Holmes and Watson

by June Thomson

  He admits he rarely mixed socially with the other students, preferring to remain in his rooms, mulling over these ideas, although he must have discussed them with his acquaintances because he tells Watson that his methods had already begun to gain him a reputation among the other undergraduates. These contacts were to prove useful to him after he left Oxford.

  Despite his unsociable habits, he made two friends, one of whom was particularly close. This was Victor Trevor, whose bull terrier bit him on the ankle as Holmes went to chapel one morning, incidentally the only occasion recorded in the canon of Holmes attending a church service. As he was laid up for ten days, Trevor used to call to see how he was, visits which led to their friendship. The other was Reginald Musgrave, who was a fellow student at Holmes’ college. Although he was never more than a slight acquaintance, he became interested in Holmes’ theories. Both were later to introduce him to two of his earliest cases.

  There were, however, diversions. Holmes spent some time fencing and boxing, the only sports he indulged in during his time at university. He excelled in the latter sport and, according to Watson, was one of the best boxers of his weight he had ever seen, a claim supported by the professional prizefighter McMurdo, with whom Holmes was to fight four rounds at the former’s benefit night and who maintained Holmes could have turned professional. Holmes does not state if he boxed or fenced for either his college or the university and there is no evidence to suggest he gained a ‘Blue’ for either of these sports.

  Holmes apparently left university after only two years, instead of the more usual three, without sitting his final examinations and therefore without taking a degree. There is, however, confusion over even this fact. Holmes refers on one occasion to ‘the two years I was at college’ and on another to ‘my last years at university’, implying he was there for at least three years. It is possible Watson either misheard or misquoted Holmes and the latter remark should read ‘my last year at university’. If that is the case, then Holmes went down in 1874 at the age of twenty.*

  One reason for his early departure could have been that dissatisfaction, already mentioned. Another was possible financial problems. Neither Holmes nor his brother Mycroft appear to have inherited much money, for both were obliged to earn their own livings. In fact, it was shortage of funds which was later to compel Holmes to share lodgings with Watson. A family financial crisis at this point in Holmes’ university career could have meant that there was no longer enough money to support him or pay his fees.

  For whatever reason, Holmes left Oxford for London, where he found rooms, presumably the same lodgings in Montague Street which he was still occupying at the end of 1880. If the dates are correct, he was to remain there for the next five and a half years. It was a convenient address, handy for the British Museum and its Reading Room, where Holmes no doubt studied the many subjects in which he was interested. The rents, too, were reasonable, a single room costing £1 10s a week (£1.50p), two rooms £3. This would have included food and cleaning. As Holmes speaks of ‘rooms’, he presumably had two, a bedroom and a sitting-room where, once he had established himself professionally, he interviewed his clients.

  Montague Street, which runs along the side of the British Museum towards Russell Square, is still lined with the same terraces of flat-fronted, four-storeyed houses, built of brick and stucco, with basement areas and iron balconies on the first floors. Since Holmes’ time, several of them have been converted into hotels.

  On first coming down from university, Holmes had no idea what profession to follow, for at that stage in his life he regarded his interest in detection as ‘the merest hobby’. It was a chance remark that was to decide his future for him.

  That same summer of 1874* he was invited by Victor Trevor to stay for a month at his family home in Donnithorpe, Norfolk. At the time, Holmes was working on an experiment in organic chemistry, suggesting that soon after coming down from university he had already set up the equipment he would need to continue his chemical studies, which might indicate that he had considered a career as an experimental chemist.

  While at Donnithorpe, Holmes was unwittingly drawn into a situation which was to lead to the Gloria Scott inquiry, the first, he told Watson, that he was asked to investigate. Strictly speaking, this is not accurate. Holmes’ involvement was limited to deciphering a cryptic letter sent by one of the participants in an old crime which had taken place thirty years earlier on board a convict ship.* Apart from this, he merely acted as an observer of the events, taking no active role in their solution. But the case was important for the part it played in Holmes’ decision to become a private consulting detective: the only one in the world, as later he was proudly to inform Watson.

  On meeting Trevor’s father, Holmes impressed him by deducing several facts about his background so correctly that he caused his host to have a heart attack, much to Holmes’ and young Trevor’s consternation. On recovering, Trevor senior made a remark which was to have significant consequences. Detection, he announced categorically, was Holmes’ ‘line in life’. He backed up this assertion by adding, ‘You may take the word of a man who has seen something of the world.’

  It was the first time it had occurred to Holmes that he might turn his hobby into a profession.

  It is not known what his second case involved. He may have been asked to investigate it by another of his varsity acquaintances. Holmes told Watson that the few cases which came his way during his early years in Montague Street were mainly from this source. But the third of these inquiries was undoubtedly the Musgrave Ritual case. He was introduced to it by Reginald Musgrave, his former fellow student at St Luke’s College, who travelled especially to London to ask for Holmes’ help, suggesting that word of his growing expertise was spreading among the varsity set.

