by June Thomson
Watson wasn’t the only person to feel the force of Holmes’ personality. Mrs Hudson was also subjected to it. In ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’, she excuses her failure to call in a doctor when Holmes, who was apparently gravely ill, had forbidden her to do so by confessing to Watson, ‘You know how masterful he is. I didn’t dare disobey him.’
The case of the Dying Detective also illustrates that callous, cold-blooded side to Holmes’ character which has already been mentioned in an earlier chapter and which will be demonstrated in an even more extreme form in the series of events which were to occur later in 1891.
In the Dying Detective case, Holmes deceives both Mrs Hudson and Watson into believing he is mortally ill with a rare coolie disease, contracted during an investigation in the dockland area of Rotherhithe. Holmes even goes to the extent of using rouge and vaseline as well as encrusting his lips with beeswax to give the impression he is suffering from a high fever, another example of his use of disguise and his love of the dramatic.* He appears, however, to have given no thought to the effect all of this would have on Mrs Hudson and Watson, two people who genuinely cared about his welfare. Mrs Hudson is reduced to tears while Watson, horrified at his old friend’s pitiable condition, is plunged into a state bordering on despair. He is also ‘bitterly hurt’ by Holmes’ refusal to accept medical treatment from him.
‘After all,’ Holmes tells Watson, ‘you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications.’
It should be pointed out in Holmes’ defence that the purpose of this elaborate deception is to lure Culverton Smith, who has murdered his nephew, Victor Savage, and made an attempt on Holmes’ life, to Baker Street where Inspector Morton will arrest him. Nevertheless, Holmes’ explanation for his behaviour rings a little hollow.
‘You will realise,’ he tells Watson, ‘that among your many talents dissimulation finds no place, and if you had shared my secret you would never have been able to impress Smith with the urgent necessity of his presence, which was the vital point of the whole scheme.’
This may well be true. Watson was too honest by nature to lie convincingly. But this is hardly an acceptable excuse, even if Holmes followed it up, after apologising profusely, by assuring Watson of his respect for his medical competence and by taking him out to dinner that night at Simpson’s, especially as the treat was as much for his own benefit as Watson’s. Holmes had been starving himself for three days in order to give himself a suitably gaunt appearance. Nor was the apology adequate compensation for the emotional trauma to which Watson, and Mrs Hudson, had been subjected, quite apart from the inconvenience to Watson, who had abandoned his practice to hurry to Holmes’ bedside.
In fact, Holmes is far more concerned with the success of his deception than with its effects on his old friend and his landlady. He has carried out the pretence, he declares in a little burst of self-congratulation, ‘with the thoroughness of the true artist’. As a further insult, Holmes, in his excitement over the arrest of Smith, forgets that Watson, who is acting as unwitting witness to Smith’s confession, has hidden himself behind the headboard of the bed.
‘To think that I should have overlooked you!’ he exclaims as Watson emerges from his hiding-place.
To think, indeed!
Watson makes no comment on either Holmes’ attitude or actions, merely expressing relief that his old friend is not, after all, at death’s door, a reaction which is another indication of the strength of his regard for Holmes as well as his own good nature. A less tolerant or forgiving man might have left the house in a huff.
But Holmes needed Watson’s friendship as much as Watson needed his, a fact Watson was aware of even if Holmes only rarely gave expression to such feelings. Apart from Watson, he had no friends who called on him socially, as he admits in ‘The Five Orange Pips’. ‘I do not encourage visitors,’ he adds, although he must have been in close contact with his brother Mycroft, at least towards the end of this period, as later events were to prove.
He quite clearly missed Watson’s companionship, in particular his ability to listen to him without interruption. He was also the only person to whom he could freely express his thoughts. ‘You have a grand gift of silence,’ he tells Watson in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’. ‘It makes you invaluable as a companion. Upon my word, it is a great thing to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant.’
And he still valued Watson’s advice on occasions, as well as the more practical help he was able to bring to an investigation. In both the Crooked Man and the Dying Detective inquiries, Holmes wanted Watson to act as a witness to the events, while in the Naval Treaty case Watson is pressed into service as a companion as well as a medical supervisor to Percy Phelps when Holmes sent him back to London with Watson to stay overnight at Baker Street. Watson’s medical knowledge also came in useful in the case of the Stockbroker’s Clerk, in which he was able to save the life of Beddington, the notorious forger and safe-breaker, after his suicide attempt.
Nevertheless, there are indications during 1889 that Holmes was making too many demands on his relationship with Watson, a situation which could have become overexacting or even psychologically damaging to Watson, whose self-esteem shows signs of suffering during this period when he compares his own intelligence with Holmes’.
‘I trust I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was always oppressed by my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes,’ he confesses in ‘The Red-Headed League’.
It was saved from becoming so by two factors: Watson’s removal to Kensington and Holmes’ involvement in a case of such immense importance and confidentiality that not even Watson could be informed of it.
