I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

Episode 151: Memoirs from Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen

Interview with Wendy Heyman-Marsaw

Burt Wolder: Support for this episode of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere is

made possible by the Wessex Press, the premier publisher of
books about Sherlock Holmes and his world. Find them online
at wessexpress.com. And the Baker Street Journal, the leading
publication of Sherlockian scholarship since 1946.
Subscriptions available at bakerstreetirregulars.com.

Scott Monty: I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, Episode 151: Memoirs from

Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen.

Mycroft Holmes: I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler.

Narrator: In a world where it's always 1895 comes I Hear of Sherlock

Everywhere, a podcast for devotees of Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
the world's first unofficial consulting detective.

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Dr. Roylott: I've heard of you before. You're Holmes the meddler. Holmes
the busybody. Holmes the Scotland Yard jack in office.

Narrator: The game's afoot as we discuss goings on in the world of

Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, the Bakers Traders regulars and
popular culture related to the great detective.

Dr. Watson: As we go to press, sensational developments have been

reported.

Narrator: Join your hosts, Scott Monty and Burt Wolder, as they talk
about what's new in the world of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes: You couldn't have come at a better time.

Scott Monty: Welcome back to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, the first

podcast for Sherlock Holmes devotees where it's always 1895.
I'm Scott Monty.

Burt Wolder: I'm Burt Wolder.

Scott Monty: I'm busily toiling away here in the eye hose kitchens on a
secret recipe, which we will test later on. Maybe we can get
folks to test it out when we see them in Indiana.

Burt Wolder: Oh, what a great idea.

Scott Monty: Yeah. Yeah.

Burt Wolder: I've been working on my no churn prime rib roast.

Scott Monty: Really, that is the best way to make it, no churn.

Burt Wolder: I think so. I think so, yeah.

Scott Monty: I'm going to see if I can sous vide to kidney pie. That would be
an interesting approach. Have you heard of the sous vide?

Burt Wolder: Oh, yes. I experiment with that. I've got a sous vide setup. That
was one of the nice things that happened over the last year or

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 so was the rise of very economical methods of trying this out.
For those of our listeners who don't know what it is, you
should give them a quick explanation of sous vide.

Scott Monty: Yeah. Sous vide is basically an emersion method of cooking.

The food gets sealed in some sort of container, usually a plastic
bag or a vacuum sealed apparatus, and gets emersed in a
water bath. The water does not touch the food itself, it simply
surrounds the containing device. You can regulate the
temperature very specifically to cook the food.

Scott Monty: It's almost like ... it's halfway between a pressure cooker and a
slow cooker, if you will. It allows you to infuse wonderful
flavors and to cook your foods until they're perfectly tender.
Usually when they come out, I don't know if you do this Burt in
your sous vide experiments, when they come out I like to sear
them either in a frying pan or with a torch, blow torch, in the
kitchen to give them that nice caramelized finish there.

Scott Monty: So many great ways to experiment with food with a sous vide.

Burt Wolder: Yes, yes. You can cook the most challenging bits of protein for
a very long while at a very low temperature in a hot water
bath, and then at the end of it after taking it out of that hot
water bath and as Scott says, searing it or putting it under a
broiler, you can truly appreciate the full naming of sous vide
because the name, of course, is French for let's go get pizza.
Then you just get rid of all that hot water, get rid of that
charred protein and get yourself a reasonably good, oh I don't
know, pesto pie. We usually like that.

Scott Monty: There you go.

Scott Monty: Well, on to other places good and great. We, of course, need
to remind you that this show, this episode in particular, is
available at ihose.co/ihose151. We are @ihearofsherlock on all
of the social platforms. You can find us on Facebook and
Twitter and Instagram. We share updates and interact with
folks there, lots of stuff going on, and we tend to update the
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 website, ihearofsherlock.com, on occasion, although it has
slowed down a little bit during the summer. We are
anticipating a pickup in the fall. There you can find ways to
interact with us as well. Send us an email, leave a comment,
and support the show.

Scott Monty: We ask your support in one or both of two ways. Leave us a
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to do that, but it would help other people find the show, which
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Burt Wolder: Yes, and you can also call us. Please. We still have our
telephonic connectivity. 774-221-READ. 774-221-7323. Leave
us a comment. You could also telegram. Send us a telegram to
IHOSE America. That's also good for the transatlantic cable. We
love receiving those and we will send you back a COD reply.

Scott Monty: Well, no COD accepted at this next place, our friends at
Wessex Press.

Burt Wolder: The ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex is looking forward

to the 10th of September, when we mark the death of St.
Frithestan of Winchester in 933. We celebrate those who
enrich our lives, as you will celebrate the treasures found in
Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in the Newspapers, volume
three, edited by Mattias Bostrom and Matt Laffey. These
restored, newly typeset stories for the last six months of 1893
show Conan Doyle, the celebrated author, lecturing on the
novelists of the day. They report the presumed death of
Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls. This essential
volume for your library is available right now at
wessexpress.com.

