by Tim Symonds
Despite being offered Watson’s favourable diagnosis of a dozen years more, Alfred Weit died less than a year after the Kipling League meeting with Holmes and Watson at Crick’s End. A bridge over the Kafue River, an important tributary of the great Zambezi, was named after him. His obituary in The London Observer read: ‘One of the most extraordinary of self-educated men, he assembled a very large fortune in mineral speculation. Long years of unintermitted toil and living in the Tropics culminated in a fever of the brain, under the influence of which he committed suicide.’
In his last Will and Testament he left 500 guineas ‘to my friend Dr. John Watson’.
Alfred Weit’s business partner Sir Julius Wernher, purveyor of the recipe for Imam bayildi, lived past the First World War.
Early in 1915 Siviter and his wife Charlotte turned most of Crick’s End into a convalescent home for officers and retired to a cottage in the grounds where Siviter embarked on his memoires. In his later years, long after the Kaiser’s War had come and gone and Britain had begun to accept the loosening ties of Empire, he turned back to his Indian cultural heritage, contemplating the old Hindu custom of giving up material interests to prepare for the spiritual plane, a theme forecast in his story titled The Miracle of Mengohn Temple. On his 44th wedding anniversary, three decades after the events described in the Dead Boer, Siviter died from a perforated duodenum. He was buried at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. The pall-bearers included a Field Marshall, an Admiral of the Fleet, and Britain’s Prime Minister. His tongue and hand sealed forever in death, with Siviter went most of the inside knowledge of the dramatic events surrounding the corpse at Scotney Castle.
1st Baronet Sir Edward Pevensey’s reputation in history was hampered by the fact that of the three Victorian Olympians (the others being Frederick Lord Leighton and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema) the least is known about him in spite of the fact that he produced some of the period’s most revered paintings. He was President of the Royal Academy for twenty-two years. He died a few months after the Great War ended.
In 1922, Lady Susan Townley, wife of a former Second Secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin, in her memoires ’Indiscretions’ Of Lady Susan added detail to Sherlock Holmes’ speculation on the offer von Hofmeyer might have brought to the Sungazer Gang. She wrote: ‘We were once present at a dinner given to the Kaiser at our Embassy when Cecil Rhodes, who was the guest of honour, asked to meet him. At this dinner (it was in 1899, if I remember right) an incident occurred hitherto unrecorded, which I am convinced had great future political interest for both Britain and Germany.
Before the dinner, Cecil Rhodes had been speaking of his grand conception of an All-British Cape to Cairo Railway, the greatest transcontinental line in the world. At that time this scheme was threatened by the lively interest which Germany displayed in African trade development.
“If only we could make the Kaiser abandon his African schemes and leave us free to get on with ours,” Rhodes said. “But he’s so obstinate. Once he has thought out a plan nothing will make him change it ... Unless,” he added reflectively, “I could think of some other scheme to put before him that would fire his imagination and lead him off on another scent!”
After dinner the ladies retired, as usual, but my husband told me afterwards how the Emperor and Rhodes fell at once into an animated conversation. In pursuance of the plan that had occurred to him before dinner, Rhodes set to work to draw a red herring before the Kaiser’s trail by leading the conversation on to the topic of Mesopotamia.
“If my thoughts were not centred on Africa,” Rhodes declared, “that would be the field of development that would attract me most. Not only is it capable of becoming the granary of the world, but it is the obvious route to the Far East and to the undeveloped markets of Persia and Afghanistan. The way to those countries lies through Baghdad!”
I know how much Cecil Rhodes had hoped to gain from this after-dinner talk, and it may be judged with what eagerness I watched for his reappearance. When after a long time the men joined us, his face was flushed with excitement. “Thank God,” he whispered, “I believe I have done the trick. I have side-tracked him out of Africa!”
... I am convinced that at that moment was born the idea of the Baghdad-Bahn.’
Whether or not Cecil Rhodes influenced the Kaiser, the Baghdad railway was attempted by Germany at great cost and limited value. A better line for trade with the East would have been via Bucharest and Constanza to one or other of ports on the Black Sea such as Batum in the Caucasus or Trezibond, and onward to Persia.
In 1915 Mrs. Hudson received a considerable accolade for service to humankind. A Belgian lady was sent over specially to reward British canteen workers with the Ribbon of the Order of Queen Elizabeth for the part they played in befriending Belgian soldiers during the first year of the Great War. Though without any strong partiality for expensive outfits, a photograph taken for the occasion shows Mrs. Hudson in a light dress with a boned, high collar and tiny braid buttons from throat to knee, beneath a straw hat tied on by a large bow of white moiré ribbon. She wore child-like white cotton socks with second-hand black buttoned boots, the latter first purchased from Nain Bleu in the Rue St. Honoré ‘by a rich lady’.
From modesty Mrs. Hudson made no claim for the medal but for the remainder of her long life the ribbon remained firmly attached to a pin-cushion in her quarters, until finally it shrivelled and dropped off and was swept up, unnoticed, with the dust.
