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Mark Twain, Sherlock Holmes
Beloved Humorist. Best-Selling Author. … Consulting Detective.
Now it can be told: Mark Twain’s adventures with Sherlock Holmes, Watson, Mycroft, and Irene Adler.
As part of his autobiography, Samuel Clemens dictated seven stories that he later ordered burned. Discovered at a Pennsylvania farm auction and edited by Pulitzer-Prize winning editor, Bill Peschel, they uncover the Mark Twain nobody knew: who interfered in a marriage proposal, organized a boxing scam, and went grave-robbing. A Twain who also caroused with a young John H. Watson in San Francisco’s Chinatown; needed Holmes’ help with a blackmail plot; tangled with Mycroft Holmes and kidnappers in Morocco; and ran up against Irene Adler and a vengeful German officer in Heidelberg.
Most of these stories — four featuring Holmes, and one each with Watson, Mycroft Holmes, and Irene Adler — appeared in the 223B Casebook series collecting Sherlockian parodies and pastiches. These tales are now available in this exclusive complete edition from the Peschel Press.
(Film and TV rights are available. Email us through our contact page.)
Table of Contents
Our Man in Tangier (1867)
The Adventure of the Dancing Man (1868)
The Adventure of the Jersey Girl (1878)
The Adventure of the Stomach Club (1879)
The Adventure of the Missing Mortician (1882)
The Adventure of the Whyos (1894)
The Adventure of the Fight Club (1887)
Excerpt: From “Our Man in Tangier (1867)”
Like many entries in his autobiography, Twain was inspired to tell this story after reading something — in this case a travel book about Morocco — that sparked his memory. He had visited the country early in his literary career. In 1867, he booked passage with a tour group to the Middle East aboard the steamship Quaker City. He made a deal with a Sacramento newspaper to publish his letters about his experiences, and they were expanded into his first travel book The Innocents Abroad (1869).
From July 4 to 17, the Quaker City crossed the Atlantic and stopped at Gibraltar, the British possession on the Spanish side of the strait. Twain and five of his fellow passengers took the opportunity to cross the Mediterranean to Tangier. Although he described it as “a foreign land if ever there was one,” he left only a sketchy account of his activities in Innocents. This story explains why.
“I started with no special object. Anyone with very little experience of travelling other than by railways could do the same. It would be desirable that they should first make themselves familiar with the general conditions of the country, and it is certainly an ad-vantage to know something of the language.”
— From Frances Macnab, “A Ride In Morocco Among Believers and Traders” (1902)
This is sound advice. I wish I had heard it 40 years before, when I was carried ashore the Tangier beach on the shoulders of a Moor who reeked of sweat, salt, and spices. It would have meant a totally different story than the one I’ll relate. If I had known more about the landscape and its people, and a few words of Arabic, I would have avoided the sad eyes in the hareem, the kidnappings, the serious end of guns and swords, and suffering the storyteller’s worst curse: knowing a keen story and unable to tell a soul.
I blame Mycroft. That boy had more devilment in him than Huck, and he came by it naturally to0, through his blood. If I had known what he was going to get me into, I’d have shoved that fresh-faced child into the Mediterranean halfway between Gibraltar and Tangier. I would have gotten away with it, too. I could have sworn my Quaker City companions to silence, and the Moors wouldn’t care what one white man does to another, so long as they’re not involved.
We boarded the small steamer in Cadiz, Spain. The boat was not as spacious as the Quaker City. It was not spacious at all. There were too many bodies filling the deck. Most of the space was covered with an awning and every square inch of it was taken up with a body, sitting, laying, and standing. We covered the spectrum of skin tones, from pale white to printer’s ink black and every shade in between. Of clothing, apart from the Western duds in our party, we saw sashes, skullcaps, turbans, trousers, pantaloons, slippers, boots, long robes and bare legs. Moorish merchants and Muhammadian vagabonds. A rag-shop of a congregation.
Our party stood at the bow soon after casting off, our cigars cheerfully contributing to the cloud that trailed the steamboat. Young Blucher, who was from the Far West and on his first voyage, joined us at the rail. Like a young boy out in nature, he came across an interesting creature and brought him home. This was a young man in a white linen suit and a straw Panama hat. He looked like a young bull, a head taller than Blucher, and his curling locks brushed his collar. He introduced himself as Michael Herndon, late of Oxford. He was off to see Europe, and he wanted to look into Morocco. I mentioned we were doing the same and that we originated with the Quaker City. His eyes lit up.
“Why, you’re famous,” he told me.
I told him I was pleased to hear that my Jumping Frog story was not only on everyone’s lips in America, but it had caused a stir in his country as well.
He said nothing to that. I figured he was stunned by my presence. He had probably never met a famous writer before, Oxford not quite measuring up as a center for literature as New York.
By now, you’ve no doubt spotted Mycroft Holmes, traveling under an alias. The reason he did this I’ll reserve for later. Rather than cause confusion, I’ll set his alias aside and refer to him direct.
He pulled out of his coat a Spanish newspaper and pointed to an item on the front page. I was unable to read it, not knowing the lingo. I ciphered through it, though, but could not see my name. Presumably they translated it into Spanish, and I made a note to check a dictionary to see how “Mark Twain” would fare. But I did see “Quaker City,” “Generalissimo Sherman” and “padre Beecher con Brooklyn Church of the Brethren” listed.
“We’ve heard of Sherman and Beecher’s roles in the abolition of slavery,” Mycroft said. “Are they here?”
Blucher spoke up, “Certainly! You’re talking with Sher-man right now.” He slapped my shoulder. “As for the good reverend, he’s back on the boat, but you know, you could pass for his double.”
Mycroft lit up with joy and thrust out his hand.
“General Sherman, it is an honor to meet you. You look not at all as you do in the papers!”
“It is the uniform, I suppose,” I said. “There’s nothing like a uniform to give a man weight and tone.”
“They make you look handsomer, too.” The boys exploded in laughter at that, and that made me hold my tongue. I could have told him that Sherman and Beecher were supposed to join the tour — I signed on in the expectation of reporting on them — but they made their excuses at the last minute. I could have made this clear to him, but he was so duped by my impersonation, and so full of good words about my generalship during the war that it would spoil a good joke to have it end so soon, so I accepted the compliments on Sherman’s behalf. And therein lay the seeds of my downfall, as you shall see.