Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle and Switzerland E-Book

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 296

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The Reichenbach Irregulars of Switzerland, an international group of Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle enthusiasts, publish their reflections and thoughts in what is the first ever Reichenbach Irregulars book, profusely illustrated! Each essay is based on a paper delivered at a Reichenbach Irregulars conference over the past 30 years, sometimes held in rather remote parts of the Swiss Alps. Introduction by Peter E. Blau Afterword by Akane Higashiyama and Mitch Higurashi

Leseprobe

Acknowledgments

As always, a volume such as this is an achievement by many.

The Reichenbach Irregulars of Switzerland would like to thank all the authors who kindly agreed for allowing us to publish their reflections and thoughts in what is the first ever Reichenbach Irregulars book. Each essay is based on a paper delivered at a Reichenbach Irregulars conference. Without these conferences, this volume would have not seen the light of day. We must also thank many Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle enthusiasts from across three continents. Over the years they have made the effort to attend Reichenbach Irregulars conferences, sometimes held in rather remote parts of the Swiss Alps.

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Helen Dorey, BSI, MBE, who has spent hours proof reading this volume. Jonathan and Elaine McCafferty, BSI, very kindly went through the final draft. We hope that we have taken all their invaluable suggestions on board. As always, any mistakes or omissions are entirely the editors’ fault.

We send our thanks to David Charlesworth of Notions by Design, England for doing the layout and turning our serious (and less serious musings) into what we think is a most handsome volume.

Special thanks to John Bergquist BSI, and Bob Katz BSI, who as chief architects of the much-acclaimed Baker Street Irregulars publications series gave us priceless advice about how to market such a volume.

Marcus Geisser, Guy Marriott, Michael A. Meer

Contents

I.

Introduction

“It Was a Lovely Trip”

II.

Reichenbach and Beyond

The Missing Mountain Guide

The many routes from the Reichenbach Falls

A Study in Probabilities and Realities

The Florentine Sherlock

Towards a Forbidden Land of the Holy Books

III.

Stories for which the world is now prepared

The Mystery of Adelheid Halm

An engine comparison

The Baden Dilemma?

A Fixed Point

IV.

“We are coming to Switzerland (...) There is beautiful atmosphere in these heights.”

Adventures & Amusements in Alpine Heights

“It is, indeed, a fearful place”:

On Conan Doyle and Switzerland

“

The Best or the Worst Thing I Ever Wrote

”: A. Conan Doyle and The Stark Munro Letters

The Brigadier in Switzerland: Travels with Arthur and Napoleon

The Final Return

V.

Afterword

“Well, it was a pleasant talk”

VI.

Biographies of authors

The Reichenbach Irregulars of Switzerland

The first Swiss Sherlock Holmes Society, was founded in Meiringen on 24 June 1989 by a dynamic group of young Sherlockians led by Marcus Geisser. During the 1990s, the Reichenbach Irregulars organised meetings in Switzerland and Southern Germany, published The Reichenbach Journal and the newsletter The Young Swiss Messenger. Since 2000, the Reichenbach Irregulars organise international expert conferences about Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. These gatherings regularly happen in Swiss alpine resorts and attract an audience from across the globe.

Members of the Reichenbach Irregulars explore Mägisalp situated above Meiringen on one of the society’s first ever outings in autumn 1991. Photograph: Reichenbach Irregulars archives.

In 1992, the Reichenbach Irregulars – together with The Bimetallic Question of Montréal – erected a commemorative plaque at the Reichenbach Falls in memory of the fateful encounter between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.

The photo on the left shows (left to right) Michael Meer, Marcus Geisser, Arthur Ott and Patrick Campbell on the day of the installation on 2 May 1992. Photographs: Reichenbach Irregulars archives.

In June 2019 the Reichenbach Irregulars made history by being the first group of Sherlockians to ascend the iconic Splügen Pass to examine where Baron Gruner had murdered his wife. Photograph: Hiroko Nakashima.

I – Introduction

“It Was a Lovely Trip . . .”

By Peter E. Blau, BSI

It’s nice indeed that Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle served as excuses for my two trips to Switzerland. Not that one ever really needs an excuse to visit Switzerland, but one of the best aspects of travel can be discovering how widely one can follow in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle.

