by June Thomson
The inquiry had particular significance for Watson, for it occurred only a few weeks before his own marriage, as he remarks in one of his typically laconic statements dropped almost casually into his account. It is useful for establishing an approximate date for his wedding to Mary Morstan but is infuriatingly imprecise on details. One has to assume that, in the weeks following Watson’s return from Devon, he and Mary Morstan were quietly making plans for their marriage, which included a search for a suitable property to serve as their home and as a base for Watson as a general medical practitioner.
Understandably, Watson did not discuss any of these plans with Holmes, not even his decision to return to medical practice. It was only when the two men met again after the marriage that Holmes was aware of this fact, which he deduced from Watson’s appearance.* Watson’s failure to confide in Holmes was not out of any desire for secrecy. He was by nature frank and, if Holmes had asked what his plans were, Watson would have told him. But Holmes did not ask, an omission which Watson accepted without any resentment.
Theirs was an essentially male friendship in which the exchange of personal confidences was not expected and much was therefore left unsaid. Apparently, not even Watson’s departure from the Baker Street lodgings on the occasion of his marriage was discussed. At least, there is no record of any such conversation in the published canon. Both men must have realised it was inevitable but preferred not to speak of it, let alone openly express their feelings about such a parting or the immense changes it would bring to both their lives.
In the weeks leading up to Watson’s marriage there was not much opportunity anyway to discuss these personal matters even if they had wished to. Holmes was out of England for most of the latter part of 1888 and the beginning of 1889. Once again, Watson fails to give precise dates and the exact period can only be guessed at by implication.
Holmes was certainly still in England at the end of November 1888. Sir Henry Baskerville, accompanied by Dr Mortimer, his personal physician, called on him and Watson then at Baker Street before embarking on a recuperative voyage which was intended to restore Sir Henry’s shattered nerves after his terrifying experiences during the Hound of the Baskerville case.
That same evening, as they sat beside a blazing fire, Holmes at last found time to give Watson a full explanation of the Baskerville affair and to tie up some of the loose ends which still remained unresolved. Later, as a belated celebration, they went out to dine at Marcini’s before going to the opera to hear the De Reszke brothers sing in a performance of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. Holmes hired a box for the occasion, further proof of his improved financial situation, a fact which would have set Watson’s mind at rest over the matter of the shared rent of the Baker Street lodgings. Holmes was now in a position to afford to pay the whole of it himself.
It must have been shortly after this that Holmes was summoned to Odessa to enquire into the Trepoff murder and then, after its conclusion, travelled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) for the case involving the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee. That, at least, is the inference, for, although Watson is far from clear on the details of this latter investigation, by using the phrase ‘at Trincomalee’, he seems to suggest that the case required Holmes’ presence at the scene of the tragedy.
During this same period, Holmes was also engaged on a delicate mission on behalf of the Dutch royal family,* the word ‘mission’ again implying that he was required to travel to Holland in order to undertake the inquiry, which he successfully concluded. This was the second occasion during this period that royalty had asked for Holmes’ assistance, the first request having come from the King of Scandinavia, and suggests that his reputation for handling highly confidential matters of state was spreading among the reigning European monarchs, many of whom were inter-related.
Of the two other cases, the Trepoff murder and the Atkinson tragedy, Watson supplies no details of their outcome. He himself only learnt about them from newspaper accounts, suggesting he and Holmes were not in direct contact during this period.
Although Watson gives no dates, it is possible to establish a rough timetable of Holmes’ activities over these months. We know the discussion with Watson over the Baskerville case took place at the end of November 1888 and that Holmes was back in Baker Street at some time before 20th March 1889 when, as will be seen in the next chapter, Watson called on him there.
If one assumes that Holmes left England for Russia on or about the 21st November and spent three weeks travelling to Odessa and investigating the Trepoff case, then he could have been back in England by mid-December. Assuming also that he departed for Ceylon almost immediately, a journey which would have taken about a month by sea, and that the Atkinson case was completed within a fortnight, it is quite possible that Holmes, even allowing another month for the return voyage, was home before the end of February. This would have given him enough time to undertake the mission on behalf of the Dutch royal family before returning to Baker Street before 20th March. It would have been a packed itinerary but one that was perfectly feasible within the available time.
Meanwhile, in Holmes’ absence, Watson’s marriage plans were taking shape. He and Mary found a suitable property in the Paddington district, not far from the mainline station, the staff of which was to prove a useful source of patients. Although Watson gives no clue to the exact whereabouts of his practice, it was probably only a few minutes’ walk from the station, for one of the guards took Mr Hatherley, an injured passenger, to Watson’s consulting room for treatment rather than to St Mary’s Hospital, which was almost next door to the terminus.
It is most unlikely that Watson and Mary Morstan went househunting in the Norfolk Square or Westbourne Terrace areas. These fashionable terraces of tall, stuccoed residences with their balconies and imposing porticoes would have been too expensive. But Watson could well have found an affordable property in such turnings as London Street or Spring Street, almost opposite Paddington station. Some of these houses are still standing, their exteriors largely unaltered since Watson’s time. Brick-built and of three or four storeys, they are more modest but still respectable and any one of them would have been suitable as a doctor’s premises. They are large enough to accommodate a consulting-room on the ground floor with plenty more space on the upper floors for private living quarters.
