and Sir John Middleton may have delighted in the lively Christmas ball in the 2002/Richard Roxborough version.

And three degrees of Austen?
1939 Hound: Nigel Bruce appeared in Rebecca with Laurence Olivier, who was Darcy in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.
1982 Hound: Tom Baker appeared in Luther with Judi Dench who was Lady Catherine in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.
1988 Hound: Edward Hardwicke appeared in Love, Actually with Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant from the 1995 Sense and Sensibility; Colin Firth, from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice and Keira Knightley from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.

Sherlock: A Case of Evil was a 2002 made-for-television film that pits a twentysomething Sherlock Holmes (James D’Arcy) against his nemesis, Moriarty and I will state from the outset that, of the few portrayals of a younger Sherlock Holmes, James D’Arcy’s is, by far, the best. Everything about his performance (including the “look” which I consider to be indispensable) is pitch-perfect.

James D'Arcy = Young Sherlock Holmes

A Case of Evil begins with the upshot of an investigation that has Holmes  pursuing Moriarty through London; there is a confrontation, Holmes shoots Moriarty and the body falls into the river. The effect of this – as Moriarty is known to be a master criminal – is to make an instant celebrity of the young detective and Holmes revels in fame, and it’s perks. Depicting Holmes as an attention-loving and arrogant young luminary (when a policeman asks for his surname, he replies. “Holmes.” [pause] “With an L”) is an interesting notion and, in its way, Canonical. Early in their Canonical relationship, Watson is irked by Holmes’s “bumptious style of conversation”, and looks upon the detective’s swift deductions as “brag and bounce”; when Holmes explains his chain of reasoning, he is “pleased at [Watson’s] evident surprise and admiration”.

We see a hint of the self-conceit in the earliest – chronologically, speaking – case, The Gloria Scott, when the college-age Holmes forms a friendship with fellow student who is “the very opposite to me in most respects”, and pays a visit to the young man and his father. Urged to demonstrate his deductive powers, Holmes leads with the observation that is guaranteed to shock and impress. In A Case of Evil, we have the same hint of swagger, and the same readiness to perform his deductive parlor tricks.

What Piers Ashworth’s screenplay posits (some odd casting and plotting choices notwithstanding*) is that, as a young man, Sherlock Holmes was engaging, vain, energetic, and emotionally susceptible. As the story plays out, we learn that Moriarty’s “death” and the case that precipitated it had been a ruse. In flashbacks, we see that Holmes has a personal grudge against Moriarty’s, and the resolution of the case costs a young woman, of whom Holmes has become quite fond, her life. The screenplay endorses the theory that the Sherlockian self-control, aloofness, detachment toward women are not fundamental traits, but the assumed, an armor against suffering. Even in the later cases, we often witness emotion and reason at odds; more than once, Watson comments on his friend’s vanity and reserve,  thoughtlessness and chivalry, his impatience and generosity. Like Jane Austen’s Mr. Bennet, Holmes is “so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice.”

 While the script does a very credible job in formulating a young Sherlock Holmes, it does tend to stray in other areas. Watson, here, is a rather unsophisticated police surgeon (and there seems to be a confusion about the era’s distinction between surgeon and doctor), to whom Holmes is introduced in the course of an investigation; yet, it has Holmes already living at Baker Street. (Sherlockians will recognize the inaccuracy). There is no sense that Watson is a man of worldly experience; there are, however, the glimpses of “pawky humor”, as when Holmes observed that there is “something abnormal about [a corpse’s] windpipe”, and Watson replies, “Yes. Normally, he’d be using it to breathe.”

Roger Morlidge as Watson

The humor extends to the script’s wry social jabs that offer “a distinct touch”. Holmes is hired by a wealthy opium importer whose clients are being killed off. Holmes – whose drugs of choice here are alcohol, including absinthe, and, of course, tobacco – despises both the client and drug use, an abhorrence that is explained in flashbacks. The gentleman rationalizes his occupation: opiates, he claims, are a “social necessity” for war veterans who have been introduced to morphine at battlefield hospitals and who continue to have “a taste for the drug” when they return.

Moriarty, who is at the root of the murders, scorns the importer for “building a criminal empire on a product that isn’t even illegal”, predicting that the real profits will come when drugs are prohibited, and that “They’re going to love it over there” (i.e., in America). Conversely, Watson, disparages Holmes’s use of tobacco, predicting that cigarettes will soon be banned by the government, while opium and cocaine, having medicinal uses, will always be legal.

Added to the interesting social landscape is the pulp reporter who dogs Holmes for headlines with all the tenacity of a paparazzo, shrugging off Lestrade’s challenge to his accuracy with, “We can always print a retraction next week.” Young Holmes is an assiduous collector of his own press clippings until the account assembled in his scrapbook becomes too personal and painful a record. Then, he decides, “I’d rather trust posterity to that diary of yours, Watson.”

