by David Marcum
Holmes at once invited me to rejoin him in our old quarters, where he and Mrs. Hudson showed much devotion in their efforts to restore me. In truth, I found my grief, however sharp, less oppressive than my role in driving my poor darling to madness and despair. It had been with a degree of malice that I told Constance of the Ku Klux Klan, and reliving the horrors of her childhood had unbalanced her. A fresher source of guilt was my relief at settling back into my old routines. Inside our rooms in Baker Street, or with “the game afoot,” it was possible to forget for hours that my wife had ever lived.
As for Sherlock Holmes, in those weeks he revealed the caring heart that lay behind his formidable intellect. Our friendship took on a new dimension, for long, personal discussions had never been our habit in the past. With his usual relentless logic, my friend sought to assure me that much of my guilt over Constance’s death stemmed from the loneliness and frustration I had felt throughout the marriage. I could not concur with this conclusion, but his genuine concern was comforting in coping with my loss. Holmes also pooh-poohed my assertion (after repelling the advances of an importune young lady)[30] that I had no interest whatever in remarriage.
“No, my friend, it will not do.” Lounging at our window on a foggy February morning, he had endured my long complaint in silence, save for a few muttered musings as he watched the passers-by. Now Holmes set down his coffee cup and reclined on the settee. “Not for you the bachelor’s life,” he proclaimed loudly. Recognising this remark to be preamble, I prepared to suffer a lecture in my turn.
“You appear to believe, Watson,” he unexpectedly began, “that I myself am immune to feminine attractions. I can assure you earnestly, however, that such is not the case.”
“Indeed,” I replied to this astonishing digression, “I could not help noticing your obvious admiration for Miss Irene Adler, during our service to the King of Serbia last May. It struck me then as rather more than a purely intellectual attraction.”
“Ah, Doctor, that woman eclipses the whole of her sex in my experience, limited though I admit that it has been. You see, after disappointing a most worthy young lady in my youth,[31] I made a conscious decision to lay aside that troubling aspect of my life, in order to devote myself - utterly and without distraction - to what your Study in Scarlet called ‘the science of deduction’. (Yes, Watson, I did read it!) Even for a man of my peculiar disposition, it has hardly been an easy vow to keep. Certainly, it is not one that you should ever make or even contemplate. I have seen the way your eyes light up when a pretty client glides across our threshold. That has not changed in recent days, despite your grief. Your regrettable encounter with Miss Withers - whom you were right to spurn - proves that you still possess attractions of your own. So, my dear fellow, mourn your lost Constance in her season. But when the time is right, you will remarry.”
In an odd way, these were the most comforting words that Sherlock Holmes had ever said to me, perhaps because he had descended from Olympus to take note of the concerns of common men. Yet, it was hardly his only contribution to my recovery from my wife’s death. The early months of 1888 saw us engaged in some of our most fascinating cases: the theft of the Eye of Heka, the Norbury affair, and of course the Birlstone murder, which I chronicled as The Valley of Fear. My friend even arranged for my participation in the first of his many diplomatic missions against Imperial Germany, which would occupy him intermittently until the war began.[32]
Some weeks after our return from Charlottenburg, I received a letter from Laguna Honda. The hospital’s director regretfully informed me that my brother Henry had taken his own life, a week after losing his wife and son to typhoid fever. Despite my shock and crushing sorrow, the letter’s conclusion filled my heart with pride:
Your brother is much lamented at Laguna Honda. His brilliant mind and legal training were of great assistance to us here. Until this sudden tragedy unhinged him, Henry Watson was on his way to becoming the finest man I’ve ever known.
Late in the summer, I received a package that contained our father’s watch, which Henry had left to me as a last remembrance. That part of The Sign of Four was true.
On the very day I showed the watch to Sherlock Holmes, there came a knock upon the door into our sitting room, and a card upon a salver announced the arrival of Miss Mary Morstan in my life. For three brief, blessed years, we were allowed to share the kind of happiness that Constance and I had been denied. My later, longer marriage to Priscilla was a happy one as well.
Yet, even now I still return upon occasion to that small churchyard in Brighton, where my first wife lies beside her mother. I offer a prayer for my lost angel, in the hope we will be reunited in whatever lies beyond.
John H. Watson, M.D.
December 25, 1928
1 See the brief account of Watson’s childhood in William S. Baring-Gould’s Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (Avenel, NJ: Wings Books, 1995 [1962]), pp. 293-294. Although Baring-Gould does not specify the date of Ella Watson’s death, he states that it occurred “when John was very young.” Watson turned six on August 7, 1858.
2 In “The Affair of the Brother’s Request” from The Papers of Sherlock Holmes: Volume One and Volume Two, edited by David Marcum (London: MX Publishing, 2014), p. 156, Watson notes that he and his third wife traveled to America in December 1920 to conduct family history research. Mrs. Watson’s cancer was evidently diagnosed within days of their return. She had been dead for several months by the time that Holmes and Watson returned to the United States in May of 1921.
3 Watson did tell the story shortly afterward in Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Tainted Canister, available as an e-book and an audio book from MX Publishing.
