Watson’s Wives and A Question of Chronology

[A version of this essay originally appeared in Volume 7, Issue 1 (June 1st, 2019) of Proceedings of the Pondicherry Lodge, the official journal of The Sherlock Holmes Society of India, edited by Jayantika Ganguly]


The question of Dr. Watson’s wives has been addressed elsewhere in countless scholarly inquiries. Although there will never be agreement – because agreement in Sherlockiana is as common as when it occurs in religion or politics – there are some theories – such as the one where the Good Doctor has seven (or more) wives – that can be politely ignored as a waste of time.

The Canon mentions two definitive wives: Mary Morstan, whom Watson met in September 1888 during The Sign of Four, and the unnamed woman that Watson married in the latter half of 1902. More about them in a bit.

There are a number of Canonical cases that occur in the late 1880’s and early 1890’s, during the period when Watson was married. Typically, chronologicists disagree on Sherlockian dates in the same way that two economists will have three opinions. Still, there are some cases that are more specific in terms of dating – and these cause problems when trying to decide whether or not Watson was married when a certain narrative occurs, and if so . . . was he married to Mary?

QUESTIONS OF CHRONOLOGY

Dates are sometimes firm in The Canon, sometimes not so much, and sometimes even a firm date can be shredded. In “The Red-Headed League”, Watson says that he had called upon Holmes “one day in the autumn of last year”. Since this adventure was published in The Strand in August 1891, most chronologicists place it in 1890. (This year is later confirmed in the story.) But then it gets tricky. Watson said it was “in the autumn”. And yet, in regard to publication of the first advertisement for the League, Watson says: “It is The Morning Chronicle of April 27, 1890. Just two months ago.” April is not two months ago from October. Jabez Wilson then reports that eight weeks pass from his initial interview and hire with the League to that same morning, when he decides to visit Holmes, after discovering this notice:

The Red-Headed League
is
Dissolved
Oct. 9, 1890

A Closer Look . . . .

For a Sherlockian chronologicist, this ought to be pure gold: An actual firm date as a jumping-off place. REDH occurred on October 9, 1890 – curiously rendered in the American form of month before day, even in the original Strand version (see illustration). This confirms that it did occur a year ago from the 1891 publication, and October is definitely in autumn.

But . . . the events of the story clearly take place on a Saturday – in fact, they have to occur on a Saturday to make sense – and October 9, 1890 is a Thursday! So our solid date, the one fixed point we can grab when trying to date this case, is ephemeral.

That throws the whole thing open to interpretation or adjustment. All of the major chronologicists still agree that REDH occurs in October, and most – but not all – still put it in 1890. But in October 1890, some favor October 4th, or 11th, or the 18th – all Saturdays, but not October 9th. Brend will only say October 1890 without picking a specific day. Others choose different years – Baring-Gould 1887 and Zeisler 1889 – and even then, they don’t set it on October 9th, instead picking October 29th or October 19th respectively, because both are Saturdays.

And what to do about that pesky April reference when Jabez Wilson was initially hired, eight weeks before his visit to Holmes? It can’t have been April as listed, but it could have been August. That fits, and the realization that someone – The typesetter at The Strand? The Literary Agent? – mis-read Watson’s notes, perhaps taking the abbreviation Au for Ap, becomes the most likely explanation for this inconsistency.

While this might seem to have little to do with Watson’s Wives, this is the kind of question that fascinates and vexes The Holmesian Chronologicist – and it’s these same kinds of matters that lead to questions about how many times that Watson was married, and to whom.

A TIME WHEN THE DATES DIDN'T MATTER . . . .

I first discovered The Canon in 1975, at the age of ten. I read the adventures out of order, in whatever order that I could obtain them. For instance, I was with Holmes and Watson in “The Empty House” weeks before I ever owned a copy of The Memoirs, or read “The Final Problem”. Thus, I knew that Holmes had survived his battle with Professor Moriarty atop the Reichenbach Falls, and exactly how he did it, before I ever realized that he was believed to have died in the first place. I was ten years old, and Canonical dates were just noise to me then – I wanted to read about what my Heroes were doing, not when they were doing it.

