Listen and repeat after me...

Hello

Well, things have certainly been super hectic here in Nicko HQ over the past month. Although, in the middle, I did have two weeks of pottering around the Sussex Downs, Dartmoor, Portsmouth and Cornwall. I have NO idea what would have held my interests there ;)

My book “The Adventure of the Wordy Companion: An A-Z Guide to Sherlockian Phraseology has had a review, and it’s by none other than award-winning Sherlockian Alistair Duncan! He was super lovely and now I have my first official quote about my book:

"To those of a more scholarly persuasion, I feel it can only be an asset to your library."

You see that? Scholarly persuasion. That’s grown up talk for people who are smart ‘n’ stuff!

Also, the lovely people at Waterstones in Uxbridge did this with my book on their shelf

If you want to buy my book, because you’re smart in the head, then you can get it in all the usual places, but let’s go for Waterstones, seeing as they did a nice display.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-adventure-of-the-wordy-companion/nicko-vaughan/9781787053168

I thought I’d look at some of the foreign language phrases which pepper the pages of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures. Be a little bit exotic to go with the weather and end with some Sherlock snaps, including a trip to the Princetown Information centre where Conan Doyle came up with Hound of the Baskervilles.

Le mauvais goût mène au crime

Translated as ‘bad taste leads to crime’ and is a quote from the writer Marie-Henri Beyle who was better known by his pen name Stendhal. It is quoted by Mr. Thaddeus Sholto after the gratitude Mary Morstan shows him in defending her father’s honour and sending her a valuable pearl each month from their treasure trove. “...it would have been such bad taste to have treated a young lady in so scurvy a fashion. ‘Le mauvais goˆ ut m`ene au crime.’ The French have a very neat way of putting these things.”

Schade, dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf, denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff

Translated from the German as “Alas, that Nature made only one man of you, when there was material enough for a good man and a rogue.” This is the second time Holmes has quoted Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in The Sign of Four. Here his context for using the quote is during a conversation with Watson about how lethargic having no problems or cases makes him feel. Watson comments on how these traits in another man would make him lazy, and Holmes agrees that he can be both full of energy and depleted of it all at once. “...here are in me the makings of a very fine loafer and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe —Schade, dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf, denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.”

And it wouldn’t be Holmes if we didn’t throw in a bit of Latin

Omne ignotum pro magniﬁco

Translated from the Latin, “the unknown always passes for the marvellous,” and is a quote taken from the book The Agricola written by Roman historian Tacitus. The phrase is uttered by Holmes in The Adventure of the Red-Headed League after Mr. Jabez Wilson plays down his astonishing deductions when Holmes explains his methods, “‘I begin to think, Watson,’ said Holmes, ‘that I make a mistake in explaining. ‘Omne ignotum pro magniﬁco,’ you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid.’”