My first visit to Switzerland was in 1966, when I was living and working in England as a petroleum geologist. I was on a brief holiday in Marrakesh when I was invited to dinner by the Marquess of Donegall, in Switzerland rather than in Morocco, and it was easy enough to change my travel plans to fly to Geneva, where Don welcomed me and drove me in his Bentley to his home in Vevey, where I was happy to stay until I was taken as his guest to the dinner that Adrian Conan Doyle had arranged to celebrate the grand opening of the Château de Lucens, which he had decided to make his home.

Both the opening and the château were grand indeed. The château is a proper castle, built on an outcrop overlooking the Broye valley, and there has been a castle at the site since the early 13th century. We approached on a winding road, walked across a bridge and through a sally-port gate, and then, still outside the castle walls, walked round on a narrow path to the entrance gate, where on that late afternoon, a trumpeter on a balcony blew a fanfare to herald visitors into the courtyard.

Adrian was proud of the château. “For within these ancient walls,” he wrote to William S. Baring-Gould on 20 January 1966, “are the original relics, the crime-scene papers, the notebooks, the manuscripts and the famous black tin boxes of the man who, more than any other, was Sherlock Holmes. A century of time has passed into history from Picardy Place to Lucens and yet there is a certain symbolism in the fact that, with the old line doomed to extinction on my death, the relics of Holmes’ creator should be finally preserved for posterity in the style of his feudal ancestors.”

His guests at the grand opening were welcome to tour the château, which offered a splendid recreation of the sitting-room at 221b Baker Street, commissioned by Adrian when he was unable to acquire the sitting-room that was exhibited at Abbey House during the Festival of Britain in 1951, as well as a proper dungeon which contained an Iron Maiden of Nuremburg as well as other instruments of torture.

There were cocktails and hors d’oeuvres in the Hall of Knights, where Adrian displayed his collection of armour and weapons. The hall was large enough to contain in a corner, not a grand piano, but rather a knight’s suit of armour, seated on a horse which was in turn armoured. Then, because there was as yet no working kitchen in the château, the guests drove off to a dinner that Adrian had arranged at the Auberge de la Couronne in Lucens. It was, all in all, a party not to be forgotten.

My second visit to Switzerland was in 2014, when Bev and I attended one of the first of the delightful conferences arranged by the The Reichenbach Irregulars of Switzerland.1

After the conference ended, we stayed on in Switzerland for a few days, and were able to visit the Château de Lucens once again. It’s no longer the home of Adrian Conan Doyle, of course, and there’s nothing Sherlockian or Doylean about it now, other than its recent history. It’s privately owned, and available for rental to anyone wishing to hold a fancy event there.2

But Adrian’s recreation of the sitting-room at 221b Baker Street still exists, in the other Sherlock Holmes Museum in the village of Lucens. Yes, there are two Sherlock Holmes museums in Switzerland, one in Meiringen, well-known to those who visit the Reichenbach Falls, and the second in Lucens, well off the beaten Sherlockian track.

Peter E. Blau (right) with Marcus Geisser (left), Co-Editor of this volume, visiting the Reichenbach Falls in September 2014. Photograph taken by Helen Dorey.

The museum in Lucens has much to recommend it. Adrian took great pains to make his sitting-room as authentic as possible. Sherlock Holmes’ desk actually is Conan Doyle’s own desk, at which he wrote at least some of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Other rooms in the museum boast more of Conan Doyle’s furniture, such as the grand dining room table, and the wonderful Viking chair in which he once was photographed.3

Recreation of Sherlock Holmes’ consulting room in the Sherlock Holmes Museum, since 2001 situated in the Maison Rouge, Lucens. Source: www.lucens.ch/sherlockholmes

There is much more of Conan Doyle and his son Adrian to be found in Switzerland. And to see that, one need only visit Lausanne, where Adrian’s personal papers are preserved in the archives of the Fondation Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire BCU Lausanne. The archives are a treasure trove indeed: they contain not only Adrian’s papers, but also much about his family, including his father. Although the collection is not on permanent display, with prior notification, one can tour the shelves, discover a box with “records” on its label, and find more than a dozen copies of the phonograph recording that Conan Doyle made in 1930, in their original paper sleeves. “Surely you don’t need all those copies of one recording,” one can ask the librarian, “would you like to sell one of them?” The answer, in 2014, when I visited the collection, unfortunately was “No.”

