Another round of potions on me
give me the skull one im ready
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I will admit that when the first images of Doyle’s Opticians appeared, I felt a certain amount of dread. The reason for this dread is that there is exactly one story in the Sherlock Holmes canon that focuses intensively on both the physical and functional aspects of eyewear—both of which are an optician’s business—but it is so odd and complex that I had been putting off dealing with it.
The Golden Pince-Nez (1904) is one of the 13 stories collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which documents Holmes’s apparent resurrection after his death at the falls of the Reichenbach. This story is a fine example of two generally unrecognized tropes in the Sherlock Holmes canon: a solution that does not entirely fit the crime (common) and double mirroring (less common). Double mirroring makes it harder to read a story’s subtext, because the meaning of a Sherlock Holmes story often depends on the answer to the question, “Is this character fundamentally a Holmes or a Watson?” When the answer is “Both”, that makes the subtext harder to parse. And sometimes, “both” is actually the answer. For this reason, The Golden Pince-Nez is like a canon hall of mirrors, which is a bit of an S4 mood.
This story has already been subtly referenced a few times in Sherlock, but the one that made me sit up and take notice is Not-Faith Smith’s portrayal in The Lying Detective.
Compared to to the other Eurus personas, and even to the “real” Faith Smith, Faux-Faith has a very… specific look. With her large glasses, difficulty walking, and particularly her thick nose, she bears a striking resemblance to “Anna” in The Golden Pince-Nez, described here as a suspect before we ever meet her:
“Wanted, a woman of good address, attired like a lady. She has a remarkably thick nose, with eyes which are set close upon either side of it. She has a puckered forehead, a peering expression, and probably rounded shoulders. There are indications that she has had recourse to an optician at least twice during the last few months. As her glasses are of remarkable strength, and as opticians are not very numerous, there should be no difficulty in tracing her.” […]
“Yes,” [Hopkins] said, “I can follow each of your arguments. I confess, however, that I am unable to understand how you arrive at the double visit to the optician.” (The Golden Pince-Nez)
So, perhaps fittingly, our escape room team of stellar meta writers (I played with @waitedforgarridebs, @jenna221b, and @green-violin-bow) visited Doyle’s Opticians twice: once to see and once to observe (and yes, we absolutely wore pencilled moustaches upon our return from the dead). Afterwards, I put Pince-Nez under the microscope. In this meta, I’ll talk about how and why this canon story and another, The Red-Headed League (1891), were interwoven in a single narrative as a preface for the Sherlock escape room, and how the combination of these stories is relevant to the The Lying Detective in particular and to Sherlock more generally.
Below the cut, there are minor spoilers for one segment of The Game is Now, which is a directed case study presented by a network operative, and not part of the timed game experience. Personally, I think that this background information will enhance this experience for new players, not detract from it; I’m interested in hearing whether others who have played the game agree.
Right! Got your reading glasses on? Good, because despite what you’ve been told, they’re the ones you’ll need under the cut.
