Chronology part 9

Chronology of extended visits

• FIVE - late Sept 1888 (refers to Mrs. Watson visiting her mother or aunt; let's say she visited either Mrs. Cecil Forrester or her school friend Kate Whitney from TWIS.)
• HOUN - Oct 1888 (let's say Mrs. Watson is still visiting friends, per T. S. Blakeney)

Similarly to SPEC, FIVE begins with Watson surveying his unpublished records. He says he has notes of Holmes's cases "between the years ’82 and ’90"; I can't figure out why he wouldn't include 1881. (FIVE was first published in November 1891.) But does that mean these are the "eight years" he was talking about in SPEC's introduction? No, 1882 to 1890, inclusive of both ends, is 9 years, not 8 years. Watson, how the heck do you read calendars? Thankfully, Watson then moves on to discussing the year 1887, listing many tantalizing titles and descriptions. He is also implying that this current case FIVE took place in that same year. But of course, nothing's that simple.

Chronology part 8

Chronology explanations of these stories

• GREE - June 20, 1888
• NAVA - late July, 1888
• CROO - summer 1888, maybe August
• SECO - Autumn, 1888. A weird case with 3 different descriptions

Watson first meets Sherlock's brother Mycroft in GREE, after many years of not knowing that he had any family at all. Watson only describes it as a summer evening after tea, and they go to the Diogenes Club at 6 PM. Later Mr. Melas says today is Wednesday. (Odd that we don't get a first name for Melas.) I would set the case pre-marriage, except that Brad Keefauver makes a convincing argument for 1888 based on their astronomical conversation about the obliquity of the ecliptic. He does say that 1887 would be an option too, but that interferes with Watson claiming that 3 months before SIGN was devoid of any cases, while Holmes injected cocaine and morphine 3 times a day. I guess Watson could have come to visit Holmes for an evening in 1888, then get caught up in the case, before returning home. Then Holmes could have passed on the news article to Watson months later about Latimer and Kemp dying in Budapest.

Chronology part 7

Chronology discrepancies in these short stories

• NOBL - October, 1887
• SCAN - March 20-22, 1888
• STOC - June 1888. Watson explains how he bought his Paddington practice months earlier.

First, NOBL was published in April 1892, and Watson refers to the case as a "four-year-old drama" that has been eclipsed by other scandals. That could mean 1888, unless Watson is being approximate or disguising the date. Watson also says that the case took place a few weeks before his own marriage; I have already chosen 1887 for SIGN. Watson speaks of "high autumnal winds" making his war wound ache, though he is vague about which limb has the jezail bullet. The noble client's letter must have arrived while Holmes was out walking alone; it makes an appointment for 4 PM, and Watson says it's 3 PM after Holmes reads the letter to him. (Usually Holmes asks Watson to read to him.) Anyway, Holmes looks up Lord St. Simon in his reference book. He was born in 1846 and is 41 now, implying that the year is 1887 (unless Robert's birthday is after October).

Chronology part 6

Chronology explanations on the novel The Sign of Four, also known as The Sign of the Four

• SIGN - September 7, 1887

There are two schools of thought on Mary Morstan's case. There are people who set the story in 1888, though they may disagree on the month, and there are those who set the story in 1887. A chronologist has to be careful of this decision, because Watson will get married afterward and move out of Baker Street. Then in the short stories, he'll date many cases to "before my marriage" and "after my marriage," making this choice crucial to placing all the other cases in order.

Chronology part 5

Moving on to dating other Holmes stories:

• REIG - April 1887. The Lyons telegram is the 14th, but the Reigate case starts on the 25th.
• SILV - July 7-12, 1887

REIG has had multiple titles over the years: "Reigate Squire", "Reigate Squires", and "Reigate Puzzle." It depends on what collection or edition you have, what the title will be. This case has one of the more interesting beginnings, because Watson mentions a great international case, concerning the Netherland-Sumatra Company and the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis, which Holmes investigated in France. He was apparently there for two months, working 15 hour days, for four days at a stretch. Yet Watson was not with him, and we are given no explanation for why. It could be that Watson got a medical job and couldn't go to France for that long. (I'm thinking of locum work, filling in for other doctors, rather than a practice of his own.) Brad Keefauver thinks that Watson was romancing a new wife and that Holmes wanted to get away starting in February. But I don't subscribe to theories about Watson constantly getting married, let alone the idea that they were all fake marriages. It could be that Holmes asked Watson not to come, that he secretly planned to use cocaine to sustain that crazy pace, and he knew that Watson would object to the drug.

Chronology part 4

Chronology explanations on the novel The Valley of Fear

• VALL - January 7, 1887

Now this one is definitely complex. This novel has a well known conflict with "The Final Problem" in that Watson knows all about Moriarty in VALL, but in FINA, set a few years later, he's never heard of Moriarty. Holmes also talks about the professor so much to Scotland Yard that they think he has a bee in his bonnet about Moriarty. The novel also has a chronology problem in its American flashback featuring a Pinkerton investigating the Scowrers 20 years ago, which is not enough time for him to lose his first wife Ettie Shafter, get rich with Cecil Barker in California, and be chased by criminals out of America to England. It's really a shame that Conan Doyle keeps using this long flashback format, because he almost never gets the time periods to mesh well with the main text. Oh, also Doyle based the Vermissa Valley story on the real life Pinkerton John McParland investigating the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania; it's an example of their union-busting deeds, and Doyle doesn't see the Pinkertons as villains at all. He thinks of them as clever, brave detectives righteously taking down an evil criminal gang, as if the Mollies were equivalent to the KKK. He even features another heroic Pinkerton in "The Red Circle" story.