St. Vitus Dance, also known as Sydenham's chorea, is a disease characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements affecting primarily the face, feet and hands which typically results from an untreated childhood infection with Group A beta-hemolytic Streptococcus. Common in the days before Fleming’s discovery of penicillin (1928), it is now very rare. Wilson Kemp may have also suffered from it (The Greek Interpreter).
Watson clearly decided to take Jackson up on his offer, though possibly not for as long as another nine years, when he bought the practice from Farquhar “shortly after [his] marriage.” It may be that he was waiting to fully recuperate from his war wounds, since he believed that “the public not unnaturally goes on the principle that he who would heal others must himself be whole” (The Stock-Broker’s Clerk). Jackson (The Crooked Man) and Anstruther (The Boscombe Valley Mystery) would accommodatingly cover for Watson’s absence from his practice while assisting Holmes in cases (The Final Problem). Watson relayed that his thriving practice was initially located “no very great distance” from Paddington Station (The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb, 1889), though its exact location is never specified in the Canon. Crawford Place, as mentioned herein by Jackson, is between Paddington Station and Baker Street, near St. Mary’s Hospital, as would be expected for residence of a general practitioner. Most suggestive of the accuracy of the account in the Bermuda Manuscript is the name of the short lane leading off it: ‘Watson’s Mews’ (perhaps re-named in his honor?). The only piece of counter-evidence to this is Watson’s relatively vague account of the route from his house to Baker Street, which took him through “the Park” (as if there were only one in London!) and Oxford Street (The Red-Headed League). And yet, a simple glance at a map shows that it is plainly impossible to live “no very great distance” from Paddington and still have to walk through both Hyde Park and Oxford Street on the way to Baker Street. This implies that this ‘description’ is either a bit of deception played upon the public by the ever-modest Watson, or a simple confusion with his later house and practice in the Kensington district (The Adventure of the Norwood Builder). Of course, none of this corresponds to a practice backing up to Mortimer Street (The Final Problem), suggesting either a third house or more obfuscation by Watson.
CHAPTER II: THE MALABAR
Watson clearly treasured that “very excellent field-glass”, as he retained it until at least 1888 when Holmes suggested that Watson bring them along upon their jaunt to King’s Pyland (Silver Blaze).
Watson would hear of St. Helena again when Jack Douglas was lost overboard in a gale near the isle, a cover for his murder by the orders of Professor Moriarty (Epilogue, The Valley of Fear). As an interesting aside, Watson’s first literary agent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story in 1903 entitled The Last Adventure of the Brigadier (How Etienne Gerard Said Goodbye to His Master), which chronicled an unsuccessful attempt to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena. One wonders if Sir Arthur got the idea from Watson?
The Malabar’s cook was wise to disguise the aging mutton in curry, which is also strong enough to “disguise the flavor” of powered opium (Silver Blaze).
Of course, Master Billy was not the only spirited British boy upon the high seas. Master Jacky Ferguson was sent out for a year as well at Holmes recommendation (The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire). Watson never records what became of Master Billy after he grew out of the role of cabin boy aboard the Malabar. It is perhaps tempting to imagine that, on Watson’s recommendation, he acquired a job as a page at 221 Baker Street (The Problem of Thor Bridge). Billy’s tenure at Baker Street was a long one, lasting from no later than 1888 (Chapter I, The Valley of Fear) to at least 1903 (The Mazarin Stone).
Watson’s quotation from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817) is the only indication that we have that Watson was familiar with the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Coleridge was indisputably an opium addict, even admitting that he dreamt up the poem Kubla Khan (1816) under its influence. Unfortunately, Watson would later witness some of the crueler aspects of opium abuse while caring for his patient Isa Whitney (The Man with the Twisted Lip).
