The Midwinter Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes: Three Adventures & The Grand Gift of Sherlock (30 page)

[166]
Sir John Chandos (1320-1369), founding member of the Order of the Garter, was one of the greatest English knights of the Middle Ages. Interestingly, he was also a major character in the historical novels,
The White Company
(1892) and
Sir Nigel
(1906), both written by Watson’s first literary agent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[167]
As noted by Watson in his list of Holmes’ limits (Chapter II,
A Study in Scarlet
).

[168]
Holmes had a strange passion for medieval subjects, including palimpsests (
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
), music (
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
), miracle plays and pottery (Chapter X,
The Sign of Four
), and charters (
The Adventure of the Three Students
).

[169]
The tantalus (also known as a ‘spirit case’) and gasogene at Baker Street make appearances in
A Scandal in Bohemia
, and
The Adventures of Black Peter
and
the Mazarin Stone
.

[170]
A recitation of simply “The Queen,” a salute known throughout the Commonwealth realm.

[171]
In the British Royal Navy, the officer’s noon mess typically began with the Loyal Toast, and then a specific toast for each day of the week. Holmes’ recited the Friday toast (appropriately enough, since 26 December 1890 was a Friday), perhaps anticipating his upcoming conflict with Professor Moriarty.

[172]
This appears to confirm the theory that Watson wrote up this adventure after the events recounted in
The Final Problem
(which began on April 24, 1891), when Watson believed Holmes to have perished in the Reichenbach Falls.

[173]
Arguably the best Christmas story ever written,
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
(set in 1889) contains a tour-de-force chain of deductions that lead from Henry Baker’s battered hat to the sincerely regretted guilt of James Ryder and Holmes’ subsequent magnanimous forgiveness. It, along with Dickens’
A Christmas Carol
(1843), also contains the perfect description of the Victorian invention of the Christmas holidays.

[174]
If this case is set in 1894, then Watson is almost certainly referring to Mary Morstan, whom scholars believe he married in 1888, and who tragically died c.1892.

[175]
Watson’s wish was granted for almost two decades, but was ultimately in vain. Despite the blood relations between the royal houses, the complex balance of power in Europe eventually disintegrated in 1914.

[176]
Brandy was one of the great restoratives of the Victorian Age. Amongst the times it was used in the Canon includes when Watson administered it to Percy Phelps (
The Naval Treaty
), Victor Hatherley (
The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
), and Dr. Thoneycroft Huxtable (
The Adventure of the Priory School
).  Doctor Roylott half-heartedly used it on Julia Stoner (
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
). Holmes self-administered a dash after being half-strangled by Alec Cunningham
(The Reigate Squires
) and of course, it was used by Holmes to restore Watson after his first and only faint (
The Adventure of the Empty House
).

[177]
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, or “Bart’s” as it was popularly known, is famous for being the locale where Dr. Watson first met Sherlock Holmes (Chapter I,
A Study in Scarlet
).

[178]
After a long campaign by Dr. Charles West, the Hospital for Sick Children was founded on 14 February 1852 and was the first hospital providing in-patient beds specifically for children in the English-speaking world, having been beaten to the punch in 1801
by The Hôpital des Enfants Malades
(Hospital for Sick Children) in Paris.

[179]
Vere Street is a street off Oxford Street, in central London. It is named after a family name of the area's owners at the time of its construction, the Earls of Oxford. It is best known for the Marylebone Chapel. By about 1729, the road had become known as Oxford Street, as many of the surrounding fields had been purchased by the current Earl of Oxford. Confusingly, the Earl, Robert Harley was not part of the original De Vere lineage, which had gone dormant in 1703 after the death of the 20
th
Earl. After the area was developed it became popular with entertainers including bear-baiters and masquerades, and for entertainment buildings such as the Pantheon. Holmes was once attacked on Vere Street by agents of Professor Moriarty (
The Final Problem
).

[180]
Beeton’s Christmas Annual was a paperback magazine printed yearly from 1860 to 1898. It is famous for the 1887 edition, which contained the first published Holmes and Watson tale (
A Study in Scarlet
).

[181]
The Strand Magazine was published from 1891 to 1950. The first of the Holmes short stories were originally published as single stories in the Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892.

[182]
Bedford Place is a small lane that connects Great Russell Square and Bloomsbury Square. It is only one block away from the British Museum on Montague Street, where Holmes once had rooms (
The Musgrave Ritual
).

[183]
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) was a British Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister. He is remembered for his political battles with the Liberal spokesman William Gladstone, and made the Conservatives the party most identified with the glory and power of the British Empire. He is to date the only British Prime Minister of Jewish birth, though his father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue and young Benjamin became an Anglican at age 12.

[184]
Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (c. 1520–1609) was the chief rabbi of Prague and the subject of a medieval legend that he built an animated creature of clay, the Golem.

[185]
King Edward I ‘Longshanks’ issued an edict in 1290 that expelled all Jews from England, and this remained in force for the rest of the Middle Ages. It was not until 1657 that the ever-hypocritical Oliver Cromwell permitted Jews to return to England, though of course, he did it in exchange for financial support of his dictatorship.

[186]
Watson’s famous list of Holmes’ limits suggests that his knowledge of literature of the non-sensational type was ‘nil’ (Chapter II,
A Study in Scarlet
).

