Adventure of the Evening Quiz

The Noble Bachelor 

Here is the quiz taken by Red Circle members on the Adventure of the Evening. Answers below

1. Identify three of the four squares named in the story. 

2. For a cold fish, Lord Robert St. Simon liked his ladies warm.  How did he describe his two lady friends? 

3. Sherlock Holmes noted that two women are not present in the story.  Who were they?

4. List three of the four drinks mentioned in the story.

5. Who are the two people whose initials caused Lestrade to go astray with the note. 

6. Where does Watson say his bullet is lodged?

7. Besides the bride, her father, and her husband, list one of the two other Americans named in the story? 

8. What did Watson write that might imply that his lower limbs were prosthetics?

9. What two parts of the newspaper does Sherlock Holmes read? 

10. Name six bachelors (other than “The Noble Bachelor”) who appear in the story.

Answers

1. Grosvenor Square (furniture van), Hanover Square (address of the church), Trafalgar Square (fountain), and Gordon Square (where Frank took lodgings). NB: The answer "Lord St. Simon" is not acceptable.

2. Flora Millar was “exceedingly hot-headed” and Hatty Doran was “volcanic.”

3. Lady St. Simon (“Lady St. Simon is myth”) and Mrs. Aloysius Doran (“having no mother, she had no one to advise her at such a crisis”).

4. Cocktails (1s at the hotel), sherry (8d at the hotel), milk (“trout in the milk”) and water (the wedding-dress of watered silk, or the veil soaked in water, or Lord Backwater).

5. Flora Millar and Francis Moulton.

6. “In one of my limbs.”

7. Thoreau and Alice, Hatty’s maid.

8. “With my body in one easy-chair and my legs upon another…”

9.The criminal news and the agony column.

10. Holmes, Watson, Thoreau, Lord Eustace [unaccompanied to the wedding], St. George, and the youth who accompanied the confectioner’s man.

The Red Circle of Washington, DC gathered at the National Press Club on Friday, June 10, 2011.

Our guest of honor was Evelyn Herzog, Principal Unprincipled Adventuress of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. Her topic was "My Life and Hard Times as an Adventuress." Evelyn, who admits that her Adventuress times have not, in fact, been hard, recounted the history of that society from its informal undergraduate beginnings in the 1960s at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT to today, when it boasts over 130 members worldwide. In looking back, Evelyn emphasized the way other Sherlockian societies - particularly the Red Circle of Washington - provided models, members, and moral support through the years.

ASH's early days as a gathering of young enthusiasts included dorm-room chats, group correspondence with "real" Sherlockians (who became kind and generous mentors), articles in college publications and even the Baker Street Journal, and finally a visit to the New York Holmes Birthday celebration, where ASH's contribution was a picket of the then-men-only Baker Street Irregulars.

After post-graduation inaction, the Adventuresses were brought back to the life in January 1975 by an encounter with other women Sherlockians.  A burst of activity in the New York City area followed, producing a lively women's special interest group in the Sherlockian world, with a quarterly publication called The Serpentine Muse, dinner meetings, and informal get-togethers. The succeeding decades have seen changes and additions to activities and the comings and goings of personnel, but overall the group's success has been the result of generous work by many talented members. Adventuresses were among the first women invested in the Baker Street Irregulars in 1991 and ASH is now also co-ed. 
A number of ASH Red Circle members were among those in attendance at the dinner - including Peter Blau, the longest-serving male ASH.

Alan Rettig reported on his journey back to Baker Street and environs to attend the 60th Anniversary celebration of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, which was held from the 19th to the 22nd of May. The international reach of the Society was evident at the gathering, with representatives from a number of European countries as well as the United States joining their London hosts for the program.

Two of the weekend's events--a welcome tea on Thursday and the gala Diamond Jubilee Dinner on Friday were held at one of London's most distinguished addresses: the Cholmondeley Terrace and Dining Room of the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster. Before the dinner, guests were taken in small groups for private tours of the legislative chambers and other significant rooms in the palace, including Westminster Hall. Then it was on to the terrace overlooking the Thames for cocktails and into the adjoining Cholmondeley Room for the festive dinner.

Saturday saw the group heading south on the river for a day at Greenwich. After lunch and a comprehensive guided walk to such destinations as the Royal Naval College and the Maritime Museum, the Society presented a new audio version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The program was produced by Laurence Owen, and presented by him in the darkened lower level of the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich--a Victorian pub formerly frequented by the likes of Gladstone and Dickens. In this evocative venue, the powers of evil were indeed exalted, and the production was applauded enthusiastically.

Sunday began with something nutritious at Simpson's, the legendary restaurant in the Strand where Holmes chose to break his fast after stubbornly failing to die in "The Dying Detective." This pleasant lunch was followed by an open-top bus tour of London landmarks associated with Mr. Holmes, ending with a refreshing walk through the byways and mews of Marylebone, from Cavendish Square to Baker Street. The journey retraced the route thought to have been taken by Holmes and Watson in "The Empty House" as they made their way stealthily to the vacated digs across from "that picturesque pile" at 221B. The walk was led by the Society's inimitable Roger Johnson, using the map and geographical landmarks charted in the early 1960s by the eminent Holmesian Bernard Davies.

Once the group reached its destination and discovered that "The Empty House" is now, ironically, a real estate office and that 221B is a cafeteria featuring salads and smoothies, it was only a short walk up Baker Street to the Sherlock Holmes Hotel for a final cup of tea and a warm farewell to good friends. Great congratulations are due the Society for a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.