*Re: the odd casting choices. Vincent D’Onofrio is Moriarty. Richard E. Grant (who was always on my Sherlock shortlist) is Mycroft. Perhaps they should have considered reversing the roles?

Vincent D'Onofrio as Moriarty

Richard E. Grant as Mycroft

And which Austen character would have enjoyed A Case of Evil? It is hard to believe that any of the young ladies of high sensibility – Catherine Morland, Marianne Dashwood, Emma Woodhouse, Maria and Julia Bertram, the Musgrove sisters or even the frivolous Charlotte Palmer – could resist this handsome, dashing version of Sherlock Holmes, and perhaps Jane herself who, in one of her letters, writes of having “the dignity of dropping out my mother’s Laudanum” would have wondered at Moriarty’s notion that the such a common remedy would ever be made illegal.

 And three degrees of Austen? James D’Arcy had the starring role in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (2001) with Tom Hollander, who was Mr. Collins in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.

I think I’ve said before, there’s times when you see an actor in something, and they’re just so perfect they get cemented in that role for all time.  No matter what else they do, or how good they are, they’re always going to be that other character to you.  Or maybe not ‘you’.  Could be just ‘me’; I have a tendency to stereotype people cause it’s so much easier than getting to know them as individuals.

That’s the case with me and Joss Ackland.  I don’t know the gentleman personally, but I’m sure he’s good and kind and helps little old ladies across the street, and lord knows he’s been in everything.  Trouble is, a couple of years ago I saw him in Hogfather, the BBC adaptation of the novel of the same name, where he played Ridcully, the blustering head of Discworld’s top (and only) wizard university.  As a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s books, Ackland was exactly how I pictured Ridcully.  Which means, as effective as he is as the tyrannical head of the Barrett clan, I’m always wondering where his pointy hat is.

Hat = wizard, wizard = hat. Everything else is frippery.

Also his hair is a bit silly.

(more…)

Putting Sherlock Holmes on the track of Jack the Ripper is unquestionably tempting; the Ripper murders occurred at a time when Holmes would have been an ambitious thirtysomething detective and quite receptive to a complex and challenging case. There has never been a positive identification of the Ripper, nor any explanation (other than the obvious: he died, emigrated, was incapacitated or imprisoned) for the abrupt termination of the killings. Drawing Holmes into such an intriguing, open-ended puzzle has invited the talents of authors Ellery Queen, Michael Dibdin,  Edward Hanna, Carole Nelson Douglas and Lyndsay Faye.

 Holmes vs the Ripper has been the subject of a couple films as well, and one that is both the most and least satisfying is the 1979 film Murder By Decree. Here, the plot exploits one of the more colorful theories: that the murdered women had knowledge of an illegitimate child who was the result of an affair (or unofficial marriage) between the Duke of Clarence, second in line to the throne, and the lowborn Annie Crook. Defenders of the heir confine Crook to an asylum and pressure her to reveal the child’s whereabouts while they systematically kill off the prostitutes who were privy to the liaison.

The most laudable aspect of the film – in fact the only laudable one – is in the casting. Christopher Plummer (Holmes) and James Mason (Watson) are on the somewhat mature side, but there is a wonderful compatibility that is not often (read: “almost never”) depicted in translations of the Canon. Mason does make one appreciate that Watson may be the harder role to pull off; with fewer props on which to string a performance – no pipe, no violin, no disguise, no displays of agility or temperament – an accomplished actor has to flesh out the dimensions of character without sinking into caricature. The fact that Mason can express his indignation at Holmes’s “squashing a fellow’s pea” without lapsing into the blustering inanity that was the default mode of other actors (read: “Nigel Bruce”) is commendation enough. Plummer is equally engaging – without ever lapsing into uncharacteristic sentimentality, his performance hints at the “great heart as well as of a great brain”: commanding, compassionate, humorous and completely authentic, even when saddled with the deerstalker and Inverness.

Mason, Finlay (as Lestrade) and Plummer

There is an impressive supporting cast as well: Donald Sutherland, David Hemmings, John Gielgud, Anthony Quayle, Frank Finlay and particularly Susan Clark as Mary Kelly, and Genevieve Bujold as Annie Crook; their scenes with Plummer are the most poignant moments of the film. (As an interesting side note, Finlay, who portrays Lestrade here, also portrayed Lestrade in another Holmes vs the Ripper film, the 1965, A Study in Terror; Quayle, who here is Sir Charles Warren was Doctor Murray in the ’65 film).

