Close To Holmes

by Alistair Duncan

  J. M. Barrie – Author of Peter Pan and friend of Arthur Conan Doyle (c1890)

  Turning to restaurants, Holmes and Watson appear to rather have enjoyed dining out and one of the mentioned establishments was Simpson’s. This restaurant, which is still in business today, features in The Dying Detective and The Illustrious Client. In the latter story Holmes and Watson dine there on no less than two occasions.

  Simpson’s Restaurant (2008)

  The site was originally home to the Fountain Tavern which itself was home to an early eighteenth century literary group called The Kit-Cat Club. In 1828 one Samuel Reiss opened the Grand Cigar Divan on the site which became known as a famous cigar and coffee house. It was a club in all but name and gentlemen paid one guinea a year for access to the facilities. One of the most popular pastimes on the site was chess. This practice developed to such an extent that it became known as ‘The Home of Chess’ and Howard Staunton (1810-1874), the first English world chess champion, was a visitor35. Other illustrious visitors over the years included Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw and William Gladstone.

  A drawing of The Grand Cigar Divan as it would have appeared at around 1828

  In 1848 Samuel Reiss joined forces with caterer John Simpson. The site was subsequently renamed ‘Simpson’s Grand Divan Tavern’. It specialised in British produce and developed the practice of wheeling joints of meat to the tables to be carved in front of the customer. In the 1890s it was demolished but was rebuilt and opened again in 1900. These dates are interesting as they suggest that Holmes and Watson dined there before and after it was rebuilt. According to a number of sources, The Dying Detective was set in 1890 which would have been only a short time before the demolition. The Illustrious Client is often stated to have been set in 1902. This means that modern day visitors to the restaurant could well be dining in a building that has changed little since Holmes’s last documented visit.

  Howard Staunton c1860

  Moving from restaurants to hotels, the Savoy Hotel was opened in 188936 and is still today one of London’s most prestigious hotels. The architect was Thomas Edward Collcutt (1840 – 1924) who was also responsible for the design of the Palace Theatre in Cambridge Circus. The most famous manager of the hotel was César Ritz (1850 – 1918) who went on to found the hotel that bears his name.

  Entrance to the Savoy Hotel as seen from the Strand (2008)

  The Savoy enjoyed the patronage of a number of famous guests including Charlie Chaplin and Oscar Wilde. As we have already seen the latter had met Conan Doyle in 1889 at the Langham Hotel. Wilde was also to meet at the Savoy on a number of occasions with Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas and these meetings were an important feature of Wilde’s later trial for ‘gross indecency’.

  Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony (1882)

  Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842 – 1900) was on the Savoy board of directors. He is better known as the composing half of Gilbert and Sullivan. Sullivan and the Savoy can both lay claims to connections with Conan Doyle.

  Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan

  Around 1892 J.M Barrie put forward the idea for a play to be entitled Jane Annie. Initially there were hopes that Sullivan would provide the score but he passed on it and one of his former students took on the project instead. While working on the play Barrie suffered a breakdown and turned to Conan Doyle for help.

  Conan Doyle was happy to assist but the resultant play was a flop37 that closed after a mere fifty performances. The two men however remained friends and Barrie would be present at Conan Doyle’s wedding reception when he married Jean Leckie in 1907 (see earlier).

  A view of the Cecil and Savoy Hotels from the Thames (early 1900s). The Savoy is on the right

  The Savoy’s link to Conan Doyle is a lot firmer. Conan Doyle attended a dinner at the hotel on June 18th 1904 that was given in honour of Lord Roberts38. Roberts (1832 – 1914) was a Field-Marshal in the British Army and the founding president of the Pilgrims Society, a society that promoted goodwill between Great Britain and the United States.

