"Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thomas Donald)

1

In the archives of Sherlock Holmes few papers have been more jealously guarded than those which touch upon blackmail or extortion. How strange it is that these should include a small collection of literary manuscripts and rare first editions acquired in the course of an investigation in 1890. They are items which Oxford ’s Bodleian Library or the British Museum or wealthy collectors like John Pierpont Morgan might have fought over in the auction rooms of the world.

To the present day, most of these treasures remain unknown to literature or scholarship. In the Baker Street files repose such lost works as the manuscript of Lord Byron’s Don Juan in the New World, in the poet’s own hand. Its stanzas confirm the great romantic rebel’s ambition to make his home in the land of Thomas Jefferson. Among other manuscripts is The Venetian Nun: A Gothic Tale, written in 1820 by the notorious William Beckford, creator of the short-lived extravaganza of Fonthill Abbey. A further portfolio contains the monologue of a famous heretic facing the flames in fourteenth century Florence, “Savonarola to the Signoria,” apparently omitted by Robert Browning from his collection of Men and Women in 1855.

A shelf of rare editions, which Holmes acquired during the same investigation, was equally remarkable. He was particularly fond of a small octavo volume in pinkish wrappers. It bore the simple title of “Sonnets By E. B. B.” At the foot of the cover was printed, “ Reading: Not For Publication, 1847.” Such was the first appearance of Sonnets from the Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett to express her love for her bridegroom, Robert Browning, at the time of their elopement and marriage in the previous year. No more than three or four copies of the private 1847 edition have survived. It was intended for intimate friends, the printing arranged by Miss Mary Russell Mitford. Sherlock Holmes’s copy bore a pencil inscription on the fly-leaf “For Miss Mitford, E. B. B.” It was Mrs Browning’s reminder that this copy had been set aside for her friend.

How odd that half a century later such a treasure should find its way into the pocket of a dead blackmailer.