Scarlet Threads

A Study in Scarlet 

(SA/2025) 

 

There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, 

and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. [1]

 

  

I. 

 

I don't dislike the bright shade of red known as scarlet, even if I prefer other colours, such as sky-blue pink and lemon drizzle yellow. That said, the less of an orange tinge the better (I don't like the secondary colour orange).

 

 

II. 

 

Like other colours, scarlet is associated with many things but has no fixed meaning. 

 

Even Christians can't decide whether to value it as the colour of blood and thus associate it with martyrdom (think of Jesus and the miracle of transubstantiation), or as the colour of sexual passion and of sin, associated with prostitution and adultery (think of the Whore of Babylon riding a scarlet beast and Hester Prynne wearing her infamous scarlet letter). 

 

 

III. 

 

Scarlet is an old word that can be traced back to ancient Persia. But in English, from around 1250, it referred primarily to the kind of brightly coloured cloth that the rich and powerful like to drape themselves in so as to demonstrate to the world that they are, indeed, rich and powerful. 

 

The finest scarlet, called scarlatto came from Venice, where it was made from kermes [2] by a guild which closely guarded the formula, much as KFC guards its secret mix of eleven herbs and spices today. Cloth dyed scarlet cost as much as ten times more than cloth dyed blue. 

 

However, in the 16th century an even more vivid scarlet began to arrive in Europe from the New World. For when the Spanish conquered Mexico, they discovered that the Aztecs were making brilliant red shades from another variety of scale insect called cochineal. 

 

The first shipments of this new and improved (and significantly cheaper to produce) scarlet were sent from Mexico to Seville in 1523.

      

Naturally, the Venetians at first tried to block the use of the cochineal in Europe, insisting on the superiority of their own dye. But, before the century was over, it was being used in in Italy, just as in Spain, France, and Holland, and almost all the fine scarlet garments of Europe were eventually made with cochineal. 

 

 

IV.

 

These days, in an age of mechanical cowardice and camouflage, British soldiers all wear their drab multi-terrain patterned uniforms. But, once upon a time, they were known as the Redcoats and proudly wore scarlet tunics so as to be seen by the enemy ...

 

This distinctive uniform was a powerful symbol of national identity and British imperial rule. Sadly, it was gradually phased out during the mid-19th century and the last time the British Army wore red in active combat was during the Battle of Ginnis, in 1885 (which they won).      

 

V.

 

Turning from the world of warfare to the world of art, we find that great painters across the ages have loved to use vermilion, a form of scarlet pigment made from the powdered mineral cinnabar. 

 

However, after the First World War commercial production began of an intense new synthetic pigment -cadmium red - made from cadmium sulfide and selenium. And this new scarlet pigment soon became the standard red used by artists in the 20th century. 

 

 

VI. 

 

I've already referred in passing to Hawthorne's great novel The Scarlet Letter (1850). But there are two other scarlet works of fiction I feel I should mention ... 

 

Firstly, Conan Doyle's detective mystery which introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world, A Study in Scarlet (1888), in which the main clue to a case of multiple homicide is the German word Rache (revenge) written in blood on the wall.  

 

Secondly, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), by Baroness Orczy, the story of an English lord, Sir Percy Blakeney, who wore a disguise in order to rescue French nobles from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. 

 

Sir Percy was supported by a secret society - the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - and he left behind him a flower of the species Lysemachia arvensis as his calling card. 

 

 

VII. 

 

There is, of course, a politics of scarlet, just as there's a politics of most things (even brushing your teeth). 

 

And in the 20th century, the red flag became firmly associated in the cultural imagination with revolutionary socialism; both the Soviet Union and communist China adopted such (although the Communards beat them to it in 1871).   

 

Funnily enough, in China red is also the colour of happiness, but I'm not sure the tens of millions of people who died during Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958-62) found much to smile about. 

 

 

VIII. 

 

Something else that isn't all that funny, is the infectious illness common among young children known as scarlet fever. Although it can now be treated with antibiotics, it was once a major cause of childhood mortality. 

 

Ultimately, no one wants to see anything other than a healthy looking pink tongue; any other colour - white, yellow, black, or scarlet - and I would suggest you go see your doctor. 

 

  

IX.

 

And finally, let us not forget she who is Scarlet Johansson ...

 

Woody Allen was fiercely criticised for describing this American actress whom he had cast in his 2005 film Match Point as sexually radioactive [3]. 

 

But then, Woody Allen is criticised by a lot of people for a lot of things he has said and (allegedly) done. And, if I'm being honest, I understand exactly what he means and doubt there would have been so much fuss were he not considerably older than her; i.e., it's a case of ageism masquerading as moralism.

 

 

The Scarlet Pimpernel Meets Scarlett Johansson 

(SA/2025)

  

  

Notes

 

[1] Quote from A Study in Scarlet (1887) by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is in this novel that the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, ably assisted by Dr Watson, makes his first appearance. The line is spoken by Holmes, to Watson, in an attempt to define his role as a detective. 

