by Anita Janda
I was months in finding the energy to offer it for publication and almost two years in developing the kind of resolution that would let me return from my morning constitutional, find the manuscript back on the mantelpiece, and wrap it up for the next editor on my list without so much as removing my hat. Holmes would watch me with narrowed gaze, his lids lowered against the effects of the tobacco smoke. Once or twice at this time, he tried to include me in one of his cases but I was generally proof against the temptation. My experiences over the adventure I later (much later) described as ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ had persuaded me that it was better not to indulge him in that way until such time as ‘A Study in Scarlet’ might burst upon the British public and exert its effect. I had no doubt that the effect would be a profound one, probably because I hadn’t looked at the story since Holmes had had me change the names of the two Inspectors.
My bulldog, now gone grey about the muzzle, learned to associate the presence of the package on the mantelpiece with an extra outing. Mrs Hudson learned to boil a three-minute egg for three minutes. Holmes learned to abuse his health alternately with morphine and cocaine. I learned to simply tear off the old wrapping, pack the thing up again, and write the new address as neatly as I could.
Then came the day I acted on a stock tip from my old friend Stamford, more than tripling my unfortunately sensible investment. I got out just in time and exhilarated by the experience, decided I could not do better than to gamble the whole of it on one John H. Watson. Somehow, on John H. Watson. I had had my eye on a Mr Farquhar’s practice for some time, but my speculation in Stamford’s wake had been too modest by far to permit me to buy the old gentleman out just yet, so I resigned myself to doing his rounds for him on Tuesdays and Saturdays a while longer, and quietly sunk the whole of my profit into a private printing of ‘A Study in Scarlet’. It should have been handsomely illustrated had I not decided in a moment of inspiration that double the quantity on poorer paper was the wiser move. This was to be an investment, not an epitaph: Dr Watson had survived it all and was lodging in Baker Street with the world’s only consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes. What was needed was 2,000 brochures to that effect, hawked by enterprising urchins at all the major stations in the vicinity of Baker Street: Waterloo, Victoria, Charing Cross, etc.
Seldom do yesterday’s tactics impress the armchair strategist as being beyond all possibility of improvement. Equally seldom, however, do they fail to survive a ten minute hansom ride. I arrived at the doors of No. 221B Baker Street, footsore and weary, after delivering the last consignment of brochures to the urchin who worked the Jermyn Street station, to find Holmes expostulating with some fifteen journalists.
‘A Study in Scarlet’ had found its audience.
Chapter 5
I am sorry I ever mentioned the giant rat of Sumatra! Or the peculiar affair of the aluminium crutch. And I rue the day I met the glory-grabbing Grice Patersons and so, heard the story of their ill-fated expedition to the miserable island of Uffa. No wonder the place is uninhabited. No wonder Mary thinks I have an inexhaustible supply of these stories. No wonder I am condemned to the task of keeping this journal.
I might at least have had the sense to tell her these stories privately. But no, I had to wait until I had an audience.
In my own defense, I may say that I was young and in love and not thinking altogether clearly at the time. That was it. That and the inevitable shock of discovering that my bride-to-be, orphan though she was, nevertheless possessed a secret horde of relatives: aunts, uncles, great-aunts, relatives on her mother’s side, relatives on her father’s side, first cousins, second cousins, third cousins once removed (but still present), and nieces and nephews of all ages. There they were, all of them (at least I hoped that was all of them), and all of them wanting to ask Mary’s young man just how he was proposing to support her, as a medical doctor without a medical practice. It was a nightmare. And how long had it been since I left the Army? Seven years? Seven years is a long time.
“I’ll drink to that,” I remember thinking.
Maybe it was the wine. Bad sherry is a great provocation and this was very bad sherry. As I made my way from Great-Aunt Gertrude to Uncle Ned, I was acutely conscious of the slight drag of my bad leg and full of sudden resolution. They should at least find me good company, I told myself. With that, I dropped the aluminium crutch on Uncle Ned, brought out the giant rat of Sumatra for the sake of the women and children, and launched the Grice Patersons on their way.