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Burt Wolder: Friends, it's September. Fly the white clouds like tattered sails
of ships, the tree tops lash the air with sounding whips. As the
seasons shift, reach for the pleasure only a volume from the
Wessex Press can provide. Choose yours today!

Scott Monty: Lo! Here the lark. Yes, lovely dulcet tones there. Well, we are
going to be fortunate enough to be joining our friends at
Wessex Press in Bloomington, Indiana in very short order for
Gillette to Brett V. It's going to be very exciting.

Burt Wolder: I'm looking forward to that, yeah.

Scott Monty: Yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll do a live broadcast if we can figure
that out. It might be great fun, we'll see. Stay tuned for that.

Burt Wolder: Yeah. I know somebody who's really good at social media. We
could ask him about that. We could probably use Facechat or
Booksnap or one of those platform things.

Scott Monty: Oh, yeah. I'd love to meet him. If you can introduce me, that'll
be fantastic.

Scott Monty: Well, we are delighted this time around to welcome Wendy
Heyman-Marsaw to the program. Wendy is actually a New
York native, but comes to us from the east coast of Canada.
Her youthful indoctrination of the Sherlockian world was
kindled by a certain deerstalker toting father in her life. Wendy
of course was able to expand her sights in London as she
attended London Polytechnic in 1972, and was an early
member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.

Scott Monty: She then immigrated to Canada in the late '70s and began a
career in advertising. She is in Halifax now having retired, and
joined the Spence Munros and the Bootmakers of Toronto. It
was here that she began to write a series of columns for
Canadian Holmes, that is of course the publication of the
Master Bootmakers, earned her her Master Bootmaker title
just a couple of years ago.

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Scott Monty: Those articles focused on the rather unique perspective of
Mrs. Hudson at the landlady of 221B Baker Street, and the
scope of the articles therein included links to the canon and
various Victorian influences and recipes pertaining to the
subject of each column.

Scott Monty: She managed to edit those columns and provide some
additional material to create this book, the Memoirs from Mrs.
Hudson's Kitchen. We will be talking with Wendy specifically
about that.

Scott Monty: Wendy, welcome to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.

Wendy Marsaw: Thank you very much, Scott and Burt. I'm delighted to be with
you today.

Scott Monty: Excellent. We are really looking forward to delving into more
about Mrs. Hudson with you. It's a topic that we covered a
little bit over on Trifles, our other podcast, but obviously that
was a shorter and more academic approach, and I think
looking into Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen and your very unique way
of parsing out who Mrs. Hudson was and what she did should
be a lot of fun today.

Wendy Marsaw: I hope so.

Scott Monty: Before we get to that, we will do what we do with all of our
guests, and ask you to go back in your mind and tell us how
you first came across this character of Sherlock Holmes.

Wendy Marsaw: Well, my dad was a first generation Sherlockian. He was a pipe
smoking Anglophile, absolutely enthralled by the Basil
Rathbone film. I think he was the only guy who wore a
deerstalker on the New York City subway system. He gave me
my first copy of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes when I was
eight years old, and we took family trips up to Gillette Castle in
Connecticut. In 1965, I saw the production of Baker Street on
Broadway starring Fritz Weaver.

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Wendy Marsaw: It just continued from there. My letters in university were
addressed to Sherlock, I signed Mycroft, to dad. I went to the
Polytechnic of Central London for a year, and I joined the
Sherlock Holmes Society while I was there.

Scott Monty: Wow. That is a very interesting history. Now, eight years old,
were you actually reading the stories at that point?

Wendy Marsaw: Oh, yes. Oh yes. I was a very prolific reader when I was a little
kid, still am. I just was fascinated myself, so I grew up with the
Basil Rathbone movies. Every chance I got, I would seek out ...
As I said, in 1972 when I was in the Polytechnic of Central
London, I joined the Sherlock Holmes Society of London whilst
I was there. Then I worked in advertising for about 32 years, 35
years. British Airways was one of my clients, so I would get to
go over to London every quarter. During that time, Jeremy
Brett's Granada productions had just started.

Scott Monty: Oh, yeah.

Wendy Marsaw: It continued from there. For my birthday party for my son
when he was six years old, it was a Sherlock Holmes themed
birthday party with him, the pipe on Sherlock. Now I'm a
member of Bootmakers of Toronto, I was made a Master
Bootmaker in 2016. I'm a proud member of the Spence
Munros in Halifax, led by Marc Alberstat and his wife JoAnn
Alberstat. It's just been terrific, a lifelong love.

Burt Wolder: Now, I think I had noted some place that you also had some
intersections early on with someone that we've mentioned
before on these shows, Chris Steinbrunner. Is that right?

Wendy Marsaw: Yes. I worked with Chris when my first job out of university at
WOR-TV in New York, and Chris was a member of BSI and of
course he won the Edgar Award for his book. Over the water
cooler as they say, Chris would regale me with wonderful
stories about what was happening at the BSI meetings he
attended, and what, he was in charge of the movies that were
being shown on WOR, and it was, Million Dollar Movie was
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 always on at seven o'clock at night. He could be persuaded to
run a Basil Rathbone every once in a while, very, very, very
easily. He was a delightful man.

