PHIL
RICKMAN:
WHOSE HOUND IS IT, ANYWAY ?
WHOSE HOUND IS IT, ANYWAY ?
PHIL
RICKMAN: WHOSE HOUND IS IT, ANYWAY ? |
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It's
a custody battle that's been going on for most of a century, and an epic mystery:
who does own The Hound of the Baskervilles?
The 'official' version is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pinched the idea from
the story of Sir Richard Cabell, allegedly the most hated man on Dartmoor and
an obvious model for the devilish Hugo Baskerville who enlisted the Powers of
Darkness in his pursuit of a maiden across the moor… only to be savaged by a
gigantic hound.
But to this day, Mr Holmes, Devon folk may be seen slavering at the mouth and
glowing incandescent with rage over a rival claim from the Herefordshire town
of Kington, right on the Welsh Border.
Here, it's strongly alleged that the origins of Doyle's Hound can be traced
back to Hergest Court, a bleak stone and timbered farmhouse in a country lane
on the edge of the town. And for local people, this is still very much a live
issue.
'I can tell you for a fact,' one said to me last year, 'that there are people
in this town now who will not go along that road after dark, either on foot
or even in a car.'
I was investigating the Hound for The
Prayer of the Night Shepherd, the plot of which hinges on the dispute
over the origins of the best-known Sherlock Holmes novel. It's been fascinating
me, on and off, for years.
'I have the idea of a real creeper for The Strand,' Conan Doyle wrote to Greenough
Smith, editor of the London magazine, in 1901, adding, 'There is one stipulation.
I must do it with my friend Fletcher Robinson.'
Robinson, a 28 year-old journalist, apparently told Doyle the story on a golfing
holiday in Norfolk. When they travelled to Robinson's native Devon to plan out
the novel, they were driven around by a coachman by the name of Harry Baskerville.
However, as Daniel Stashower points out in his Conan Doyle biography, Teller
of Tales (1999) Greenough Smith later recalled that Robinson had
admitted finding the hound legend in 'a Welsh guidebook'. And the proposed title
The Hound of the Baskervilles had been divulged by Doyle to his mother before
he and Robinson had been to Devon or encountered Harry.
The Baskervilles, as it happens, were a Norman dynasty whose castle was five
miles from Kington and whose name is still commemorated by The Baskervilles
Arms, just over the border in Clyro.
The border legend, however, relates to Thomas Vaughan, known as Black Vaughan
who lived at Hergest Court in the 15th century and whose spectacular tomb is
in Kington Church.
Vaughan has often been described as a notorious tyrant (although there's no
historical evidence of this) who, after death, subjected the area to some heavy-duty
haunting, accompanied by his faithful hound. When Vaughan's spirit was eventually
exorcised by 12 priests and confined to a snuff box at the bottom of Hergest
pool, only the hound remained, as a harbinger of death in the Vaughan family.
Although the immediate family died out in the 19th century, the Hound, it seems,
remained and has allegedly been seen several times in the past century. A former
tenant farmer at Hergest Court told me of hearing the patter of huge paws in
an upstairs room and seeing a doglike shadow padding in front of him and into
the inner hall. 'A prickly feeling,' he said, 'went up my back.'
Around Kington, the story persists that Doyle was distantly related to what
became the Baskerville-Mynors family and also had friends locally. In Herefordshire
Folklore (2002), Roy Palmer records that 'both Doyle and the Vaughans
were connected by marriage to the Baskerville family.'
It was also said that Doyle stayed at a particular mansion on the outskirts
of Kington and this, frankly, was enough for me. What if it was now a hotel?
What if the present owner, to enhance his investment, was determined to prove
a link with Conan Doyle? And what might have happened here to Doyle to persuade
him to transfer the location of his novel to the safety of Devon?
Do I believe that the Hound of the Baskervilles belongs to Herefordshire? Well
why not? Most authors enjoy blurring the facts, nicking an anecdote here, a
name there.
And, talking of names, what also impresses me is that the most powerful Marcher
lords hereabouts, commemorated in a number of place names, were the Mortimers.
Remember Dr Mortimer who invited Holmes to take the case?
And, of course, just a few miles away with a ruined castle on a hill, is the
tiny village of… Stapleton.
Review
By Bernard Knight
PHIL RICKMAN. The Prayer of the Night Shepherd - 6th Merrily Watkins mystery - published on April 2, 2004 by Macmillan. (Author Photo (c) Keith Lewis) Authors web site: http://www.philrickman.co.uk/
Bibliography
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 The
Lamp of the Wicked Macmillan, 2003 |
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