  Field-Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts

  Roberts fought in the Boer War and it was about this war that Conan Doyle wrote in his book The Great Boer War (1900) in which he explained the war as even-handedly as possible in order to contradict a lot of the anti-British sentiment that the war had created. It was this book or rather the earlier pamphlet on which it was based, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, that Conan Doyle believed earned him his Knighthood in 1902.

  Roberts also had the distinction of a brief mention in a Sherlock Holmes story. The adventure entitled The Blanched Soldier, which was published in 1926 and set in 190339, contains the mention of Roberts’ name towards the very end. This was quite apt as the story concerned soldiers who had fought in the Boer War.

  The final site of interest on the Strand before it connects with Fleet Street is the church of St. Clement Danes. The building of this church was completed in 1682 by none other than Sir Christopher Wren. On November 24th 1907 a memorial service took place here to mark the death three days previously of Conan Doyle’s friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson40. This ceremony was held at the same time as Robinson’s actual funeral which took place in his home town of Ipplepen, Devon.

  St. Clement Danes church (2006)

  31 The Face of London by Harold P. Clunn.

  32 The Face of London by Harold P. Clunn.

  33 A possibility is that the name stems from the village of Marsham in Norfolk. In 1903 Conan Doyle stayed at the Hill House Public House in Happisburgh and while there he wrote The Dancing Men. The Literary Norfolk website states that this was a motoring holiday so it is possible that he passed by or through Marsham or perhaps simply saw it on a local map and then decided to use the name in The Abbey Grange which was published the following year.

  34 Source: Sherlock Holmes – The Published Apocrypha by Jack Tracy

  35 Source: Simpsons official Website

  36 Source: Official Savoy Group Website

  37 An initial review of the play appeared in the May 15th 1893 issue of the Times.

  38 Source: On the Trail of Arthur Conan Doyle: An Illustrated Devon Tour by Brian Pugh and Paul Spiring. The event was reported in the Times (20th June 1904).

  39 The date is implied when James Dodd refers to the fact that 1901 was ‘just two years ago’.

  40 Source: bfronline.biz.

  The Lyceum Theatre and William Gillette

  In 1772 the Society of Arts founded an exhibition and concert room on the site of the present theatre. However it was not until 1809 that the Lyceum came into its own. The destruction by fire of the nearby Theatre Royal saw its company move to the Lyceum and the Lord Chamberlain granted it the licence it required in order to present plays. The site was rebuilt to the design of architect Samuel Beazley, (1786 – 1851) and opened in 1815. Unfortunately, fifteen years later, the Lyceum suffered the same fate as the Theatre Royal and burned down. Four years later, having been rebuilt, the theatre reopened. Fire struck again seventy years later and the current theatre was built and opened in 1907.

  The Lyceum enjoys three links to Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. The first link, chronologically, comes from a visit to London made by Conan Doyle in 1874 when he was fifteen years old41. During his stay he visited the Lyceum to watch a performance of Hamlet. It is certainly reasonable to assume that the theatre left a lasting impression as he proceeded to use it for a rendezvous in his second Holmes adventure The Sign of Four (1890). In this story Holmes, Watson and Mary Morstan wait for contact with Mary’s mysterious benefactor at the third pillar from the left outside of the theatre. The story, according to most sources, is set in 188842 which means the theatre would have been the one prior to its present incarnation.

  The final link is a factual one and concerns Holmes’s appearance on stage. In 1901 the American actor William Gillette brought his play Sherlock Holmes, which had opened in the United States in 1899, to London. It began with a seven month run at the Lyce
um before it went on tour. Its origins lay in the decision by Conan Doyle to sell the rights to the name Sherlock Holmes to Broadway producer Charles Frohman in return for royalties from anything in which it was used43.

