Canon Discussion: The Sign Of Four, Chaps. 1 - 6

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

This week we’re looking at the first six chapters of The Sign of Four. As usual, I’ve typed up a few thoughts to get the discussion started.

Chapter 1

It has to be said that the passage of time between STUD and SIGN is rather strange. On the one hand, it appears that the case in STUD has only recently happened: Holmes refers to it as though it’s the only case Watson has been involved in, and they talk about Watson’s “small brochure” as though it’s only recently been published. And Watson says: "My constitution has not got over the Afghan campaign yet. I cannot afford to throw any extra strain upon it."

But we know Watson was wounded in the Battle of Maiwand which was in 1880, so he must have met Holmes at the latest in 1881. And in SIGN, Miss Morstan lets us know that we are in 1888. Indeed, Watson explicitly states: More than once during the years that I had lived with him in Baker Street… Very rum.

Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance… But Watson says later that they’ve been living together for some years. And he suspects Holmes of taking narcotics in STUD but he doesn’t witness him taking them, and in fact immediately abandons his suspicion. So when and why does Holmes start taking the drugs in front of Watson?

I made no remark however, but sat nursing my wounded leg. I had had a Jezail bullet through it some time before… And of course, in STUD Watson says he was struck on the shoulder. Any ideas?

I handed him over the watch with some slight feeling of amusement in my heart… I have to say that Watson seems rather dispassionate about his recent bereavement—happy to use the watch and his late brother for a test of Holmes’ skills. Any thoughts on Watson’s family? In STUD he says that has no family in England, but his brother must have been living in England at least for a while before his death. Holmes talks about the marks that “pawnbrokers in England” leave inside watch cases. I also presume H. Watson must have been living a fair distance away from London as the watch had to be sent to Watson. And who was the person who got it cleaned before sending it on?

“I never even knew that you had a brother until you handed me the watch." Watson and Holmes do seem to be keeping their cards close to their chest with regards to their backgrounds. But in GREE we are introduced to Mycroft Holmes—GREE being a story that takes place before Watson’s marriage to Miss Morstan. So although Holmes eventually reveals to Watson he has a brother after a friendship of some years, at that point Watson still keeps his own brother to himself. Is he embarrassed about his brother’s drinking? And why keep his bereavement to himself but then hand over the watch to Holmes to analyse?


Chapter 2

“…you once enabled my employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester, to unravel a little domestic complication.” Enter Miss Mary Morstan. Any thoughts on the “domestic complication”?

“About six years ago…” “I had at that time just entered the family of Mrs. Cecil Forrester in the capacity of governess.” Any thoughts on Miss Morstan’s life for those four years between her father’s disappearance and her starting work in the Forrester household? Did she have to start work immediately, do you think? Did the family of a school friend maybe take her in?

"What a very attractive woman!" I exclaimed, turning to my companion. "Is she?" he said languidly; "I did not observe." Is Holmes perhaps treating Miss Morstan more fairly than Watson? He knows that he has to wait to find out what she is truly like but Watson is romanticising her a little. Holmes doesn’t simply go by first appearances.


Chapter 5

“I have seen something of the sort on the side of a hill near Ballarat, where the prospectors had been at work." It was the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes that drew my attention to this. Watson talks about Australia as though he’s been there. That statement doesn’t really suggest he’s merely referring to a picture. So when was he there? The New Annotated introduced me to the theory that Watson spent part of his childhood in Australia. It might explain where most of his family are.


Chapter 6

“I'll never forget how you lectured us all on causes and inferences and effects in the Bishopgate jewel case.” Any ideas about this case?


Next Sunday, 6th July, we’ll be finishing off The Sign of Four by looking at chapters 7 – 12. Hope to see you then.

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

I suppose having no family in England could leave family in Scotland. Or Watson's remark means that he had no family he could go to and therefore could do as he liked. A drunken brother wouldn't have taken him in when he returned and there was presumably no communication between the two.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

That could well be true - he had family in Scotland. It's ambiguous what he says in STUD - he might be using "England" in the old-fashioned way and be referring to the whole of Britain, or he might be referring to simply England. If he does mean the whole of Britain, his brother might have been living abroad in 1881 but came back shortly after.

In any case, the two brothers don't seem to have been in communication at all. And as you say, in STUD the brother may have been living in England but Watson didn't count him as someone he could go to.

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

I do wonder if Holmes' drug habit had grown since they first met. He doesn't have to scrimp for the rent, for one thing. Watson does seem to be feeling it more.

Like you, I wondered if Watson's second wound might be from after Afghanistan. Though I don't think Holmes would be the one who shot him.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point. At the beginning, Holmes may not have deliberately been refraining from taking drugs in front of Watson. It may just have been that he couldn't afford to take them on a regular basis at that time.

