Detectives, Dickens, and Diesel

[Max Magee]

My family received a beautifully bound copy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol a few days before Christmas from a family friend. What better time to start reading it aloud with my 7 year old at bedtime? Well, we're about halfway through (we've met two of four apparitions) at the turn of the year, but we're still very much enjoying it.

One particularly fun and surprisingly lively passage that I believe could never quite be replicated in any visual medium is the following, about the festive and jolly sales displays in the London streets on the morning of Christmas:

The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. ~ Stave Three: A Christmas Carol

Among other questions this passage brought to mind, (like, what's the difference between a filbert and a hazelnut? I looked this up while eating Nutella this morning) I wondered what a Norfolk Biffin was, and I thought I might have heard the name in a Sherlock Holmes story (I had guessed that it was a variety of apple). I searched for the phrase Sherlock Holmes Norfolk Biffin (wasn't there a story called The Adventure of the Norfolk Biffer?)...

A Norfolk Biffin (a.k.a. Norfolk Beefing) from realenglishfruit.co.uk

I found many articles about a recently rebranded/repainted electric diesel locomotive (English Electric Type 1 Class 20 'Chopper' Bo-Bo diesel locomotive 20227) painted in the maroon of the Metropolitan livery that celebrates both the legacy of Our Famous Sleuth and his adventures on the London Underground (though this locomotive operates on the North Norfolk Railway) and his fruitful reliance on rail transport, as well as the 150th anniversary of the underground itself:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart166axe/32633755027

(Note the shedplate number 221 B)

This engine (20227) was previously named after Sir John Betjeman, whose legacy as a poet includes a Christmas poem that talks about London shops and tram cars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyZL9_To0_A 

(a video of the poet reading his own poem set to music)

A different class 20 engine (20142) on the same line now bears Sir John Betjeman's name:

For those of you interested in railway timetables, the source of the photo above with both engines has some interesting historical dates and times.
https://www.brc-stockbook.co.uk/lt_railtour.htm

As for the actual Sherlockian connection, I'd note that there was a Holmes fruit company that only operated at Christmastime:

And I did recall/look up the true variety of apple mentioned in the Canon, Ribston-Pippin from this passage describing suspects (in this instance James Lancaster) in BLAC[k]:

a little ribston-pippin of a man, with ruddy cheeks and fluffy white side-whiskers

A ribston-pippin from "OrangePippen.com"

This wasn't the only time that a person's face was compared to fruit in the Canon, can anyone identify others? (Hint: Holmes has a love-hate relationship with oranges and their pips, but in the case I am thinking of, citrus doesn't enter into it.)

Ribston-pippin is a very literary variety of apple, and circling back, Charles Dickens also included it in one of his first long-form forays, The Pickwick Papers:

"A little hard-headed, Ripstone pippin-faced man, was conversing with a fat old gentleman in one corner; and two or three more old gentlemen, and two or three more old ladies, sat bolt upright and motionless on their chairs, staring very hard at Mr. Pickwick and his fellow-voyagers." ~ Chapter 6: The Pickwick Papers

I think, once you've used the adjective ruddy a few times, you have to start thinking of fruit you can use to describe faces.

A bonus apple connection, a pastiche in the form of an apple varietal quiz Holmes administers to Watson (or vice-versa): The Adventure of the Scarlet Blush

(spoiler alert: it's the best apple-pastiche I've ever read!)

I'd be remiss talking about Sherlock Holmes books and Apples, if I didn't mention that I'm very much looking forward to Glen Miranker's Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects opening in Minnesota February 13th of this year.
https://www.continuum.umn.edu/2022/12/sherlock-holmes-in-221-objects/

Merry New Year!

Max