The Canonical Toast to the Second Mrs. Watson: 2011

by Roger Donway


When I accepted the honor of proposing this canonical toast, I was not aware of the extensive literature regarding Dr. Watson’s wives, and therefore I was not aware of the unhappiness that Dr. Watson’s married life had brought him.


There was, I have learned since, a first Mrs. Watson1 who died within fourteen months of assuming her title.2 That was the Mrs. Watson of November ’86 through December ’87. The Mrs. Watson of “Five Orange Pips.”3 The Mrs. Watson who had a mother in England.4  Dr. Watson’s first marriage, to a sickly patient, ended in the lady’s death, which was certainly a misfortune, though perhaps not unexpected. But Dr. Watson’s second marriage, I am convinced, although he tells us merely of his “sad bereavement,” ended in true tragedy.5


The Short Happy Life of Mary Watson


And yet it began with high romance. A woman who can lose the great Agra treasure in one moment and say “Thank God” in the next, because her poverty has brought her a husband, is not just romantic but a hyper-romantic. You will not find such a heroine in Jane Austen.6 You will find her in Victor Hugo and Sir Walter Scott.


But what becomes of such a hyper-romantic lady when she must settle down as the wife of a hard-working doctor? For the answer, we need look no further than Emma Bovary. She seeks the excitement of a flirtation.


I am sorry to speak ill of any lady, but the psychological probability is confirmed by textual evidence. Consider this conversation between the Watsons, in response to a telegram from Holmes asking Watson to come to Boscombe Valley.7


Mrs. Watson: What do you say, dear? Will you go?


Dr. Watson: I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present.


Mrs. Watson: Oh Anstruther would do your work for you.


Mrs. Watson: You have been looking a little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good…


Mrs. Watson: …and you are always so interested in Mr. Sherlock Holmes’ cases.”


You don’t have to be a Sherlock Holmes to perceive that Mrs. Watson wants her husband out of town.


And then there is the fact that Mrs. Watson called her husband “James.”8 If you can remember your years on the dating scene, you know that such slips of the tongue are inevitable when there is more than one “significant other” in your life. Fortunately, single people can usually be honest about such slips. But Mrs. Watson could not. The first time such a slip of the tongue occurred, therefore, she probably made a joke of it, saying that she naturally needed two names for her husband because he was a divine duality: “two persons in one substance.” He was John, the husband of Mary; but he was also James, the Boswell of Sherlock.9 After that, she surely teased him with her joke about two names, to protect herself against future slips.


But all of this raises a question: Why could Mrs. Watson not be honest about her friendship with this James Whoever? We have no reason think that they were lovers.


Well, if you have read Anthony Trollope’s 1869 novel He Knew He Was Right, you will have seen how, in Victorian times, even the most innocent acquaintanceship between a married woman and a respectable bachelor could lead to marital disaster.


And this James fellow, I think, was not wholly respectable. He must have been the kind of fellow who would appeal to Mrs. Watson’s hyper-romanticism: a dashing military man—of good breeding and education—but a bit of a rogue —a man who would talk to a lady about the primitive practices of foreign lands and the naughty doings of London’s demimonde. Worse yet, I expect, he encouraged Mrs. Watson to talk about unseemly things, and to relate especially those stories about England’s criminal underworld that she was gleaning from her husband’s adventures with Sherlock Holmes.


Frailty, thy name is woman.10 Holmes found, in Porlock, the weakest link in Moriarty’s circle. Moriarty found, in the second Mrs. Watson, the weakest link in Sherlock Holmes’s circle. And so, to exploit it, he sent his most trusted henchman: his brother Colonel James Moriarty.11


Of course, Holmes immediately sensed that there was a leak; and soon enough he knew where it was. No doubt, he privately warned Mrs. Watson about the character of her amiable companion. But infatuated ladies do not often listen to interfering friends. Notice, however, that Mrs. Watson absents herself when Sherlock Holmes comes to call.12 Evidently, she could no longer bear to face him.


But she did continue her liaison—for two years. Which is to say: until the supposed death of Sherlock Holmes.


Dawning Awareness, Darkening Shadows


In the note that Holmes wrote at Reichenbach Falls, his final blessing was, of course, on Watson: “my dear fellow.” But recall that his very last sentence also included this: “Pray give my greetings to Mrs. Watson.”