Apart from a few scattered references, there is no detailed description of either the interior or the exterior of the house. It was next door to another doctor’s practice, a fact which, like its proximity to Paddington station, was to prove useful to Watson in the coming months. There were well-worn steps up to the front door – Holmes comments on them – and the hall floor was covered in linoleum, a practical touch this. With the coming and going of patients, sometimes in muddy boots, a carpet would soon have become worn out. In addition to Watson’s consulting-room, there was also a sitting-room on the ground floor. It is possible there was a more formal first-floor drawing-room. In ‘The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk’, Watson writes of going upstairs to speak to his wife.
The practice had belonged to Mr Farquhar, an elderly gentleman who suffered from St Vitus’ Dance. Because of his age and infirmity, the number of patients had decreased and the income had dropped from £1200 a year to a mere £300. But Watson could still draw his army pension which, added to the money he could expect from the practice, gave him an annual income of £500, enough for the Watsons to live on in reasonable comfort and to afford a servant. Besides, Watson had every confidence that, with his youth and energy, he could gradually build up the practice over the coming months.
He does not say how much he paid for the practice but the usual price at that time was one to one and a half times the annual income. Watson therefore probably paid between £300 and £450. Neither he nor Mary Morstan could have had much capital. Both had modest incomes, Watson relying entirely on his army pension and Mary Morstan on her salary as a governess, which in the late 1880s was about £50 a year, including board and lodging.* They had
probably managed to save a little but not enough to buy a suitable house and furnish it adequately.
However, Mary Morstan was in possession of the six pearls, part of the Agra treasure, which had been sent to her by Major Sholto, her late father’s army colleague. Presumably some, if not all, were sold to raise the necessary capital.
Watson says nothing at all about the wedding itself, whether it was a church or registry office ceremony. But wherever it was held, it was almost certainly a quiet affair. Neither he nor Mary had the money or the inclination for a lavish celebration and, as neither of them had any relatives living in England or many close friends, the number of guests was probably small.
Mrs Cecil Forrester and her family were probably present. So, too, was Mrs Hudson. It is unlikely Watson would have left her off the guest list. Colonel Hayter, Watson’s former army acquaintance from Reigate, may also have been invited as well as Mr and Mrs Whitney. The Whitneys were to play a small part in a subsequent case. Kate Whitney was an old school friend of Mary, and her husband, Isa, was to become one of Watson’s patients. Stamford, Watson’s former dresser at Bart’s who introduced Watson to Holmes, is another possible guest.
But one old friend was certainly not at the wedding. This was Holmes himself, who was most probably out of England on one of his foreign investigations at the time. His absence is made quite clear. When several months later he called on Watson in June 1889, he asked after Mrs Watson, expressing the hope that she had recovered from the excitements of the Sholto affair. He had therefore not seen her since September 1888, the date of that case.
The date of the wedding cannot, however, be fixed. But it must have occurred between late November 1888, when Watson was still living in Baker Street, and well before 20th March, by which time Watson was already married and settled into the Paddington practice. Commentators have suggested various possibilities from December 1888 to January or February 1889. One of the two later months is the more likely. A December wedding would have hardly given Watson time to make all the necessary arrangements.
As it was, there was evidently some problem over the purchase of the Paddington practice. Watson states that they moved into the property shortly after the marriage. The delay may have been caused by a legal complication or the difficulty of finding suitable premises. Or they may have had to wait while builders or decorators finished refurbishing the house.
But, once installed, Watson was delighted with the arrangements. It was the first time he had owned his own home and he refers proudly to being master of his own establishment. A servant, Mary Jane, was engaged but soon proved unsatisfactory. She was a clumsy, careless girl and Mrs Watson was forced to give her notice.
Apart from this minor domestic inconvenience, Watson was a deeply contented man. During these first few weeks of marriage he put on seven and a half pounds in weight, a sure sign of a man at peace with himself and his world. However, when he picked up his newspaper and read the reports of Holmes’ latest exploits, he may have felt a small twinge of nostalgic regret for the old Baker Street days.
The events of the evening of 20th March 1889 certainly suggest that, for all his domestic happiness, he missed that element of adventure and excitement which his long association with Holmes had given him.
* See Appendix One for the dating of the Sign of Four case.
* See Appendix One for the dating of the Hound of the Baskerville case.
* If the dating of the Silver Blaze inquiry to September 1888 is correct, then the Baskerville case was the second investigation which took Holmes and Watson to Dartmoor that autumn. Presumably the Silver Blaze inquiry occurred between the end of the Sign of Four case in the first weeks of September 1888 and the Baskerville investigation in early October of the same year. With the other cases assigned to this period, including the Noble Bachelor inquiry as well as the unrecorded inquiries relating to Colonel Upwood, Mme Montpensier, the King of Scandinavia and the Grosvenor Square furniture van, the autumn of 1888 was a particularly busy time for Holmes. Readers are referred to the suggested chronology in Chapter Six.
