The West End Horror by Nicholas Meyer Read Free Book Online

Holmes wondered.
    Shaw laughed once more. “For that you must be familiar– as I suspect you are not–with the comic operas of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan. Do you never go to the Savoy?”
    “The Mikado and so forth?” Holmes shook his head and relit his pipe.
    “Then you are missing the greatest combination of words and music since Aristophanes, Wagner excepted. Bunthorne is to be found in Patience.”
    “I have heard the tunes, I expect, on the barrel organ.”
    “Of course you have. Every hurdy-gurdy in London grinds all Sullivan’s music interchangeably.” He regarded Holmes with a trace of scorn. “On what planet do you spend your time?” he wondered. “You are at least familiar with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and ‘The Lost Chord’?” He was amazed, I could see, by the detective’s ignorance, which nonetheless did not seem strange to me. Sherlock Holmes was the man who once said it was a matter of utmost indifference to him whether the earth circled the sun or the sun the earth, provided the fact did not affect his work. Aside from his own particular musical interests (which leaned towards violin concerts and the grand opera), nothing was less likely than his knowing anything of London’s fads and rages. He ignored Shaw’s gibes and persisted with his own line of enquiry.
    “Tell me about Patience,” he demanded.
    “Just a moment,” I cried, rubbing my forehead. “It comes to me now. Holmes, when I returned from Afghanistan in eighty-one, I saw this play! At the Savoy, was it?” I turned to Shaw.
    “I believe it opened the theatre,” the critic assented.
    “I’m almost certain of it, though I can’t remember what it was about, for the life of me. I always forget the plots and so forth within a week or two. I remember this one because I couldn’t understand what it was about at the time I was watching it–soldiers and someone with very long hair who was liked by all the chorus.”
    “Can you be more precise?” Holmes asked Shaw. “The opera parodies the whole Oscar Wilde cult of aestheticism in rather a smart fashion. It was lost on you, Doctor, because you were out of the country when Wilde and his cronies burst upon the scene. Wilde himself appears in the piece in the person of Reginald Bunthorne–‘A Fleshly Poet.’ ” Shaw grinned, coughed, and broke into song, his voice proving to be surprisingly musical, a pleasant, not quite robust baritone that caused a nearby head or two to turn in our direction:
    If you’re anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare,
    You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere.
    You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind, The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
    And every one will say,
    As you walk your mystic way,
    “If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
    Why what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”
    Seeing that we made no move to interrupt, he went on:
    Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,
    An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not too French French-bean!
    Though the Philistines may jostle you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band,
    If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediaeval hand.
    And every one will say–
    Here he broke off, coughing again and looking embarrassed.
    “It goes something like that for another verse or so. Anyhow, that’s Bunthorne–and depend upon it, that’s Oscar.” He looked at his watch. “Heavens, I must be off. I’ve had my fun, and now I must pay for it. Where shall we meet? I want you to catch me up on what progress you make.”
    “Willis’s for supper?” I hazarded.
    “That’s a trifle rich for my blood.”
    “What about Simpson’s?”
    ‘Very well.” He started to rise, “A little