But not long after discovering The Canon, it was time to make my yearly Christmas list, and I looked through a book catalogue that my dad regularly received. There, on the inside back page was a whole Sherlock Holmes section – more titles than I could possibly request - even from my parents who brilliantly supported my love of reading and the need to have more books. At that time, I was pretty much only reading two things, The Three Investigators (the best) and The Hardy Boys (a close second), and the brilliant publisher marketing always included lists of the other books in the series on the back cover of each book. Acquiring those books and checking them off the lists were the early sparks that lit the fires of being a collector, and seeing that there were other books about this Sherlock Holmes chap, besides the nine original volumes, was very interesting to me.

I asked for several of the titles in the catalogue that Christmas, including The Sherlock Holmes Companion (1972) by the Michael and Mollie Hardwick, The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (1974) by Peter Haining, a set of old Rathbone radio shows from Murray Hill Records . . . and Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (1962) by William S. Baring-Gould.

Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street changed everything, because reading it took me from simply racing through each Holmes adventure to actually thinking about each adventure, and how it fit with the others, and more importantly, how it fit within the context of Holmes and Watson’s entire lives. Now I was playing The Game. Now I was a Sherlockian.

From that point, I became a Baring-Gouldist as well, buying into many - but not all - of the ideas that he presented in Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. This was only reinforced a few years later when I received the amazing boxed set of his Annotated Sherlock Holmes as a birthday gift.

Of course, I don’t blindly agree with everything that Baring-Gould described. His above-mentioned dating of REDH to 1887, for instance, is a pure mistake, contradicted by the very Canon. Likewise, he puts “The Resident Patient” in 1886 – although to be fair, most major chronologicists get this one wrong, too, with most of them placing it in 1887, or a few in 1882 or 1886. If one goes back and reads the original Strand version, before the odd publication history and text changes of “The Cardboard Box” caused it to lose its original opening, Watson clearly states “I cannot be sure of the exact date, for some of my memoranda upon the matter have been mislaid, but it must have been towards the end of the first year during which Holmes and I shared chambers in Baker Street.” (For more about the correct RESI text, see The Oxford Sherlock Holmes – The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes pp. 174 and 306-307.)

Even though Baring-Gould misses the mark on some things, he gets others very right. The revelation of the existence of Sherrinford Holmes as Mycroft and Sherlock’s older brother, for example. I completely and absolutely accept The Meeting in Montenegro between Holmes and Irene Adler, as originally theorized by others but codified by Baring-Gould, and the amazing result of that meeting, leading to my second-favorite book friend after Holmes. I agree with his dating of some of the cases – especially those that are in question because of contradictory statements within the narratives about Watson’s marriages and the times when they occur. And by way of this, Baring-Gould gives us information about Watson’s first wife, Constance.

SHIFTING DATES

In The Sign of the Four, we meet Mary Morstan, the only wife in The Canon whose name is known to us. She begins her story by stating that “[a]bout six years ago – to be exact, upon the 4th of May, 1882 – an advertisement appeared in The Times . . . .” Thus, we can decide with some confidence that this case occurs in 1888, six years after 1882. So far so good? Not so fast . . . .

A few lines later, Mary reveals a letter that she received that morning. “The envelope too, please,” says Holmes. “Postmark, London, S.W. Date, July 7. Hum!” So we can then decide that SIGN begins on July 7th, right? Hold on. In the next chapter, Watson says, “It was a September evening.” July? September? Huh? What? Wait – What to do? My thinking is that Watson’s notes had a 9 written for the month, and it looked too much like a 7. Some major chronologicists (Baring-Gould, Christ, Dakin) go with September 1888 as the date of this adventure, while Blakeney, Brend, and Folsom choose July 1888. Inexplicably, Bell chooses September 1887, and Zeisler likes April 1888. (I favor September 1888 in my own extensive and massive chronology of both Canon and Pastiche, which I started in the mid-1990’s, now numbering around one-thousand densely packed pages. For more about The July-September Question, see Note 14, p.124 in The Oxford Sherlock Holmes edition of The Sign of the Four.)

Actually, there are other reasons that Bell likely chose September 1887. He’s trying to explain contradictory references in “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Five Orange Pips. In SCAN, Watson states “. . . it was on the twentieth of March, 1888 . . . .” A solid date upon which to build, one would think – until one recalls that naming a specific date in The Canon can often be like making bricks without clay. For what follows this line is the recounting of Watson’s visit to 221b Baker Street just after his marriage, and a discussion about how marriage suits him. But wait . . . . . If Watson met Mary Morstan in 1888 – either July or September – then how is he already married in March 1888?

