Mrs Hudson's Diaries by Barry Cryer

Author:Barry Cryer [Cryer, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849544702
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2012-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

Mrs Hudson’s hiatus

by Oliver Philpott

A considered view of the years 1892–94

I feel it is my duty to step in at this point and explain a little about the background to the two-year period titled ‘Mrs Hudson’s hiatus’. The devotees of Holmes like to refer to this period in Sherlock’s life as The Great Hiatus, in which he is said to have travelled the world. He spent two years in Tibet, had an amusing visit to Lhasa (where he visited the head Lama no less), posed as a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson, then went through Persia, Mecca and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, before returning to France where he spent some months researching coal-tar derivatives in a laboratory at Montpelier. Just as Dr Watson appears to have picked up his pen with renewed vigour during this period, it seems Mrs Hudson did precisely the opposite. No diary entries were found for 1892 or 1893.

Some might consider it futile to speculate on her movements during this time, but you know I can leave no mystery intriguingly unsolved. In fact, as something of an amateur (as in ‘lover of’, I should add) graphologist, I embarked upon an analysis of our good lady’s handwriting to see if I could open a window into her patterns of behaviour. Incidentally, I can offer my services in the complementary field of Graphotherapy – please see my website www.philpottsworld.com for details (‘You too, can make the “write” change!’44). For those of you familiar with the engrossing art of graphology, you’ll be pleased to know that my analysis of Mrs Hudson’s handwriting focuses mainly on the major cardinal traits of the language of ink – namely the Slant, the Space, the Baseline, the Flex, the Swoop, the Elision, the Halt (controversially), the Size, the Signature (everyone’s favourite!) and the Serif, not to mention the foot soldiers of our trade: the Capitalisations and the Exclamatories. To begin with, Mrs Hudson’s sloping h’s give us the impression of someone who is constant and yet curious. Perhaps she may have travelled in her mind during this time, if not in her deeds. Unfortunately, nowhere in the diaries does Mrs Hudson’s signature manifest itself. It was upon investigating her vacillations and true ascending baseline that this thought struck me. Without this crucial piece of evidence, my graphological analysis reached something of a stalemate.

However, not to be deterred and mindful that what follows might make me seem like something of a fruitless pontificator, my supporting analysis did present the following theories:

The diaries yield seven instances of the word ‘Scotch’, therefore, Mrs Hudson may have upped sticks and moved to Scotland for two years. The fact that she never mentions living in Scotland in any way, shape or form did not deter this most tenacious of bloodhounds. However, it is unlikely.

She may have gone wandering in the Serengeti. I base this on the fact that, following the resumption of her writing, she mentions the warm weather quite a bit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.