Victorians! discussion

This thread is for the discussion of the second half of the book - SPOILERS ARE FAIR GAME, so beware if you haven't finished it yet!


"A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. 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."

So, in a way, everyone was right. A hound it was, made phantom through human ingenuity. Science and superstition combined to create the ultimate killing machine.

How did you feel about the dénouement?

Did Holmes live up to your expectations?

Did Watson?

How many red herrings did you manage to count along the way?!

If you hadn't read any of the Holmes stories before, would The Hound encourage you to read more?

This is not my first encounter with CD, so it is hard to say if THOTB specifically would make me read more. However, I do enjoy reading and re-reading SH from time to time. What makes me come back is the character development I find in these stories. I do not find SH believable, but he is certainly enjoyable and entertaining. In this story SH appears more in the background, but we get a glimpse of his eccentricity in Watson's comment and apology for including details that SH might find unimportant:

“I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun.”

Watson is referring to SH thinking such knowledge was utterly useless for his line of work and he was going to forget it.

Are Brit and I the only ones who made it to the end?!! I know it's not haute littérature but still... ;-)

I made it to the end early on, but didn't have anything I really wanted to say about it that seemed worth saying here. We already talked about the interplay between Holmes and Watson, which for me is probably the major charm of the book. Stapleton was an obvious prospective villain, so there wasn't that much surprise there. And the whole scenario of his keeping the hound on the island and how he used it was completely unconvincing (if the path through the moor was so treacherous, how is it that the hound navigated it so many times without mishap? Dogs are roamers; he would have been roaming all over as he went to and from the island, and trying to control him on a leash to step only on the secure places which were not obvious to view seems unlikely.)

We've also talked about the moor as a character, and it certainly was that in spades. Was it only convenience for Doyle that the moor swallowed Stapleton so Holmes didn't have to capture him and bring him to justice and try to prove a case of murder against him? (Question: it it murder to set up a situation that frightens a person to death when you had no direct hand in his death? What crimes could Stapleton have been convicted of in court?) Or was it a sense of poetic justice?

One aspect of the hound's hiding place is totally unconvincing. The area the hound was secured in held an old tin mine and miners cottages. "A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners." Is it likely that they wouldn't have built some sort of safe passage not only for the miners to traverse but also to get the tin out? It would have taken at the very least horses or oxen to carry out the tin, and probably some sort of wagon, let alone getting the huge driving-wheel into the island. Is it likely that this would have been done with no safe passage to and from the island?

One quite interesting aspect of the book for me was the interplay between the superstitious acceptance of the moor dwellers and the scientific approach of the city-dwelling Holmes. This is particularly interesting because Doyle was a believer in spiritualism, and so might himself, although a scientifically trained man himself might have been more susceptible to the legend of a giant hound than a more rationalist person might have been.

Overall, an enjoyable enough read, but also enough holes that it wouldn't pass muster as a modern mystery, where readers expect more realistic and accurate situations.

Everyman, you find yourself in good company with the American publisher Frank Sidgwick, who picked several holes in the plot in his 1902 "Open Letter to Dr. Watson", which you can read here: http://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/ind...

Re: the tin mines, good points. However, CD based Grimpen on the real-life Fox Tor Mire where tin had been mined since Mediaeval times until it was abandoned in the late 19th century. He actually visited this place, so I can only assume he was describing what he'd seen. More info here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White...

Pip wrote: "Re: the tin mines, good points. However, CD based Grimpen on the real-life Fox Tor Mire where tin had been mined since Mediaeval times"

Interesting. but from the photo in the link, it's pretty clear that mine wasn't in the middle of a swamp -- there are cows grazing in the background, and it looks like fairly high ground. I suspect he may have smashed two very different areas together.

I, too, made it to the end. I love the SH stories but I was disappointed with THOTB for several reasons, all of them related to the second half of the story. The fact that Holmes showed up so late and then was so ineffectual bothered me. The point at which the reader was made to think Holmes had shot Sir Henry was the weakest part of the story. To explain why I experienced the book in this way, I go back to the opening scene, when Watson is showing off his deductive skills regarding the cane. Holmes praises his skills but disagrees with his conclusions, so I was expecting something similar to happen once Holmes showed up. Holmes not only agreed with Watson, and didn't have any brilliance to add, but he also seemed to fail, shooting the man who was, in essence, his client.

I agree with everything Everyman said about the implausibility of the hound hiding on the island. The hound's transformation into hellhound seemed farfetched. I kept trying to understand why Sir Charles was taken in.

Re Pip's question about red herrings: I was thinking there weren't any. The Barrymore behavior was explained early on; Stapleton seemed too obvious. I wanted a surprise at the end.

Still, I was engaged, and this discussion helped enormously. Thanks for the much appreciated comments and questions, everyone!

I get the feeling this story is not perceived as the best SH story. I tend to agree and find that I like the SH stores where there is a lot of interaction between Dr. Watson and Holmes. This interaction was minimal in this story. Dr. Watson is reporting to SH, but we do not get the ongoing responses from Holmes.

I have not considered in detail how accurate or realistic the events are. Since this is fiction, I don't worry too much about that. But I enjoy reading your comments regarding this.

Also, this was an easy and quick read, which was perfect for the hectic Christmas season.

I also finished, and agree with the holes picked in the story, however I tend to read my SH with a certain suspension of disbelief as most of his deductions are based on pretty tenuous evidence, so the fact that he always reaches the correct conclusion is pretty farfetched.

I'm more interested in the unfinished business of the secondary characters-what will happen to the butler and housekeeper, to Mrs Stapleton or to LL? Is there any chance at all of HB and Mrs Stapleton pursuing their relationship once they both recover, or is it impossible for HB to take up with a foreigner and a previously married woman?

I think that SH is much more suited to the short story format, which is in fact how most of the collection is written. This gives ample time for a clever puzzle to be presented and solved, and we can get character development over the series.