Lord Van Beers died in 1925. With his departure a generation of Victorian men and women not to be equalled again in their reach, self-belief, and ambition for England had gone.
In 1929 Mrs. Keppell came into ownership of Sherlock Holmes’ farm and bees in Sussex. No record was kept of her Norwich terrier Tallulah.
As the years passed, Eddie Marsh proceeded through the rites of passage of a successful Civil Servant’s career. ‘Eddie’ Marsh became Edward Marsh, alias Mr. E. Marsh, Esq., transmogrifying into Sir Edward Marsh K.C.V.O. as presence was forced upon him. He retired in February 1937 with a gift of ‘an exquisite and convenient inkstand of Sheffield plate’, inscribed ‘To Eddie, from his friends in the Dominions Office’. In retirement he spent many of his waking hours in the bow window of Boodle’s Club in St. James Street or at his cottage in Picardy.
Dr. Watson died in 1939. Conscientious to the end, his last recorded words were, ‘Has anything escaped me? I trust there is nothing of consequence I have overlooked?’
A short obituary appeared in his favourite newspaper, The Morning Telegraph, noted for its attentions to the activities of the powerful and wealthy and its interest in foreign affairs:
‘Dr Hamish Watson, Birthplace: Exact county unknown (Scotland). Best known as: Sherlock Holmes’ assistant and chronicler. Occupation: Doctor of Medicine, former army surgeon, physician, biographer.’
In 1939, Crick’s End, in which secret diaries might to this day lie hidden, became the property of the National Trust on the death of Siviter’s widow.
In 1975, Watson’s favourite Club, The Guards, founded in 1810, gave up its premises in Charles Street, and merged with the Cavalry Club. Much of the property of the former Guards Club was sold publicly at that time, but the Club brought with them to the merger some fine military pictures, silver (including a beautiful candelabra) and 800 members.
The Watson Codex continues to be used to this day to estimate the onset and duration of rigor mortis upon death. At the turn of the 20th Century, researchers at India’s Chandigarh Institute added further valuable documentation on the onset and duration of rigor mortis in eyelids.
Historians can only speculate why Watson never published the Dead Boer despite his reconciliation with Sherlock Holmes.
---finis---
Acknowledgements
To achieve as much as possible the tone of the iconic Sherlock Holmes stories I have taken some of the atmospheric w
ording of the canon and scattered it here and there. For historical background to the period I much recommend the following:
East End Chronicles by Ed Glinert.
Sherlock Holmes in London, a photographic record of Conan Doyle’s stories, by Charles Viney.
Victorian England as seen by Punch by Frank E. Huggett.
The London of Sherlock Holmes, by Michael Harrison
Lives Of The Indian Princes by Charles Allen. Century Publishing
The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook, edited by Peter Haining, foreword by Peter Cushing.
Sherlock Holmes, by Mark Campbell, Pocket Essentials Literature.
A Victorian Son by Stuart Cloete.
The Sherlock Holmes Journal, published twice a year, usually in July and December.
The Baker Street Journal, a leading Sherlockian publication with both serious scholarship and articles that ‘play the game’.
My gratitude to -
The Whapham and Wrenn Sussex farming families at the edge of whose fields near Burwash I sat on fallen oaks writing this novel over three glorious summers.
Robert Ribeiro for going through the final text with such a knowledgeable eye (as befits the owner of the house built by famous Holmes and Watson illustrator Walter Paget).
Paul Spiring for his enthusiasm and early edit.
Historian Judith Rowbotham whose books on Victorian and Edwardian crime form a fine backdrop to the Dead Boer.
The friendly staff at National Trust properties Bateman’s in Sussex and Scotney Castle in Kent whose buildings, ruins and grounds inspired the plot. This particularly includes Mike Lacey and his atmospheric and informative talks on Kipling and his times. Don’t miss them of a summer’s day at Bateman’s.
English Heritage for background on Charles Darwin and Down House.
Google and Wikipedia and the worldwide web for the speed and depth of research they make available.
Amazon, Alibris and AbeBooks where I found even the most obscure books to add value and interest to the plot.
Dave Berry’s hidden treasure of a bookshop at Heathfield, East Sussex.
Above all to my partner Lesley Abdela for her warm encouragement, who took on work assignments at great risk to her life in war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan and Africa to bring in an income while I sat with quill and paper cocooned in the beautiful English countryside sketching out the Dead Boer, my first novel.
Final note: it was only when writing this story I discovered a long-dead favourite actor-uncle of mine by the name of Stanley van Beers produced a Sherlock Holmes play some fifty or more years ago, a melodrama titled The Return of Sherlock Holmes, at the New Theatre, Bromley, in Kent. In his happy memory I named the Macchiavellian Randlord in the Dead Boer after him. In a future ‘Sherlock Holmes’ I would include another uncle, Elleston Trevor, also deceased, whose RAF service and years near my family home in Guernsey trying to become a novelist was followed by his success with such best-sellers as The Flight of The Phoenix and a series of Cold War thrillers featuring the British secret agent Quiller.
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