Date of Meeting: 1st September 2023
Location of Meeting:
The Sherloft, My House, Portsmouth, UK
Attendees:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)
Apologies:
None.
Presentation:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) presented the following paper about the true identity of Dr John H Watson:
Who is Dr. John H. Watson?
Several times in The Canon, Sherlock Holmes appears to read Watson’s mind. He explains how he produced the effect afterwards, but it all seems rather magical anyway. Furthermore, we never see him make such accomplished readings of anyone else. Indeed, in the case of Helen Stoner, he couldn’t even tell the difference between shivering from cold and shivering from terror. Sure, we get him “deducing” Grant Munro’s name by reading it in the lining of his hat. There’s a moderately impressive reading of Jabez Wilson too, in which he sees snuff powder and deduces he takes snuff and a freemason pin and deduces he is a freemason and a Chinese tattoo and deduces he has been to China. But this all pales into insignificance next to the inferences he makes about Watson.
Take their first meeting as an example. Sherlock confidently states that Watson has just returned from Afghanistan. Later he explains how he deduced this. Within his chain of reasoning is the following unusual statement: “Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then.” What on Earth is a “medical type” or “the air of a military man”? These meaningless explanations are quickly passed over and it is easy to take them at face value. But they simply do not make sense. It is as if Holmes himself cannot explain how he achieved his results.
These moments occur repeatedly throughout The Canon. Remember the opening mind-reading scene from The Cardboard Box (later transposed onto the front of The Resident Patient). Apparently, from seeing Watson putting a paper down, looking around the room and moving his lips, Holmes was able to infer that Watson was reflecting on war and its futility. The entire scene stretches credulity.
Other examples include the clairvoyant identification of Watson examining Mortimer’s stick in The Hound of the Baskervilles. This is explained by Holmes apparently managing to watch Watson’s reflection in a teapot without Watson noticing. In The Sign of the Four Holmes manages to relate the entire life story of Watson’s brother from a brief viewing of a freshly cleaned watch. In The Dancing Men, he knows exactly where Watson has been and what his financial plans are because he has a chalk mark on his hand. Not only does this sound preposterous, even the identification of the chalk mark makes little sense when we know his attention had been upon a chemical experiment and not Watson’s hand prior to his deductive tirade.
In summary then, Holmes seems to be able to read Watson in a way he never replicates with other people. So, what is going on here? The three obvious explanations are easily dismissed. Firstly, the accounts are to be taken at face value. For some reason, Sherlock Holmes is truly able to pluck these “deductions” about Watson from trifles, but he chooses never to replicate this ability with anyone else. I think I have already demonstrated that this is not the case.
Secondly, Sherlock Holmes can read Dr John H. Watson’s mind psychically. As telepathy is impossible, this cannot be the answer. (At this point, there will be those among my readers who exclaim that I am silly sceptic and telepathy IS possible. I respond “No it isn’t. Don’t be telepathetic.”)
The third explanation that may be offered is that the written accounts are wrong, either Holmes may have deceived Watson as to the real way he achieved his results or Watson exaggerated Holmes’s results in his writings. This is tantamount to sacrilegious. Watson and Holmes are alike in that they are true gentlemen – knowingly lying to or about each other is beneath them both.
That rules out the impossible. Now we must consider the improbable. That is, Sherlock Holmes can see what is going on in Dr John H. Watson’s mind because they share one mind. I propose that Sherlock Holmes and Dr John H. Watson were the same person. I further propose that neither of the pair were aware of this fact. In short, I propose a theory of Split Watsonality. That is, unknown to Holmes and Watson, Sherlock Holmes’s personality split, creating Watson as a secondary persona.
It may be asked why I believe Holmes conceived Watson and not the other way around. There are good reasons for this. Watson arrived from Afghanistan conveniently with “neither kith nor kin in England”. Holmes, on the other hand, at the very least has a brother who shares Sherlock’s surname. Holmes then, is more anchored in reality. He has a verifiable backstory. Watson has very few people to vouch for his existence prior to meeting Sherlock Holmes.
