3 Roger T. Clapp underlines the practical value of Watson’s writing, observing in “The Curious Problem of the Railway Timetables” that, as a businessman, Holmes made shrewd use of Watson’s abilities to generate new clients. Word of mouth from satisfied clients and referrals from Scotland Yard could only create so much business, and outright advertising by professionals was considered unseemly. Holmes must have realised that publication of Watson’s records of his cases would advertise the detective’s services to the wider public. “That this was his underlying plan,” Clapp goes on, “is quite clearly evidenced by his repeated—although subtle—suggestions that Watson select for his published stories those cases which best illustrated Holmes’s deductive powers and resources . . . and his frequent complaints that Watson was sacrificing technical detail which would reflect Holmes’s brilliance for the purely dramatic aspects of his cases.” Holmes’s constant apathy and even belittling of Watson’s efforts (sprinkled with offhand suggestions of cases Watson might want to write up) was a psychological tactic, Clapp argues, designed to let Watson think the entire project was his own idea, not some manipulative marketing ploy.
4 Watson writes in the preface to His Last Bow (1917) that the farm was “five miles from Eastbourne,” and in “The Lion’s Mane,” the villa is said to be “situated upon the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a great view of the Channel.”
5 Edgar W. Smith adamantly disputes this image of Holmes as publicity-shy recluse. “The facts flatly contradict this assertion,” Edgar W. Smith declares in “Dr. Watson and the Great Censorship.” Although the public had been told that Holmes had died in 1891—in the story “The Final Problem,” published in 1893—no sooner did Holmes retire than “The Empty House” was published in the Strand, revealing that Holmes, still very much alive, had returned to London in 1894 to solve Ronald Adair’s murder. It may be that what Watson meant here was that Holmes did not want any publicity about the details of his retirement, and as will be seen in “The Lion’s Mane,” and “His Last Bow,” both post-retirement tales, Holmes’s place of refuge is obscure.
6 The manuscript originally read “one supreme example of the international influences he has exercised.”
7 See the appendix on page 1222 for a discussion of the identities of “Lord Bellinger” and the “Right Honourable Trelawney Hope.”
8 In the manuscript, Watson originally wrote that he “puffed a cigarette.”
9 The manuscript omits the phrase “until I missed the paper this morning.”
10 Commentators suggest that the “foreign potentate” who sent the ill-advised letter must have been Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859– 1941), also known as William II. The emperor of Germany and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, William had already earned himself a rocky reputation in Britain, despite the traditional friendship between the two nations. In 1895, he famously sent a telegram to South African president Paul Kruger congratulating him on his defeat of the British-supported Jameson Raid. The strengthening of Germany’s navy and the expansion of its colonial interests further incited British suspicions, and the two countries began to feel the strain of competition. Germany’s creation of the Triple Alliance with Italy and Austria-Hungary in 1881 (see “The Naval Treaty,” note 19) divided the two nations still more, and in 1907 Britain countered by joining with Russia and longtime rival France to form the Triple Entente. The rising tensions between Germany and Britain, combined with William’s lack of political tact, seem to lend themselves to a letter containing “provocative” phrases and of such import that it could involve Britain in a “great war.” In fact, Germany and Britain would face off against each other in the Great War only eight years after publication of “The Second Stain.”
11 This seems a stunningly naive statement by Holmes, who has just been informed of the highly delicate nature of the letter’s contents. Aubrey C. Roberts expresses his disappointment in what he sees as only one of Holmes’s “lapses” in “The Second Stain,” chiding, “With questions like these right up front, it is a great wonder that the illustrious Premier did not take his business elsewhere, post haste.”
12 This could allude either to the Triple Alliance or, more likely, to the then-Dual Alliance between France and Russia (preliminarily formed in 1891, and confirmed in 1894), which Britain had yet to join. See note 10, above. Scholars reach little concurrence on the dating of “The Second Stain,” ranging from 1886 to 1894, although those proposing the later date do so on the existence of the Dual Alliance.