Likewise, in FIVE, the case is said to occur in September 1887. (However, only Baring-Gould and Hall accept that, with Blakeney, Christ, Dakin, Folsom, and Zeisler shifting it to September 1889, and Bell and Brend moving it to September 1888. At least they could all agree on September.) Along with this September 1887 date, a year before Watson meets Mary Morstan, he also states that he’s temporarily staying in Baker Street because “My wife was on a visit to her mother’s . . . .” Yet how can this be Mary Morstan that he’s discussing? She stated in SIGN, when introducing her problem to Holmes, that she was sent home from India as a child years before meeting Watson, and that at that time her mother was dead! Clearly, this woman to whom Watson is married in 1887, before he meets Mary Morstan in September 1888, is another wife – a first wife!

Tangentially related to this problem is the dating of The Hound of the Baskervilles. At the very beginning of the tale, Dr. Mortimer’s stick is shown to have been engraved in “1884”. Just a few lines later, Holmes indicates that the engraving marked an event “five years ago” – thus placing HOUN in 1889 – or so one would believe. Of course the chronologicists disagree. Only Blakeney and Hall actually say that it occurs in 1889. Bell puts it in 1886, Christ in 1897, and Dakin, Folsom and Zeisler in 1900. (How do they get 1900 as being five years after 1884?)

Why do so many of these scholarly chronologists feel the need to shift the story from the implied 1889 date? It’s because of the fact that Watson is already supposed to be married by then, having met Mary Morstan in September 1888, and logically having wed her sooner rather than later. So if he’s married by then, in autumn 1889, why is he still living in Baker Street – and more importantly, how is he able to go with Sir Henry Baskerville to Dartmoor for weeks and weeks at the drop of a hat? Possibly that tried-and-true device of having Watson’s wife away visiting someone and the good doctor is staying indefinitely in his old Baker Street rooms might be the explanation – except he certainly has a medical practice to maintain after his marriage, as mentioned in “The Engineer’s Thumb”, for example – and how would he walk away from that, simply to vanish into the Dartmoor wilderness for such a long a period of time?

The chronologicists solve this problem by shifting HOUN to a period when Watson was not married – and therefore he has no wife from whom to walk away. Baring-Gould answers both the SCAN and HOUN time-frame marriage problem in his own way. He shifts HOUN back to 1888, occurring not long after SIGN. Moving a case is not frowned upon by chronologicists, who recognize that a number of Canonical dates are incorrect, either due to Watson’s carelessness, his intentional obfuscation of facts, his poor handwriting, the shoddy effort by typesetters, or even some dark and sinister motive of the Literary Agent, who likely had his own agenda to cruelly foist upon Watson's notes. Some cases absolutely have to be time-shifted, as in “Wisteria Lodge”, which begins on “a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892.” But at the end of March 1892, as we all know, Holmes was believed to have died at the Reichenbach Falls nearly a year before, and in fact he was nearly one-third of the way through The Great Hiatus. There’s simply no way that he and Watson were in London carrying out a routine investigation in March 1892. This is clearly a misprint or an obfuscation – and the perfect example of why Canonical dates cannot be trusted, and can be adjusted.

With HOUN shifted to 1888 in Baring-Gould’s chronology, occurring not long after Watson meets Mary, there is no marriage or practice yet to conflict with his West Country mission. This period, with SIGN and HOUN, was a very busy time for Holmes and Watson. Not to be ignored during this period was Holmes’s greatest investigation, that of The Ripper. I go more into depth about that in my essay “Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper”, which originally appeared in The Watsonian Fall 2015 (Vol. 3, No.2), and later as an entry from my blog:

http://17stepprogram.blogspot.com/2017/02/sherlock-holmes-versus-jack-ripper.html


In the case of SCAN, where Watson is married before meeting Mary Morstan, Baring-Gould shifts the dates back one year, to March 1887. Some would argue that move places it outside of the possibility of being married to Mary – and they would be right. But it does set the story within the range of Watson’s first marriage.

