A HOLMESIAN CALENDAR

HERE IT IS January 8, 2016, and we’ve already missed, by two days, the 161th anniversary of the birth of Sherlock Holmes. But there are a lot more places to mark our new calendars to celebrate the world’s first and greatest consulting detective. One helpful reference is The Sherlock Holmes Calendar 1887 – 1983.

The Sherlock Holmes Calendar 1887 – 1983, edited by Sean M. Wright, 1982. My copy, number 124 of 300.

The year 1983 is of no particular Holmesian significance, other than being when Sherlockian scholar Sean M. Wright chose to issue this collection of tidbits. On the other hand, Dr. John H. Watson’s first chronicle appeared in 1887. With the aid of his literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, Watson published “A Study in Scarlet” in the November Beeton’s Christmas Annual. There, Watson recounts how Holmes greeted him on January 1, 1881, at Barts by observing cogently, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

Beeton’s Christmas Annual, Ward Lock & Co, November 1887.

Holmes’ January 6, 1854, date of birth comes from deductions that would make any Sherlockian proud. The year follows from Holmes being “a man of 60” in “His Last Bow,” 1914. Watson begins this tale with “It was nine o’clock at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world.”

The day of Holmes’ birth, Friday, January 6, can be deduced from his evident fondness for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a play that, uniquely, Holmes quotes twice in the Canon. To some, the 6th is the twelfth day of Christmas, but Shakespeare didn’t write a play of that name, did he?

As added proof, in “The Valley of Fear,” which opens on Saturday, January 7, 1888, Watson says, “Really, Holmes, you are a bit trying at times.” Why should Holmes be especially cranky that particular morning? A hangover after birthday partying?

Watson’s chronicles are rich with other calendar references: Said archrival Professor James Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” 1891, “You crossed my path on the 4th of January…. On the 23rd you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty.”

James Moriarty, mathematician, professor, “the Napoleon of crime.” Image by Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, December 1893.

It was on Monday, May 4, 1891, that Holmes and Moriarty had their deadly denouement at Reichenbach Fall. No plot spoiler here, but this led to Holmes’ two-year hiatus and possible Tibetan adventures.

An Irregular Chronology of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, by Jay Finley Christ, Magico Magazine, 1947.

Not that these datings are without controversy. Consider An Irregular Chronology of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, by Jay Finley Christ. Based on analyses of “The Final Problem” and other tales, this Sherlockian scholar puts the Holmes/Moriarty showdown two years later in 1893.

This evidently plays havoc with Holmes’ Tibetan travels, but Christ claims it fits other evidence. (When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.) As an example, Christ’s analyses of the era’s actual thoroughbred records would seem to place the “Silver Blaze” adventure in September, 1891, conflicting with traditional thinking that it occurred a year earlier.

Christ writes, “Dr. Watson was at the very pinnacle of his obfuscatory powers.” Or Watson may have simply been careless in his chronicling. In “Watson’s Eyesight, Holmes’ Eating Habits,” I noted that the good doctor once wrote of seeing a mysterious personage on the moor—from a chronicled distance of “several miles away.”

All in good Sherlockian fun. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2016