The Isle of Devils

by Craig Janacek

   In the official Canon, Watson never clearly identifies the make of his service revolver, despite the fact that it features prominently in many of the stories (first mentioned in Chapter V, A Study in Scarlet). A great number of candidates for the make of the weapon have been proposed, based on the slim clues that he left us, such as is being called an “Eley’s No. 2” (The Adventure of the Speckled Band). If the Bermuda Manuscript is genuine, we finally have an answer to this little mystery.

   At the Globe Hotel the four-poster bed in which Georgiana Walker gave birth to her fourth child, was still on display in the 1950s. The bed’s canopy was in fact a Confederate Naval Jack. What happened to the bed after that is a mystery.

  CHAPTER V: ST. GEORGE’S

   Watson’s waking habits seem to vary from “all sorts of ungodly hours” (Chapter I, A Study in Scarlet) shortly after his injury to quite “regular” three years later, presumably after he regained most of his health (The Adventure of the Speckled Band).

   Watson continued to shave every morning by sunlight, which occasionally led to irregular results (The Boscombe Valley Mystery).

   Watson never lost many of his military routines, as in 1889 he still carried his handkerchief in his sleeve (The Crooked Man), a habit also shared by Mr. James M. Dodd (The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier).

   Reginald Musgrave was also fond of strong café noir, though he recommends not taking it after dinner if you wish to sleep (The Musgrave Ritual).

   Watson and Holmes were very fond of paraphrasing Shakespeare, for numerous examples populate the Canon (including in The Reigate Squires, A Case of Identity, The Red Circle, and The Empty House).

   Warburton’s slight misquote about ‘infinite variety’ is of course from Antony and Cleopatra, and Holmes also misquotes this line while laying a trap for Sebastian Moran (The Adventure of the Empty House).

   Quinsy, acute inflammation of the tonsils and the surrounding tissue, was the fabricated ailment of James Windibank to disguise his voice for his role as Mr. Hosmer Angel (A Case of Identity).

   One wonders whether the Cloister School of Mr. Warburton is in any way related to the Priory School of Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, also thought to be a thin disguise for the Abbey School (The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier)?

   By a strange coincidence, Watson’s first literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a fine series of books about Professor George Edward Challenger. One wonders if his inspiration for the Professor’s name stems from this expedition?

   Watson perhaps later regretted his adventurous choice of breakfast. By 1888, he was back eating ham and eggs (Chapter VIII, The Sign of the Four). Rashers are a thin slice of bacon or ham (The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb).

   This encounter with the negress serving-girl may explain Watson’s familiarity with them and why he was hardly startled when he saw the daughter of Mrs. Effie Munro (The Yellow Face).

   Watson continued to claim that heat does not bother him thanks to his Indian training as late as 1888 (The Cardboard Box).

   Watson clearly enjoyed strolling through the streets of towns that he and Holmes visited, such as the town of Ross (The Boscombe Valley Mystery), Birlstone (Chapter IV, The Valley of Fear), and Cambridge (The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter).

   Five thousand pounds in 1880 would be the equivalent of at least $600,000 today! Not bad for a hunk of whale biliary secretion! Bermuda would become known as manufacturer of fine perfumes in 1928, when the Perfumery was opened. This moved its operations to historic Stewart Hall in St. George's in 2004.

   Washington Irving (1783 – 1859) wrote a tale entitled “The Three Kings of Bermuda” which detailed the adventures of Misters Carter, Waters, and Chard.

   Yellow Fever, an acute viral hemorrhagic disease by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito found in tropical and subtropical areas. It was a great killer of men during the Colonial Era, including Mrs. Effie Munro’s first husband, the lawyer Mr. John Hebron of Atlanta (The Yellow Face), and Rodger Baskerville (Chapter III, The Hound of the Baskervilles). While there is no specific therapy even today, vaccination (developed in 1937) and improved vector control have significantly blunted its impact.

   In 1867, the house that would become the Globe Hotel was rented to Ralph Foster, the first of many proprietors. He died the following year at the age of thirty-three, but his widow continued to run the hotel and bar with billiard room for another fourteen years. It would have been hard for Mr. Foster to stride the timber of the Globe Theater, considering it burned down in 1613. A second theater of that name was built on the same site by 1614, but it was closed in 1642 and vanished under the expanding morass of London. It wasn’t until 1997 that the new Globe rose from the ashes near its original site. It is true that the wreck of the Sea Venture almost certainly could not have served as the model for The Tempest. However, that does not mean that the author of that play could not have been inspired by the Isle of Devils, whose existence was well known to well-educated Elizabethans, having first been discovered in 1511 by the Spanish. Doubts regarding the authorship of the “Shakespeare” plays have existed since at least 1848, and the great American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was indeed a skeptic of the merchant of Stratford’s authenticity. Emerson and Watson may have doubted the authorship of the plays, but it is unlikely that they ever backed the most likely contender, Sir Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, as his candidacy was not proposed until 1920.

