Arthur Conan Doyle and Downton Abbey at Baconthorpe Castle Part 2

Although William Baxton, the first member of the Heydon clan, built the Inner Gatehouse in 1460, it was Sir Henry Heydon (William Baxton's grandson) who constructed the rest of the castle inside the courtyard, either during or after the War of the Roses finished. There, they would have lived comfortable lives, their needs attended by servants a la Downton Abbey. His son, John Heydon II, also constructed a wool processing factory along the inner courtyard wall, the ruins of which you can see behind me. By his Sir Christopher Heydon I's time, the family owned 20,000 to 30,000 sheep, and their ability to produce finished cloth allowed them to live in truly grand style, perhaps even better than the Crawley Family in Downton Abbey. For then, in the mid sixteenth century, they employed around 80 servants, and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle.

Unfortunately, as in Downton Abbey, Sir Christopher Heydon I found that his spending outstripped his earnings, and his son was forced to sell off part of the estate and mortgage the rest of the property. 

When I read The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle, I couldn't understand why Sir Nigel Loring left his castle in England to find glory in France. Recently, I've been reading about the 100 Years War, and how France was less a country back then than a series of adjacent territories overseen by various rulers. The novel is set in 1366 and 1367, when England saw itself as owning much of France back then. So Sir Nigel's decision to lead a company of knights through land of contested ownership, and perhaps in some way increase England's sovereignty, makes sense. 

There was also an economic benefit to the 100 Years War which Arthur Conan Doyle doesn't cover. One region ruled by French rulers was Flanders, which is now a county in Belgium. Flanders was where the medieval world sent its wool to be transformed into finished cloth. The leaders of the wool trade in Flanders appealed to Edward III to help protect their businesses, which were necessary to UK international trade. 

Still, British rulers were too far away to protect Flemish weavers, so they began emigrating to England. Remember, Sir John Heydon II built the wool processing factory, and his first spinners and weavers likely hailed from Flanders. The fact that he owned 20,000 to 30,000 sheep, and operated the wool processing center too, gives you an idea of how powerful he was, and how he could afford such a lavish lifestyle.

Unlike the Crawley family in Downton Abbey, Sir Christopher and his successors couldn't control their spending. So increasingly, servants were dismissed, lands were sold, buildings were mortgaged, or even dismantled and the stone sold by the cartload.

People no longer live year round at Baconthorpe Castle. But visitors come to see the ruins of a castle that lasted from the tail end of the 100 Years War, through the War of the Roses, the British religious reforms of Henry VIII and his successors, and the English Civil War. While we were there, a swan couple found the mere a pleasant place to birth their children. So perhaps successive generations of swans will call Baconthorpe Castle home. Let's hope they prove wise managers of the estate, and refrain from warring with their avian neighbors.

Dragon Dave

Related Links
Baconthorpe Castle at English Heritage
Wool Trade at Historic UK

Arthur Conan Doyle and Downton Abbey at Baconthorpe Castle Part 1

The first thing that greets you at Baconthorpe Castle is the outer gatehouse, which was built around 1560 by Sir Christopher Heydon I. His lordship of the castle seems to coincide with the high point of the Heydon family. Like the Crawley family in the TV series Downton Abbey, the Heydon family by this time had a large manor house inside the inner castle courtyard, and employed around 80 servants.

At first glance, Sir Christopher Heydon I (1518-1579) seems to have benefitted from a period of relative peace in England, falling between the War of the Roses in the 15th Century and the English Civil War in the 17th Century. But then you have to remember that Henry VIII ruled England during the first half of the 16th Century. His government could have been described as anything but placid.

By 1560, when the outer gatehouse was finished, English Christians had been rocked by the formation of the Church of England and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, ultra-progressive protestant rule of Henry's son Edward, and the ultra-Catholic rule of his daughter Mary. No wonder Sir Christopher decided he needed an outer gatehouse, as well as a larger defensive wall to surround the property. 

Oh, and he also decided to crenellate the buildings and walls around this period too, which would give his guards and soldiers better defensive positions.

The stretch of land between the outer and inner gatehouse gives you some scope of what was essentially a manor house and surrounding lands. The area off to the right would have been a large formal garden, completed by Christopher Heydon II (1561-1623). He was a solder, as well as a Member of Parliament and a writer of astrology books. 

