"He was clad in his dressing gown" [CREE]
You'll find Sherlock Holmes lounging in his dressing gown in no fewer than 14 of the original stories. And yet, its color changed from story to story. Sherlock Holmes's dressing gown was alternatively purple, blue and mouse — how can this be?
We discuss the possibilities that scholars have put forth over the course of many decades and even add our own conjecture. Add in a quick primer on what dressing gowns are and what Victorian / Edwardian habits were that required them, and you've got the best podcast episode about dressing gowns and Sherlock Holmes you've ever heard.
A tip of the deerstalker goes to Bill Hyder, BSI, whose 1995 BSI Dinner publication "TRIFLES" contained this very topic.
Download | 7.25 MB 15:50
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Links
- Dressing Gowns: Loungewear of Old
- Sherlock Holmes's Dressing Gown (ihearofsherlock.com)
Music credits
Performers: Uncredited violinist, US Marine Chamber OrchestraPublisher Info.: Washington, DC: United States Marine Band.
Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
TRANSCRIPT
Narrator: [00:00:04] Welcome
to Trifles - a weekly podcast about the Sherlock Holmes stories.
Clive Merrison: [00:00:09]
It is of course a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.
Narrator: [00:00:15] Yes
the Colourman was Retired, the Three-Quarter was Missing and the Client was
Illustrious. But there are so many other details to pick apart in the stories.
Jeremy Brett: [00:00:24] Pray
be precise as to details.
Narrator: [00:00:29] You
know the plots. But what about the minutiae? Have you ever wondered why
Sherlock Holmes had three different colored dressing gowns? Or what a Crockford
is?
Denis Quilley: [00:00:38]
You are inquisitive, Mr. Holmes.
Jeremy Brett: [00:00:40] It's
my business to know what other people don't know.
[00:00:45] Scott Monty
and Burt Wolder will have the answers to these questions and more in Trifles.
Clive Merrison: [00:00:53]
The game's afoot.
Narrator: [00:01:00] Episode 10:
The Dressing Gown of Many Colors.
Scott Monty: [00:01:05] Hello
and welcome to trifles that Sherlock Holmes podcast about oh those many details
in the canon some of which may have appealed to you and come to your notice
others which may have gone right over your head. I'm Scott Monty.
Burt Wolder: [00:01:21] And
I'm over your head Burt Wolder.
Scott Monty: [00:01:23] No
never. You're always under my feet - under my thumb. I don't know where you
are. It's nice to have you around - over, under, or wherever you happen to be.
Burt Wolder: [00:01:32] It's
nice to be round. And someday I'll be a triangle as well.
Scott Monty: [00:01:37] Everyone
is getting into shape these days and the shape I have chosen is a pear. That
seems to be the easiest one. Well, we said that we would talk about things like
Sherlock Holmes, his dressing gown - and you know it seems like a pretty
standard kind of thing. You know you think about Sherlock Holmes and obviously
when people picture Sherlock Holmes in their head, they think of him with of
course the deerstalker hat and the curved pipe and the Inverness cape. But what
about Sherlock Holmes at home? You know he wasn't wandering around the Baker
Street suite of rooms with the deerstalker on or with the Inverness on, so how
did he relax and kind of kick back? And we of course know that there is only one
story in which we hear of Holmes getting a little comfortable and putting on
his slippers. And that was in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle."
That's right. They had just come back from that frosty night out and they
tracked down James Ryder and Holmes said, "Here we are," cheerily, as
we filled in the filed into the room. "The fire looks very seasonable in
this weather. You look cold, Mr. Ryder - pray take the basket chair. I will
just put on my slippers before we settle this little matter of ours." And
of course in the Jeremy Brett Granada version you had that wonderful image of
him actually putting the slippers on by the fire as they came home. So a
wonderful kind of homey experience.
Burt Wolder: [00:03:13] I
just wonder what it must have felt like to slide your feet into something that
was so full of tobacco.
Scott Monty: [00:03:22] [LAUGHTER]
Well, do you think - do you think he saved the other Persian slipper for
wandering around the house or did you think he had traditional house slippers?
Burt Wolder: [00:03:30] Well
personally I think that when he got back from a case he just put on his gym
shorts you know like most Americans do today. [LAUGHTER]
Scott Monty: [00:03:37] And
there you go. Oh well... we know of course that Holmes, like many men of his
age, wore a dressing gown.
Burt Wolder: [00:03:48] Yes,
well, it was a popular standard article of clothing in a world in which
particularly in the chilly weather most of the heat is coming from a coal
burning fire rather than from forced air heating and other things that people
take for granted today and so one would wrap themselves up in a dressing gown
and stay warm. But of all the articles of clothing, it is the one - now
friends, you may not think anybody has gone through all 56 short stories for
novels to identify how many times this article of clothing has been identified
or an article of clothing. Well, you're wrong! Because we happen to know based
on our sources that the dressing gown appears no fewer than 14 times.
