The Umbrella Stand
Sherlock Holmes has an umbrella stand at 221B. Such a simple and ordinary thing to have such a special place in his life. Unless you know it's contents and their story…..
The Umbrella Stand
Actress and author Joyce Grenfell used to maintain that you could read a person by the content of their bookshelves. But as far as Sherlock Holmes was concerned, the best way to read him would be to check his umbrella stand. Not that anyone ever did - or would. For whoever looks at the jumble of contents in an umbrella stand?
In fact whoever even notices such an old fashioned thing as an umbrella stand at all?
But look closer. For an umbrella stand contains the history, the minutiae and the detritus of an entire life. Sherlock's entire life. If you know what you are looking for. Or even looking at.
The tall cylindrical blue and white Kangxi Chinese porcelain urn covered in hand painted buildings and mountains was a family piece; so heavy that only a determined person would bother to upturn it and find whatever could be cached in the hollow beneath; a baggie of drugs, a spliff, or contentious small samples of evidence kept secret and safe, and tucked well out of the way.
The ash thumbstick was the tall and the simplest thing in the umbrella stand. He had cut it himself as a teenager, selecting the right tree in the covert that could be seen from his childhood bedroom window, choosing the living branch carefully to ensure a comfortable Y fork at the top for resting the thumb in when walking, for balance and rest. Stripping the bark, smoothing and sandpapering the wood, treating it with oil and varnish and adding a silver ferrule at the end. All patience and attention to process.
Creating it had been a labour of love and focus over one school holiday, and the end result was useful as well as aesthetically pleasing. It had spent a lot of time just propped in the corner of his bedroom; sliding down the side of the wall and being picked up again, until, finally annoyed by this, he had purloined the umbrella stand from beside a rear entrance and heaved it up to his bedroom. No-one had noticed it missing, so he had claimed the stand as his own for evermore, and it had accompanied him to Baker Street.
So the thumb stick was the first inhabitant of the stand in his ownership. As a walking aid for rambling hills and fells, the thumbstick was not vital, exactly, but useful. He also discovered it was extremely handy for reaching out for items, dislodging hidden things in high or tucked away places, unlatching windows and vents and reaching and probing into dark and secret corners. Yes, the thumbstick came in handy for all sorts of licit and illicit little tasks, even in the city. It was an old and trusted friend.
The polo stick with it's heavy mallet head was kept in the stand as something of a joke, a bit of a conversation piece. Polo had been a schooldays activity, incorporating equestrian skills, strategy and sheer brute force into one fluid high speed whole, demanding a cool commitment in himself he had always been proud of.
Kipling's noble polo pony The Maltese Cat had been a childhood hero of courage and self sacrifice. Mycroft had caught him reading it one winter's afternoon and had mocked him out if his tearful sentimental immersion in the story, the scorn and disdain in his brother's face and voice enough to teach the idealistic child a lesson about and against cheap sentiment; of being mistrustful of the loner who walks into the sea, who holds back destruction so the more worthy can escape their fate, of introduction of the loyal dog that always dies at the end. So Sherlock had learnt that lesson well and early. And yet the Cat, the 'past pluperfect prestissimo of the game' had remained in his heart forever and planted a small seed of inspiration, his life lesson always heartfelt and inspiring. Whatever Mycroft said about it.
So he could still swing the polo stick with deadly accuracy, even though there was little opportunity or space to do this within the confines of Baker Street. But at it's full fifty inch macau-cane length with it's eight ounce weight mallet head, it's presence would terrify any burglar, so that was good enough reason to retain it in full view!
Woe betide any amateur who tried to wield it, because they would probably knock themselves out while getting hopelessly entangled in the furniture! Keeping the polo stick was both protection and reminder of many things.
If anyone ever noticed the umbrella stand, they often smiled ruefully at the old fashioned soft yard broom upended and stuck in there. If they ever attempted to heft the brush the head always dropped off. It was merely jammed onto the end of what looked like the shaft, the component parts only vaguely married together for the look of the thing.
They pushed the head back onto the shaft in embarrassment at having disturbed the broom at all. And if they mentioned it to Sherlock, he would look away as if distracted and mutter something vague about it being 'a job to get round to.' Without ever having any intention of 'getting around to.'