The second Christopher's militaristic nature got him into trouble in 1601 when he took part in the Essex Rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I. Unlike the 100 Years War, and the War of the Roses, the Essex Rebellion was a comparatively small affair of short duration. Nevertheless, he fought on the wrong side, against Elizabeth, and ended up being fined and sent to prison.

Still, even if his warring nature got the better of him, and he proved an unwise estate manager, at least he appreciated the beauty of nature, as he built a mere as well as the formal gardens.

A moat surrounds the castle. You have to walk across what was once a drawbridge, and is now a permanent walking bridge, to access the inner gatehouse and castle interior. The Inner Gatehouse was built by the founding member of the family castle, built by William Baxton around 1460. 

At first, you might ask why he built such defenses, as this would have been just after the 100 Years War, which lasted from 1337 to 1453. But then you have to remember that the War of the Roses, which lasted from 1455 to 1485, had already begun. Anyone who had significant assets back then, and wanted to protect their family back then, would have owned a defensible manor or castle like Sir Nigel Loring in Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The White Company. 

Although William died rich, and got the castle off to a good start, his son changed the family name to Heydon, as William was a self-made man. Perhaps patrons like William de la Pole, the Duke of Suffolk and a prominent military leader in the 100 Years War, disliked the Baxton name. Or perhaps, John felt that Heydon sounded more prestigious than Baxton in the fifteenth century. 

After all, young immigrant Bedrich Polouvicka changed his name to Richard DeVere in the sitcom To The Manor Born, and went on to found a popular UK chain of supermarkets. And the Heydon family would go on to become major players in the wool trade, which was one of England's major industries in medieval times.

Dragon Dave 

The Guardians of Blythburgh

When tragedies strike, we wonder why. People ask: Why didn't God intervene? For Christians, there are no easy answers. Christian teaching suggests that each of us have a guardian angel, who looks after us in times of need. Yet where were God's guardian angels in 1577, when the legendary Black Shuck burst into Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, England, and killed a man and a boy?

These carved angels adorn the ceiling of Holy Trinity in Blythburgh. Even after centuries of existence there, their features can still be distinguished. The gentle restoration of the sanctuary preserves their beauty, without obscuring the way they have weathered the ages. So why didn't they prevent the death of two innocents on the day of the Black Shuck's attack, you ask?

Isn't a better question this: Why didn't the ghostly Black Shuck kill the entire congregation, instead of a man and a boy?

Either way, after the spectral beast's attack on Holy Trinity, the congregation took additional steps to ensure the Black Shuck would never terrorize them again. The local craftsmen created a Jack o' the Clock to protect their church. They set this additional guardian up in the church tower, where it could gaze out upon the surrounding land. 

If the Jack o' the Clock saw the Black Shuck, or any other danger approach, it could ring the church bell to alert the locals.

Still, the memory of an attack pervades a place. So these days, when worshippers kneel in prayer at Holy Trinity in Blythburgh, they not only look to the angels on the ceiling for protection, but to the Jack o' the Clock, who inhabits an alcove above the altar. He still rings his bell to call the faithful to worship.

 

Let's hope he never has to ring the bell for any other reason. 

Dragon Dave

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Blythburgh

To most Americans, history goes back hundreds of years. What occurred before the founding of the United States? Who knows? And does it really matter?

Residents of England take a longer view. Histories extend not just hundreds of years into the past, but thousands. Take Blythburgh in the county of Suffolk for example. The local church, Holy Trinity, has stood for over a thousand years. It has survived the ravages of war, the weather, and changes of religious beliefs that have stripped many East Anglian churches of great portions of their history.

Once, it even survived an attack by a savage, ghostly animal.

The first documented sighting of the Black Shuck occurred in the twelfth century, perhaps around the time Holy Trinity was built. Four centuries later, in 1577, locals reported that the satanic dog broke through the front door during a worship service. Within sight of the entire congregation, the Black Shuck killed a man and a boy. So ferocious was its attack that the church steeple collapsed. 

Naturally, today's more scientific minds, who seek to discredit the supernatural, claim a storm hit the area, and lightning struck the steeple. Who are you going to believe? An entire congregation who witnessed the tragedy, or modern revisionists? 

Countless stories have been lost to time. Yet the exploits of Sherlock Holmes endure forever. Foremost of those is The Hound of the Baskervilles. Could some of its timeless allure be due to the legendary Black Shuck, a spectral creature that haunted the Norfolk and Suffolk counties of East Anglia, as well as Dartmoor and more distant reaches of the British Isles?