   The Montrachet, a white Burgundy made from the Chardonnay grape, that Watson enjoys with his dinner was obviously not made in Marseilles, but that port is a logical locale from which a bottle of wine from the Bourgogne region of France could have shipped to Bermuda. Many years later he and Holmes enjoyed another bottle of Montrachet with some cold partridge (The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger).

  CHAPTER VI: THE HEART OF THE ISLAND

   Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) did indeed have a golden nose (or perhaps copper), having lost the original in a duel. And the eccentric scientist not only kept a tame moose (or elk) at his castle, but he fed it beer. The unfortunate creature one night had a bit too much to drink, fell down the stairs and died. True story. Only a few months later, Watson would profess great astonishment when his new roommate, Sherlock Holmes, proclaimed that he was “ignorant of the Copernican Theory” and did not care whether the earth travelled round the sun or vice versa (Chapter II, A Study in Scarlet). Evidence suggests that Holmes was possibly having a bit of fun with the somewhat gullible Watson.

   Watson certainly enjoyed fishing, though his attempts to actually do so were often interrupted, such as when Holmes conveniently forgot their spoon-bait (The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place).

   The irony of course, is that the church of St. George’s ran into difficulties in 1894 and was never completed. The ruins today are known by the poetic name “The Unfinished Church.”

   Watson’s admiration for General Charles George Gordon (1833 – 1885) continued to grow, such that sometime after the General’s death at the hands of the Mahdists Watson acquired a “newly framed picture” of him for the walls of 221B Baker Street (The Cardboard Box). Gordon’s “Ever-Victorious Army” was a sort of a French Foreign Legion in reverse.

   Boudica, the queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the Romans in c.60 CE, was very popular amongst the Victorians, who saw Queen Victoria as a sort of second coming of the ancient queen. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892), the Poet Laureate, wrote a poem about her (Boadicea) in 1865. Later, in 1905, London would see the erection of a great bronze statue of Boudica atop her war chariot next to Westminster Bridge and across from Big Ben.

   Watson quotes a famous line from a poem of John Milton (1608 – 1674), On His Blindness (c.1655): “We also serve who only stand and wait.”

   It is generally accepted that Watson was born in 1852. His birthplace is less certain, but there does appear to be a hint of
the Scottish in various aspects of his history, such as his middle name and even his surname, so it is certainly plausible that the Bermuda Manuscript is accurate in its claim for Edinburgh.

   It is possible that the Watson family traveled on the Rock of Gibraltar, since the Adelaide-Southampton line’s new ship the Bass Rock, was not completed until near 1897.This would have been many years before Mr. Crocker served as its first officer (The Adventure of the Abbey Grange). Watson’s father was fortunate to arrive in Australia by 1853, as the boom was largely over by 1854, plunging towns like Melbourne into severe depressions.

   Watson’s early background (before he attends the University of London) is relatively obscure. One of the few certainties is that he attended boarding school in England with Percy “Tadpole” Phelps, who was two classes ahead of him (The Naval Treaty). Although not explicitly stated, it stands to reason that Watson would have known Phelps best if his older brother Henry was also in Phelps’ class. But it is even debated exactly which school Watson and Phelps attended. The two major candidates include Winchester College, Hampshire and Wellington College, Berkshire. If the Bermuda Manuscript is authentic, the issue may have been solved. Watson’s old school number would stick in his brain for many years, as he continues to use it as a memory device as late as 1899 (The Adventure of the Retired Colourman).

   There is an apocryphal tale (The Field Bazaar, 1896) by Watson’s first literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which bizarrely suggests that Watson did not have an MD, despite Watson’s clear statements to the contrary (The first line of A Study in Scarlet, as well as its title for Chapter VI, and The Problem of Thor Bridge). Why Sir Arthur would suddenly slander his friend Watson is one of the greatest mysteries of their relationship. Watson’s statement in the Bermuda Manuscript makes it clear that he was fully qualified to practice medicine.

   The exact timetable of Watson’s time on the Indian subcontinent is a bit muddled. At first, he appears to suggest that he spent almost no time in India before proceeding to Afghanistan (Chapter I, A Study in Scarlet), but he later refers to his service in India (The Cardboard Box & The Problem of Thor Bridge), implying that some adventures must have taken place there as well. The issue may never be made clear, unless we are so fortunate as to discover another preserved manuscript from Watson’s early days.

   Watson eventually was persuaded of Lucy’s views upon the ridiculousness of war, for he later mirrors her sentiment (The Cardboard Box). Unfortunately, this view was not popular and Watson would live to see at least one more war of the greatest horrors (1914 – 1918).

