Nobody gets it!
In Victorian etiquette, an unintroduced gentleman could almost never speak to a lady in public, as it was considered rude and improper…”
At least nobody as far as I can tell, who put Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty” on film or tape.
We look at the story through twenty-first century eyes, with today’s mores and it is just too strange for us. Miss Harrison’s time, 1893 is more than one and a half centuries from us. It is incomprehensible to imagine that the intelligent Miss Annie Harrison would remain silent or that no one properly introduced her at the meeting. Just too inhuman! Certainly for our day.
But that was what life was like for a woman in Victorian times living by strict Victorian mores. And it is exactly Miss Harrison’s silence that prompts Sherlock Holmes to create the Rose Soliloquy as a means to circumvent Victorian rules for bachelors and maidens.
From Thomas E. Hill Manual of Social and Business Forms, 1875. Favorite practices of social etiquette for ladies and gentlemen from the Victorian Era.
“In Victorian etiquette, an unintroduced gentleman could almost never speak to a lady in public, as it was considered rude and improper. A single woman never addressed an unknown bachelor. Social interactions were governed by strict, formal rules, and an introduction by a mutual acquaintance was a prerequisite for conversation.”
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, Miss Harrison is not properly introduced to Sherlock Holmes. She is there as a silent nurse only to help the still fragile Percy through this trying meeting. After all it is held in his bedroom to accommodate the ill gentleman. Yet to Holmes, she is a suspect that he desires to interview. He could either ask Percy or his brother-in-law, Joseph to introduce her. Or he could compose the Rose Soliloquy and bring her to him.
Writers and directors automatically add something for her to say in the scene. Yet doing so defeats the purpose of Holmes’s Rose Soliloquy.
With Miss Annie Harrison’s version of the story, she attempts to bring us closer to her lifetime, to show us how this can be true, and just how different her time is from our present day. Understanding that difference brings us closer to why Sherlock Holmes composed the Rose Soliloquy.
Also useful in how to approach Sir Arthur’s stories. I don’t think it is possible to honor all of what he was writing from our frame of reference. Time is also a language and to believe that ours and his are the same is to remain deaf to the rich voice of the 19th-Century.
This story is available in my storybook, Sherlock Holmes Far And Wide. It is one of eleven spectacular stories.
Gretchen Altabef is an award-winning author of sensational new Sherlock Holmes mysteries written from a woman’s perspective. THESE SCATTERED HOUSES brings Holmes to New York during his ‘great hiatus’. REMARKABLE POWER OF STIMULUS follows in London. During the investigation of a gruesome murder, Sherlock seizes a second chance with THE woman, and they marry in anarchist-ridden Paris. The series continues with FIVE MILES OF COUNTRY. Holmes is called in by Thomas Edison to solve a murder in his unique film studio. While Mrs Irene Adler-Holmes triumphs on Broadway despite the antics of a theater ghost. THE KEYS OF DEATH is a genesis story of 221B Baker Street and its inhabitants, as told by Mrs Hudson. Sherlock Holmes FAR & WIDE mystifies with nine stories and one play, including the award-winning “Sir Arthur And The Time Machine”.
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