The name swamp adder is an invented one, and the scientific treatises of Doyle’s time do not mention any kind of adder of India. To fans of Sherlock Holmes who enjoy treating the stories as altered accounts of real events, the true identity of this snake has been a puzzle since the publication of the story, even to professional herpetologists. Many species of snakes have been proposed for it, and Richard Lancelyn Green concludes the Indian Cobra (Naja naja) is the snake which it most closely resembles, rather than Boa constrictor, which is not venomous. The Indian cobra has black and white speckled marks, and is one of the most lethal of the Indian venomous snakes with a neurotoxin which will often kill in a few minutes. It is also a good climber and is used by snake charmers in India. Snakes are deaf in the conventional sense but have vestiges to sense vibrations and low-frequency airborne sounds, making it remotely plausible to signal a snake by whistling.
In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the deafness inconsistency (while not the others) was solved by Dr. Roylott (suspecting the deafness of snakes) softly knocking on the wall in addition to whistling. While snakes are deaf, they are sensitive to vibration.
Bitis arietans from Africa, Russell’s viper and saw-scaled viper also bear resemblance to the swamp adder of the story, but they have hemotoxin — slow working venoms.
The herpetologist Laurence Monroe Klauber proposed, in a tongue-in-cheek article which blames Dr. Watson for getting the name of the snake wrong, a theory that the swamp adder was an artificial hybrid between the Mexican Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) and Naja naja. His speculation suggests that Doyle might have hidden a double-meaning in Holmes’ words. What Holmes said, reported by Watson, was “It is a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India”; but Klauber suggested what Holmes really said was “It is a samp-aderm, the deadliest skink in India.” Samp-aderm can be translated “snake-Gila-monster”: Samp is Hindi for snake, and the suffix aderm is derived from heloderm, the common or vernacular name of the Gila monster generally used by European naturalists. Skinks are lizards of the family Scincidae, many of which are snake-like in form. Such a hybrid reptile will have a venom incomparably strengthened by hybridization, assuring the almost instant demise of the victim. And it will also have ears like any lizard, so it could hear the whistle, and legs and claws allowing it to run up and down the bell cord with a swift ease.
Most of the stuff that looks weird to us now in the Sherlock Holmes stories was in ‘The Strand Magazine’ in an article somewhere. Doyle would read the magazine, find stuff he liked, put it in a Sherlock story and send it to The Strand.
Don’t overlook the “Just Made Shit Up” factor, either… Demands of a good story rarely align with reality. He needed a snake with those characteristics, he made one up out of whole cloth.
Kipling, having a great familiarity with the Indian sub-continent, wouldn’t have. And, because your typical reader of Doyle’s wouldn’t have known any better, Doyle conducted reality triage on researching the details of his story, and just went with it. Nobody called him out on it, either, and he got paid. That’s all that matters to the author–That sweet, sweet financial reward.
Watching the Jeremy Brett outings years back on MYSTERY!, the host (which may have still been Vincent Price) explained that Conan Doyle often wrote his stories while out doing something else like watching sporting events or the like. In such situations, he may not have had ready access to The Compleat Herpetology of the Indian Subcontinent, with Lithographs or quite remembered if that jezail-fired bullet hit Watson in the shoulder or leg.
Like Shakespeare, Doyle has had way too many people reading way too deeply into his works; the man wrote to make a living. If continuity and reality had to be thrown out with the morning wash-water, so be it.
The root problem with a lot of this analytical crap is that you kill the joy with it all–Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, not a metaphor for rape.
Fundamentally, I think a lot of this sort of thing stems from people who are completely untalented, and educated well past the point of their intelligence–So, being frustrated that they can’t produce limpid prose or interesting stories of their own, they feel the need to rape the work of others.
There’s a reason why you see such charity in the reviews of things done by other real authors–They appreciate what goes into art, while the critic is merely a jackass.
Laurence Monroe Klauber worked his way up from electric sign salesman to president of San Diego Gas and Electric company. On the side, he served as Consulting Curator of Reptiles at the newly established San Diego Zoo. His 35 years in that role led to him becoming the celebrated author of Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories and Influence on Mankind, a two-volume book entitled published in 1956. “It is still considered to be the most complete and authoritative resource ever written on rattlesnakes.” He left a brilliant career after him: he was considered the foremost authority on rattlesnakes. “He was also a businessman, inventor, and contributed to mathematics in his study of the distribution of prime numbers.”
Laurence Monroe Klauber was the Napoleon of herpetology.
Doyle said he was ‘not nervous about details’ instead of ‘made shit up’ because he was a gentleman damn your eyes.
From the Wikipedia: “The San Diego Natural History Museum Research Library houses a significant collection of Laurence Klauber’s papers, data notebooks, daily diaries, correspondence, ephemera, and photographs.”
I’m envisioning a series of tales, à la John Gardner’s Moriarty books, in which a library researcher stumbles across evidence of the tangled web of secret criminal adventures and enterprises the respected Power-House president felt necessary to adequately fund his beloved Reptiles division. Why, here is the Mastermind of a literal Buchan-style Power-House!
“Rape the work of others” — !!!
Kirk, to paraphrase a certain sanguinary Count: Ah, sir, you dwellers in Curmudgeon City cannot enter into the feelings of the enthusiast.
David, your plot outline is very tempting, indeed.