The Adventure of the Purple Poet

by Nicholas Utechin

I am a light sleeper in normal circumstances, but I must have been in a deeply unconscious state when first I felt a hand pulling at the eiderdown upon my bed. As I gradually roused myself, I became aware of Holmes’s eager face.

“What the blazes is going on?” I asked, fully awake in an instant as befitted my military training years earlier. “Are we on fire, or is it another of your demanding clients appearing at an ungodly hour?” Holmes smiled.

“Neither, Watson, but it is eight in the morning on Christmas Eve and we are summoned to Oxford. Do prepare yourself and throw some clothes in a bag: Mrs. Hudson has laid out a basic breakfast and we should be able to reach Paddington for the half-past-ten.”

It took but a few minutes for me to be down at our hearth. Sherlock Holmes was pacing up and down, his chin upon his chest in thought. I busied myself with the dishes and coffee.

“What is going on at your old University city,” I ventured at last, “especially in the depths of the holiday period?” Holmes tossed a telegram to the table in front of me. I picked it up and folded down the creases.

“‘Univ in uproar,’” I read, “‘Please attend. Baffled by Shelley. Macan.’ Holmes, what on earth does this mean? How can the university be affected by a poet who died seventy years ago?” My friend laughed.

“I know as much or as little as you do, Watson. But Macan is an old acquaintance of mine and he would not waste my time, especially at Christmas, if the matter was entirely unimportant. And, by the by, Univ. is not the whole University. I shall telegraph to tell him when we shall arrive.”

Fresh snow had fallen in Baker Street, and the relative earliness of the hour meant that the white blanket had not yet been ruined by too many passers-by and dirty traffic. There was a peace and a calm about the place which I enjoyed for a moment before a cab was hailed and we were on our way to the station, barely a ten-minute ride away.

On our arrival at Paddington, Holmes crossed to the telegraph office, and within a few minutes, we were ensconced in a first-class carriage. Only when the steam was up did Sherlock Holmes finally relax, lying back upon the thick embroidered cloth of his seat. He lit his pipe.

“One or two background facts, Watson. Univ. is the shortened form for University College, the oldest college at Oxford. Macan I have known since the ‘70s, when he was a scholar there and our paths occasionally crossed. He is now a college fellow and a classicist, with an expertise on, if I am not mistaken, Herodotus. As I told you in Baker Street, Reginald Macan is not going to worry about a trifle, and so I am prepared to travel to Oxford on what must be one of the last trains to venture out before the line is closed before tomorrow’s full holiday. I fancy we shall be staying in the rather attractive city of spires for two nights. And we shall see what we see and hear what we hear.”

Holmes closed his eyes and I could see that conversation was at an end.

The view from the carriage window as we travelled was as picture-perfect as one could have wished. Snow-covered fields spread to the horizon, occasionally interrupted by slight hints of cottages and church towers. There was a wonderful country calmness, lit by a sun blazing down through a crisp blue sky. It was a glorious December morning and I could only guess at what lay ahead.

We drew to a halt at Oxford Station at midday and a cab took us quickly into the city’s main street, where we alighted across from the college. A be-gowned gentleman was waiting at the great oaken door, and I was somewhat surprised to see how Holmes and the man greeted each other, in the highest of spirits. I crossed the street, dodging my way through the heavy traffic.

“You are Dr. Watson, I presume,” said the scholar, shaking me firmly by the hand. “It is a delight to meet the man whose tales of my old friend so often interrupt my tedious studies. I am Reggie Macan. Come into Univ., both of you, and let me explain why I have asked you to be here.”

The three of us passed into the front quadrangle of the college. There was a wide pathway running straight before us, the snow impacted by the passing of feet; but on each side lay lawns untouched by any stray mark, a pristine white. At the far end were two old adjoining buildings, which I took to be the chapel and hall. Gnarled bare wisteria vines twisted their way along the stonework of the four sides of the quadrangle, with arches cut into the walls that led to student staircases.

Sherlock Holmes stood quietly, taking in the view. He was not by nature an emotional man, but I could see that he embraced the atmosphere of peace and quiet.

