The Mary Russell Companion
Read The Mary Russell Companion Online
Authors: Laurie R. King
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths, #Reference, #Writing; Research & Publishing Guides, #Research
The Mary Russell Companion
Laurie R. King
Copyright © 2014
Introduction to The Mary Russell Companion
by Laurie R. King
Mary Russell is what Sherlock Holmes might look like if that great Victorian detective were A) young; B) female; C) of the Twentieth century; and D) interested in theology. If the mind is like an engine, free of all considerations of gender, race, and nurture, then the Russell & Holmes stories are about two people whose basic mental mechanism is identical. What each does with that machine, however—ah, that’s where the interest lies.
According to Arthur Conan Doyle, following a long life in private practice as a consulting detective—a period called simply “Baker Street”, after the London rooms rented from Mrs Hudson—Sherlock Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs. The Conan Doyle stories recount some adventures during the years that followed, but they end on the eve of the Great War, when Holmes foils a German plot in the summer of 1914 (
His Last Bow
).
Thus, the Conan Doyle stories make no mention of Mary Russell. Nonetheless, in Russell’s Memoirs, another history—an alternative to that of Conan Doyle, who has the Great Detective fade into the sepia stains of history along with the rest of his Victorian Era—begins in the spring of 1915, when Sherlock Holmes is at long last confronted by a young person with the potential to become his student.
I came to know Mary Russell in the late 1980s, when either A) I sat down and wrote the words, “I was fifteen when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him” or B) I received a mysterious trunk filled with odds, ends, and… manuscripts. Since that time, I have either A) continued to invent and publish a series of books about Russell, Holmes, and their colleagues, or B) continued to transcribe Miss Russell’s difficult handwriting to publish the books.
“A large and much-abused, old-fashioned metal traveling trunk…”
This question of my relationship with Mary Russell—am I the author who invented her, or the agent who represents her?—is one that has followed me all my career. It forms the basis of Miss Russell’s communications with me, included here with the documents “My Story” and “A Case in Correspondence”, and occupies the Companion’s chapter called “Miss Russell’s Game”, but ultimately, the choice is yours: believer, or skeptic?
The Game continues.
—Laurie R. King
Thanks & Acknowledgments
It takes a community to shape a Companion. Miss Russell and Laurie R. King owe their special thanks to:
Alice Wright, for her long friendship and her closely detailed notes concerning the history of Mary Russell, the sequence of stories, and the physical details of Russell’s world. She and Merrily Taylor are responsible for a number of the footnotes to the
Beekeeper’s Apprentice
section.
Leslie S. Klinger, who so gleefully agreed to turn his prodigious annotating skills onto the LRK Kanon.
Team LRK: Robert Difley, Zoë Elkaim, and Nathan King, who did all the hard work, and to Vicki Van Valkenburgh, Erin Bright, and all the other Friends of Russell out there.
Jean Lukens, whose paintings grace the Companion’s cover and the beginning of
The Annotated Beekeeper’s Apprentice
.
Veronica Adrover, Shirley A Bomgaars (Creative Office Guru graphic design), Jenny Parks (scientific illustrator, jennyparks.com), and Debra C. Thomas, for their “Parrot King” illustrations; Rori Shapiro and Sara McClelland for their “Illuminated MyStory” pieces; Tamra Arnold and Kimberly Pollard, for their vivid moments in Russell’s life; and Jarl Meagher, for the photograph of the house where Conan Doyle stayed.
Marjorie Tucker and John Bychowski, Russell’s puzzling friends, for their word play.
Kathryn Caras and Mary Rawlinson, whose enthusiasm for the Sayings of Mary Russell may some day come to fruition in a separate volume, but whose work on Russellisms contributed much to the current Companion.
Heifer International, whose gorgeous booklet
“Practical Handbook of Bee Culture” by Sherlock Holmes
was a part of the fund-raising campaign for
Language of Bees.
And particular thanks to Random House/Bantam Books and Picador/St Martins Press, for their generous permissions and their ongoing support and enthusiasm.
The Mary Russell Companion
Table of Contents
(Click on any
blue
text in this ebook to link to subject)
Introduction & Acknowledgments, by Laurie R. King
Where’d she go? Maps of the Russell travels
A Woman of the Twenties: Mary Russell, Feminist?
