Discussion Prompt by Tony Groesbeck

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once complained about our friend, Sherlock, saying “If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one.” Whether or not this is true, no one can say, but we do know that Sherlock Holmes, who appeared in four of Doyle’s 22 novels and 56 of his 204 short stories was and remains the most lucrative and recognizable figure in Doyle’s quiver of literary arrows.

What is it about Sherlock Holmes that has intrigued readers for so long? Perhaps Holmes and his methods give us a reassuring sense of security because we can expect that when the veils of insidious criminality and vile deception are drawn back, Holmes will calmly explain how something that seemed impossible, (or at least, incredible) is actually quite elementary to comprehend. This is certainly the case in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” wherein we (and our avatar, the dear Dr. Watson) are confronted with the legend of a spectral hound who has tormented the same family (the titular ‘Baskervilles’) for generations as a curse for the actions of a vicious member of the tribe.

The legend lays as follows: during the time of “The Great Rebellion”- a 1640’s English civil war of sorts (see your local history teacher for more info), a rogue of the first order named Hugo Baskerville liked a girl who was none too fond of him, and he pulled a “Gaston,” where he and a few of his fiendish cronies decided to kidnap the girl and imprison her, apparently hoping for a “Stockholm Syndrome” kind of courtship. The girl escaped, and Hugo, the fervent lover that he was, put his pack of hunting dogs on her trail to run her down. It was later reported that as Hugo galloped after her on his steed, a “hound of hell” chased Hugo in turn and was soon after seen tearing the throat out of the dastardly rapscallion. For the 250(ish) years since the event, the story of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” has haunted the nights and dreams of the Baskerville men.

It is a wonderfully gothic back story to intrigue the unremitting mind of Sherlock Holmes. To help readers get engaged with the mysterious tone of the tale, Doyle gives us Baskerville Hall; the imposing, dark, and foreboding ancestral home of the clan that seems to have been drawn from an Edgar Allen Poe story. What’s more, the location of the creepy old manse is the middle of a creepy old moor complete with bogs, mist, and some strange old paleolithic huts. The neighbors are weird, the butler and his wife are clearly involved in something shady as the woman is constantly weeping, and oh yeah- there’s an escaped homicidal convict rumored to be tramping about the area at night. Add a little erudite dismissal of the testimony of the “lesser peasants” and a doomed love affair that is a bit “near the knuckle,” and we are set up for a wonderful October read.

As we begin talking tonight, there are a few topics that might be fun to discuss.

1. Arthur Conan Doyle (he wasn’t “Sir Arthur” until 1902), was a passionate Spiritualist who studied psychic and supernatural phenomena and did so from at least the 1880’s to the end of his life in 1930. Why then did his most famous creation find such traction in the exploration of applied observation and especially an elevation of reason almost to the point of veneration? Can Sherlock himself (the “savior” of the story) be seen as a personification of materialist reasoning?
2. Would Holmes and Watson have come to the conclusion that there actually was a real hound in play if they were not so quick to dismiss “the rumors of the peasants”? What caused them to dismiss the rumors out of hand? Are Doyle’s own beliefs infiltrating this element of the story?
3. It what way(s) can it be said that there really was a “Hound of the Baskervilles”? Was the family cursed?