“It is some time, Macan, since we stood on this spot as undergraduates. But Watson and I are intrigued as to why you think it so vital that we break into what was going to be an exuberant Christmas celebration in Baker Street?” My friend smiled slyly at me. “And what is baffling about Percy Bysshe Shelley? I have always found his poems most congenial.” Macan slapped Holmes upon his shoulder.

“Time enough, Holmes. Let us first go to the common room. I shall ask the porter to have your bags taken to your rooms.” He signalled to the servant, who had been hovering behind us, and gestured us to follow him over to the right side of the quad.

A moment later we had passed beneath the lintel of one of the stone arches and were hanging our coats upon pegs provided for the purpose. The scholar opened a door and ushered us into a most beautiful panelled room. A festive tree stood at the far end, covered with coloured balls hanging from pieces of twine which caught the flickering light from the candles that stood upon the central oak dining table, on which places were already laid. A fire already glowed gently in the grate and a cluster of decanters shone in the corner

“This is where we shall be dining later, but for now there is a cold collation in the summer common room on the other side of the corridor.”

There was a less formal style to this second chamber, with a variety of comfortable looking sofas and armchairs, upon which a number of what were clearly senior college fellows were spread. Macan waved an arm in our direction.

“Gentlemen, may I present my guests Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson, who I have invited to try and shine some light on our poet’s problem. I shall introduce you all properly in due course. A glass of burgundy, Holmes?” he asked, already holding a bottle. A general murmur from the assembled fellows implied that my friend’s name was immediately recognised

I felt that Holmes was restraining himself from speaking out, but that he was unwilling to impose himself too quickly upon the sedate traditions of the academic common room. We settled ourselves around a small table in the corner of the room and only then did he show some impatience.

“Macan, I ask again: I enjoy a Christmas puzzle as much as anyone, but...” and he left the obvious question hanging in the air. Our host leaned forward.

“I apologise, Holmes. I shall show you the evidence after lunch, but let me explain what has occurred.”

“I should be more than obliged,” my friend replied drily.

“You may be aware that Percy Bysshe Shelley came up to this college as an undergraduate in the year 1810. You may also be aware that he left, and was indeed sent down from the university, but a year later, having published a pamphlet extolling atheism. It was a famous story and one that, perhaps, did not redound well on the reputation of University College when, in ensuing years, Shelley became one of this country’s finest romantic poets. It took many decades, but we seemed to right some kind of wrong two years ago when almost all of us accepted the offer of a fine memorial - a figurative statue of the man, then only twenty-nine, when his drowned body was washed up on an Italian shore. It had been commissioned by Shelley’s daughter-in-law to stand at his grave in Rome, but its plinth was considered of too great a weight to lay upon the churchyard soil, and thus last year - while you, Holmes, were still missing presumed dead yourself - it found a proper resting-place in a special domed structure in the college. It is a glorious sculpture in pure white marble by Onslow Ford, an example of the most superb delicate design and workmanship. In a sense, it demonstrates that Univ. has accepted that an error was made too quickly so many years ago.”

Sherlock Holmes responded in some exasperation.

“An informative, but hardly vital, history lesson, my dear Macan.”

“Then it will interest you that Shelley’s head is entirely purple today.”

The others in the common room heard Macan’s words clearly, and newspapers and wine glasses were lowered in anticipation. Holmes glanced across at me and raised an eyebrow.

“At last!” Our host’s face remained serious.

“Holmes, I suppose this is indeed some sort of Yuletide puzzle, but it is an extremely serious matter. A major work of art has been despoiled and it would be far too tedious, I fancy, to involve the local police force - a force which, it must be said, tries to involve itself in college and University affairs as little as possible. No, there has been no murder or other serious deviltry done, but the story will undoubtedly come out, which will be highly detrimental to the college and could contribute to an element of distrust, and thereby fewer young men choosing to attend here for their further education.”

“When you say his head is purple,” I ventured, “what exactly do you mean?” Macan was about to answer, but Holmes intervened decisively.