Interview I: Mary Russell interviews Laurie R. King
Russell’s Fellow Actors: the characters of the Russell Memoirs
—
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice:
The
Annotated
Beekeeper
Interview II: LRK interviews Mary Russell
Three: The Mystery of the Memoirs
Laurie R. King: Literary agent?
Mary Russell: “A Case in Correspondence” (The documents in the case)
Mary Russell: “A Case in Correspondence” (The transcripts)
Interview III: a Leslie Klinger-Mary Russell “Twinterview” in 140 characters
Interview IV: A Twentieth Anniversary conversation
William King and the Dalai Lama: the papers of WH King
Fun & Games with Russell & Holmes
Art in the Blood: A Beekeeper’s Gallery
Note: “Russellisms”—pithy or memorable turns of phrase taken from the Memoirs—are the equivalent of the Holmes world’s collection of “Sherlockisms”. These epigrams are treasured by Russell’s readers, printed onto t-shirts and coffee mugs, used in informal contests of wit, and are found in this Companion, either scattered throughout the chapters or in groups at the beginning of each book page.
Further note: Many title references are given in short form here, omitting “The Adventure of” or “The Case of the”, and in parenthetical references, short stories are put into italics rather than quotes
One:
On Mary Russell
Russell on Holmes:
I hoped to God this man actually was a friend. If he was my enemy I was in grave trouble.
(Garment of Shadows)
*
Although it may not have been a union of conventional bliss, it was never dull.
(Monstrous Regiment)
Holmes on Russell:
Why did it never occur before to me to have a vigorous young assistant to do what the Americans call my “dirty work”?
(O Jerusalem)
*
He generally was aware of her presence, that sturdy physicality wrapped around a magnificent brain and the stoutest of hearts. . . this incomparable hard diamond of a woman. . . . (
Locked Rooms
)
Miss Russell’s Game
The world of Sherlock Holmes—the Conan Doyle world, that is, one in which the detective has yet to meet Miss Russell—is based upon what is called “the Game”, that deadly serious, tongue-firmly-in-cheek proclamation that The Great Detective was (indeed,
is
) a living man; that Dr Watson wrote the stories; and that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was Watson’s literary agent, whose presence permitted the residents of 221b Baker Street to go about their business without constant interruptions from the adoring public. Any conundrums held in the stories, be they chronological oddities or factual conflicts, stem either from our inadequate understanding, or are flaws introduced by the Literary Agent.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur, not being by nature an ironist, barely touches on the possibilities inherent in the Game. In “The Greek Interpreter”, Mycroft Holmes does say to Watson, “I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler,” but that is about as far as the Canon takes matters.
Metafiction is a game of fiction-within-fiction, sometimes ironic, other times playful. It is self-referential, leading back into itself, and carries with it the danger of nudging the reader out of the “vivid dream” of the story at hand.
Metafiction is an ongoing theme within the Russell Memoirs. For example, in (aptly enough)
The Game
, Russell is shown an old birth certificate from Ferozepore, on which is recorded a vaguely familiar name:
“I’m sorry,” I began, and then I paused, my mind catching at last on a faint sense of familiarity: Kimball. And O’Hara. Add to that a town that could only be in India…. No; oh, no—the book was just a children’s adventure tale. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, only where before it had connoted apology, this time it was tinged with outrage. “This doesn’t have anything to do with
Kim
, does it? The Kipling book?”
“You’ve read it?” Mycroft asked.
“Of course I’ve read it.”
“Good, that saves some explaining. I believe this to be his amulet case.”
“He’s real, then? Kipling’s boy?”
“As real as I am,” said Sherlock Holmes.
The Russian-dolls aspect of the books is there from the beginning, with LRK’s introduction to
The
Beekeeper’s Apprentice
, in which she describes receiving a trunk full of manuscripts and other odds and ends—which is then followed by Mary Russell’s own introduction concerning the book. The next three books continue the theme, with notes by King expressing her own befuddlement about the stories (real, or not? And why sent to me, she wonders?) that are later followed up by two explanatory stories that give details of how King came to have the memoirs (“My Story” and “A Case in Correspondence”, both in this Companion.)
The mirror world of Russell’s reality pops in and out of the books. She mentions Conan Doyle, ragging Holmes about the fairies in his garden shortly after Sir Arthur’s 1920
Strand
article about the Cottingley Fairies exposed his gullibility to the world—an article that would surely have driven the world’s proponent of rationality around the bend.