Ladies and Gentlemen, The Toast Is Sherlock Holmes!

         

Sidney Paget Illustration for the "Dying Detective"

It was an inhumanly cold and rainy January New York night, during the 2018 BSI celebrations of Sherlock Holmes' 164th Birthday. The rain was so insistent that it poured and puddled into our coatroom. I was invited to present my first Toast to the Master at the Gaslight Gala, which despite the weather, was filled to the rafters with hale and hearty Sherlockians. I did so in costume: A long 19th-Century men’s nightshirt underneath my floor-length blue dressing gown, wearing a top hat, and bunny slippers. You see, for much of Watson’s story, Holmes is in pyjamas. It went over exceedingly well, for this is one of the best audiences on the planet. Some said I looked more like Jon from Peter Pan’s “Lost Boys” than Sherlock Holmes. I think it was a height thing.

My toast below:

The play’s the thing! Our scene is the overflowing cesspool of Victorian London. Its inhabitants terrified of disease. 

I’ll begin by alarming Mrs. Hudson. Three days without food or drink. My makeup box will supply Rouge for the fevered cheek, vaseline for my forehead’s cold sweat, Belladonna for fevered eyes, beeswax for encrusted lips. Emanating horrible groans from my chambers should carry it off.

Then she would awaken Watson to this horror. “He is pitiful, exhausted, gasping for breath--he’s dying, Doctor!”

Fooling my dear friend, Watson, requires a bit more skill. I will keep him at a distance so he doesn’t observe my costume. Yet, after a medical struggle or two, he will eventually give in to my wishes, especially as he will experience my rapid decline: “Feverish, hands twitching and jerking, gaunt, listless, voice feeble and croaking, face convulsed, frantic eyes, delirious . . . his magnificent intellect babbling and raving like a child.” Watson will not fail me. He will fetch Smith and be witness to his disclosures.

The climax--when at last, I will confound the master! One villain alone comprehends this malady. He will little know how close on his track I tread. To trap the evil, murderous amateur in an amateur consulting detective’s web, I will play up my pitiful condition and coax his confession.

The denouement will be the achievement of his arrest with the help of my friends at Scotland Yard, and the rope for Smith, a gruesome ending for the murderer of Victor Savage.

To the consummate actor, in his most convincing tour de force: “The Adventure of the Dying Detective." 

Ladies and Gentlemen, the toast is Sherlock Holmes!

BSI is an abbreviation of The Baker Street Irregulars. The oldest and one of the most prestigious of the Sherlockian Literary Societies. And are the hosts of the New York celebrations of Mr. Holmes' Birthday.  https://bakerstreetirregulars.com/