Burt Wolder: Yeah, he really was. We talk about him from time to time. Did
you not in those days, I mean, I think in those days, was he still
connected to The Priory Scholars up at Fordham? Did you get
involved in any New York scions?

Wendy Marsaw: No. I didn't get involved in the New York scions. I was tempted
to join ASH. I quickly, after I was in New York, I moved to
Canada in 1979, so I wasn't in New York working very long. Had
a wonderful opportunity to come up here and I'm now a
Canadian citizen and very happy, I love it, but I miss New York,
certain things that you can't get up here. Egg cremes.

Burt Wolder: Well, we can always send you some Fox's U-bet. That's easy.

Wendy Marsaw: Oh, that's wonderful. That's my favorite. I have a recipe for a
Fox's U-bet cake.

Burt Wolder: Really?

Wendy Marsaw: Yes.

Burt Wolder: Well, I've got to get your address when we're all done, and I'll
post you some Fox's U-bet in exchange for the recipe.

Wendy Marsaw: Well, I think you'll like my address, because it's Pondicherry
Crescent.

Scott Monty: That's great.

Burt Wolder: How did you, with that sort of background, so there you are, at
what point in all of this did you get focused on Mrs. Hudson?
Did that loom large for you as an area of interest?

Wendy Marsaw: Well, it was when I joined the Spence Munros in Halifax and
we had our Bootmakers Journal that came out, and Marc used

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 to do a Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen little piece that had just a simple
recipe from Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen. It could be something like
Sally Lunn Cake or something like that.

Wendy Marsaw: Then I got the idea of saying, you know, perhaps we can do
something a little bit more with the Mrs. Hudson character,
and get into a bit of the social and cultural happenings around
her. I had a new way of looking at Mrs. Hudson, I think. She
had a wonderful meek and intimate knowledge of her tenants
that nobody else could share. She was a woman of great
loyalty and discretion. I think that I saw her, unlike the way she
was portrayed previously, I saw her as a much younger and
much more vital member of the household. To be as flexible
and tolerant and brave in the face of the worst tenant in
London as John Watson called him, I think she was probably
just a bit more compelling character than she had been
portrayed.

Burt Wolder: Interesting. Did you also have an interest in cooking? Were you
just intrigued by Victorian food, or was that just sort of the
way to get to Mrs. Hudson as a character?

Wendy Marsaw: Well, I'm a great foodie. I have a collection of over 100
cookbooks. The Victorian and Edwardian periods have always
an area of interest for me. I majored in history and
communications in university. I love that time period. It was a
new way of looking at Victorian/Edwardian culture, is through
the eyes of the canon and a new way of looking at
Victorian/Edwardian food fitting into that culture and relating
it back to the canon once again.

Wendy Marsaw: The recipes were linked to the activities of Holmes and Watson
as they went about their business, whether it was dinner on a
train, or of course having dinner at Simpon's in the Strand and
it gave me an opportunity to really research what these venues
and areas were like. I got a great kick out of it.

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Burt Wolder: Are you going to add to your collection of cookbooks with one
authored by yourself? Have you thought about curating a
cookbook of Holmesian or Victorian recipes? That's been done
over the years, but there's always room for another one.

Wendy Marsaw: Well, I do have a website and blog, that's

www.mrshudsonskitchen.com. In that blog, I cover things like
Victorian Christmas and the Crystal Palace, and I have a new
blog I'm working on dealing with Sherlock's disguises and
London's street food, which he would've had to enjoy while he
was in disguise. I'm working on it through that and keeping
that alive, keeping it green as you say through that venue.

Scott Monty: Tell us a little bit about your theory behind Mrs. Hudson as a
contemporary? We really, we think of Mrs. Hudson through
the eyes of actresses who have played her like Rosalie Williams
in the Granada series or Mary Gordon in the Rathbone films.
We certainly read of Mrs. Hudson's "stately tread" upstairs.

Wendy Marsaw: Yes.

Scott Monty: That tends to have us think of Mrs. Hudson as this middle aged
to elderly landlady, but you've taken a very different approach.
Tell us about the Mrs. Hudson that you uncovered?

Wendy Marsaw: Well, the stately tread could be traced to the instruction in
deportment that all young upper-middle class ladies were sent
to school to learn from balancing the book on the head, and
that could account for her stately tread. She probably was a
woman, I envisioned her with a father who was a lawyer who
educated her more so than other young Victorian women were
educated.

Wendy Marsaw: She married an architect who unfortunately was killed, and she
came to inherit 221B upon his death. It was interesting
because looking back at how women were allowed to own
property was very difficult in the 1870s and going through to
1887 when they were finally allowed to own some property of

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 their own. The only way she could've gotten 221B was through
the death of her husband.

Scott Monty: That's pretty ingenious. That makes total sense.