And you know me - I go for the silly option, so that's why I had Holmes shooting Watson ^_^ The thing about the Jezail though is that it was a gun specific to Afghanistan, which rather limits how Watson came to be shot by one. (For years, I thought a "Jezail bullet" was a type of bullet. Looking it up for this post, I found it is of course a bullet from a Jezail gun ^^") I thought the most likely thing would be for someone in England to have a gun collection - which made me think of Colonel Hayter ^^

[vaysh]

I doubt, though, that cocaine or morphine were expensive in late 19th century England. As much as I know, the drugs were legal and ingredients of many painkilling and sleeping medicines. Holmes may just have got it from the hospital where he did his experiments.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point too ^^" So that still leaves us wondering why Holmes didn't take drugs in front of Watson for the first years but now does. I suppose it's possible his drug habit did increase over the years for reasons that had nothing to do with the financial cost. But that's unlikely - he takes drugs because he doesn't have something to work on. In 1888 he would have even more cases than he did in 1881.

[vaysh]

My thoughts on these questions will always be "outside of the game", I'm afraid. :) Sign of the Four to me is an obvious continuation of Study in Scarlet, with Watson still an invalid from his war wound and only getting to know Sherlock Holmes. The misalignment of dates is Doyle's mistake.

ACD for some reason decided to give Holmes a casual drug habit when he wrote the novel in 1889/1890. Without knowing much of ACD, I think he wanted to make Sherlock Holmes a more bohème, a more interesting and a more controversial character. I can imagine, too, that ACD - just like many intellectuals of the time – was fascinated by the effects of drugs like cocaine and morphine on the brain and the possibilities of new and different physical and mental sensations that it offered. Doyle's characterisation of Holmes is very much of a man who would experiment with drugs if he believed that new insights could be gathered from the experience.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

In STUD ACD does of course bring up the possibility that Holmes is taking drugs: On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion. It's then never mentioned again (in STUD) but I suppose ACD always had it in mind for Holmes' character, and he decided to develop the idea in SIGN.

I completely agree with you about ACD mucking up the dates ^_^ And I agree with your analysis about why ACD had Holmes taking drugs.

[vaysh]

Fascinating questions and notes, as always. As for the question of whether Holmes saw Mary Morstan with a less love-struck eye than Watson – I don't think so. :) He seems to genuinely not notice attractiveness or the lack thereof as anything else than how it played into the puzzle he set out to solve.

I have been reading Sign of Four for the first time since I was a child (then I must have read an abbreviated German translation, I am sure), and I am just totally awed by it. ACD really comes into his own in this novel: it's plotted awesomely, with a cliff-hanger ending almost every chapter. The mystery deepens and twists, the book combines a mystery with a romantic plot and it has the oddest cast of characters.

But most of all I am in awe of how ACD juggles and developts his characterisation of Sherlock Holmes: on the one hand the decadent, egoistic and arrogant user of artificial stimulants; on the other hand the virile man of force who garnered the respect of prize-fighters as much as respectable women like Mrs Cecil Forrester. The difference of how Holmes uses the cocaine, and how Thaddeus Sholto smokes the hookah, is telling, I think. Both men are outsiders in Victorian England, but Sholto is the hypchondric, physically and morally weak decadent, whereas Holmes is virile and active despite or even because of his use of cocaine to counter boredom of mind.

And of course Sholto's characterisation is the homophobic stereotype of a homosexual of the time. ACD clearly wants to say: this is not what Sherlock Holmes is. But at the same time, Holmes is not heterosexual like Watson. Mary and the ensuing romance between her and Watson make one point very obvious: this is also not what Sherlock Holmes is.

There are some descriptions in the novel that we today will read as erotic, starting with that amazing first paragraph when Holmes injects the cocaine into his vein. I am sure this is not how ACD meant these passages to be read. But I am also sure that no author controls the text in every respect, and these passages definitely don't read as if ACD was all that certain as to what he was saying. :)

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Crikey, I heartily applaud your analysis of SIGN - I greatly enjoyed it ^^ It is a wonderful book - STUD has its moments but SIGN works better as a whole.

You know, it has never occurred to me that Thaddeus Sholto is supposed to be a contemporary stereotype of a homosexual ^^" I suppose it's always difficult to read a book in the way the original readers would have interpreted it. (And as you say, readers today will add their own interpretations as well.) I find your point most interesting - that Sholto's behaviour and Watson's behaviour are being used as a contrast to Holmes' behaviour. You've given an extra depth to the novel for me.