The Morstan family was spellbound. I know—I was spellbound with them.
How I was to know that Mary’s “favourite relative,” introduced to me as Cousin Nat Fitscherton, was also Nathaniel Fitsch, editor of the Strand Magazine? He didn’t look like an editor. Before I well knew what was happening, I was giving Cousin Nat “first refusal rights” for my forthcoming adventure, ‘The Sign of Four’. I should have known then how it would be: I hadn’t even written it yet and already he was refusing it. Youth doesn’t excuse everything. And yet, all I could think about was how to manage the writing of it now that I had an Editor waiting to see it.
In truth, I was dismayed at the way it grew, untidy as a weed. The first draft rapidly assumed the proportions of ‘A Study in Scarlet’, which had been rejected as too long by half the publishers in London. (The other half thought it was too short.) I had not forgotten, if Mary had, that it had cost me fifty pounds to publish ‘A Study in Scarlet’. Self-publication is no hobby for a married man. I had to do better with ‘The Sign of Four’.
The revisions I made to that manuscript! There was a time, I do believe, when it had over twenty chapters. I know it was one of the most disjointed pieces of journalism it has ever been my misfortune to read. There were so many plot lines to juggle, so much tension to capture, so many characters to introduce, manage and dismiss. What drove these people to act the way they did? What motivated them? The story didn’t begin to fall into place until I realized that if I telescoped our courtship and let our engagement coincide with the opening of the Agra treasure chest, I would have both the dramatically satisfying ending I needed and the perfect engagement gift for my Mary. Mindful of Holmes’s concerns, I remembered to disguise Anthony Smith’s name and settled on Inspector Athelney Jones. I foresaw problems in keeping the fictional names clear in my own mind and bought a pocket diary for the purpose.
Through it all, I was seeing Mary, cherishing my writer’s dream, and casting about for a medical practice that was within my straitened means, since we were naturally unable to marry until there should be some glimmer of financial security on our horizon. Fortunately, as it turned out, we were not dependent on the sale of my manuscript to make that possible.
It was at about this time that Holmes formed the habit of including me in his cases. [Note: Mary must never see this diary.] Those were good days, though not of course as good as the married ones since.
I am beginning to understand why Mary has refused to read this journal. It is a heady experience, writing without fear of contradiction or reproof. If Lestrade were a more lettered man, I would suggest he attempt the exercise himself. Now there’s a thought: Inspector Lestrade keeping a diary.
Lestrade is an interesting study. Over the years, Lestrade has been the means of introducing Holmes to any number of practical, intellectually stimulating problems which, while they may not have been financially lucrative as a rule, have been the making of him as a detective. Even the self-taught need others, if only to provide them with the opportunity to perfect their craft. This opportunity Lestrade has repeatedly provided over the years, at a cost to his vanity that, judging by my own experience of Holmes, has not always been outweighed by the gratification of presenting the correct solution—Holmes’s solution—to a wider audience than was Holmes’s own. It is a pity Holmes is not more grateful for it. At the same time, I may say that Lestrade’s concept of what constitutes an adequate investigation does lend a certain amount of credibility to Holmes’s oft-repeate
d assertion that Lestrade would spend his days copying The Encyclopaedia Britannica if his superiors at the Yard asked him to do so.
You know what it is, don’t you? It is this Jack the Ripper madness and the pure confusion of those who are supposed to be handling it. The full weight of officialdom has been brought to bear upon the matter and officialdom is helpless. Helpless or not, however, it is still not about to put itself in Holmes’s hands and only Holmes could expect it to do so. This is not one of Lestrade’s little investigations, where Holmes can be smuggled in by a side door. The soiled doves of Spitalfields won’t be clubbing together to hire him, the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee is more interested in violence than vigilance (and, in any event, is as disorganized as most amateur efforts), and Scotland Yard has its reputation to protect. Sir Charles Warren is not the man to trifle with tutelage from unofficial sources, were Holmes twice as tractable and only half as abrasive as he is. All the whores in Whitechapel could lie dead at his feet, their entrails affixed to their shoulders like epaulettes, and Sir Charles would still fight for the integrity of the Yard. That is what it is for a man like Sir Charles to be a public servant. He is as undivided in his loyalties as Holmes is in his. They simply have different loyalties.