Plummer with Clark (as Mary Kelly)

Plummer with Bujold (as Annie Crook)

As for the everything else: watching this again (I had seen it years ago), I realized what is unsatisfying about it. For a film that offers an intriguing theory about the Ripper that brings together a royal conspiracy and a vicious serial killer with literature’s most famous detective, the film is rather suspenseless. Perhaps it is the jarring score that forecasts every crime so relentlessly that the crime itself becomes almost anticlimactic. Perhaps it is the reticence with which the crimes are rendered – one can be shocking without being explicit. And, perhaps, it is the awkward angling of the exterior shots to camouflage the use of sound stages. At any rate, it remains just good enough to make a viewer wish it had been better.

Which Austen character would have enjoyed Murder By Decree? Colonel Brandon would certainly have admired Holmes for risking his life and reputation in a just cause; Frank Churchill would have understood keeping secrets out of self-preservation, and Mary Bennet may have drawn a useful lesson from the prostitutes’ conspiracy: that one false step can involve a woman in endless ruin.

And three degrees of Austen: Particularly easy here, since Donald Sutherland, who plays the psychic Robert Lees, was Mr. Bennet in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.

In honor of the January birthday of Sherlock Holmes (b. 1/6/1854), my January film notes will concentrate on a few of the more interesting screen re-imaginings of the world’s greatest detective.

The first, in keeping with the season, will be the Granada interpretation of The Blue Carbuncle, which I think did a superior job of transposing a Holmes tale. It had the advantage of being one of the earlier programs in the series, so you have Jeremy Brett, as Holmes, in better form and health than he was in the last installments, and David Burke, the actor who gave us the most faithful Watson.

Brett & Burke

The story, which appeared in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, involves the theft of a rare gem, the Blue Carbuncle, its discovery in the crop (the gullet) of a goose, and the goose finding its way to 221 B Baker Street.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle begins with Watson’s visit to Holmes two days after Christmas, but the filmed version gives us a prologue, as the Blue Carbuncle- “the precious stone”- is passed from one generation to the next, falling into the possession of the Countess of Morcar. The characterization of the Countess is a departure, but an interesting one: in the Conan Doyle story, she remains off stage, but offers a thousand pound reward for the gem, and Holmes observes that the Countess would “part with half her fortune” for its recovery. In the teleplay, she is a tight-fisted miser whose tip to the hotel servants is to be divided “for the three of you”, whose Christmas tree is a limp cheerless affair, who is infuriated by the suggestion that she ought to offer a reward for her own property; actress Rosalind Knight’s rendering of this worldly, lonely miser is shrewd and on point.

Rosalind Knight (left) as the Countess of Morcar; note the sorry-looking Christmas tree in back.

In fact, the entire translation of the tale, from the development of minor characters, the different arrangements of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen supplementing the score and the inspired direction of David Carson, render a visual equivalent of Conan Doyle’s prose with remarkable fidelity. There is a gentle humanity in the details – Henry Baker(who inadvertently comes into possession of the prized goose) whose shillings have not been “so plentiful as they once were”, nonetheless stops to give a coin to a beggar; Holmes groping for a match to light his morning cigarette, just frenzied enough to hint at graver addictions; and the near-farcical episode of Holmes conning a poulterer into a wager -  suggest an understanding of the Canon that is too often lacking in many modern renditions.

David Stuart Davies, in his excellent record of the Granada series – Bending the Willow – credits Brett with certain cynical details that stave off an excess of sentimentality: the early-morning craving for a cigarette, the curt dismissal of the pathetic Henry Baker who is, after all, only “a mere unit, a factor in a problem” (as Holmes remarks in The Sign of the Four). But it is in the comic scene where Holmes finesses a skeptical poulterer  that the episode really shines.

Three degrees of Austen? Jeremy Brett (Holmes) appeared in the TV version of The Merchant of Venice with Sir Laurence Olivier who was Darcy in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.

And who would have liked this film? Jane Bennet, always optimistic, would have sympathized with Holmes’s release of the culprit, though she might have been less cynical about his future, possibly hoping that he would “come to a right way of thinking”. A mystery involving stolen gems, a Countess, a detective and an unexpected conclusion would have appealed to Catherine Morland’s penchant for sensational fiction and perhaps Mrs. Nicholls, the Netherfield cook, employs her master’s long absence to catch up on reading and hopes for a stroke of good fortune when she rounds up “three couple of ducks, just fit to be killed.”

There is an exchange in the Sherlock Holmes tale The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton that is particularly illustrative of Holmes’s character. Having exhausted all options for recovering his client’s letters from a ruthless blackmailer, Milverton, Holmes announces to Watson: “I mean to burgle Milverton’s house tonight.” Watson protests, but finally concedes that the act, while technically criminal is morally justifiable, and Holmes reasons, “Since it is morally justifiable, I have only to consider the question of personal risk. Surely a gentleman should not lay much stress upon this when a lady is in most desperate need of his help.”