Wendy Marsaw: That's the way I saw her, as a women's right advocate for
property ownership, and I could see her as a suffragette, and
going through the Criterion for the suffragette meetings they
used to have there in the discussion room, which is of course
where John Watson started his encounter with Sherlock
Holmes.

Burt Wolder: As you think about that and that arc, that trajectory, you've
seen that one of the things that intrigued you here was the
research, the Victorian period, your interest in history. At that
time, in terms of popular culture, popular society, Victorian
society, there were ... well, let's put it this way, fairly rigid
values around the role of women. How did these things
connect? How does your view of Mrs. Hudson connect with
the role, because you just mentioned suffragette, which really
puts her at the progressive end of the spectrum. Can you talk a
little bit more about that?

Wendy Marsaw: I think she was at the more progressive end of the spectrum
because she was a property owner. She was a property owner
not just for some quiet tenants. She had criminals in her home,
she had the Baker Street Irregulars tramping through the
hallways. She had to be a woman of great understanding and
patience and tolerance. I think she was quite brave in the
Empty House when she was working with Sherlock Holmes
crawling on the floors. You're not going to get an old, elderly
woman to be as nimble as that I think.

Wendy Marsaw: I do believe that she was a woman of her time, but more a
radical feminist, if I can use that expression to describe her, in
a Victorian kind of way. She certainly appreciated Victorian
values and dress and all of those kinds of constraints, but

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 within that, she found her way through society and culture to
become her own woman in her own right.

Burt Wolder: Tell me a little bit about the structure of the book? This is
really interesting. You view Mrs. Hudson as this sort of
progressive proto-feminist, a property owner, whose day
includes people traipsing up and down the stairs, perhaps
people falling on the floor in Baker Street, windows shattered
by air guns. Yet, she's also keeping life going-

Wendy Marsaw: - VR on the walls.

Burt Wolder: Right, right. Bullet pocks in her plaster. She's also keeping the
place going. She's cooking, and you have this interest in food.
With that start of Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen, those early columns
in the Canadian publication, how does your book tell this
story?

Wendy Marsaw: Well, it's a series of vignettes I think you can call them. To take
an interest what came out of the canon, what did Sherlock and
Dr. Watson do in terms of their travel and their being in certain
areas, which would, for example, Devonshire, which has its
own wonderful regional foods, and going dining in Baskerville
Hall, where he would be of course served magnificent meals.

Wendy Marsaw: At some of his clients, again, he would be served these huge
Victorian dinners and everything like that, and that goes all the
way to the cold collation that would be prepared if he was
arriving late at night at a place, and they would put a cold meal
for him.

Wendy Marsaw: Also, the inns that they traveled to and the recipes that were
popular at the inns in those days.

Wendy Marsaw: I took great care in finding recipes that worked with the
location that they were in, and how it related to the stories. If
he was at Baskerville Hall, it was a description of the kind of
meal he would have and the recipes that he would have. Also,
when he entertained Athelney Jones and he made the the tray
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 of oysters and wines, what he termed as dusty, spidery I think
wines. He was somewhat of a gourmet. He fixed it himself, and
felt that Dr. Watson didn't quite appreciate his abilities as a
homemaker.

Scott Monty: And we're just going to pause here a minute for a brief word
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Burt Wolder: Yeah. So in doing all of this, have you cooked all of the things
that you refer to in your book? When you go back and look at
those Victorian cookbooks, I mean, one of the things you'd find
is that they used lots of, well, I don't know lots of, but they
certainly used a great number of ingredients that time has

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 moved on today. You can still put lard and crust, but the use of
fats and beef fats and tallow and things like that.

Wendy Marsaw: Yeah.

Burt Wolder: Did you have any adventures in exploring these recipes?

Wendy Marsaw: Yes, very much so. In fact, the one that sticks out in my mind is
the recipe for shortbread, where they just specified sugar.
When I made it, I realized it should've been confectioner's
sugar. That came out testing a bit sandy, but it's authentic. I
relied on Mrs. Beeton's cookbook quite a bit for some of her
recipes, and I loved her curry recipe. She gave this huge recipe,
and then it said, you'd be better off just buying it at your local
purveyor. She discouraged the making, using 25 different
herbs and spices to come up with an authentic Indian curry.

Burt Wolder: Are there dishes that have now sort of become regular staples
that turn up every week or so in your household because of all
of this work? Are you regularly serving pate de foie gras pie?

Wendy Marsaw: No. I wish. I think I'm a little turned off by foie gras pie. I have a
daughter who's a vegan and would not take kindly to that. The
Basmati rice, I do make the game pie regularly. I'd say that's
every two weeks. There's some other recipes that are a part of
my repertoire that I can include.

Wendy Marsaw: My husband is a good lover of curries and he served in the

Royal Canadian Navy, so mushrooms on toast and toad in the
hole and bubble and squeak and the no-churn mint chip ice
cream were great. Prime rib, standing rib roast is a must at
Christmas with Yorkshire pudding, but mine tend to come out
like Yorkshire hockey pucks.

Scott Monty: Wow, that's really Canadian. That's good.