Two things we know for certain. Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, became an ardent spiritualist in his later years. And Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, England, no longer has a steeple.

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle in Princetown and Cromer

Visit Dartmoor National Park in England, and you'll see the desolate landscape Sherlock Holmes braved in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Travel to the town of Princetown, deep within this brooding landscape, and you'll see the prison from which the murderer Seldon escaped to terrorize the local inhabitants. Stop by the Dartmoor National Park High Moorland Visitor Centre, and you'll see the great detective himself, along with the terrible black hound that haunted the Baskerville family.

It was here that Arthur Conan Doyle stayed a century ago, when the visitor center was the Rowe Duchy Hotel. From there, he investigated the claims of his friend, journalist Fletcher Robinson, who told him of about the Black Shuck, a dark, spectral beast that prowled the lonely moors, looking for souls to devour.

Travel north, to the seaside town of Cromer in the county of Norfolk, and you'll see where Fletcher Robinson first told Arthur Conan Doyle about the Black Shuck. The two were visiting Cromer for a golfing holiday, when Robinson told Doyle about the legendary Black Shuck that had haunted the good people of Norfolk for centuries. 

According to researchers, Arthur Conan Doyle transformed Dartmoor's Fox Tor Mire into Grimpen Mire for The Hound of the Baskervilles. He transformed stories of a notorious Dartmoor lord of the manor, Richard Cabell of Brock Hall, into Hugo Baskerville. He even combined several large houses, so say Dartmoor historians, into Baskerville Hall. 

Historians in seaside Cromer disagree, at least with the latter. They point to Cromer Hall, a local manor house, as the inspiration for Baskerville Hall. They claim that descriptions in The Hound of the Baskervilles portray Cromer Hall, not some backward Dartmoor manor house. 

Did an evil lord of Cromer Hall once live to hunt and terrorize the peasantry? Was this wicked aristocrat killed by the ghostly Black Shuck, whose fearsome howls could be heard across the land at night? And does the Black Shuck still roam Cromer and Dartmoor?

If you visit either place, and the wind sweeps over the land, then you'll know.

Dragon Dave

2017 In Review Part 2

Last week, I listed all the novels I read in 2017 on the right. Here's the final post on those I felt compelled to tell you about.

Jeffrey Archer's house:
 the Old Vicarage, Grantchester 2017

Shall We Tell The President by Jeffrey Archer
A taut political thriller set in Washington DC, written by a former politician who worked at the highest levels of British government. I found it interesting how he knows so much about the workings of the American government and its law enforcement agencies. I visited the author's house in Cambridge last year. 

St. Edmundsbury Cathedral 2017

In Mary's Reign by Emma Orczy
A romance involving renowned Protestant-hater Mary I, the daughter of Henry VIII, a young man at court, and two women who look startlingly similar. I visited Bury St. Edmunds this year. It was a rainy day, so we had little time to explore the town. So we spent it largely inside the cathedral. Had I read the novel before I visited the town, I might have ventured out to nearby St. Mary's Church, where she was buried.

Paddington Helps Out by Michael Bond
The answer, in case you are wondering, is No. One can never get enough of Paddington Bear.

Five Hundred Years After by Steven Brust
I'm most familiar with Brust's stories about Vlad, the former assassin and underworld figure, who is on the run from his fantasy-world equivalent of organized crime. He drops lots of hints about how his world came to be, with it's mix of witchcraft and sorcery. This one leads up to a pivotal event in the world's history, and involves the ancestors of Vlad and his friends (and perhaps a few of his longer lived friends). 

The War in the Air by H.G. Wells
A bicycle repairman helps extricate a man and a woman from a downed air balloon on a windswept beach. Then the air balloon takes off again, and whisks him off to Germany. The army finds him, along with plans for a proposed airplane. He is brought on board a zeppelin, and transported across the ocean to the United States, where the fleet of German zeppelins devastate New York. A strangely prophetic novel, written three decades before World War II.

Big Ben 2011

The Clockwise Man by Justin Richards
While I'm a Doctor Who fan, I've never really liked the TV versions of the Ninth Doctor and his companion Rose. But I liked their characterization in this book, as they investigate attacks on people in early twentieth century London. The story featured displaced European aristocrats, who had to flee to England for their lives, much like Baroness Emma Orczy. And the climax occurs inside Big Ben, an English landmark I'd very much like to tour, but probably would never be allowed inside. 

