Holmes and Watson (7 page)

The front door opened into a passage from where the staircase rose to the upper floors and a narrower set of steps led down to the basement.

The ground floor (American first floor) consisted of
two main rooms, the original front and back parlours. As we shall see later in the chapter, Mrs Hudson probably received between £208 to £260 a year from letting off the three upper rooms, not a large income to cover household expenses which included grocery bills, the wages of at least one servant and the payment of ground rent, and she may have augmented this sum by letting out the front room to a commercial tenant, such as a dressmaker. If she did so, there is no reference to one in the canon. However, it would seem that she kept the back parlour for her own use as a sitting-room, which she also made available as a waiting-room for Holmes’ clients. There are several references to such a room and, according to the occupation of the rest the house, it was the only one which would have been free for such a purpose.

It is unlikely there were any other private tenants. Watson never refers to any and the general impression he gives is of Holmes and himself being the only lodgers.

From the hall, seventeen steps led up to the first or drawing-room floor which, like the ground floor, consisted of two rooms, a large one at the front and a smaller back room opening from it. When the houses were first built in the eighteenth century, these two rooms were connected by a pair of folding doors which, when opened back, would have made one large L-shaped area. When Holmes and Watson moved into the lodgings, these doors had already been removed, the opening bricked up and plastered over, and a single door put in their place.

Watson describes the sitting-room as being ‘light and
airy and illuminated by two broad windows’. The use of the word ‘broad’ is a little confusing. As we have seen, the windows were sash and were long and narrow rather than of broad proportions. Watson may have been referring to the fact that they were larger than those on the bedroom floors above. Readers are again referred to Appendix Two in which the vexed matter of the bow window, to which Watson also refers, is examined.

Watson also remarks that the sitting-room was ‘cheerfully furnished’. From references scattered throughout the canon, it is possible to establish what this furniture comprised. Although individual items may have been changed over the years, it is unlikely that Mrs Hudson went to the expense of refurnishing the lodgings entirely. After he had left Baker Street, Watson writes fondly of returning to the familiar rooms as if delighted at finding them exactly as he had left them.

We know that there was a sofa, two armchairs and a basket chair, which probably had loose cushions for extra comfort. As well as a mahogany sideboard, the room also contained a table and upright chairs, for it was used as a dining- as well as a sitting-room. Both Holmes and Watson had their own desks, Holmes’ fitted out with pigeon-holes and probably also a roll-top lid. It may have been his own property. In addition, Holmes had a deal bench on which he conducted his chemical experiments and which Watson sometimes refers to as a table. Gas was laid on, so there was no problem in connecting up a Bunsen burner, although water must have been brought to the room in
jugs or buckets from elsewhere in the house, presumably from the kitchen. Holmes’ microscope stood on this bench among the test-tubes, retorts and other paraphernalia.

There was a fireplace with a mirror hanging above it, possibly part of an elaborate wooden overmantel. A coal-scuttle, where Holmes kept his cigars, stood in the fender and bookcases filled the chimney alcoves containing Watson’s modest collection of medical books and Holmes’ more extensive library of reference volumes. These included a copy of the current Bradshaw which contained railway timetables, an
Almanack de Gotha
, listing the genealogies of all the European royal families, a
Whitaker’s Almanac
and his own, personally-compiled commonplace books of newspaper cuttings as well as his encyclopaedias in which he collected any facts which he considered interesting or relevant. Near at hand were Holmes’ pipe-rack and the Persian slipper he used as a tobacco pouch.

The windows were fitted with blinds and also with curtains, probably two sets, one of lace and a heavier pair made of velvet or some other thick material to exclude draughts.

Readers who wish to see what the room may have looked like are recommended to visit the Sherlock Holmes public house in Northumberland Street to the south of Trafalgar Square, where a reconstruction of it is on display upstairs. The pub itself has a strong Sherlockian connection, for it was formerly the Northumberland Hotel, where, it is believed by some commentators, among them William
S. Baring-Gould,
*
Sir Henry Baskerville stayed before travelling to Dartmoor and where two of his boots so mysteriously disappeared.