Because this excuse was a blatant lie. The parts had always been separate, had never been married together. The soft brush head sat where it was but was easily detached and came in very handy for cleaning off evidence that had been dusty or dropped in mud and needed a quick rough clean, or for bringing together ash or rock samples to deliver into an evidence bag. Vital for the work in it's own terms.
While what looked like the broom shaft was actually oak; a strong and enduring material, not a wood used as a broom handle normally. Thicker and longer than an ordinary broom handle, if anyone was really looking and noticing such a thing, or was expert with a yard broom. Although experts with yard brooms were not regular visitors to Baker Street, so a high class weapon remained - as many other things within Sherlock's home - hidden in plain sight.
.
For take that length of wood into the hands, and instantly the greatest and most skilful silent weapon, the cheapest, simplest, most classic weapon that reached far back into history - in various lengths and guises - the stave, the single stick, the quarter staff appeared in full working mode.
In the hands of an expert like Sherlock Holmes this plain length of wood became a swift and effective fighting weapon that could stun, kill or maim with speed and efficiency. Innocent it might look to the layman, but was truly a weapon to be feared.
As a child he had wanted to be a pirate. A plastic sword from Woolworth's did not feel alive in the hand like a length of wood with a handguard made of a shorter piece of wood tied in place with garden twine stolen from the workbench in the glasshouse.
Thus the fascination with hand weapons began. Take a piece of wood…
The plain efficiency and versatility of fighting staves and cudgels - even the heavy topped Irish blackthorn shillelagh - had always appealed to him and proved their efficacy, as did the fact such items were wildly out of fashion. No sharp edges, so no technology; just speed and balance and coordination. Satisfying as a skill, and transferable to so many other tools and skills of his trade.
Singlestick combat was another old skill he had from school, and now saw coming back into fashion. And as for Barititsu…no, not baritsu as on the cherished print over his bed! He was amused by that misprint, and the ludicrous thought that the writer of Baritsu had had too delicate a sensibility to write a word with 'tit' within it. But that was another story altogether…
Oh yes! And there really was an umbrella in the umbrella stand! One of Swaine and Adeney's best. With a Malacca handle and black silk dome, the umbrella actually protected the carrier from the weather, as intended. But twist the silver ferrule in the correct manner and a nine inch stiletto of Spanish steel came quietly into the hand. At it's appearance any attacker would back off and run away. At it's use from an owner like Sherlock Holmes, they would not get that chance.
Highly illegal, of course. But a regular accompaniment of Victorian gentlemen fearing thieves and footpads. Sherlock had found it in a dusty little books and miscellanea shop behind Charing Cross Road. He had been looking for Georgian medical tomes, but had found the umbrella instead.
It was a sad and neglected thing then, grey with age, the silk green along the spines as the metal interacted with the silk. He had not even needed to whisper the blade from the shaft to know what was in his hands, and with a secret little smile had offered a price to the bookseller. Ridiculously cheap; the fact the man accepted the offer with alacrity meant he had no idea that the tatty old umbrella was something other than it appeared.
Sherlock had hugged it to his chest all the way home like a gleeful small child with a hard won plastic cricket trophy. Had cleaned the shaft and returned it to it's honey gold best, had the umbrella canopy re-silked, but then had tended to the blade himself, cleaning the metal with it's filigree decoration until it returned proudly to it's dull deep sheen, hand sharpening the blade, honing it with carborundum. A soothing task for a wet afternoon.
And sometimes, when dressed at his best for an official outing, the umbrella came too. It gave him confidence, and made him look like a Victoria gentleman with modern cool even more than he normally did; but it was also something he would never leave on a train or in the back of a taxi. It was far too precious.
No-one ever commented on the very plain rosewood walking stick. It came in handy when he occasionally cricked an ankle chasing over rooftops, or coping with a ripped calf muscle or the like; an everyday consequence to being a highly successful consulting detective.
This, too was an antique. It was a solid stick in the hand, and no-one ever suspected that the shaft was hollow and the walking cane was a sword stick. A fabled weapon for centuries from the Roman dolon to the Indian gupti and the Japanese shikomeizue the sword stick was a fashionable yet very real protection in Georgian and Victorian times, and other walking sticks had varied and novel gadgets within them that included compasses, tools of a trade such as surveying and watchmaking, or even glass vials for a secret tipple of brandy.