The letter, when it finally arrived, proved to be from Mr Fitsch rather than Cousin Nat. It was remarkably clear. The Strand Magazine is not interested in book-length fiction. This is no reflection on the quality of ‘The Sign of Four’, which is undeniably high (“one might even say gripping in places”), but a straightforward response to the exigencies of the market. They cater to a population of busy, modern people who require brief interludes of mental stimulation of a fairly intense but not protracted nature. A novel with twelve (12) separate chapters offers their readers eleven (11) separate places to put their magazine down and lose interest in it. The Strand prefers short fiction, “adventures,” falling somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 words. If I should care to sign a contract for, say, six (6) adventures deliverable at two-month intervals (six adventures would be the minimum number that they could consider), my contributions would be very welcome.
The standard rate was remarkably appealing. Half for me, half for Holmes, and Holmes won’t have to look for another roommate. I meant it, too.
I believe it was Mary who pointed out that it might be as well to have six adventures in hand before signing a contract committing me to the timely delivery of same.
* * *
“Your diary, John.”
I suppose the idea is for me to find myself unexpectedly in possession of a particularly fine spot of prose that I will then feel compelled to share with the immediate world, thus inspiring me to produce yet another “adventure” of Sherlock Holmes. It doesn’t work that way. Holmes knows it doesn’t work that way. ‘The Sign of Four,’ ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band,’ ‘The Five Orange Pips,’ ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery,’ ‘The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor’—I have a drawerful of useless manuscripts at this point. Do I really need to produce any more?
I don’t consider myself easily dissuaded by any means, but there comes a point where you have to consider the possibility that the Universe is trying to give you a hint. Maybe the world doesn’t need to hear about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Did you ever think of that?
Holmes certainly hasn’t. He stopped by last night to tell me the story of the Gloria Scott. Last week it was the story of the Musgrave ritual. I don’t know how to tell him this, but much as Mary and I enjoyed hearing about his third case as a consulting detective and the strange events that persuaded him to invent his unusual profession in the first place, it would be a sheer waste of my time to prepare either of these for publication. A man has to be well-known before his biographer can afford to begin his story with his subject’s first faltering steps on the road to glory. Nobody knows who Sherlock Holmes is. Why should they care how he became a consulting detective?
I can’t possibly tell the story of Holmes’s life in chronological order. What is beginning to worry me is that I may not be able to tell it in any other order, either. It really is extremely peculiar. Mary is committed to my writing (as witness this diary), Mr Fitsch is committed to my writing (as witness his publication offer), even Holmes might be said to be committed to my writing—or why should he have told me the stories of the Gloria Scott and the Musgrave ritual? I, on the other hand, have never felt more detached from the process in my life. Too many people are taking too much interest in this. All of the pleasure has gone out of it.
Holmes means well, but if he wanted to encourage me in this work, then he shouldn’t have put the kibosh on the four adventures I had completed. There is no doubt in my mind that Holmes’s refusal to accept any of the money offered me by the good gentlemen of the Strand (“Your friendship is all I require, Watson”) would have meant infinitely more to me if he had not simultaneously made it impossible for me to accept that money myself.
Nothing is more discouraging to the would-be writer than a sudden and complete halt to the publication process. I feel all of the satisfaction of a wandering scholar patiently trying out his schoolroom Swahili on his native bearers who only finds out a week into the experiment that they are, each and every one of them, stone deaf. On top of the frustration, I feel foolish. I should have known.
I did know some of it. That is, I knew that ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’ was going to have to wait, first for the autumn Assizes and then for “John Turner’s” death. But he was an old man and dying when we knew him, if not from the diabetes that I gave him in my manuscript. It can’t be long now. And it’s not as though I were planning to come out with this adventure first. No, that honour was to have gone to ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’.
