Sir Charles Baskerville

“ Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places. ”

“ Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her.
“I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville,” said he. “My friend here, Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter.” ”

“ So much for the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. You perceive the devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women concerned in the case, Mrs. Stapleton and Mrs. Laura Lyons, were left with a strong suspicion against Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton knew that he had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound. ”

“ Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London again!”
“But what is it that alarms you?”
“Look at Sir Charles’s death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There’s not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What’s he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to any one of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Henry’s new servants are ready to take over the Hall.” ”

“ And yet, consider that every Baskerville who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Charles could have spoken with me before his death he would have warned me against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Charles will crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. ”

“ There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to imagine that death could be from any but natural causes. Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind. In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. ”

“ Watson,” said he; “but I have never seen a place to compare with it.”
“I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county,” I remarked.
“It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county,” said Dr. Mortimer. “A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles’s head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?” ”

“ Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of character and extreme generosity had won the affection and respect of all who had been brought into contact with him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing to find a case where the scion of an old county family which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known, made large sums of money in South African speculation. ”

“ He was a son of that Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father’s. He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire. ”

“ It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here—you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis!—who would inherit the estate?”
“Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles’s younger brother died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland.” ”

“ The typography of Baskerville is eminently beautiful—his letters are in general of a slender and delicate form, calculated for an octavo or even quarto, but not sufficiently bold to fill the space of an imperial folio, as is evident from a view of his great Bible. He united in a singularly happy manner the elegance of Plantin with the clearness of the Elzevirs: his 4to and 12mo Virgil, and small Prayer-book, or 12mo Horace of 1762, sufficiently [Pg 39] confirm the truth of this remark. ”

“ It is indeed from this point that the study of English bibliography becomes more difficult and confusing, and here precisely that the young collector is apt to go astray.
The most famous English printer of modern times was undoubtedly John Baskerville; in fact, he seems to have been the only one possessed of exceptional merit. Everyone has heard of Baskerville: he rises the one solitary genius out of the multitude of labourers in the same field, and towers so high above the rest as to eclipse them entirely. ”

“ He was so great a cherisher of wandering beggars that he built for them a large place like a barn to receive them, and hung up a little bell at his back door for them to ring when they wanted anything. Indeed, he had been several times indicted at Abingdon sessions for harbouring beggars. This singular person was buried at Sunningwell on 18 March 1668. He had sixteen sons and two daughters by his wife, Mary, daughter of Captain Nicholas Baskerville, second brother of Sir Thomas Baskerville, general of the British forces in France. ”

“ Meanwhile, in the English Midlands an interesting and creditable, though wrong-headed, attempt to improve on existing founts had been made by John Baskerville, a Worcestershire man, born in 1706, who worked at Birmingham, and in 1757 printed there in his own types 300 a quarto edition of Virgil which attracted considerable notice. The merit of Baskerville’s type is its distinctness; its fault is the reappearance in a slightly different form of the old heresy of Aldus, that what is good, or is thought to be good, in penmanship must necessarily be good in type. ”

“ During the twenty-five years I knew him, though in the decline of life, he retained the singular traces of a handsome man. If he exhibited a peevish [7] temper, we may consider good nature and intense thinking are not always found together. Taste accompanied him through the different walks of agriculture, architecture, and the finer arts. Whatever passed through his fingers, bore the lively marks of John Baskerville. ”

“ Baskerville is said to have been small in stature, and fond of making the most of his figure by costly dress, and a stately deportment. He was cheerful and benevolent; at times extremely idle, but of an inventive turn, and prompt to patronize ingenuity in others; he retained the traces of a handsome man even during the last twenty-five years of his life; and his civility to strangers gained him the esteem of all who came to inspect his office. Although he printed a sumptuous English Bible and Greek Testament, he is supposed to have entertained an aversion to Christianity ”

“ And so, finally, after [Pg 62] being turned out of the garden at Easy Hill for a canal-wharf, exposed to neglect and ignominy in a plumber’s warehouse, interred by stealth in the vaults of Christ’s Church, and then again removed by the march of business, Baskerville’s bones at last found permanent rest in a quiet cemetery of the Church of England. It is in a spot remote, not easily discoverable, and where few are likely to see the stone, which has been transferred thither from Christ’s Church. ”

“ As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning.
“Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel,” he cried. “They’ll find they’ve started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. ”

“ He is very rare, and seldom found in the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!”
He spoke unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the girl to me.
“You have introduced yourselves, I can see.”
“Yes. I was telling Sir Henry that it was rather late for him to see the true beauties of the moor.”
“Why, who do you think this is?”
“I imagine that it must be Sir Henry Baskerville.”
“No, no,” said I. “Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is Dr. Watson.” ”

“ Negotiations were again renewed, in 1765, through the medium of Franklin, who was in Paris, and the price was reduced to £6000. But Franklin wrote that the French government was too poor to buy it; that they [Pg 51] had not money enough to keep their public buildings in repair, and so nothing came of the attempt to sell during Baskerville’s life. Upon his death his widow advertised the business for sale, and stated at the same time that she continued the business of letter-founding in all parts. ”

“ Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor,” said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage window.
Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. ”

“ Baskerville entertained peculiar opinions on religious subjects. There was a rumour of some efforts having been made to deposit his remains in one of the church burial grounds, but they were not successful. A year or two ago, while in Birmingham, a snuff-box was shown me, on the lid of which a portrait of Baskerville was painted, which fully agreed with a description of his person given me many years previously by one who had known him. ”

“ The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills. ”

“ Contemporary opinion in England was no more than lukewarm in their favour. The Virgil procured Baskerville a commission from the University of Oxford to cut a Greek fount, but this was generally condemned, though it had the merit of being free from contractions. Editions of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (1758) , and other classics, were more successful, and Baskerville was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge for ten years ”

“ Smart, the bookseller at Worcester, for £100. But in a few years after that, not a copy remained unsold. [28] Smart built a house and called it “Baskerville House.”
Dibdin says that “the prayer books of Baskerville are probably more frequently seen within the pews of a church than any [Pg 34] other, at least they were so within these dozen years past; they are of two forms or sizes, royal octavo and crown octavo. The crown octavo impression, which is the rarer of the two, is executed in a small character, in double columns, upon thin paper, but of a close and durable texture. ”

“ These trace the survival of the Baskerville types to a date twenty years later than that at which they are commonly supposed to have perished. “It is to be hoped,” says Reed, “that their discovery may in due time reward the patience of those whose ambition it is [Pg 53] to recover for their native land these precious relics of the most brilliant of all the English letter-founders.” [39] It is impossible to say precisely what became of the Baskerville founts which had gone to France, but so late as 1891, a book appeared in France professedly printed en Caractère Baskerville du xviii siècle. ”

“ He also gave evidence of fine mathematical powers. After graduation he returned to Mississippi and began the practice of law. He was in Port Gibson during the yellow fever epidemic in 1878, and he remained through the whole dreadful tragedy of sickness, serving everywhere as needed, a devoted nurse. He never fully rallied from the fearful strain and the harrowing scenes through which he passed, for he was, says W. W. Baskerville, “that rare union of bright mind with frail body through which the keenest appreciation and most exquisite sensibility are developed.”
IRWIN RUSSELL
His father, Dr. ”