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charloweenIt's been an awesome week back in Ontario - lots of hanging out, sharing meals, knitting hats (on my third try I think I finally have this winter's toque)... and heading back to Toronto's Mecca of Sherlockian Fan-insanity.
This time, I found an article in The Cornhill Magazine (edited by a Lord Gorell), from November 1934, entitled "This Watson" and written by J.S. Coltart (pages 513-526, if you're interested). The neat thing about this archive is they have the magazine itself, not a facsimile. This trip I also played with the card catalogue. Card catalogue!!
I'd set this magazine aside to read after hunting down other citations, but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thucyken grabbed it and started reading, and started expressing her incredulity rather vocally. And she was right to do so: J.S. Coltart, you've given me my new favourite Watson meta. See, Moriarty never existed. But. Holmes did toss someone over the Reichenbach Falls. It was James Watson, the evil (American) gangster brother of the kindly John H. Watson.
It explains the double wounds (shoulder or leg?), the confusion about the timeline (if Holmes was missing from 1891 to 1894, how did he have a case in 1892?!), the fact that Watson-the-narrator has two different first names (John and James)... and the fact that there's absolutely no record of Moriarty outside of the stories themselves. A hundred years ago, Holmes fans decided that Holmes was really real, k? Both Watsons were medically trained (of course) and both chronicled Holmes's cases for The Strand, but where John H. was a nice guy, his (older?) brother James was a nasty piece of work.
But then, Holmes was no sweetheart either: Coltart points to the list of cases where Holmes demanded excessively high fees from his clients, and the number of times where Holmes caused the death of someone related to the case (usually though avoidable inaction) and failed to show any concern. (I enjoy this darker reading of the characters: no nostalgia for a tweed-wearing, foggy-London-inhabiting, gentleman detective...)
Coltart begins with bibliography of “canonical authorities” (513) on Watson, continues with enumerating Americanisms in (particularly) The Case-Book and cites a review from The Times regarding an 'Americaniser' for Watson's wandering wound and American slang (514). The problem of Moriarty is easily resolved, he argues, when you accept that he's a hastily-constructed character that was made up to cover Holmes's murder of the evil Watson brother: Moriarty's spotty publication history and unclear academic affiliation aside, the scant details we have about this arch-villain are (so Coltart argues) are vague enough to be sufficient only for fiction.
Read for yourself:
Coltart concluded that James stole the Agra treasure, and concealed it from the reading public. Since Holmes was a greedy, drug-crazed narcissist:
After that, John H. was recalled to duty (having moved out, married and set up private practice just before publishing A Study in Scarlet), either believing that his brother fell in the battle or a willing collaborator in the fiction that hid his brother's death (murder, execution).
Amazing.
This time, I found an article in The Cornhill Magazine (edited by a Lord Gorell), from November 1934, entitled "This Watson" and written by J.S. Coltart (pages 513-526, if you're interested). The neat thing about this archive is they have the magazine itself, not a facsimile. This trip I also played with the card catalogue. Card catalogue!!
I'd set this magazine aside to read after hunting down other citations, but
thucyken grabbed it and started reading, and started expressing her incredulity rather vocally. And she was right to do so: J.S. Coltart, you've given me my new favourite Watson meta. See, Moriarty never existed. But. Holmes did toss someone over the Reichenbach Falls. It was James Watson, the evil (American) gangster brother of the kindly John H. Watson. It explains the double wounds (shoulder or leg?), the confusion about the timeline (if Holmes was missing from 1891 to 1894, how did he have a case in 1892?!), the fact that Watson-the-narrator has two different first names (John and James)... and the fact that there's absolutely no record of Moriarty outside of the stories themselves. A hundred years ago, Holmes fans decided that Holmes was really real, k? Both Watsons were medically trained (of course) and both chronicled Holmes's cases for The Strand, but where John H. was a nice guy, his (older?) brother James was a nasty piece of work.
But then, Holmes was no sweetheart either: Coltart points to the list of cases where Holmes demanded excessively high fees from his clients, and the number of times where Holmes caused the death of someone related to the case (usually though avoidable inaction) and failed to show any concern. (I enjoy this darker reading of the characters: no nostalgia for a tweed-wearing, foggy-London-inhabiting, gentleman detective...)
Coltart begins with bibliography of “canonical authorities” (513) on Watson, continues with enumerating Americanisms in (particularly) The Case-Book and cites a review from The Times regarding an 'Americaniser' for Watson's wandering wound and American slang (514). The problem of Moriarty is easily resolved, he argues, when you accept that he's a hastily-constructed character that was made up to cover Holmes's murder of the evil Watson brother: Moriarty's spotty publication history and unclear academic affiliation aside, the scant details we have about this arch-villain are (so Coltart argues) are vague enough to be sufficient only for fiction.
Read for yourself:
" Yet someone was thrown down the Reichenbach Falls by Holmes, though it is inconceivable that even an Army coach would conduct operations against so tough a proposition as Holmes on the lines deduced by the chronicler. And on that point, that Holmes, who in a rough house usually shot at sight from his coat pocket, should take to wrestling on the brink of an abyss, is altogether too tall a story to swallow. The solution in a grave one of far-reaching import and cannot be propounded without a warning as to the shock the next words will give to all true Watsonians: Holmes threw Watson into the abyss!
