Holmes and Watson

by June Thomson

  The date of the first publication of ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ and the choice of Collier’s Weekly rather than The Strand in which to launch it are, I believe, significant clues to the date of Holmes’ retirement. In his account of the case, Watson states that it was only ‘at the end of nearly ten years’ after the events that Holmes allowed him to publish it, that permission being granted on the ‘third of last month’, that is 3rd August 1903, the month before it appeared in Collier’s Weekly. This suggests that Holmes was making positive plans to retire and may already have found that ‘little farm’ of his dreams in Sussex by August of that year. Knowing his retirement was imminent, Holmes therefore lifted his veto and allowed Watson to publish his account of the Empty House case on the understanding that it appeared first in the States and that the English publication in The Strand Magazine was delayed until October, by which time Holmes had given up practising as a private consulting detective and had left Baker Street.

  However, even when the embargo was lifted in September 1903, Watson’s problems were far from over. Holmes still continued to exercise editorial control over his publishing activities, as Watson makes clear in ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’. Because of Holmes’ objections to the publication of this latter account, Watson had intended to end the series with ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’, which first appeared in print in September 1904. This decision was made, he explains, not through any shortage of material, for he has notes on many hundreds of cases never alluded to, nor out of a lack of interest on the part of his readers, either in Holmes’ ‘singular personality’ or the ‘unique methods of this remarkable man’. But, on thinking the matter over, he decided that an account of the Second Stain inquiry would form a more appropriate climax to the sequence. He had, moreover, given his word that he would place this case before the public. The problem was persuading Holmes to allow its publication. To quote Watson’s own words, he states: ‘It was only upon my representing to him that I had given a promise that ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ should be published when the time was right, and pointed out to him that this long series of episodes should culminate in the most important case which he has ever been called upon to handle that I at last succeeded in obtaining his consent that a carefully guarded account of the incident should at last be laid before the public.’

  Watson does not specify to whom he gave this promise. It may have been his literary agent, if he had one, or possibly the proprietors of The Strand, who published his accounts and with whom he may have discussed projected subjectmatter. They would have had a keen interest in Watson’s literary output, as his chronicles of Holmes’ exploits were very popular with their readers. They may also have felt that, in view of the international situation in 1904, publication of ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ was particularly apt. At that time, Great Britain was anxious, in the face of growing German expansionism and increased rearmament, to end its policy of ‘splendid isolation’* which had marked Queen Victoria’s reign and the premiership of Lord Salisbury. With Victoria’s death in 1901 and Salisbury’s retirement in 1902, a new foreign policy was adopted and Britain began to cast around for European allies. In 1904 Edward VII made a state visit to Paris in order to patch up Britain’s relationship with its old enemy, France. Despite anti-British feeling, exacerbated by the Boer War (1899–1902),† Edward VII was able finally to win French support and an Entente was signed in 1904.

  Although the Second Stain case dealt with events which had probably happened about eight years before,† nevertheless it was relevant to the political situation of 1904 in which Great Britain, aware of the growing threat posed by the Kaiser’s foreign policy, was attempting to hold the balance in Europe by signing the Entente with France, thereby preventing the scales of power falling too heavily in Germany’s favour, points which the prime minister at the time, Lord Bellinger, put to Holmes during the course of that inquiry. Indeed, the contents of the stolen letter, which Lord Bellinger had been so anxious to retrieve and which had criticised Great Britain’s colonial policy, probably towards South Africa in 1895 before the outbreak of the Boer War, were also applicable to the 1904 situation after the Boer War, which had aroused strong anti-British feeling in Europe, particularly in Germany. Readers are reminded of the telegram sent by the Kaiser in 1896 congratulating the Boers and offering them friendship, an action seen by the British at the time as decidedly hostile.* Publication of ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ would therefore have been seen as an opportunity to put forward the British side of the situation and also to warn of the danger still posed by Germany.

  These continuing difficulties in obtaining Holmes’ permission to publish certain accounts must have caused Watson considerable frustration as an author. It also placed him in an embarrassing situation with regard to his readers, to whom he felt he owed some explanation. But he could hardly blame Holmes outright for exercising this form of editorial control without placing his old friend in a poor light. In the end, Watson compromised by deliberately blurring the issue.

  ‘The real reason,’ he writes in ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ in an attempt to explain the situation, ‘lay in the reluctance Mr Holmes has shown to the continued publication of his experiences. So long as he was in actual professional practice the records of his successes were of some practical value to him; but since he has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs, notoriety has become hateful to him, and he has peremptorily requested that his wishes in this matter should be strictly observed.’

  This sounds like an apologia for Holmes’ conduct. Readers will note that Watson makes no reference to the April 1894 ban which extended, with the exception of the publication of The Hound of the Baskervilles, until September 1903, a period of nearly nine and a half years when Holmes was, in fact, in active practice. Nor was the ban imposed, or rather re-imposed, immediately on Holmes’ retirement as Watson implies in his statement. Holmes was already living in Sussex when the majority of Watson’s thirteen accounts were published. Indeed, Holmes only decided that notoriety was ‘hateful’ to him fifteen months after his retirement when ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ was first printed in The Strand in December 1904. Having belatedly made up his mind to avoid publicity, Holmes then re-imposed his veto on publication and Watson was silenced again until September 1908, a period of almost another four years. This aspect of Watson’s career as an author will be examined in more detail in the next chapter.

