Startling revelations about the private lives of the great have always found the ear of the public pricked and twitching, and when, in 1931, Mr. S. G. Roberts first promulgated the theory of Dr. Watson’s second marriage, he created a literary sensation only equalled in recent times by the exposure of Wordsworth’s lapse into frailty and the publication of Charlotte Brontë’s love-letters to M. Héger. The first reaction was one of shocked incredulity. Though there is nothing in itself irregular or reprehensible about the remarriage of a widower, we had for so long been accustomed to look on the good doctor as indissolubly wedded to the memory of Mary Morstan that the suggestion appeared incongruous and distasteful, as though we had detected him in a breach of faith, or, at the very least, of decorum.

But the human mind is elastic. The first movement of repugnance was of short duration. Within a year, the critics had accepted the second marriage, and one of them—a prey to that fury of iconoclasm which urges us to dance upon the fragments of a fallen idol and grind them, if possible, to powder—had come forward with the hypothesis of yet a third Watson marriage.

Quousque tandem . . .? Are a fourth and a fifth Mrs. Watson to be disinterred from nameless graves in obscure paragraphs in order that each fresh commentator may show himself a more avid ghoul than his predecessors? Is every blank page in Watson’s notebook to be filled with a conjectural marriage certificate? Or is it possible to check this itch of match-making and forbid, in the words of a poet who owes his sole fame to the brutality of his critic, the “red and raging eye” of imagination to pry further?

The evidence for one marriage after the death of Mary Watson ( née Morstan) in 1891−4 is, so far as it goes, substantial. It comes to us under the hand of Sherlock Holmes himself, and is comprised in the notorious passage in The Blanched Soldier : “I find from my notebook that it was in January, 1903, just after the conclusion of the Boer War. . . . The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association.” The statement is categorical; the date is adduced from Holmes’ written notes and does not depend upon his memory; moreover, it is confirmed by the internal testimony of the story itself, which is concerned with events that could only have taken place during and after the Boer War. The one puzzling thing about the passage is Holmes’ remark, “the only selfish action . . . in our association.” The remark, which, in its sub-acid flavour, is characteristic of Holmes and bears every mark of authenticity, implies that the desertion of a friend in favour of any wife at all was a selfish action. If so, then the marriage of 1887 was selfish too, and the marriage of 1902 did not stand alone in its egotism. Some commentators have gone so far as to reject The Blanched Soldier altogether from the canon on the strength of this anomaly, while Mr. H. W. Bell, rushing to the opposite extreme, says: “This argument might be advanced . . . in denial of Watson’s undoubted first marriage, in 1887. If Holmes’ words do not imply that the marriage in 1902 was Watson’s only marriage, there can be no reason to deny the possibility of a third.”[1] 

There may, however, have been special reasons which made the 1902 marriage peculiarly obnoxious to Holmes. What was excusable in the man of thirty-five[2] may have seemed merely wanton in the man of fifty. The breaking-up of the Baker Street household may have come as a heavier blow after twenty years of fellowship than it had done when that fellowship was only six years old. Holmes himself was not getting younger, and with increasing fame and increasing burdens may have felt the loneliness of genius more keenly than in his younger days. Always sensitive to any slight, he may have become querulous and crabbed when, in 1926, and at the advanced age of seventy-three,[3] he wrote the story of The Blanched Soldier . To the aged detective, looking back over the years, the long-distant ’eighties appeared as a remote and golden age when all was well with the world. He had forgiven the earlier desertion—had he not, after all, helped to bring the lovers together?—but the betrayal of twenty-three years back still irked him with a sense of loss and estrangement. It is quite possible that this desertion was the final blow that broke the back of Holmes’ energy, for in the year 1903, he retired from practice, and the old connection with Baker Street was severed completely and for good.

For these reasons, I shall make no attempt to upset the 1902 marriage. If any one wishes to do so, he may perhaps take the line that the words “for a wife” are an error or an interpolation, and that what Holmes really wrote or dictated was “for a while” or “for a whim” or “for his work,” or some such phrase. It is noteworthy that, while Holmes always assumed an attitude of kindly tolerance towards Watson’s early matrimonial preoccupations, and remained on a very friendly footing with the first Mrs. Watson,[4] he did, on one occasion, display a certain jealousy, not of Watson’s wife, but of his work. “ ‘My practice——’ I began. ‘Oh, if you find your cases more interesting than mine——’ said Holmes, with some asperity. ‘I was going to say that my practice could get along very well for a day or two, since it is the slackest time in the year.’ ‘Excellent,’ said he, recovering his good humour” ( Naval Treaty , p. 515). And it is possible that the jealous feelings were not all on the one side. Watson remarks: “The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution, I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. . . . I had uses. . . . His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me—many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead—but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way useful that I should register and interject. . . . Such was my humble role.” The passage[5] should be studied carefully in extenso . It carries a suggestion that Watson, for all his loyalty, was suffering under a sense of grievance which was rather more than a passing pique. He found himself treated as a mere convenience, like the fiddle and the old pipe, to be picked up or cast aside as Holmes’ fancy took him. His faithful heart was really wounded. He withdrew himself and occupied his mind with his practice.[6] When the call comes, he answers it, but not quite with the old alacrity. “Was it for so trivial a question as this that I had been summoned from my work?” he asks himself, with a touch of bitterness.[7] Never before had he resented an intrusion on his “work.” This was in 1903. His final departure from Baker Street had occurred in the previous year, before the adventure of The Illustrious Client ,[8] and on p. 1,095 there is a very significant juxtaposition of paragraphs.