The Criminal Justice Act 1988 banned the use and carrying of sword sticks, but Sherlock's is legal to own - something he feels quite smug about - as it is more than 100 years old.
Not so the ultra modern black acrylic Japanese looking walking stick nestled next to it; for not only does that have a torchlight in the handle, but it is also complete with a one million volt stun gun. A hi tech gadget never yet used; but ready and waiting just in case, complete with wall charger. Seems a bit of a cheat, but one has to be always prepared, at the cutting edge of skills and technology, and the black stick always reminds him of this principle.
The faded pink and white ladies parasol next to it had been his great grandmother's. He had found it at home and kept it, with the amused intention of showing it to The Woman; she would have been amused by such a feminine looking concealed weapon and remarked with a knowing smile that the female of the species was always deadlier than the male. And he would have smiled, and agreed, and made a mental note for the future.
Between the old and fascinating sticks, John Watson's disgarded, ugly and purely functional NHS standard issue adjustable aluminium walking stick was always ignored. That remains in the stand for sentimental reasons only - John Watson's sentiment, naturally. Or in case he ever really needed it again. But no-one has time for psychosomatic limps at 221B, Baker Street. So perhaps not.
In the summer the ancient pitted steel poker from the fireplace in the sitting room was often relegated to the umbrella stand to be out of the way. Mainly because John Watson complained that the engraved and enamelled handle was far too broad to hold comfortably because he consistently put his hand around the outside, and not the inside, of the gauntlet handle.
Sherlock always smiled softly to himself at that, and declined to explain that the poker was actually an Indian pata, a Marathi fighting sword used by warrior horsemen singly, or as danpata with one in either hand when on foot, the handle actually a gauntlet, the hand inserted, the hilt protecting the hand and lower forearm from strikes as well as offering extra strength; a sword only for the use of an expert.
Having the skill to be that expert, Sherlock preferred to keep that other skill as secret as several others. Come the time, come the capacity. And he didn't want to be teased yet again about being a smart arse by explaining that…..
He had found the pata on the same market stall as the Morroccan leather medical case containing the Victorian drug taking kit. He brought both home as useful curiosities, and first used the pata as a fire poker for obvious reasons; the gauntlet also protected the hand when turning over the sitting room firebed to get maximum heat from the red hot embers for making the best ever toast - over the fire on an old fashioned toasting fork.
The modern domestic practicality for such a sophisticated fighting tool had amused him, so normally the pata sat at the side of the grate in winter to be useful; but remained also a useful weapon always at hand. If needed quickly. Oddly reassuring; a deadly weapon hidden in plain sight like that. A visitor - or even John Watson - would see but not observe.
Mycroft, however, would sit by the fire and twitch an eyebrow at the pata but never deign to comment on it. His ever-so-slightly dyspeptic glance at the sword every time he entered the room amused Sherlock; he liked the way it irritated and discomforted his brother. So he perversely liked to keep it in full view, and often within inches of Mycroft's elegantly presented foot as they sat opposite each other by the fireside. He could then lean forward onto the hearth and move the coals, gesturing the deadly weapon in his brother's direction as he did so.
Sometimes his brother would hiss: "Don't be so childish!" out of the corner of his mouth at him when he did that. Sherlock would return his gaze, all blank eyed innocence, while John Watson would look up from his laptop with a little puzzled frown, yet again not understanding the subtext of what was passing between the brothers and then look away again, piqued at his exclusion, mild as it was. But he was used to the secret language of the brothers, and mostly immune to it by now.
And then there was the black riding crop. There was always the riding crop, pushed safely down so it could be barely seen, never remarked upon and never borrowed. An old crop, with a whalebone shaft to be flexible and effective. It had been his mother's and he had used it out riding long after she died. Out of respect and affection and practicality. An old tradition honoured it was, for a horseman or woman to pass down boots and spurs, Burberry riding macs and whips.