      For me, part of the appeal of this line is it reverses the biblical idea of a scarlet thread as a symbol of redemption and divine grace (see the story of the harlot Rahab in the Book of Joshua). 

 

[2] Kermes is a genus of gall-like scale insects in the family Kermesidae. They feed on the sap of oaks and the females produce a red dye that was the original source of natural crimson. 

 

[3] Woody Allen, Apropos of Nothing (Arcade Publishing, 2020). 

      What Allen said in full was that Miss Johansson - who was nineteen when cast in Matchpoint - was "an exciting actress, a natural movie star, real intelligence, quick and funny, and when you meet her you have to fight your way through the pheromones ... Not only was she gifted and beautiful, but sexually she was radioactive." Allen was seventy when he made the film in 2005 and eighty-five when his memoir was published in 2020. 

      Whilst this is not meant to be a post about Woody Allen and the accusations of abuse made against him, I would like to say shame on all those at the Hatchette Book Group who played a part in preventing the book's original publication with Grand Central Publishing. 

      As for Johansson, whilst she has expressed displeasure at being hypersexualised, she has also admitted being flattered that people find her attractive. I think that the film critic Anthony Lane hits the nail on the head when he writes that she is "evidently, and profitably, aware of her sultriness, and of how much, down to the last inch, it contributes to the contours of her reputation". 

      See Lane's piece in The New Yorker entitled 'Her Again' (24 March, 2014), Vol. 90, No. 5, pp. 56-63.            

 

 

Fairy Tale

Frances with Fairies (1917) by Elsie Wright 

I. 

I suppose it's fair to say that the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best remembered as the creator of Britain's most famous fictional detective. Less well known is the fact that, despite his training in medical science, he was fascinated by paranormal activity and psychic phenomena. 

 

Indeed, Conan Doyle was a believer not only in the efficacy of spiritualism, but in the existence of fairies and published a book on the latter - The Coming of the Fairies (1922) - in which he set out his views and reproduced the Cottingley Fairies photographs, convinced as he was of their authenticity.  

II. 

In 1917, two young girls in West Yorkshire - Elsie Wright, aged 16, and her cousin Frances Griffiths, aged 9 - produced a couple of photographs purporting to show fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Public reaction to the pictures was mixed; some people believed them to be genuine and insisted that they provided firm evidence for the existence of supernatural beings; others, not quite so willing to accept the validity of the photographs, simply smiled at the idea that these magical figures from European folklore might actually be real and noted the très moderne hairstyles that the fairies modelled. 

Interestingly, whilst Elsie's mother, Polly, was in the first camp, her father, Arthur, a keen amateur photographer, immediately dismissed the images as a prank and was only concerned that the girls may have tampered with his camera.

The pictures became public in 1919 when Polly attended a meeting of the Theosophical Society in Bradford. At the end of the meeting, she showed the photographs taken by her daughter and niece to the speaker and, as a result, they were displayed at the Society's annual conference in Harrogate later that year.

 

Here, they came to the attention of a leading theosophist, Edward Gardner, who recognised the importance of the pictures; the fact that two young girls had not only been able to see the fairies, but also materialise their presence sufficiently for their images to be recorded on a photographic plate, demonstrated that psychic photography was possible.

 

Gardner was soon selling prints at his lectures and, before long, Conan Doyle came to hear of them. Never one to miss an opportunity, the latter quickly gained permission from Arthur Wright to use the images (free of charge) to illustrate an article he had written for the 1920 Christmas edition of The Strand Magazine. He also arranged with Gardner for the girls to take more fairy photos.

The two men were ecstatic with the results and believed the new pictures confirmed the truth of their theories concerning fairies and other psychic phenomena. Critics, however, were increasingly scornful; G. K. Chesterton is said to have remarked that when it came to this sort of thing, Conan Doyle's mentality was unfortunately more Watson than Holmes. The public also were growing tired of this fairy tale ...

It wasn't until 1982, however, that Elsie and Frances finally admitted in an interview what surely everyone with eyes can see; namely, that the photographs were faked using cardboard cut-outs of dancing girls copied from a popular children's book of the time and given wings (although both maintained that there really had been fairies at the bottom of the garden).

III.

As the author of Genocide in Fairyland - an unpublished collection of contemporary tales - I have to admit that I have a certain fondness for fairies, elves, goblins, and little people of every variety. I even agree with Conan Doyle who wrote that recognition of their existence would jolt the material modern mind 'out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and make it admit that there is a glamour and mystery to life.' 

 

Primarily, however, my thinking on this subject has been shaped by the following (extraordinary) passage from an essay by D. H. Lawrence, in which he argues that fairies are not merely an imaginative reality:

"Fairies are true embryological realities of the human psyche. They are true and real for the great affective centres, which see as through a glass, darkly, and which have direct correspondence with living and naturalistic influences in the surrounding universe, correspondence which cannot have mental, rational utterance, but must express itself, if it be expressed, in preternatural forms. Thus fairies are true ..."
 

 

See:

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Coming of the Fairies, (Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1922). This work can be read online thanks to the good people at arthur-conan-doyle.com - click here. 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press,1988), p. 127.