Talk:The Strand Magazine/Volume 2/Issue 10/The Boscombe Valley Mystery

"Baxter" quote

In the second to last paragraph is the following:

"God help us!" said Holmes after a long silence. "Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as this that I do not think of Baxter's words, and say, 'There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.'"

I believe the "There but for the grace of God," line is actually by John Bradford, but I don't have a hard copy to verify whether Doyle actually wrote Baxter or if that's a typo. -Andy 18:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's "Baxter" in my hard copy (Barnes & Noble Books edition, The Complete Sherlock Holmes). However, it does appear that Bradford is correct, judging by the number of matches when searching the Web for 'Bradford "grace of God"' compared to 'Baxter "grace of God"'. -Jason 17:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that Bradford is the source to which Doyle was referring, but I do have a healthy distrust of the B&N Complete Sherlock Holmes due to the sheer amount of typos I have found. It's still a great read if poorly edited. -RV —unsigned comment by 70.102.56.186 (talk) .

My copy of the story (which is a facsimile of the original Strand publication) has "Baxter". It would appear that Doyle went from memory rather than checking his source. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:20, 16 January 2013 (UTC)