In conclusion, it is interesting indeed that so small a country has so many places of interest to Sherlockians and Doyleans. Of course, the Swiss have long welcomed Sherlockians to share these wonderful sites. Michael Meer has found an early report on this in The Oamaru Mail, a small weekly periodical published in another small country, New Zealand. In 1901, an anonymous “well-known traveller” told of being accompanied by Swiss mountain guides who would show visitors the exact spot where Holmes and Moriarty had vanished into the abyss of the Reichenbach Falls. “At the edge of the village”, he said, “I saw the customary army of guides, and among them the chap I had patronized some years before. I hired him again, and he pointed out to me the various places of interest. But you can imagine my surprise when he suddenly turned and said: ‘And this, Sir, is the place where Monsieur Sherlock Holmes, the great English detective, was died’ [sic].”4

It should also be noted that many tourists, Sherlockian and otherwise, have relied upon Baedeker’s valuable guides. The twenty seventh revised edition of Baedeker’s Switzerland Together with Chamonix and the Italian Lakes (published in 1928) reports that “The Lower Reichenbach Fall, 8 min. W. of the Reichenbach upper station by road, also deserves a visit. The Reichenbach here descends in two copious cascades, and drives a saw-mill. – It will be remembered that Sherlock Holmes disappeared at the Reichenbach Falls.”

Tourists today can follow the footsteps of Holmes and Conan Doyle through Switzerland using a much more recent travel guide: The Adventures of Two British Gentlemen in Switzerland – in the Footsteps of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes (Ludwigshafen am Rhein: Deutsch Sherlock-Holmes-Gesellschaft, 2016); it is fully illustrated, with text in both English and German, and a valuable resource.

The Swiss are as welcoming to visitors today as they were when Conan Doyle and his wife made their first visit all those years ago. You will find much about the country’s Sherlockian and Doylean connections in the excellent papers presented here, from the conferences arranged by the Reichenbach Irregulars. One can only hope there will be more conferences, and more volumes to come.

Map of Switzerland

Map of Bernese Oberland

Source: Collection of Guy Marriott.

1 Visit the Reichenbach Irregulars’ website for a full report of this conference entitled Alpine Adventures – Arthur Conan Doyle and Switzerland: http://www.221b.ch/Past_Events_Davos_e.html .

2 If you’re so inclined, the château has a web-site at www.chateaudelucens.ch .

3 You can learn more about the museum at www.lucens.ch/sherlockholmes.

4 “Solidifying a Myth” in: The Oamaru Mail, 2 December 1901.

II – Reichenbach and Beyond

The Missing Mountain Guide

By Eva Zenk Iggland

In “The Final Problem” Sherlock Holmes tells Watson that he is prepared to give up his life in order to free the world of Professor Moriarty, but surely this could just have been a price he was prepared to pay, not a wish to die. He must have hoped for Moriarty’s death and his own survival and made plans accordingly. After the death of Moriarty, he, Holmes, would be a hunted man, for the Professor’s associates would surely make attempts to avenge his death. So, Holmes would have looked to lure Moriarty to a place from which it would be possible to escape, by one of several routes, and which would not make it obvious which way he had gone.

Meiringen, at the crossroads of at least five different “Saumwege”, was ideal. The German word “Saumwege” has the meaning of ancient trade routes using pack animals and is sometimes translated in English as “mule track.” I believe that the existence of these different escape routes brought Meiringen to Holmes’ mind, but there was another major reason for Holmes to choose Meiringen – the “Missing Mountain Guide”.

“It was not a pleasant business, Watson. The fall roared beneath me. I am not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear Moriarty’s voice screaming at me out of the abyss. A mistake would have been fatal. More than once, as tufts of grass came out in my hand or my foot slipped in the wet notches of the rock, I thought that I was gone.”

Author Eva Zenk Iggland reenacting Holmes’ escape from the Reichenbach Falls. Photograph: Collection of Eva Zenk Iggland.

