The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

The Complete Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Second Stain (The Return of Sherlock Holmes)

Availability The Return of Sherlock Holmes: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/108

Background Information

"The Adventure of the Second Stain", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) and the only unrecorded case mentioned passively by Watson to be written. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in December 1904, and was also published in Collier's in the United States on January 28, 1905. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Second Stain" eighth in his list of his twelve favourite Holmes stories.

Publication History

"The Adventure of the Second Stain" was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in December 1904, and in the US in Collier's on January 28, 1905. The story was published with eight illustrations by Sidney Paget in the Strand, and with six illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele in Collier's. It was included in the short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in the US in February 1905 and in the UK in March 1905.

In Collier's, the story was presented as "the last Sherlock Holmes story ever to be written by A. Conan Doyle". This would prove to be incorrect since the story preceded later Sherlock Holmes stories collected in His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the novel The Valley of Fear.

Adaptations



A Short Summary



The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for European Affairs, Trelawney Hope, come to Holmes because a crucial letter, a "rather injudicious letter from a foreign potentate," has been stolen from Hope's dispatch box. The contents of the letter are so sensitive that its publication could lead to war. Holmes believes that one of three individuals, Eduardo Lucas, La Rothiere, and Hugo Oberstein, might be involved in the theft. Eduardo Lucas is found stabbed to death, which Holmes believes is connected to the stolen letter. Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope, the Secretary's wife, visits Holmes and reveals that she had a love affair with Lucas before her marriage and that he had been blackmailing her.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Second Stain (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)
Discussion Questions

1) What do you think the missing document contained, and why was its theft so dangerous?

2) Why do certain characters lie or hide information in this story? What are their motivations?

3) What is Trelawney Hope's role in the story, and how does his character shape the narrative?

4) What is the significance of Eduardo Lucas's death in the story?

5) What is the significance of the "second stain" in the story's title?

Some shades of Charles Augustus Milverton in the blackmailing and The Naval Treaty in the plot, but I think this story holds its own.

Trelawney Hope seems a bit bumbling... carrying the document around with him but then leaving it unattended upstairs for hours. And Hilda isn't very clever, is she? Might she not have guessed it was an important document to be worth blackmailing a person over? However, she does show some gumption in going back to rescue it.

A fun scene with Lestrade and the carpet and the policeman, and a good denouement I thought. This also reminded me a bit of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband," with Victorians being blackmailled because they can't stand their partner to know they aren't entirely perfect.

I noticed that is quite common to Doyle to use the blue eyes to describe people, but he uses in two ways, depending on the necessity: if someone is pretty the blue eyes are a quality (as is in this short story), if the person is a bad character, the blue eyes are a signifier of this bad character.

I didn't make notes of the instances when this happens, but ii was a handful of times in the short stories read until now.

This one made me laugh because it all went down to two opportunistic women with emotions roused to avert a catastrophic war.

Rather too opportune for the crazed Frenchwoman to catch her husband with Hilda and stab him with the ornament hanging over the fireplace.

Even harder to swallow was Hilda (was the ‘lady’ an actress before assuming her high rank?) charming her way into the policeman’s confidence and stealing back the letter.

Hilda’s husband should at least have told her that everything he dealt with was of National importance and there would be serious repercussions if anything wen’t missing. That might have stopped her betraying him and her country to get back a love letter containing one or two saucy remarks.

https://gazetteer.sherlock-holmes.org...

Emily wrote: “this also reminded me a bit of Oscar Wilde’s an ideal husband”. Oscar and Arthur could be described as contemporaries as there was only about five years between their ages. They met at a lunch hosted by Lipplngcotts magazine that they were invited to write stories for. They submitted the ‘picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘the sign of four’ about the same time.