  However, although Watson gives Holmes’ hatred of notoriety as the reason for his refusal to allow publication, there may have been a subconscious resentment on Holmes’ part towards Watson’s success as an author. Despite his own literary achievements, for example his monograph on the motets of Lassus and ‘The Book of Life’, these were minor triumphs compared to Watson’s much greater output and widespread popularity. Holmes’ remark regarding the publication of his treatise on beekeeping – ‘Alone I did it.’ – could indicate such a resentment, while another comment made by him in ‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane’, which Holmes himself wrote, has all the hidden suggestiveness of a classic Freudian slip. In it, Holmes refers to ‘all my chronicles’ of past cases, as if claiming authorship of Watson’s accounts. If such an interpretation is correct, it might help to explain Holmes’ need to control not only Watson’s right to publish but other aspects of his life as well. By doing so, Holmes was asserting his authority over Watson who, in his eyes at least, was assuming authorial control of his own life by acting as his chronicler, a role which Holmes, with his dominant personality, found unacceptable on occasions.

  Watson was under other publication restraints in addition to those imposed by Holmes. Because of the delicate nature of the case involving the blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton, Watson had to wait until the ‘principal person’ in the inquiry, presumably the titled lady who shot Milverton, was herself dead before he could publish his account, and even then he del
iberately withheld the date and other information in order that she should not be identified. As we have seen, he also had to be ‘guarded’ in his account of the Second Stain case, refraining from divulging all the facts because sensitive international issues were involved.

  The subject of Watson’s writing and publishing activities between September 1903 and December 1904 gives rise to several other notable factors. Firstly, in none of these accounts, and not even in those which were to be published towards the end of Watson’s life, is there any reference to his second wife, an omission which has been commented on earlier. One suspects that, as the years passed, this was not so much out of a need to suppress the old scandal surrounding his wife’s past nor fear of Neil Gibson’s revenge, both of which would have faded with time, but from a continuing anxiety on Watson’s part about Holmes’ reaction should any reference to this second marriage remind Holmes of his, Watson’s, so-called desertion and perhaps cause him to extend his ban on publication even further. One assumes the marriage was happy. There is no evidence in the canon to suggest otherwise.

  With regard to Holmes’ objections to publicity, Watson must have discussed the whole matter with him either on his weekend visits to Sussex or by letter, a fact which is made evident by those comments already quoted from ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ and ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’.

  Thirdly, and more importantly, although Holmes now lived in Sussex he was still exercising a degree of control over Watson’s life even from a distance, a state of affairs which Watson apparently accepted without protest. At least, he voices none. From this, we may reasonably assume that when the two men met, if only infrequently, their relationship almost certainly continued on much the same footing as before, Holmes acting as the dominant partner in the friendship, Watson deferring to his wishes.

  One final fact emerges concerning Watson’s life during this period from September 1903 to December 1904: the punishing work schedule he had set himself. Despite the calls made on him as a practising GP, he nevertheless managed to find the time to write on average one account a month, a total of about 100,000 words over fifteen months, an output which many professional full-time writers would find taxing and one which Watson himself had not surpassed since the time of the Great Hiatus, when he also produced over 100,000 words.

  It should also be noted that, during both these exceptionally productive periods in Watson’s career as an author, Holmes was absent. During the first, he was travelling abroad; during the second, he had retired to Sussex. It is a sad but significant reflection on their friendship that, when Holmes was present, such were the demands he made on Watson’s time that the latter’s writing activities were considerably curtailed. As an author, Watson found himself in a classic double-bind situation. Without Holmes, he had no material on which to base his accounts. But when Holmes was there, he had scant opportunity to record it.

  * Cyanea capillata or the Lion’s Mane jellyfish is fairly common off the British coast. It has many fine tentacles which hang down from a reddish-brown bell and which may extend for several yards. The bell can grow to 40 inches or 100 centimetres in width. Although its sting is dangerous, it is not usually fatal unless the victim is suffering from a weak heart, as is the case with Fitzroy McPherson.

  * In calculating the length of time Holmes was acquainted with Mrs Hudson, I have discounted the three years of the Great Hiatus.

  * The term ‘splendid isolation’ was first used in the Canadian House of Commons in 1896. However, the description is misleading for, although Great Britain tended to keep aloof from international politics, she did sign alliances with some European countries when these were to her advantage. Readers are referred to the entry for ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’ (Appendix One).

  † See the entry in Appendix One, Chapter Fourteen, under ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’.

  * See the entry in Appendix One, Chapter Fourteen, under ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HOLMES AND WATSON: THEIR LAST BOWS

  July 1907–2nd August 1914

  ‘Tut, my dear sir, we live in a utilitarian age. Honour is a mediaeval conception.’

