* An Inspector in the U.K. is equal to S.D.O. in India.
Mary Russell on God
From the first time we—and Sherlock Holmes—meet Mary Russell, she is already on the road to theological studies. Her Jewish mother got her started, and Russell’s theological and criminal enquiries often weave together.
As do, interestingly enough, Russell’s interests and those of her agent, Laurie King. Laurie wrote a Master’s thesis on the feminine imagery of God. Or, is this a section of one of Russell’s papers?
Feminine Aspects of Yahweh
The people Israel called their God “Father”, thought of him as a King, a warrior, a male. However, the vocabulary of masculine terms was at times inadequate, and at those times the person speaking to or of God would slip into maternal imagery.
It is difficult for most modern minds to understand the fluidity of boundaries that seems to have existed in previous millennia (and indeed exists still in some groups and individuals). It takes us by surprise to hear of Israel sucking the “breast of kings” (Isa. 60:16), to have a goddess such as Ishtar who is both male and female, and to think of the very masculine father god Yahweh in childbirth. It offends our need for tight compartmentalization, and leads to the re-writing of passages such as Deut. 32:18, where the RSV translations (“You forgot the God who gave you birth”) glosses over the Hebrew, which clearly means to write in the effort of birthing. (More on this verse later.) In this chapter we will look first at gynomorphic imagery as applied to Yahweh: “his” possession of a womb and ability to bear and give birth; Yahweh’s formative influence on the child in the womb; Yahweh’s maternal love; Yahweh nourishing the child at the breast; and the juxtaposition of male and female imagery this draws out of the bible. We will then turn to the concept of Yahweh’s rahamim, that compassionate womb-love which has its basis in the womb. This womb-love of Yahweh will first be shown in parallel with other expressions of divine love, particularly hesed; then it will appear in opposition to the judgmental wrath of God.
Gynomorphic imagery
Yahweh is never explicitly called “Mother” in the Bible. Yet, on close examination, one finds the full gamut of motherhood covered in Yahweh’s attributes. The following section discusses those passages most relevant to the picture of God the Mother.
The womb of God
Deuteronomy 32:18, mentioned above, is translated by RSV: You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.
The translators make a note that the word “begot” can also be “bore.” Indeed, BDB gives the meanings for yalad as “bear, bring forth, beget”, in that order. The word rock, sur, is masculine, hence the verb is masculine, so the translators chose “begot” rather than “bore”. However, if the primary meaning of “to bear” is applied, it introduces two parallel female images rather than a male/female juxtaposition. Phyllis Trible, in her structural analysis of Dt 32, sees verse 6 as the conclusion of the introductory section:
Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?
She then posits v. 16 as the conclusion of the first major section. Whereas both speak of creation and God as the giver of life, the first is God the father, the second, God as mother:
The Rock who gave you birth you forgot, and you lost remembrance of the God who writhed in labor pains with you.
The TDNT article on odin would agree with her translation of what the RSV gives as “the God who gave you birth”. The Hebrew very hul (hil) is basically a shaking dance movement, from which comes the general application to any shaking or twisting. In childbirth it is the “quivering and trembling of the mother at the physical exertion, in the contraction, pressure, and stress at the beginning of labor.” BDB also defines the word as whirling, twisting, or writing, be it in dance, pain, or childbirth. Thus the image of God “giving birth” to the child Israel is not simply a distant statement of theology, but one which presents in the most direct language possible the idea of God’s maternal involvement in the birth process.
* *
(RSV= Revised Standard Version of the Bible; BDB= Brown-Driver-Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon; TDNT= Theological Dictionary of the New Testament)
The rest of Laurie King’s MA Thesis is available online, here.
Six:
The Russell Community
“Formidable,” my companion murmured. (Beekeeper’s Apprentice)
*
It was the usual religious nonsense that had flowered since the War’s end, equal parts delusion, untidy thinking, and egomania. (Language of Bees)
*
“Your wife is such a darling, and such a sense of humour!”
