In 1957, he published the book The Lure of Limerick. In 1962, he coedited The Annotated Mother Goose with his wife. However, Baring-Gould’s true passion was the world of Sherlock Holmes. In 1948, he published the essay, “A New Chronology of Holmes and Doctor Watson,” which was his first piece of Sherlockian scholarship. The Baker Street Journal serialized this essay in the fall and spring issues of 1948. In 1952, he was invested in the Baker Street Irregulars under the name “The Gloria Scott.”
In 1955, Baring-Gould authored the book The Chronological Holmes, which was an expansion of his 1948 essay. It was printed and discussed among the members of the Baker Street Irregulars. Baring-Gould later utilized this text as a reference guide while writing the two volumes that comprise The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, in which he organized the Sherlock Holmes stories by his own, sometimes disputed, chronological order.
However, The Annotated Sherlock Holmes was not Baring-Gould’s masterpiece. Instead, that honor belongs to his earlier work, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of The World’s First Consulting Detective, which was published in 1962. This book treated Sherlock Holmes as though he were an historical figure. As such, the book chronicles the life of Sherlock Holmes until his death, which Baring-Gould theorized occurred in 1957.
This technique blends the original text of the stories with new material. As a result, the narration of the novel switches between first person and third person. Within Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective, Baring-Gould proposed several theories about both “the Canon” of Sherlock Holmes, as well as its chronology.
Although Baring-Gould published multiple Sherlockian articles during his life, he specialized as a chronologist. However, he was not the first Sherlockian to construct a chronology of the Sherlock Holmes stories. That honor belonged to the Reverend Ronald Knox, who in 1911 published the essay Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes, which included a brief chronological outline of “the Canon” of the two collections of Holmes stories along with the published novels. The “Canon” was incomplete, therefore Reverend Knox’s chronology was also incomplete.
The first complete chronology was Harold Wilmerding Bell’s book Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: The Chronology of their Adventures, which was published in 1934. Another chronology of Holmes and Watson was Theodore S. Blankley’s book Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction, published that same year.
Baring-Gould divided the Holmes stories into different periods as though they were Socratic dialogues based on their chronological date. He created seven chronological periods. The first was the early years of Sherlock Holmes. This period contained the stories “The Gloria Scott,” which occurred while Holmes was a university student, and “The Musgrave Ritual,” which occurred after Holmes left the university. These stories also occurred before Holmes first met Dr. John H. Watson in 1881.
The next period covered the early years of the partnership between Holmes and Watson. It began with the first novel, A Study in Scarlet, which occurs in 1881. It lasted until 1886. The next period spanned from 1886 to 1891. It ended with the final battle between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The fourth chronological period began in 1894 with the return of Sherlock Holmes to London and lasted until the year 1902.
The three remaining chronological periods covered the final years of the partnership between Holmes and Watson. According to Baring-Gould, the year 1903 contained the stories “The Adventure of the Three Gables” and “The Adventure of the Creeping Man.” It also contained the stories “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier,” before which Watson had “deserted me for a wife, the only selfish act which I can recall in our association,” and “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone.”
The remaining two cases occurred after Sherlock Holmes abandoned his practice in 1907 and entered retirement in the Sussex Downs. In 1909, Holmes dealt with the mysterious death of Fitzroy McPherson, the science master “at Harold Stackhurst’s well-known coaching establishment” near the Sussex Downs, as chronicled in the story “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane.” In 1914, Holmes emerged from retirement to help British intelligence thwart the German spy Von Bork. Watson chronicled this adventure in the short story entitled “His Last Bow.”
Within “the Canon,” the sole information about the ancestors of Sherlock Holmes is found in the short story “The Greek Interpreter.”
“To some extent,” he answered thoughtfully, “my ancestors were country squires who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But none-the-less, my turn that way is in my veins and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.”
This would make Holmes the great-grandson of Carle Vernet, who lived from 1758 to 1835. It could also make Holmes the great-grandson of Claude Joseph Vernet, who lived from 1714 to 1789.
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of The World’s First Consulting Detective depicts Yorkshire as the ancestral home of the Holmes family. The Holmes estate is located in the area known as North Riding. To this manor house, Baring-Gould gave the name Mycroft.
This depiction builds upon a theory suggested by Rufus S. Tucker in the essay “Genealogical Notes on Holmes.” This essay was initially published in 1944. It was later reprinted in the collection Profile by Gaslight: An Irregular Reader About The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
North Riding is home to manors known as croft. This is an old Saxon term for an enclosed field. This manor was named Mycroft to designate it from the crofts belonging to the neighbors of the Holmes family. Tucker theorized that as the older son, Mycroft “was doomed to bear the name of the family estate.” He also theorized that the father of Sherlock Holmes was named either Sigurd or Siger, as Holmes “sometimes signed himself Sigerson, a Norwegian form of Sigurdsson.” In addition, he proposed that Holmes’s grandfather was named Sherrinford.
