Holmes and Watson (3 page)

During this period, Watson was himself a medical student at Bart’s and he was probably present at some of the classes which Holmes attended, although they never became acquainted. However, they may well have passed each other on the stairs leading up to the chemistry laboratory or watched the same anatomy demonstrations. They may even, without knowing it, have sat together reading in the library or examining the jars of specimens in the Pathological Museum.

Apart from these courses at Bart’s, Holmes’ time was taken up with conducting his own chemical experiments at his lodgings, where he had presumably set up a work-bench similar to the one he was later to install at 221B Baker Street. He was also perfecting his skills in other areas.

Throughout his professional life, Holmes stressed the importance to a detective of a knowledge of the history of crime. ‘Everything comes in circles,’ he was to tell Inspector MacDonald, whom he advised to shut himself up for ‘three months and read twelve hours a day’ into the subject. No doubt, this advice was based on personal
experience of his time at Montague Street before his practice was established and he had the leisure for such sustained reading.

‘All knowledge comes useful to a detective,’ was another of his maxims, and it was probably also during these years that he made a serious study of tobacco on which he wrote a monograph: ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos’. This may have been published while he was still at Montague Street. It was certainly in print by March 1881, the date of the Study in Scarlet case. Two other articles published in the
Anthropological Journal
on the subject of ears may also belong to this period. If not, Holmes would have carried out the research while a student at Bart’s.

Over the years, he was to publish other articles and monographs on codes and cyphers in which he analysed 160 different types, on tattoos, on the influence of a man’s trade on his hands, and on footprints, a special interest of his which, as has already been suggested, may have stemmed from a boyhood hobby.

‘There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footprints,’ he was to inform Watson.

From such prints he was able to tell not only the type of footwear a suspect was wearing but also his height from the length of his stride. Holmes was to put this skill to use in numerous cases and, in his monograph on the subject, was to add some remarks about the use of plaster of Paris in taking impressions of the prints.

Other specialised subjects in which he took a professional interest and which no doubt he studied during these years were the dating of documents, watermarks in paper, the analysis of handwriting and perfumes, and the study of different makes of bicycle tyres. He also made himself familiar with the types used by newspaper printers and, at one stage, he considered writing monographs on typewriters and their own distinctive print as well as the use of dogs in detection.

His writing activities were not confined only to the subject of crime. Several years later, in November 1895, when in the middle of the inquiry into the theft of the Bruce-Partington plans, a case of national importance, he was working on a monograph on the polyphonic motets of Orlandus Lassus, the sixteenth-century German composer, which was published privately and was considered by the experts to be the last word on the subject.

But, above all, he studied his fellow human beings, a subject on which he was to publish a magazine article entitled ‘The Book of Life’ in which he asserted that a man’s whole history, as well as his trade or profession, could be deduced from his appearance. It was a skill which, as we have seen, he had already demonstrated to Victor Trevor’s father with such unfortunate results. As Watson read the article soon after meeting Holmes, it was almost certainly written and probably published while Holmes was still living in Montague Street.

Some at least of these early monographs were later translated into French by François le Villard, a French
detective who also consulted Holmes about a case involving a will. As M. le Villard corresponded with Holmes in French, this is further proof of Holmes’ familiarity with the language.

This exchange of ideas was not just in one direction. Holmes was to become an enthusiastic admirer of the Bertillon system for identifying criminals. Devised by Alphonse Bertillon, who was Chief of Criminal Investigation with the Paris police force from 1880, it was based on detailed descriptions, photographs and precise bodily measurements. It was eventually superseded by fingerprinting.

The use of disguise was another aspect of detection which Holmes must have studied during this period. He was a natural actor, capable of taking on a role so convincingly that Watson was later to state that ‘his very soul seemed to vary with each fresh part he assumed’. Even old Baron Dowson, for whose arrest Holmes was responsible, said of him on the night before he was hanged that ‘what the law had gained the stage had lost’. Among the many disguises Holmes was to adopt during his career were those of a plumber, an elderly Italian priest, a sailor and an old woman.

William S. Baring-Gould has suggested that between 1879 and 1880 Holmes was touring the United States of America as an actor with the Sasanoff Shakespearean Company. There is no evidence in the canon to support the theory. On the contrary, all the available information tends to show that Holmes was fully occupied and living
in Montague Street during these years. Nor was there any need for him to take to the professional stage to learn the art of disguise. There were plenty of retired or out-of-work actors in London who could have taught him how to fix on a wig or false moustaches and to apply greasepaint.

But it wasn’t all work and study. London offered plenty of opportunities for diversion and amusement in the way of plays, operas, concerts and music-hall entertainments. Although there is no evidence in the canon to suggest he ever went to the theatre or music-hall, he certainly attended operas and concerts. He was familiar with St James’s Hall in Westminster, for he was to discuss its acoustics with Watson. It was there that he heard Wilhelmine Norman-Néruda play the violin at concerts given by Sir Charles Hallé, whom she later married. Holmes admired her bowing technique and the vigour of her performances. However, other
concert-goers
must have found his habit of beating time to the music with one hand annoying, although, as Holmes kept his eyes shut, he was probably quite unaware of their reaction.

And if the price of a concert or opera ticket was beyond his means while he was struggling to establish himself professionally, there were plenty of other ways he could amuse himself for nothing.

Holmes enjoyed walking and it was during his time in Montague Street that he began the habit of taking long walks about the capital, familiarising himself with its streets, particularly the slum areas of the East End with its docks and with the gin shops and opium dens of Limehouse.