There are two stories in which mountain guides are brought to our attention. They are “The Final Problem” and “The Empty House”. In the first of these, “The Final Problem”, Holmes and Watson cross the Gemmi Pass. The ascent of this pass is steep, but once at the top the trail is relatively flat and easy. The trail passes a lake called the Daubensee, and as they pass the lake a large rock “clattered down and roared into the lake” behind them. The story continues “In an instant Holmes had raced up on to the ridge, and, standing upon a lofty pinnacle, craned his neck in every direction. It was in vain that our guide assured him that a fall of stones was a common chance in the spring-time at that spot.” So – here they had a guide, which is what one would have expected. As the Gemmi Pass was “still deep in snow” this was the wise and sensible thing to do. But in the second story, “The Empty House”, there is no guide mentioned. And this is exactly the point. How could Holmes possibly cross the Alps in early May without the help of a guide?

In this second story, after Dr Watson has recovered from his shock at finding that Holmes is alive, Holmes gives a detailed description of his struggle with Moriarty. Holmes also describes the path to the Reichenbach Falls, the ledge where he lay in hiding while Watson was searching for him, the cliff wall and how difficult it was to climb, and how he half climbs down, half falls, back to the path after Moriarty’s man started hurling rocks at the ledge. Holmes continues “…by the blessing of God, I landed, torn and bleeding, upon the path. I took to my heels, did ten miles over the mountains in the darkness, and a week later I found myself in Florence…”.

This is the point at which the guide is brought to our attention – by being so blatantly not mentioned where a guide is absolutely necessary. There can only be one explanation – even after several years, any indication that someone had helped Holmes to escape would put that person’s life in danger. But I believe I have identified that person, and by now it should be safe to name him.

In 1891 there was no Daylight-Saving Time in Switzerland (indeed no country adopted this concept until the 20th century) so at the beginning of May sunset was at about 7.30pm, and it would be dark a little after 8pm. Holmes and Watson left Meiringen to walk to Rosenlaui in the early afternoon and Watson reports that it took him about 3 hours from the time he left Holmes near the Falls until he returned again; having searched in vain for Holmes, Watson must have left about sunset, or a little before, so Holmes would have had about 40 minutes of fading daylight to make his way down to Meiringen – the rest of his journey that day he would have to do in the dark.

My belief is that Holmes made his way from the Falls down towards Meiringen, sliding and climbing down through the woods, and by keeping to the edge of the woods what little light remained would have been enough. Once he had reached the edge of Meiringen, he could follow a small road to the little hamlet of Zaun. Since the road was well-trodden this would be do-able in the dark. This is about 11 kilometres – close enough to the 10 miles mentioned by Holmes. Zaun is just west of Meiringen, but 400 metres higher, and the hamlet was the home of Melchior Anderegg, his wife and their 12 children.

In 1891 Melchior Anderegg (born 1828, died 1914) was the most famous mountain guide in Switzerland. Edward Whymper, the British Alpinist who was in the party which made the first successful climb of the Matterhorn (in 1865) wrote: “Who is Melchior Anderegg? This question can only be asked by someone who has never been in the Swiss Alps, because there his name is as well-known as Napoleon. Melchior is in his own way an Emperor, the king amongst the Mountain Guides.”

Melchior Anderegg was born in 1828 in Zaun. 5 He grew up on the family farm, learning to observe the changing of the weather and the seasons. He was a passionate hunter of the chamois in the mountains. His knowledge of the mountains came from first-hand experience, paired with a very keen, open and intelligent mind. In 1854 at the age of 26 he was hired by the Grimsel Hospiz, close to the top of the Grimsel Pass, to take English tourists on tours to the glaciers. The first such tour to be described in detail was made by Anderegg in 1855 with Thomas Hinchliff. The next year Anderegg worked in the summer months at the Hotel Schwarenbach, beyond the Daubensee lake on the Gemmi Pass. Hinchliff spent that summer, as usual for him, in the Alps and was very pleased to meet Melchior Anderegg again at the Hotel Schwarenbach. In Hinchliff ’s book Summer Months Among the Alps published in 1857 he gives Anderegg nothing but the highest praise, although he is critical of many other guides he has encountered. Hinchliff ’s book became very popular in England and Melchior Anderegg quickly became famous and sought-after. In that same year, 1857, Hinchliff was one of the “Gentleman Tourists” who founded the Alpine Club in London.