Burt Wolder: Yorkshire pudding is like a popover.

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Wendy Marsaw: I know! It should be the easiest thing in the world, and I have
to admit, it takes me some doing to make. The tobacco cookies
I think I'll give a miss to making those again, but the
Devonshire chicken dumplings are terrific. The eggs a la russe
are very, very simple to make. The chocolate truffles are easy.

Wendy Marsaw: The Turkish smoked eggplant with yogurt, I'm not going to
even try to pronounce that name, Patlicanezmesi. That came
from one of my favorite vignettes in the book where they go to
the Turkish bath. I just thought that was a great thing, because
the Turkish bath were not only for the wealthy, well-to-do,
upper class Brits, they were also open to the middle and
middle-lower class Brits, so Londoners had a chance to
frequent those.

Wendy Marsaw: The importance of the coffee houses was also another thing
that amazed me. It was a place where they would get their
newspapers and the running patterers would come in and give
them the latest headlines, political discussions would take
place. It was quite social themed. There were thousands of
coffee houses in London in the old days.

Burt Wolder: Cycling back to Mrs. Hudson, with all of this, with this great
range of culinary experiments, and this sort of progressive
proto-feminist. In your view, as you conceive of Mrs. Hudson
as a character, how did she come by all this knowledge and
skill? She sounds like pretty much a Victorian superwoman to
be able to do all of this.

Wendy Marsaw: I think she is an unusual woman. She did have to master
cooking as every woman of her class did. She made herself into
a role, although she was the landlady, she was the chief cook
and bottle washer as well, which was an unusual role for a
landlady, which is why I think she did get to know Holmes and
Watson a lot more intimately than the books would have us
believe. She was only in, I believe it was nine stories. I think if
they had her as a character in the new Sherlock series, she is a
little bit more of a participant in their affairs, but she does

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 make it clear that she does not cook, leave the kitchen duties
up to Holmes and Watson. In the picture with Jeremy Brett
and certainly in the Basil Rathbone, she's much more a servile
character. I think she just loved cooking.

Burt Wolder: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, there's a-

Wendy Marsaw: Toad in the hole for the Irregulars. How could she ignore these
poor little children and not feed them?

Scott Monty: Well, and surmising as you have of her widowhood, which
makes great sense in terms of her ownership of the house, it
could very well be that she never had children of her own, and
this could be a proxy-

Wendy Marsaw: Yes, exactly. Exactly. I believe that her husband was killed soon
after they were married. A woman's picture or her names
should appear in Victorian only at the time of her birth, her
marriage and her death. That's why on my website, I have a
picture of what I envision Mrs. Hudson to look like. She was
quite an attractive looking woman who would appeal to
someone of an upper class or middle class occupation, such as
an architect. I could see 221B with a window being wonderful
light for an architect to work in.

Scott Monty: Yeah. Who but an architect could craft a layout for 221B that
accommodates all the various scenarios that we come across
over the 60 stories?

Wendy Marsaw: Exactly. Exactly. I think that he didn't design 221, he chose
221B. In the story that I wrote about him, I saw him building
his own home for himself and Mrs. Hudson, which is why I
believe that he died fairly early, and she was on her own, and
she was looking for a tenant. She makes no mention, or there
is no mention of prior tenants in 221B. It's quite likely that she
met Sherlock when she was in her 20s and he was in his 20s.

Scott Monty: Interesting. Following that, how likely do you think it was that
she was in fact the Martha that was mentioned in His Last Bow
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 in 1914, whom as we all know, Vincent Starrett has long
surmised was Mrs. Hudson, who then moved from the city to
the country and stayed in service of Sherlock Holmes.

Wendy Marsaw: With all due respect for such an eminent scholar as Starrett, I
don't believe that she was Martha. Martha was a housekeeper
and described as a housekeeper, and that's not what Mrs.
Hudson was. She was a cut above that. I can't see her leaving
to go and work in Surrey ... I'm sorry, is it Surrey?

Scott Monty: Sussex I think.

Burt Wolder: Sussex.

Wendy Marsaw: Sussex, yes. Sussex, sorry.

Scott Monty: Down on the coast.

Wendy Marsaw: Sussex Downs. No, I can't see her being the Martha of that. It
was a woman who took her place, or one of the Conan Doyle
idiosyncrasies that another Mrs. Turner was looking after the
meals. I surmised that that was probably her sister-in-law who
came to sit in for a day while she was going out to a suffragette
meeting.

Scott Monty: Yeah. Well, certainly given that character makeup that you've
worked out, I would agree that Martha character does not
sound at all like the Mrs. Hudson that we know, the strong and
independent woman. Unless, unless, I'm going to go out on a
ledge here, Watson was simply covering for what later resulted
in an official unification of these two grand characters, Mrs.
Hudson and Sherlock Holmes, in matrimony.

Wendy Marsaw: In matrimony?

Scott Monty: Yeah. I mean, what if Martha was actually, what if she were
Mrs. Hudson, and she and Holmes were married and living
together down in Sussex, and Watson was simply providing a
little bit of artistic license to cover for it.