That Watson was a voracious reader is self-evident from a perusal of the Canon. The list of books that he has reporting reading is long and varied. Watson clearly collected books, and his shelves were almost completed filled by 1894 (The Adventure of the Empty House). In 1895, Holmes even goes so far as to call him a “man of letters” (The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge). Watson clearly enjoyed The Wreck of the Grosvenor (1877) enough to continue to read the author’s other works, for by early 1885 he was “deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea stories'” (The Five Orange Pips). Sensational novels bound in vividly illustrated yellow boards and originally intended for railway travelers, were always referred to by Watson as “yellow-backed novels” (The Boscombe Valley Mystery). Even before his fateful meeting with Sherlock Holmes Watson was extremely fond of mysteries: “’Oh! A mystery is it?’ [he] cried, rubbing [his] hands” (Chapter I, A Study in Scarlet). Wilkie Collins’ (1824-1889) classic The Moonstone (1868) is considered the first detective novel (as opposed to Poe’ short stories) written in English, and certainly Watson would have read it.
Watson and Lomax would continue as friends for many years. In 1902, Watson consulted Lomax when he was in need of a rapid education on the history of Chinese pottery (The Adventure of the Illustrious Client).
Lomax’s quote ‘But dearly was that conquest bought’ was from the opera The Americans (1811) by John Braham, with words by S.J. Arnold. Very popular in its day, Sherlock Holmes would later quote from a later part of the same passage (‘For England, home and beauty’) (His Last Bow).
Lomax’s longing to see England again was clearly typical of the soldiers of the day. His very words echoed those of the crippled Harry Wood (The Adventure of the Crooked Man). Watson also continued to feel strongly about the lure English countryside (The Cardboard Box).
Watson was still fond of quoting Thomas Carlyle (1775-1881) a year later (Chapter II, A Study in Scarlet). He was amazed that Holmes did not know Carlyle’s works, though Watson must have inspired his new friend. By 1888, Holmes was completely familiar not only with Carlyle, but with his intellectual ‘parent’ Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825), as the two men discussed on their hunt with Toby (Chapter VII, The Sign of the Four).
By an odd coincidence, a copy of Pope’s Homer was later stolen from the house of old Acton by the two Cunninghams (The Reigate Squires). Watson was clearly fond of Alexander Pope’s writings, as he quotes him (“The proper study of mankind is man”) to young Stamford (Chapter I, A Study in Scarlet). Watson’s allusion to a ‘modern Alexander’ refers to Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who legendarily slept with a copy of The Iliad under his pillow.
Watson was certainly familiar with the works of Poe (1809-1849) by the time he met Sherlock Holmes, for he remarked that Holmes “reminded [him] of Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin” (Chapter II, A Study in Scarlet). Since The Gold Bug (1843) was Poe’s most successful story during his lifetime, it is highly likely that Watson once read that tale as well. We now have proof for that supposition and one wonders its influence on Watson’s further tales of treasure and great jewels (see notes to Chapter XXV). Watson must have enjoyed the tales of Poe, since by the time he met Holmes he had already moved on to the tales of the detective Lecoq by Emile Gaboriau (1832-1873) (Chapter II, A Study in Scarlet).
It is not clear how much of Watson’s list of ships is accurate. It is well documented that the HMS Northampton was at Bermuda in 1880, where its generator-powered electric lights were a ‘brilliant display” and “most splendid” (the Bermuda Royal Gazette). The HMS Warrior certainly undertook a voyage to Bermuda in 1869, but it is less clear that it would have been spotted there by Watson in 1880. Fortunately, the ship is still intact and can be visited in the historic dockyard of Portsmouth, England. Both the Irresistible and the Scorpion were definitely stationed in Bermuda
during that time, as was the Vixen, which was deliberately scuttled in 1896 off the western shore of Bermuda and can be reached by scuba divers today. There does not appear to be good evidence that the Achilles was in Bermuda in 1880. While it is possible that the cutter Alicia would have been spotted in Bermuda waters, it is odd that a ship of the same name was mentioned by him twenty years to have mysteriously disappeared (The Problem of Thor Bridge). As it is not an uncommon name, it may be a coincidence.