Furthermore, it makes more sense for the genius – Holmes – to have the mental capacity to create the everyman – Watson – than it does the reverse. Consider how Holmes speaks about his mind throughout The Canon. When he gets bored, he says it is “like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built,” (WIST). In The Sign of the Four he is shown resorting to drug use to relieve his boredom. (Note, that this was only shortly after the creation of the Watson persona and that later in The Canon, Watson would take credit for weaning Holmes off drug abuse). There are also a few references in The Canon to Holmes wanting to abandon mental stimuli and retire to a quiet spot in the country. For example, in The Creeping Man he stated, “It's surely time that I disappeared into that little farm of my dreams.” A desire he, apparently, did fulfil when he eventually retired to the Sussex coast to keep bees.
Bearing this in mind, it is easy to see how Holmes, in the quiet early days of his career, lacking the stimuli his racing engine brain needed, might have cracked. I’m no expert on mental health issues, but I see no reason not to admit the possibility that a cracked genius brain could create a split personality. Desirous of some tranquillity, Holmes’s unconscious mind created the Watson persona. Neither the Holmes persona nor the Watson persona were aware of this. But when the Holmes persona thought he got “in the dumps at times, and [didn’t open his] mouth for days on end” he was really allowing the Watson persona to take over and think at a more normal pace. And when Watson persona thought he was waiting around at 221b for his friend to arrive he was actually in a mental limbo while the Holmes persona took over, went out and got things done.
After conceiving this idea, I found a few other problems of The Canon also began to resolve themselves.
Watson’s journey home in A Study in Scarlet doesn’t quite add up. He goes through an awful lot between the Battle of Maiwand (27th July 1880) and Holmes discussing his Book of Life article (4th March 1881). In less than a year, he fought in a very famous battle, recovered from a bullet wound and then contracted and recovered from enteric fever. On its own, this is improbable, but he also claims that he then arrived in Portsmouth aboard the troopship Orontes. The HMS Orontes was a real enough ship. Indeed, it was also reasonably famous as it had been used to bring Louis Napoleon’s body back from the Zulu War in 1879. However, as Percy Metcalfe observed many moons ago, the Orontes only made a trip from Bombay to Portsmouth once between the Battle of Maiwand and March 1882. It left Bombay on 31st October 1880 and arrived in Portsmouth on 26th November. Now, there is absolutely no way Watson could have recovered from a bullet wound and then enteric fever in just three months, so as to be able to return to England aboard this vessel. What is possible is that Holmes’s subconscious constructed a back story for the Watson persona based on a recent famous battle, and a recently docked famous ship. Without knowing it, that’s the real reason the Holmes persona knew so much about the Watson persona at their first meeting. It was a result of sharing the one mind. Which explains why Holmes claims “the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps.” What really happened was the Holmes persona imagined it all and as he did so it became true for the Watson persona. When he later tried to explain how he came to his conclusion, he came out with his guff about “medical types” and “the air of a military man”. The Watson persona didn’t question this nonsense because it was as invested in the charade as the Holmes persona, though this was not on a conscious level for either of them.
“But what of Stamford?” I hear you cry. He introduced them. He spoke to them both. Surely he would have noticed if they were the same person! In fact, he is one of the few characters in The Canon who knows Watson from before he met Holmes. If Stamford knew Watson before Holmes did, Watson can’t be a figment of Holmes’s imagination. Well, yes. Yes he can. If Stamford, similarly never existed.
Consider the amount of coincidence needed for the Criterion story to be true. Watson and Holmes had to both know the same man. Watson and Holmes both had to be drawn to London. (Remember that Holmes’s “ancestors were country squires”. Either he or someone in his ancestry must’ve made the move from the countryside to London). Watson and Holmes both had to say to the same person on the same day that they were looking for somewhere to live on a budget. In fact, Stamford claims they both used the exact same phrase:
“Looking for lodgings,” [Watson] answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”
“That's a strange thing,” remarked [Stamford]; “you are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.”
Now, “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.” is hardly a common expression that trips lightly from the lips of all English speakers. It is a very specific sentence formed by a specific person. And yet Stamford claims that both Holmes and Watson – very different people in personality – used this exact same phrase on the exact same day while speaking to the exact same person without any knowledge of the other person. Inconceivable.