“I have not had occasion to mention Shinwell Johnson in these memoirs because I have seldom drawn my cases from the latter phases of my friend’s career. During the first years of the century he became a valuable assistant. . . . It was to him that Sherlock Holmes now proposed to turn.

“It was not possible for me to follow the immediate steps taken by my friend, for I had some pressing professional business of my own.”

Was it perhaps Shinwell Johnson, that man of dubious antecedents, who caused a little friction between the two friends? Watson pointedly refrains from selecting many cases from those “latter phases” when Johnson was the chosen partner. When Holmes announces that “Shinwell Johnson might be a help,” Watson suddenly remembers “pressing professional business” of his own. If he is not wanted, he will go away.

It is melancholy to find these traces of coldness and jealousy marring the perfection of such a friendship. Both men had reached a difficult period of middle age, when the emotional make-up tends to become unstable.[9] That there was no real change in Watson’s affection is abundantly shown by his instant rush to his friend’s side after the murderous attack by Baron Gruner’s hirelings, and by his readiness to co-operate even with the detested Shinwell Johnson in order to set Holmes’ mind at rest ( Illustrious Client , p. 1,107). But the little rift within the lute had made its presence felt. Watson, in a final effort at self-assertion, left Holmes; left him for his own work, certainly, and for a second wife, not improbably. Holmes, the man of iron, lost heart and set finis to his life’s work. The autumn of life had breathed its chilling influence on both of them.

So much for the 1902 marriage. But the marriage of 1896, proposed by Mr. H. W. Bell, rests on a very different basis of evidence, a basis almost as slender as that iota which split Christendom asunder.

Mr. Bell, with great frankness, admits as much. Let us quote his own words:

“The evidence for Dr. Watson’s second marriage[10] is contained in a few brief sentences in The Veiled Lodger : ‘One forenoon—it was late in 1896—I received a hurried note from Holmes asking for my attendance’; and ‘Two days later, when I called upon my friend . . .’ That is all.”

From this, Mr. Bell proceeds to build up his theory. His arguments are:

(1) Why had Watson left Baker Street? He had not gone away for his health, for he was close at hand when summoned and got round to Baker Street before the new client had finished her story. He was not in practice, for in the following year (February, 1897)[11] he refers to “the degree to which I had lost touch with my profession” ( Missing Three-Quarter , p. 821). The only conceivable motive for his desertion is marriage.

(2) Holmes often twits Watson with being a “ladies’ man,” and there is some evidence that, at the time of the Lady Frances Carfax affair,[12] Watson had shared a hansom-cab with a lady and resented being questioned about it.

(3) Apart from The Veiled Lodger , we have no record of any case for the year 1896, evidence pointing to a dissolution of partnership in that year.

(4) At the time of The Sussex Vampire ,[13] Holmes was obliged to explain to Watson that Matilda Briggs was the name of a ship and not of a woman, evidence pointing in the same direction.

(5) Without assuming some such temporary dissolution of partnership, we cannot account for the statement that Holmes and Watson were associated for “seventeen years” only ( The Veiled Lodger ).

Let us examine these points.

(1) is the most urgent, and forms, in fact, the foundation of the whole superstructure. Without, at the moment, discussing other possible reasons for Watson’s absence, I will say definitely and at once that I believe the date of The Veiled Lodger to be wrong and that, in my opinion, this error has caused the whole misunderstanding.