At some time between 27th December 1889, the suggested date of the Blue Carbuncle case, and October 1890, the date generally accepted for the Red-Headed League inquiry, Watson sold his Paddington practice and moved to Kensington, although it is not known exactly when this took place. Watson himself only mentions this change of address in a passing remark in ‘The Red-Headed League’, when he refers in a typically laconic manner to driving home to his house in Kensington. It was near Church Street for, in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’, Holmes, disguised as an elderly bookseller, refers to himself as Watson’s neighbour as his shop is on the corner of Church Street. Apart from this and the fact that Watson had an ‘accommodating neighbour’ called Anstruther, very little else is known about it. Even its exact address is disguised. In ‘The Adventure of the Final Problem’, a case which will be examined in more detail in the next chapter, Watson describes Holmes scrambling over the garden wall into Mortimer Street where he hailed a hansom. However, as there is and never has been a Mortimer Street in the Kensington area, one must assume that Watson deliberately falsified the address so that it could not be identified, in much the same way as he disguised other facts, such as personal names and the exact location of 221B Baker Street.
During the year 1890 only three cases occurred of which, as Watson states, he kept any records. Although critics disagree which these three inquiries were, according to the suggested chronology given earlier in the chapter they were most probably the Boscombe Valley mystery, the Red-Headed League inquiry and the case of the Dying Detective, the last two taking place after Watson’s move to Kensington.*
This decrease in the number of cases with which Watson was associated with Holmes may have been partly caused by this change of address. Kensington was about two miles from Baker Street, twice the distance Paddington was, and it was not so easy for Watson to call in casually at his former lodgings as he had done in the previous year, 1889. Although his new practice was smaller than his old one in Paddington, he was still kept busy. In ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’, Watson speaks of a ‘fairly long list of patients’.
Holmes, too, as we shall see in the next chapter, was fully occupied with one particular investigation, which was to absorb much of his time and attention during the latter part of th
is period.
Evidently, Holmes paid no call on the Watsons during 1890 and of the three cases in which Watson became involved, he was summoned to two of them by Holmes, once by telegram (‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’) and on the other occasion by Mrs Hudson, who took it upon herself to call on Watson when Holmes was apparently ill (‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’). However, it is clear from her remarks that the request for Watson’s presence had come from Holmes himself. Although at first refusing any medical attention, Holmes had at last reluctantly agreed to see a doctor, adding, ‘Let it be Watson, then.’
The only case with which Watson became associated through his own initiative was the Red-Headed League inquiry, when he called at Baker Street, the only recorded instance of his doing so during 1890. Business was apparently slack at the time for Watson tells Holmes, ‘I have nothing to do today.’ His added comment, ‘My practice is never very absorbing,’ should not, I believe, be taken too literally. Watson was probably salving his professional conscience by making the remark, although he may have been expressing a temporary boredom with his daily routine. He was, after all, thirty-seven or thirty-eight and the first flush of enthusiasm at returning to the medical profession was probably waning a little. And so, feeling in need of some excitement and finding himself with time on his hands, he called on Holmes.
Before the Boscombe Valley mystery, he was evidently so busy that he was in two minds whether or not to accept Holmes’ invitation to travel to Herefordshire with him to investigate the case. It was only on his wife’s urging that Watson agreed to go.
‘Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking a little pale lately. I think the change would do you good,’ she assures him, expressing both her understanding of the relationship between Watson and Holmes and a wifely concern for her husband’s well-being.
In fact, towards the end of this period, there is evidence that the two friends were slowly drifting apart as they grew more and more absorbed in their own separate lives. Watson was aware of it, for he expresses this sense of growing separation in ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’.
The ‘very intimate’ relations which had existed between himself and Holmes became, he states, ‘to some extent modified’, and between November 1890, the date of the Dying Detective case, and the early spring of 1891, Watson had seen nothing of Holmes, his only knowledge of his old friend’s activities being gleaned from the newspapers, from which he learnt that Holmes was engaged by the French government on some matter of supreme importance, and from two short letters Holmes sent him from Narbonne and Nimes which suggested Holmes expected to remain in France for some considerable time.
Watson was therefore quite unaware of the fact that Holmes was also engaged on an even more important investigation which, if it succeeded, would be his greatest triumph yet.
* Dr Jay Finley Christ has suggested that Uffa is a combination of the names Ulva and Staffa, two islands three-quarters of a mile apart off the west coast of Scotland.
* This is the first recorded case of Holmes’ involvement in an inquiry which could have had serious international repercussions, although the theft of the treaty was not the work of a professional spy. The treaty involved two secret Mediterranean agreements signed by Great Britain with Italy and Austria in 1887. Readers are referred to Appendix One, for the dating of the Naval Treaty case and its political significance, and also to Chapter Seventeen for a more detailed examination of the part Holmes was to play in international affairs leading up to the First World War.
* On Anstruther see footnote 5.