13 “Half-a-dozen,” according to the manuscript.
14 This would have been a pretty penny indeed! In A Sherlock Holmes Handbook, Christopher Redmond explains that income tax in the 1890s stood at 2.5 percent. Remembering that a pound consists of twenty shillings, each shilling twelve pennies, the tax was 2.5% x 240 pennies/pound, or 6 pennies per pound. Holmes’s “another penny on the income tax” would be a one-sixth increase in the tax and would, according to Redmond’s calculations, “add more than £2 million to the annual collections of only £13 million, out of a total public revenue of £100 million.”
15 The first two reappear, with Oberstein as a principal character, in “The Bruce-Partington Plans.”
16 Kensington and Notting Hill are the addresses of Oberstein and La Rothiere given in “The Bruce-Partington Plans.”
17 A tray upon which food or drinks are served. From the French salve, to save; the Spanish salva, to taste food to detect poison; and the Latin salvare, to save.
18 Lady Hilda’s demeanour here departs markedly from that of today’s political wives, who tend to be somewhat savvier about their husbands’ affairs. Her naivete about what the theft of the letter might imply is surely a product of the age, D. Martin Dakin comments, observing that “Nowadays any politician fortunate enough to be married to a society beauty would be sure to have her active assistance in his election campaign and writing part of his address to his constituents.”
19 The manuscript originally read, “ ‘Now, Watson, what’s the meaning of this?’ asked Holmes.”
20 Watson means the one chair in the room that would have put the light at her back, not that there are no other chairs present. Holmes and Watson’s armchairs are mentioned in “The Three Gables,” “The Five Orange Pips,” and “The ‘Gloria Scott’.” The basket chair, generally used by clients, is noted in “The Noble Bachelor” and “The Blue Carbuncle.” Holmes and Watson would (as gentlemen) clearly have been standing when she entered the room, and Lady Hilda thus had a choice of at least three chairs.
21 Who would have possibly noticed Mme. Fournaye—until now, a person of seemingly no importance—at both Godolphin Street on Monday and Charing Cross Station on Tuesday? Certainly she appears undeserving of attention. It is also unlikely, argues George J. McCormack, that responsible doctors would have so quickly concluded that she was permanently insane. Based on such dubious reporting, McCormack proposes that the entire newspaper article was a fabrication, planted by Holmes. McCormack goes on to conclude that Lady Hilda herself murdered Lucas and that Watson invented the story of the French wife at Holmes’s insistence, to shield her and to conceal his role as a criminal accessory.
22 Felix Morley points out that Holmes might have remembered the value of his own observation, in “Silver Blaze,” that a dog that “did nothing in the night-time” could prove a vital piece of “negative evidence.” In this situation, Morley writes, “Holmes failed to make an equally brilliant—and obvious—deduction.”
23 A rug made of coarse wool or wool and cotton.
24 E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable supplies that “to live in Queer Street” meant “To be of doubtful solvency. To be one marked in a tradesman’s ledger with a quære (inquire), meaning, make inquiries about this customer.” Similarly, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one character remarks, “No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.” Although historian Graham Robb ventures that
the word “queer” had come to imply homosexuality as early as 1894 (see “The Greek Interpreter,” note 8), the implication was far from universal, and generally the word was still used to refer to irregularity or to counterfeit goods.
25 In English editions, the word “incident” is “accident.”
26 This is prescient of Holmes, for there is surely no prior hint that any third party might be called upon to identify any of the principals of the case. Did he also have a photograph of Trelawney Hope?
27 At this point in the manuscript, a substantial portion appears in a handwriting that is not that of Conan Doyle, the scrivener of virtually all of the other manuscripts. Several suggestions were considered, including that the writing was that of Alfred Wood, Conan Doyle’s secretary; that of Sir Arthur but his so-called resting hand; or even that of Dr. Watson! The editors of Baker Street Miscellanea, however, wisely asked Dame Jean Conan Doyle, the daughter of Arthur Conan Doyle, who promptly identified it as that of her mother, then Jean Leckie, later Sir Arthur’s second wife.