Hinchliff ’s criticism of many of the Swiss guides was well-founded. Many Swiss saw an easy opportunity to earn some money and help alleviate the often extremely poor conditions in which they lived by presenting themselves as guides, without the knowledge of either the area or the dangers. In 1856 the situation was so bad that the Canton of Berne introduced an examination for Mountain Guides, with strict rules. These rules included:

A permit was necessary to describe yourself as a “Mountain Guide”

A good reputation was necessary

The Guide was required to have a knowledge of the heights of mountains and passes in the area

The Guide was required to behave with honesty and decency

The Guide was required to warn his client of dangers

The Guide was required to take care of the client’s baggage

The Guide must avoid alcohol abuse

Payment to the licensed Guide was fixed at between 6 and 8 francs per day

The Guide had to register and make a security deposit of 500 francs (this high amount was to ensure that only those who were serious about this work would seek to register)

When a Guide was first entered on the register, he received a “Führerbuch” (a guide’s book) which contained the identifying details of the Guide (much like a modern passport), with printed Rules for the Guide and numbered pages.

The visitor hiring a Guide had to specify the date, the route and the performance of the Guide, and sign it. If the Guide received unfavourable comments written in the “Führerbuch” three times in a year, his license would be recalled.

Melchior Anderegg from Meiringen, Christian Almer from Grindelwald and Ulrich Lauener from Lauterbrunnen were the first to receive a license. From about 1870 there are only a few pages signed in Melchior Anderegg’s book. His reputation was such that he was booked one or two years ahead by his regular clients, most of whom were members of the Alpine Club. Many of them climbed with Melchior every year for between 20 and 40 years, and one of note was Lucy Walker, a pioneering woman climber.

One of his regular clients, and who also became a good friend, was Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Stephen was tall, thin, athletic, and he and Anderegg climbed together for several weeks each summer between 1858 and 1869. Stephen, and other clients, left descriptions of Melchior Anderegg in the annals of the Alpine Club. They praise his cheerful gravitas, his graciousness of nature, his gentlemanly feelings, his unswerving courtesy and his gentleness and kindness of heart. They also speak of his fantastic sense of orientation, his fitness and his good judgement in difficult situations. Just once in his career is it recorded that one of his clients was badly hurt; a young man of 18 left the group he was with during a rest break on a climb and fell.

The beginning of May is too early for most climbing expeditions, the passes and climbs still covered in snow, so it is very likely that Anderegg was available at a moment’s notice in May 1891 to assist Holmes. Melchior Anderegg was the first guide in Switzerland to do winter climbs – in 1866 over the Finsteraarjoch and Strahlegg – and he developed much experience in routes and climbs in snowy conditions. He knew well the areas of the Grimsel and Gemmi Passes, to Zermatt and the Italian border, having spent years climbing and walking in that region. He would be the right person to take Holmes into Italy.

Holmes had probably heard of Anderegg through members of the Alpine Club, many of whom were influential in politics and cultural matters in England. Leslie Stephen was a famous author, influential journalist and mountaineer. Mycroft Holmes would have known of him and may have procured from Stephen a Letter of Introduction for Sherlock to Melchior. Or perhaps Sherlock Holmes had met him in England? Melchior Anderegg visited London in 1861, but a more likely date for a meeting would have been in 1888 when Anderegg was an honoured guest at a meeting of the Alpine Club. After this meeting, Anderegg went climbing in Snowdonia. Anderegg visited London a third time in 1894. Can it be coincidence that this is when Holmes returned to London after “the Great Hiatus”?

Payment to Melchior for assisting Sherlock over the Alps in May 1891 was no doubt arranged by Mycroft, and we know that in 1892 Melchior purchased another piece of land in Zaun. Renowned for his discretion, Melchior Anderegg could be relied upon not to speak about the assistance he had given to Sherlock Holmes. Anderegg would have known of the risk to himself if Moriarty’s gang suspected that he had given help to Holmes. Holmes would have mentioned to Anderegg that the rooms at 221B Baker Street had been set on fire the night before Holmes and Watson left London for the Continent. So, when the great fire broke out in Meiringen on 25 October 1891, and burned down large parts of the village, Anderegg would know that this was the Moriarty gang’s revenge against the people of Meiringen. Since the gang would have guessed that Holmes must have had help to escape, but could not find out who had helped, they took their revenge on the whole village. The insurance companies paid 2,196,000 francs for the damage caused by the fire – this equates to more than 100 million francs today.