* Holmes says: ‘If a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the side of his top hat to show where he secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull indeed if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession’ (‘A Scandal in Bohemia’). Some commentators have remarked a little derisively on Watson’s method of carrying his stethoscope but there is no indication it was a habit of his. He may have placed it there temporarily in order to leave his hands free to greet Holmes. All the same, it is a strange place to put it and is an example of Watson’s endearing eccentricities of character, less marked than Holmes’ but nonetheless a part of his character.
* The King of the Netherlands at this time was William III (1817–90) who reigned from 1849 until his death.
* In ‘The Adventure of the Copper Beeches’, a case which occurred not long after Watson’s marriage, Miss Violet Hunter says that in her last post as a governess her salary was £4 a month.
CHAPTER NINE
SCANDAL AND REUNION
20th March 1889
‘He [Holmes] never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer … And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.’
Watson: ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’
In the months following his marriage, Watson saw nothing of Holmes. As we have seen, Holmes was out of England for most of this period and when he finally returned to Baker Street, he preferred his own solitary life, shunning society and ‘alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition’, as Watson expresses it. This regular use of the drug could suggest more than his usual dependency. In his loneliness after Watson’s departure, he may well have found solace in cocaine, although he would never have admitted this. When not drowsy with drugs, he threw himself into solving those cases which had baffled the police. Watson does not specify what these cases were.
Watson himself was also busy with what he calls his ‘home-centred interests’ and with building up his practice. He admits that his marriage had caused Holmes and himself to drift apart. It was a state of affairs which might have continued and grown worse as the weeks passed until the gap between them grew too wide to be bridged, unless one or other of them made an effort to close it.
Characteristically, it was Watson who took the initiative. It is doubtful if Holmes would have gone out of his way to seek out Watson first. His pride would have prevented it. It was also typical of Watson that he acted on impulse.
On the evening of 20th March 1889,* he happened to be passing his former lodgings in Baker Street on his way home from visiting a patient. On reaching the familiar front door, he was seized by a sudden desire to see Holmes again and he gives a vivid description of standing outside on the pavement, watching his old friend’s tall, spare figure passing in silhouette across the blind as he paced up and down in the lighted sitting-room beyond.
To give Holmes his due, he welcomed Watson with his usual unaffected bonhomie. After waving him towards an armchair and tossing over his cigar-case, Holmes invited him to help himself to a whisky and soda before remarking on how well he was looking.
‘Wedlock suits you,’ he commented.
It was a wise approach. A more effusive welcome would have been out of character and embarrassing to both of them. A cooler response might have driven a final wedge between them. But with that one remark, Holmes signalled his acceptance of Watson’s marriage and his willingness to continue their friendship on its old footing. The ice, if any existed, was broken, and when Holmes followed it up with one of his brilliantly clever deductions from a few simple observations, a skill which had never failed to impress Watson, the gap was finally closed. In this instance, it concerned the state of Watson’s left shoe from which Holmes correctly deduced the existence of Mary Jane, the Watsons’ incorrigible servant-g
irl, to whom Mrs Watson had given notice.
From there, the conversation passed quite naturally to the latest case, which Holmes had been asked to investigate on behalf of an anonymous client who by a lucky chance arrived shortly afterwards. With characteristic diffidence, Watson offered to leave but was urged by Holmes to stay.
‘I am lost without my Boswell,’ he admitted, the nearest Holmes came to confessing he had missed Watson and how much he had relied on his help and companionship. And so Watson stayed and became involved not only in the case concerning the former opera singer, Irene Adler, and the King of Bohemia, but also in many other subsequent inquiries, some of which he was later to chronicle. It was almost like old times.
In fact, Watson became so caught up with the case that he returned to Baker Street the following afternoon and stayed that night, the eagerness with which he seized on the chance to renew their former partnership suggesting that he had indeed missed Holmes’ company and the opportunity for adventure which it had afforded him.
The facts of Irene Adler’s background and career were already indexed in one of Holmes’ encyclopaedias of reference and he was able to report that she was American, born in New Jersey in 1856, which made her thirty-one at the time of the events of March 1889. A contralto, she had sung at La Scala, Milan, and also at the Imperial Opera house in Warsaw but had since retired from the stage and was living in London. During her career in Warsaw, she had met and formed a relationship with the King of Bohemia, of whom more later.
Watson is too discreet to define the exact nature of the connection between the two of them but it involved some compromising letters sent to her by the king and a photograph of them both taken together. It was the photograph in particular which the king wanted Holmes to retrieve, for Irene Adler had threatened to send it to the King of Scandinavia, whose daughter Holmes’ royal client was planning to marry. Such a scandal would have brought an end to the engagement. As we have already seen, the King of Scandinavia was one of Holmes’ clients during the latter end of the 1881–9 period.