Question

The extract begins when Mary Morstan meets Sherlock Holmes at his house. After that Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Mary visit some places in London. Explain in detail the various places mentioned in the extract.

Answer 1

As the trio headed towards the Lyceum Theatre in their cab, Dr. Watson described the September evening as dull, with a thick misty fog that lay low upon the great city and mud-coloured clouds slowly moving over the muddy streets. The first place that they come across is the Strand, where the street lamps look like misty spots of dim light, throwing a faint circular glimmer upon the wet pavement. The bright yellow lights in the shop-windows shone out into the steamy, foggy air and threw a misty, irregular glow across the crowded street. The faces of the countless people, who passed through these narrow bars of light, seemed eerie and ghostlike. The trio then reaches Lyceum Theatre, where the side-entrances were already crowded with people while horse-drawn carriages and four-wheelers constantly flowed at the front and shirtfronted men and beshawled and bediamonded women alighted from these rides. From the Lyceum Theatre, the trio was escorted by a small, dark, brisk coachman in a horse-drawn carriage. The carriage passed through Rochester Row Street, then through Vincent Square, then along Vauxhall Bridge Road, and headed over to the Surrey side, adjoining the Thames. As the carriage crossed over a bridge, a passing view of a stretch of the Thames, with the lamps shining upon the water could be seen. On the other side of the bridge, they landed on Wordsworth Road, followed by Priory Road, Lark Hall Lane, Stockwell Place, Robert Street, and Cold Harbour Lane, all of which are among the less fashionable regions of London. This rundown neighborhood is questionable and forbidding and full of dull brick houses with some public houses at the corner. These are followed by two-storied villas, each with its small garden in the front, and then followed again by a continuous line of new brick buildings, which looked like the monstrous tentacles of the city. Their journey ended in this neighborhood where they drew up at the third house on a new terrace.