“an old dressing-gown of Holmes’s” [EMPT]
If you see a silhouette with a pipe, magnifying glass, and deerstalker cap, you know it's Sherlock Holmes. That famous headgear can't be worn without an association with the detective.
The same could be said for the Inverness cape, although that attire is slightly more common than the fore-and-aft cap. But there is one other garment that we associate with Sherlock Holmes that bear some consideration: the dressing gown.
In three different stories, we're told that Sherlock Holmes's dressing gown was purple (in "The Blue Carbuncle"), blue (in "The Man with the Twisted Lip"), and mouse-colored (in "The Empty House" and "The Bruce-Partington Plans"). What are we to make of this dressing gown of many colors?
As usual, Christopher Morley, founder of the Baker Street Irregulars, provided a perfect explanation for this palette, in his essay "A Christmas Story Without Slush" for the 1948 BSI edition of "The Blue Carbuncle":
"The gradual solstitial fading of Holmes's dressing gowns is one of the statutory documentations of life as it happens. It is one of the accidentals that prove Doyle was a great unconscious artist, as all artists are."
Morley reasoned that the dressing gown had faded over time, from purple to blue to mouse. And thus was born the official color scheme for the Baker Street Irregulars.
For more on this topic, read "Sherlock Holmes's Dressing Gown" on IHOSE and listen to Episode 10 of Trifles:
Meanwhile, bundle up. The puns around Baker Street Elementary are cold...
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 the Baker Street Elementary website.
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