Investigation showed that the great Meiringen fire had started early in the morning in the house of Katarina Bragger, caused by a defective fireplace. Frau Bragger supplemented her income by renting out rooms to foreign visitors to Meiringen, and it was reported in the newspapers in Berne and Zurich that some of the villagers put the blame on some “Italians” who were lodging with Frau Bragger at the time.

Statue of Melchior Anderegg and Leslie Stephen, near the Sherlock Holmes Museum and the Sherlock Holmes Statue in Meiringen. Photograph: Collection of Eva Zenk Iggland.

I believe that Holmes left Meiringen with the help of Melchior Anderegg via a route that would not be the first to come to mind. Taking into consideration what we know of Anderegg’s abilities and knowledge, and the need for absolute secrecy, I think that Holmes spent the night after the struggle at the Falls with Anderegg at Zaun. There he could be equipped for the hike, and in the morning he and Anderegg started back to cross the Gemmi Pass into the Upper Rhone Valley. It would be natural for Melchior Anderegg to continue on to Zermatt, and then with Holmes cross the Theodul Pass into Italy. In early May this is still covered in snow, but with Anderegg’s long experience of winter tours in the region, Holmes could manage this route with Anderegg’s assistance. And if anyone had seen them? Well, Leslie Stephen had visited Meiringen and Melchior Anderegg in March 1891 on a journey to Switzerland to recover his health. Surely anyone who, only a few weeks later, noticed the guide with a tall, thin companion would think that Stephen was back again to take up his favourite pastime? In the centre of Meiringen a statue was unveiled in November 2015. It depicts Melchior Anderegg on a climb, with one of his clients roped to him. The client depicted is said to be Leslie Stephen. But maybe it looks rather like Sherlock Holmes?

Bibliography

Natascha Knecht, Melchior Anderegg - Pionier und Gentleman der Alpen, Zürich: Limmat Verlag, 2014. Ursula Maurer, Der Brand von Meiringen 1891 und der Wiederaufbau des Dorfes, online at https://www.bezg.ch/img/publikation/99_1/maurer.pdf .

5 Photo taken by Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed, or Lizzie Le Bond for her friends, from Ireland, was herself a pioneer of mountaineering (1860 – 1934). Source: https://www.summitpost.org/melchior-anderegg/939794 .

The many routes from the Reichenbach Falls

By Guy Marriott, BSI

It was in 2016 at a meeting of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London which took place in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, that I first heard my friend Eva Iggland outline her belief that Holmes had received the assistance of the Mountain Guide Melchior Anderegg to leave Meiringen for Italy after his struggle with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. And when I heard this, I had the immediate thought “Yes, of course this is how it had to be done.” But my analysis of the options leads me to the conclusion that Holmes and Anderegg did not take the route proposed by Eva, but instead took a different route out of the Haslital, that valley in which Meiringen is situated, almost surrounded by high mountains of the Bernese Alps.

It will be remembered that Holmes had climbed up to a ledge above the path where the struggle occurred, using the climbing skills he had acquired as an undergraduate at Cambridge (a talent on which I have spoken and written on other occasions), and then later, with difficulty, returned back to the path after Watson and the Swiss officials had satisfied themselves, wrongly, that Holmes, too, had fallen into the Falls to his death.

So, what were the route options now available to Holmes to get away from the Falls, remembering that one of the few clues we have is that Holmes did “ten miles over the mountains in the darkness” – but to where? No doubt to a village or hamlet or habitation to rest from his exertions of the previous day. Meiringen on the map gives a false idea of the available routes. Taking the alluvial plain of the River Aare between Meiringen and Lake Brienz, with Interlaken at the other end of the lake, is the only easy way in and out of Meiringen, and Watson has recorded that they had reached Meiringen via Interlaken. Surely Holmes would reject that option – it was the easy and obvious route, so Moriarty’s men would be watching this route closely. But every other way out of Meiringen involves a climb of greater or lesser degree.

An example of a well-tried alpenstock, probably of seasoned ash. Source: Collection of Guy Marriott.