CHAPTER III: THE ISLE OF DEVILS
The Llandoger Trow pub on King Street is supposedly the meeting place of Daniel Defoe and the historical inspiration for ‘Robinson Crusoe’, Alexander Selkirk. It is also rumored to be where Robert Louis Stevenson got the idea for the Admiral Benbow pub at the beginning of his great work, Treasure Island (1883). The pub is a 17th-century Grade II listed building that still stands in Bristol.
Unfortunately for Mr. Brewis, although he would eventually return to Bristol temporarily and marry his sweet barmaid, she would later prove to be unfaithful to him when he was sent back to Bermuda, taking her pleasures with Mr. James McCarthy (The Boscombe Valley Mystery). This is the only mention of Bermuda in the Canon, suggesting that Watson may have had painful or unpleasant memories of his sojourn there.
The Floating Dock nobly served its purpose until 1906, when the new generation warships were too large to fit in its constraints. It was then sold to a German company for scrap metal. After partially dismantling it, the Dock was being towed away when it fell into a gale and broke loose. It then got stuck upon a reef near Spanish Point, where multiple attempts to remove it have failed. Even today you can see a large chunk of rusted iron lying on the water, all that remains of the greatest floating dock in history. No other shipyard appears in the Canon of Sherlock Holmes, though one does make a memorable appearance in the 2009 eponymous film.
From 1880 to 1885, Dr. Edward Lewton Penny was the Dockyard parson, schoolmaster and librarian. His complaints about life on Bermuda were legendary.
In addition to eventually going back into full-time practice for a stint, Watson also kept up with his medical literature, such as “the latest treatise on pathology” (Chapter II, The Sign of the Four), “a recent treatise upon surgery” (The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez), the British Medical Journal (The Stock-Broker’s Clerk), and even “monographs upon obscure nervous lesions” (The Resident Patient). The British Medical Journal is the official journal of the British Medical Association, of which Watson must have been a member, and has been continuously published since 1840.
Based on Watson’s reporting, Henry must have joined the Army in 1872, around the same time that Watson enrolled in the University of London. Since Watson reports that Henry was two years his senior, it is not certain what Henry did for two years after finishing at Winchester College.
While Watson was thorough and detailed about depicting his friend Holmes, he was much more reticent to put down on paper a description of his own physical description. The closest we come was that reported by Inspector Lestrade when looking for a suspect in the death of the blackmailer Milverton (The Adventure of Charles Edward Milverton). Watson clearly must have looked much different with his new moustache, since both his brother Henry and his school-day pal Percy Phelps mentioned it upon first seeing it (The Naval Treaty). His now-legendary moustache is only mentioned once more by Holmes, who describes it as “modest” (The Adventure of the Red Circle).
Watson never lost his Afghanistan-acquired skill as a “prompt and ready traveler” (The Boscombe Valley Mystery).
Ironically, a train was eventually installed in Bermuda in 1931, but Henry was right. It was a mad idea, crushed by the rapidly advancing onslaught of the automobile. The Bermuda Railway stopped operations only seventeen years later, leaving only a pleasant foot trail and the ruins of several bridges. Watson was very familiar with the injuries suffered by railway-men (The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb).