“Oh yes,” Holmes agreed gravely. “Quite the joker is my wife.” (The Game)
The Friends of Russell community is varied and ever-growing. New books are celebrated with a flurry of contests, art projects, book club discussions, blog posts, and overall enthusiasm.
From Russell’s desk (Alice Wright)
Laurie R. King
Laurie King is, understandably, foremost among Miss Russell’s fans. Her website is a wealth of material on All Things Russell. She has assembled a collection of lengthy excerpts and Reader guides. The publication of each new Memoir is heralded by numerous posts on Laurie’s blog, “Mutterings”, with photographs of scenes from the upcoming book to illustrate brief excerpts.
Russell Blogs?
Yes, Miss Russell very occasionally posts a note on her personal blog, Mary Russell Holmes: A Lifetime with Sherlock. Nothing too personal, mind, and rare, but any glimpse at her life from the inside is to be treasured.
Twitter & Twitter parties
A Twitter invitation
Yes, Russell Tweets. The lady has clearly taken regular doses of whatever substance it is in bees that alleviates the symptoms of rheumatism since, despite the English climate, Russell’s fingers remain nimble.
Moreover, her participation on Twitter goes beyond her daily ruminations, snippets from her books, and interaction. Every so often she invites her followers to a party, offering them tea, scones, appropriate snacks, and a near-lethal quantity of honey wine. Merriment ensues, to put it mildly. It often takes considerable time to get the final tipsy guests out the door, and to pull the parrots (Pirate King) and/or camels (Garment of Shadows) from the trees in the orchard.
Letters of Mary
One online forum which Russell views with a certain degree of bemusement is “Letters of Mary”, where enthusiasts indulge their impatience with the slow appearance of the next volume of Memoir by suggesting episodes that took place but have gone (as yet) unacknowledged. Call it Fan Fiction, call it homage, the participants are not only full of energy, they are marvelously talented.
Virtual Book Club
Virtual Book Club logo
Each month, Right-Minded Readers (that is, people who love the Memoirs) come together to discuss a new book, in the LRK VBC: Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club. Mostly fiction, often historical, but really a mix of everything, the discussions are lively and wide-ranging. And how many book clubs let its participants drop by day or night, in pajamas or what-have-you?
Meet-ups
Get-togethers and dinner parties (of the real, rather than virtual, variety) take place at many Crime and Mystery conferences, and when Laurie King travels on book tour. Meet-ups are often organized through the Virtual Book Club.
Fun & Games with Russell & Holmes
Word puzzles, as one might imagine, are popular with Miss Russell’s friends. Sometimes it is Marjorie Tucker’s Bee-fore and After:
(The solution is here.)
Other times it is John Bychowski’s Word Search:
(If you want to work this one, the grid and clues are here, the grid and solutions here.)
Art in the Blood: A Beekeeper’s Gallery
Miss Russell being a true art lover, married to a man with “art in his blood”, it is only appropriate to invite her friends to express their affection for the Memoirs in their own fash
ion. Some pieces in the Laurie King website’s “Beekeeper’s Gallery” are individual works, others form part of the ongoing Russellscape panorama, while some began as part of a contest:
“Parrot King” (a story given in the Companion) for example, was connected with the publication of Pirate King:
Parrot King (Jenny Parks)
Illuminated MyStory
In the “Illuminated MyStory”, Russell’s friends were invited to illuminate that tale (which is given here in this Companion.) Sara McClelland’s can be folded to publish as a book:
Whereas Rori Shapiro expressed herself with a classical Illuminated Manuscript:
…and The Game goes ever on.
* * *
[1]1 La Vie des abeilles (The Life of the Bee) by Maurice Maeterlink (1901, translated by Alfred Sutro).