WATSON'S FIRST MARRIAGE

Postulation of an earlier marriage helps to solve some of these chronological problems. Additionally, it smooths a few edges – although not all of them – with the facts related in Angels of Darkness, a play by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that includes some aspects of Watson’s life, without any mention of Sherlock Holmes. (The play, long suppressed by the Doyle Estate, is available both from The Baker Street Irregulars and as a part of Les Klinger’s The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library: Volume X: The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes:

In it, Watson is a doctor in San Francisco, where he loves Lucy Ferrier, a name familiar to readers of A Study in Scarlet. Clearly, this is wrong, and for Watson to actually woo Lucy Ferrier sets up problems that cannot be explained away. The truth of the matter is that, during those mid-1880’s days when Conan Doyle and Watson were first working out the details of their literary arrangement, and figuring out what to write, it was decided that Watson would write the portion of A Study in Scarlet relating to Holmes’s investigation, and Conan Doyle, the budding historical novelist, would work up the Utah section, which so bogs the action of the rest of the book. (I realize that Conan Doyle is revered as a writer, but as the central historical section of STUD is one of the few examples of his writing that I’ve ever read, along with the middle part of The Valley of Fear and his introduction to The Casebook, I don’t judge him too positively.) In the process of creating this Utah segment, Conan Doyle decided to write a play about Watson’s time spent in San Francisco (as described in Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, where Watson traveled to California in order to assist his wayward brother.) In expanding upon this idea, Conan Doyle changed names, using several from the Utah section of STUD to litter Angels of Darkness. Therefore, the woman that Watson met in San Francisco was given the same name as the girl from the historical section of STUD. Watson, upon being shown the manuscript, was not amused, and Angels of Darkness was promptly shelved. Still, some authentic facts from it may be gleaned. Watson did spend time in San Francisco, and it was there that he met his first wife, who in truth was named Constance Adams.

For those who question Baring-Gould’s information about this and other assertions, it must be recalled that his grandfather, Sabine Baring-Gould, was Sherlock Holmes’s godfather. This has been confirmed by a separate source, as related in The Moor (1998), written by Mary Russell, and edited by Laurie R. King.

Much that Russell herself writes is highly questionable, as she was doing so from a perspective of spiraling mental illness, as outlined in “Necessary Rationalizations: The Overall Chronology of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (along with the Truth About Mary Russell)", originally in The Watsonian (2017, Vol. 5, No. 1) , and later in an entry from this blog:

http://17stepprogram.blogspot.com/2018/08/necessary-rationalizations-overall.html

Still, the fact that Sabine Baring-Gould was Holmes’s godfather explains a great deal about how his grandson William was able to obtain such specific and mostly correct information concerning Holmes and Watson for his biography, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street – including details about Watson’s first wife, Constance.

We don’t know much about Constance. There have been a number of extra-Canonical stories that describe the time after she died, such as a few of mine, and also various stories in the Imagination Theatre radio broadcasts, which thankfully and specifically mention Constance by name. The events of their marriage are described in Chapter 7-10 of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. Watson first met her in San Francisco when he traveled there to help his poor brother. The most information that has otherwise been provided so far about the poor Constance Watson has been through “A Ghost from Christmas Past”, brought to us from Watson’s original notes by Tom Turley. (This story can be found in Part VII – Eliminate the Impossible: 1880-1891 of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, 2017)

In this narrative is a description of Watson and Constance’s courtship, as well as their subsequent move to England following their marriage on November 1st, 1886. After that, Constance became ill, and was forced to travel a great deal away from London, seeking better climes in which to heal. Watson, in the meantime, was forced to stay in London, attempting to build his practice so that one day he and Constance could afford to go elsewhere. It was during this period that he was able to continue his extensive involvement with many of Holmes’s cases, as later chronicled in a number of narratives that were presented to a world starving for more Holmes adventures by someone else than the original Literary Agent.

When Constance unexpectedly died just a few days after Christmas, 1887, just a little over a year after their marriage, a devastated Watson sold his practice and returned to Baker Street. The first months back were a grief-stricken adjustment, and it was during this time that Holmes, in order to help him work through his pain, began to relate a number of previously untold cases, such as “The Musgrave Ritual”, “The Gloria Scott”, “The Old Russian Woman”, “The Aluminium Crutch”, and many others. Through this period immediately following Constance’s death, Watson participated in a number of investigations as well, including the events of The Valley of Fear, and a couple that I’ve brought forth, including Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt (2013) and the forthcoming Sherlock Holmes and The Eye of Heka.