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Wendy Marsaw: Well, I could see, although they refer to old Martha, I could see
that being a possibility given my perception of her being a
younger woman. It's not impossible to see Holmes and Mrs.
Hudson marry in their 40s when he retired.

Scott Monty: Right.

Wendy Marsaw: That would be a very romantic kind of vignette, yet to be

written.

Scott Monty: Do you have a favorite essay in the book, something that really
stands out to you or really you think typifies what people
should read when they get the book?

Wendy Marsaw: Well, one of my favorites is definitely the Turkish bath one. I
just find the interaction between Holmes and Watson in that
circumstance to be very, very interesting. There are discussions
in the cooling room and things like that I think are compelling.

Wendy Marsaw: There is a couple of other stories that I liked. The Criterion Bar
and the Holborn restaurant I believe was interesting, because
that of course was where Watson meets up with Stamford,
and he claims Watson is talking about how poor he is, yet he
goes to the Criterion, which is one of the most expensive
places in the Holborn restaurant as well.

Wendy Marsaw: Another one that I quite like was the dining car. They'd use
train travel so much, and dining on the dining car, the adjunct
of the dining car was just around the time of Holmes and
Watson. They trained the servers with blindfolds and served
very, very wonderful meals, until they started serving terrible
sandwiches and things like that that they have nowadays. The
meals were quite sumptuous and the preparation was
beautiful. The service was fantastic. These guys could get
around with blindfolds.

Scott Monty: That comes in handy when you get into those tunnels. There's
one piece of personal information that you share about
yourself, and I think it's a fairly unique one, although we have
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 run into a couple of other people with this. You have a certain
type of bodily decoration. Would you like to tell us about that?

Wendy Marsaw: Yes, I do have a tattoo. It was done by my son-in-law, who's a

tattoo artist.

Scott Monty: Oh, really?

Wendy Marsaw: Yes.

Scott Monty: Wow.

Wendy Marsaw: It's a profile of Sherlock in an oval frame and it says, "Sherlock
lives." That's the only, I decided that that was something, I
wouldn't tattoo my body unless I really knew I loved this for
life. Certainly it got a lot of mentions on the holidays down
south, wearing clothing that could reveal it. The only other
thing that competes with it is a Rolling Stones logo on my
other shoulder.

Scott Monty: Oh, two British icons. I love that.

Wendy Marsaw: Well, Keith Richards is one of my favorites. Sherlock Holmes

and Keith Richards, what do they have in common? It might be
an interesting essay to do.

Scott Monty: Yeah. Well, they're both older than dirt, and they keep
surviving. This really gives new meaning to the phrase keeping
green the memory of the master.

Wendy Marsaw: 160 years, and 75 years of Keith Richards, it's remarkable.

Scott Monty: That's great. That is fantastic. Well, Wendy, what's next on
your list of Sherlockian projects?

Wendy Marsaw: Well, right now, I'm working on a project, a blog deal that's
dealing with Sherlock's disguises and the London street food
and purveyors of secondhand clothiers. I also wrote an essay
for a book that's being edited by Chris Redmond called Why

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 Sherlock Holmes is like ... In it, I compare Sherlock Holmes to
Hamlet. Don't ask me why, but it popped into my head, and
there really was a lot of things that were parallel between the
two men, not the least of which is that Hamlet is a detective
story, and many of the actors who played Sherlock Holmes also
played Hamlet.

Scott Monty: That is true. Of course, in the BBC series, you've got that skull
that sits on the mantelpiece-

Wendy Marsaw: Yes-

Scott Monty: Yeah. Interesting. We will look forward to that. I know it's our
intention to speak with Chris again when the book comes out
later this year. We'll make sure we ask him specifically about
your essay.

Wendy Marsaw: Great, thanks.

Scott Monty: Well, Wendy, thank you for spending some time with us and
sharing this really unique and different approach to Mrs.
Hudson. I think it's just so refreshing. I think it should
encourage other scholars out there that it's really a matter of
changing your perspective just a little bit and being able to find
in the canon and supporting sources, the way to actually back
up your theory and strengthen it. Brava to you for doing such a
spectacular job.

Scott Monty: We'll have a link to the site mrshudsonskitchen.com in the

show notes. The book of course, Memoirs from Mrs. Hudson's
Kitchen, it's available on all of the major online bookstores,
and you can read more about it on the website there.

Scott Monty: Wendy, thank you for being with us.

Wendy Marsaw: Thank you so much for having me, Scott and Burt. I really
appreciate it.

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Burt Wolder: Well, now, that is a completely different take and a very
original approach. There is so many opportunities when you
get involved in doing a regular column to think about putting
them together and telling a larger story. I really like the idea of
Mrs. Hudson being a neglected and not sufficiently understood
and appreciated participant in Baker Street. That's not a new
idea, but I really like that approach.

