Title: Somehow Impure

Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Granada)

Rating: Gen

Length: 91

Content Notes: Italian sonnet; inspired by a scene in the Granada TV version of the canon story “The Creeping Man” where Alice Morphy asks her friend Edith Presbury to tell her father (who is Alice’s fiancée) to stop sending her orchids because they are ‘somehow impure.’ This scene is not in the original story.

Summary: The orchids unsettle Alice.

Author’s Note: I believe the orchid used in the scene is an Odontioda Victoria Village, a modern white hybrid, bred from the species Odontoglossum crispum. It is white and frilly with faint gold touches and very dark red-violet spots at the centre.

Unfurled uncurled the white majestic bloom’d
Like flags announcing royalty’s parade
Exotic beauty, pale, in glass displayed
Inviting praise, exhaling breath perfumed
A golden kiss adorns each blossom plumed
On silk wan, magenta caress betrayed.
A courtesan’s expression, guarded, staid
That hints of buried lies and loves exhumed.

O hateful blooms! Love’s emissary not!
Too knowing, bold for maiden young demure
Thy folds and frills remind what’s best forgot
Reveal, expose too much to one unsure
Be gone! My heart’s unsettled, my nerves wrought
By flowers fair, but oh, somehow impure!