“I cannot but be intrigued, as you thought I would be, old friend. I think you had better show us the scene of the crime - a phrase which is almost certainly a touch too serious in this case. But, come, Watson, we are relaxing in Oxford: let us see how white has turned to purple. Gentlemen,” he said, addressing the others in the room, “while you do not exactly appear to be in the uproar that Macan indicated to me in his wire, I hope that by the time you sit down for your Christmas repast on the morrow, there will be no further shilly-shallying over Shelley.” With that, he motioned me to follow Macan.

We stepped back into the quadrangle, and our guide led us back towards the lodge, then turned to his left through a corner archway, kicking the snow from his shoes. A short corridor suddenly opened out into a domed area of perfect dimensions, dominated by an ornately carved block of black marble upon which lay the life-size, pure white sculpture of the great poet, of such subtle shaping that it seemed nigh on impossible that it could have been hewn out of Carrara.

Yet, as we approached it, it became apparent that something was badly amiss, for there were blotches and streaks of a deep purple and crimson colour upon the face and head. Holmes descended the two steps and went up to the sculpture.

“Some sad student prank, no doubt,” I suggested to Macan, who immediately shook his head.

“Under normal circumstances, Dr. Watson, that is precisely what I should have assumed. But it is Christmas Eve: we have not had an undergraduate on the premises for nearly a month. And there are few of us dons in college at this time of year.”

“Seven, including yourself, I should say,” came from Holmes, now busy sniffing the sculpture. “Nine places are laid for dinner, I think. This is most interesting, Watson. I should value your opinion.” I approached the tainted sculpture in some surprise.

“I am more used to dealing with live bodies, actually,” I retorted. My friend smiled, almost impishly.

“Tell me, Macan, when you found the sculpture in this state?”

“After dinner yesterday evening. My rooms are up this staircase, and so I have to pass Shelley.”

“Did you tell the other fellows of your discovery?”

“Yes. I hurried back to the dining room, where I found Dr. Rowley and Professor Teasdale. They were appalled, of course. I naturally waited until early this morning to send you a telegram.”

“Quite so. Well, Watson, what do you think?”

I had been examining the purple portions closely.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Holmes,” I replied, in some exasperation.

“Sixty-three or seventy?” I think the set of my eyebrows must have indicated that I had no idea of what my friend was talking about.

“Macan, I presume the college has a good cellar?”

“Of wines?” the academic asked, uncertainly.

“Well, of ports, to be precise. Watson, did you not smell? Even after a good few hours, there is no doubt that it is port that has settled into the marble. I merely wondered if you recognised the vintage.”

“I am more of a Madeira man myself, as you well know,” I said to Sherlock Holmes, as a few minutes later we settled ourselves once more in the college common room. We were the only occupants, the other dons having disappeared, and Dr. Macan having held back to ask staff about cleansing matters.

“I don’t think we must take this affair too seriously, Watson,” Holmes remarked languidly, “but it is a decided waste of Ferreira sixty-three - for that is what I fancy it was. Why should any man hate Bysshe Shelley enough to desecrate such a wondrous sculpture?”

I was about to express agreement when the door flew open and Macan appeared as if shot from a cannon.

“I don’t believe it! I simply don’t believe it!” he cried, as he slumped into an armchair. “They have done it again, and it is worse, so much worse.” He tapped his fingers in exasperation and a vein stood out upon his forehead. “Now it is brandy.”

“Surely not spirits as well as vintage wine?” I said. Macan stared at us in agitation and then drew a deep breath.

“There is the most delicate tinge of light brown across the toes. They certainly had not been assaulted thus last night, and I had not noticed this disgrace when we were there just now.” Holmes furrowed his brow.

“Nor had I,” he admitted with some chagrin. “Show me. Watson, you need not come: relax and think of the Malvasia grape.”

I busied myself with the pile of newspapers that lay upon the central table and helped myself to another small glass of white burgundy. Some fifteen minutes later, Holmes and Macan returned, my friend holding a handkerchief.

“Here, you can smell cognac quite clearly, and Macan thinks it must have been done during the few minutes he was waiting at the college gate onto the High Street for our arrival before lunch. Oh, and, Watson, I have just checked: there is a half-filled decanter of the Ferreira in the adjacent dining room.”

“I had wondered if it might be a college staff member who could have perpetrated these outrages, if it were not a student,” I said. “But perhaps we need to investigate the fellows, if port and brandy are involved.” Homes intervened suddenly.