Holmes, in Watson’s words, “disliked and distrusted the [female] sex, but he was always a chivalrous opponent.”  In reading Austen, Holmes would have discovered a chivalry worth emulating in the conduct of Darcy, who endures the mortification and expense of salvaging Lydia’s reputation, or Brandon’s calling-out of Willoughby to punish the seduction of Eliza. While Holmes declares that the work is his reward and it is art for art’s sake, there is a defining knight errantry associated with cases that involve vulnerable women – Holmes rescues Violet Smith from a forced marriage, Helen Stoner from a murderous stepfather and Grace Dunbar from a wrongful charge of murder. His most dramatic rescue, however, is the from-the-brink-of-death rescue of Lady Frances Carfax.

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax begins with Holmes concluding, from Watson’s bootlaces, that he has been to the Turkish baths. “It is what we call an alterative in medicine,” replies Watson, admitting that he has been feeling “rheumatic.”

Holmes’s discourse takes another direction. “One of the most dangerous classes in the world,” he muses, “is the drifting and friendless woman. She is the most harmless, and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter or crime in others. She is helpless. She is migratory…She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed.”

Holmes concludes by saying that he is afraid Lady Frances Carfax has met with foul play, but it may be that the inference of Watson’s therapeutic bath and the thoughtful meditation upon “drifting and friendless” women was influenced by a recent perusal of Jane Austen’s Persuasion; curative baths and the plight of vulnerable women is suggestive of Persuasion’s Mrs. Smith.

The most unfortunate character in all of Austen is Mrs. Smith, formerly Miss Hamilton, the invalid acquaintance of Anne Elliot. Unlike Mrs. and Miss Bates, who have likewise sunk from comfort to poverty, Mrs. Smith has no charitable neighbors to offer relief and stability. Like Lady Frances, she is migratory, relegated to – “obscure pensions and boarding-houses”, though Lady Frances’s spa in Baden is considerably finer than Mrs. Smith’s “noisy parlor and a dark bedroom behind” in Bath.

We meet Mrs. Smith about two-thirds of the way into Persuasion, when the Elliots settle in Bath. Anne Elliot is made aware of Mrs. Smith’s situation by a former governess, as Holmes is alerted to Lady Frances’s disappearance by her old governess when their regular correspondence has abruptly ceased.

Mrs. Smith, like Lady Frances, has been left “with limited means”. She is widowed, rheumatic and poor, her one object of value being some heavily encumbered property in the West Indies. Lady Frances has assets that are more accessible and portable – “some very remarkable old Spanish jewelry” that is always in her possession and that could easily make her “an inciter of crime in others.”

In Lady Frances Carfax, Holmes observes that “When you follow two separate chains of thought, Watson, you will find some point of intersection.” Mrs. Smith and Lady Frances have been accustomed to society and affluence, and both are inclined toward charity, but they have separate responses toward their plights and their piety: while Mrs. Smith has become cautious about her associations, having “seen too much of the world to expect sudden or disinterested attachment anywhere”, Lady Frances rebuffs a persistent lover and a faithful servant and allows herself to be taken in by a pair of seductive charlatans.

Lady Frances is described as “spiritual”, “religious” and “pious”, but it is a craving for piety, rather than piety itself, which has her fleeing from a coarse but sincere lover, and into the company of a couple who call themselves the Reverend and Mrs. Schlessinger, and whose, “…particular speciality is the beguiling of lonely ladies by playing upon their religious feelings”. Lady Frances whiles away her days fawning over the convalescent “missionary”; Mrs. Smith, on the other hand, takes up knitting needles in her rheumatic fingers and sells her handmade items to help support “one or two very poor families in this neighborhood.”

There is another common thread – a point of intersection – in their immobility.  Mrs. Smith is confined, by her poverty and infirmity, to a pair of rooms, unable to move from one to the other, or to be carried to the baths, without assistance. Lady Frances suffers a somewhat darker fate; the Schlessingers first manipulate her into emotional dependence, and then into physical imprisonment, and finally, drugged and unconscious, into a coffin.

Both women come perilously close to being buried alive – Lady Frances literally and Mrs. Smith, figuratively – or “gobbled up”, as Holmes expressed it, and are rescued by gentlemen who are not put off by difficulty or personal risk when a lady is in need of his help.  Holmes will not wait for a warrant before tearing into the Schlessingers’ custom-ordered coffin to free Lady Frances. Captain Wentworth, “by putting [Mrs. Smith] in the way of recovering her husband’s property in the West Indies, by writing for her, acting for her, and seeing her through all the petty difficulties of the case with the activity and exertion of a fearless man,” restores Mrs. Smith to all that she had been deprived of by Walter Elliot.

(You may read an account of the romance and marriage of Miss Hamilton and Charles Smith in Lady Vernon and Her Daughter).

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