Baring-Gould gave the name Siger Holmes to the father of Sherlock Holmes. This man was the Squire of Mycroft. He was a second son, whose brother died in 1844 in “a fall from a horse.” As the remaining son, Siger Holmes inherited the Mycroft estate and the surrounding lands. That year he married Violet Sherrinford. She was the daughter of Sir Edward Sherinnford and one of the Vernet sisters.
Neither Holmes nor Watson refers to the existence of Siger Holmes within “the Canon.” Baring-Gould resolved this problem by proposing that Holmes angered his father by deciding to become a consulting detective. In response, Squire Holmes banished his son from the family estate. Until the current Squire died, Sherlock Holmes could never “return to the house and lands in Yorkshire.”
“The Greek Interpreter” also marks the first appearance of a relative of Sherlock Holmes.
“When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.”
“Is he your junior?”
“No, he is seven years my senior.”
Despite being the older brother, Mycroft did not succeed Siger Holmes as the Squire of Mycroft. Instead, his employer is the British government, for which he “audits the books in some of the government departments.” Mycroft reappears in the short story, “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans.” In the years between the two stories, within the British government Mycroft has become “the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance.” On multiple occasions, Mycroft’s word has “decided the national policy.”
This prompted Baring-Gould to speculate on the existence of a third Holmes brother who was older than either Sherlock or Mycroft. This brother, Baring-Gould declared, was Sherrinford Holmes. He was named for the children’s maternal grandfather, Sir Edward Sherrinford.
Sherrinford Holmes was born in March 1844 in Yorkshire. Many Sherlockian scholars believe that Sherlock Holmes was born in the year 1854. As such, Sherrinford Holmes would be ten years older than Sherlock. As Mycroft Holmes is seven years older than Sherlock, his birth occurred in the year 184
7, which makes Sherrinford three years older than Mycroft. According to Baring-Gould, Mycroft was named for Mycroft, the older brother of Squire Siger Holmes.
As the eldest of the Holmes brothers, Sherrinford would “inherit the family holdings in Yorkshire.” This freed Mycroft to enter employment with the British government. It also freed Sherlock to become a consulting detective.
In Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, Baring-Gould postulated that the Holmes family engaged in frequent international travel. The family’s first sojourn began in 1855, during which they traveled to many European cities. In 1858, the family temporarily settled in Montpellier, where “many of Mrs. Holmes maternal relatives, the Vernets, had moved.”
Late in 1858, the family returned to London after the health of Sir Edward Sherrinford declined. He died in the fall of 1858. Afterwards, the family embarked on another international sojourn. This trip lasted until 1860. Upon their return to London, the Holmes children attended boarding schools.
Over the past century, many writers of Holmes pastiches have made frequent use of Professor Moriarty. However, he only appeared in the short story “The Final Problem,” which was published in 1893. Moriarty is also mentioned in the final Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear.
“The Final Problem” describes Moriarty as being a “man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty.” At the age of twenty-one, he published a text “on the binomial theorem which had a European vogue.” This text won Moriarty the “mathematical chair of one of our smaller Universities,” which would secure him a brilliant career. He also possessed “tendencies of the most diabolical kind.” In this story, Arthur Conan Doyle also established Moriarty’s role as the leader of London’s criminal world.
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in the great city… He sits motionless like a spider in the centre of its web but that web has a thousand radiations and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.”
Baring-Gould believed this detailed knowledge of Moriarty’s career implied that Holmes possessed prior knowledge of him. He theorized that Moriarty’s treatise on the binomial theorem was published in 1867. He also speculated that five years later, Squire Siger Holmes hired Professor Moriarty as a mathematical tutor for young Sherlock. This employment was brief, since Sherlock was unwilling to accept his tutor’s teaching. This prompted Moriarty to depart from “Mycroft to return to his academic calling.”
Upon his return to academia, Moriarty published his text The Dynamics of An Asteroid. It was also when he became known in the criminal underworld. These rumors and accusations forced him “to resign his chair and to come to London,” where he became a teacher at a boarding school.
Baring-Gould also connected Professor Moriarty to the death of the American John Openshaw in “The Five Orange Pips.” Openshaw sought Holmes’s assistance in unraveling the meaning behind a threatening message he received that contained five orange pips. Despite the efforts of Holmes, John Openshaw was murdered. Baring-Gould believed that agents acting on orders from Moriarty performed the murder.
In 1974, Nicholas Meyer published the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Seven Percent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of Doctor John H. Watson M.D. Meyer is best known as the director of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country. In this novel, he built upon several of the theories popularized by Baring-Gould.
The first was the childhood home of Sherlock Holmes. As in Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective, the location of the Holmes family estate is North Riding in Yorkshire. It was here that Meyer contended that Mycroft Holmes was born. In this version, Squire Holmes was “a second son never due to inherit the family the estate at all by rights.”
While the Holmes family lived in Yorkshire, the older brother of Squire Holmes died a widower. This prompted Squire Holmes to relocate to Sussex and move “his family into the old estate.”
This description is inspired by a second theory concerning the childhood home of Sherlock Holmes. The Sherlockian Scholar Trevor H. Hall proposed in his essay “The Early Life of Sherlock Holmes” that the Holmes family originated in Sussex and that Sherlock Holmes was raised in East Sussex. The Holmes family estate would be located between the towns of Eastbourne and Brighton, where “the South Downs adjoined the sea.” It was also where Sherlock had spent his childhood.