“What was that word you used one moment ago, Watson? What is brandy?”

“A spirit, Holmes,” I replied, a touch wearily. “One of many.”

“Of course: thank you, my friend. Macan, tell me of the six other Univ. fellows at present residing in the college over this Christmas period.”

“Well, we are a college strong in the arts and classics, as you know. Wilson is a historian of the first order, who concentrates on the Whigs of the last century. Teasdale and Kerr are classicists, Rowley and Seton specialise in ancient and more modern literature respectively, while Dix has been immersed in Goethe for as long as I myself have been a Fellow here. All of us are of broadly similar age, in our fifties and sixties.

“By the by, gentlemen, we shall dine early this evening, to permit the steward and the other servants to leave the college at not too late an hour, to be home with their families for the start of Christmas Day. You are both in rooms on Staircase One, and the porter will show you to them. May I suggest we gather here again at half-past-six? Perhaps, Holmes, by then you may have some theories as to what we are facing here, bizarre as it may seem?”

Holmes looked up at Macan from his chair in relaxed fashion.

“I already have one very specific theory. But I need to know what liqueurs you have available? And I should like to see the College Register - would that be possible?”

“It is held in the Master’s Lodgings, but he is away at present and there would be no harm in my bringing it over this evening. And all available drinks are over there in the walnut cabinet - apart, that is from the decanters you have already seen in the dining room.”

Holmes crossed the room and swung open the doors of the chest, quickly surveying the contents. “I thought so,” he announced triumphantly. “An entertaining evening lies ahead for us, I fancy, Watson.”

“Do please share some of your thoughts. Which drink has particularly caught your eye?”

“Don’t worry, my friend: you will be present at the denouement. I must pay one further visit to the sculpture, smoke a contemplative pipe in my room, and be back down here at the time proposed.” With that, Sherlock Holmes strode from the common room, whistling, somewhat to my surprise, a jaunty version of “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”.

“Oh, and by the by,” he said, turning abruptly, “hail to thee, blithe spirit!”

I was somewhat surprised at this exhortation, but was glad to see that, however complex the matter of Shelley’s head and feet appeared to me, Holmes seemed confident.

Having spent a restive half hour rambling through the snowy streets of Oxford and watching myriad last-minute Christmas gifts being purchased by anxious-looking townspeople, I changed in my room and was down in the common room at the appointed hour. Holmes and Macan were already seated at a side table, poring over a volume, while fellows drifted about with glasses of sherry in their hands. I crossed to my friends.

“Ah, Watson, we were just going over the Register from eighty-three years past. Here is the relevant entry.” said Holmes, swivelling the great leather-bound tome towards me and pointing a thin finger at a written entry. “This is why Shelley left University College.”

I peered at the ancient scratchy writing: “At a meeting of the master and fellows held this day it was determined that Thomas Jefferson Hogg and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Commoners, be publicly expelled for contumaciously refusing to answer questions proposed to them,” I read slowly, “and for also repeatedly declining to disavow a publication entitled ‘The Necessity of Atheism’.” I looked up at Holmes and was about to speak.

“Stubbornly, or perversely, Watson.”

“Hogg was a close friend of Shelley’s,” Macan explained. “They were both what you might call intellectual rebels and, with the publication of this pamphlet in March 1811, were frankly mocking the very foundations upon which the University - let alone this college - rested at the time. Another student, a contemporary of the miscreants, reported that the two of them had made themselves as conspicuous as possible in the days leading up to their expulsion - walking proudly and blatantly up and down the centre of the quadrangle.”

I could see that one or two of the academics were trying very hard to hear what was being said. Holmes intervened:

“Interesting, my dear Macan, that you yourself have just used the word ‘miscreants’ to describe Shelley and his confederate?”

“It is, of course, another world today, and I used the term lightly. But the fury at their actions apparently ran very deep at the time, Holmes, and certain of the fellows held much rancour against Shelley for years. It would seem that the Master might have had mercy if the young man had been, er, less contumacious, but was livid when he gave no ground. The Dean said that the student could never ever be forgiven for having brought the college into such disrepute, and apparently even forty years later, eyebrows were raised if any undergraduate expressed an interest in the poet’s works.”

