The monkey in the room

 Our local library group met again tonight to discuss "The Creeping Man," via a mix of masks, vax, and Zoom, and I really think we isolated the problem with any discussion of that particular story.

SPOILER ALERT!

It's the monkey thing.

Once you bring up the fact that Professory Presbury was a man-monkey, a discussion group just can't take their eyes off it. We tried. We tried hard.

The college, the fiancee a third of his age, the client, the daughter, and that perpetual Sherlock Holmes story favorite, the dog . . . all fell by the wayside as we just couldn't help but stare silently at the fact a man was injecting himself with monkey serum on a regular basis. Even our biggest proponent of the goodness of any Sherlock Holmes story was going, "Good for the first two-thirds, then the monkey serum came in!"

As I wracked my brain to find a way "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" felt like a true Sherlock Holmes story, it kept turning black and white in my head, with Basil Rathbone's Holmes turning up. How many times did Rathbone face a weird, scary monster of that era? The Hound, the Creeper, the Scarlet Claw . . . a rampaging man-monkey lurking in the shadows was perfect for the world of Rathbone's Holmes. Had it not been for patriotism and those damned Nazis entering the picture, perhaps we would have gotten a film titled The Creeping Man out of Rathbone and Bruce.

It's the perfect medium for that mess.

Not that the writing in "The Creeping Man" isn't clever, with such wonderful lines as "Come at once if convenient -- if inconvenient come all the same." It's just that plot driving straight for a spectacular monkey-splash of a crash. And it all started so well, too. We don't even notice the horrible contradiction Watson throws at us:

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes was always of opinion that I should publish the singular facts connected with Professor Presbury, if only to dispel once for all the ugly rumors which some twenty years ago agistated the university and were echoed in the learned societies of London."

(Okay, first -- why not "of the opinion" and "once and for all?" Was it lazy Terrence's day to typeset The Strand?)

But here's the thing. Even though Watson still has "reticence and discretion," if you're trying to clear up ugly rumors once and for all, wouldn't you put the actual name of the university, instead of "Camford?" If Professor Presbury is so famous, people would know. And if you're talking about a sixty year old that got mauled by a dog twenty years ago . . . oh, wait.

Oh. Wait.

This story is about sex, isn't it?  

When explaining the story to Watson, Holmes goes "He is, I gather, a man of very virile and positive, one might almost say combative, character." Why is Holmes gathering that Presbury is so very virile? Something Watson used discretion to leave out? And what was the point of the monkey serum in that sixty-one-year-old's life anyway? Smoother skin? Longer life? No, this is 2021, we know that the men of his era were just waiting for Viagra. And Lowenstein of Prague was probably all about finding the horniest monkeys he could.

If his final moral lecture of the story, Holmes points out the trouble humanity would have if "the sensual" get to prolong their (sex) lives. And the detective is all over finding an inn in town with clean sheets, so you know that he's a little tired of getting hotel rooms after "the sensual" have been trysting about. But here's the thing -- Holmes leaves this case with a vial of monkey serum in his hand and a desire to make contact with Lowenstein. And then he retires. And then, in the very next story in Casebook, we meet Maud Bellamy, a young lady of whom Holmes writes, "Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart, but I could not look upon her perfect clear-cut face, with all the soft freshness of the downlands in her delicate colouring, without realizing that no young man would cross her path unscathed."

Why is Sherlock Holmes so suddenly having the mind of a young man? Could he have worked with Lowenstein, intent on perfecting a serum to extend the life of his mental faculties, and gotten a very libidinous side effect out of the bargain? Maybe he didn't start courting Maud after "The Lion's Mane" (though my money is there), but how else to you explain that weird Mary Russell stuff that is rumored to have gone down after that time? Just which ugly rumors was Holmes trying to dispel?

Is that truly the "monkey in the room" of "The Creeping Man?" When old guys start going after young girls, the word "creep" always does come up in some fashion, and perhaps that title, along with the way Watson wrote it up, was not actually discretion about Presbury but an admonishment to Sherlock Holmes himself to keep his thoughts off the young ladies of Sussex. There was probably a perfectly lovely, age-appropriate Violet Hunter still out there somewhere, who might enjoy a little bit of monkeying around. 

And Watson would know.