How bizarre.


It’s the sort of a banality one might toss into a hastily written postcard from a seaside resort. Yet Holmes, as he wrote, believed that he was poised at the brink of death, speaking his last words.


“Pray give my greetings to Mrs. Watson”? How on earth could Watson carry out such a commission?


“Hello dear! I’m home! Sherlock’s dead! He says Hi!”


It’s absurd.


No. Though Holmes was never romantic, he was always chivalrous. By his whole fatalistic tone in that letter—and then by his inclusion of that silly pro-forma courtesy—I believe that Holmes was trying to say (without being overheard to say) that he forgave Mrs. Watson.


Unfortunately, she could not forgive herself.


No doubt, she held a final interview with Colonel Moriarty, in which he tried to depict Holmes as a monomaniac. But now she could see through the colonel’s lies. No doubt, she followed intently the trial of the Moriarty gang, in order to understand just how much devilry she had abetted. And it must have made her utterly miserable.


Then, in the Spring of the following year, there fell a horrible conjunction of dates that completely unhinged the guilty mind of Mrs. Watson. May 4th, the first anniversary of Sherlock Holmes’s death (as the world assumed), was precisely the tenth anniversary of the day she had read an advertisement in The Times saying that it would be to Miss Mary Morstan’s advantage to come forward.13 To the hyper-romantic spirit of Mrs. Watson, such a coincidence of dates could be no coincidence. It had to be the workings of some Thomas Hardy–style destiny.


And so, like the Romantic novelist she might have become, Mrs. Watson determined to close the circle of fate—on May 4, 1892—joining in the Thames that fortune whose curse she had, briefly, imagined she could escape.14


In concluding my toast, therefore, I think that I cannot do better than employ the words a Victorian poet wrote for another lady who drowned herself in the Thames:15


Owning her weakness,

Her evil behaviour,

[But] leaving, with meekness,

Her sins to her Saviour


I ask you to join me in a toast to the unhappy Romantic who was: The Second Mrs. Watson.


_________________________



1 William S. Baring-Gould says: “This view [that Watson married three times] is based on researches which demonstrate (conclusively to us, at least) that Watson married for the first time circa November 1, 1886” (The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, vol. 1, p. 328). Baring-Gould bases his belief on the unfinished manuscript Angels of Darkness: “There, it will be recalled, Conan Doyle revealed that Watson had for a time practiced medicine in San Francisco, California, U.S.A. But more than that was revealed: as Mr. John Dickson Carr wrote in his Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (italics ours [i.e., Baring-Gould’s]): ‘Either [Watson] had a wife before he wedded Mary Morstan, or else he heartlessly jilted the poor girl whom he holds in his arms as the curtain falls on Angels of Darkness.’ From what we know of Watson’s character, it is unthinkable that he should have ‘jilted the poor girl’ and your editor is firm in his belief that the first  Mrs. Watson was an American, a girl from San Francisco who was a patient of Watson’s when he briefly practiced medicine there” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 328).


2 In The Valley of Fear (the events of which Baring-Gould dates to January 1888 [Ibid., vol. 1, p. 471]), Watson is apparently unmarried and living at Baker Street. Says Baring-Gould: “The first Mrs. Watson died, probably in late December 1887, but very possibly early in January 1888, and Watson returned to Baker Street” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 330).


3 Baring-Gould dates this adventure as running from Thursday, September 29, 1887, to Friday September 30, 1887 (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 389). And he has good reasons. Watson says that 1887 “furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less interest,” and he then proceeds to describe the adventure of “The Five Orange Pips” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 389 et seq). Thus, the implication is strong that it took place in that year. Moreover, Openshaw says it was in January 1885 that “my poor father met his end, and two years and eight months have elapsed since then” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 396). Thus, September 1887.


4 In “The Five Orange Pips,” Watson says: “My wife was on a visit to her mother’s, and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street” (Leslie S. Klinger, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, vol. 1, p. 135). This cannot be Mary Morstan, for she says, in The Sign of the Four, that her mother died before 1878 and she had no living relatives in England (Baring-Gould, vol. 1, p. 616). Hence, it must be a wife of Watson’s prior to Mary Morstan.