The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle
Unlike his Sherlock Holmes adventures, this is a 14th Century historical novel based partly in Minstead, England. It's really a series of misadventures featuring a young man who grows up believing he will become a monk, but falls in love with a noblewoman, becomes a squire, and eventually a knight and a landowner. As it happens, Minstead sits roughly halfway between Brighton (which I visited in 2013), and Lyme Regis (which I visited in 2015). Arthur Conan Doyle must have liked the town, as he was buried there.

E. F. Benson's House in London 2013

The English Way of Death by Gareth Roberts
An adventure in 1930s England, featuring the 4th Doctor and favorite companions Romana and K-9. There's some interesting nods to the Mapp and Lucia series by E. F. Benson. It takes place near the Victoria and Albert museum, where E. F. Benson lived, and also out on an English beach, where a strange brick bathing hut serves as an entry portal to another dimension. 

Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne
A fond look back at childhood stories, and a reminder that an important and beloved novel can be whimsical and lighthearted.

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Global warming has left many of the world's coastal cities underwater. Large swathes of New York City now stand in the intertidal zone. Skyscrapers have been fortified to withstand the conditions, and life goes on as usual, with intrigues, big business, and disasters. Homeless people live in boats on the water, scavenging to get by. Others who can't afford housing stay in tents atop the skyscrapers. The novel features a woman who travels around the world in a blimp, transplanting endangered animals to  regions where climate shift will allow them to survive. Another thread involves a search for buried treasure from a ship that sank off the coast during America's Revolutionary War. There are references aplenty to Herman Melville, including a lost story or novel which might also be recovered. But mostly it's a story about the centuries-old history of the city, and a thoughtful vision of its potential future.

A Mississippi River Boat in England?
Horning 2017

The Confidence Man by Herman Melville
The Canterbury Tales on a Mississippi River Boat. The theme is how much are you willing to trust, and believe in, your neighbor. Will you choose to believe in a good cause, based only upon a stranger's word? This is a tiresome read, and most of the time I was plodding through it. I don't recommend it. Nonetheless, it is one that challenged my outlook regarding the "good causes" people ask me to help, whether they be legally organized charities, or the scruffy, unwashed person on the street.

A Son of the People by Emma Orczy
A Hungarian Lord of the Manor tries to build a modern mill, using principles he's read about in England. But the local serfs are fearful that his advancements will leave them out of work, and they rebel by setting fire to the fields. While the rich lord is foreword-thinking, he's stupid about money, and ends up owing everything to a greedy Jewish moneylender. A peasant, who has worked hard and invested wisely, comes to his aid, and asks for his daughter's hand in return. This semi-autobiographical novel makes for an interesting study of life at the time in Europe, the interaction of the classes, racism, and the inevitable march of technological progress.

I'd be honored if any of my (eventual) published novels were to prove as noteworthy as the above listed titles.

Dragon Dave

Traveling with H.G. Wells, Jane Austen, and Arthur Conan Doyle

In November, I read several graphic novels, lots of comics, and a book on geology. I also read three novels. The first, by H. G. Wells, transported me to Switzerland. Or, at least, so it seemed. 

Supposedly, A Modern Utopia takes place on a planet like Earth in another solar system, but the descriptions of the landscape, and the picturesque villages, reminded me of Switzerland. In many ways, it reminded me of one of his earlier novels, The Wheels of Chance. In that novel, his protagonist, a young draper, sets off on a bicycle holiday in the south of England. His descriptions of the landscape are so vivid, so evocative, and so overwhelmingly beautiful that it made me want to follow the hero's bicycle journey with my wife. In A Modern Utopia, I felt as though he was transporting me to Switzerland. It's a country I would very much like to visit some day, and Wells spoke just as passionately about his surroundings in this idealized world as he did in The Wheels of Chance. 

After A Modern Utopia, Jane Austen returned me to some familiar sites in her novel Persuasion. The story begins in a manor house in Somerset, a county in southern England. In fact, it's the same county in which the real-life manor in the TV series To The Manor Born is located. 

