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IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: December 1910

US: January 1911

COLLECTION

His Last Bow, 1917

CHARACTERS

Dr. Leon Sterndale Lion-hunter and explorer.

Mortimer Tregennis Bachelor lodging at the local vicarage.

Owen and George Tregennis Mortimer’s brothers.

Brenda Tregennis Mortimer’s sister.

Mr. Roundhay Local vicar.

Dr. Richards Local doctor.

Mrs. Porter Housekeeper at Tredannick Wartha.

When asked by The Strand Magazine in 1927 to list his 12 favorite Holmes stories, Conan Doyle commented laconically: “‘The Devil’s Foot’ has points. It is grim and new. We will give it the ninth place.” It is indeed a grim tale—one of Conan Doyle’s most atmospheric and chilling, with a wild, sinister setting, and a horrific mystery at its heart that hints at the dark forces of the supernatural. To solve this case Holmes has to be at his most objective, ingenious, and daring.

In 1910, Conan Doyle and his second wife Jean went to Poldhu in Cornwall for a spring break, staying at the Poldhu Hotel. Jean was pregnant with their second son, Adrian, who was born just a few weeks before “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” was published. This area of England was steeped in legends of witchcraft, and Conan Doyle evidently decided it was the perfect setting for “The Devil’s Foot”; the story is also perhaps influenced by Conan Doyle’s increasing interest in spiritualism.

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The dramatic setting of Mounts Bay, Cornwall, has inspired writers and artists for centuries. This painting was made in 1909 by Canadian Elizabeth Forbes, who settled in Newlyn.

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Mortimer Tregennis poisoned his siblings as he could not bear them to remain in the home that he felt was his. Sterndale, recognizing the cause of their deaths, returned to make Mortimer pay for the death of his dearest love.

Holmes on vacation

It is March 1897, and work has taken its toll on Holmes—he has been advised by an eminent Harley Street doctor to take a vacation, “on the threat of being permanently disqualified from work.” And so Holmes and Watson rent a cottage on the headland at Poldhu. It is a wonderfully atmospheric setting, overlooking “the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay, that old deathtrap of sailing vessels, with its fringe of black cliffs and surge-swept reefs on which innumerable seamen have met their end.”

But it is the “sombre” rolling moors, ancient Cornish language, and prehistoric stone monuments that fascinate Holmes, as they did Conan Doyle. For a few days they enjoy a “simple life” of walks on the moors, while Holmes theorizes that the Cornish language developed from Chaldean, an Aramaic language brought over in the Bronze Age by Phoenician tin-traders. This idea, for which there is little evidence, was popular among antiquarians at the time.

Now and again during their wanderings outdoors, they catch sight of a famous local, “the great lion-hunter” Dr. Leon Sterndale, a giant of a man with grizzled hair and a white beard.

"Why not tell them of the Cornish horror—strangest case I have ever handled."

Sherlock Holmes

POISONOUS PLANTS

The fictional devil’s-foot root is reminiscent of the Mandragora, or mandrake, genus of plants, whose forked roots are said to look human, and supposedly “scream” when pulled up. Mandrakes contain poisonous hallucinogens and are a staple of European witchcraft. Witch doctors across the world use a variety of plants to induce hallucinations and even madness and death. A legendary teacher at Conan Doyle’s medical school in Edinburgh, Robert Christison (1797–1882), nearly killed himself by eating part of a Calabar bean (pictured) sent from tropical Africa by missionaries, only saving himself by drinking his shaving water and making himself sick. He was also known for firing blowpipes when lecturing on the South American plant poison curare. Explorer Charles Waterton (1782–1865) who, like Conan Doyle, went to school at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, showed that a donkey poisoned by curare could be kept alive by artificial respiration until the effects wore off. This led Waterton, rightly, to conclude that the plant could be used as an anesthetic.

Madness and death

One morning, while Holmes and Watson are eating their breakfast, two men arrive: the local vicar, Mr. Roundhay, and his lodger, Mortimer Tregennis, a bachelor of independent means. Between them they have a terrible tale to tell.

The previous evening, Mortimer had been playing cards with his brothers, George and Owen, and his sister Brenda at Tredannick Wartha, their house on the moor. The three siblings live in the family home, while Mortimer lives locally. He had left them in good spirits just after 10pm, but while out on a walk the following morning, he met Dr. Richards, the local physician, rushing to the house in response to an urgent summons. There they found the three siblings still seated around the card table, just as Mortimer had left them. Brenda was dead and her brothers were both shrieking dementedly, “an expression of the utmost horror” on each of their faces. On entering the room, Dr. Richards himself almost fainted. Concluding his narrative, Mr. Roundhay tells Holmes, “In all England you are the one man we need.” Despite orders for a peaceful vacation, Holmes is as thrilled by the mystery as “an old hound who hears the view-halloa.” All Watson’s hopes of a respite are dashed.

