Give Me Another Horse

• Published in: American journal of semiotics 1991-01, Vol.8 (4), p.41-52
• Main Author: Sebeok, Thomas A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930); English literature; Inference
• ISSN: 0277-7126; 2153-2990
• DOI: 10.5840/ajs1991844

(Richard IIII, 3.178) The form of the horse's hoof is just as much an image of the steppe it treads as the impression it leaves is an image of the hoof (Lorenz 1973:xi) There hangs in London's National Portrait Gallery a 1926 cartoon by Bernard Partridge, depicting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as "the slave of his creation, Sherlock Holmes" (Fig. 1). Because "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" (Doyle 1967: 776-89), first published in the same year, 1926, represents a singularly radical stylistic experiment on the part of its author, then age 67, this, of all his mysteries, surely became one the most intriguing in the entire Sherlock Holmes corpus of 56 short stories: for Holmes, then living in retirement in his Sussex home, necessarily conducts his investigation there in the absence of Watson. William's display of "habits of observation and inference which [Holmes] had already formed into a system" (Doyle 1967: 109) mimics the structure and spirit, if not the substantive content, of similar passages throughout the Holmes canon. [...]at the beginning of "The Red-Headed League" (1967: 418-38), Sherlock Holmes' quick eye took in [Watson's prejoccupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances [at Mr. Jabez Wilson]. To cite just a few by others, these include Creasey's Death of a Racehorse (1959), Giles's Death at the Furlong Post (1967), Gruber's The Gift Horse (1942), Palmer's The Puzzle of the Red Stallion (1937) and The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (1941), Philips's Murder Clear, Track Fast (1961), Platt's The Princess Stakes Murder (1973), Van Dine's The Garden Murder case (1935), Wallace's The Flying Fifty-Five (1922) and The Green Ribbon (1929), and, of course, some three dozen racing books, through his current Longshot (1990), by Dick Francis. The earliest accounts of riding and the management of horses date from the Iron Age; especially noteworthy are the essays on hunting and horsemanship from the 4th century BC, by Xenophon, an adviser of Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, who, together with his war horse Bucephalus, conquered the world.