(2) It is true that Holmes does continually twit Watson about his admiration for the fair sex. This was a time-honoured jest which had begun when Watson fell in love with Mary Morstan, but there is nothing to show that it was anything more than a pleasantry depending for its point upon its absurdity. It is to be classed with Holmes’ determination to look upon Watson as “a man of letters.”[14] And no doubt Watson laid himself open to the charge, by pretending to an histoire galante to which he had no proper claim. We know that Watson was apt to exaggerate his own prowess, and that the smaller his experience, the more he boasted of it. He is always, to himself, the “old campaigner”—whereas his actual experience of military service was limited to a period of about twelve months, of which six, at least, were spent in hospital. [15]So in The Sign of Four , written in 1890, he refers to “an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents.” Now, Mr. S. C. Roberts, in his Dr. Watson (p. 15), has made it fairly clear that these continents were Australia, Asia (India) and Europe. “In all probability,” he says, “the period of Watson’s Australian residence was before he reached the age of 13.”[16] This is not an age at which “experience of women” can be taken in any very man-of-the-world sense—not, at any rate, in the case of a man so normally constituted as Watson. India also, thanks to Mr. Roberts, we know all about. Watson embarked for Bombay in the spring of 1880, joined his regiment in Kandahar, fought in the Battle of Maiwand on July 27th, was wounded and was removed to the Base Hospital at Peshawar. There, when his convalescence had only so far advanced as to enable him to “walk about the wards and bask a little upon the verandah,” he was struck down by enteric and “despaired of” for months, being left at last in a weak and emaciated state unsuited for amorous adventure. He was then shipped straight back to London. Thus his “experience of women” was confined, as regards Asia, to such opportunities as he may have found in his few weeks with his regiment at Kandahar, or, as Mr. Roberts suggests, among the staff-nurses at Peshawar.[17] 

The European experiences (covering “many nations”) are relegated by Mr. Roberts to such conjectural visits as he may have paid to Continental gambling resorts at intervals between 1881 and 1883.[18] No wonder that Holmes’ eyes twinkled when he chaffed Watson about his Don Juan propensities. Watson was a good soul, but he had his weaknesses, and a tendency to pose as a connoisseur of female charms was one of them.

But there can be no doubt whatever about Watson’s pure and single-minded devotion to Mary Morstan. From the moment of meeting her, he was completely bowled over, and his reactions are certainly not those of a hardened womaniser, but of a man who, at the mature age of thirty-five, tumbles unprepared into all the absurdities of calf-love. Men whose “experience of women” extends over continents and nations do not sit babbling in cabs about double-barrelled tiger cubs,[19] nor, if they hold hands with a lady in a garden at night, do they do so in any childlike spirit.[20] No; Mary Morstan was the object of Watson’s first serious attachment; his admiring affection breathes in every word he writes about her; their home life was serenely happy until it was cut short by her death; he was deeply and sincerely moved by her loss. So we have always believed; so Holmes himself believed, if we may judge him by his speech and actions; so Watson evidently intended us to believe, and if it was not so, then he was a hypocrite indeed.

Mrs. Watson died some time between 1891 and 1894, and Mr. Bell, noting that in April of 1890[21] Watson is living in Baker Street over a period of at least a fortnight, and that, further, her name is not mentioned in either The Greek Interpreter (summer, 1890) or The Red-Headed League (October, 1890), concludes that about this time her health began to fail and that she had gone away to a sanatorium. “What more natural,” asks Mr. Bell, “than that Watson, in his loneliness and sorrow, should have returned for a while to Baker Street . . . until he had recovered some measure of self-control?”[22] 

Mr. Bell then proceeds: “There is an indication that he was not long in regaining it. Watson was always a ladies’ man; and even his grief did not prevent him from taking favourable notice of Miss Violet Hunter, in whom ‘rather to my disappointment,’ as he himself faithfully records, Holmes ‘manifested no further interest’ once the case was ended. Watson, however, kept himself informed, and may even have maintained a correspondence with her.”[23] 

This passage shows to what strange lengths a man may be carried in pursuit of a favourite theory. In order to prove that Watson was the kind of man who might have had three wives, Mr. Bell permits himself the heartless and abominable suggestion that, at the very moment when his wife lay stricken with a mortal illness, Watson was endeavouring to get up an intrigue with another woman—for in 1890 a married man did not maintain a correspondence with a young unmarried woman for prunes and prisms.

Let us see what Watson actually says about Miss Violet Hunter. He describes her as being “plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.”[24] This is not exactly a lover-like beginning; Watson’s first impressions of Mary Morstan had been very different.[25] When the client takes her leave, Watson observes to Holmes: “At least she seems to be a young lady who is very well able to take care of herself.” Self-reliance is the last feminine quality to appeal to a man of Watson’s temperament, who invariably “likes ’em clinging.”[26] When he arrives at the Copper Beeches with Holmes and Miss Hunter, Watson goes in with Holmes, leaving the lady outside; there is no holding childlike hands in the garden on this occasion. In the dreadful incidents which follow, Watson leaves Miss Hunter to look after herself while he (very properly) concentrates on rendering first aid to the mangled Rucastle and dispatching the butler to break the news to Mrs. Rucastle. Then, at Holmes’ suggestion, the two friends together escort the lady home. Watson’s last word on Miss Hunter is that “she is now [1892] the head of a private school at Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success.”