[187]
Sadly, like so many of Holmes’ non-criminal monographs, his work on comparative solstice practices has been lost. It was perhaps destroyed in the bombing of London during World War II?

[188]
The New Bow Street Police Court was constructed from 1878-1881. Holmes and Watson also visited the building in to see the beggar Hugh Boone (
The Man with the Twisted Lip
).

[189]
Holmes was well acquainted with Inspector Bradstreet from the adventures of Neville St. Clair (
The Man with the Twisted Lip
), John Horner (
The Blue Carbuncle
), and Victor Hatherley (
The Engineer’s Thumb
).

[190]
Inspector Bradstreet appears to have gotten a promotion since Holmes and Watson visited him in 1889, when his office was described as “small.”

[191]
In actuality, about 2.1 miles along the route described. This would take about 45 minutes by foot.

[192]
Watson clearly changed the name of the church in question, as no such Reverend Arden exists on the records of Marylebone Chapel.

[193]
The Marsh test is a sensitive method for the detection of arsenic developed by the chemist James Marsh in 1836. Before the development of the Marsh test, arsenic trioxide was a highly favored poison for it is odorless, easily incorporated into food or drink, and untraceable in the body. For the untrained, arsenic poisoning would have symptoms similar to cholera, though very high doses could produce fatal cardiac arrhythmias. In France, it came to be known as ‘
poudre de succession
’ (‘inheritance powder’). After the Marsh test, its use as a poison gradually fell out of favor. Devious minds such as Dr. Grimsby Roylott sought to utilize poisons that were impossible to detect (
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
).

[194]
Thomas Fowler of Stafford, England, proposed a solution of 1% potassium arsenite in 1786 as a general medicinal for a wide range of diseases, including malaria, chorea, and syphilis, though with little practical benefit. However, from 1845, Fowler's solution became a leukemia treatment and it saw use into the late 1950s.

[195]
While many physicians of the era were still general practitioners, some had begun to specialize. For example, Dr. Percy Trevelyan was a specialist in nervous diseases (
The Adventure of the Resident Patient
).

[196]
Sir Jasper Meek was one of the best physicians in London according to Watson (
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
).

[197]
Wassail is a hot, mulled punch often associated with Yuletide. Historically, the drink was a mulled cider (sometimes ale) made with sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg and topped with slices of toast. Wassailing refers to a traditional ceremony to awaken the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the autumn.

[198]
Sir Henry Baskerville stayed at the Northumberland Hotel during his brief sojourn in London (Chapter IV,
The Hound of the Baskervilles
).

[199]
We know that John Clay was the fourth smartest man in London (
The Red-Headed League
), but the rest of Holmes’ list has been lost to posterity.

[200]
Newgate was one of the most notorious prisons in London and was in use from roughly 1188 to 1902. It played home to many famous individuals (including William Penn and Casanova), and was featured in many of the works of Charles Dickens and other Victorian authors.

[201]
One of Holmes’ most famous expressions, but actually only used once in the Canon. “‘Come, Watson, come!’ he cried. ‘The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!’” (
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
). It itself is a paraphrase of Shakespeare from
King Henry V
.

[202]
To the modern reader, it is perhaps surprising that Lestrade and Holmes did not insist upon a fingerprint analysis of the vial of arsenic, which would have quickly answered many questions. The history of when exactly fingerprinting became widely used is a bit muddled, but Scotland Yard did not begin to employ it until 1901.

[203]
Mr. Henry Baker also used lime-cream in his hair (
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
).

[204]
Holmes must have appreciated the importance of Dr. Lowe’s case for him to impersonate a minister of the Church of England, which was an illegal act. That is likely why he chose to be a Non-conformist clergyman in the less urgent case of The King of Bohemia and Miss Irene Adler (
A Scandal in Bohemia
).

[205]
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the father of the British historical novel. Although not explicitly stated, it seems likely that Watson was reading his epic poem
Marmion
(1808), which revolves around the Battle of Flodden Field, but is most famous for its Eighth Canto known as ‘Christmas in the Olden Time,’ which begins with:
‘Heap on more wood! the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still. Each age has deemed the new-born year; The fittest time for festal cheer…’

[206]
Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) was the father of modern pathology. His great work
Die Cellularpathologie
(Berlin, 1858), was translated into Englishin 1860 by Frank Chance (Cambridge), but the polyglots Holmes & Watson could likely have read it in its original German.

[207]
Holmes paraphrases himself: “I think, Watson, that you are standing in the presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe” (
The Man with the Twisted Lip
).

[208]
A puzzle box (also called a trick box) is a item that can only be opened through some obscure or complicated series of manipulations, which can range from two to hundreds of moves. Although often mistakenly associate with the Chinese, the puzzle box originated in the Hakone region of Japan at the turn of the 19th century as the Himitsu-Bako, or Secret Box.

[209]
The carol that Watson is referring to can only be “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” which was based on the 1863 poem
Christmas Bells
by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Written during the dark days of the American Civil Way, the song tells of the narrator's despair, upon hearing Christmas bells, that “there is no peace on earth for hate is strong.” But the carol concludes with the bells carrying renewed hope for “good-will towards men.”