He had been victorious in equestrian competitions with that crop, and had suffered from it and because of it. The crop had once held bad memories of pain and damage, but he had kept it out of sheer refusal to be blighted by those experiences, but had then had it repaired and replaited, learning for himself how to take the eight strands of leather, to plait them round the shaft in twos, to wet and roll to force the strands to a smooth plaited finish, how to fit the silver collared keeper at the head - inscribed with his mother's initials in a flowing cursive script, barely worn - to add the leather keeper at the bottom.
The whip came in useful in many ways. Many would think of it as a sex toy when kept in the city - don't think of The Woman, and how she had beaten him with her almost
identical crop, because he rarely indulged or suffered that memory - but to Sherlock the crop could also be a blunt instrument, a threat and a handy implement for flogging dead bodies to measure bruising on the recently deceased when checking alibis.
Doing this at Bart's had marked the day he had first met Dr John Watson and his life changed forever. So the crop was an appropriate memento and marker in the circumstances.
Which meant the umbrella stand was quite full, and seemed to lack only a broken tennis racquet, a croquet mallet and a fishing rod to make a complete set of what looked to be a useless, archaic and totally antiquated jumble of ill assorted kit.
Only Sherlock knew the full story of his umbrella stand, and he wasn't telling. He got too much pleasure and reassurance from that strange collection of items. Like most things that could be found in the cosy and sometimes alarming mix of contents that was 221B, everything had a history, and a backstory, and a unique place in the life and times of Sherlock Holmes.
He liked it that way. Like the headphones on the bison skull, the old Persian slipper, the jack knife on the mantelpiece…and perhaps one day the kubaton fighting stick that posed as his keyring and looked rather like a blunt, grooved bradawl, would come in useful too: for some passing bout of hand to hand combat when the keyring could act as flail, or affect pressure point attacks, hammerfist strikes, or harden a fist for a punch.
For that was his life. Something extraordinary in response to the ordinary, something exotic in protection against the ugly everyday, the martial art ideal of learning and using fighting skills to protect and defend, but also to advance and enrich and ennoble life and the mind.
So the umbrella stand stayed just as it was. Not thrown out because umbrella stands are out of fashion, not tidied because everything within it has it's own particular place.
The umbrella stand silently welcomed him home every time he returned from his adventures, and he often gave it a rueful smile in passing. Because it was as much a part of him as the Belstaff and the Browning, the violin and the animal vitality, the chemistry and the chaos. Treasure trove, life history, armoury. And all so very, very, ordinary. Unless you knew.
END
Author's notes:
There really is a form of wrestling, invented by a Victorian Englishman in Japan, called Bartitsu; and there is still a Bartitsu Society. As you may expect, there are various theories as to why ACD changed it to Baritsu, among them not wanting to infringe copyright, forgetfulness, copying a misspelling in Pearson's Magazine - and simply disliking a word with the word 'tit' inside it - Victorian sensibilities, eh?
In polo English players call the item the player holds with which to whack the ball a polo stick; in the US it is called a mallet. Same thing, merely the difference between English and American English. Polo was formerly an Olympic sport, and many public schools have their own polo clubs and tournaments.
The Maltese Cat is probably the best known, accurate and most beautiful short story about polo ever written, first appearing in The Pall Mall Gazette in 1895; quite a memorable years for Sherlock Holmes also, not to mention John Watson's blog counter! Kipling himself played, and the personality of the Cat would appeal to Sherlock. The pony came from Malta and had pulled a vegetable cart until his speed and agility was discovered; his own philosophy, rather like Sherlock's: "we don't play the maxims, we play the game."
Singlestick is still practised; the weapons look like long children's wooden swords with a leather hand guard. See YouTube. Also similar articles and videos for fighting with quarterstaffs(staves) and cudgels. Both are fascinating insights into almost forgotten fighting skills.
Swordsticks and similar hidden weapons are still produced and sold, mainly in the USA and Japan. There is a long and fascinating world history of such weapons.
The role of a riding crop in Sherlock Holmes's backstory can be found in Sevenpercent's story Musgrave Blaze and beyond. The Woman and the riding crop appear in Sherlock Series Two, A Scandal in Belgravia. For anyone who has their childhood reading memory teased by the mention of a black riding crop, Black Hunting Whip (1950)is the memorable children's novel by Monica Edwards you are thinking of!