Adventure of the Evening Quiz

The Illustrious Client

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

1. What was Sir James Damery's telephone number? (the only one mentioned in the Canon, by the way)

2. Give two criminals' names.

3. How do we know that Baron Adelbert Gruner was allergic to pork? 

4. Which character might say: "By Hera!" or "Wield the Golden Lasso"? 

5. Name the three diseases mentioned in the story. 

6. What English monarch is mentioned by name in the case? 

7. What other royal person was mentioned in the story? 

8. Name 10 animals from the story. 

9. Name at least five cities from the story. 

10. Name a sixth city mentioned in the story. 

Answers

1. XX.31

2. Charlie Peace and Wainwright (bonus criminals mentioned: "the late Professor Moriarty" and "the living Colonel Sebastian Moran," plus "former criminal" Shinwell Johnson)

3. He was an expert at Hurling-ham

4. Violet de Merville, described as "young, beautiful, accomplished, a wonder-woman in every way."

5. scurvy ("scorbutic" Shinwell Johnson). . .leprosy. . .erysipelas (skin infection also called St. Anthony's Fire)

6. Queen Anne (Watson was "living in my own rooms in Queen Anne Street at the time.") 

7. Chinese Emperor Shomu

8. Cat ("hell-cat" Kitty Winter). . .cobra. . .mice. . .moths or butterflies. . .pigeon ("pigeon-hole"). . .raven ("raven-black hair"). . .bear (pain is more than I can "bear"). . .kid ("kid-gloved"). . .horse (he was a "horse fancier"). . .fish ("dead-fish eyes")

9. Kingston. . .Liverpool. . .London. . .Prague. . .Peking

10. Nara in China

The Red Circle of Washington gathered at the National Press Club on Friday evening, September 14, 2012. A robust group of old and new friends enjoyed cocktails and dinner. 

The evening’s speaker was the renowned Conan Doyle biographer and Red Circle member Daniel Stashower, who gave a well-received illustrated talk on Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure, a diary by Arthur Conan Doyle, which Dan edited along with Jon Lellenberg.

This new book is based upon two hand-written notebooks of 25,000 words and 70 drawings made by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1880. Serving as a ship's surgeon on a whaling "cruise," Doyle noted his day-to-day activities aboard the S.S. Hope and illustrated scenes of naval life -- and sometimes death -- at sea. After impulsively joining the crew for a seven-month voyage to escape the drudgery of medical school, the twenty-year-old Doyle later declared that sailing among the Arctic ice floes the "first real outstanding adventure” of his life.

He may have taken the job to support himself and to see the world, but Doyle also wanted the break from school to pursue his budding literary career. His hand-tinted sketches showed Doyle's talent as an artist, taking after his illustrator father. But it was the prose that impressed Dan Stashower the most, as he read aloud Doyle's vivid account of harpooning a whale in the dangerous waters. Many of Doyle's detailed descriptions of sailors and ships in the Holmes canon were informed by his real-life nautical adventures. The original logbooks are now in the British Library.

Dan also noted that one of the first newspapers Doyle was able to read after the Hope reached Scotland mentioned a major defeat of the British Army in Afghanistan, which became the basis for Dr. Watson's backstory seven years later in the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet.