Watson's Last Case

by Ian Alfred Charnock

  Then came the day when Mycroft left for university. He was being given advice from all sides as he boarded the train, but just as the train was leaving he looked out of the window and said to his parents: ‘Before I go I have some advice for you both. Father, drink only to celebrate or to relieve insufferable tedium. Mother, travel — the broader the horizon the broader the mind. Both of you, visit France — and take Sherlock with you.’ With that the train had pulled out before any reply could be made.

  After much discussion it was agreed to visit the Vernets — without the grandmother.

  Young Sherlock fell in love with France. Its sensations were so different and exhilarating for the Norfolk country boy. He felt stimulated by its very air. His favourite town was Montpellier but he resolved to visit all of France one day, particularly the warm south and south-west.

  Sherlock’s parents also felt something and fell in love but alas not with each other. The objects of their affections seemed quite perverse. The English mother fell in love with France and the half-French father fell in love with Sussex as they travelled back from Portsmouth via Brighton. Both parents resolved to return to their new loves which resulted in the young Sherlock dividing his time between school in England (Winchester?) and holidays in France. He found this completely congenial to his tastes and made him a seasoned traveller, capable of packing a bag in five minutes, from an early age. Skills that were useful more than once later. His parents were now relatively happy. The father controlled his drinking and told his son about the many wines of France, in particular extolling the virtues of the great vintages of Bordeaux whose châteaux had been classified into groups of merit in 1855. Sherlock also learnt more of the violin and grew to love Sussex in preference to Holme Hope. Before long only Grandmother Vernet and Uncle Sherrinford were left there.

  As to the mother she found the attentions of the French gallants much more to her liking after the tedium and tensions of Holm Hope. Sherlock merely shrugged his shoulders and observed that it was only natural for such a good-looking woman to have admirers. (‘A sentiment expressed with regard to Miss Maud Bellamy in The Lion’s Mane. Holmes obviously learnt young!’ — Stamford.)

  Many of Sherlock Holmes’s later characteristics can be seen for the first time during this period. His love of the violin and knowledge of France are obvious. Mycroft’s words of advice given from the receding window of his university-bound train also left a germ of an idea that bore later fruit. (‘Surely he did not tell you about drugs, my dear little sister’ — Stamford.) Also his attitude to emotional entanglements originate here. He had seen how an unhappy marriage could affect an artistic temperament and blunt, not hone, perceptions. His ascetic side had come out in his love of Bible study. Thus he could see emotional entanglements with the opposite sex could not be a help to his fulfilment. (‘Do I hear a sigh?’ — Stamford.) This does not mean that he became a woman-hater — he was quite aware of his father’s failings and weakness of character which resolved Sherlock to be stronger himself. He was always chivalrous and courteous towards women, quite like a knight of old. It did not matter to him whether they were duchesses or destitutes, they were all damsels in distress to him. (‘A rather romantic way of putting it perhaps, but then you would know more about that than I, sister dear’ — Stamford.)

  When he left school in July 1872, Holmes fulfilled the vow he had made to himself and travelled throughout France, particularly Bordeaux, Perpignon, Narbonne, Nîmes and Montpellier. In October 1873 he went up to Oxford.

  From then until Christmas 1874 you know about, but what happened when Holmes returned to Oxford for the later term of 1875?

  Once again his resignation was not accepted, and so he simply wrote to each of his tutors saying that he would be following a full course of study, but not with them. It was to be a syllabus of his own devising if they cared to peruse its parts — chemistry, anatomy, botany, geology, law, a little politics, and a new science which he called criminology. Again the whole gamut of academician twitches and tics became manifest, to no purpose. Holmes knew that non-attendance at lectures and tutorials was enough to earn him a dismissal so that the remaining two terms at Oxford had to be used to their fullest. Public lectures were attended, museums and collections visited, experiments undertaken, results collated.

  One thing that he had learnt from his experiences on the night of December 23rd 1874 was the need for concealment, and what better concealment than that of disguise. He practised make-up, alteration in posture, mannerism, speech, demeanour. Sometimes he would follow an acquaintance through Oxford. One day he was spotted which angered him but helped to refine his technique. He was never caught out again. He perfected a way of having several disguises on his person so that he was able to change his persona as he went. Sterndale was to discover this in The Devil’s Foot: Holmes — ‘I followed you.’ Sterndale — ‘I saw no one.’ Holmes — ‘That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.’

  When the time came to leave Oxford there was no animosity on either the side of the college or of Holmes. The college regretted losing such a capable student, Holmes regretted that Oxford could not accommodate him. However, bolstered by letters of recommendation from his tutors and the knowledge that Beethoven never got a degree from Oxford, Holmes returned to Mycroft and Montague Street to continue his studies at London University, then gaining a considerable reputation for work in the scientific fields. Add to that the museums, galleries and concert halls, as well as the many streets of London whose ways had to be learnt, and Holmes’s choice of a second university becomes a formality.