  This was followed by Conan Doyle’s decision to write a Sherlock Holmes play himself. This was duly sent to Frohman who did not think it good enough to put into production. Frohman travelled to England to tell Conan Doyle this in person and on the same visit suggested that Gillette rewrite it. It is not known to what extent the play was altered as the original manuscript has been lost. It is presumed by some sources that it burned along with Gillette’s first draft in the fire that consumed the Baldwin Hotel, San Francisco in 1898 where Gillette was staying while appearing in the play Secret Service. Conan Doyle enjoyed top billing on the end result so it could be presumed that some part of his original vision remained intact even if it was substantially rewritten.

  William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes

  Maude Fealy (1881 – 1971) as Alice Faulkner – Sherlock Holmes’s love interest (Courtesy of Roger Johnson)

  Cast list for original 1901 production taken from 1922 edition of French’s Acting Edition44

  The play was a significant success, attracting such names as the Prince of Wales, and ran for two hundred and sixteen performances before going on tour. Such was the demand by audiences, especially in the United States, that Gillette spent much of the rest of his life giving further performances. Vincent Starrett, author of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, said that it was ‘An absurd, preposterous, and thoroughly delightful melodrama, Mr. Gillette’s “Sherlock Holmes” is possibly as Frederic Dorr Steele has said of it, the best realization of a novelist’s conception ever produced upon the stage.’

  Lyceum Theatre, Wellington Street (2008)

  41 Source: Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes by Andrew Lycett. The same events are also mentioned in The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by John Dickson Carr.

  42 Once again it is D. Martin Dakin’s A Sherlock Holmes Commentary and Leslie Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes that agree on this date.

  43 Source: Sherlock Holmes – The Published Apocrypha by Jack Tracy.

  44 Samuel French Ltd who published this copy of the script had their offices at 26 Southampton Street. This was a relatively short distance from the offices of The Strand Magazine at numbers 8 – 11.

  Sherlock Holmes and the railways

  During the course of his adventures Sherlock Holmes and Watson made frequent use of the railways. We have already covered Charing Cross Station but this was by no means the only station mentioned in the stories.

  Victoria Station c.1910

  Victoria station is the gateway to vast swathes of Kent and the South coast of England. Its principal claim on the Holmes enthusiast is that it is from here that Holmes and Watson catch a train as part of their efforts to elude Professor Moriarty in the adventure The Final Problem (1893).

  Although it is one large building it was once effectively two stations. The eastern side continues to serve Kent and the western side serves Surrey and Sussex. The western side opened on October 1st 186045, was the most impressive and incorporated the Grosvenor Hotel. The eastern half was a considerably less imposing wooden fronted building which opened on August 25th 1862. The dividing wall was removed (in part) in 1924 and the platforms were renumbered from east to west.

  Victoria Station in 2008

  The station has twice been successfully targeted by terrorists. On the morning of Tuesday February 26th 1884 members of the Irish group called Fenians blew up a station cloakroom46 and in 1991 the IRA exploded a bomb in a litter bin which killed one person and injured thirty-eight.

  Kings Cross Station. The platform shown is number eight. Trains inbound from Cambridge often come into this platform. Holmes and Watson may have arrived at this point on their return from The Missing Three-Quarter (2008)

  Kings Cross Station opened on October 14th 185247 having been constructed during the previous two years. When it opened it had eight platforms but only numbers one and eight were used, the others were used purely as sidings. It is rumoured that platform eight covers the burial site of Queen Boudicca48, the Queen of the Iceni tribe and the scourge of the Roman Empire.

  Drawing of Kings Cross Station soon after its opening in 1852

  The station was designed by Lewis Cubitt (1799 – 1883) who, with his elder brother Thomas (1788 – 1855), made a significant contribution to London architecture49. Thomas was a leading Master Builder in London and was responsible for building several sites designed by his brother Lewis.

  The father of the Cubitt brothers was a Norfolk farmer and it is therefore apt that Cubitt was responsible for the design of a station that runs trains into West Norfolk50. The Cubitt name is common in Norfolk and features in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Dancing Men. However Conan Doyle’s decision to make Holmes’s client a Cubitt has nothing to with this Cubitt family. In fact he named the character after the Cubitt family that ran the Hill House Public House in which he often stayed during his visits to Norfolk51.