[2] Mary Russell was born January 2, 1900. Holmes’ birthday is celebrated on January 6 (Twelfth Night) although the actual year is a matter of fierce debate (cf footnotes 9 and 35).
[3] According to Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs around the end of 1903, where he studies the life of honeybees.
[4] The Great War, as it was known, commenced in August 1914 and ended with an armistice on 11 November 1918. In the early months, after hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died on both sides, a stalemate quickly developed along the Western Front, as the embattled nations became literally entrenched. In the spring of 1915, the Allied forces commenced the Gallipoli campaign, an undertaking to seize the Dardanelles strait and capture Constantinople. The land forces quickly became stalled. By the campaign’s end in December 1915, with the ignominious withdrawal of the Allied invaders, over 100,000 men were dead, including 56,000–68,000 Turkish and around 53,000 British and French soldiers. In April 1915, the war was going poorly for England.
[5] Gorse is a low-growing shrub with yellow flowers and occasionally vicious thorns, native to England.
[6] Publius Virgillius Maro, better known as Virgil, was probably the greatest Roman poet of his era, 70 to 19 B.C.E., and his epic poem, the Æneid, is still read today. Following the adventures of the Trojan soldier Æneas, from the Trojan War to his landing in Italy and the founding of Rome, the Æneid has long been a staple of Latin literature. At 15, if Ms. Russell is still “wrestling with Latin verbs,” it is unlikely that she would be reading Virgil’s other masterworks, the Eclogues or the Georgics. On the other hand, she was no doubt introduced to the Georgics before long, since Virgil has much to say there (Book IV) about the honeybee.
[7] The white cliffs are indeed chalk, laid down during the Cretaceous era, a million generations of tiny shelled creatures at the bottom of the sea, later pushed up to form the distinctive southern coast of England. Typically, chalk is studded with large nodules of flint, used as building materials throughout the Downs, including for the house of Sherlock Holmes.
[8] Or perhaps an American oath. It is unlikely that Ms. Russell learned such language from her mother.
[9] The debate rages on concerning the age of Sherlock Holmes. His early biographer W. S. Baring-Gould gives him a birth date of January 6, 1854; Laurie R. King (in the e-book collection “Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes”) questions this and suggests 1861 was more likely, making him 54 in 1915, if not younger. See also the discussion below, note 45.
[10] The upper-class drawl is characterized by linguists as non-rhotic (that is, the “r” in words like “hard” is not pronounced). This form of speech became popular in southern England and the upper classes in the late 18th century and has remained the standard for differentiation from the “received speech” patterns of the classic BBC English accent.
[11] In fact, he was not bored, but suffering from depression, as described by Holmes himself in “Beekeeping for Beginners.”
[12] This river is no doubt the Cuckmere, a small and meandering stream that cuts through the South Downs near Seaford.
[13] One can only speculate as to the relationship between this Tom Warner and the similarly beekeeping but clearly nefarious Josiah Warner of “A Venomous Death”, given here in this Companion.
[14] Again according to Holmes’ brief memoir, “Beekeeping for Beginners”, he thought at the time that Russell was yet another of the “fans” with which his life was plagued, even in his rural Downs retreat.
[15] “Three months ago”: Russell seems to have arrived in Sussex in January, 1915. However, below she admits that she has not begun walking the Downs until February, no doubt due to recuperation from the injuries she sustained in the fall of 1914 in California. (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice; Locked Rooms)
[16] Russell often sells Dr Watson short in the brains department, even after she gets to know him. In fact, the image of Watson as a bumbler is more down to Nigel Bruce than Arthur Conan Doyle, who invariably presents Watson as, if not quite up to the standards of his flat-mate, plenty bright enough to hold his own. See also footnote 62.
[17] Although Laurie King has written of the difficulties in transcribing Russell’s handwritten memoirs, her own writing leaves something to be desired. The initial manuscript version of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was hand-written, and the typist, confronted with this line, transcribed it with the remarkably evocative phrase, “…if that’s all that remains of the great detective Smird!”
