“And so under” [MUSG]
One of the side-benefits of reading the Sherlock Holmes stories is we have the opportunity to educate ourselves on terminology that is almost comprehensible. That is, words or phrases that might seem odd yet vaguely familiar.
For instance, when Watson needs to educate himself on the finer points of Chinese pottery in "The Illustrious Client," he tells us
“I drove to the London Library in St. James’s Square, put the matter to my friend Lomax, the sub-librarian, and departed to my rooms with a goodly volume under my arm.”
Lest you think that a sublibrarian is a person of letters attending to the reading needs of those in the navy, the matter is made clear to us via Donald Redmond in A Study in Sources:
“A sub-librarian in English parlance is the deputy head, in fact the active operating head of a library... [The London Library] was then one of the few major libraries where a member could ask the staff a question such as Watson's and receive the immediate, thorough assistance he did.”
So that means when we hear of "Arthur Charpentier, sub-lieutenant in Her Majesty’s navy" in A Study in Scarlet, he was a deputy lieutenant. Or was he?
Perhaps at Baker Street Elementary, we ought to fix our attention so under...
Baker Street Elementary follows the original adventures of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, as they and their friends work through the issues of elementary school in Victorian London. An archive of all previous episodes can be viewed at www.bakerstreetelementary.org.
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