We know that Holmes understood himself to be in danger in Switzerland (for example, the episode of the rock at the Daubensee) and so would be on his guard at all times. By travelling to, and staying at, a place – Meiringen – in an upper Alpine valley and in May, before the winter snows have melted on the upper passes, perhaps Holmes was intending to lure Moriarty into a trap. The excursion to the Reichenbach Falls is an obvious one if in Meiringen, and Holmes would surely have known the note from “an English lady in the last stage of consumption” to be a hoax to lure Watson away. In planning his visit to Switzerland, Holmes would have recognised the absurdity of an invalid lady undertaking a journey from Davos Platz to Lucerne via Meiringen in early May – to reach Meiringen from Davos Platz at that time of year the lady would have already passed through Lucerne!

A rope made of manila hemp. Source: Collection of Guy Marriott.

Holmes would certainly have been carrying a Guidebook for Switzerland, and what better one to use than the trusty Baedeker? I have looked at the 1893 15th edition of this Guidebook. I acknowledge that Holmes and Watson were here in 1891, but I think this edition will serve for my purpose. What does Baedeker suggest is needed for an excursion on foot in Switzerland? For a week, the Guidebook suggests that everything necessary can be packed into a gibicière, which can be best thought of as a late-Victorian satchel. I admit that I cannot identify this in Paget’s drawing of Holmes at the Falls, but there must have been something carried, with the necessaries for at least the planned overnight stay at Rosenlaui.

Melchior Anderegg (1828 – 1914)“(H)is name is as well-known as Napoleon. Melchior is in his own way an Emperor, the king amongst the Mountain Guides.”– Edward Whymper

Grimsel Pass

And what is to be packed into this gibicière by a gentleman for a week’s hiking? Baedeker suggests you should pack a change of shirt and socks, a pocket handkerchief, a pair of slippers and your objets de toilette, together with a map, a pocket knife with corkscrew, a leather drinking-cup, a spirit flask, gloves, coloured spectacles to protect your eyes from the glare of the snow, a small telescope, sewing materials, a supply of cord, sticking plaster, a compass, a pocket-lantern, a thermometer and a barometer. No doubt with practice all of these items can be fitted into your gibicière, and some of these items Holmes may have concluded he didn’t need to carry with him. Your reserve of clothing in a portmanteau of modest size could be forwarded from town to town by the efficient Swiss Post.

Susten Pass

Baedeker adds that the mountaineer should also take with him a well-tried alpenstock of seasoned ash, and for the more difficult ascents an ice axe and rope are also necessary. It is noted that the best ropes, light and strong, are made of silk or manila hemp, and in crossing a glacier the precaution of using the rope should never be neglected. It should be securely tied round the waist of each member of the party. We know Holmes had his alpenstock with him at the Falls, but he wasn’t carrying any rope. Watson would have been very curious if Holmes had taken rope with him for the walk to Rosenlaui.

Furka Pass

As Watson records the events, he and Holmes leave their hotel, the Englischer Hof in Meiringen, for their excursion to Rosenlaui, and walk uphill toward the Falls. With Watson sent on his fool’s errand back to Meiringen, Holmes finds himself at the end of the path by the Falls, where the fateful struggle occurred. In “The Empty House” Holmes describes the events after Moriarty has fallen from this path and Watson has returned and found only the alpenstock, the silver cigarette case and Holmes’ note:

“At last, when you had all formed your inevitable and totally erroneous conclusions, you departed for the hotel and I was left alone. I had imagined that I had reached the end of my adventures, but a very unexpected occurrence showed me that there were surprises still in store for me. A huge rock, falling from above, boomed past me, struck the path……”

“I did not take long to think about it, Watson. Again, I saw that grim face look over the cliff, and I knew that it was the precursor of another stone. I scrambled down on to the path. I don’t think I could have done it in cold blood. It was a hundred times more difficult than getting up. But I had no time to think of the danger, for another stone sang past me as I hung by my hands from the edge of the ledge. Halfway down I slipped, but by the blessing of God I landed, torn and bleeding, upon the path. I took to my heels, did ten miles over the mountains in the darkness, and a week later I found myself in Florence with the certainty that no one in the world knew what had become of me.”

No doubt Watson had collected up Holmes’ alpenstock at the Falls and taken it with him back to the Englischer Hof, and there is no mention that Holmes had any rope – not needed for the easy excursion to Rosenlaui. We’ll leave the absence of the necessary alpenstock and rope which Holmes needed to get away from Meiringen over the mountains and return to these points later.