Memoirs from Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen

by Wendy Heyman-Marsaw

Mrs. Hudson is possibly the most famous landlady in literature. Residing over 221B Baker Street, she saw many clients, villains and Baker Street Irregulars during the tenancy of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. This series of columns, thoughts, recipes and memoirs are from a long-running column in the Sherlockian journal Canadian Holmes. Columnist, Wendy Heyman-Marsaw puts herself in Mrs. Hudson’s shoes, up and down the 17 steps, and recounts not only the time and era but the food, dining and eating habits of Victorian England. With many illustrations from the Strand Magazine, readers will get a rare peek inside Victorian life.

130 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2017

About the author

I was born and in New York City. My youthful indoctrination into the Sherlockian world was kindled at the age of 8 by my father, an unabashed pipe-smoking Anglophile and Sherlockian devotee. He was probably the only person to wear a deerstalker in the NYC subway.
While obtaining a BA in History and Communication from The State University of New York at Binghampton, I attended the London Polytechnic in 1972 and earned an honours certificate in international broadcasting. It was during this time that I joined the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and remain a member to present day. I then moved to Canada in 1979 and began a career in advertising that spanned 3 decades working on multi –national clients.
I then retired to Halifax and joined the Spence Munroes and The Bootmakers of Toronto. It was here that I began writing a series of columns for “Canadian Holmes” – a quarterly magazine of the Bootmakers – that earned me the honour of “Master Bootmaker” (MbT). The articles focused on the unique perspective of Mrs. Hudson as landlady of 221B Baker Street. The scope of the articles included links to the Canon, various Victorian influences and recipes pertaining to the subject of each column. As an avid “foodie” it was a delight to research the recipes.
My husband and I reside in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia with our miniature Schnauzer, Beowulf, also known as Wolfie Watson.

Reviews

[Sue Slade · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a person who has visited the museum now located at 221B Baker Street in London and who has hosted traditional British Roast Beef feasts with all the trimmings including Yorkshire pudding and boiled puddings with hard sauce, the Memoirs from Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen was a fun read. I enjoyed the reprinted advertisements scattered throughout the book and the recounts of the Victorian England Era, from the railways to the coffee houses. I had forgotten how much I love bread pudding and now will have to try the recipe in the book.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very neat little book. Well done.

[Lyn Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Memoirs from Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen" is a slim volume, stuffed with content. ‘Twas years ago I read the Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, and now I wish to reread the stories, this time allowing Mrs. Hudson more attention, recognizing her as the important character she was. Wendy Heyman-Marsaw has done the work for me, of course, and in her own book, writing as Mrs. Hudson, she offers the reader a picturesque description of the Victorian era, including its clothing, medicine, wars, inventions, and the societal position of women and children. It is intriguing to imagine the landlady of Holmes and Watson delighting in the ice chest and ‘telephone apparatus.' The book includes copies of old print ads for tea and coffee, whiskey and health, pottery and cutlery, and Hovis bread and biscuits. There are illustrations from Sherlock Holmes books and old cookery books, and even notes from Florence Nightingale on meals for invalids. There are brief histories of London restaurants and hotels, railroads, men's fashions, Turkish baths, bee keeping, curry as an English national dish, and country inns, some of which have been in existence since the days of the Crusades. This is all in addition to the Victorian recipes from Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen.

With an English mother, I found so many of the recipes familiar: toad-in-the-hole, junket, bubble and squeak, treacle tart made with golden syrup, mint sauce, crumpets, and Battenburg cake. They pulled me back to the tastes of my childhood. I plan to try my hand at Turkish Delight, and chocolate truffles, and certainly must invite my brother to a Devonshire tea, if only I can find some clotted cream. Some recipes I will read only, such as those for tobacco cookies and haggis in ox cecum. I am sure not to try cock’s combs on a skewer, and never was tempted by my mother’s suppers of drippings on bread.

What a complete treat this book is, so meticulously researched for Victoriana, for tales of Holmes and Watson and their beloved Mrs. Hudson, for the food of the time which Heyman-Marsaw has made accessible to the modern cook. It is a delight from cover to cover.