If Mr. Bell can make a sentimental attachment out of this, he can do anything. Granted, that if there had been such an attachment, Watson would not have said so in so many words, yet some kind of positive evidence is needed with which to construct a theory. The “correspondence” probably boils down to the receipt at Baker Street of a prospectus of Miss Hunter’s school (Watson was married, and, for all she knew, might have had some use for the document). They may have received accounts of her from persons who knew the school—Watson’s “I believe” need imply nothing more intimate.[27] 

In fact, if the story is read in an unprejudiced spirit, it is perfectly plain that it was Holmes himself who (to Watson’s malicious amusement, no doubt) was suspected of feeling a personal interest in his client, and that Watson was “disappointed” at being deprived of the pleasure of welcoming Holmes to the Benedictine fold. (For it is well known that, like the fox who lost his tail, a married man is commonly eager to persuade his friends into his own situation.) Here are the relevant phrases:

“I could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner and speech of his new client.” (Mr. Bell, by annexing the word “favourable,” endeavours to delude us into thinking that the impression was made upon Watson; this is disingenuous.) When Miss Hunter has told her story, Holmes says, with a touch of human feeling rare, at that date, in his dealings with women clients,[28] “I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to see a sister of mine apply for,” and, not content with that, continues to mutter the same expression at intervals for a fortnight on end, while Watson is idly wondering, in an academic sort of way, whether the lonely woman has fallen into the hands of a philanthropist or a villain. At the conclusion of the interview with Miss Hunter at Winchester, Holmes praises her in words that bespeak a very sincere admiration: “You seem to have acted all through this matter like a brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could perform one more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not think you a quite exceptional woman.” And when she has succeeded in locking up Mrs. Toller in the cellar, he cries with enthusiasm, “You have done well indeed!”[29] 

Watson might well imagine that his friend’s armour of indifference had been pierced at last, and feel disappointment when nothing came of so promising a start; but he himself never utters a single word expressive of particular admiration for Violet Hunter, and to pretend that her bright, quick, freckled face could for one moment have displaced the sweet image of Mary Morstan in his heart is a libel upon an honest gentleman. Had not the suggestion been put forward in so peculiarly insidious and misleading a manner, it would scarcely seem necessary to refute it at so much length. It affects the question of the 1896 marriage only as showing from what untrustworthy materials the fable of Watson’s amativeness has been fabricated.

The affair of the hansom cab in Lady Frances Carfax will not carry very much weight either. The assumption is that Watson was sharing it with a lady because he sat on the left-hand side. But even when the occupants of a hansom are two men, one of them must necessarily sit there. If the date of the adventure could be proved by internal evidence to have been 1895, there might be some significance in the incident; unhappily, Mr. Bell relies on the marriage to prove the date and not vice versa. Nor is Watson’s “asperity” on being convicted of cab-sharing necessarily referable to embarrassment about his companion. It is sufficiently accounted for as he himself accounts for it: namely, by Holmes’ irritating behaviour in first deducing his Turkish bath from his boots and then (in reply to a courteously-phrased request to explain his reasoning) producing no explanation, but only a fresh illustration of his own powers.[30] It is just as likely as not that Watson had merely given a male fellow bather a lift home from the Turkish baths.

(3) The year 1896 is not the only year for which we have only one published account of a case. For the year 1899, there is not merely no written account, but actually no mention of any case at all; the years 1883, 1884 and 1885 have one apiece ( The Speckled Band , Charles Augustus Milverton and The Cardboard Box ); during all these years[31] Watson was admittedly in close association with Holmes.

(4) Mr. Bell’s point about the “Matilda Briggs” involves exactly the same sort of subtle misrepresentation as the assertion that Watson took “favourable notice” of Violet Hunter. Holmes was not “obliged,” so far as we can see, to explain the identity of “Matilda Briggs” at all, for Watson asked no question and expressed no opinion on the point. The letter from Morrison, Morrison and Dodd “ re vampires” ends thus:

“We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.”

Holmes’ comment “in a reminiscent voice” is volunteered immediately upon Watson’s reading of the letter:

“Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson. It was a ship.”[32] The remark was called for, since Messrs. Morrison, Morrison and Dodd’s representative had fallen into the solecism (common to-day among journalists) of writing the name of the ship without the definite article. Neither Holmes nor Watson suggests that there was any reason why the latter should ever have heard of the Matilda Briggs . But Mr. Bell goes on to say that, since Watson had no knowledge of the episode, it is probably to be ascribed to 1896, the year of Watson’s second marriage; and he seems to think that he can somehow use this to prove that the marriage took place. There is a name for this kind of reasoning. It is called petitio principii , and it is not the sort of thing one cares to see in any work with pretensions to scholarship. As a matter of fact, there is not the smallest reason for supposing that the episode of the Matilda Briggs took place in the year immediately preceding The Sussex Vampire ;[33] it may belong to the period of Watson’s first marriage or to the years before he had ever heard of Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, Holmes’ “reminiscent voice” and the solicitors’ assurance that they “have not forgotten” it, rather point to some earlier date than the preceding year.