4 Baring-Gould briefly covers Watson’s time in San Francisco, and his meeting with Constance, in Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, pp. 67-70. In his novel Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt (London: MX Publishing, 2013, Hardcover edition), pp. 19-21, David Marcum offers a similar account but differs slightly on chronology. Both writers pay tribute to Holmes’s generosity in advancing his friend funds to undertake the journey.
5 With her kind permission, I have borrowed this reference to the Watson brothers’ military service from Marcia Wilson’s wonderful series of fan fiction novels, particularly A Sword for the Defense and A Fanged and Bitter Thing. Now that Ms. Wilson has begun to publish her work in printed form, we can all look forward to this story, which involves John and “Hamish” (not Baring-Gould’s “Henry”) Watson in thwarting a gruesome gem-smuggling operation perpetrated by none other than Colonel Moriarty.
6 This quotation, which comes from The Picture of Dorian Gray, appears on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads. com/quotes/101333-it-s-an-odd-thing-but-anyone-who-disappears-is-said For more on Wilde’s 1882 San Francisco visit, see “Oscar Wilde in America” at: http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/lectures-1882/march/0327-san-francisco.html
7 In 1854, eight Irish nuns from County Cork arrived in San Francisco to nurse residents through epidemics of cholera and smallpox. They won praise for cleaning up City and County Hospital and improving its standards of patient care. Nevertheless, the city’s board of supervisors chose to evict the Sisters three years later, rather than reimburse their expenses in caring for the indigent. Their new facility, where Watson worked, eventually became St. Mary’s Hospital. See the San Francisco Chronicle’s article “Our SF: Hospitals offer compassion through the generations,” by Peter Hartlaub (November 14, 2015) at: http://www.sfchronicle.com/oursf/article/Our-SF-Hospitals-offer-compassion-through-the-6630800.php Other sources for San Francisco’s medical history are an article on the University of California San Francisco’s website, “San Francisco’s First Medical Institutions: Hospitals and Pesthouses,” at: http://history.library.ucsf.edu/1868_hospitals.html and Wikipedia’s articles on St. Mary’s Medical Center, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Ma
ry%27s_Medical_Center_(San_Francisco) and San Francisco General Hospital (formerly City and County Hospital) at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_ General_Hospital
8 Besides sources already cited, see the historical article on Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center’s website, at: http://lagunahonda.org/OurHistory
9 David Marcum establishes the location of Watson’s San Francisco practice in Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt, p. 20.
10 Either Watson or Teresa must be in error here, for an article from the Library of Congress states that Peruna’s inventor, Dr. Samuel B. Hartman, began marketing it widely only in 1885. See “Topics in Chronicling America - Catarrh Remedy: Peruna Scandal,” at: https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/peruna.html Although useless for curing “catarrh” (which Hartman asserted as the source of many human ailments) or anything except sobriety, Peruna remained popular until the repeal of Prohibition. See Jack Sullivan’s article, “The Peruna Story: Strumming That Old Catarrh,” in Bottles and Extras (May-June 2007), pp. 28-31, at: http://www.fohbc.org/PDF_Files/Peruna_ JSullivan.pdf.
11 Both Golden Gate Park and the more famous bridge are named for Golden Gate Strait, which connects the San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean. The park, began in 1870, is far older than the bridge, completed in 1937. When Constance visited in the mid-1880s, Golden Gate Park was still under construction; but over 155,000 trees (largely Eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and Monterey cypress) had been planted on what was formerly 1,000 acres of dune and wasteland. In 1886, streetcars delivered 47,000 people to Golden Gate Park in a single afternoon. See Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Park.
12 Woodward’s Gardens was a six-acre site “situated on the west side of Mission Street” and accessible by cable car. It boasted many attractions for a courting couple, such as an extensive zoological museum, conservatories of exotic plants, a marine aquarium, and even “a small but select Art Gallery.” The zoo itself included “a large bear pit and yards for camels, deer, buffaloes and other similar quadrupeds,” as well as “many varieties of domestic fowls.” There was also a restaurant and an outdoor pavilion for dances, skating tournaments, and “acrobatic feats.” See the excerpt from California Notes by Charles B. Turrill (San Francisco: E. Bosqui & Co., 1876) on The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco’s website: http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist9/woodward.html
13 Although Watson’s quickest route toward England was by transcontinental railroad, in 1886 no line terminated in San Francisco. Rail passengers from the city took a ferry at the Market Street docks, crossed the San Francisco Bay, and landed at the Oakland Mole. From Oakland, they could catch a train ferry to Sacramento, then ride the Central Pacific Railroad to points east. See the CPR Photographic History Museum’s discussion at: http://discussion.cprr.net/2012/07/how-did-railroad-passengers-actually.html
14 Baring-Gould indicates (pp. 293-294) that Henry Watson, Sr. took his boys to Australia following their mother’s death. John remained there until 1865, when he returned to England to enter school at Wellington College, Hampshire.
15 In this description, and at several points later in the story, I have referenced David Marcum’s forthcoming novel, Sherlock Holmes and The Eye of Heka. It also chronicles the doctor’s marriage to Constance Adams, albeit in retrospect. Except where cited, Mr. Marcum bears no responsibility for the plot or characters presented here.