Or if such a visit is not possible, readers may picture it for themselves on, say, the wild, tempestuous evening in late November 1894 when Inspector Hopkins called on Holmes and Watson at the beginning of the Golden Pince-Nez inquiry. The wind is howling down Baker Street and the rain is beating against the windows but inside all is warm and cheerful, with a bright coal-fire burning in the grate and the gas jets lit, as well as the oil lamps for extra illumination, their yellow glow falling on the room strewn with Holmes’ and Watson’s possessions; mainly Holmes’, it must be admitted. They consist mostly of documents connected with his cases and they lie everywhere, piled up in every corner of the room. He had a horror of destroying papers and over the months they would accumulate until Holmes found the time and energy to docket them and put them away.

Newspapers add to the general untidiness. Holmes was an avid reader of the daily press, particularly the personal advertisements or ‘agony’ columns, as well as the reports on criminal cases. There are references to at least eight London dailies which Holmes regularly studied, including
The Times
and the
Daily Telegraph
, and seven evening papers, among them
The Echo
and the
Evening News
.
Mixed up with the documents and newspapers are relics of the cases he had worked on which, Watson remarks, with a touch of humorous exaggeration, got everywhere, even into the butter-dish.

Apart from the books and possibly also one of the desks, Holmes and Watson introduced other items of their own over the years into the sitting-room, including a gasogene, a curious Victorian invention consisting of two glass globes which produced aerated or soda water; a safe for more confidential papers, and a spirit case or tantalus for bottles of whisky, brandy and so on. Holmes was later to buy a gramophone which he put to good use in recovering the Mazarin stone. By 1898, the date of the case involving the retired colourman, he had had the telephone installed; quite late, as the telephone was introduced into London in 1876 and Bow Street police station was equipped with one by 1889. Perhaps he preferred his privacy to remain undisturbed.

Watson’s contribution was the two pictures of General Gordon and Henry Ward Beecher, referred to in Chapter One.

A door in the interior wall of the sitting-room led to Holmes’ bedroom which was at the back of the house, while another door in the bedroom itself gave direct access to the landing. The only description Watson gives of Holmes’ bedroom is in ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’, a case which occurred much later in November 1890, but the room probably had much the same appearance during this earlier period. Every wall,
Watson writes, was adorned with pictures of celebrated criminals, while the mantelpiece was covered with ‘a litter of pipes, tobacco-pouches, syringes, pen-knives, revolver cartridges, and other debris’.

Apart from the bed, which had a headboard high enough for Watson to conceal himself behind it (‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’), the room must also have contained a chest of drawers and a wardrobe in which Holmes kept his clothes as well as his store of many disguises which he adopted when the need arose.

Later on, Holmes was to make use of the two lumber rooms, presumably in the attic, as extra storage space for newspapers and some of these disguises, for in ‘The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet’, Watson writes of Holmes coming down the stairs after having changed his appearance. Over the years, he also acquired the use of at least five small refuges in different parts of London where he could adopt a disguise without the need to return to Baker Street, as Watson reports in ‘The Adventure of Black Peter’.

While on this subject of apparel, it is worth pausing here to consider what clothes Holmes – and Watson, also – would have possessed.

Conventions of the period demanded that a gentleman dressed according to the occasion. For formal day-wear in town, a frock-coat worn with a topper and a stiff shirt with a wing-collar was considered
de rigueur
. For less formal occasions, a short jacket and a bowler or Homburg hat were acceptable. A dinner or theatre engagement called
for full evening dress of tails, starched shirt and silk hat, worn either with a cloak or a dress overcoat. Tweed suits or jackets and plus-fours were acceptable in the country. Holmes would have worn his famous deer-stalker hat and cape only when travelling or out of town, never in London. Other clothing would have included a smoking-jacket, blazer and flannels and, of course, a dressing-gown, which features in so many of Watson’s accounts. Over the years, Holmes owned at least three, a grey or mouse-coloured one, a blue one and a purple.

Despite his untidiness over papers, Holmes was neat in his personal appearance and Watson refers to his ‘quiet primness of dress’.