As in the TV series, Austen's protagonist Anne, through no fault of her own, is forced to leave her beloved country home due to the fiscal mismanagement of a family member: in this case, her father. So she travels to stay with a family friend, then another member of her family, and this second visit takes her to Lyme Regis. 

While she and her party tour the seaside resort, a crucial event in the story takes place on the Cobb. This is a long walkway or pier, and perhaps the town's most striking feature. 

Jane Austen's characters then make their way to Bath, a setting she used in Northanger Abbey, which I read in October. Sadly, she doesn't offer much description of Bath in Persuasion. Austen painted a more vibrant view of the historic city in Northanger Abbey. (Also, Charles Dickens set part of his first novel The Pickwick Papers there, which I read earlier this year). Still, reading about Anne's visit to Bath made me want to travel there. It was a fashionable resort town in Austen's time, and remains a popular town for tourists today.

Finally, I returned to England for The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. This second collection of stories took me back to London, the great town's suburbs, and other towns in rural England. Then for the last story, "The Final Problem", Arthur Conan Doyle returned me to Switzerland, as Holmes and Watson seek to evade the clutches of the evil Professor Moriarty. As all Holmes aficionados know, Holmes and Moriarty have their final confrontation at a very real place: Reichenbach Falls. Having seen many dramatizations of this beloved story, I enjoyed reading Doyle's words, and following the characters' journey through Switzerland. 

Ah, the places great stories can take us!

Dragon Dave

May Reading Roundup Part 2

6. Transit by Ben Aaronovitch. What if you could travel to another planet simply by boarding a train. This is the future that the seventh Doctor Who and his companion Bernice Summerfield confront in this New Adventures novel. The only problem is that, by creating wormholes through normal space, the designers have given entry points for beings from another dimension. The action takes place all over the solar system, from Earth to Mars to Pluto, and all places in between. The Doctor will not allow these beings to take control of our worlds and our lives. But can he prevent it? The action, and the reasoning behind it, may be a little difficult to follow at times, following as it does the English literary style of the New Weird. But the story is fun, told at an epic scale, and features a young black woman who is a descendant of the classic Doctor Who character, Brigadier Leftbridge Stewart.

7. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I also read this classic novel on my Kindle. We meet a mole who decides that, instead of keeping his home underground tidy, he would rather go boating every day with his friend the water rat. He and Rat get along famously, and make a new friend in Toad. But whereas Mole and Rat make rational, thoughtful decisions, the Toad always wants to be the center of attention. He follows the latest fads, but never takes the time to master any skills. Thus, when he discovers he likes driving automobiles, he drives them too fast, and crashes them. Rat and Mole try to intervene, and prevent him from ruining his reputation, and losing his wealth through his extravagance, but Toad escapes from them, and gets into even more trouble. It's a fun novel, which has been adapted many times for TV. It amazes me how powerfully this simple story has affected generations of readers and viewers. Sadly, my version didn't come with any illustrations, such as in the edition pictured above. Maybe I'll have to watch a TV version, and see how others adapted it for the small screen.

8. Artemis Invaded by Jane Lindskold. This is the second of a two-part series about a planet that has been lost by galactic civilization. After society climbs back from its crash, one young man from a powerful family discovers Artemis, a world created by prior generations as a pleasure planet. Technology does not work there, and his shuttle crashes before he can land safely. But he makes friends with a young lady, a hunter, who has a psychic connection with a puma. In this second novel, other members of the man's family land on Artemis. They seek to control the natives and exploit the technology of a former age. As some of this technology involves powerful weapons, this is of concern to all. But the biggest dilemma is faced by Adara, the young huntress. During the events of book one, she came into psychic communication with the planet's consciousness. Artemis offers her stronger powers, and a means to defend her world against the grasping avarice of the man's family. But to accept Artemis' gift means opening herself up even more to Artemis. Will there be anything of Adara left is she accepts these offered powers? Or will she become simply a human extension of the planetary consciousness? 

A building in Oxford, the historic university
Gerald will later attend.

9. Gerald Eversley's Friendship by James Welldon. This is an ebook which I read in the PDF format on my computer. It's a nineteenth century English novel written by a Church of England priest. The title character attends St Anselm's on a scholarship, as his father, the vicar of a small country village, could not have afforded to send him. There he makes a friend in the rich son of an English lord. While Gerald is introverted, and makes few friends, he slowly gains the respect of his peers through his scholastic efforts, as well as his sterling character. He eventually gains a scholarship to Oxford University. But while it seems like his life is a smooth rise to the top of society, it is anything but. His growing knowledge of the world around him makes it difficult for him to believe in the tenets of Christianity, which separates him from his parents. And another setback, the illness of someone he loves, looms in his future. Ultimately, the friend he made the first day at St. Anselm's school that will save him from committing a terrible folly. But then, that is the power of friendship.