(5) Mr. Bell’s fifth point has more reason behind it. It is clear that an interruption of one year did occur at some point in the partnership. It seems as though we had to choose between the blank year 1899 and the year 1896, blank but for the affair of The Veiled Lodger .

The time has now come to examine The Veiled Lodger more closely with a view to determining this crucial question of date.

The date as we have it is supplied by Watson himself. “It was late in 1896” when he hurried round to Baker Street at an urgent summons from Holmes and found Mrs. Merrilow relating her story about Mrs. Ronder, who had been her lodger for the last seven years. The name “Abbas Parva” is mentioned, and when Mrs. Merrilow has gone, Holmes asks Watson: “Have you no recollection of the Abbas Parva tragedy?” “None, Holmes.” “And yet you were with me then.” And that the tragedy at Abbas Parva actually took place in the same year in which Mrs. Ronder went to lodge with Mrs. Merrilow[34] is made clear when Holmes goes on to describe it: “On this particular night, seven years ago.”

Now, seven years subtracted from 1896 brings us to 1889, and at once a doubt arises in our minds. In 1889 Watson certainly was “with” Holmes in the sense that they were friends and to some extent still fellow workers. On the other hand, this was a year in which Watson was living at home with his wife, and was particularly busy with his practice, as is shown by his accounts of the three cases belonging to that year. In The Boscombe Valley Mystery (June, 1889) Watson receives Holmes’ telegram at breakfast and says to his wife: “I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present.” She replies that he has “been looking a little pale lately” (no doubt from overwork) and that “the change” will do him good. In The Man with the Twisted Lip (same date), Watson is visiting the opium den in search of one of his own patients and encounters Holmes by accident. It is only the “definiteness” and the “air of mastery” with which Holmes puts his request that lead him to accompany his friend on the adventure. At the time of The Blue Carbuncle , Watson was so busy that, as Mr. S. C. Roberts points out,[35] “he did not call upon Holmes to wish him the compliments of the season until the 27th of December, and a case delayed him on that day until nearly half-past six.” Watson was, therefore, only in a very limited sense “with” Holmes in 1889, and it would not be surprising if he should altogether fail to recall an incident of which Holmes’ own impression was “very superficial, for there was nothing to go by, and none of the parties had engaged (his) services.”[36] Yet the cuttings relative to the affair were in the commonplace books, it had worried Holmes at the time, and he says, “it will probably come back to your memory as I talk.”[37] In the course of the conversation, it comes out that Watson was there at the time and did remember it, for when Holmes mentions how young Edmunds of the Berkshire Constabulary had dropped in and smoked a pipe or two over it, Watson identifies him at once as “a thin, yellow-haired man,” and Holmes replies, “Exactly. I was sure you would pick up the trail presently.”[38] Thus the difficulty of assigning the date of the “tragedy” to 1889 links itself on to the difficulty of accounting for Watson’s absence from Baker Street in 1896 and raises a certain amount of doubt about the episode.

Now, all doubts and difficulties would vanish from the case immediately if it were possible to suppose that 1896 was a mistake for 1890. No two figures are so easily mistaken for one another as a “6” and a “0,” and there is nothing in the story of The Veiled Lodger to make 1890 an improbable date per se for the adventure. In October of 1890, Watson was living at home, for he “called upon” Holmes on the fourth[39] of that month, and it is probable that “late in the year”[40] he was still at his own address. Seven years subtracted from 1890 gives us 1883 as the date of the Abbas Parva tragedy—a date before Watson’s marriage, when he was most certainly “with” Holmes and associated with him in the matter of The Speckled Band .

There is, however, one very weighty objection to the year 1890, and that is Watson’s categorical statement, made in 1893,[41] that “in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record,” and these three cases must be The Copper Beeches , The Greek Interpreter and The Red-Headed League .[42] If Watson was literally exact about this, 1890 must be abandoned.

There are, however, certain reasons which might plausibly be advanced to explain why Watson should have deliberately omitted The Veiled Lodger from his 1890 records. To begin with, it was not, strictly speaking, a “case” at all. Holmes made no investigations in connection with it, and was only called in by Mrs. Ronder as “a man of judgment” to whom she could “tell her terrible story.” In the second place, it was not until 1927 that Watson felt himself at liberty to make the facts public, and then only with a “change of name and place.” At the time, he probably expunged the affair from his note-books and, as far as possible, from his memory. Not until more than thirty years later[43] did he think it safe to disinter it from oblivion, and it is exceedingly possible that, in so doing, he intentionally altered the date as well as the other indications.