Watson’s bedroom was on the second floor (American third) at the back of the house and would have been furnished in a similar fashion to Holmes’ room. There are several references to his coming downstairs to the sitting-room and in ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’, he describes the back yard and its single plane tree, which he could see from his window.

There may not have been gas laid on in the upper floors, for in ‘The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist’, Watson mentions lighting a candle when woken by Holmes in the early hours of the morning. But this may have been easier and quicker than fumbling his way in the dark across the room to light the gas jets which were usually placed on the wall over the fireplace.

Mrs Hudson almost certainly occupied the front bedroom on this floor, while the servant slept on the floor
above. In
A Study in Scarlet
Watson writes of hearing her and the maid passing the sitting-room door on their way upstairs to bed.

There is no reference to a bathroom, although Watson twice mentions taking a bath, but he could have done so in a hip-bath in his bedroom. All the bedrooms would have been equipped with a marble-topped wash-hand stand, complete with a large china bowl and jug. Hot water would have been carried up from the kitchen. Nor is there any reference to a lavatory although, after the cholera epidemic of 1849, a sewer system was installed in the 1860s and by 1881 many houses were connected to the main drainage.

Strangely, for Watson gives detailed accounts of the women he encounters, there is no description anywhere in the canon of Mrs Hudson, apart from one reference to her ‘stately tread’, suggesting she was a dignified, well-built lady. As there is no reference either to a Mr Hudson, William S. Baring-Gould is probably correct in suggesting she was the widow of a prosperous shopkeeper who had invested the money he left her in buying the leasehold of 221 Baker Street with the intention of taking in lodgers, thus providing herself with a steady income.

Certainly, whatever her antecedents, she was a woman of amazing tolerance, putting up with Holmes’ untidiness and irregular life-style, although even her good nature must have been sorely tried when, in one of his ‘queer humours’ as Watson describes them, presumably a manic phase, he carried out revolver practice in the sitting-room,
neatly picking out the letters V. R., for Victoria Regina, in bullet holes in the plaster of one of the walls. One wonders what the neighbours thought of the noise. His habit of keeping the old plugs and dottles from his pipes on one corner of the mantelpiece for his first smoke of the morning or of skewering his unanswered correspondence to the centre of the mantelshelf with a jack-knife cannot have been very endearing either.

One has the impression that Holmes and Watson were Mrs Hudson’s first tenants and that she had not become case-hardened by a succession of lodgers and their peculiar ways. She was to grow very fond of both her gentlemen, especially Holmes, who knew how to charm women when he put his mind to it. When she thought he was seriously ill (‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’), she was genuinely distressed. In later years when he became successful, Holmes was to reward her by increasing the rent he paid to a sum Watson regarded as princely.

It is not known exactly what rent she charged for the set of rooms. In Pascoe’s
London Guide and Directory for American Travellers
, the recommended prices in Baker Street were £1 10s (£1.50p) a week for a single room to £5 for two. As Watson describes the rent as ‘moderate’, she probably charged between £4 and £5 for the three rooms, that is £2 to £2 10s (£2.50p) each, amounting to £208 to £260 a year. This would have included food, cleaning, and possibly also laundry and lighting as well, although they may have had to pay extra for coal. At the end of the
week, Watson would have still been left with £1 17s 6d (about £1.87p) or £1 10s 6d (about £1.52p) for clothes, tobacco, travelling expenses and entertainment. It was not a large sum considering Watson’s rather extravagant habits but, once he had settled down into the lodgings, there was less need for him to go looking for company in such places as the American bar at the Criterion.

Mrs Hudson was a good, plain cook of the Scottish style, as Holmes describes her, which probably meant she provided large helpings of nourishing food but nothing fancy. When he wished to entertain guests, such as Lord St Simon, more lavishly, he sent out for an ‘epicurean little cold supper’ consisting of a brace of cold woodcock, a pheasant, a
pâté de foie gras
pie and bottles of vintage wine. The dinner of oysters and a brace of grouse, served with ‘something a little choice in white wines’, to which he invited Inspector Athelney Jones at the end of the Sign of Four case was probably also supplied by an outside caterer.