28 The phrase “written before my marriage” was added to the manuscript.
29 B. George Isen asserts that the letter was written to Eduardo Lucas himself, a “man whose relations with women . . . appeared to have been promiscuous but superficial.” Isen concludes that Lady Hilda killed Lucas mere moments before the “French wife” burst into the room but that Holmes, out of concern for both Lady Hilda and England, concealed the facts (rather as he did for the mysterious lady culprit in “Charles Augustus Milverton”).
30 This sentence has been added to the original manuscript, and nothing further is said about Lucas’s spy. Who was the spy? Surprisingly, observes B. George Isen, no one—not even Holmes—seems significantly worried about “this dangerous creature in the presumably secure government office who not only had known that Mr. Trelawney Hope always carried the missive with him but knew, too, that Hope deposited it in his dispatch box at home.” Surely Holmes must have sought to discover the identity of the spy and expose him or her to the government.
John Hall, in Sidelights on Holmes, suggests that while Holmes would not have dropped the matter, exposure may have been unnecessary. “Perhaps Holmes thought that, with Lucas dead and thus any hold he had over the spy gone, the furore [over Lucas’s death] would ensure that the spy behaved himself in the future. It might even be that Holmes had a discreet word with the offender, and satisfied himself that there would be no further lapses.”
31 This sentence was added to the manuscript in the handwriting of Conan Doyle.
32 This sentence does not appear in the original manuscript.
33 This sentence also was added to the original manuscript.
34 And so it emerges that Watson, in judging Lucas’s murder “an amazing coincidence,” was right after all, whereas an uncharacteristically rash Holmes, who insisted, “No, my dear Watson, the two events are connected—must be connected,” was in the wrong. In considering Lucas’s death, Nathan L. Bengis writes in “Sherlock Stays After School,” the practical Watson took a less cerebral approach and came to the correct conclusion “but allowed himself to be shouted down” by Holmes, who normally lectures against leaping to conclusions but did the opposite here. Of course, even upon learning the true sequence of events, Holmes declines to give his friend proper credit. Bengis complains, “One would expect Holmes to have been big enough to admit his error to Watson in some words as these: ‘You were perfectly right. It was an amazing coincidence. I was too rash in jumping to conclusions.’ Watson, of course, was too fine to recriminate his friend with ‘I told you so,’ but he had been made so often to eat humble pie that for once he should have insisted that his friend eat some!”
35 The phrase “and thought of destroying it” is not in the manuscript.
36 Scornfully, D. Martin Dakin deems Lady Hilda “one of the most dim-witted of lovelies” for seeing no way out of her dilemma. “As she had a duplicate key and the dispatch-box was still in the bedroom, there was no reason why she should not have put it back on the quiet at any time, without waiting for Holmes to do it for her.”
37 “His” in some American editions.
38 “Let us face it,” concludes Aubrey Roberts. “[Holmes’s] number one ally in this case was ‘Lady Luck.’ ” His risky gamble in challenging the premier with pointed questions paid off; the ensuing murder of Lucas was, in the end, a fluke that opened the door to important new evidence. So, too, was Lestrade’s sudden summoning of Holmes to consult with him about the second stain a happy stroke of luck. In the end, the clues dropped into Holmes’s lap fortuitously, assembling themselves into a pattern quite beyond his initial line of thought. “However,” Roberts sighs, “would this arrogant egocentric be expected to say, ‘Sir, it was an uncommon bit of luck; a chance shot in the dark’? No, of course not. Still he must have been smiling at that possibility as he turned away to hide such thoughts from the ‘keen scrutiny’ of the Premier. . . .”
