The Midwinter Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes: Three Adventures & The Grand Gift of Sherlock

by Craig Janacek

  [149] Bought for fifty-five shillings at a broker in Tottenham Court Road who did not understand that it was worth at least 500 pounds, as related in The Cardboard Box.

  [150] Watson would have expected such a thing from hearing the saga of his friend Percy Phelps, who lost just such a treaty ‘written in the French language’ (The Naval Treaty).

  [151] This story has similarities to the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask, the secreted away identical twin brother of Louis XIV, which was told by Alexandre Dumas in 1850. Perhaps Dumas was inspired by hearing rumors of the plight of Edward VI?

  [152] Simon Renard (1513-1573) was an advisor of Emperor Charles V, and later his son Philip II, of Spain. As ambassador to England he developed extraordinary influence over Mary I. He vigorously promoted her marriage to Philip, and was said by some to be virtually directing English affairs. He first came to London when Edward VI was dying, and was replaced by De Feria in autumn of 1555, although he continued to advise from afar on English affairs until Mary’s death in 1558.

  [153] Watson was not far from the truth. It is possible that at the time he was unfamiliar with the work of the American author Mark Twain, who in 1881 published the novel The Prince and the Pauper, which shares many plot elements with this letter, albeit with a much happier ending. The introduction to that novel runs: “I will set down a tale as it was told to me by one who had it of his father, which latter had it of HIS father, this last having in like manner had it of HIS father — and so on, back and still back, three hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so preserving it. It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition. It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it COULD have happened. It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and credited it.” No other historical source for the switching of Edward VI can be located.

  [154] An obvious paraphrase of the discourse to Horatio (with ‘stranger’ substituted for the correct ‘more’) from Hamlet, Act I, Scene V.

  [155] The Fieschi Letter was discovered in 1878 by a French archivist in a registrar belonging to the Bishop of Maguelonne, preserved in the Archives Departmentales d’Herault. Testing suggests that it is not a forgery. It was written by a priest at Avignon named Manuele Fieschi to Edward III in c.1337. There is some evidence that the following year, his son, Edward III, travelled to Koblenz in the Holy Roman Empire, where he saw his incognito father one last time.

  [156] William II, son of the Conqueror, called ‘Rufus’ or ‘the Red’ for his red face, ruled from 1087-1100. While hunting in the New Forest near Brockenhurst he was killed by an arrow through his lung. His younger brother, Henry, abandoned the body in the woods and rode straight for the capital at Winchester in order to secure the treasury and have himself elected king the following day. Needless to say, Henry I has been long suspected of masterminding the ‘wayward’ arrow.

  [157] Richard II was imprisoned at Pontefract Castle near the end of 1399. There, probably by the orders of Henry IV, he was murdered either directly or by starvation. However, contemporary rumors persisted that he escaped and survived, and a man calling himself Richard served as a figurehead for continued resistance to the rule of Henry until ‘Richard’s’ death in 1419. He was buried as a king at a Dominican friary in Stirling.

  [158] The 12 and 9 year-old sons of Edward IV, Edward and Richard vanished from the Tower of London in 1483. Popularly believed to have been murdered by Sir James Tyrrell, acting under the orders of their uncle Richard III, the more plausible modern theory lays the blame at the feet of the usurper Henry VII. This forms the plot of Josephine Tey’s novel The Daughter of Time (1951).

  [159] Perkin Warbeck was a pretender to the throne of England during the reign of Henry VII. He claimed to be Richard, Duke of York and younger son of Edward IV, who escaped from the Tower. His claim was supported by Margaret of York, Edward IV’s sister. After starting a rebellion against Henry VII, he was captured and executed upon the Tyburn tree on 23 November 1499. This forms the plot of a novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, entitled The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830).

  [160] On 8 September 1560, the estranged wife of Lord Robert Dudley, ‘favorite’ of the Queen, was found with a broken neck at the foot of a flight of stairs. Although the coroner’s jury ruled it an accidental death, rumors abounded that the Earl ordered her murder in order to clear his path to possibly marrying the Queen. Elizabeth eventually decided to never wed, and contemporary scholars doubt Dudley’s role in Amy’s death. However, this was the plot for Sir Walter Scott’s popular novel Kenilworth (1821).

  [161] Watson is of course referring not to the American Civil War, but to the English one from 1642-51, fought between the Roundheads of Oliver Cromwell and the Cavaliers of the King (initially Charles I, and then Charles II after his father’s execution).

  [162] Such as time has obviously not yet come, since I am unable to confirm the tale of the Renard Letter by any source other than Watson’s manuscript. However, it may still be under the protection of the Official Secrets Act, the first of which went into effect on 26 August 1889, presumably at the bequest of Mycroft Holmes. This also may explain why Watson’s recounting of this case was suppressed for so long.

  [163] Holmes says the same thing to Lestrade at the conclusion of The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.

  [164] Although never formally stated, Lestrade appears to be talking about Prince Edward, who also peripherally appears in The Adventures of the Beryl Coronet and the Illustrious Client.

  [165] The exact etymology of the term ‘Boxing Day’ is unclear. It may come from a custom in the late Roman/early Christian era, wherein metal boxes placed outside churches were used to collect special offerings tied to the Feast of Saint Stephen, which falls on 26 December. In Great Britain, it was tradition that since the servants of the wealthy would have to wait on their masters on Christmas Day, they were allowed the next day to visit their own families. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts and leftover food.

  [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 20th 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.”

  [210] Although they have attained a near-legendary reputation, the Baker Street Irregulars headed by Wiggins only appear in the earliest two cases of the Canon (A Study in Scarlet & The Sign of Four) and the case of The Crooked Man (dated to 1889). However, various non-Canonical works suggest that Holmes continued to employ them for many years.

  [211] Limehouse Basin opened in 1820 as an important connection between the Thames and the canal system, where cargoes could be transferred from larger ships to the shallow-draught canal boats. Because ships crews were employed on a casual basis, replacement crews would be found wherever they were available, with foreign sailors in their own waters being particularly prized for their knowledge of currents and hazards in ports around the world. Crews would be paid off at the end of their voyages and, inevitably, permanent communities of foreign sailors became established. At Limehouse, there were colonies of Lascars and Africans from the Guinea Coast, and a Chinatown established by the crews of merchantmen in the opium and tea trades. The area achieved notoriety for opium dens in the late 19th century, but after the devastation of the Second World War most of the Chinese community relocated to the Soho area of London.