  Holmes says that it was four years since he had last seen Musgrave. Assuming June 1874 is the correct date for Holmes’ departure from Oxford, the case therefore occurred either in 1878 or 1879, depending on how precise Holmes was over the matter of the time gap.* That being so, Holmes had undertaken only three cases during those four years. They were lean times indeed and Holmes’ comment about his ‘all too abundant leisure time’ was fully justified.

  Although Holmes does not say as much, he may have charged Musgrave a fee for his services. When Musgrave arrived, Holmes told him, ‘I have taken to living by my wits.’ It is possibly a hint that he had turned professional and expected to be paid. This would accord with a statement Watson was to make many years later. In the opening sentence of ‘The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger’, Watson states quite categorically that Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years and that ‘during seventeen of these I was allowed to co-operate with him’. Although Watson is notoriously unreliable about facts and figures, it seems that on this occasion at least his arithmetic was partly correct, according to this dating scheme.

  It is generally accepted by most commentators that Holmes retired in 1903. After discounting the three years of the Great Hiatus, the period in which Holmes disappeared and was thought dead, we arrive at 1877, possibly the same year in which Holmes undertook his second case, as the date when he also began his ‘active practice’, a term which probably implies his decision to turn professional and charge fees. The second part of Watson’s statement, that he co-operated with Holmes during seventeen of these years, will be examined in more detail in a later chapter.

  It is not known how Holmes supported himself financially during the two and half years from the summer of 1874 when he left university until 1877 when he may have begun charging his clients. Presumably he had a little money of his own or his family may have paid him a small allowance, to which his brother Mycroft may also have contributed. By that time, it is likely Mycroft was established in his career as a Civil Service auditor and was living in London in his own bachelor lodgings. Certainly he took an active interest in his younger brother’s career, for he introduced Holmes ‘again and again’ to cases, amongst which were some of th
e most interesting he was to undertake.

  We are on safer ground when we come to consider how Holmes spent that ‘all too abundant leisure time’ during those early years. He used it to study ‘all those branches of science’ in which he needed to become an expert before turning professional. In short, he was perfecting his tradecraft, to use one of John le Carré’s terms.

  One method of achieving this goal was to join the anatomy and chemistry classes at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in West Smithfield, near St Paul’s Cathedral. These courses were open to members of the general public who, while not intending to become doctors, were interested in medical subjects. Holmes could have found out about these classes from the registrar of the University of London, which had its offices in Malet Street, only a few minutes’ walk from Montague Street.

  It is possible Holmes chose Bart’s in preference to other London hospitals because it was then one of the largest, with 676 beds, and because of its reputation. Its staff included Sir James Paget,* the distinguished consulting surgeon who lectured on anatomy, one of the subjects Holmes elected to study. Bart’s ran four separate courses of anatomy lectures as well as two demonstration classes. It is not known which of these Holmes chose to attend but he almost certainly enrolled for the demonstration class in Morbid Anatomy under Dr Gee. He also joined at least one of the chemistry courses, possibly the one on Practical Chemistry, taught by Dr Russell. The fees varied from ten guineas for an unlimited course in anatomy to three for practical chemistry.

  During this period, Watson was himself a medical student at Bart’s and he was probably present at some of the classes which Holmes attended, although they never became acquainted. However, they may well have passed each other on the stairs leading up to the chemistry laboratory or watched the same anatomy demonstrations. They may even, without knowing it, have sat together reading in the library or examining the jars of specimens in the Pathological Museum.

  Apart from these courses at Bart’s, Holmes’ time was taken up with conducting his own chemical experiments at his lodgings, where he had presumably set up a work-bench similar to the one he was later to install at 221B Baker Street. He was also perfecting his skills in other areas.

  Throughout his professional life, Holmes stressed the importance to a detective of a knowledge of the history of crime. ‘Everything comes in circles,’ he was to tell Inspector MacDonald, whom he advised to shut himself up for ‘three months and read twelve hours a day’ into the subject. No doubt, this advice was based on personal experience of his time at Montague Street before his practice was established and he had the leisure for such sustained reading.

  ‘All knowledge comes useful to a detective,’ was another of his maxims, and it was probably also during these years that he made a serious study of tobacco on which he wrote a monograph: ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos’. This may have been published while he was still at Montague Street. It was certainly in print by March 1881, the date of the Study in Scarlet case. Two other articles published in the Anthropological Journal on the subject of ears may also belong to this period. If not, Holmes would have carried out the research while a student at Bart’s.

  Over the years, he was to publish other articles and monographs on codes and cyphers in which he analysed 160 different types, on tattoos, on the influence of a man’s trade on his hands, and on footprints, a special interest of his which, as has already been suggested, may have stemmed from a boyhood hobby.

  ‘There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footprints,’ he was to inform Watson.

  From such prints he was able to tell not only the type of footwear a suspect was wearing but also his height from the length of his stride. Holmes was to put this skill to use in numerous cases and, in his monograph on the subject, was to add some remarks about the use of plaster of Paris in taking impressions of the prints.

  Other specialised subjects in which he took a professional interest and which no doubt he studied during these years were the dating of documents, watermarks in paper, the analysis of handwriting and perfumes, and the study of different makes of bicycle tyres. He also made himself familiar with the types used by newspaper printers and, at one stage, he considered writing monographs on typewriters and their own distinctive print as well as the use of dogs in detection.