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The Victorian fascination with drugs and madness informed contemporary fiction, such as R. L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and this appeal continued into the 20th century.

"There still lingered upon it something of that convulsion of horror which had been her last human emotion."

Dr. Watson

A visit to the scene

Accompanied by Mortimer, Holmes and Watson go to the house to investigate. On the way, they pass a coach taking Owen and George to the asylum. Watson glimpses a “horribly contorted, grinning face glaring out at us. Those staring eyes and gnashing teeth flashed past us like a dreadful vision.”

Arriving at Tredannick Wartha, Holmes trips over a watering can, spilling its contents. An act of apparent clumsiness at the time, Holmes uses this to gauge a clear impression of Mortimer’s footprint. From this he is able to trace Mortimer’s tracks from the previous night and verify his claim that he had gone straight back to the vicarage. Once inside, Holmes and Watson see Brenda, once a great beauty, laid out on her bed. They learn that the housekeeper, Mrs. Porter, fainted on entering the room where her mistress had died. Examining the scene, Holmes finds it odd that a fire had been lit in such a small room on a spring evening. Mortimer explains the night had been “cold and damp.”

Holmes laments there are simply too few clues: “To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine,” he says. “It racks itself to pieces.” He suggests a walk to Watson, to talk things over. Both agree that they can rule out any supernatural “diabolical intrusions into the affairs of men.”

Murder at the vicarage

When they return to the cottage, Holmes and Watson are surprised to find the eminent Leon Sterndale waiting for them, eager to hear Holmes’s suspicions about the tragedy. He claims he had been about to leave for Africa, but rushed back from Plymouth on receiving a telegram from the vicar with news of the tragedy, even though some of his luggage was already on board the ship. Holmes is unconvinced by the explanation that this loner chose to abandon his African trip due to his friendship with Owen, George, and Brenda, and refuses to give him any details. Sterndale leaves, Holmes following him in secret. Sterndale goes to the vicarage, looks around, then returns home.

The next day, Mr. Roundhay calls on Holmes and Watson in a state of deep agitation. “We are devil-ridden, Mr. Holmes! My poor parish is devil-ridden! Satan himself is loose in it!” Mortimer Tregennis has been found dead in his downstairs room, in a similar state to his sister.

They rush to the crime scene before anyone (including the police) can disturb it, and find Mortimer sitting dead in his chair, with the same look of horror on his face as had been on Brenda’s. They also note the stuffy atmosphere in the room—a lamp is still “flaring and smoking” on the table. With this fresh lead, Holmes rushes around: “He was out on the lawn, in through the window, round the room, and up into the bedroom, for all the world like a dashing foxhound drawing a cover,” notes Watson. Holmes examines the lamp and takes a sample of powder from it, leaving some for the police.

"There is a thread here which we have not yet grasped and which might lead us through the tangle."

Sherlock Holmes

A dangerous experiment

Back at the cottage, Holmes once again becomes the experimental scientist, just as when Watson first met him in A Study in Scarlet. With a lamp identical to the one in the room in which Mortimer was found, Holmes conducts a series of tests. He reveals that he has realized a connection between the lamp, the fire in the room at Tredannick Wartha, and the “horrible stuffiness” at both crime scenes. He reasons that something toxic must have been burning in both of the fateful incidents. To clinch this theory, he needs to test the powder retrieved from the lamp, and invites Watson to join his experiment. The loyal doctor does so willingly. Holmes puts the powder taken from the second crime scene on a burning lamp, and together they sit down to await its effect. Within moments, Watson is suffering from terrible hallucinations, but when he catches a glimpse of Holmes’s face, “white, rigid, and drawn with horror,” it rouses him enough to grab his friend and drag him outside into the garden, where they both lie gasping in relief in the open air. It has been a close call, and there follows an unusually touching moment that reveals the depth of their friendship. For an instant, the curtain is lifted, and each says what he truly feels, knowing they have escaped death by a hair’s breadth. “I owe you both my thanks and an apology,” says Holmes. “It was an unjustifiable experiment… I am really very sorry.” Watson replies, “You know that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.” Within seconds, however, Holmes is back to his usual sardonic self.

