The Adventure of the the Sweet Cross-Hatching

March 15, 2010 5:05 PM

An excellent set of illustrations from a French Sherlock Holmes collection. Let us attempt to sleuth out the stories to which these great little pieces of art belong.
posted by BlackLeotardFront (9 comments total)

This is a fantastic find, thank you for sharing! I was hoping the captions would be more lulzy and thus my french studies would pay off, but all the ones I've seen are rather solemn.

There is the irony (?) in this one. 'You couldn't imagine how funny and odd he was.' The one lady (I guess looking down modestly) looks about to fall asleep he is so boring.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 5:23 PM on March 15, 2010

I'd much rather make up fake Sherlock Holmes stories for these to belong to. I'll start!

1: Sherlock Holmes Shows Johnny Foreigner What For
2: The Curious Case of the Widget
3: The Not at All Unexpected Death of the Man Who Liked to Wear a Snake for a Hat
4: AAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
5: The Man Who Did Unnameable Things to Geese
6: The Man Who Beat Children to Death With Geese
7: The Famous Last Words of the Woman Who Tripped on the Very Long Hem of her Nightgown
8: The Short Adventure of the Man Who Fled the Scene of a Crime Through an Eighth Floor Window
9: The Adventure of the Foofy Hat
10: The Adventure of the Clashing Outfit
11: The Adventure of the Man Who Mistook an Asshat for a Hat
posted by Kattullus at 5:24 PM on March 15, 2010 [11 favorites]

Great pictures.

There is the irony (?) in this one. 'You couldn't imagine how funny and odd he was.' The one lady (I guess looking down modestly) looks about to fall asleep he is so boring.

If that's what the caption says then it's from "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches". The women doing the embroidery is the mans wife who is fully aware of why the guy is telling teh funny stories. The women with her back to the picture is the person being quoted.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. Almost certainly also TAofBC.

I could go on but then I would reveal my somewhat obsessive interest in Sherlock Holmes to a greater degree than I already have !
posted by southof40 at 5:48 PM on March 15, 2010

The Man Who Did Unnameable Things to Geese

To be fair, that is pretty much the plot of the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.
posted by interplanetjanet at 5:56 PM on March 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

This one must be The Adventure of the Red-Headed League (possibly my favourite SH story).
This one is The Adventure of the Reigate Squire (the caption gives it away).
This one is The Adventure of the Yellow Face.
posted by verstegan at 6:24 PM on March 15, 2010

I'd swear I recognize some of these -- or parts of them anyway -- from Max Ernst's Surrealist collage novel Une Semaine de Bonté. Some of them are pretty hallucinatory all by themselves.
posted by ROTFL at 7:06 PM on March 15, 2010

This has got to be The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.
posted by selfmedicating at 7:10 PM on March 15, 2010

Sherlock 2 and 3 are The Adventure Of The Speckled Band.
posted by cromagnon at 7:12 PM on March 15, 2010

9 is from A Scandal in Bohemia ("To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman...").
posted by cobwebberies at 12:52 AM on March 17, 2010