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.

The "winter's night" could take place any time after they moved in together in 1881 to 1887 when Watson moved out due to marriage. (1887 is when I dated Sign of Four.) It's not important. The year that Sherlock was at university could be the mid 1870s, depending on his birth year; traditionally Sherlockians say he was born in 1854, but it could be off.) Holmes says he was at college for only two years here, and doesn't say that he took a degree. He'll revisit his college years in "Musgrave Ritual" which is next. In the "Gloria Scott" story, Victor Trevor's father is never given a full name. He's always referred to as Old Turner or by his title of Justice of the Peace; he's a respected gentleman of the area. Maybe we are supposed to assume that his name is Victor Trevor senior, but I'm not sure. They never call young Victor a junior.

Anyway, SPOILER ALERT, Old Trevor turns out to be an ex-criminal James Armitage who changed his name to hide his shameful past. James Armitage was 23 years old when he was put on a ship for transportation to Australia, but then there was a ship mutiny led by a ruthless criminal Jack Prendergast. Armitage and a friend participated in the mutiny, but then objected to some violence, and got off the ship together with others on a lifeboat. But then somebody blew up the ship either by accident or on purpose. With their little boat they rescued a sailor named Hudson before rowing to safety. Armitage and his friend changed their names, made their fortune in Australia, moved back to England, and lived respectably. Armitage specifically states that the mutiny occured in 1855 during the Crimean war and that 30 years passed before Hudson found him and blackmailed him. But 30 years means that the mystery takes place in 1885, which is long after Sherlock got out of college, became a detective, and met Watson. Even if you change it to 20 years time, to set the mystery back to 1875, then there's not enough time for Armitage to make his fortune, go home, and have a 20-year old son Victor. Plus, then he'd only be 43 years old, and Sherlock has kept referring to him as an old man throughout. Even exaggerating, 43 would still be middle-aged, not elderly. So that's the crux of the problem, the 3 different time periods fighting each other.

The only way to resolve the mess is to cut the Crimean War out of it and set the mutiny back to 1845 or so. Some people argue that the Crimean War is essential because Armitage says the ship was not a regular prison ship, but had been pressed into service due to most ships being used in the war. Because it was not a regular prison ship, the mutiny was easier to accomplish. However, in researching the Orontes troopship for Study in Scarlet, I see that other ships can be pressed into special service for one-off voyages. So I'd rather argue that Armitage's mutiny happened in a different war, and it was yet another one-off voyage. The reason Watson reported the wrong war and wrong date on the confession documents, is that he's disguising the case out of discretion. Old Trevor died, but his son Victor Trevor is probably still alive in Terai. Sherlock was friends with Victor, unlike with other clients, so he might not want Watson to dredge up the scandal again and hurt his old friend's feelings by publishing it. Victor might feel betrayed. So Watson misdates the case on purpose. This would also assume that Victor Trevor is not his real name, that all these character names are aliases, and we don't really know what names Trevor, Hudson, and Beddoes used while living in England. Even the name of the ship would be disguised in that case; perhaps the real name started with a V, and that's why the case is listed under V's in Holmes's commonplace books. On the 1845 war, Britain was involved in a lot of colonial wars during their empire, so I find it hard to choose. In one fanfic, I settled on one of the New Zealand wars, the Flagstaff War, just because that's near Australia. But it could be anything around the date. Plus 30 years makes Armitage's death in 1875; it should be late summer or early autumn just before university resumes for Michaelmas term. Victor Trevor doesn't return, leaving for Terai.

Now for "Musgrave Ritual", in which Holmes avoids cleaning the room by telling Watson yet another early case out of his tin box. Here Holmes speaks of his "last years" of college, a slightly different phrase than he used before. This implies that there were "early years" vs. "late years" as if he attended for at least 4 years, rather than only 2 years. Holmes jokes fondly that "these [early cases] were all done prematurely before my biographer had come to glorify me," and some Sherlockians take that to mean that Watson must have published at least one novel for Holmes to call him a biographer here. But I don't see anything wrong with Holmes calling Watson his biographer before publication. Just because he's unpublished doesn't mean he's not doing the work of writing everything down and also gushing about Holmes to everybody. I'm sure he must have glorified Holmes to Stamford and other acquaintances once he learned that Holmes was a detective. Anyway, Holmes makes reference to GLOR and STUD and says that he's famous now. (I still see no problem, because Holmes is famous enough in 1887 that he solves an international case in France in "The Reigate Squires/Puzzle" long before Watson published anything.) Plus in general I ignore references to other cases in my chronology. It's easily Watson self promoting other written works to his readers. I'll say Holmes is telling the story to Watson in 1885, same year as he told GLOR.

Anyway, Holmes talks about living in London in Montague Street after he left university but before he moved in with Watson in Baker Street. He didn't have a lot of cases at first, so he spent a lot of time at the British Museum doing research and stuff. Holmes says "during my last years at the university there was a good deal of talk there about myself and my methods" which seems to imply that Holmes returned to university after the "Gloria Scott" business and told people how he solved it; they all were impressed and brought him cases as a result, though it's still a low number. The third such classmate is Reginald Musgrave whom Holmes hasn't seen for 4 years. So with the confusion about how many years Holmes attended college, that makes this year unclear. But it must at least be 1879, given how I set GLOR in 1875. It could even be 1880, but I want to put more time between this case and Holmes meeting Watson in 1881. Holmes says it's an early case after all.

The problem is I don't know the month or day in 1879. Some Sherlockians work it out based on weather and the shadow of the trees. They even try to find out the month in the Musgrave Ritual. The problem is that the ritual was written in 1640s before England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, so there's a conversion problem, and also New Year used to be the quarter day in March, then New Year was changed to January 1st. So the ritual could be referring to July, or to September. I really can't tell, and it's reminiscent of the July/September problem in SIGN. As I chose September there, I guess I can go with July 1879 here. But the whole thing is ridiculous if the ritual treasure map is just pointing to a cellar in a building rather than actual buried treasure in the dirt. Someone should have found that treasure years ago, with or without Brunton's intellect.

Also the discrepancy in years of college could be resolved if we say that Holmes attended one university (Cambridge) with Victor Trevor, decided to leave there to become a detective, and enrolled in a different university (Oxford) with Reginald Musgrave because he thought that university had more classes useful to him in his chosen career. You'd still have to be careful of the dates to give Holmes enough time in both universities before he meets Watson. In that case, GLOR would have to be pushed back a couple of years to 1873 or so. I think Baring-Gould's theory might have put Holmes in both universities too; it's in the Chronological Table that Les Klinger puts in his Annotated Sherlock Holmes, basing the chronology on Baring-Gould. I reverse the order because people have argued before that Reginald Musgrave would only be at Oxford.