“And yet the college did indeed forgive in the end,” I suggested, “as the acceptance of the monument indicates.”

“Indeed,” replied Holmes. “Yet troubled waters run just as deep as those that are still, as we see from the desecrations of that monument we are investigating, the source of which I expect to be discovered before the dawning of Christmas Day. Aha, dinner is being called. And Watson, by the way, I should have drawn your attention to the names of the college fellows in 1811.”

I was naturally slightly thrown by this aside, but forbore to reply as the nine of us filed across into the dining room, where three college stewards waited. There was a low murmur of gossip as we took our allotted seats around the long oval table. Holmes was in deep conversation with his friend Macan, and I exchanged words with the classics scholar Professor Teasdale to my right, a man of thin features and a nose upon which a pair of wire spectacles was loosely balanced. He was intrigued by our presence and wanted to know what lines Holmes and I were following, especially since only he and one other don had been present when Macan reported the first discovery of Shelley’s ruined head. Since I understood so little of the case myself, we moved on to other topics as a splendid fillet of fish was placed before me, and something rather special was poured into my wine glass.

As the evening wore on and two further festive and fascinating courses came and were consumed, Sherlock Holmes became the centrepiece of the dinner. Macan could but shrug his shoulders and grin in my direction as my friend held court. Truth to say, I had heard some of the tales before and his extraordinary summing-up of the recent and intriguing correspondence between Florence Nightingale and William Rathbone came as little surprise to me. But it was a most enjoyable repast, and by the time the port and Madeira decanters had circled for the final time - the table having already been cleared and the servants departed - we all agreed that it had been a most delightful way to spend a Christmas Eve.

The air in the dining room was thick with cigar smoke and the embers in the fireplace were just beginning to die down when Holmes was suddenly at my side.

‘Come, Watson, now, and do not appear surprised,” he whispered urgently, then passed from the room. I downed my glass in contemplative fashion, rose and bid my friends a good night and compliments of the season. As I too left, I saw Macan giving a slight nod in my direction.

Holmes was outside in the quadrangle, shifting his weight from foot to foot in anxious fashion as a light fall of snow wafted down. He laid a hand on my shoulder and near pushed me to the left and thus, I surmised, towards the corner archway that would lead to the Shelley sculpture. There was only the light of the moon to guide us the few yards before we ducked into the complete darkness of the short corridor.

“Holmes, what are we doing?” I whispered. His grip on my shoulder tightened.

“You have correctly surmised that this is not an important case, Watson,” he replied in a low voice, “but it is Oxford, it is Christmas, and it is fun. I should like to see that matters turn out as I predict. Here, now, is the statue, and there is room for the two of us in the right-hand corner of this space in front of the Shelley to wait and see what may transpire. I have a shaded lamp here and am trusting to have a poetic outcome tonight. Silence, please.”

Over the years, I have shared with Sherlock Holmes long waits during the watches of the night, the cases involving the infernal spotted snake and the league of red-haired men springing immediately to mind. Despite his words, however, that he believed this case not to be one of the most serious he had entertained, no pitch black wait can ever be entirely relaxed if one has no idea of what to expect; and thus it was that I sought some refuge in the fact that Holmes had not asked me to bring any weapon from Baker Street to Oxford.

Perhaps twenty minutes had passed when suddenly Holmes tautened. I became aware of the slight flickering of a candle from our left, the light brightening as it advanced upon the statue area. A dark figure stepped down towards the plinth.

In a second, Holmes released the lamp shutter and moved towards the form. I heard a strangled epithet and the sound of smashing glass, a sweet and somewhat sickly odour immediately suffusing the enclosed space. There was, however, no resistance from our quarry, a man revealed immediately to be the white-haired Doctor Rowley. He quickly collapsed in Holmes’s arms, seeming to sob.

“Back to the common room, old man,” said Holmes. “It’s a sad story and too many decades have passed for you to make such foolish gestures. He’s a broken man, Watson. Could you go ahead to the common room? Reggie Macan should be waiting.”

