#ENGR acd

[dailyholmes]

"He settled our new acquaintance on the sofa." The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb. Published in The Strand Magazine. Sidney Paget, 1892

Sources 1 2

[eirinstiva]

Shady jobs with high salaries in an ACD story is 🚩

[astudyincanon]

For the week of November 13th - November 19th, we will be tackling

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb (#ENGR ACD)

We’re back at it again this week with “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,” which was published in The Strand in March 1892. The case is notable as being a rare instance where Watson is the one who brings the case to Holmes’ attention. The word count on this one is just under 9,000 words.

Make sure you get the correct abbreviation in your tags this week--instead of ENGI as you might expect it to be, Jay Finley Christ decided this one would be ENGR because it’s a commonly-used abbreviation for engineer, even though it went against the system he had established for the other stories.

Feel free to read at your own pace throughout the week. We will be tracking the tags for the story and posting what we find as the week goes on.

[daisyfornost]

A thought about The Engineer's Thumb

Oh! My friends. This is pure, hilarious, Victorian gaslight melodrama. I guarantee you Lysander Stark wears a black cape and twirls his villainous moustache as he says "Very vell! You vill know oll abowt ze MASHEEN!!"

Victor Hatherley is the perfect stupid, greedy, hapless young victim careening around in his Extreme Male Privilege suit. You know the one: it has SEEMS LEGIT scrawled across the chest in big red letters. "What's that, frightened lady? You're urging me to run for my life? Pshaw! I ain't leavin' without the insane pile of money I was promised by that obviously trustworthy weirdo you're so afraid of. Man coming through! STEP ASIDE."

No woman on earth. Just sayin'.

Damn lucky he only lost a thumb.

[sarahthecoat]

The Engineer's Thumb

It's funny how every week I look forward to the next story, remembering somewhat dimly "oh, that's a good one, i like that one!" as if there was ever one that i didn't like! I do like this one, even though Holmes has so little to do in it. Maybe I remember it so fondly because Watson actually has more of the spotlight, and carries it well. He treats Mr Hatherly with gentle compassion, readily whisks him off to see Holmes, who he's clearly eager to see himself. As others have pointed out, Stark's offer is WAY too good to be true, topping all the other too good to be true stories so far, yet Watson isn't condescending about that. Holmes makes a "bit not good" joke, but... somebody had to, right? And other than that, Holmes is also welcoming and comforting.

I think it really was mostly an excuse for watson & holmes to hang out together though. If Hatherly had just gone to the police after being bandaged, they would have gone with him to the train station he'd got off at, and pretty shortly the column of smoke from the burning house would have gotten their attention, even though it wasn't "ten miles" out of town. The crooks had already gotten away anyway, nothing would have changed. Only Watson missed Holmes, and this was the perfect opportunity to go see him, and have a jaunt out of town. And Holmes was clearly happy to see Watson, and go on that jaunt.

The eeriest part of the whole story to me, is the thought Hatherly has inside the closing press, about whether to meet his fate on his back or front. I don't know about the actual mechanics of such a situation, whether it actually makes a difference, or what the difference would be, but it's a ghastly thought. And I can't help thinking about all the meta about "forwards or backwards" regarding bbc sherlock, though that's another tangent.

[tremendousdetectivetheorist]

The Engineer’s Thumb

I don’t have much to add, except that this story is Watson being humble and a good friend. He doctors the engineer’s hand and directs the case to Holmes. It’s lot of backstory and Holmes doesn’t do much in the case, so again, Watson is doing all he can for this guy by recording and sharing all the backstory.

“During the years of [their] intimacy” Watson says that he’d only brought two cases to Holmes, the cases being this one and that of “Colonel Warburton’s madness”, but I suppose The Naval Treaty hadn’t been written yet.

Also, there’s an Awesome Female Character in this story who sort of gets snubbed by the engineer.

[gralto]

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“The Engineer’s Thumb” illustrations by Sidney Paget 1892

[travelingwithoutthedoctor]

Which one is it Watson: are you married to your (unnamed) wife or in an intimate relationship with Sherlock Holmes?

[materialofonebeing]

Hatherley the engineer:  “I have lost my thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?”

Holmes, laughing.  Yes, laughing:  “You have only to put [your experience] into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.”

My thought:  “Too soon, man.”

Imagined Holmes, with a flourish of his long, thin hand:  “Adventure is always aesthetic (X).”

[sarahthecoat]

LOL! I was thinking he's the same kind of underemployed, easy target fellow as the ones in STOC and REDH and RESI, but this time with added palpable physical danger fully flagged with dead of night travel like in GREE, where mr melas at least had the good sense to WANT to get out of the carriage immediately.

Another part of me was thinking, hmm, trains... "hydraulics"... yeah, definitely no gay subtext hidden under shocking gory adventure here, no sirree.

@astudyincanon

I don't have much else to say about this one, except that i had forgotten how very little holmes actually contributes to the case. He looks up the disappearance of the previous engineer from a year ago in his scrapbook, which is more a matter of him settling "whatever happened to him" for himself, and then pointing out to the police that the crooks' lair must be very close to the train station based on the freshness of the horse. The great column of smoke from the burning building might have led them to it anyway.

A thought about The Engineer’s Thumb

Oh! My friends. This is pure, hilarious, Victorian gaslight melodrama. I guarantee you Lysander Stark wears a black cape and twirls his villainous moustache as he says “Very vell! You vill know oll abowt ze MASHEEN!!”

Victor Hatherley is the perfect stupid, greedy, hapless young victim careening around in his Extreme Male Privilege suit. You know the one: it has SEEMS LEGIT scrawled across the chest in big red letters. “What’s that, frightened lady? You’re urging me to run for my life? Pshaw! I ain’t leavin’ without the insane pile of money I was promised by that obviously trustworthy weirdo you’re so afraid of. Man coming through! STEP ASIDE.”

No woman on earth. Just sayin’.

Damn lucky he only lost a thumb.