Burt Wolder: One of the nice parts about Wendy's book is that she seems to
have found, by collecting these columns and reediting them
and presenting them, a nice way to sort of add that dimension
to Mrs. Hudson as you amplify what the daily experience was
like in Baker Street, with recipes for things, for things that I am
very unlikely ever to make, things like toad in the hole, which is
basically eggs and milk and beef kidneys, or leftover mutton.
You know, I don't know about you, but I have very little
leftover mutton in our house.

Scott Monty: Yeah, yeah. I tend to clean my plate on the first serving. There
ain't nothin' like mutton, clearly.

Burt Wolder: Yeah.

Scott Monty: I think the genius of Conan Doyle's creation here, and we think
about some of the mainstays, some of the characters that have
lived beyond the pages of the canon, those that authors and
filmmakers and producers alike have chosen to make part of
their creations themselves. Typically, it's Professor Moriarty,
Mycroft Holmes, who by the way, each of them only appears in
two stories, it is Inspector Lestrade. These are folks that come
up from time to time.

Scott Monty: Mrs. Hudson, as Wendy mentioned, appeared in nine stories.

You think about the fact that so many of these stories did take
place at Baker Street, she was somewhere in the background,
and she was part of the daily life at Baker Street. In some ways,
it's almost left us a blank slate on which to project our notion
of what a landlady, or later as Vincent Starrett did, a

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 housekeeper might be, might look like, might personify, might
interact.

Scott Monty: I think Wendy really did a fine job in sussing through how Mrs.
Hudson came to be the landlady, came to be the owner of the
establishment, and how she interacted with Holmes and
Watson. There's still opportunities for others to do the same.

Burt Wolder: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I agree. I just realized, we've sort
of left her off the hook, because we had a good discussion
about was Mrs. Hudson Martha, and came to the conclusion,
at least Wendy did, no. But we haven't found out her view
about Mrs. Hudson's first name.

Scott Monty: Well, maybe it's worth resurfacing.

Burt Wolder: I wonder if it was Gladys?

Scott Monty: Effie. I don't know. We have no way of knowing. You could
assign any Victorian name to it and be convincing.

Burt Wolder: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Scott Monty: It probably wasn't Brittany.

Burt Wolder: Dawn.

Scott Monty: I particularly do like Brittany because Watson in His Last Bow
said she personified England, and what better name than
Brittany?

Burt Wolder: Yes. I don't know that Watson said that. Wasn't that Von Bork
who said ...

Scott Monty: Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Burt Wolder: With her aura of somnambulance, something or other, you

know?

Scott Monty: Yes, because she was sleeping in a chair or something.

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Burt Wolder: Yes, yes. Look, everyone knows that Martha in His Last Bow is
actually Mycroft in a dress.

Scott Monty: That's great. She might almost personify Britannia, said he,
with her complete self-absorption and general air of
comfortable somnolence.

Burt Wolder: Somnolence, there we are.

Scott Monty: The secretary said that.

Burt Wolder: I aspire to having an aura of comfortable somnolence.

Scott Monty: Well, I think that's pretty much what our listeners have every
time we pop open ...

Scott Monty: All right. Well, it is that time. You guessed it, you heard the
music, it is time for Canonical Couplets, the great Sherlockian
quiz show, where we tend to test your knowledge about just
about anything that you could come across in the canon in just
two lines. Absolutely amazing when you think two simple lines
could sum up some of these great stories.

Scott Monty: Now, you'll remember that the last time we had you on here,
we gave you this canonical couplet to be identified. To send
such relics to a nice old lady implies behavior something worse
than shady. Any ideas what that might have been Burt?

Burt Wolder: Yes. That was the Cardboard Treaty, wasn't it?

Scott Monty: It was worth the paper it was printed on. You were close, so
close as always. The Cardboard Box, that's the one. Cardboard
Box.

Burt Wolder: I knew it was something about cardboard.

Scott Monty: Yes. The relics that were sent of course were human ears,
freshly severed. You know, we didn't see any recipe for

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 severed ears in Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen unfortunately. Ear ear.
That would've been a good recipe.

Scott Monty: From all of our winners, we need to stick our hand into the
revolving drum, of course, waiting until it stops, and it's
coming around. It looks like it's stopped on number ... lucky
number 11. Number 11 corresponds with ... looks like it's Nils
Gampert.

Scott Monty: Nils Gampert, you are our winner this time. We'll get you a
little keepsake, a little Sherlockian tchotchke of sorts, perhaps
printed. We'll get it off in the mail to you. Thanks for
participating, Nils.

Scott Monty: Now of course we have the next round up in Canonical

Couplets. Get yourselves ready, get your ears attuned for this
one to win a prize. It's hard to find a workable deterrent for
[inaudible 00:55:22] both historical and current.

Scott Monty: If you think you know which canonical story that couplet refers
to, send us an email at comment@ihearofsherlock.com,
putting Canonical Couplet in the subject line. We will be
delighted to have you compete for the next prize here on
Canonical Couplets.

