acdhw

I should be writing the Star Trek WIP but it doesn’t cooperate. Instead, binge-watching old Russian Holmes, giffing, etc. I want to finish my Kirk/Spock WIP because I’d hate to leave them hanging. They are too dear to me for that. Besides, I promised myself that after that I could proceed with ACD stuff again.

A comment on the margin about RL: the lockdown period having been extended until the end of April, I’ve no slightest idea how I’m going to do job hunting, so I prefer not to think of it at all XD 

Binge-watched it today because I needed a lazy day. A few years ago I tried the book, but it didn’t work for me. I liked the show, although I had to scroll through a bit. Now at least I know what the fuss is all about. A well-told story. And its message is comforting—that things will work out eventually.

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. (STUD)

Some more excerpts from Holmes and Watson by June Thomson. They give more insights into Watson’s army days and contribute to building headcanons. I find dates especially helpful. For convenience, I compress the data given there for future reference:

At the end of his year’s service as house surgeon [at Bart’s], Watson was faced with a crucial decision about his future career: what should he do next? In order to set up in private practice, he needed capital which he did not possess.

He could remain in hospital service although this had its own disadvantages. Hospitals then employed only four consulting surgeons and, as a consequence, promotion was slow. Watson might have to wait until he was in his forties before a senior post became vacant.

To a medical man, a military career offered several advantages. An army assistant surgeon earned £200 a year, with his keep and living quarters provided. After ten years’ service, he could retire on half pay with enough money saved to set himself up in private practice.

Watson’s prep studies for the army:

The Army Medical School at Netley in Hampshire, later called the Royal Army Medical School, was first established at Fort Pitt, Chatham, in 1860 and was moved to Netley three years later when the military hospital, the Royal Victoria, was opened. One of the wards was converted into a classroom while laboratories as well as quarters and mess facilities for the students were housed in separate buildings behind the main hospital block.

(picture source 1 and 2)

There were two courses a year at Netley, each lasting five months, the first beginning in April, the second in October.

The course, which was divided into two parts, covered such subjects as hygiene, including the burial of the dead, as well as military surgery and pathology. Field exercises were also organized during which the candidates were expected to choose suitable sites for latrines, kitchens and dressing-stations.

During their time at Netley, the candidates were expected to obey army discipline, which included the wearing of uniform and attendance at parades. Their duties also entailed caring for patients in the wards.

In February 1880, if the suggested chronology is correct, he became Lieutenant John H. Watson, a rank he never referred to after he returned to civilian life. Assuming he embarked [to India] in March 1880, he arrived in Bombay in April, after a sea voyage lasting a month.

Watson’s probable route to Kandahar: after travelling from Bombay to Karachi by steamer, he then went by rail to Sibi and from there by horse and camel caravan across the mountains to Kandahar, encamping at night.

In the meantime, the war had been gathering momentum. The two forces met at the village of Maiwand, fifty miles to the north-west of Kandahar, in the early morning of 27th July 1880 on a hot, dusty plain dissected by dry water courses. Watson was later to speak of seeing his comrades “hacked to pieces at Maiwand” (STUD), a possible reference to the gallant rearguard action which was fought by the survivors of two companies of the 66th who stood back to back, fighting off the advancing tribesmen until all were killed.

Watson’s injuries:

• a bullet in his left shoulder fired from a jezail rifle, one of the Afghan long-barrelled guns, which shattered the bone, presumably his collar-bone, and grazed the subclavian artery.

• a bullet that damaged his Achilles tendon (“whence come Toby, and a six-mile limp for a half-pay officer with a damaged tendo Achillis” SIGN). 

In the face of the fierce onslaught, the defences broke and what remained of the British forces turned and fled, including the medical staff of a field hospital who abandoned their patients, leaving them lying on stretchers. The Afghans remained behind to loot the baggage and dismember all those found on the battlefield, both the living and the dead, assisted by their womenfolk.

Casualties, Watson among them, were transferred to the base hospital at Peshawar, the capital of the British north-west Indian possessions. Here Watson began to recover until he contracted typhoid.

There is no doubt Watson was gravely ill but his statement that "for months my life was despaired of" is a little exaggerated. Typhoid fever usually lasts about five weeks and the time scale will not allow for a protracted illness. No doubt the weeks he suffered seemed like months to him. In fact, he was in the Peshawar hospital for less than two months for by the end of October he was back in Bombay.

He had to make the 1,600 mile journey south by train and boat in time to embark on the troopship SS Orontes which sailed from Bombay on 31st October 1880. Having left Bombay, she called at Malta on 16th November and finally arrived at Portsmouth on the afternoon of Friday 26th November, ‘bringing home the first troops from Afghanistan, including eighteen invalids.’