Dinosaurs live not only on isolated Central American plateaus,
but also in Natural History Museum in Oxford, England.

10. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. A family member once told me that, while he would never read any story I wrote, he would watch a film version of any book I wrote. The numerous film versions of The Lost World demonstrate how var a film (or for that matter, a TV adaptation) can veer from the original novel. I've seen several versions, and none of them bear much resemblance to Doyle's classic novel, at least in my memory. Actually, this novel reminds me of the trilogy of novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, beginning with The Land That Time Forgot. It's the story of Professor Challenger, who leads an expedition to a Central American plateau. There dinosaurs live, along with a few primitive humans, and a race of intelligent, aggressive apes. But no creatures are more aggressive than the pterodactyls, those dragons of the prehistoric age. It was interesting to read the Sherlock Holmes stories, so grounded in nuts and bolts of normal Victorian life, and then read this flight of fantasy by the same author. But then, while Burroughs' novels are more fantasy than science, Doyle writes a quintessential science fiction novel. To honor him, Michael Crichton gave his sequel to Jurassic Park the same title as Doyle's classic novel. A few years ago, I read Dinosaur Summer, which author Greg Bear fashioned as a more direct sequel to Doyle's. Only instead of Doctor Challenger, his heroes are real life people like special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, and the men who made the original movie "King Kong."

11. The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie. A young man travels from Africa to England. Although he attended the best schools in England, he travels under an assumed name. He does so because he left England to escape large debts. He also wishes to keep a low profile. He undertakes this journey for two reasons. He must deliver the memoirs of a deceased politician to the publishers, while evading the agents of government factions who wish to see the manuscript destroyed. He also seeks to return a collection of letters to a lady, a member of the aristocracy, who would see her world erupt in scandal should they reach other members of society. But on his first day in England, he is attacked in his hotel room. That night, the letters are stolen. The following day, he delivers the memoirs to an agent of the publisher, only to later learn that the man to whom he delivered the manuscript was an imposter. His efforts to reclaim the manuscript and the letters will lead him to Miss Virginia Revel, the woman implicated in the letters, and take him to a grand English manor house known as Chimneys. I found this novel impossible to put down. I read the final half of it one evening. The recent TV version featured Miss Marple, and told an entertaining story. But this novel, which Agatha Christie wrote two years before she created her classic heroine, seemed far richer.

Well, there you have it, the list of books I read May. It does not attempt to address all the individual issues of comics I read, aside from those collected in book form. It was a good month for reading, and I can say that, for all their differences, I enjoyed them all a lot. That being said, I hope for a full return to health next month, and less reading. While I enjoy having virtual adventures on the printed page, I prefer to have some real life adventures as well. Still, if I had to be sick, I couldn't have wished for better books to keep me company.

Dragon Dave

May Reading Roundup Part 1

May was a good month for reading, if a bad month for other reasons. Although we returned feeling healthy and rested from Hawaii, we soon got sick. Whatever we caught, the illness lingered. But, while this limited how much we accomplished in other aspects of our lives, it was good for my reading. Here's a rundown of the books I read last month.

Wychnor House, in the English Midlands,
one of many former manor houses
that have since been turned into hotels.

1. Ravenshoe by Henry Kingsley. This was a nineteenth century English novel about a young man raised as a protestant in a Catholic household. Eventually, the Catholic priest reveals that the Protestant son is actually a bastard, and the son of an estate worker is actually an heir to the family fortune. The Protestant son leaves his family's manor house, goes to serve as a groom to a rich man, and eventually joins the army. He goes abroad to fight in the Crimean War, and even takes part in the Charge of the Light Brigade. This is a long, epic-style novel. It's less fun than The Pickwick Papers, but like Charles Dickens' novel, it paints a compelling portrait of life among the various social classes in another age.