  Did Holmes ever visit the United States during these years? There are certainly indications in Watson’s chronicles that he admired the United States and wished for a closer relationship between the USA and the UK. He speaks of the folly of a king and his minister which he hopes will not stop the quartering of the Stars and Stripes and the Union flag. Also in the story of The Red Circle, he appears to be fully au fait with American criminals and with the work of the Pinkerton Detective Agency so that he can quickly recognize the villain as big Gorgiano of the Red Circle and the Pinkerton detective (Mr Leverton) as the hero of the Long Island cave mystery. (I think that Holmes was pulling someone’s leg here — there are no caves on Long Island.) However, he never actually mentions a trip to the USA despite his many other journeys. As with so many things we need more data.

  That he travelled between leaving Oxford in 1875 and meeting my brother in late 1878 there is no doubt, but it was mainly to France. Both his parents and his grandmother died during this period and the money raised by the sale of the Sussex cottage of his father and the possessions of his mother was enough to enable Holmes to continue his studies as an external student in London.

  During this period he made many contacts with people throughout London and the mysteries that he solved he never called cases as such because they tended to be, in his words, ‘run of the mill’. Not that he did not learn to respect such problems — often by their very featureless nature being quite difficult to solve satisfactorily. They were more in the line of apprentice pieces. The most important work that he was involved in was his studying of ‘all those branches of science which might make me more efficient.’

  He gave himself three years to become proficient in his chosen career — like taking a degree he said. He was aware of the importance of deadlines and how they should be kept. Thus his ‘degree term’ was complete in June 1878. If he were a doctor he would have put a brass plate by his door, but as he was the first consulting detective in the world he did not have a precedent to direct him — or restrict him. Instead he put discreet advertisements in the newspaper. He always said that the press could be very useful if used properly.

  Perhaps the very strangeness of the new title put prospective clients off, but whatever the reason, his faith in his methods with regard to the efficiency of the press must have been sorely tried because the only replies he received were from private detectives wanting to know what
he was up to. They were not particularly friendly and one could be forgiven for mistaking them for his quarry not his colleagues. This in turn made him realize that there was definitely a market for one of his discretion and skills, so although his advertisements had failed him, his youthful enthusiasm had not.

  As he was so close to the British Museum he was able to use its peerless Reading Room for some very recherché study, which raised the eyebrows of some librarians and made those who sat next to him feel a little uneasy as to the nature of this solitary student in their midst. (I can imagine Holmes telling my sister this. He would sometimes indulge in diverting ‘theatricals’ to enliven his mind by playing small private jokes on other readers. If, for example, a clergyman was sitting next to him reading work on Christian morality, he would get a book out on Devil worship and place the title in a prominent position so that the unfortunate cleric could not fail to see it — and be discomforted. It was always the pompous who received this treatment, some of them either being or were to become rather prominent men.)

  During this period of ‘too abundant leisure time’ certain cases did come Holmes’s way ‘principally through the introduction of old fellow students.’ The third of these cases was the Musgrave Ritual, brought to him by his old friend Reginald Musgrave who had succeeded to the family inheritance at Hurlstone in Sussex two years before on the decease of his father. They had not met for four years and it was this case which brought Holmes the ‘break’, as Americans would say. The full details of the case are set out in Dr Watson’s The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. As to the other two cases brought to Holmes’s attention before this he would only give cryptic references.

  Miss Stamford concludes: ‘Sherlock Holmes drifted out of my life when my brother went on his travels and I stayed at home in Kent with my brewer parents. I had never forgotten him — one had only to read the newspapers to find evidence of his activities although I often felt that some of Scotland Yard’s more spectacular successes seemed to owe more to him than was revealed in the newspapers. This does not mean that I doubted the abilities of the Scotland Yard detectives, but my own personal experience of his methods in finding my husband Neville St Clair for me in June 1889 proved to me that he is the greatest of detectives.’

  Stamford Continues

  So now you know the identity of my sister. It should also explain why he stayed with her in Lee, Kent, during the investigation of The Man with the Twisted Lip. It was out of friendship, not a romantic adventure. His words to Watson justify his presence there by saying that he had ‘many inquiries which must be made out here’ when in fact he had none, was another of his ‘build-ups’ to what he hoped would be a happy scene as surprising as it would be helpful to my sister and to Watson. He thought that as I had been Watson’s dresser, that Watson would know my sister and be a friendly face among all the terrors of her predicament. That was why he wanted Watson to come along at such short notice, to help my sister as much as himself. It was typical of him to have set up the scene where the two old friends would meet. Unfortunately Watson did not know my sister as he had never met her. She had never been up to Bart’s during Watson’s time nor he back to Kent with me. As you know we were several years apart in age and not particular cronies then.

  As to the other two cases that came along to Holmes’s Montague Street premises, you may read them in the first volume of these papers.

