yoyo, I've never read this book so looked up the various comments on Amazon. Apart from the fact that I understood Sherlock Holmes to be something of a misogynist I don't see anything particularly wrong in this young woman's behaviour. Is the fact that she is in the house of an 'older man' or that she is drinking booze that is bothering you?
Perhaps you in the US and I from the UK just have different moral parameters. ;-)

Veer,

I had no problem with her in the home of an older man, as she seems quite capable of handling herself.

The idea that an adult and a 15 year old are sharing a bottle of wine threw me !
In the US she'd be 6 years away from being 'legal'.

Yoyo, I read The Beekeeper's Apprentice probably a decade ago now, but I don't recall a whole lot about it. However, the time setting (late 19th century) would indicate to me that attitudes toward alcoholic beverages were quite different from those of the late 20th and 21st centuries. It was quite normal for youths (and children even) to consume wine and beer, particularly in Europe, because they grew up drinking it at table with adults.

Even in the U.S. in some cultures (like my own German-American culture) kids were started on children's beer (low alcohol content, 3% as I recall) and watered-down wine as young as five years old. It was just another beverage (and probably safer than most water and milk, for instance), and the primary reason for drinking it was not to get a 'buzz' or get drunk. It wasn't illegal for minors to be given alcoholic drinks in private residences until later. Of course during Prohibition it was illegal for everybody, but it was only after repeal of Prohibition that the attitude that children or teenagers should not be given alcohol really took hold.

Have not read the book, but I think we are speaking of a cultural difference, here.

I lived a year in Europe in the 60's and traveled widely. I was living with a French family in Paris and it was customary to serve a little wine cut with water to children, starting at about age 10. When I traveled in Germany, it was customary for families to let children of about age 10 onward to have a mild beer with meals. It was considered more wholesome for kids to learn to drink MODERATELY within a family setting than to have a jarring exposure to extremes, later on. Also, in some Jewish and Italian families family wine drinking can be often linked to religious holidays.

When I was growing up in the deep south, we were often given "Sweet Sixteen" parties by our parents, where we were served our first taste of beer, wine, or sherry, to celebrate our being on the road towards adulthood.

It seems that in these scenarios the younger teens are drinking under the supervision of parents.

I just read the synopsis of The Beekeeper's Apprentice and noted that the meeting between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes was in April 1915, so the time setting is early 20th century. But I think the basic attitudes of 1915 were still those of the late 19th century (in Europe and parts of the U.S.) and not those of the later 20th-century and present-day United States. It's hard sometimes to get past one's modern-day, ethnocentric thinking and accept a premise in a historical novel that things have not always been the same, but I think Laurie R. King added a bit of authenticity by allowing her young heroine to take a bit of wine with a fifty-four-year-old man.

Yoyobon, is it that Mary Russell was unsupervised by her parents in the wine-drinking with the older man that jars you?

Today we would think that was unwise. How did Mary know that Holmes wasn't a pedophile or some other sort of pervert? Of course such people did exist during that time, as much as any other time. Maybe it takes a willing suspension of disbelief for the sake of the story?

As I recall, Mary Russell was Jewish-American, so perhaps what Woodnymph noted about wine-drinking in her culture applies. I confess that I never noticed (or if I did, it was fleeting and soon forgotten) when I read the book what has bothered you, Yoyobon.

There are no laws over here forbidding the consumption of alcohol by 'minors' in a private home, although if an adult caused a child to become inebriated which led to an accident they would probably get nicked for child cruelty/neglect? As for buying/selling of alcohol it is legal once someone is over the age of eighteen. Supermarkets selling drink or pubs serving it are meant to check that the buyer is over that age . . . but we have no ID cards over here so it is mostly guess work by the staff.
In the case of restaurants, cafes etc where full meals are served they are allowed to serve young people, though I don't think a group of 14 year olds would be able to buy a bottle of wine to go with a burger!
About 10 years ago the 'Licensing Laws' were relaxed by the then Blair Govt. who felt we should have a cafe/pavement culture as they do on the Continent. Now pubs/clubs can apply to stay open into the 'small hours' and a few for 24 hours a day. This has had the opposite affect to that intended with a huge amount of under-age drinking and the disgusting sight of young people rolling in the gutters, fighting and vomiting. In the past drunks spent the night in the police cells where they cooled off and sobered up often appearing in Court the next day. Now the police take them to the hospital A&E where they continue to fight and hurl abuse at the staff, causing the 'genuine' emergency patients to wait in a queue.
This goes on even in the smallest one-horse towns and nothing could be further from the 'Sweet Sixteen' parties Mary describes. ;-(
In my own home there was a very relaxed attitude towards 'drink' (my Father's family had owned many hotels/pubs/inns). He always drank a bottle of beer with lunch and I was given the 'dregs' to drink from a very early age. And boy did I hate the taste!

Frieda, I think you nailed it, re difference in point of view re that century and ours.

Was there not a scene in Anne of Green Gables of underage drinking, by girls unsupervised by adults?

> Was there not a scene in Anne of Green Gables of underage drinking, by girls unsupervised by adults?

There was indeed, and quite funny too, but with appropriately moralistic consequences.

I would like to add to the above discussion that Holmes and Russell are both quite unconventional characters and might not care much for accepted social conventions.

Just my own two cents here... I ADORE Sherlock Holmes. Read all of the books and stories, watched and re-watched the Grenada series staring Jeremy Brett (in my opinion, the most authentic). Getting to "know" Sherlock over the years, and knowing that his mind never seemed to turn "in that direction" I confess that it never bothered me that Mary was alone with him. In my mind, it was akin to being alone with a computer.

PAM

I read the book when it first came out but have no memory of it. I must not have liked it much, because I never read any of the following books in the series.

I would think that a single glass of wine for a girl in her teens would not be so much an issue at the time. While we've grown permissive in some areas, we've grown puritanical in others. However a young girl alone with an adult man of any age short of the very elderly would very much have been considered shocking. At 15 wouldn't she was old enough to require a chaperone? Things changed after the war, of course.

Rosefolly

I'm scouring these posts for new authors, again!

Some time back I read glowing posts about this series so checked one out. Very put out since Holmes was the confirmed bachelor and the age discrepancy ridiculous! By the end of the book I'd gotten into the swing of the plot/s and characters. Read all the library had. They were light and adventurous. Good bedtime read for mystery lovers.