Chronology part 3

Some more reasoning on my Sherlock Holmes chronology.

• SPEC - April 1883
• COPP - early spring 1884
• BERY - Friday in February 1885
• YELL - Saturday in early spring 1886

"The Speckled Band" has long been undisputed by chronologists. Watson says it occurred in early April 1883, and there's nothing to contradict it. It was published in the Strand in February 1892, and Watson opens by discussing "my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes." Chronologists all pounce on a similar opening in "Veiled Lodger" to calculate the length of Holmes's career, yet they forget that SPEC has this reference to the past 8 years. 1892 minus 8 years only gets back to 1884. Is there something else he's not counting? 1881 plus 8 years gets us to 1889. Oh, I see. He's not counting some months in early 1881 when he didn't go with Holmes on cases, he's not counting some months in early 1887 when Holmes is away in France solving a big case without him (REIG), and he's not counting some months just after his marriage (before SCAN) when he was busy with his new practice and not visiting Holmes. So assuming those months add up to a year, we can get to from 1881 to 1890. Per "The Final Problem," Watson barely saw Holmes for 3 cases in 1890, and then didn't see Holmes early the next year. Watson only saw Holmes because of Moriarty's threat from April to May 1891 and that wasn't a case so much as an escape to continental Europe. That's why he's not counting that year. So those are the years that he considers himself Holmes's biographer. Keep that in mind for when he recalculates for us in VEIL later. Odd how it's always the early months in the year that he misses recording cases.

Chronology part 2

Now the next part:

• STUD - March 1881, see my notes on the Orontes troopship and the weekday.
• RESI - October 1881 based on the original Strand text, before the mind-reading scene was grafted on from CARD. Or October 1886, if Watson is fibbing to protect Trevelyan. The Worthingdon bank gang were sentenced to 15 years and got out way too early.

Written in 1886 and published in December 1887, A Study in Scarlet is the first novel in which we ever meet Holmes and Watson. It's greatly entertaining in the beginning chapters, but it has a structural flaw. Half the novel breaks off from the Brixton mystery to suddenly flashback to America to explain a motive for the murderer; he apparently wanted revenge on two Mormons, but all Mormon society in general is depicted as an evil murderous cult. This is not even framed as a flashback from Jefferson Hope's point of view; it's an omniscient 3rd person narrator describing events happening to John Ferrier and his adopted daughter Lucy, survivors of a wagon train to the West. Some readers are fine with the Mormon section while others prefer to skip over it to get back to Holmes and Watson. Whatever suits you. It's just a melodrama derivative of other anti-polygamy novels of the time period, and Doyle eventually gave an apology to Mormons. Unfortunately, the break in the London narrative allows Conan Doyle to lose the thread of his plot and forget about the dead dog in the sitting-room.

Chronology part 1

So now I'll begin explaining the reasoning behind my chronology in more detail, taking a few stories at a time. I'm not sure how many parts this will take to do all 60 stories. This is the chunk I'll try to tackle now.

• GLOR - Summer 1875 when Holmes solves the case. Maybe 1885 when Holmes tells the story to Watson "one winter's night"
• MUSG - July 1879 when Holmes solves the case. Holmes tells the case to Watson on another winter's night, after having told GLOR.

First, "Gloria Scott" is a well known mess, almost as bad as Sign of Four with its fucked up dates. There's actually 3 different time periods in this story: 1) the "winter's night" when Sherlock Holmes decides to tell Watson the story of his first case 2) the year in college when Sherlock was friends with Victor Trevor and "solved" the "mystery" such as it was, and 3) the year that James Armitage participated in a fatal ship mutiny, a scandalous past for which Hudson blackmailed him. These 3 time periods are all fighting each other, creating a headache for any chronologist. I mean, there's even a 4th time period, if you count Watson's present narration quoting Holmes's narration of the "Gloria Scott" case. Conan Doyle for some reason likes this nested flashback device, and he gives too little time for the past flashback to take place; he doesn't care about such details if he can just tell a "ripping good yarn" of an adventure.

Sherlock Holmes Chronology

Ok here's the final timeline I've made after rereading the entire canon and making notes on dates. This does not apply to any fanfic I've written, which play by their own rules. This is just what I've worked out from the Holmes stories themselves, but attempting to make chronological sense. I will use the four-letter abbreviations by Jay Finley Crist, to save typing.

