In my previous blog, I introduced you to Dr. John H. Watson, who, having been injured in the 2nd Afghan War, had found his way to London, where he was leading a meaningless existence in a private hotel on the Strand.
One day, whilst visiting the Criterion Bar, he meets Stamford, who had been his dresser at Barts Hospital, Watson tells Stamford that he is looking for lodgings in London.
Stamford tells Watson about a man named Sherlock Holmes who is working in the chemical labs at the hospital and who is looking for someone to go halves with him on a nice suite of rooms that he has found.
Watson asks Stamford to introduce him to this fellow, and, after lunch, they set off to walk to St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
SHERLOCK HOLMES
On the journey there, Stamford tells Watson that Holmes is a little too scientific, to the point of cold-bloodedness, for his taste. He could imagine him giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects.
And if that’s not bad enough, Stamford has even seen him with his own eyes, beating the subjects in the dissecting room with a stick in order to verify how far bruises may be produced after death.
ST BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL
The two turn down a narrow lane and pass through a small side door that opens into a wing of the great hospital.
“It was familiar ground to me,” Watson tells his readers, “and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with its vista of whitewashed wall and dun-coloured doors.
Near the farther end, a low-arched passage branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory.
WATSON MEETS HOLMES
Stepping inside, Watson observes one student in the room, who is bending over a distant table absorbed in his work.
At the sound of their approach, he turns and springing to his feet with a cry of pleasure, comes running towards them, with a test tube in his hand, and blurts out, “I’ve found it… a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin, and by nothing else.”
No, me neither, but Watson is impressed, and observes to his readers that:-
“Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shone upon his features.”
Stamford then makes the introduction, “Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
YOU HAVE BEEN IN AFGHANISTAN
Watson takes up the narrative:-
“How are you?” he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
“How on earth did you know that?” I asked in astonishment.
“Never mind,” said he, chuckling to himself. “The question now is about haemoglobin…”
A SUITE IN BAKER STREET
Later in their conversation, Holmes informs Watson that he has his eye on a suite in Baker Street, which would suit them down to the ground.
Having made Watson aware of his shortcomings – which include but are not limited to smoking strong tobacco, generally having chemicals about, getting down in the dumps at times and not opening his mouth for days on end, and playing the violin – they agree to meet at noon the next day in order to inspect their potential lodgings.
HOW THE DEUCE DID HE KNOW THAT?
And thus, Stamford and Watson leave Sherlock Holmes working amongst his chemicals and they head towards Watson’s hotel on the Strand.
“By the way,” Watson asks, suddenly stopping and turning to Stamford, “how the deuce did he know that I had come from Afghanistan?”
“That’s just his little peculiarity,“ responds his old dresser, “A good many people have wanted to know how he finds things out.”
TO 221B BAKER STREET
The next day, Holmes and Watson meet to inspect the rooms at 221B Baker Street, and finding them to be desirable in every way “the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we at once entered into possession.”
And so it is that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson settle at the address with which their names will become indelibly linked, and the place where they met would become little more than a vague memory for many of the readers of their adventures.
THE BARTS PLAQUE
But, for St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the fact that Holmes and Watson had met within its confines was not to be forgotten, and, in 1953, a plaque was put up to commemorate the place at which the meeting took place.
Its inscription reads:-
“AT THIS PLACE NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1881 WERE SPOKEN THESE DEATHLESS WORDS “YOU HAVE BEEN IN AFGHANISTAN I PERCEIVE” BY MR SHERLOCK HOLMES IN GREETING TO JOHN H. WATSON M.D. AT THEIR FIRST MEETING.”
In other words, the hospital is the proud possessor of a plaque that commemorates a meeting that never actually took place between two characters that never actually existed.
NOW IN THE MUSEUM
The plaque has now been moved to the Hospital’s museum, in order that the public in general, rather than just a handful of medical staff, can view it.
There is even a convenient copy of “A Study In Scarlet” on the ledge beneath it so that those who make the pilgrimage here can sit and re-acquaint themselves with the storyline, albeit not as many people as you would imagine would actually pay the museum a visit to view the plaque and read the relevant passage.
SHERLOCK’S DEATH PLUNGE
However, in recent years, Barts Hospital has enjoyed something of a revival in the Sherlockian stakes in that, in the final episode of series two of the BBC’s “Sherlock,” in which Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman play the roles of Holmes and Watson,
Holmes jumps from the roof of the hospital’s former Pathology Department, and, apparently, crashes to his death on the pavement below, landing close to the phone box that stands on Giltspur street outside the hospital.
SHERLOCK’S MEMORIAL PHONE BOX
As a result, the phone box has become a place of pilgrimage to distraught “Sherlock” fans from all over the world, and they arrive here in their drives armed with post-it notes and sticky labels on which they scrawl messages of heartfelt grief at the demise of their hero before affixing them to the panes of the phone box.
Perhaps it would be an act of public service if the powers that be were to place their own plaque here advising the pilgrims to watch series 3 …. Just saying.
THE APPEAL OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
But the fact that they come really does illustrate the timelessness of Arthur Conan Doyles’ immortal creations. Holmes and Watson can be adapted to any age and can be believed in and enjoyed by all generations and all nationalities.
It is difficult, in many ways, to explain their appeal, but that that appeal is universal and undiminished, despite the passage of more than 135 years since their first appearance, is indisputable – and to think it all began with a chance meeting at a west London bar, that led to two of literature’s most famous characters being introduced to each other at one of the worlds most illustrious Hospitals.
HOW THE DEUCE DID HE KNOW?
And in answer to Watson’s question to their introducer, Stamford, how the deuce did he know that I had come from Afghanistan?”, Holmes himself later explains his method:-
“The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.”
It really was elementary my dear viewer.
What? He never said that?
Oh well, there goes a perfectly good closer.