[Interestingly, I floated The Eye of Heka past a publisher – no names need be given, but they produce a fair amount of Sherlockian content, sold online and in bookstores ‘round the world, and they are a Giant in the business. The editor at the time – who no longer works there – was quite rude and arrogant, acting as if I had been a Holmes fan for maybe one week and had only read one Holmes story, likely my very first ever, and that I'd just had spontaneously decided to write a book. When I explained that The Eye of Heka was set in January 1888, immediately after the death of Constance, Watson’s first wife, she snidely informed me that they followed The Klinger Timeline, as developed by Les Klinger, and therefore nothing related to Constance was allowed. I was happy to point out to this now-no-longer-employed editor at the Giant publisher that Constance is mentioned three times - twice by name – in Mr. Klinger’s Chronology (see 1884, 1886, and 1887) – a fact that this editor hadn’t bothered to determine before referencing it, proving that this editor was moving in deep waters.

This chronology is available in Mr. Klinger’s Reference Library, published by Gasogene Books, an imprint of the Wessex Press.]

Throughout the early part of 1888, Watson never believed that he would marry again. But that autumn, he met Mary Morstan, and several months later, on May 1st, 1889, she became The Second Mrs. Watson. Mary has been portrayed a number of times on-screen, and a few times in print, including (Top to Bottom, Left-to-Right):

Jenny Seagrove (1987, Jeremy Brett as Holmes); Cherie Lunghi (1983, Ian Richardson as Holmes); Lynn Rainbow (1983, Animated , Peter O’Toole as Holmes); Sophie Loraine (2000, Matt Frewer as Holmes); Isla Bevan (1932, Arthur Wontner as Holmes); Isobel Elsom (1923, Eille Norwood as Holmes); Kelly Reilly (2009, Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes); Ann Bell (1968, Peter Cushing as Holmes); as illustrated by Richard Gutschmidt in Das Zeichen der Vier, 1902-1904; and by an unknown artist in Harper’s Magazine, 1904

Mary and Watson appear to have been quite happy, and a great number of extra-Canonical adventures tell of the few years that they were married. But Mary’s health was not-so-great, and sometime during The Great Hiatus, she passed away. There have been a number of reasons given in quite a few of the non-Literary-Agented narratives, but it seems to have been from a combination of many causes, including a carriage accident, combined with a plethora of ongoing illnesses, including tuberculosis, cancer, complications from past miscarriages, heart problems, a recent fall, and grief from the recent deaths of both a son and a daughter. Additionally, there have been many theories as to when her death occurred – either soon after Holmes was believed to have died on May 4th, 1891, or just before his return on April 5th, 1894, or anywhere in between. Personally, for my own Chronology, I’ve settled, after an examination of many sources, on April 27th, 1893 as the most likely date.

During the period immediately following Holmes’s presumed death, Watson began to chronicle a number of his adventures in short form. These were published between 1891 and 1893 in a brand new magazine, The Strand, which had only gone into business in January 1891. (For those pulling new adventures from Watson’s Tin Dispatch Box, Beware! Having Watson publish in The Strand before January 1891, in a time prior to its very existence, is a serious error!)

These initial twenty-four adventures were later collected into The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs. As described by Baring-Gould in Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, Watson was faced with a dilemma. Throughout most of the time he was compiling these stories for The Strand, Mary was still alive. How could he tell stories about Holmes from when Constance was still alive without hurting Mary’s feelings? At the urging of the Literary Agent, Watson was vague, mentioning a wife without giving her name, and leaving the impression that he was referring to Mary, even for cases that occurred before he met her in September 1888, when he really meant Constance. Likewise, Watson added mentions of The Sign of the Four to some of the published pre-Mary cases, implying that the wife in those was Mary and not Constance. (And it didn’t hurt, probably according to the Literary Agent, to work in mentions of The Sign of the Four, first published in 1890, to various stories, as a reminder to enthused readers who might like to know that it was still available to anyone that enjoyed reading the stories in The Strand.)

With the publication of “The Final Problem” in December 1893, Watson settled into a bleak existence – widowed, and still coming to terms with the death of his best friend. But he was mightily surprised in early April 1894 when Holmes returned to London, after it was thought that he’d never be seen again. Holmes had learned of Watson’s sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than in his words. “Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,” he’d said, and he invited the doctor to return to Baker Street, as he had in early 1888 following Constance’s death.