“My goodness, two generations pass, and still the affair rankles,” said Holmes, as the gas lights came on and the four of us sat back in comfortable seats, Rowley cowed and shivering. “Can your family never forgive?” The old man pursed his lips and remained silent.

“It was the green Chartreuse tonight, was it not?” Holmes persisted. The broken man nodded. Macan smiled, as if he had begun to understand what had occurred. Holmes addressed his words to me.

“What we have here, Watson, is a story of intractable unforgiving, lasting over too many years. It is a tale of misplaced familial loathing, with a trite and alcoholic end. Dr. Rowley, it is a pathetic tale, would you not agree?” Rowley winced.

“I am at a loss to know how you discovered it was me,” he said in limp fashion.

“A simple linking of surnames. You are the grandson of Dr. George Rowley, Dean of this college at the time of the Shelley scandal, and later to become its Master. Your grandfather signed his name in the register on the date that Hogg and Shelley were thrown out. A deeply religious man, he loathed the concept of atheism and anyone who promoted it. This carried through to your father and then to you. Macan tells me that you alone of the fellows voted against accepting the offer of the sculpture to this college.

“And then, once it had been installed, having lost the intellectual and historical argument, you began to concoct a bizarre plan of desecration. For a man of your distinction in the university - you are, I believe, one of the leading experts on ancient literature here at Oxford - you made one flawed decision and one psychologically interesting one. For some reason, you chose to make your mark, quite literally, when the undergraduates were out of college during this vacation: had the attacks on the sculpture been made in term time, they would undoubtedly have been put down to student high jinks. You also decided to play what you thought was a pretty little game, by running to a work by the very man you loathed. Watson, how well do you recall Shelley’s lines in his poem ‘To a Skylark’?”

“A question I regard as striking somewhat below the belt at this hour, after all we have been through, and indeed imbibed, this night,” I responded. Holmes laughed.

“A fair enough answer, Watson! Let me, then, draw to your attention the first lines of the fourth verse. ‘The pale purple even melts around thy flight’. The purple of port, perhaps? I even gave you earlier a hint of the direction of my thoughts, when I gave you part of the opening line of the whole poem - and one of the most famous in all poetic history: ‘Hail to thee, blithe Spirit’. See what Rowley was doing? Brandy is as good a spirit to hurl at white marble as any. That is what we were already faced with by this evening.

“What further alcoholic beverage might be chosen next? There is mention by Shelley, of course, of ‘the blue deep’, but I am not aware of any drink of that hue. And I discarded for the same reason, his use of the words ‘that silver sphere’. But eventually the line ‘In its own green leaves’ led me to ask Macan here what liqueurs are held in the common room, and when I saw a full bottle of the superb drink created by monks in their Chartreuse monastery near Grenoble, I was fairly sure of Dr. Rowley’s next weapon. And it turned out to be so.”

Rowley was a pathetic sight, his thin body almost fading into the folds of his academic gown and his hands clasped in anguish. Macan stood up with an air of finality.

“What you have done is despicable, Rowley. The Master will be told on his return to college, and I have no doubt that he will call a meeting of fellows - just as that held in 1811 to decide on Shelley’s fate. The result, I fancy, will be the same.”

Sherlock Holmes leaned forward in his armchair.

“I wonder, Macan, whether you are perhaps being a touch severe on your colleague? Despicable his actions have certainly been, and I sincerely regret the uses to which fine port, cognac, and liqueurs have been put. But I fancy your college authorities will provide funds towards Shelley’s cleansing, with no lasting damage done, unless it be to Dr. Rowley’s own conscience. I have no powers in this matter, but Christmas Eve seems to me to be a time for forgiveness and understanding.”

Macan smiled and shrugged his shoulders, his anger clearly receding. Holmes turned towards me.

“What a very curious Christmas we are spending, my dear Watson, when events of nearly a century ago have returned to haunt this ancient seat of learning. I think we shall allow ourselves to enjoy a festive day tomorrow in this lovely city and then return to Baker Street and hope for less bitter, twisted tales to come before us.

“So far as you are concerned, Rowley, you should have considered the closing two lines from another of Percy Shelley’s poems: ‘The world is weary of the past. Oh, might it die or rest at last!’”