This reasoning may appear a little forced. Are we then thrust back on 1896 as the only possible alternative to 1890? If so, the question would still remain whether some hypothesis less drastic than that of a marriage may not be advanced to explain Watson’s absence from Baker Street. The simplest and most obvious solution is that he was staying with friends—very likely with the Percy Phelpses. Phelps had no doubt been married for some time to Miss Harrison, and may easily have taken a house in Town, situated perhaps in the neighbourhood of Lancaster Gate. The house at Woking belonged, of course, to Percy’s parents, and it is in any case probable that he would prefer to live in Town during the winter.

But are we, in fact, obliged to choose between 1890 and 1896? Whichever of these dates we select, it is curious that Watson should have waited quite so long as he did before publication. Mrs. Ronder’s intention in taking Holmes into her confidence was to set herself right with the world before she died. She considered herself justified in doing so, since Leonardo, the only other person who could have been injured by the truth, was dead. She herself did not commit suicide as she had meant to do, but, according to Mrs. Merrilow, her health was failing fast and she was “wasting away.” If it was her death that Watson waited for, when did it occur? To explain the long silence and the extreme precautions taken in writing the story, it would seem as though she could not have died very much before 1927, so that, if the adventure took place in 1896, she must have lived for nearly thirty years afterwards. It is not, of course, impossible. She was married in the first years of her womanhood and was perhaps only about thirty years old when Holmes visited her. Perhaps she died in the early nineteen-twenties, and Watson—who may have received a suggestion from Holmes to this effect—then thought it right to make her story known, with precautions which would baffle idle curiosity, but which could, in the nature of the case, present no obstacle to those who had been concerned in the tragedy at the circus and might have some claim to learn the true facts.

There remains, however, one other possibility—namely, that 1896 is (by error or intentional mystification on Watson’s part, probably the former) the date, not of the case, but of the Abbas Parva tragedy itself. Seven years added to that bring the case to the end of 1903, when Watson had left Holmes, and just before the time of Holmes’ own retirement from practice.[44] In 1896, Watson would be “with” Holmes in Baker Street,[45] and all the conditions of the problem would be fulfilled. This theory reduces the long gap between the case and its publication, and brings it into line with the other 1902-3 cases, all of which were made public at intervals during the nineteen-twenties.

In that case, nothing remains to be accounted for but the one year’s interruption of the partnership, which must now be placed some time between July-August, 1898 ( The Dancing Men ), and May, 1901 ( The Priory School ), and most likely between July-August, 1898, and July, 1900.[46] And this is, indeed, the most probable period for it. It seems almost incredible that, if Watson really was at Baker Street during the whole of those two years, no case of any kind should have presented itself worthy of record. It was during this period (October, 1899) that the War broke out in the Transvaal, and it would be only natural that Watson (that spirited old war-horse) should hear his country’s call and hasten to place his services, in some capacity, at the disposal of the Government. Whether he actually went to South Africa or not is uncertain; his health would not stand prolonged strain in arduous conditions. It is, however, quite on the cards that he took up hospital work at home in order to release younger medical men for service abroad during Lord Roberts’ campaign. Possibly (if he did marry again in 1902) he made the acquaintance of his future wife at this time—she may have been a hospital nurse—and wedded her at the conclusion of the War. He was once more busily in practice in 1903 ( Mazarin Stone ), so it is evident that, in spite of “the degree to which he had lost touch with his profession,” his interest in medicine had been somehow stimulated and a fresh connection secured during the first years of the century.

The foregoing suggestions are put forward somewhat tentatively, not in order to discredit Mr. Bell’s careful and exhaustive research work, which is invaluable, but rather as a plea for more evidence before accepting his pronouncement that no other solution is possible. Mr. Bell’s emphasis of assertion is understandable; for him the 1896 marriage is vital , since he depends upon it for the precise chronology of many cases.[47] But any theory, if sound, must be able to face criticism, particularly a theory so startling in itself and based upon so slender a foundation. Reluctant as any commentator must be to tamper with the established text, we cannot help asking ourselves: Is it not perhaps less extravagant to suppose a trifling lapsus calami on the part of a man like Watson, who in so many instances has been proved guilty of similar inaccuracies, than to drag in a wholly hypothetical marriage, unrecorded, and lasting less than twelve months,[48] with the sole purpose of explaining Watson’s temporary absence from Baker Street?