  His writing activities were not confined only to the subject of crime. Several years later, in November 1895, when in the middle of the inquiry into the theft of the Bruce-Partington plans, a case of national importance, he was working on a monograph on the polyphonic motets of Orlandus Lassus, the sixteenth-century German composer, which was published privately and was considered by the experts to be the last word on the subject.

  But, above all, he studied his fellow human beings, a subject on which he was to publish a magazine article entitled ‘The Book of Life’ in which he asserted that a man’s whole history, as well as his trade or profession, could be deduced from his appearance. It was a skill which, as we have seen, he had already demonstrated to Victor Trevor’s father with such unfortunate results. As Watson read the article soon after meeting Holmes, it was almost certainly written and probably published while Holmes was still living in Montague Street.

  Some at least of these early monographs were later translated into French by François le Villard, a French detective who also consulted Holmes about a case involving a will. As M. le Villard corresponded with Holmes in French, this is further proof of Holmes’ familiarity with the language.

  This exchange of ideas was not just in one direction. Holmes was to become an enthusiastic admirer of the Bertillon system for identifying criminals. Devised by Alphonse Bertillon, who was Chief of Criminal Investigation with the Paris police force from 1880, it was based on detailed descriptions, photographs and precise bodily measurements. It was eventually superseded by fingerprinting.

  The use of disguise was another aspect of detection which Holmes must have studied during this period. He was a natural actor, capable of taking on a role so convincingly that Watson was later to state that ‘his very soul seemed to vary with each fresh part he assumed’. Even old Baron Dowson, for whose arrest Holmes was responsible, said of him on the night before he was hanged that ‘what the law had gained the stage had lost’. Among the many disguises Holmes was to adopt during his career were those of a plumber, an elderly Italian priest, a sailor and an old woman.

  William S. Baring-Gould has suggested that between 1879 and 1880 Holmes was touring the United States of America as an actor with the Sasanoff Shakespearean Company. There is no evidence in the canon to support the theory. On the contrary, all the available information tends to show that Holmes was fully occupied and living in Montague Street during these years. Nor was there any need for him to take to the professional stage to learn the art of disguise. There were plenty of retired or out-of-work actors in London who could have taught him how to fix on a wig or false moustaches and to apply greasepaint.

  But it wasn’t all work and study. London offered plenty of opportunities for diversion and amusement in the way of plays, operas, concerts and music-hall entertainments. Although there is no evidence in the canon to suggest he ever went to the theatre or music-hall, he certainly attended operas and concerts. He was familiar with St James’s Hall in Westminster, for he was to discuss its acoustics with Watson. It was there that he heard Wilhelmine Norman-Néruda play the violin at concerts given by Sir Charles Hallé, whom she later married. Holmes admired her bowing technique and the vigour of her performances. However, other concert-goers must have found his habit of beating time to the music with one hand annoying, although, as Holmes kept his eyes shut, he was probably quite unaware of their reaction.

  And if the price of a concert or opera ticket was beyond his means while he was struggling to establish himself professionally, there were plenty of other ways he could amuse himself for nothing.

  Holmes enjoyed walking and it
was during his time in Montague Street that he began the habit of taking long walks about the capital, familiarising himself with its streets, particularly the slum areas of the East End with its docks and with the gin shops and opium dens of Limehouse.

  He also became acquainted with the second-hand shops in and around Tottenham Court Road, for it was here that he bought his Stradivarius violin, worth at least five hundred guineas, for fifty-five shillings (£2.75p) from a Jewish broker. Today it would be worth many more times this amount.

  For a man interested in antiquarian books, there were the booksellers as well, although at this stage in his career Holmes may not yet have been able to afford to indulge his hobby of collecting unless he was lucky enough to find a bargain, such as the little brown-backed volume of De Jure Inter Gentes, published in Liége in 1642, which he found on a stall selling second-hand books and which he later showed to Watson.

  But business was picking up. Between 1878 and the last months of 1880, at least eight more cases came his way. As he was later to tell Watson that his practice became ‘considerable’, there were undoubtedly more which he failed to mention. Those he listed were the Tarleton murders and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, as well as the inquiries involving an old Russian woman, the club-footed Ricoletti and his abominable wife, and a particularly curious investigation which concerned an aluminium crutch. Unfortunately, Holmes has given no further details about these cases.

  Other clients included a Mrs Farintosh, who consulted him about an opal tiara, and a Mr Mortimer Maberley, whom Holmes was able to help over a ‘trifling matter’ and whose widow later requested his advice over the sale of her house, the Three Gables. A Mrs Cecil Forrester also asked for his assistance. Although her case was straightforward, involving only a minor domestic complication, Mrs Forrester was to play an important part in Watson’s future, for it was through her that Miss Mary Morstan heard of Holmes and several years later came to consult him about a much more complex problem of her own. Some of these cases came, as he told Watson, from private detective agents who turned to him for help when they found themselves in difficulties and whom Holmes charged for his services.