2. Y: The Last Man: Book One by Brian K. Vaughan. This is a graphic novel I picked up in Hawaii, but finished after I returned home. It collects the first ten issues of the sixty-issue series. In the first issue, an unexplained event occurs, and every male Human and animal dies. This event crashes governments, the financial markets, and industries that supply basic needs like power, water, and food. As the title suggests, one man survives, along with his pet male monkey. The new female president assigns him a bodyguard, who travels with him to find a genetics research scientist who they hope may determine why he lived, while all the other males died. Of course, as he faces dangers at every turn, including from a group of militant Amazon warriors who ascribe all the evils of the world to man. The tension is increased by the knowledge that if he dies, all humanity will follow him.

3. Soulless by Gail Carriger. This recent novel is set in the nineteenth century. It focuses on a heroine who lacks a soul. This makes her immune to the bite of werewolves and vampires, who are created by possessing an "excess" of soul. While Victorian Britain is ruled by the monarch, power blocks of werewolves and vampires act as the Queen's advisors. As for our heroine, she is courted by a scientist who seeks a cure for an "excess" of soul, which would wipe out vampires and werewolves. At the same time, she is courted by a werewolf who oversees a powerful domestic force that guards ordinary citizens against supernatural dangers. For our heroine needs no outside assistance. With her cunning, and her silver-tipped umbrella, and her soulless status, she can defend herself against most every danger that threatens her. If only she had lighter skin, and possessed the features that London society defines as "beautiful." Then she could find a wealthy suitor, and get married!

4. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Is anyone in the world unfamiliar with Sherlock Holmes? This collection of short stories needs little introduction or summary. These are the cases that made Holmes into a household world in Victorian England. I read these stories on my Kindle, a few pages or so each night, until my wife drifted off to sleep. Then reluctantly, I switched over to another novel, such as Ravenshoe, which I also read on my Kindle. 

5. WildCATs Compendium by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi. This graphic novel collects the first four issues of this series. The WildCATS is a team of superheroes, overseen by a dwarf (not a mythical being, but a person of short stature) who has gone from homeless to billionaire in a few years. He has accomplished this feat with the aid of a spectral being who can see into the future. Thus, he has raised a team of superheroes, as he knows that there is an evil force, a member of the Daemonite race, who is raising an army of superheroes to control the war. It's all part of a centuries-long war between the Kerubim and the Daemonites, two races who arrived on Earth long ago, and now seek to control the world. If these characters bear some similarities with more recognizable characters from Marvel, they're still fun, and the artwork is particularly striking.

It's kind of an interesting mix so far, comprising an English family novel, a collection of mysteries, a post apocalyptic tale, a clash of superheroes, and a Jane Austen style fantasy mashup. I'll cover the remaining six books in Part 2.

Dragon Dave 

Arthur Conan Doyle on the Dangers of Collecting Butterflies

Warning: This post contains a spoiler for Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Read on at your own risk!

In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr John Watson takes a walk across the moor. There, in the wilds of England's Dartmoor National Forest, he meets a man dressed in a grey suit and wearing a straw hat. Or, as Watson describes him: A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly net in one of his hands. The man introduces himself as Mr Stapleton of nearby Merripit House. Then, after warning Watson to beware the dangers of Grimpen Mire, he dashes off in the hopes of capturing a Cyclopides, a type of butterfly also known as a South American Skipper. 

Dartmoor National Forest is a place of rugged natural beauty. As my wife and I drove through the park, stopping off at Princetown, the home of the famous prison, where Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired to write The Hound of the Baskervilles, and several important tors, I could not help but wonder what it was like to travel through and live on the moor in the day when people crossed it on foot, on horseback, or in wooden wagons pulled by those delightful Dartmoor ponies. It's hard to imagine living there, especially when the wind howls across the land. But people do, and some of them own some pretty large spreads.

Mr Stapleton could have enjoyed a long life in Dartmoor, spending each evening in Merripit House, and days out wandering the moors in search of his beloved butterflies and insects. He was a noted naturalist, and made several important finds there. Unfortunately, he decided to covet his neighbor's property, and reawakened the old myth about the Hound of the Baskervilles to frighten away the residents of Baskerville Hall, in the hope that he could gain possession of it instead. Unfortunately for him, Sherlock Holmes takes the information Watson gathers on Mr Stapleton to the British Museum. There he learns that the man's really a Baskerville, and that he was the first to describe a species of moth while living in Yorkshire.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you plan on becoming a criminal, keep your hobbies at the amateur level. Otherwise, the police will discover your true identity, these days via a quick internet search. Either that, or you can devote yourself to pursuing your interests, and sharing that passion with others.