  Baron Von Herling: His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes

  Very little is known about Holmes’ and Watson’s lives over the next seven years. In consequence, some commentators, unable to tolerate the silence, in much the same way as Nature is said to abhor a vacuum, have put forward their own theories in an attempt to fill this gap. Holmes, they suggest, was acting as a spy for the British authorities throughout this period. They even claim that, in this capacity, he was responsible in 1917 for handing over to the United States government the Zimmerman note which proposed an anti-American alliance between Germany, Mexico and Japan should America remain neutral. It was the discovery of this note which led to America’s declaration of war against Germany shortly afterwards.

  My own theory seems prosaic by comparison. I suggest he remained quietly in Sussex, tending his bees and enjoying all those other activities such as reading, swimming and walking over the Downs which had given him so much pleasure in the first four years of his retirement. The fact that he was reluctant to leave Sussex to undertake an important mission on behalf of his country and was only persuaded to do so by the personal intervention of no less a person than the prime minister tends to support this conclusion.

  But he was not idle, for it was probably during this period that he wrote and published his book, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations on the Segregation of the Queen, already referred to in the previous chapter.

  Presumably he also kept up his friendship with Harold Stackhurst and other members of the staff at The Gables. But he and Watson seem to have drifted apart for, when they finally met in August 1914, it is quite clear that they have not seen each other for some considerable time. Watson’s comment that he has ‘heard’ of Holmes ‘living the life of a hermit’ among his bees and his books on a small Sussex farm is, of course, like his apparent ignorance of Professor Moriarty’s existence when Holmes came to visit him in Kensington at the beginning of the Final Problem, merely a literary device intended to inform his readers of Holmes’ activities during his retirement. The account in which he makes this comment, His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes, was first published in The Strand in September 1917, while ‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane’, which Holmes himself wrote and in which he set out details of his life in Sussex up to July 1907, was not published until November 1926, nine years later. Watson was therefore obliged to fill in some background information about Holmes when he came to write his own account. His remark also tends to support the theory that Holmes remained in Sussex during those intervening years.

  Like ‘The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone’, ‘His Last Bow’ was written in the third person, a choice of narrative form which was largely dictated by the material. As we have already seen, Watson was aware when he published ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’ that some cases in which he was either not present or had played too small a part ‘could only be told as by a third person’. This is certainly true of ‘His Last Bow’, which opens with a long discussion between Von Bork and Von Herling, witnessed by neither Holmes nor Watson. One can only assume either that Watson learnt the details of this conversation from Von Bork himself after he was arrested and taken to Scotland Yard for questioning, or that he was later given access to the report of the interview by one of the police officers. Watson’s choice of the third person may also reflect that loss of contact between himself and Holmes, already referred to, which he may have thought was better indicated by the use of a less personal narrator.

  This is not to suggest there was any serious rift in the relationship between Holmes and Watson between 1907 and 1914. When they finally meet, they greet one another with obvious pleasure. Their lack of contact is due more to a slow drifting apart, brought about by the physical distance between them, rather than t
hrough any specific alienation. Both were busy men, absorbed in their own very different lives and, as can happen in even the closest friendships, they found they had less and less in common as the years passed and there were fewer opportunities to meet.

  Despite his work as a GP, Watson still found time for writing, although to a lesser extent than before. Once again, Holmes lifted his veto on publication in September 1908 when Watson was allowed to publish ‘Wisteria Lodge’, which appeared in print in The Strand in two parts during September and October of that year. It was the first of only six accounts which he published in the seven years between 1907 and 1914, the last being ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’, which first appeared in Collier’s Weekly in November 1914 and in The Strand Magazine the following month. Readers are referred to the chronology in Chapter Fourteen for the titles and publication dates of the other four accounts.

  This diminution in literary output may have been partly caused by the demands made on Watson’s time by his professional duties, although difficulties in gaining Holmes’ permission to publish were largely to blame. As Watson makes clear in ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’, it was because of Holmes’ ‘aversion to publicity’ and not through any lack of interesting material that has caused him ‘of late years to lay very few of my records before the public’. In fact, he wrote his account of the case only after receiving a telegram from Holmes containing the message: ‘Why not tell of the Cornish Horror – the strangest case I have ever handled.’ Watson himself had no idea what had prompted Holmes to make this suggestion, but he immediately set to work to look out his notes on the case and to begin writing them up before Holmes could change his mind and send another telegram cancelling the arrangement. It would seem that, in withholding and granting permission, Holmes was acting largely on whim. Although there are no signs that he continued to suffer from those periods of manic depression which he had experienced as a younger man, he remained mercurial by nature. As an author, Watson must have found this behaviour frustrating. However, Watson was evidently given permission to write an account of the Birlstone tragedy which had occurred in the late 1880s and in which Professor Moriarty and his gang had played such a significant role. As well as the six short accounts already referred to, Watson must have also written this novel-length narrative, The Valley of Fear, during this same period, for it was published as a serial in The Strand between September 1914 and May 1915. It was issued in volume form in the latter year.