He also became acquainted with the second-hand shops in and around Tottenham Court Road, for it was here that he bought his Stradivarius violin, worth at least five hundred guineas, for fifty-five shillings (£2.75p) from a Jewish broker. Today it would be worth many more times this amount.

For a man interested in antiquarian books, there were the booksellers as well, although at this stage in his career Holmes may not yet have been able to afford to indulge his hobby of collecting unless he was lucky enough to find a bargain, such as the little brown-backed volume of
De Jure Inter Gentes
, published in Liége in 1642, which he found on a stall selling second-hand books and which he later showed to Watson.

But business was picking up. Between 1878 and the last months of 1880, at least eight more cases came his way. As he was later to tell Watson that his practice became ‘considerable’, there were undoubtedly more which he failed to mention. Those he listed were the Tarleton murders and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, as well as the inquiries involving an old Russian woman, the club-footed Ricoletti and his abominable wife, and a particularly curious investigation which concerned an aluminium crutch. Unfortunately, Holmes has given no further details about these cases.

Other clients included a Mrs Farintosh, who consulted him about an opal tiara, and a Mr Mortimer Maberley, whom Holmes was able to help over a ‘trifling matter’ and whose widow later requested his advice over the sale
of her house, the Three Gables. A Mrs Cecil Forrester also asked for his assistance. Although her case was straightforward, involving only a minor domestic complication, Mrs Forrester was to play an important part in Watson’s future, for it was through her that Miss Mary Morstan heard of Holmes and several years later came to consult him about a much more complex problem of her own. Some of these cases came, as he told Watson, from private detective agents who turned to him for help when they found themselves in difficulties and whom Holmes charged for his services.

It is clear from even the limited list he gave Watson that Holmes’ reputation as a private consulting detective was spreading far outside the circle of his former varsity acquaintances and that he was considered expert enough to be consulted, presumably by the police, over such serious crimes as murder.

It is not known when Scotland Yard first asked Holmes for his assistance, but it was before the end of 1880, by which date he was already acquainted with Inspector Lestrade and was helping him with a forgery case. This investigation, which lasted into the early part of 1881, was probably one of the last Holmes undertook while at the Montague Street lodgings. His attitude towards what he called the ‘Scotland Yarders’ was contemptuous and shows all the arrogance of a young man aware of his own superior intelligence. As he grew older and more mature, he was to moderate his opinions. At the time he considered Lestrade and Gregson, whom he also
met during this period, ‘the pick of a bad lot’, quick and energetic but shockingly conventional in their methods. He was exasperated, too, by their professional jealousy and their habit of claiming all the credit when a case was successfully solved.

Watson, with his gift for sketching people in a few vivid words, has given us descriptions of them. Lestrade was a ‘little sallow, rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow’ in contrast to Gregson who was a ‘tall, white-faced,
flaxen-haired
man’.

During these years, Holmes may also have made the acquaintance of Athelney Jones,
*
another Scotland Yard detective, a ‘very stout, portly man’, as Watson describes him. If Holmes met him before the end of 1880, then he was also involved in the Bishopgate jewel case, on which he lectured Jones and his colleagues on its causes, inferences and effects – an occasion which clearly rankled and led Jones several years later to refer to Holmes sneeringly as ‘the theorist’. His comment may well sum up the general attitude of the police at that time towards Holmes and his methods.

Holmes’ disdain was not entirely unjustified. At that time, senior police officers came up through the ranks and their standard of education was not high, compared with Holmes’. Nevertheless, one can appreciate how Lestrade, an officer of twenty years’ experience, must have felt when
taught his business by a young man who was himself only in his twenties. Watson was right in thinking that at times Holmes was bumptious.

Watson has given us many descriptions of Holmes, the most detailed the one he drew of him soon after their first meeting. He was, Watson writes, rather above six feet in height and ‘so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller’. His eyes were ‘sharp and piercing … and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination’.

Over the years, Watson was to add further touches to this description, referring to Holmes’ deep-set, grey eyes; his narrow features; his dark, heavy eyebrows; his black hair, thin lips and his high, quick and ‘somewhat strident voice’.

Physically, Holmes was strong, especially in the hands, although, when necessary, he had ‘an extraordinary delicacy of touch’. Watson also states that Holmes’ senses were ‘remarkably acute’. Holmes had trained himself to see in the dark and was capable of hearing even the slightest sounds.

Towards the end of 1880 Holmes decided to look for other lodgings. He does not say what prompted this decision. Perhaps, now that his clientele was expanding, he needed more space. Or there may have been difficulties with his landlord or landlady or with other lodgers. He may even have been asked to leave. Many years later,
Holmes was to tease Watson on this very subject when they were lodging in one of the university towns.
*

‘What with your eternal tobacco, Watson, and your irregularity at meals, I expect that you will get notice to quit, and that I shall share in your downfall.’

This could be a wryly humorous reference to his own experience.

He cannot have been an easy tenant, with clients coming and going, quite apart from his own eccentric life-style, which included playing the violin at all hours and conducting chemical experiments in his sitting-room. As Watson was to discover, the stench from these could at times be offensive.

The need to move must have come at an inconvenient time. Not only was the number of clients increasing but Holmes was busy working at the chemistry laboratory at Bart’s on an experiment which, if successful, would be ‘the most practical medicolegal discovery for years’. This was a new method for testing the presence of blood in even a highly diluted form.
†

Nevertheless, he decided to look for new lodgings at a reasonable rent, bearing out his own statement that although his practice was by this time considerable, it
was ‘not very lucrative’. As someone who preferred his own company, he would certainly, given the choice, have rather lived alone. But, as he was to discover, finding the right accommodation at a price he could afford was not to prove easy.