[Jen Robley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful things in a little package .. that’s this book! As a huge Sherlock Holmes fan I loved this. I enjoyed reading the recipes - some I grew up on . London is one of my favourite cities , I’m always counting days until I can go back someday.
Learning more about Mrs.Hudson and her life was a pure delight .My only complaint - I wish the book was longer !!! I’ll be keeping it handy for the recipes :)

[Elizabeth Varadan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memoirs from Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen, is a treasure trove for writers of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and fan fiction. It's also sheer pleasure reading for those who simply like wondering about the fictitious people who lived at 221b Baker Street. Settling into these pages, it's easy to believe they actually existed.

Mrs. Hudson, readers will recall, was the patient landlady who rented rooms to Holmes and Watson. What's fun about this book is Mrs. Hudson's many observations on the habits of these gentlemen, what they preferred for breakfast, whether they took tea or coffee (coffee with breakfast, tea for special occasions), little gossipy tidbits like that. Obviously the landlady was an avid reader of Watson's stories, for she refers to various cases in little trips of her own down memory lane. Not surprisingly, her memories involve meals served, advances in kitchen gadgetry, recipes with instructions for preparing several recipes, and cleaning tips she and her maid, Molly used to keep 221b clean and sparkling.

Mrs. Hudson was well-read in general, and these memoirs provide her own slant on Victorian society, train travel, fashion, the history of certain buildings, and on Queen Victoria herself. We also get a glimpse into Mrs. Hudson's personal background — how she met her husband; how he died; why she never remarried. (Heyman-Marsaw provides a lovely portrait supposedly of Mrs. Hudson as a young woman.)

This delightful book both an enjoyable read and a truly useful handbook for anyone writing about the Victorian Era in general or Sherlock Holmes adventures in particular — all enhanced by newspaper photographs and advertisements of the time. Five stars to this fine book.

[Thomas Turley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short but delightful volume, compiled from Wendy Heyman-Marsaw’s columns in the journal Canadian Holmes, is much more than a cookbook. Mrs. Hudson, as she appears here, is not the “aged and fussy” landlady usually depicted, but a well-educated solicitor’s daughter contemporary in age with Holmes and Watson. She offers details on the lives and eccentricities of her two tenants that will be invaluable to writers of pastiches, and her own life was far more interesting than Conan Doyle revealed. (Did you know that Mrs. Hudson became a suffragette?) Thanks to her enlightened upbringing, the erudition in this book extends far beyond cuisine and household management, although those subjects are well and fully covered. There are essays on Victorian attire, tobacco houses, hotels, and Turkish baths, as well as inventions, dining cars, country inns, and medicine. While her heroine quotes most frequently from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Ms. Heyman-Marsaw’s other sources include Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and Jack Tracy’s Encyclopedia Sherlockiana. As for the recipes, they feature not only such bulwarks of the Empire as prime rib roast, scones and crumpets, toad-in-the-hole, and curry, but less familiar dishes such as kedgeree, Prince of Wales soup (an unlikely royal favorite, as it was made from turnips), and (may St. Andrew preserve us!) haggis. Though Mrs. Hudson composed her recipes in proper Victorian style, her editors have thoughtfully updated the instructions and ingredients for modern cooks and kitchens. The recipes my wife and I have tried so far have been delicious. I’m sure we will get around to all of them eventually—except for haggis!

[Susan Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

This delightful little book is packed with fascinating facts relating to late Victorian times and specifically the world of Sherlock Holmes and his landlady, Mrs Martha Hudson.
It’s not only recipes you’ll find here, which is just as well, since tastes in food have moved on massively since those times. Surely few people today would relish sitting down to a boar’s head in aspic or a coffee beef stew. Who would fancy munching on tobacco cookies, except as a curiosity (steep inner leaves of a cigar in warm water for ten minutes; ‘it will be quite strong with a nicotine sting’)?
Food was stodgy and overladen with butter and cream and one wonders how anyone could have survived Mrs Beeton’s dinner party menus with their numerous courses, even if they did end with the ‘poetry of the dessert’.
Interestingly it was in Victorian times that service changed from ‘à la française’, with everything heaped on the groaning table at once, to the ‘à la russe’ style we know today, with courses served one after the other.
Wendy’s book also gives fascinating insights into many others aspects of the Victorian world. For instance, the invention of labour-saving devices such as the rotary knife cleaner or the insulated ice chest. She takes us into gentlemen’s clubs and Turkish baths, and describes the fashions. Holmes may have worn ‘a deer-stalker hat in his travels, but never in London, where it would have been a serious faux pas.’
Each chapter was originally published as a column in the journal, Canadian Holmes, and here are accompanied by original illustrations from the Canon as well as contemporaneous advertisements. My eye was caught by one for Geo. Roe’s whiskey, ‘endorsed by the medical profession’.