NOTE ON THE DATE OF “THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE”

Mr. Bell’s date, November 19th, 1897, for this rests on the theory of the 1896 marriage. But it will be enough for him if we can place it later than 1896. In any case, it cannot have occurred between 1891 and 1894, when Holmes was abroad, and any earlier date than 1891 is quite clearly impossible. Ferguson had played Rugger as three-quarter for Richmond and had encountered Watson on the field. This cannot have happened before 1870, when Watson was eighteen, and may more plausibly be placed a few years later. Watson distinctly states that he had known Ferguson “in his [Ferguson’s] prime.” Now, the “prime” of a Rugger-player is a comparatively short period, and it is unlikely that Ferguson would be playing for a crack club after the age of twenty-five or so. Even if we allow that he was as much as twenty-five as early as 1870, then, before 1891, he would have been forty-five at the outside. But Watson’s description of him at the time of The Sussex Vampire suggests a man considerably older than this. He is the wreck of a fine athlete, his great frame has fallen, his hair is scanty, his shoulders are bowed. Unless he had “crocked” in an exceptional manner, we should expect him to be between fifty and sixty. By placing the adventure as late as possible—1897—we can contrive to make him as much as fifty-two, thus reaching something more like probability, and attaining Mr. Bell’s conclusion by a different route. The later the date the better for our purpose (since he would probably be in reality rather under twenty-five than over in 1870). Since Mr. Bell has excluded all dates after 1897 on other grounds, 1897 achieves its place on its own merits. Ferguson had been married at least sixteen years at the time, and probably wedded his first wife when he was about thirty-five.

NOTE ON THE DATE OF “LADY FRANCES CARFAX”

At the date of this adventure, Lady Frances was “not more than forty,” and it seems clear that the Hon. Philip Green was not a great deal older. His father (Admiral Philip Green, later elevated to the peerage) had been made an Admiral before the time of the Crimean War (1854) and was still alive (otherwise the Hon. Philip would have succeeded to the title). The Admiral would scarcely be an Admiral at a very much less age than forty-five, and is not likely to have been much more than eighty-five at the date of the adventure. Adding forty years to 1854, we get 1894. If we take Mr. Bell’s date of 1895 as being approximately correct, we get a plausible age, both for the Admiral and his son. It cannot be earlier than 1894, since it is after the Return; it cannot be very much later, since that would tend to make the Admiral and his son rather too old. Without the suggested marriage, however, it is difficult to date it more closely. Our alternative theory, placing the “interruption of partnership” in 1899-1900, would set a limit of 1894-9. The case is not included in Watson’s list of cases for that “memorable year, 1895.”



[1]

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson , p. 94.

[2]

I accept Mr. S. C. Roberts’ date of 1852 for the birth of Dr. Watson.

[3]

It appears likely that Holmes was born between 1852 and 1854. On grounds given elsewhere (see my paper on “Holmes’ College Career,” p. 134), I am inclined to give my preference to 1853.

[4]

“Holmes, for his part, maintained his respect for Mrs. Watson, and Mrs. Watson never failed to encourage her husband to collaborate with his old friend. . . . Holmes would descend upon Watson near midnight, ask for a bed, and carry off his friend by the eleven o’clock train; if an old friend of Watson was in trouble, his wife would acquiesce at once in his rushing off to Holmes,” etc. (Roberts, Dr. Watson , p. 22). Holmes was also “occasionally persuaded” to pay the Watsons a friendly visit in their house near Paddington ( Engineer’s Thumb ). If he “gave a most dismal groan” when Watson announced his engagement ( Sign of Four , p. 270), he followed it up with a handsome compliment to the lady, and it is evident that his protest was made, and received, with the utmost good humour.

[5]

The Creeping Man , p. 1,244.

[6]

In The Mazarin Stone , dated in the same year as The Creeping Man (1903), he bears “every sign of the busy medical man.”

[7]

The Creeping Man , p. 1,245.

[8]

September, 1902.

[9]

Holmes, about this time, exhibits an unprecedented liability to bursts of almost hysterical eloquence. See his description of Violet de Merville and his report of his conversation with her ( Illustrious Client , pp. 1,102 sq. ).

[10]

Second, that is, in point of time.

[11]

All dates are taken from Mr. Bell’s own chronology, as being essential to his theory; that of The Missing Three-Quarter is well supported by the text.

[12]

Mr. Bell’s date (1895) depends upon the theory of the 1896 marriage. See note below.

[13]

Mr. Bell’s date again depends on the 1896 marriage, but there is collateral evidence to support it. See note below.

[14]

Wisteria Lodge , p. 891.

[15]

Roberts, Dr. Watson , pp. 12 sq.

[16]

Op. cit. , p. 9. He considers it “conceivable, though not likely,” that Watson revisited Australia between 1881 and 1883 (p. 15).

[17]

Watson was never in civil practice before 1887−8, so that we cannot count on any unprofessional interest in female patients, unless, indeed, we fall back on the melancholy specimens of humanity he may have encountered in his student days in the hospitals.