Burt Wolder: Well, you know, Mrs. Hudson is not a new subject for Scott and
I, and months and months ago, we wondered why it was that
over the years, particularly in the old days, there was never a
radio program about the adventures of Mrs. Hudson at 221B
Baker Street. We actually produced an example that has never
before been heard until today. Let us know what you think of
it.

Burt Wolder: And now, it's time for Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen, a story of a
woman alone in Victorian London and her struggles to succeed
as landlady to the world's first consulting detective.

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Burt Wolder: It's spring 1895, and we are below stairs at 221B Baker Street.
Mrs. Hudson has just said good morning to her young nephew
Willie, and we hear Willie say ...

Willie: Gosh, Aunt Martha. It sure is stuffy down here in your kitchen
with all those things on the stove.

Aunt Martha: Oh, Willie. Why ever would you call me Aunt Martha?

Willie: Gosh, Aunt Martha.

Aunt Martha: Why, Martha, that's the kind of name some housekeeper
would have if she worked for some German spy. What an idea.

Willie: I'm sorry, auntie. But it still is stuffy down here in your kitchen
today. What's that bubbling on the stove? Is it something
wonderful for Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson?

Aunt Martha: My mother named me Clyda Esther Antigone. It's a perfectly

lovely name. Why, that's a pot of lead there bubbling away.

Willie: You're melting lead, auntie?

Aunt Martha: Yes. I pried those bullets out of the wall in Mr. Holmes' room
upstairs and melted them all down.

Willie: But why do that, auntie?

Aunt Martha: I'm making lead soldiers, Willie, a whole platoon of them, to
recreate the Crimean War.

Willie: Wow. Can I have some, auntie?

Aunt Martha: That depends on the casualties, Willie.

Willie: Could they be a Christmas present for say, some favorite

nephew?

Aunt Martha: Oh, no, Willie. I'm going to paint them and package them up
for Mr. Hudson to sell in his shop.

Page 25 of 28
Willie: Gosh, auntie, I thought Mr. Hudson was dead.

Aunt Martha: That's what we want the insurance company to think, Willie.
But no, he has a little shop in the Kennington Road, and these
will fit right in. He can't drop these and break them like all
those statues.

Aunt Martha: Oh, be a dear and go see who's at the front door. I have to
keep stirring this or it will stick to the pot.

Aunt Martha: Who was it, Willie?

Willie: Oh, it was a ratty little man with bad breath. He pushed right
past me and ran upstairs to Mr. Holmes.

Aunt Martha: Oh, that will be Inspector Lestrade, out of his depth again. That
means ... Oh, dear. That means Inspector Gregson can't be far
behind.

Aunt Martha: I can't think why we pay that boy in buttons, Willie. He's never
around when you need him.

Willie: Gosh, auntie. It sure gets noisy here in Baker Street.

Aunt Martha: Oh, there they go. That will be Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson and
the two policemen, off to inspect some old corpse, no doubt.

Willie: Oh, darn, auntie. I thought I was going to meet this time for
sure!

Aunt Martha: Next time perhaps, Willie. Now, I've got to get upstairs and
clear away the breakfast things and wash the towels and
sheets, and open up all the windows up there.

Willie: Has Mr. Holmes been doing more of his smelly chemical
experiments, auntie?

Aunt Martha: Oh, no, Willie. Not lately, no.

Willie: Or smoking late at night with the windows closed?

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Aunt Martha: I don't think so, Willie. But Dr. Watson is not what you call a
regular bather, Willie. Now, you keep stirring this pot while I
go upstairs and work.

Willie: Gosh, auntie. You sure seem happy about having to do all that
cleaning upstairs.

Aunt Martha: It's the best part of the day for me, Willie. Nothing cheers me
up more than getting out of Mrs. Hudson's kitchen.

Scott Monty: Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen stars Victoria Secret as Mrs. Hudson and
Caldecott Meddle as Willie, and is brought to you by the
makers of lard, the cook's best friend since the 16th century.
Spread some on your oatmeal today! Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen
was written, produced and directed by Stuart David Stewies.
This is a STUD production.

Scott Monty: Well, I can't believe we've done it again. We've convinced
people to waste an hour with us.

Burt Wolder: Invest. I don't think of it as wasting. I think it's an investment.

Scott Monty: Investment. What's the ROI on being an IHOSE listener?

Burt Wolder: Well, the return on investment is uncalculable delight, clearly.

Let the joy be unconfined. That's my motto.

Scott Monty: It can be unconfined and uncontrollable. Seeing as I am neither

unrefined nor controllable, I will remain Scott Monty.

Burt Wolder: And I'm stuck being Burt Wolder.

Scott Monty: We love it.

Holmes & Watson: The game's afoot!

Sherlock Holmes: You know, I'm afraid that in the pleasure of this conversation,
I'm neglecting business of importance, which awaits me
elsewhere.

Page 27 of 28
Narrator: Thank you for listening. Please be sure to join us again for the
next episode of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, the first
podcast dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes: Goodbye and good luck, and believe me to be, my dear fellow,
very sincerely yours, Sherlock Holmes.

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