[Emesskay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had this book on my "to read" shelf for a while, and finally ordered it when I received a gift card as a present. When it first arrived I initially felt a little disappointed- that I had paid so much for such a slender volume. However, once I started reading I became totally entranced by this book.

The author is a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes canon, and has written a column as Mrs. Hudson in in the Sherlockian journal "Canadian Holmes." This book compiles her columns into one volume.

Ms. Heyman-Marsaw's love and appreciation of the Sherlock Holmes stories shines through in her writing. The book covers various subjects such as breakfast or the responsibilities of housekeepers that provide extra insight into the Holmes tales we know and love. Recipes are included, should you care to try these at your home.

I truly loved this book for the insights it provided into running a Victorian household, and the way it shines a light into the Mrs. Hudson sections in the Holmes stories

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book comprises thoughts, recipes, & memoirs from the long-running column published in the Sherlockian journal 'Canadian Holmes'.

This collection is publishing by MX Publishing and illustrated with lovely old advertisements.

The book talks about how the column started and how the book came about.

There are loads of interesting facts, not to mention some absolutely delicious recipes, several which I intend to at least attempt to cook.

This delightful little book is so interesting and so useful that it has earned a permanent place in my research library.

Highly recommended for all those with an interest in the world of Sherlock Holmes and in life during the Victorian period.

[Deedra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audible:I enjoyed this short book on Mrs.Hudson's kitchen.The recipes and story behind her coming to own the building that housed Holmes and Watson was a fun few hours. Verona Westbrook was a very good narrator.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

[Barry Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her compact book, Ms. Heyman-Marsaw not only reveals the foodstuffs and implements to be found in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen as the title promises, but takes us to London's more fashionable late Victorian restaurants and hotels, as well as carrying us by train to England's country inns. In the course of exploring the kitchen at 221B and the points beyond, we learn a great deal about living conditions in Sherlock Holmes' time—at least about living conditions among the fairly well to do. Thus, we learn about the fare to be had at Simpson-on-the-Strand, the Criterion Bar, and the Holborn Restaurant, and the elegant accommodations available at Claridge's Hotel—as well as the elegant people who made use of them. Along the way we are given opportunity to increase our culinary skills with recipes for a host of dishes including some, such as toad in the hole and bubble and squeak, whose names have long intrigued those of us never privileged to taste such delicacies. Through the voice of Mrs. Hudson we are provided a wealth of brief, but highly informative reports of the technology of the day, the clothing of the day (at least the clothing worn by Holmes and Watson), as well as the status of women, medical practice, and even beekeeping in Sussex (from which one learns that the aptly named worker bees fly a distance equal to a one and half circumferences of the earth during a period of eight weeks or less, after which their wings and their selves understandably often give out). But it is Ms. Heyman-Marsaw's audacious account of Mrs. Hudson's history that is guaranteed to stimulate great interest, if not significant controversy. While rejecting any notion that the Martha of Holmes' later years is the Mrs. Hudson of his earlier years, she alleges a husband, Alec Hudson, for the landlady. We further discover that Mr. Hudson was brutally murdered, a horrific crime that remains unsolved in spite of the efforts of Lestrade and (much later) of Holmes. Fortunately, the good woman recovered sufficiently from her tragedy to provide housing for Holmes and Watson. Fortunately as well, through the good offices of Ms. Heyman-Marsaw, we are invited into Mrs. Hudson's world and given opportunity to become a great deal more knowledgeable about it. Now, if we only knew the woman's first name or had the least capacity to describe her.