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Using a lamp similar to the one that burned in the vicarage, Holmes, here played by Jeremy Brett, experiments with the burning times of different oils.

Medical experimentation

The idea of self-experimentation was very much a part of doctors’ lives in the 19th century. Before the days of clinical trials for testing drugs and poisons, often the only way doctors could discover the effects of such chemicals was to experiment on themselves. There was an element of bravado about this, but also a sense of pushing at the frontiers of science. Conan Doyle himself tried the poison gelseminum (made from the root of yellow jasmine) while a medical student in Edinburgh, and wrote a paper for the British Medical Journal in 1879 about his observations. When Watson first meets Holmes, the detective is covered in scars from his own experiments. His drug habit may even have begun this way.

Nevertheless, to involve Watson in this experiment was, as Holmes admits, sheer madness, and they were lucky to escape with their lives, even if it confirmed how the deaths at Tredannick Wartha and the vicarage occurred. Holmes is now certain that Mortimer threw some of the powder on the fire as he left Tredannick Wartha, leaving the fumes to wreak their terrible effect on his siblings. He had admitted being in a bitter dispute with them over an inheritance, but had claimed “it was all forgiven and forgotten”—but as Holmes observes, “He is not a man whom I should judge to be of a particularly forgiving disposition.”

"At the very first whiff of it my brain and my imagination were beyond all control."

Dr. Watson

Holmes knows all

Sterndale soon arrives, at Holmes’s invitation. The great explorer is visibly bristling at the summons, but goes quiet when Holmes informs him that he knows he killed Mortimer. Holmes reveals that he had followed Sterndale home after their first meeting, and then how a later investigation found gravel from his cottage on the lawn below Mortimer’s bedroom window. From this Holmes concluded that Sterndale had gone to the vicarage early that morning and thrown gravel at the window to wake Mortimer. Sterndale had then shut him in the room with the burning lamp, while he stood outside on the lawn smoking a cigar and watching him die.

“You are the devil himself!” cries a stunned Sterndale to Holmes. He confesses what Holmes suspected all along—that he had been in love with Brenda for years, but had a long-estranged wife whom he was unable to divorce. Just a few weeks earlier, Sterndale had shown Mortimer some of his “African curiosities,” among them a reddish-brown powder made from Radix pedis diaboli, or devil’s-foot root, a secret “ordeal poison” used by “medicine-men in certain districts of West Africa.” Mortimer, upon learning of its deadly effects, had stolen some and used it to kill his siblings, thus making himself “sole guardian of their joint property.” To avenge Brenda’s murder, Sterndale, armed with a gun, forced Mortimer to sit in his chair and face the same hideous death. “In five minutes he died,” the explorer tells Holmes. “My God! How he died!”

Remarkably, the detective sympathizes with Sterndale and, now that he knows the truth behind his motives, decides to let him go free. Holmes always leans in favor of acting fairly over the letter of the law, and is rarely concerned with legal process once he feels that justice has been done. He advises the great explorer to go and finish his work in Africa. After Sterndale leaves, Holmes tells Watson, “I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done.”

There is something so marked and poignant in Holmes’s sympathy for Sterndale’s predicament that it is hard to escape the idea that this could be Conan Doyle speaking from the heart. In 1897, the year in which “The Devil’s Foot” is set, Conan Doyle had met and fallen in love with Jean Leckie. But his wife Louise (or “Touie”) was very ill with tuberculosis, and rather than leave her at this time of crisis, he kept his affair quiet and looked after his wife until she died in 1906, without her ever knowing she had a rival. Conan Doyle finally married Jean in 1907. This decade of heartache meant that the author would know what star-crossed love felt like, and could only too well imagine Sterndale’s agony of having his love suddenly snatched away from him.

LEON THE LION-HUNTER

Dr. Leon Sterndale, lion-hunter and explorer, was already a somewhat dated figure in 1910. The image of the romantic adventurers that Conan Doyle had idolized in his youth was tarnished by the growing realization that white colonials had not behaved well toward native people in Africa. However, Conan Doyle admired the exploits of men like Richard Burton and John Speke who blazed trails into the African wilderness. Some Holmes scholars have suggested that Sterndale is based on English naturalist and explorer Charles Waterton (1782–1865, pictured), who once walked barefoot through the Amazon. His book Wanderings in South America (1825) inspired naturalists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. But Sterndale is probably a mix of the great Victorian explorers. His name may have been inspired by Robert Sterndale, who wrote about big-game hunting in India in books like Seonee (1877)—the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894).

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