So, what really happened? I suggest that Stamford was another figment of Holmes’s cracked mind. He was little more than an extra in his delusion who appeared solely to introduce the two fully formed personas in his split personality. Stamford was little more than an excuse for the Holmes persona to meet the Watson persona. Stamford was a very two-dimensional character that allowed the two full personas to know about each other, live together and thereby give the original Holmes’s subconscious a way to cool off – by periodically becoming the Watson persona.
Consider the opening of The Reigate Squires. Holmes persona is in the Hotel Dulong recovering from the extreme efforts he put into investigating and thwarting the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis. Watson persona travels from London to Lyons to help him recover. Why were they separated for this investigation in the first place? Elsewhere in The Canon, Holmes claims to be lost without his Boswell? The answer is that the Maupertuis case was so involved and difficult that there was no time to indulge in the Watson persona for any rest. He had to keep in full-on Holmes mode to triumph – which he did, but at a cost to his mental health. Thus, the moment the case was resolved, Watson persona magically found its way to Lyons within twenty-four hours and took over. It took three days of Watsoning for this split mind to heal itself and return to Baker Street.
A lot of the mysteries concerning The Great Hiatus also begin to make sense when we apply the Split Watsonality Theory to them. Some of the more troubling ones for me have been:
1. Why did Moriarty not just shoot Holmes? He’s supposed to be a scheming villain. It is improbable that he would leave his fate to a clifftop brawl with a younger, fitter man when a revolver could settle the issue more assuredly.
2. Why were no bodies found?
3. Why did Holmes pretend to be dead for three years to fool Moriarty’s gang when Colonel Sebastian Moran saw him survive?
4. How did Holmes manage to solve the Wisteria Lodge business in 1892, right bang slap in the middle of The Great Hiatus?
Seen as an extreme episode of Holmes’s split personalities, all this can be explained. Holmes’s battle of wits with Moriarty was even more taxing than the Maupertuis affair. At the start of The Final Problem Watson persona imagined himself hardly seeing Holmes. He explains this to himself as having been married and setting himself up in active practice. He claims to have only seen Holmes for three cases in 1890 and had not seen him at all in 1891 until the start of this story. This is nonsense. The Holmes persona was once again taking dominance in the real world. This was due to the mental demands of dealing with Moriarty. The Watson persona was effectively on the back burner in the shared mind and was granted a mundane imaginary existence while Holmes persona got the work done. Eventually he succeeded, reunited with Watson persona, and took himself off to the continent while the police finished things up. The police did successfully finish everything off. Moriarty was captured. Moran may have escaped the net, but he did not pursue Holmes across Europe. He stayed in London and kept his head down.
What Watson persona reported – the chase and confrontation with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls – was all imagined. As with his collapse after catching Maupertuis, after dealing with Moriarty the Holmes persona needed a rest. Subconsciously, he’d hoped a holiday in the peaceful Alps with Watson persona for company might do the trick. But it was much worse this time. Moriarty’s machinations had almost ruined Holmes’s mental health. Holmes persona needed to let Watson persona take over for a good long while. This is why his subconscious constructed the ludicrous ending to The Final Problem. Watson persona was lured away by an imaginary boy with a letter – neither existed, they just got Watson persona out of the way. With Holmes persona in full control again, his subconscious conjured up a scenario in which Holmes persona could be allowed to die. That is why Moriarty used such a bizarre method of attack. That is why Moriarty bizarrely allowed Holmes to write a note before they fought. That’s why Moriarty’s body was never found. Moriarty was never there – it all happened in Holmes’s mind as he prepared to take a step back from existence.
Proof of Holmes’s death had to be available to the Watson persona. This is why Watson persona suddenly became an expert on reading footprints – a skill he had never demonstrated before this moment. Watson persona was essentially borrowing this skill from the Holmes part of their shared mind. But the subconscious Holmes mind knowingly left himself a door open to return, too. He knew his body would never be found. This would leave room for doubt about his death so that if the split mind ever managed to repair itself sufficiently, the Holmes persona could potentially return.