How could Holmes have promised Helen Stoner to keep her story to himself until after her death? She is younger than we are! Or, promising her his silence, how could he have neglected to mention it to me? Suppose I had published the adventure first and shown it to Holmes afterwards? Not that I would have done such a thing. My habit of consulting Holmes over the final version was formed by ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and I should find it hard to break now—doubly hard since this latest development. But oh, it does hurt to see this one consigned to oblivion. A wicked stepfather, gypsies, poisonous snakes, cheetahs, baboons, mysterious last words, the lovely Helen: it had everything. Everything, that is, except permission to publish.
To think I once thought it was my consummate powers of selection that would make us famous! I spent weeks going over my notes before I made my selection. Now I find that ‘The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor’ is as unsuitable as all the rest. This one must wait until Lord St Simon has recovered from his humiliation. And how, pray tell, shall I know when that has taken place?
“Tut, Watson, you have only to read the society pages. As soon as St Simon engages himself to marry Another, you may be certain that any objections he may have to the airing of the peculiar circumstances that attended his previous wedding will be overruled by the young lady in question. Whatever other virtues your prose may have (and it paints a very pretty picture of that young man), your report will have the effect of a public proclamation of St Simon’s continued bachelorhood. An aristocratic silence on the subject will not serve. They must be grateful to you. Bigamy is an ugly word.”
True enough, no doubt, but what guarantee do I have that St Simon will pursue the matter? He has been forty years without a wife and I do not think that his first experience of wedded bliss can be described as at all encouraging. How many husbands lose their wives at their own wedding breakfast, after all? Stronger characters than his have quailed before the possibility of a second disappointment. It is the kind of situation in which the inverse relationship between the magnitude of the embarrassment endured and the probability of its being repeated brings the subject no comfort whatever.
So we are left with only one adventure, the weakest of the lot and a personal failure for Holmes. When I wrote ‘The Five Orange Pips’,
I thought I was providing a little ballast for the series, a touch of reality to offset the staggering success reported in the other adventures. It’s not good to give the public the impression that you can solve everything, that no matter what the problem is, you have the cure for what ails them. For one thing, it isn’t honest, and for another, it lessens their appreciation when you do succeed. I thought Holmes knew that. Besides, it’s not his fault the Lone Star went down in the West Indies, cheating the gallows. As long as the villains are dead, what difference does it make how they died? I think he’s taking this whole thing too seriously, hedging his permission with one condition after another. Yes, I may publish ‘The Five Orange Pips’, but not until I have at least four (4) other adventures in print, all showing his cleverness in bringing some villainy home to the villain(s) of the piece. That’s a bit thick, isn’t it? I felt like I was talking to Cousin Nat, with his first refusal rights and his six adventures at two-month intervals.
I don’t know whether Holmes settled on the number five because I had so far completed only four “adventures” including that of the pips (so that I would have to write at least one additional adventure before the issue could so much as arise for discussion) or because my unfortunate title suggested it to him (so that the fifth adventure in the series could be ‘The Five Orange Pips’). I only know that the more time I spend combing through my notes, the less sure I am that this is possible to do at all or if it is, that I want to be the one to do it.
I thought I had my six adventures for Cousin Nat, but by the time Holmes got through with the four I had to show him, I was in no mood to interview him about the overlapping footprints for ‘The Brook Street Mystery’ or the ins and outs of the handwriting analysis for ‘The Reigate Puzzle’. He would have liked nothing better, I’m sure, than to reconstruct his thinking for me on these two technical matters, but what would have been the point? Even after I got those stories straight and wrote them up, I would still be three adventures short of what I need in order to take on the Strand and two adventures shy of being able to use ‘The Five Orange Pips’. There’s no other way to think about it. If I write up ‘The Brook Street Mystery’ and ‘The Reigate Puzzle’, I will have one less adventure for Cousin Nat than I had before I spoke to Holmes and offered him half the money. The more I write, the less it seems I have written. That can’t be right.