Watson’s state of mind: He was certainly bitter. His health, as he himself states, was 'irretrievably ruined’ and the prospects of beginning a new career in civilian life seemed bleak. Even his rugby-playing days were over. From the symptoms of which he was later to complain, including sleeplessness, depression, irritability and nervous tension, he was probably suffering from the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition for which today he would receive treatment.

By the way, at one point, being fresh from the university and penniless, ACD considered joining the army himself but instead grasped the opportunity of earning some money as a ship’s doctor.

When a man is in the very early twenties he will not be taken seriously as a practitioner, and though I looked old for my age, it was clear that I had to fill in my time in some other way. My plans were all exceedingly fluid, and I was ready to join the Army, Navy, Indian Service or anything which offered an opening. […] I suddenly received a telegram telling me to come to Liverpool and to take medical charge of the African Steam Navigation Company’s Mayumba, bound for the West Coast. In a week I was there, and on October 22, 1881, we started on our voyage. (Memories and Adventures)

The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891) caught my eye because of the likeness of the name with E. W. Hornung’s A. J. Raffles (1899) who made his appearance a few years later. This is a short novel ACD wrote while studying ophthalmology in Vienna, and apparently the Holmes vibe was strong in him at the time because the protagonist, Raffles Haw:

- is a tall, lean man, a pipe smoker;
- “He had a pale, thin face, a short straggling beard, and a very sharp and curving nose, with decision and character in the straight thick eyebrows”, with “keen grey eyes”—apart from the beard everything else checks out;
- is a chemist which later is an essential point of the novel;
- his room is that of a “busy and untidy man”;
- is a recluse: “Not that I mind isolation: I am used to it.”;
- often has walks at night: “I am somewhat of a night prowler myself, and when I treat myself to a ramble under the stars I like to slip in and out without ceremony.”;
- is prone to “fits of depression”;
- has some Holmesian speech patterns: “But I am afraid that I bore you rather with all these petty contrivances”-“On the contrary, I am filled with interest and wonder” (cf. “But I weary you with my hobby.”-“Not at all,” I answered, earnestly. “It is of the greatest interest to me” STUD);
- has a propensity of looking distracted when actually in deep concentration: “sat with a vacant face, as though he were not listening to me”.

Being a billionaire and a philanthropist, Raffles Haw is often perceptive of people’s motives: “swift was the perception of the recluse, and how unerringly he could detect a flaw in a narrative, or lay his finger upon the one point which rang false”. But ultimately he fails to see the true nature of a family he befriends. As one of the reviewers on goodreads put it, his help makes surrounding people “lazy and entitled rather than grateful”. It is an interesting parallel with Doyle himself who soon after that became quite rich thanks to Holmes stories. Did his family, who had had to struggle, become lazy and entitled when ACD helped them out? He spared his sisters from the necessity of working abroad as governesses (which might have been unsafe for a woman alone in a different country, entirely at the mercy of her employers. Perhaps such Holmes stories as “The Solitary Cyclist” or “The Copper Beeches” were in some ways inspired by ACD’s sisters’ work). Thanks to financial security ACD was able to provide the best treatment for his first wife, who had contracted tuberculosis, and thus extend her lifespan for much longer than doctors had predicted. ACD provided stability and prosperity for his mother who had raised him and his siblings practically alone. However, ACD’s sons by his second marriage did lead a playboy lifestyle, so there’s no definite answer.

Another curious parallel with the Doyle family is a character of old Mr. McIntyre, a drinking father who gradually descends into madness and later is locked away in an asylum. Rather similar to ACD’s own father, Charles Altamont Doyle.

One more point I’d like to mention is that burglars in this novel, as it often happens in ACD’s works, have their criminality written on their ruffianly faces. A far cry from Raffles, the gentleman thief.

Part 3: The Chocolate Box (1924) and some others

Poirot tells about his early case as he and Hastings sit by the fire on a “wild night” when “wind howled malevolently, and the rain beat against the windows in great gusts”. It’s a story of Poirot’s failure for Hastings to “add into his collection.” And once the story is told, Poirot asks Hastings to say to him “Chocolate box” whenever Poirot becomes too conceited. Compare:

• “on a wild, tempestuous evening, when the wind screamed and rattled against the windows” (The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, 1904);
• “you will have a very pretty case to add to your collection, Watson” (The Dancing Men, 1903);
• “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, […] kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear” (The Yellow Face, 1893).

In terms of the plot, The Chocolate Box is completely independent. So why this, why?

