The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

The Complete Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone (The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes)

Availability The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69700

Background Information

"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in October 1921, and was also published in Hearst's International in the United States in November 1921.

Publication History

"The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" was published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in October 1921, and in the US in Hearst's International in November 1921. The story was published with three illustrations by Alfred Gilbert in the Strand, and with four illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele in Hearst's International.] It was included in the short story collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in the UK and the US in June 1927.



Analysis



"The Mazarin Stone" is notable for being one of only two Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes stories, aside from a couple of humorous vignettes, to be written in third-person. The other is "His Last Bow". "The Mazarin Stone" was written this way because it was adapted from a stage play, The Crown Diamond, in which Watson hardly appeared. Its adaptation from the theatre also explains why the action in this story is confined to one room. The plot twist in which Holmes reveals he had been listening to the two criminals as they spoke freely would also not have been possible using a first-person narrative.

The Crown Diamond, subtitled An Evening with Sherlock Holmes, was first performed on May 2, 1921 at the Bristol Hippodrome, and was written before the short story, which was first published in October 1921. However, historians do not agree on when the play was written, with some believing it was penned in early 1921 while others believe it was written years earlier. In the original play, the villain was Holmes's enemy Colonel Sebastian Moran of "The Adventure of the Empty House" infamy, not Count Negretto Sylvius.

According to Leslie S. Klinger, the name used to describe the "Mazarin stone" in the short story implies the stone once belonged to Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who, upon his death in 1661, bequeathed to the French monarch a collection of eighteen diamonds thereafter called the "Mazarin Diamonds". The name "Mazarin" is not mentioned in the original play, though the stone is described as a yellow Crown diamond in both the play and the short story.

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The Complete Sherlock Holmes
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone (The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes)
Discussion Questions

1) Do you think Watson was as involved in this case? Why or why not?

2) Why is there a wax dummy of Holmes sitting in a room near the window in his home?

3) Why is Holmes disguising himself as a workman and a woman around Baker Street?

4) How does Holmes trick Sylvius into telling him he has the Mazarin stone?

5) Why did Holmes play a practical joke on Lord Cantlemere?

6) Why doesn’t Holmes call the police right away knowing Sylvius and Sam Merton are in possession of the stone?

7) How does Holmes ultimately retrieve the stone from Sylvius and Sam Merton?

I guessed that Holmes was not playing, but a grammar phone record. I thought it was a bit far-fetched the way Holmes faces down armed criminals.

A bit of repetition here, both with the dummy Sherlock and the air gun, which seems to have been passed between villains just to get a pot shot at Sherlock.

I agree with Neil that it was bravado in the extreme for Holmes to invite his would be murderers to tea. Even more so that he sent Watson away so he couldn’t be hiding behind the curtains with his trusty revolver.

There was an interesting paragraph or two about Billy being Holmes only ‘friend’ because Watson had become too busy to visit him very often.

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

I thought this story was pretty terrible. The writing felt very disjointed, as though ACD had been dragged out of retirement to do Holmes yet again. I'm not quite sure why he chose third person instead of our usual Watson narration. And as Trev says, the story itself was a bit repetitive and also hard to see the workings of (I did not see how Holmes managed to substitute himself for the mannequin without moving the mannequin.

All told, the most interesting element was the curious appearance of Billy (Perhaps Mrs Hudson has just reached an age to put her feet up) and the peculiarity of Watson's having moved out, again.