" At first sight this may seem to open up more difficulties than it solves; but the explanation is simple: there were two brothers Watson. There was that delightful person Dr. John H. Watson, who writes the first part of his reminiscences in A Study in Scarlet: the sub-title is significant: why would he call it a reprint from his reminiscences any more than any of the subsequent writings, which bear no explanation? Why? Because the series was continued by his, James Watson, a fellow with a shady past who had probably become a gangster after a period as a remittance-man in America; he reappeared and trading on the soft and sentimental side of John H., persuaded him to take a practice in Kensington and give up the share of the Baker Street rooms to James Watson. James Watson is 'the Americaniser' whose existence The Times reviewer scented; he was wounded in the leg, whereas John H. Watson carried a Jezail bullet in his shoulder. Despite his assertions we suspect that the bullet in the leg was no Jezail but one of American manufacture. And with this we turn back to The Sign of Four.
" Here the scene opens with James Watson in possession; he is rather a complaining sort of fellow, but doubtless he is in some anxiety about his means of livelihood. He has followed his brother's lead and is trying to live by the pen rather than the pistol, but he lacks a theme till he makes an attempt to see if some long-delayed statement about the change of brothers could not be worked up to produce a guinea or two; so he takes out his watch (it was as well to do it then, for at the moment it was out of pawn; after his attendance on Holmes at Lyons following the Netherlands-Sumatra Company investigation, he would be temporarily in funds), and makes up a story about a dead elder brother, when he had actually supplanted a living younger one, and when the scratches on the watch-case were really made by his own drunken fumblings. It is a sordid scene; James Watson's influence always brings out Holmes's worst side and he has quickly become a supine drug-fiend." (these three paragraphs from pp518-519)
" At first sight this may seem to open up more difficulties than it solves; but the explanation is simple: there were two brothers Watson. There was that delightful person Dr. John H. Watson, who writes the first part of his reminiscences in A Study in Scarlet: the sub-title is significant: why would he call it a reprint from his reminiscences any more than any of the subsequent writings, which bear no explanation? Why? Because the series was continued by his, James Watson, a fellow with a shady past who had probably become a gangster after a period as a remittance-man in America; he reappeared and trading on the soft and sentimental side of John H., persuaded him to take a practice in Kensington and give up the share of the Baker Street rooms to James Watson. James Watson is 'the Americaniser' whose existence The Times reviewer scented; he was wounded in the leg, whereas John H. Watson carried a Jezail bullet in his shoulder. Despite his assertions we suspect that the bullet in the leg was no Jezail but one of American manufacture. And with this we turn back to The Sign of Four.
" Here the scene opens with James Watson in possession; he is rather a complaining sort of fellow, but doubtless he is in some anxiety about his means of livelihood. He has followed his brother's lead and is trying to live by the pen rather than the pistol, but he lacks a theme till he makes an attempt to see if some long-delayed statement about the change of brothers could not be worked up to produce a guinea or two; so he takes out his watch (it was as well to do it then, for at the moment it was out of pawn; after his attendance on Holmes at Lyons following the Netherlands-Sumatra Company investigation, he would be temporarily in funds), and makes up a story about a dead elder brother, when he had actually supplanted a living younger one, and when the scratches on the watch-case were really made by his own drunken fumblings. It is a sordid scene; James Watson's influence always brings out Holmes's worst side and he has quickly become a supine drug-fiend." (these three paragraphs from pp518-519)
Coltart concluded that James stole the Agra treasure, and concealed it from the reading public. Since Holmes was a greedy, drug-crazed narcissist:
" ...the discovery of James Watson's guilt was a fearful temptation to Holmes: he was an arbitrary person and frequently took the law into his own hands, and his vanity and melodramatic aberrations leaped up at the prospect of playing the bizarre rôle of being at once prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. Besides, James Watson really knew too much for a person who was not to be trusted; so Holmes decided to dispatch him himself, a course of action which had the advantage of securing the administration of justice without involving him in a public scandal or instituting uncomfortable enquiries into details of some of his own actions.
" It is not certain if the victim tried to escape and was only tracked down in Switzerland, thus making The Final Problem a tissue of lies from the first to the last, but it is more likely that the fictitious pursuit of 'Moriarty' was enacted to dupe the wretched James Watson, for a murder could be more dexterously despatched [sic] out of England. Holmes probably hid his intentions from his victim until the very last and tipped him over unawares; but is seems certain that down the Fall he went, bowler hat and all. Though for that matter there is no written evidence that either of the Watsons wore a bowler hat.” (these two paragraphs from p522)
" It is not certain if the victim tried to escape and was only tracked down in Switzerland, thus making The Final Problem a tissue of lies from the first to the last, but it is more likely that the fictitious pursuit of 'Moriarty' was enacted to dupe the wretched James Watson, for a murder could be more dexterously despatched [sic] out of England. Holmes probably hid his intentions from his victim until the very last and tipped him over unawares; but is seems certain that down the Fall he went, bowler hat and all. Though for that matter there is no written evidence that either of the Watsons wore a bowler hat.” (these two paragraphs from p522)
After that, John H. was recalled to duty (having moved out, married and set up private practice just before publishing A Study in Scarlet), either believing that his brother fell in the battle or a willing collaborator in the fiction that hid his brother's death (murder, execution).
Amazing.