Oddly, many of the ships reported by Watson in Hamilton Harbor seem familiar to scholars of the Canon. The brig Hotspur makes its first appearance in the recollection of James Armitage, talking about a ship he was picked up by in 1855 (The “Gloria Scott”). One of the ships sounds very similar to the Gloria Scott, though it must have been a sister ship, for she was blown-up thirty-five years earlier. The British barque Sophy Anderson was lost in approximately 1887, though the facts surrounding the case have never been fully elucidated (The Five Orange Pips). The barque Lone Star was lost in the equinoctial gales of the Atlantic in 1887 (The Five Orange Pips). The ill-fated steamer Norah Creina was also lost with all hands off Oporto in 1887 (The Resident Patient). At least two ships in Hamilton Harbor survived that grim year, including the steamer Esmeralda, which was still sailing in 1888 (Chapter XI, The Sign of the Four), and the SS Palmyra, which often sailed a route from Cape Town to England, though it was the site of a great tragedy when Jack Douglas was pushed overboard from it upon the orders of Moriarty (Epilogue, The Valley of Fear). Perhaps it is too much of a coincidence that all of the vessels that Watson spies in Hamilton Harbor would later play a role in his tales of Holmes. It has long been suspected that Watson changed names, such as the King of Bohemia (A Scandal in Bohemia) or the Duke of Holderness (The Adventure of the Priory School) to protect the identities of Holmes’ clients. Perhaps he also changed the names of some of the ships involved in the later cases, and took the names from this experience?
The Hamilton Hotel was the first of the grand hotels that would eventually become the cornerstone of the Bermuda tourist industry. It was finished in 1852, and was extended and modernized at the beginning of the twentieth century to attempt to keep up with competitors such as the famous pink Hamilton Princess. Sadly, it was destroyed by fire on December 23, 1955, and was never rebuilt. It stood where the City Hall car park is now located.
Port, a fortified wine made in Oporto, Portugal, was widely consumed during the Victorian era. Watson records drinking it with Holmes twice (Chapter X, The Sign of the Four & The Adventure of the Creeping Man).
CHAPTER IV: THE GLOBE HOTEL
Sadly, little remains today of the North Shore sights pointed out by Henry. Admiralty House would go on to serve an important function in the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, intercepting U Boat signals, but later fell into disrepair. The Black Watch Well was eventually abandoned and capped off by a featureless slab of concrete. The name of the regiment lives on however, in the excavated Black Watch Pass road that links the North Shore to the city of Hamilton.
Watson’s way with women was borderline legendary. Not only was he married several times, and had a self-proclaimed vast “experience of women,” (Chapter V, A Study in Scarlet), but Holmes himself admitted that “the fair sex is [Watson’s] department” (The Adventure of the Second Stain).
Sir Robert Norberton placed second in the Grand National and won the Derby with Shoscombe Prince (The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place). Watson was fortunate to bet on Isonomy, whose progeny would go on to win the Wessex Cup (Silver Blaze). However, Watson was not always so fortunate at the track. Watson’s managed to hide his love of horse racing for many years, for in 1902 the usually astute Holmes had to ask him whether he knew “something of racing” (The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place). Watson admitted that he had fully given in to the vice, as he paid for it with half of his wound pension. Watson was never the best at managing his money. Watson even asked Holmes to lock his cheque book up in Holmes’ drawer (The Adventure of the Dancing Men), presumably to prevent him from wagering too much upon the horses. It was similar financial straits upon his return to England that led Watson to look for a roommate. As fortune would have it, he found one that was certainly unique (Chapter I, A Study in Scarlet).
In 1888, the most expensive hotels in London charged eight shillings for a room (The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor).
Henry was right about Bermuda’s forts. British Bermuda would never be succe
ssfully invaded, other than a little-known episode in 1777 by some pesky Americans.
Watson and Holmes enjoyed many drinks together, but must have especially liked a whisky and soda (The Red-Headed League and The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor), since they had their own gasogene at 221B Baker Street (A Study in Scarlet & The Mazarin Stone).
The corridors of Professor Coram’s house (The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez) and the stairway at Pondicherry Lodge (Chapter V, The Sign of the Four) were also lined with coconut matting. The interior dividing walls and twisting corridor described by Boyle (and later mapped out by Mrs. Foster) as being installed by Mr. Foster when he acquired the building for the purpose of turning it into a hotel are no longer present in the modern-day iteration of the property (now the Bermuda National Trust Museum). Despite exhaustive efforts, I have been unable to locate any other historical floor-plans of the building that would either support or refute the authenticity of the Bermuda Manuscript.
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