  We are now up to the latter months of 1879. The Musgrave case and particularly Musgrave’s connection enabled more clients to find Holmes, and his time became increasingly busy. Several of his solutions to cases which had entirely fooled the regular force brought his exceptional talents to their collective attention and Inspector Lestrade was able to make use of his talents on many cases, particularly a very knotty one about a forger which Watson mentions in his Study in Scarlet.

  Holmes’s reputation was increasing and as it did he had to experiment even more as the cases he became involved in tended to be only the complex ones that appealed to his intellect.

  It was in 1877–78 that I started at Bart’s. In June 1878 John H. Watson became Dr John H. Watson and went to Netley to be trained as a surgeon for the Army. As I look back on it Holmes and Watson missed meeting by two days. Would history have been changed if they had met then and not in 1881? I am sure that they would have become great friends whenever they met, Watson was like that. From my point of view if Watson had not gone to Afghanistan and stopped a Jezail bullet I would not have become involved in this story in the way that I am, so I am glad that the meeting was postponed for three years.

  The Attendant Three-Quarter

  Those who take the date of the Battle of Maiwand, Tuesday, 27th July 1889, as the one fixed point in a changing age with regard to the life and career of John H. Watson MD, from which all else can be deduced are right to do so — up to a point. However, we must be mindful that the still waters of Dr Watson ran so deep that even Holmes admitted that he could not fathom his companion’s depths. History is not simply the study of dates and chronology. Many an event would have passed unnoticed but for the remarkable qualities of the participants.

  When I first met Watson he was a final-year student at Bart’s before he became qualified in June 1878. He was a strongly-built man of middle stature, with a fledgling moustache, a square jaw and a thick neck. In other words he was perfectly proportioned to play rugby football.

  Hospital rugby was well established by then. The first Hospital Cup had taken place in 1875 and had been won by the oldest club in the world, Guy’s Hospital.

  In the early seventies the teams had been twenty-a-side with thirteen in the pack of forwards, three half-backs immediately behind the pack, one three-quarter behind them, and three full backs making up the last line of defence. The forwards would push against each other in their attempts to win the ball. Sometimes these pushing matches would last several minutes at a time accompanied by shouts of ‘Heave’ from the crowds, and ‘Push’ from the packs, although the half-backs would bring a little more finesse to the proceedings with such remarks as ‘Steady with it,’ ‘Not too fast,’ and ‘Keep it together.’ It was not just the two packs who pushed together like this. On one celebrated occasion two individuals pushed each other in the ‘in-goal’ area behind the posts for several minutes much to the delight of spectators and team-mates alike. The idea was that the forwards would push through their opposite numbers and kick the ball on when they had broken through the opposition ranks. In the resulting follow through the attacking forwards (i.e. those going forward chasing the ball) hoped to gain ground, possession and points.

  It was now that the backs came into play. The halves had to pick up or drop on the ball that had just been kicked through the scrum by their opponents. They had to be expert dodgers and runners. They played for themselves and tucked the ball under one arm so that they could hand-off the opposition with the other. Passing was frowned upon and looked on as ‘funking’.

  The single three-quarter was quite a star of the side having to cover the whole width of the field between the halves and the fulls. As he was the first real line of defence against the opposing halves he had to be fast and a fierce tackler. However, he was not expected to run with the ball but he did have to be an accurate kicker for touch and goal.

  Finally, bringing up the rear were the full backs. They were there simply to defend and so they had to be expert tacklers, although in those days punting for touch was frowned on. It had to be drop-kicked which is more skilful.

  During the seventies the game changed. The numbers on each side were reduced from twenty to fifteen, the first international with fifteen-a-side was England versus Ireland at the Oval on 5th February 1877. I was there and saw England prosper by two goals and a try to nil. There were now nine forwards and two of each of the backs — although the rules were not strict on that. The old, ‘blind’, shoving was replaced by the forwards trying to wheel the scrum, and then having got the ball at their feet and the opposition forwards on the wrong side
they would charge downfield.

  In 1878 the rules changed and a player now had to release the ball immediately he was held. As a consequence the best forwards were those who could include among their repertoire of accomplishments close dribbling, a fast follow-up in support, and quick accurate short passing. Above all they had to be fit.

  The club that did the most to bring about this change in the London area was Watson’s Blackheath. They even included two men in their 1878 pack who were there not because of their bulk or weight but because of their strength and speed off the mark away from the scrum either in pursuit of the ball or in support of the halves. These players tended to be of average height and thick-set. In other words, Watson to a tee. Big Bob Ferguson might have thrown Watson over the ropes and into the crowd at Old Deer Park when the former was three-quarter for Richmond, but it was Watson’s style and team that was to carry all before them in the future. Ironically Blackheath’s greatest season was when Watson was in Afghanistan, for in 1879–80 they had an unbeaten season in which they played sixteen, won fourteen and drew the other two.