Scott Monty: [00:04:34] Wow.
Burt Wolder: [00:04:35] In
14 different cases of Sherlock Holmes "The Beryl Coronet," "The
Blue Carbuncle, "The Bruce-Partington Plans," "The Cardboard
Box," "The Empty House," "The Engineer's Thumb,"
"The Final Problem," The Hound of the Baskervilles, "Lady
Frances Carfax," "The Mazarin Stone," "The Naval
Treaty," "The Resident Patient," "Man with the Twisted Lip,
AND... The Valley of Fear.
Scott Monty: [00:04:51] That's
easy for you to say.
Burt Wolder: [00:04:53] I'll
say it again...
Scott Monty: [00:04:55] Now
these this is just the time that that Holmes himself wore a dressing gown,
because I'm sure there were other mentions of dressing gowns in the in the
Canon, right?
Burt Wolder: [00:05:06] Oh
I don't know. I don't know. That's just - oh no, yes this is Holmes's case. OK.
Scott Monty: [00:05:12] All
right. So and it was it was not an uncommon and uncommon garment of the time.
Burt Wolder: [00:05:19] No,
not at all.
Scott Monty: [00:05:21] And
people getting comfortable after coming home from work is not a new phenomenon
either. But typically - just for a brief primer here - the history of dressing
gowns actually begins in the early 18th century with the introduction of what
was called a banyon a loose fitting coat that can be worn by men in the
confines of the home or at the office when fashionable jackets were too
restricting. And of course the banyon got its influence from Middle Eastern and
Oriental cultures. So you saw these colorful fabrics - silk and printed cotton
or or even velvet - but it was a mark of being from the from the upper class.
Right. So by the mid 19th century what we saw and the evolution of the dressing
gown, it became more akin to what we know now as as the dressing gown. And it
was really just relegated to home where it was used. Interestingly it was used
equally by men and women. And it was usually more of a somber tone. And for the
women it offered them again a little respite from the tightly corseted daywear;
and for men it just became just something to keep warm in those days before
central heating while not being in your shirtsleeves. Now when it comes to
Sherlock Holmes we have mentions of seemingly three different dressing gowns
the first time we come across him in a dressing gown was in "The Man with
the Twisted Lip." Or was that "The Blue Carbuncle"? Which one of
those was published first? You know your handy cheat sheet there - your card.
[BURT THUMPING ABOUT] you're knocking things over in your office on your way
to.
Burt Wolder: [00:07:22] I
have to pull it out. Well that's the problem because my list will only tell me
chronologically.
Scott Monty: [00:07:29] It's
"The Blue Carbuncle" that was published first in The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes. And in that one that was the famous purple dressing gown where
Sherlock Holmes was lounging on the settee and he had Henry baker's hat hanging
over the corner of the chair in his purple dressing gown.
Burt Wolder: [00:07:47] Well
now, does Blue (unintelliglbe)? Because because Twisted Lip is also in The
Adventures.
Scott Monty: [00:07:52] Yes
but I think twisted lip happened - well not happened but was published after
after Blue Carbuncle.
Burt Wolder: [00:08:01] And
then you had Twisted Lip has been chronologically dated June 1887 versus Blue
Carbuncle which is December.
Scott Monty: [00:08:08] Exactly
- and that's going to figure in in just a moment. And then later on we discover
Holmes and his mouse colored dressing gown and "The Adventure of the Empty
House" and "The Bruce-Partington Plans." We know homes came back
from the great hiatus in The Empty House in 1894 and then very clearly the
Bruce-Partington Plans took place during that foggy third week of November of
the seminal year 1895. So there you've got three colors of Holmes's dressing
gowns and three or four different stories. What could possibly be happening
here? Well, there are a number of assumptions along the way. So for example
Martin Dakin assumed that the blue dressing gown - that's the one in the Man
with the Twisted Lip. When we see Holmes in this dressing gown it is at an
overnighter. They were doing a slumber party - with Mrs. Neville St. Clair.
Burt Wolder: [00:09:13] With
Mrs. Neville St. Claire??
Scott Monty: [00:09:14] Well
that's a topic for a whole other episode. It could be the top ten most risque
things said in the canon. No of course Neville St. Clair had disappeared. And
they went out to his home in Lee and the county of Kent. Late one night after
Watson discovered Holmes in the opium den and they got an update from Mrs St.
Clair, and it was so late they couldn't simply go back to London. So they
stayed there and that's where Holmes donned his dressing gown and set up a kind
of an Eastern divan of a number of pillows and sat there and smoked his pipe
until he came to his conclusion. So Martin Dakin thinks that the blue dressing
gown in the Man with the Twisted Lip was borrowed from Neville St. Clair. So
that's his solution for that and he didn't speculate about the other colors
though which leads me to ask this question. Would Sherlock Holmes have traveled
with his dressing gown in tow?