THE THIRD MRS. WATSON

After his return to 221b Baker Street in mid-1894, Watson lived there until after the turn of the century. Then we find an indication that change was in the wind. “The Illustrious client” begins on September 3, 1902. How do we know this? Because Watson writes that it was on “September 3, 1902, the day when my narrative begins.” With that in mind, it’s no wonder that two chronologicists, Folsom and Hall, state that it actually begins on October 3, 1902, while two others, Bell and Zeisler, shift it to September 13, 1902.

In any case, Watson states soon after that, “I was living in my own rooms in Queen Anne Street at the time . . . .” If he had moved out, there was likely a reason, and we find the most likely one described by Sherlock Holmes in “The Blanched Soldier”, which occurs in January 1903. (Amazingly, every major chronologicist actually accepts this date – maybe because Holmes himself states it - unlike Watson and his questionable chronological assertions, Holmes has given us no reason to doubt!)

In BLAN, Holmes writes, “I find from my notebook that it was in January, 1903, just after the conclusion of the Boer War . . . The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone.”

How markedly different is this hint about Holmes’s relationship with the 1902-1903 wife – Watson’s third – when compared to the mutual respect implied during Watson’s first and second marriages of the mid-1880’s and early 1890’s.

Although nothing else can be gleaned Canonical about Wife Number Three, she has made a number of appearances in extra-Canonical adventures – but under many different names, and exhibiting vastly differing backgrounds and personalities. These include:

• The Adventures of The Second Mrs. Watson (2000), Murder in the Bath (2004), The Exploits of the Second Mrs. Watson (2008), and The Stratford Conspiracy (2011) – Michael Mallory: Amelia Watson, née Pettigrew, a former actress in the theatre. In an email of May 16th, 2019, Mr. Mallory assures me that “Amelia will be back (after a bit of a hiatus) in issue #30 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, late 2019 or early 2020. She is now employed as an operative for Whitehall's M Division, headed by (you guessed it) Mycroft Holmes.” Even though she’s called the second Mrs. Watson, she’s the third – trust me . . . .

• Sherlock Holmes and the German Nanny (1990) – John North (whom I strongly suspect was prolific pasticheur Val Andrews): Watson is being pursued by Tilly Footage, who is working as his receptionist, but he hasn’t married her yet. (Several other volumes published by Ian Henry in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s also include Tilly, although a reference to her being the Third Mrs. Watson isn’t mentioned. These various books are purported to come from The Footage-Watson Papers.)

• Sherlock Holmes and the Arabian Princess (1990) – also John North (This same story was first published as a musical comedy script Sherlock Holmes and the Deerstalker 1984): At the conclusion, Watson is going to marry a showgirl named Tilly Footage.

• The Revenge of the Hound (1987) – Michael Harrison: Set in the summer of 1902, in and around the events of “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax”, Watson is engaged to Coral Atkins:

• “The Adventure of the Marked Man” is in both The Game is Afoot (1994) and also The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1985) – Stuart Palmer: Watson’s fiancé is Signora Emilia Lucca of “The Red Circle” . . . .

• Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (Film, 2006): Watson’s fiancé is an American psychologist named Mrs. Vandeleur – curiously the same name as one of Stapleton’s aliases in The Hound!?!?

• "The Adventure of the Russian Grave" in Sherlock Holmes in Orbit (1995) - William Barton and Michael Capobiano: An example of one of the may post-1902 adventures that mention Mrs. Watson but don't give her name.

• “The Illustrious Client” (BBC Radio Version, September 21, 1994 Dramatized by Bert Coules): Watson’s fiancé is named Jean, and in. . . .

• “The Mazarin Stone” (BBC Radio Version, October 5, 1994, Dramatized by Bert Coules) . . . In these, Watson’s wife is named Jean. (Bert Coules has said that this was in honor of Jean Leckie Doyle)

• “The Adventure of the Mocking Huntsman” [Sherlock Magazine #55, 2003] and in an alternate form as “The Covetous Hunstman” in The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Imagination Theatre Radio Broadcast No. 51, July 25, 2004,) both versions presented by Matthew Elliott: In “The Mocking Huntsman” Watson’s wife isn’t named, but the story indicates that she has a grown son named Elias who is a part-owner in an automobile factory. In “The Covetous Huntsman”, her name is given as Kate.