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Other Side of Dartmoor

In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr John Watson describes Dartmoor Forest as a dark, dangerous, and wild place. This is largely the way we found it during our two days there last year. But there were a few exceptions to the rule, and one of those was in a Bed & Breakfast near Hay Tor.

Hay Tor is a cluster of boulders, strewn across the top of a fell in Dartmoor. The wind rushes up and over these small hills, or fells, battering your body and howling in your ears. But at our Bed & Breakfast near Hay Tor, the air was quiet and still. After continually getting inundated by the angry elements, I enjoyed wandering the grounds outside our room, and marvel at the beauty of the gardens.

I suppose part of the reason for this is that this little neighborhood was surrounded by trees, that form a natural windbreak, preventing the wind from rushing over this area and tearing their plants, bushes, and flowers to shreds. Had Baskerville Hall been surrounded by tall trees, Arthur Conan Doyle might have described the estate differently. Come to think of it, I believe Dr John Watson mentions a number of tall shrubs that formed barriers around the grounds, so perhaps these offered Baskerville Hall a little shelter from the wind. But then, Sir Henry only employed two servants, a butler and a cook. Had he employed a full-time gardener, perhaps Baskerville Hall could have enjoyed a more pleasant aspect.

I suspect Arthur Conan Doyle wished readers to see Baskerville Hall as dark and forbidding as the surrounding countryside. Of his four Sherlock Holmes novels, only one takes place in and around London. Half of the first novel, A Study in Scarlet, takes place in the wild western state of Utah, where cowboys drive cattle across the range, covered wagons bring settlers to untamed lands, and bandits pillage and murder those they encounter. Half of his final Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, takes place in a mining town in the United States. There, the local branch of a men's club has become the headquarters for organized crime. The men in this group steal from nonmembers, extort businesses, and beat and kill other residents in their lust for riches and power. So it makes sense that for his third novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle sought to make a Dartmoor Forest seem wild and forbidding to English readers. 

Given the way the elements had raged at us, my wife and I brought food with us, and planned on eating in our room that night. But the air was so still, the temperature so moderate, and our surroundings so beautiful, we enjoyed a pleasant, relaxing dinner at a picnic table outside our room. Which just goes to show that no matter how vividly an author describes a particular place, you really can't know what it's like until you actually visit. But then, isn't that a great reason to travel: to check out the places that inspired authors like Arthur Conan Doyle to use them as settings for their stories?

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle: Punishment in Dartmoor

In his investigations, Sherlock Holmes sometimes allows a prisoner to escape capture. He regards it as his duty to solve the case, not catch the criminal. In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, it is Dr. John Watson who allows a prisoner to go free. While staying at Baskerville Hall, Dr. Watson and Sir Henry Baskerville learn that the brother of a servant is hiding out on the moor. When they try to apprehend the fellow, the butler and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore, intercede on the criminal's behalf. They beg the gentlemen to leave him alone for a few days, as they have secretly secured his passage aboard a ship traveling to South America.

While exploring the glories and dangers of Dartmoor, Arthur Conan Doyle stayed in the Duchy Hotel in Princetown, which now serves as the visitor center for Dartmoor National Park. 

There, Doyle doubtless heard shocking tales of the inhuman crimes for which inmates of the famous prison located on the outskirts of the town had been sentenced. Yet we mainly see Seldon, a dangerous escaped convict, through his sister's eyes. 

"Yes sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humored him too much when he was a lad, and gave him his way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then, as he grew older, he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke his mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower, until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold; but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with, as an elder sister would."

The next day, rain covers the land, and Watson cannot help thinking of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor.

While visiting Dartmoor this summer, wearing long pants and a rain jacket proved mandatory. Winds howled across the barren landscape, and rainclouds sped across the land. The sheep and cattle grazing on the rocky ground seemed inured to their surroundings. But despite its rugged beauty, I couldn't imagine living in Dartmoor.

And that was during the summer, not during the hard autumn rains, or the bitter winter snowstorms.

Whatever Dr. John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, or Arthur Conan Doyle thought of England's prison system in the early twentieth century, I can sympathize with Watson's thoughts on anyone forced to live rough on the moor.

Poor fellow! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them.

Dragon Dave