In Double Sin (1961), Poirot is overworked to the point of exhaustion and needs a vacation, just like Holmes does in The Reigate Squires (1893) and The Devil’s Foot (1910). Unlike Holmes, whose health problems are due to neglecting his own well-being while working, Poirot is fatigued by numerous cases, many of which he took because of money only, having no particular interest in them.

In Wasps’ Nest (1928), Poirot prevents a terminally ill man from framing his rival in love. The man planned to kill himself but make it look like as if his rival killed him and thus have that rival sentenced to death. Sounds a bit like Thor Bridge (1922), doesn’t it? Although otherwise it’s an original story, with nothing else in common with THOR.

The Submarine Plans (1951) deals with stolen submarine designs the loss of which is a matter of national security. So does The Bruce-Partington Plans (1908), although here similarities end: these two stories have completely different plots.

Like I’ve mentioned before, Christie was not the only one who tended to borrow from predecessors. Doyle himself was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s Dupin is an eccentric which leads a secluded life with his companion, tends to talk in soliloquies, investigates for amusement, and keeps silent about his findings until the time is ripe. Doyle borrowed the concept from Poe while making his own works less graphic in depiction of violence, less wordy, and more dynamic. However, Christie, in turn, did not just borrow some characterisations from Doyle. In several cases she copied details almost verbatim and nicked a couple of plots as well.

I do enjoy stories about Poirot, both in the books and on screen. I think the adaptation with David Suchet is superb and done by amazingly talented people. But still, it’s not difficult to say why for me Holmes stays number one.

I’ve finished watching the entire series of Poirot and now am onto some short stories and novels. While Arthur Conan Doyle admitted that Holmes was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin, Poirot, in his turn, is heavily influenced by Holmes, especially in early works. Let’s have a closer view, taking as examples three short stories.

Part 1: The Veiled Lady (1925)

First of all, short stories are written from Hasting’s POV which is a direct reference to Watson and Dupin’s nameless companion. At the beginning of this story Poirot is getting restless without a case, just like Holmes does. But unlike Holmes, who laments the lack of ingenuity in criminals, Poirot is so self-important that he seriously assumes that criminals are too afraid of him to commit any crimes.

Then the events unfold roughly in the same way as in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (1904): no sooner than Poirot says, “To work against the law, it would be pleasing, for a change”, a pretty lady of high society comes to him seeking his help against a blackmailer. She is engaged to a duke, there’s her compromising letter, and she doesn’t have sufficient means to buy it back. So she asks Poirot to negotiate. The blackmailer shows up to Poirot’s flat, but the negotiations prove to be futile. Pretty much a carbon copy, isn’t it?

Poirot decides to burgle the house of the blackmailer with the help of Hastings. Here the plagiarism borrowing becomes awkward because for a man who prefers to solve cases avoiding leg work it’s rather out character. As they proceed with their plan at night, we learn that Poirot visited the blackmailer’s house earlier under a false identity to ensure an easy access later. No, he didn’t get engaged to a maid but fooled the housekeeper. Points to Holmes for using his charm. Points to Poirot for not breaking a girl’s heart. I guess he didn’t have the looks?

The burglary is far less dramatic: there’s no hand holding behind the curtains, no chases through the garden and narrow escapes, no witnessing of the blackmailer being murdered by his former victim. Nope. Poirot just finds what he was looking for. The blackmailer is killed offstage somewhere in Holland. The lady and the bloke who pretended to be the blackmailer when he talked to Poirot are actually two crooks who had robbed a jewellery shop and had been in league with the real blackmailer until he decided not to share with them and hid the jewels in his house.

Having read this story, I remain as perplexed as I was after watching the episode of the TV series. This goes beyond being simply inspired. It’s a rip-off, and a bland one at that. The action, the tension, the excitement of CHAS are gone. It’s not as if Mrs. Christie couldn’t come up with original plots of her own—she could and did most successfully. If it’s a “form of flattery”, as E. W. Hornung put it in his dedication to ACD in The Amateur Cracksman, it’s a rather unsatisfying form.

Made backups of my Holmes/Watson blog on tumblr via archive.org's Wayback Machine. Takes far less time than the overloaded WordPress, and the blog is preserved precisely as it is.

acdhw as of Dec 5, 2018


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I’ve been participating in A Study In Canon online book club since summer 2018 and writing down some thoughts on the Canon stories. Just in case, I backed up the contents of those posts on AO3. The stories I’ve covered are mostly from The Return and The Casebook, as well as a few other ACD’s stories, e. g. The Doctors of Hoyland, which surprised me with rather progressive views on women, considering the time it was written in and ACD’s conservatism in this matter.

Everything is filed under the title Sherlock and his Watson.