5 “In some manner, he had learned of my own sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than his words” (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 337). Baring-Gould dates this adventure to April 5, 1894 (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 329).


6 Marianne Dashwood, of Sense and Sensibility, might seem an exception. But though she is a hyper-romantic, I would argue that she does not become an Austen heroine until she has forsworn her Romantic sensibility for good English sense.


7 Baring-Gould dates “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” as extending from Saturday, June 8, 1889, to Sunday June 9, 1889 (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 134).


8 In “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” Mrs. Watson says to Kate Whitney. “Now, you must have some wine and water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or should you rather that I sent James off to bed?” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 369). Baring-Gould dates this adventure as running from Saturday, June 18, 1887, to Sunday, June 19, 1887 (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 368). If that were accurate, the wife in question would be the first Mrs. Watson. Baring-Gould notes, however, that he is the only commentator who places the adventure in 1887, and that “all others” accept Watson’s statement that “it was in June, ’89” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 368). I follow “all others.”


9 As early as “A Scandal in Bohemia,” which Baring-Gould dates as running from May 20, 1887 to Mary 22, 1887, Holmes had taken to referring to Watson as “my Boswell” (Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 346, 351). Mrs. Watson’s use of “James” when consoling Kate Whitney may signal her husband that Kate will not want her domestic tragedy recorded by Sherlock’s Boswell.


10 In The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes warns Watson, as Watson is rushing off to tell Mary Morstan (and Mrs. Cecil Forrester) all about Holmes’s latest discoveries: “I would not tell them too much. . . . Women are never entirely to be trusted—not the best of them” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 656. Watson interprets the remark as sheer misogyny: “I did not pause to argue over this atrocious sentiment” (Ibid.), and many commentators have followed Watson in seeing it that way. In fact, it may represent a specific insight into and warning about Miss Morstan’s personality, softened by the concession to Watson’s feelings that she is “the best” of women.


11 Inasmuch as the cases cited here take place within the first two months of the Watsons’ wedding, the time frame may seem too short for such a plot to unfold. But one need not assume that the plot against Mary was launched after her wedding. It may well have been launched immediately after the announcement of Watson’s engagement, when Mary would be less likely to hold herself to the strict proprieties binding on a married woman. Then, when the thrill of the wedding had passed, a revival of the friendship would have seemed both perfectly natural and a welcome source of excitement.


12 For example, at the beginning of “The Stockbroker’s Clerk” Holmes calls on Watson just after breakfast in order to invite him on a case. Baring-Gould dates the adventure to June 15, 1889 (Baring-Gould, vol. 2, p. 153). It is apparently Holmes’s first such visit since The Sign of the Four, and he pointedly inquires after Mrs. Watson. Yet we know that she does not come down to greet him, for when Watson accepts Holmes’s invitation, Watson says that he “rushed upstairs to explain the matter to my wife, and joined Holmes upon the doorstep” (Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 153–54). Thus, Mrs. Watson passed up even a second chance to come down and say hello to Holmes.


13 “About six years ago—to be exact, upon the 4th of May, 1882—an advertisement appeared in The Times asking for the address of Miss Mary Morstan, and stating that it would be to her advantage to come forward” (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 617). Baring-Gould believes that Watson’s marriage to Mary Morstan took place circa May 1, 1889 (Ibid., vol. 1, p. 330). If he is correct, I think it is very probable that a woman of Miss Morstan’s hyper-romanticism would have insisted on a wedding date of May 4th, which would then have made the date of Sherlock Holmes’s death a triple conjunction of fate.


14 Holmes’s supposed death took place on May 4, 1891 (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 301). Watson spoke of his sad bereavement on April 5, 1894 (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 337). Thus, Mrs. Watson might have “closed the circle of fate” on either May 4, 1892, or May 4, 1893. I believe it was the former. Had she survived the first anniversary of Holmes’s death, with all the lamentable effects that its approach must have had on her husband, I believe she would have survived the second anniversary—which suggests, ironically, that she might have survived until Holmes’s reappearance.


15 Thomas Hood’s “The Bridge of Sighs.” www.bartleby.com/101/654.html