   Some disreputable commentators have slandered Dr. Watson’s medical skills, partly due to his apparent belief that a dash of brandy solved most problems (see notes to Chapter IX). And yet he remained current with the most recent medical journals (The Stock-Broker’s Clerk) and surgery treatises (The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez). He is also to diagnose both Jefferson Hope’s aortic aneurism (Chapter VI, A Study in Scarlet) and Thaddeus Sholto’s normal mitral valve (Chapter IV, The Sign of the Four). He displays the full prowess of his medical skills multiple times in the Canon, such as when he treated the thumb wound of Victor Hatherley (The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb), the neck wound of Professor Presbury (The Adventure of the Creeping Man), and the acid burn of Baron Gruner (The Adventure of the Illustrious Client), though he strangely refuses to do much for the “horribly mangled” neck of Jephro Rucastle (The Adventure of the Copper Beeches), perhaps because he was so despicable? Watson also resuscitated the overly-chloroformed Lady Frances Carfax (The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax), the hanged Beddington (The Stock-Broker’s Clerk) and the suffocated Mr. Melas (The Greek Interpreter). Perhaps Watson was right about the brandy too!

   Watson must have learned his lesson on that afternoon, and would always be prepared in the future with a stethoscope secreted in his top hat (A Scandal in Bohemia), even when he was not actively in practice (Chapter IV, The Sign of the Four).

   Although considered by Holmes to be an expert on the ways of women (The Adventure of the Second Stain), when around a women to whom he is significantly attracted, Watson had a funny tendency to get extremely nervous and reverse objects in his sentences (Chapters III & IV, The Sign of the Four).

   Some herpetologists have made the unequivocal statement that there is no such snake as a “swamp adder.” However, in an age when new species are still being discovered in the far corners of the world over one hundred and forty years after Holmes and Watson first embarked on their adventures together, this seems like an overly bold statement. These herpetologists may simply have not spent as much time in India as Watson and Dr. Grimesby Roylott (The Adventure of the Speckled Band).

   Watson often enjoyed a Beune wine with lunch (Chapter I, A Study in Scarlet) and was clearly fond of taking an afternoon nap (Chapter V, A Study in Scarlet).

   A reader might suspect Watson of boasting about his experience with women, as he makes such a claim again (Chapter II, The Sign of the Four). However, since eight years have passed, we will be generous and assume that the doctor has forgotten. Much has been made of which three continents exactly Watson was referring. Clearly Europe must be one, likely with an unrecorded sweetheart of his days at the University of London. Asia is certainly the second, with the aforementioned Miss Violet Devere finally being revealed as the source of his knowledge. While some scholars have assumed Australia, it seems likely that Watson was sent back to England for boarding school at far too young of an age to have acquired any significant “experience of women.” Now we realize that he must have been referring to the Americas, further strengthening the plausibility of the Bermuda Manuscript.

  CHAPTER VII: PIERCING THE VEIL

   Watson was clearly fond of the phrase that he used for the title of this chapter, for he concluded his final novel with it (Epilogue, The Valley of Fear).

   Sherlock Holmes was a fan of curaçao, as he mixes it with his coffee while dining at Goldini’s Restaurant (The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans). It is possible that he was introduced to it by Watson.

   Watson was fond of spoiling dogs with lumps of sugar, having also done so with Toby (Chapter VII, The Sign of the Four). For more on Gladstone, see the notes to the Epilogue.

   We now know exactly how Watson was acquainted with Mr. Hilton Soames, and he would renew this association when in 1895 when Soames is forced to consult with Holmes (The Adventure of the Three Students). There is of course, no College of St. Luke’s at either Oxford or Cambridge Universities, so Watson is concealing something here.

   One wonders if the Thurston family estate borders on that of Mr. Elias Openshaw? (The Five Orange Pips).

   Watson tells his tale of the tiger-cub and the double-barreled musket again, in a terser and much more jumbled fashion, to entertain Miss Mary Morstan on their four-wheeler ride across London to the home of Thaddeus Sholto (Chapter III, The Sign of the Four).

   Watson would not record partaking of Tokay again for many years until he and Holmes drank some to celebrate their defeat of the spy Von Bork (His Last Bow). He and Holmes turned down a proffered glass from Sholto (Chapter IV, The Sign of the Four).

   In 1881, Watson still smoked ‘ships’ tobacco (Chapter I, A Study in Scarlet). However, by 1888, he had reverted to the Arcadia mixture of his ‘bachelor days’ (The Crooked Man).

   Unfortunately, Watson would eventually inherit their father’s watch after Henry’s dissolute end (Chapter I, The Sign of the Four).

   Watson and Thurston would remain friends for at least another eighteen years. Billiards was a popular pastime of the Victorian Era, with Justice Trevor even having a billiard-room at his estate (The ‘Gloria Scott’). However, Watson generally did not play, excepting only when he visited Thurston at his club, perhaps getting together to remember their deceased brother / comrade, Henry (The Adventure of the Dancing Men).

   Wax vestas were short matches with thin wax shanks th
eir name derived from Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth. They were made and peddled by a low class of individuals, such as Hugh Boone (The Man with the Twisted Lip).