• “The Adventure of the Second Generation” (Radio Broadcast, December 17th, 1945, dramatized by Denis Green and Anthony Boucher) and also in The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (transcribed by Ken Greenwald): In the text version, Watson’s wife is named Anna. She was killed in a four-wheeler accident not long before this narrative.

• Sherlock Holmes and the Lusitania (1999) – Lorraine Daly: Watson is married to Violet Hunter of “The Copper Beeches”.

• The Seventh Bullet (1992) – Daniel D. Victor: An unnamed wife who has never been to America.

• Nightwatch (2001) – Stephen Kendrick: Watson is engaged to an unnamed nurse-in-training that he met at Barts.

• “The Canaveral Caper” in Indian River Trilogy (1989) – Donald W. Holmes: Watson’s 1902-1903 third wife is also named Mary.

• The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (1974) – Philip Jose Farmer: Watson is married to a native girl that he and Holmes rescued in Africa during World War I – not quite the 1902-1903 wife, but still a later wife worth mentioning . . . .

• “Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Card” (1999) – Joel Lima: Watson’s wife is named Violet, the daughter of a general. (I’ve wondered if it’s implied that Watson married Violet de Merville, General de Merville’s daughter, from “The Illustrious Client”?)

And finally, the most recent portrayal of The Third Mrs. Watson is in Nicholas Meyer's The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols (2019): Watson is married to the former Juliet Garnett, the sister of writer, critic, and editor Edward Garnett (1868-1937).

IN CONCLUSION . . . .

There is far more about this topic than could ever be discussed in this short essay – both in terms of scholarship examining Watson’s wives, and specific discussion of all the times that the various wives have appeared in both the Canon (on-stage or implied) or in extra-Canonical adventures brought to us without having to first cross the Literary Agent’s desk.

Some may give no thought to Watsonian Wives or Sherlockian Chronology, instead racing through the adventures like I did as a ten-year-old, new to The Canon, and totally oblivious to these deeper questions. But for those who do enjoy drilling deeper, there is a never-ending joy in seeing the connections and hints and clues, and how it all fits together. There is plenty of clay there for those willing to make the effort to make the bricks.

©David Marcum 2019 – All Rights Reserved

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David Marcum plays The Game with deadly seriousness. He first discovered Sherlock Holmes in 1975 at the age of ten, and since that time, he has collected, read, and chronologicized literally thousands of traditional Holmes pastiches in the form of novels, short stories, radio and television episodes, movies and scripts, comics, fan-fiction, and unpublished manuscripts. He is the author of over sixty Sherlockian pastiches, some published in anthologies and magazines such as The Strand, and others collected in his own books, The Papers of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt, and Sherlock Holmes – Tangled Skeins. He has edited over fifty books, including several dozen traditional Sherlockian anthologies, such as the ongoing series The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, which he created in 2015. This collection is now up to 21 volumes, with several more in preparation. He was responsible for bringing back August Derleth’s Solar Pons for a new generation, first with his collection of authorized Pons stories, The Papers of Solar Pons, and then by editing the reissued authorized versions of the original Pons books. He is now doing the same for the adventures of Dr. Thorndyke. He has contributed numerous essays to various publications, and is a member of a number of Sherlockian groups and Scions. He is a licensed Civil Engineer, living in Tennessee with his wife and son. His irregular Sherlockian blog, A Seventeen Step Program, addresses various topics related to his favorite book friends (as his son used to call them when he was small), and can be found at http://17stepprogram.blogspot.com/ Since the age of nineteen, he has worn a deerstalker as his regular-and-only hat. In 2013, he and his deerstalker were finally able make his first trip-of-a-lifetime Holmes Pilgrimage to England, with return Pilgrimages in 2015 and 2016, where you may have spotted him. If you ever run into him and his deerstalker out and about, feel free to say hello!

His Amazon Author Page can be found at:

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B00K1IKA92?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader

and at MX Publishing:

https://mxpublishing.com/search?type=product&q=marcum&fbclid=IwAR12tH4SUvE9nmEnnuqeI5GC7Tv69-NagPgmAZlxcz0vr2Ihza5_6jP-fXM