Three years would pass before that amazing mind could safely allow Holmes persona to properly return. In the meantime, it allowed Watson persona to fully assume control. A less taxing existence, though still a noble and gentlemanly one, gave that mind the rest it needed. Finally, when the time was right for the return of the Holmes persona, Watson’s imaginary wife was killed off and the stage was set for a return to Baker Street.
As for the Moran story – this was conjured up as an explanation for where Holmes had been. Both personas believed Holmes had to keep his existence secret from the remains of Moriarty’s gang. The inconsistencies in Holmes’s preposterous tale of Moran seeing him survive at the falls and his tall tale about impossible travels to inaccessible places weren’t noticed by either personae because their shared subconscious did not want to notice them. But, in reality, Moran had escaped arrest. Instead of being locked up with Moriarty, Moran was still at large and was a threat to the British public. Holmes’s mind (still ticking away at a bare minimum amount somewhere behind the Watson persona) knew this and knew Moran had to be stopped. This is why Watson persona felt the urge to investigate the Adair murder. But the Watson persona was not up to the task. And so, the Holmes persona had to be revived.
This provides an acceptable explanation for the business of Wisteria Lodge, too. Scott Eccles was unaware that Holmes was supposed to be dead when he sent a telegram to him. Somehow it found its way into the hands of the Watson persona. The Holmes mind recognised the importance of this matter and had to come back to sort matters out. Which it did. And Watson persona never questioned this, because subconsciously their shared mind did not want him to. After the job was done, Holmes persona faded away again to allow the mind to continue recovering.
This theory also provides an explanation for the many marriages of Dr John H Watson. A strict reading of the dates in The Canon suggests that Watson was in a constant state of flux with regards to matrimony. Without getting bogged down in tedious chronology here, there are occasions when Watson seems to be married one month, a bachelor the next and then his is off being married again a few weeks later. If you take the dates The Canon as accurate, it is impossible to arrive at fewer than six marriages for the good doctor.
Under Split Watsonality Theory we see an easy explanation: the marriages weren’t real. They were a subconsciously created excuse for the absence of Watson persona whenever the Holmes persona had to take dominance.
It makes sense of other matters too. Why was Watson’s cheque-book locked in Holmes’s drawer? Because they were the same person. Why do the two accounts Holmes wrote up sound so much like the accounts Watson wrote up? Because they are the same person. Why did his wife call John Watson “James”? Because she didn’t exist, and it wasn’t an important enough detail for the subconscious mind to bother getting right. (That whole business with Isa and Kate Whitney never happened. It was just a subconscious explanation for both personas for why Watson would suddenly appear in an opium den).
The issue of Watson’s knowledge of Moriarty now begins to make some sense. Most Sherlockians will already be aware of this problem: in The Final Problem (set in 1891) Watson clearly states he had never heard of Moriarty before but in The Valley of Fear (set in 1887) he clearly states he knows all about Moriarty. This means that four years after knowing a great deal about Holmes’s nemesis, Watson has never heard of him before. In terms of Split Watsonality Theory this may be explained as the Watson persona always knowing (or not knowing) what the Holmes persona needs it to know (or not know). In 1887 Holmes persona found it useful for Watson to already know all the facts he knew. In 1891, in preparation for his big assault on the Moriarty empire, Holmes persona found it useful to go over all the facts again and so Watson persona knew nothing. Neither persona ever questioned this because the subconscious split mind quietly orchestrating all this did not want them too – it was in neither of their interests.
Also, it seems there is now an explanation for why Holmes resented Watson’s 1903 wife more than any other. At the beginning of The Blanched Soldier Holmes persona complains that “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.” As I have previously stated, Holmes persona had already been abandoned for a wife by Watson persona at least five other times. He had never reacted so badly to it before. What was different this time? 1903 seems to be the year that Holmes persona is winding down. It is the same year he took on the business of The Creeping Man, a story in which he was forced to confront the effects of aging, and which lead him to complain of himself “…what a fool I have been!... It's surely time that I disappeared into that little farm of my dreams.” Here the Holmes persona is admitting that his abilities were fading. We may assume then, that his mind’s ability to create more than one persona was also fading. And that was fine, as the slowing of the Holmes mind meant that Watson was no longer required. So, in 1903 when the Holmes mind imagined Watson persona leaving to be elsewhere, it knew that this time it would be a more permanent arrangement. Holmes did retire to the Sussex coast and kept bees in solitude. Now that his racing engine mind had calmed down to a chugging-along-quietly engine, he was able to function healthily this way. Watson persona faded due a lessening of need and a lessening of ability. Perhaps Holmes’s distress was a bit uncalled for - Watson persona had not entirely disappeared. In Lion’s Mane Holmes says that the Watson persona still paid Holmes persona “occasional week-end visit”. But this was rare. Indeed, Holmes states that “the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken”.