If the Holmes family resided in East Sussex, it would then be impossible for Holmes to have been raised in Yorkshire. Instead of being forced to choose between these two possible locations, Meyer designated Yorkshire as the birthplace of Sherlock Holmes and Sussex as his childhood home.
The Professor Moriarty in The Seven Percent Solution was inspired in part by Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective. In his novel, Meyer depicts Moriarty as the childhood mathematics tutor of Sherlock Holmes.
“Oh but I did,” interrupted the professor, to my vast surprise.
“You did?”
“I did, indeed, and a most engaging young man he was, Master Sherlock.”
“Master Sherlock?”
“Why, yes. I was his tutor in mathematics.”
Nicholas Meyers theorized that Moriarty also tutored Mycroft Holmes.
“I see. And that is where you meet Holmes?”
“I taught both boys.” Moriarty replied with more than a touch of pride “and brilliant lads they were too, both of ’em.”
The most controversial theory proposed in Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective involves Irene Adler. Irene Adler is one of the most recognized characters in the Holmes Canon. However, like Professor Moriarty, she only appeared in one story. In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Miss Adler possessed a photograph of herself and Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, the Grand Duke and heir to the throne of Bohemia. The two were involved in a brief romantic relationship. She planned to release this photograph to the London papers to prevent the Duke’s upcoming wedding. The Grand Duke hired Holmes to locate and retrieve the photograph, although Holmes never succeeded in his task, for Irene Adler fled London with her new husband.
To Holmes there was only one Woman, “the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.” To him she represented the “whole of her sex.” Adler also possessed an admiration for Sherlock Holmes and admitted herself flattered that she was an object of “interest to the celebrated Mister Sherlock Holmes.”
Baring-Gould theorized that Holmes’s admiration for Adler developed into a romantic interest after the events of “A Scandal in Bohemia.” However, no reference is made to this relationship in “the Canon.” The relationship was brief and occurred outside London. As such, Baring-Gould dated the relationship to 1892. In 1891, it was believed that Sherlock Holmes died at the hands of Professor Moriarty. Although Holmes survived, several high-ranking members of the professor’s organization avoided the arrests conducted by Scotland Yard, which prompted Holmes to flee through Switzerland to Florence, Italy. For the next three years, he remained abroad under the name Sigerson.
Baring-Gould theorized that Holmes sailed from Italy to the country Montenegro. After his arrival, Holmes traveled to the capital city Cettigne. In 1891, this city possessed a population of three thousand inhabitants, which made it a place where a hunted man could “find a reasonable degree of security.”
There he encountered Irene Adler, who was performing with a travelling opera company. The two became romantically involved. However, their relationship ended when Adler departed later that year. She boarded a steamer bound for the Italian coast prior to continuing across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. Before her departure, Adler and Holmes consummated their relationship. During her voyage, she was pregnant with the child of Sherlock Holmes.
Baring-Gould postulated that as an adul
t, this child became Rex Stout’s fictional private investigator Nero Wolfe. Several similarities exist between Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe: both characters served as consultants to the governments of their respective countries; Holmes advised several inspectors of Scotland Yard, while Nero Wolfe often assisted the homicide detectives of the New York City police department; and during the Second World War, Nero Wolfe also served as a consultant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both men were intellectuals and both often engaged in rigorous athletic activity.
As an adult, Nero Wolfe bore a closer resemblance to Mycroft Holmes. “The Greek Interpreter” describes Mycroft Holmes as being “much larger and stouter man than Sherlock. His body was absolutely corpulent, but his face though massive, had preserved something of the sharpness of the expression of which was so remarkable in that of his brother.” Mycroft performed no exercise except for a daily walk from the Diogenes Club “into Whitehall every morning and back every evening.”
Nero Wolfe and Mycroft Holmes also shared similar temperaments. In “The Greek Interpreter,” Holmes describes his brother as lacking ambition.
“He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, he would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.”
Nero Wolfe would not venture beyond West 35th Street while a case was in progress. Instead, he entrusted this work to either Archie Goodwin or to the men whom he employed as his agents.
This theory was inspired by one proposed by the scholar John D. Clark in the article “Some Notes Relating to A Preliminary Investigation into the Paternity of Nero Wolfe.” This article was published in the Baker Street Journal in 1956. It was later reprinted in the collection Sherlock Holmes by Gas Lamp: Highlights from the First Four Decades of the Baker Street Journal.
Clark believed that in 1892 Holmes arranged for Irene Adler to board “one of the Italian steamers at Antivari.” When she arrived in Italy, she bought passage across the Atlantic Ocean to “join her parents in New Jersey.” Her son, whom she named Nero Wolfe, was born in Trenton, New Jersey “six months after his mother had left Montenegro.” This placed the birth of the child in either the year 1892 or the year 1893. Sherlock Holmes remained behind in Montenegro to draw off her attackers.
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 16 Page 2