Holmes, Sweet Holmes
SIR,-1 remember seeing William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes at the Lyceum Theatre just fifty years ago and I feel sure Strix is correct in saying that " elementary, my dear Watson " was a line in the play. Gillette spoke in an eerie, sinister drawl, rather high-pitched, and, with his head thrown back and eyes half-closed, gave the impression that he was thinking of anything but the problem on hand. Only at the tense moments with Moriarty did he snap into life and become peremptory and incisive. There was at the same period a skit on Gillette as Holmes running at Terry's Theatre in the Strand, called Picklock Holes, and the phrase was used in that as well.
Charlie Chaplin played the page boy in the Lyceum " Holmes " and he used to dash on the stage with his uniform in tatters indicative of his struggle with Moriarty's men who had tried, off stage, to stop him reaching Holmes. No doubt Mr. Chaplin would be as good an authority as any on the use of the line on the stage.—Yours
Whiteways, Canterbury.
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