[18]

Op. cit. , p. 15.

[19]

Sign of Four , p. 162.

[20]

Ibid. , p. 178.

[21]

The Copper Beeches.

[22]

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson , p. 68.

[23]

Loc. cit.

[24]

This and the following quotations are from The Copper Beeches .

[25]

“Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and sympathetic. . . . I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer promise of a refined and sensitive nature” ( Sign of Four , p. 152). “My mind ran upon our late visitor—her smiles, the deep, rich tones of her voice. . . . If she were seventeen at the time of her father’s disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now—a sweet age,” etc. ( op. cit. , p. 158). Later, there is a picture of her, dressed in “some sort of diaphanous material,” with the shaded lamplight “playing over her sweet, grave face, and tinting with a dull, metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair” ( op. cit. , p. 240). A perfect little oleograph of the romantic ’nineties.

[26]

“There was in her [Mary Morstan] also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection” ( Sign of Four , p. 178). “ ‘But would he come?’ she asked, with something appealing in her voice and expression. ‘I shall be proud and happy,’ said I, fervently” ( ibid. , p. 156).

[27]

Watson likewise made a “short note” at the end of his “manuscripts” dealing with The Solitary Cyclist , giving particulars of the subsequent career of Miss Violet Smith (who married Cyril Morton, the electrical engineer) and of her abductors. No doubt it was usual to keep tabs on clients.

[28]

With Miss Morstan, highly as he esteemed her, he was more brusque. “She put her hand to her throat, and a choking sob cut short the sentence. ‘The date?’ asked Holmes, opening his notebook” ( Sign of Four , p. 154). This was more characteristic of his early manner with women.

[29]

It is noteworthy that Holmes, though he “disliked and distrusted” the female sex as a whole, had no petty, masculine jealousy. He admired self-dependence and initiative and, while extending his chivalrous protection to the Mrs. St. Clairs of this world, reserved his homage for the Violet Hunters and Irene Adlers.

[30]

This was one of Holmes’ favourite tricks. He played it on Watson in the prologue to A Scandal in Bohemia (1888). Watson then exclaimed that it was “too much!” and that in the Middle Ages Holmes would have been burnt for a wizard. By the time the Carfax case came on, the jest had begun to pall.

[31]

Mr. Bell’s own dates.

[32]

The Sussex Vampire , p. 1,178.

[33]

See note below on the date of this adventure.

[34]

The “tragedy” must, therefore, have occurred early in the year, for it was six months before Mrs. Ronder was sufficiently recovered to give evidence at the adjourned inquest, let alone go out to look for lodgings. Mrs. Merrilow “reckons” that she had already tried other rooms, but it is evident that the trials can only have been short ones. It is odd that, if “Ronder was a household word,” Mrs. Merrilow should not have associated her lodger’s name with the accident at the circus some months earlier, but possibly she was one of those people who “keep themselves to themselves” and never read the papers.

[35]

Dr. Watson , p. 23.

[36]

Veiled Lodger , p. 1,291.

[37]

Loc. cit.

[38]

Ibid. , p. 1,293. It is not clear whether Edmunds’ visit took place at the time of the tragedy or of the inquest six months later. In either case the date would still be 1889. See note above.

[39]

The text has “9th,” but see Bell, p. 70, and my own study on the dates in The Red-Headed League , p. 168.

[40]

November is the likeliest month of 1890. During the winter, Watson did not see Holmes, but only read of his doings in the papers. Final Problem.

[41]

The Final Problem , p. 537.

[42]

For all these three cases, Mr. Bell’s dates appear to me to be established without possibility of contradiction.

[43]

Whether we take 1890 or 1896.

[44]

Watson tells us that The Creeping Man (September, 1903) was “one of the very last cases handled by Holmes before his retirement,” p. 1,244.

[45]

Since this theory disposes of any necessity to postulate a marriage in that year.

[46]

Mr. Bell’s dates for The Six Napoleons (July, 1900) and Thor Bridge (October, 1900) are partly dependent on the theory of the 1896 marriage, but have nothing inherently improbable about them. During all but one year of this period Watson must have been in close association with Holmes, and probably in Baker Street.

[47] e.g. The Six Napoleons , The Conk-Singleton Forgery , Thor Bridge , The Matilda Briggs , The Sussex Vampire , Lady Frances Carfax , The Coiner .

[48] “Before twelve months had passed, his wife, it appears, was dead, since at the beginning of 1897 we find him back again in the rooms at Baker Street,” Bell, p. 94. Watson would seem to have been rather a perilous marriage-partner, and Mr. Bell’s theory suggests that it might have been advisable to check up the contents of his poison cupboard!