[18] In “The Mazarin Stone,” an unnamed narrator declares that “Holmes seldom laughed, but he got as near it as his old friend Watson could remember.” Clearly, that statement is disproved here. A. G. Cooper, in “Holmesian Humour,” claims to have counted 292 examples of the Master’s laughter, while Charles E. Lauterbach and Edward S. Lauterbach, in “The Man Who Seldom Laughed,” compiled the following figures:
Smile: 103
Laugh: 65
Joke: 58
Chuckle: 31
Humor: 10
Amusement: 9
Cheer: 7
Delight: 7
Twinkle: 7
Miscellaneous: 19
Total: 316
[19] The word “teenager” was not in common use in 1915, although the versions “teen” and “teener” were found occasionally. This, as with much of Russell’s memoirs, come with her having written them in her eighties. Throughout, the language spoken is in the formal cadence of a woman in her ninth decade looking back at her youth, rather than the English actually spoken in the Twenties.
[20] In Latin, “homo” is man in the sense of mankind; “vir” refers strictly to the adult male, equivalent to the Greek terms anthropos and aner. Vir, meaning “husband,” is used chiefly in the legal phrase “et vir” (“and husband”).
[21] Ms. Russell did not yet know Holmes well. If she had read The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade, that he recommends to Watson as “one of the most remarkable ever penned,” she might have learned that he had a more subtle and complex view of humanity, a subject worthy of study but not of scorn.
[22] Formal English custom requires that a proper introduction be made by a third party.
[23] It is not entirely clear whether Holmes is actually pronouncing it in an Irish accent, or if he is merely drawing out the name in his mouth. If the former, perhaps this reveals something about Holmes’ past: Conan Doyle was born in Scotland, but both parents were Irish. If the two men were in some way blood relations, it could explain why Conan Doyle was chosen as Dr. Watson’s literary agent.
[24] This is a joke. Mary, the Mother of God, according to Anglican tradition, is the sinless peacemaker; Mary the Magdalene (not, incidentally, ever spoken of as a woman without virtue, much less a prostitute) is a disciple in her own right whose assertiveness is rewarded by being the first to speak with the risen Christ after the crucifixion.
[25] One imagines Holmes’ parallels drew on Machiavelli’s ideas of the “new prince” and the difficulties in building a new, stable society. At the time of this conversation, Germany’s aims in the Great War were the expansion of its empire (through the destruction of other empires and the conquest of the la
nds held by those empires). The French empire was a tempting target: The Germans perceived the French military forces as weak and expected a quick victory over France. The “Schlieffen Plan,” the idea of Count Alfred von Schlieffen, called for a rapid invasion of France, with the expectation that Russia would only slowly arm, allowing Germany to complete its conquest of France in the West, with ample time to turn to the East to face the Russian foe. These plans, like so many others in the War, miscalculated badly, and Germany was embroiled in the very two-front war that the Schlieffen Plan sought to avoid.
[26] First mentioned in “His Last Bow.” Holmes called it “the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days.” Unfortunately, no copies are extant, although Mary Russell appears to have one, since portions of it are quoted in Laurie R. King’s The Language of Bees.
[27] In June 1902, according to Watson’s account of “The Three Garridebs.”
[28] Watson had little complimentary to say about Mrs. Hudson, save that “she had as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman.” (From “The Naval Treaty”—and note, current usage would demand “Scotswoman”, but Conan Doyle did grow up in Edinburgh, after all, and he should know his Scots, be they men or women.) However, he surely appreciated the high regard in which she held Holmes (in “The Dying Detective,” he remarked that she “stood in the deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem. She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women.”
[29] Allotments were areas of land given over to the working poor to grow food, a reaction to widespread industrialization in the years before Britain took on the responsibilities of a welfare state. Some towns had allotments as early as the late nineteenth century, but the movement grew in the years after the Great War.