* A further example of Holmes’ love of the dramatic is seen at the conclusion of the Naval Treaty case, in which he arranges for Percy Phelps to find the missing document served up on the breakfast table under a covered dish.
* In ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’, Mrs Watson suggests that Anstruther would be prepared to take over Watson’s practice while he is away in Herefordshire with Holmes. Although Watson does not state as much, he had almost certainly moved to Kensington by this date, a suggestion borne out by the fact that, in going to meet Holmes at Paddington station, Watson takes a cab. Had he been still living in Paddington where, he states, his practice was ‘no very great distance’ from the terminus, he would surely have walked. This theory would tend to support the suggested date of June 1890 for the Boscombe Valley case, as in June 1889 Watson was quite definitely still living in Paddington. It would also suggest that Watson had moved to Kensington before June 1890. Presumably, Anstruther was also the ‘accommodating neighbour’ who acted as Watson’s locum during the Final Problem.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FINAL PROBLEM
24th April 1891–4th May 1891
‘Your memoirs will draw to an end, Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the capture or extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe.’
Holmes: ‘The Final Problem’
Watson’s ignorance of the fact that during these intervening years between 1888, the suggested date of the Valley of Fear case, and April 1891 Holmes had continued his investigation into the criminal career of Professor Moriarty is not altogether surprising. Holmes had deliberately kept Watson in the dark before over much less important cases. And for this inquiry, which must have involved a great deal of undercover work and secret information gathering, it was imperative that no whisper of his activities became known. It was not that Holmes mistrusted Watson’s discretion. Time and again Watson had proved his trustworthiness.
Holmes’ silence may be partly due to that innate secretiveness which, as we have seen, was an important element of his personality. But it was largely because of the dangerous nature of the enterprise. Moriarty, whose gang had already been responsible for over forty murders, was quite capable of ordering Watson’s death, should he suspect Watson was actively involved in Holmes’ investigations. As for the danger to his own life, this was a risk Holmes was prepared to take. This need to protect Watson may also partly explain why after November 1890, the date of the Dying Detective case, Holmes made no attempt to contact Watson although, as we have seen, Holmes was in France for much of this time, working for the French government.
That mission to France may, in fact, have been connected with the Moriarty inquiries, as Edward F. Clark Jr has suggested in his essay ‘Study of an Untold Tale’, in which he puts forward the theory that Holmes was engaged in recovering a painting stolen from the Louvre by Moriarty’s organisation. However, there is no evidence for this in the canon.
Because of Watson’s ignorance of Holmes’ continuing interest in Moriarty, it is impossible to give a detailed chronology of Holmes’ activities during the early months of 1891, only a broad outline based on the condensed account he later gave to Watson when his investigation was drawing to its conclusion. From this, one can piece together a fairly coherent record of at least the latter part of these enquiries.
Since Holmes’ first brush with Moriarty during the Valley of Fear case, the Professor’s teaching career had suffered a setback. Although nothing could be proved against him, ‘dark rumours’ had forced him to resign his chair of Mathematics at the provincial university and he had come to London, where he was ostensibly earning a living as an army coach, that is as a private tutor preparing potential officers for their qualifying examinations. It was a professional come-down for Moriarty which also had the effect of bringing him within Holmes’ orbit. Once Moriarty was established in London, it was much easier for Holmes to monitor his activities. It would appear that Moriarty’s arrival in London had taken place only three months before the events of 24th April, suggesting that the Professor had left his university post in December at the end of the Michaelmas term.
Despite this closer proximity, Holmes was finding it no easier to obtain the evidence he needed to prove Moriarty’s guilt in a court of law. As Holmes explains to Watson, Moriarty himself was never involved directly in any of the crimes. These were carried out at his orders by membe
rs of his organisation and, if any of them were arrested, the money needed for their defence or bail was supplied by the syndicate. Nevertheless, throughout the early months of 1891 Holmes’ enquiries were progressing to the point at which they were not only causing Moriarty considerable inconvenience but were severely hampering his plans. In fact, by 24th April Holmes needed only three more days to complete his enquiries, after which Moriarty and his gang could be rounded up by Inspector Patterson, the Scotland Yard detective in charge of the official side of the investigation.
The Moriarty inquiry came at a crucial point in Holmes’ professional career. He had, as he tells Watson, dealt with over a thousand cases during his years in practice and he was growing tired and disenchanted. Although only thirty-seven, he was seriously considering retirement but felt he could not do so until Moriarty was arrested.
‘I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life,’ he confided to his old friend, and in his last letter to Watson he also writes of his career reaching a ‘crisis’ and of a desire to bring it to a conclusion.
He could afford to retire. The fees he had received from the Scandinavian royal family in 1888 and more recently from the French government had been generous enough to make this possible. Once Moriarty and his gang were arrested, he intended to live quietly and devote his time and energy to chemical research. There is, however, no suggestion at this point that he intended to retire to the country or to go abroad.