In the "Adventures" stories, Holmes and Watson keep referring between cases as if they happened in order, but I ignore those references as Watson self-promoting, just like in SIGN he keeps referring to STUD as if it was recent, rather than years ago, and pretends that the Baker Street Irregulars haven't aged. As I said before, Watson lies out of discretion. In SPEC for example, Watson specifically states that he could not publish it until after the lady (Helen Stoner) died. In other cases, the principle people have not yet died, so Watson could be changing names and dates out of discretion for the clients. That's the only way to make GLOR make sense, that Watson substituted the Crimean War from 1855 instead of a war from 1845, so that the real Victor Trevor cannot be identified. Holmes could have asked Watson to do so, for the sake of his college friend.

Even if we assumed that Watson was honest, the dates would not make sense. For example, Watson claims that SCAN occurred on March 20, 1888, then he leaves IDEN undated other than a reference to the King of Bohemia some weeks ago. But REDH refers to Mary Sutherland's case (that is, IDEN) being just "the other day" even though REDH is in autumn 1890. How can IDEN be just weeks after March 1888, yet just "the other day" before 1890? (Unless there was some second case for the King of Bohemia, in 1890, for which Holmes accepted a gaudy snuffbox for payment.) Thus these references between stories can't be relied upon. It's dramatic license pretending that Holmes is commenting as each story is published. Holmes after all faked his death in May 1891, and Watson published the short stories starting in July 1891, after the presumed death.

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Get out the vote

Early voting has started for some municipal and school board elections, but today is a state holiday called San Jacinto Day. Apparently it's the day the white Texans defeated Santa Anna and got independence from Mexico. I mean, the fact that Texas history books pretend that this was some noble war for freedom rather than a hostile takeover because they wanted to keep slaves while Mexico outlawed slavery, is a sign of how screwed up Texas is. The white guys deliberately moved to Tejas knowing the existing laws; they intended to manifest destiny themselves into taking over the place. Nobody forced them to come here and fight at the Alamo, or anything. Fucking colonizers.

So I'll be voting tomorrow, trying my best to elect Democrats where I can. Virginia is having a special redistricting election today, so vote Yes, if you can!

Earth Day is tomorrow. I hope it's not too late to save the world despite all the US fuckery. Many other countries are still fighting climate change at least. Hungary ousted Orban at least. And the Onion is taking over Infowars, hooray! Now if only we can stop this stupid war and Israel's war crimes.

CBS Radio HOUN, SIGN, STUD, and REDH

I've listened to more CBS Radio Mystery Theater episodes. (The Sherlock Holmes episodes most often star Kevin McCarthy and Court Benson, but according to Russell's comment here they use different actors in some episodes. These adaptations are written by Murray Burnett (I think the same guy who co-wrote the play that was the basis for the movie Casablanca). Burnett makes some minor changes in each story, like changing Mrs. Barrymore to Mrs. Harrison, and cutting some other characters from Hound of the Baskervilles. That seems somewhat logical, to cut a novel-length story down, but other changes are weird, and the comments by the host E. G. Marshall are sometimes eccentric and wrong. For example, at the end of Sign of Four, Marshall claims that Doyle never killed off Watson's wife Mary. Technically he may be right that Watson never makes clear what his "bereavement" was in "Empty House", but Watson then moves back into Baker Street by the next story, so something tragic must have happened.

There are some good edits, like dropping the Mormon plot from A Study in Scarlet, changing Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson to members of a gambling club. Burnett also cuts out mentions of the Baker Street Irregulars from both STUD and SIGN, and he cuts Jonathan Small's confession from SIGN. The description of Tonga is made to be a little less racist, though he's still called a savage. At the end, Holmes even comes to tell Watson that Small dumped the Agra treasure in the Thames, and he actively encourages Watson to propose to Mary Morstan. But in the "Red-Headed League," there's a strange subplot added about Jabez Wilson falling in love with a woman, and also being told by letter that he must go to Surrey for the League to debate whether to ban him because he's not married. These might be interesting, but the story ends abruptly with no resolution to whether the woman was in on John Clay's plot.

These are overall very quirky adaptations, just like the "Speckled Band" one I listened to before.