George McCormack decides that Holmes’s “diplomatic secret” was the guilt of Lady Hilda, and further surmises that Holmes did not in fact replace the state papers in the despatch-box, since doing so would have exposed Lady Hilda as the sole suspect (assuming that Trelawney Hope did not fall for such a cheap parlour trick). Instead, McCormack theorises, Watson created out of whole cloth the touching scene at the Hope residence; in reality, Holmes extracted the paper from Lady Hilda and then handed it over outright to Hope and Lord Bellinger at the Baker Street office, without telling them from which channels he had procured it. “It was to encourage such speculation,” McCormack writes, “that Holmes, in declining to explain how he had recovered the paper, said to Lord Bellinger, ‘We also have our diplomatic secrets.’ In this way, Lady Hilda was in no way implicated.”
Yet Lord Bellinger had no such illusions, concludes Ian McQueen, which “Holmes clearly perceived as he ‘turned away smiling from the keen scrutiny of those wonderful eyes.’ The next Cabinet reshuffle probably saw Trelawney Hope stripped of office and sent to occupy a back bench in the Lords. In time he may even have guessed that his wife was branded as a security risk. Bellinger’s twinkle of mystification was not to be satisfied by Holmes’s disarming remark about diplomatic secrets. And Holmes knew it; or why the hurried exit?”
PREFACE
THE FRIENDS OF Mr. Sherlock Holmes will be glad to learn that he is still alive and well, though somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism.1 He has, for many years, lived in a small farm upon the Downs2 five miles from Eastbourne, where his time is divided between philosophy and agriculture. During this period of rest he has refused the most princely offers to take up various cases, having determined that his retirement was a permanent one. The approach of the German war caused him, however, to lay his remarkable combination of intellectual and practical activity at the disposal of the Government, with historical results which are recounted in “His Last Bow.” Several previous experiences which have lain long in my portfolio, have been added to His Last Bow so as to complete the volume.3
JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.
1 Holmes’s rheumatism is studied in detail in Rosemary Michaud’s insightful “All in Your Hands, Mr. Holmes.” Michaud concludes from the Canonical evidence that Holmes’s arthritis was in his hands and that it became severe after the Great Hiatus. This explains why Holmes virtually gave up the violin and perhaps explains Holmes’s inability to prevent the attack on Watson in “The Three Garridebs.” The incident, argues Michaud, revealed to Holmes once and for all that he could no longer continue certain aspects of his detective work without endangering Watson and himself and led him to retire soon thereafter. John Hall, however, in Sidelights on Holmes, suggests that Watson is deliberately deceiving the reader here, to provide a “cover” for Holmes’s post-“Last Bow” espionage activities.
2 Ensuing details reveal that Watson is referring here to the South Downs or Sussex Downs, the range of chalk hills that divides the county of Sussex into the coastal district and the We
alden district of forested land.
3 “The Cardboard Box,” which originally appeared in book form following “Wisteria Lodge,” has been restored to its rightful place in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. See “The Cardboard Box.”
THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE1
As Watson reported in the preface to His Last Bow, a collection of eight stories published in 1917, Holmes may have been retired, but the accounts of plenty of his cases remained to delight his fans. The seven new stories that Watson added to “His Last Bow” as part of the collection (also included was “The Cardboard Box,” properly part of The Memoirs) had appeared in the Strand sporadically from 1908 through 1917. “Wisteria Lodge,” the first, is misdated by Watson (probably by accident), who places it in 1892, when Holmes was missing and thought dead. Here, as in “The Golden Pince-Nez,” Holmes deals with a political fugitive, this time from South America. Although voodoo is a staple of twentieth-century thrillers, the earliest book in the British Library on the subject was published in 1893, and this story may be the earliest literary reference to voodoo. Unusually, Holmes is assisted in the case by that rarity in Dr. Watson’s accounts, a competent local policeman.
I. THE SINGULAR EXPERIENCE OF MR. JOHN SCOTT ECCLES
I FIND IT RECORDED in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892.2 Holmes had received a telegram whilst we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply. He made no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for he stood in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face, smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the message. Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,”3 said he. “How do you define the word ‘grotesque’?”
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books) Page 51