Burt Wolder: [00:10:23] Well
sure. I mean if I was going to a country house it would be one of the articles
of clothing that I would pack perhaps even in preference for sleepwear. You
know and that was in those days it wasn't unusual to have shirt stocks that
were separate from their collars and cuffs. So the stock of the shirt could be
worn more than once while you rotated - while you changed collars and cuffs. And
people did not travel with the assortment. Most people did not travel with the
assortment of toiletries and accessories and multiple changes of wardrobe that
people tend to travel with today.
Scott Monty: [00:11:04] Interesting.
Interesting now do --
Burt Wolder: [00:11:08] I
think it would be very unusual for for someone's wife to land even a stranded
guest one's husband's dressing and so that you could sit and smoke your pipe
and roll around and I mean it's sort of a personal personal garment.
Scott Monty: [00:11:23] It
is. It is that's a good point. Now do you travel with a dressing gown?
Burt Wolder: [00:11:28] Sometimes,
sometimes. When I go -- if I know that part of my travels for a weekend there's
going to be breakfast the next morning, and my hosts are typically in pajamas
and robes when they have breakfast then I'll bring, I'll bring a lightweight
dressing gown.
Scott Monty: [00:11:49] You
know what's interesting I've never tried that.
Burt Wolder: [00:11:52] Most
of the time you know if it's staying in a nice hotel they'll have a robe or
something if you happen to be chilly getting in and out of the bathroom - which
I never am - there's usually some sort of robe, but it's not. Now I must admit
today with today's heating and climate control it's really really not an issue.
Scott Monty: [00:12:07] Well
that's it. Yeah but I mean you talk about a dressing gown being too personal.
Well even when you're wearing that over your clothes I don't want to put on a
hotel robe that someone has perhaps been wearing naked coming out of the
shower. It's a little too much for me.
Burt Wolder: [00:12:25] Well
now you're talking about Mrs. Neville St. Clair again; we should get back on
topic.
Scott Monty: [00:12:32] Well
another theory and this goes goes about from our friend Sidney Blake. He said,
well, the obvious solution would be homes owned more than one dressing gown.
Over the course of 23 years in practice there. Of course you would have have
had more than one. And the blue and purple gowns he said were some of his
earlier dressing gowns, and of course we know that Holmes's rooms were set
afire by Professor Moriarty in "The Final Problem" with Professor
Moriarty's men. So those would have been lost in the fire. And Holmes would
have replaced them with the mouse gray one.
Burt Wolder: [00:13:13] Right.
And our friend Christopher Morley was of the opinion that Holmes dressing gown
faded over the years of different colors and Morley himself remembered that
when he was a young boy he had a cape-backed overcoat that had been his
father's which had been cut down to make a dressing gown for him. And that over
the years it had been dyed various colors. And so its palette - its color
palette - had changed over the years so he was of the opinion that it had faded
from blue to purple to mouth sort of the other way around or had been
consciously dyed in the story at various times.
Scott Monty: [00:13:55] Yeah.
And you know I like that solution as the most elegant of them all because we've
all seen whether it's books that are left out in the direct sunlight or
furniture or carpeting or even clothing. It does fade over time if exposed to
the elements. And I think that that solution is the most simple and most
elegant, and in fact Morley was so enamored with that that he turned it into
the official colors the Baker Street Irregulars and turned it into the club
tie.
Burt Wolder: [00:14:34] I
agree with you about the simplicity and elegance. But I've always been unhappy
that my own theory which is much simpler and much more elegant has not gotten
any currency.
Scott Monty: [00:14:42] Dare
I ask?
Burt Wolder: [00:14:44] Well
it's clear. Watson was colorblind.
Scott Monty: [00:14:48] [LAUGHTER]
Oh, boy. So you're trying to tell me that it was actually the Adventure of the
Five Red Pips?
Burt Wolder: [00:15:03] It
could be, it could be.
Scott Monty: [00:15:05] And
maybe that's the answer: that the carbuncle was not in fact a blue, but red.
Burt Wolder: [00:15:12] Exactly
right! You know, it's just a trifle.
Clive Merrison: [00:15:16]
It is of course a trifle but there is nothing so important as trifles.
Narrator: [00:15:22] Please
join us again next week for another installment of trifles show notes are
available on Sherlock Holmes podcast dot com. Please Subscribe to us on iTunes
and be sure to check out our longer show I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere where we
interview notable Sherlock fans share news and go into even more depth on
certain topics.
Peter Barkworth: [00:15:44]
You take my breath away, Mr. Holmes.
Jeremy Brett: [00:15:48] Peculiar.
That is the very word.
--
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