  The link for the Holmes fan lies in the fact that it is from Kings Cross Station that Holmes and Watson travel to Cambridge in their search for Godfrey Staunton in The Missing Three-Quarter.

  Paddington Station is one of the most mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes Canon. Holmes and Watson catch trains from Paddington to places outside of London in three stories – The Boscombe Valley Mystery, Silver Blaze and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Watson and his wife Mary lived near to Paddington Station in the immediate aftermath of their marriage and his link with the station was the means by which the adventure known as The Engineer’s Thumb was brought to Holmes’s notice.

  The station was opened in 1838 but the current building dates from 1854 and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Nine years later the first underground rail line was opened between Paddington and Farringdon and this was to become what is known today as the Metropolitan Line.

  Train in Paddington Station 1914

  Victor Hatherley shows Doctor Watson his injury in his Paddington consulting room.

  As we have come to expect, where there is a station there is a hotel. In this case we have the Great Western Hotel. This hotel was designed by Philip Charles Hardwick, the son of Philip Hardwick (see later) and built by the Cubitts who, as we have seen, were responsible for the building of Kings Cross Station. The hotel, now trading under the name Hilton London Paddington, was built between 1851 and 1854 and from the late nineteenth century until 1983 was run directly by the railway company.

  The Great Western Hotel c1854 from The Illustrated London News

  The Paddington area itself contains a number of interesting connections. One of its most infamous sons (although he was not so at the time) was John Charles Netley.

  John Charles Netley

  Netley (1860 – 1903) was a cabbie and tragically died when he was thrown from his own cab, trampled by his horses and had his head crushed by the vehicle wheels. In 1976 this little known man became famous when the Jack the Ripper ‘Royal Conspiracy Theory’ gained widespread attention courtesy of the author Stephen Knight. The theory alleges that this same John Netley drove the royal surgeon Sir William Gull (see later) around Whitechapel in a coach thus acting not only as an accessory to the murders but also as the means of the killer’s many escapes from justice.

  The area can also lay claim to events connected with St Mary’s Hospital. This hospital, through which Watson could have gained work directly or indirectly, was founded in 1845 and had its own medical school. Sir Alexander Fleming (1881 – 1955) discovered Penicillin in the hospital’s laboratory and Sir Bernard Spilsbury (1877 – 1947), who occasionally conducted research in the same laboratory, was a pioneering British pathologist whose evidence helped to convict many murderers including Dr Crippen.

  Dr Crippen

  St Mary’s Hospital (2008)

  Euston Station c1900

  Euston station,
opened in 1837, was designed by Philip Hardwick (1792 – 1870). It features in three Sherlock Holmes adventures – A Study in Scarlet, The Priory School and The Blanched Soldier. The station had the distinction of being the first inter-city station built in London and, during the time of Holmes and Conan Doyle, it was owned by the London and North Western Railway. Today it is owned by Network Rail.

  During the 1840s the station was improved and extended. One of the principal additions was the great hall which was designed by Hardwick’s son52 and opened on May 27th 1849.

  The Great Hall at Euston Station from around the time it opened in 1849

  In A Study in Scarlet it is from Euston that Drebber and Stangerson plan to take a train to Liverpool before their plans are upset by events. In The Priory School it is from Euston that Holmes and Watson accompany Dr Huxtable to Mackleton, where the school of the title is situated53, so that they can investigate the disappearance of Lord Saltire. Finally, it is in The Blanched Soldier that Holmes, James Dodd and Sir James Saunders travel to Bedfordshire from Euston to investigate the strange behaviour of the Emsworth family.

  Sadly in the 1960s, in what can only be described as an act of historical and architectural vandalism, the station building and arch were demolished54 to make way for a new station which opened in 1968. This station is now the home for Network Rail.

  Euston Station (2004)