16 See “A Scandal in Bohemia” and Baring-Gould, p. 300. According to B-G, this was one of several cases that kept Holmes occupied, and largely out of touch with Watson, during the winter and spring of 1886-1887.
17 “In 1837, the Register General of Births, Marriages, and Deaths set up his office in the North Wing [of Somerset House], establishing a connection that lasted for almost 150 years. This office held all Birth, Marriage, and Death certificates in England and Wales; indexes to these are now at The National Archives” https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Somerset_House
18 The Greene County, Alabama courthouse burned in 1868 http://www.archives.alabama.gov/REFERENC/firemap.gif Greensboro, near the Adams’s home, is now within Hale County, formed in 1871.
19 Officially the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. Although Brighton had been a health resort since the mid-18th century, railway building in the 1840’s made it a popular destination for “day-trippers from London”. “By the late 1880’s, the LB&SCR had developed the largest suburban network of any British railway... in three routes between London Bridge and Victoria” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Brighton_and_South_Coast_Railway)
20 “In the latter half of the 19th century a large number of churches were built in Brighton. This was in large part due to the efforts of Reverend Arthur Douglas Wagner, a prominent figure in the Anglo-Catholic movement of the time”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Brighton
21 As Adams served with General Nathan Bedford Forrest, his wound presumably occurred during Forrest’s raid into west Tennessee (December 1862). This timing would place Adams at home, recuperating, in March of 1863, when Constance (born in December) was conceived. For the raid, see Stanley F. Horn’s The Army of Tennessee (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952 [1941]), pp. 194-195.
22 According to a Congressional inquiry, a similar event occurred in 1871 in Mississippi. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
23 The Colonel’s donation must not have sufficed to fund this venture, for Alabama’s Confederate Soldiers’ Home did not open until 1902. Located in Mountain Creek in Chilton County, it had served over 800 people by the time it closed in 1939. A Confederate cemetery and museum, managed by the Alabama Historical Commission, are still on the site. See the links at: http://www.preserveala.org/ http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/confederatepark. html
24 See the references provided by Doyle in “The Reigate Puzzle” and by Baring-Gould, pp. 71, 300-301.
25 By the time he wrote in 1928, Watson had already penned his replacement for “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Entitled “A Scandal in Serbia,” it finally identified the mythical “King of Bohemia” as King Milan Obrenović of Serbia (1854-1901). This second “Scandal” appears in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part VI: 2017 Annual, edited by David Marcum (London: MX Publishing, 2017), pp. 545-572. In the original story edited by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Watson dated the Irene Adler case as beginning on March 20, 1888. Baring-Gould (pp. 72, 301) established its actual date as May 20, 1887. The doctor explained his reasons for this ruse (which had largely to do with protecting Miss Adler) in the course of his revised account. His description of the case as “consequential” probably refers to Holmes and Adler’s subsequent affair, recorded by Baring-Gould, pp. 207-212.
26 Watson is slightly anachronistic here. According to Dictionary.com, the first British use of the term “in-law” (rather ambiguously described as “anyone of a relationship not natural”) was in 1894. Blackwood’s Magazine attributed the “happy phrase” to Queen Victoria, “than whom no one can be better acquainted with the article.”
27 David Marcum notes Holmes’s lack of enthusiasm for his Christmas gift (A Quantity of Debt, p. 22) but neglects to mention Watson’s earlier trip to visit Colonel Hayter.
28 According to the Met Office (British meteorological office) monthly weather report for December 1887, “on the 27th a heavy snowstorm was experienced in the extreme south-east of England” (See the report at: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/mohippo/pdf/6/r/dec1887.pdf) It contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government License v1.0. My thanks to Marcia Wilson for informing me of this source.
29 Because diphtheria is most often a disease of childhood, the use of tracheotomy to prevent suffocation inevitably resulted in a high mortality rate. By 1885, Dr.
Joseph O’Dwyer was employing intubation (inserting a tube to clear the airway) at the New York Foundling Asylum, but his work was not yet published and would have been unknown to Watson. Antitoxins for diphtheria were developed in the 1890’s, just too late to save poor Constance. Today, of course, children are routinely vaccinated against the disease. To learn more about diphtheria, the following websites may be useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphtheria http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159534.php http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Dipht https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_O%27Dwyerheria
30 Readers will meet this young lady, Miss Withers, in David Marcum’s yet-to-be-published novel Sherlock Holmes and The Eye of Heka.
31 Holmes may be referring to Priscilla “Poppy” Stamford, a young female physician he met in his Montague Street years. Dr. Stamford ultimately married Holmes’s friend from Oxford, Victor Trevor, and moved with him to India. Her relationship with the budding detective is chronicled in several Before Watson novels by the writer A.S. Croyle, notably When the Song of the Angels is Stilled and The Bird and the Buddha. Both are available from MX Publishing.
32 Watson will recount this mission in “The Case of the Dying Emperor,” from my forthcoming collection Sherlock Holmes and the Crowned Heads of Europe.