Still, his country retreat must have done Holmes some good. When circumstances required it, in 1912 he was able to step up to active life again. For two years he became an entirely different person – Altamont, a bitter Irish-American spy working for the Germans. In light of Split Watsonality Theory, this incredible ability to become a totally different person for protracted periods of time does not seem so remarkable.
Now all those moments in The Canon when Watson is sat around bored waiting for Holmes to return can be seen for what they are – Holmes persona taking dominance and Watson persona taking a back seat. Equally, all that time in The Hound of the Baskervilles when Watson is alone on Dartmoor are simply moments when Holmes persona was resting and letting Watson persona take over. While I don’t believe either persona ever realised that they were the same person, there are moments when one or other of them seem uncomfortable about both simultaneously being around other people. For example, at the beginning of one of their early case, A Scandal in Bohemia, Watson is very keen to leave the room before the King of Bohemia arrives:
“I think that I had better go, Holmes.”
“Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it.”
“But your client—”
Bearing Split Watsonality Theory in mind, this comes across as if the Holmes mind is battling with itself about how to proceed. On some level Watson persona knows it cannot be in the room at the same time as Holmes persona and a real person. However, Holmes persona wants its security blanket.
So how did they resolve this issue. The Canon is littered with moments where both personas are interacting with real people. This is surely the biggest problem that Split Watsonality Theory faces. I think there may have been a mixture of explanations.
No doubt Mycroft Holmes realised what was going on (i.e., Sherlock had a split personality), but never said anything to his brother to dissuade him of his delusion. Mycroft was even more intelligent than Sherlock. He would have been able to understand not only what was going on, but why it was happening. To keep his brother functioning, he played along with the dual existence of Holmes and Watson. He might have even explained the situation to a select few of Sherlock’s closest allies – Mrs Hudson and Lestrade seem likely to have been taken into Mycroft’s confidence. Perhaps even the irregulars were informed.
It is also possible that the subconscious Holmes mind kept the two personas safe by conducting an awful lot of events in imagination rather than reality. Conversations with clients might not have happened in reality quite the same way that the two personas were perceiving them. As an example, let us consider the famous closing scenes of The Three Garridebs. Killer Evans emerged from a trapdoor to find he had been caught in the act. Watson was shot by Killer Evans. Killer Evans was knocked out by Holmes. Holmes rushed to assist Watson while shouting at Killer Evans about the fate of his friend. Clearly things couldn’t have truly happened this way if Holmes and Watson shared one body. That body could not be lying on the floor shot at the same time as knocking out a villain.
However, I propose that what really happened is the following. Killer Evans emerged from the trapdoor to see that Holmes was waiting for him. In a panic he fired off a shot that went massively wide. The bullet hit nothing, but Holmes persona imagined it hitting Watson persona. Imaginary Watson persona fell to the floor while Holmes persona – in control of the body – incapacitated Killer Evans. Holmes persona then started talking to someone Killer Evans couldn’t see and shouting about Killer Evans shooting someone Killer Evans couldn’t see. When Killer Evans later tried to tell people that Sherlock Holmes was stark staring mad, no one was interested. I suspect there are similar explanations available for many other such moments in The Canon.
Other such moments may have happened entirely in the imaginations of the two personas. It is possible that some people they interacted with were completely imagined. It is also possible that Holmes’s odd behaviour was also just thought to be that of an eccentric genius by many of his clients. Certainly, the many moments in The Canon when Holmes and Watson were both interacting with someone at the same time do not have to mean they could not be the same person. All it has to mean is that Watson and Holmes probably perceived those events differently to everyone else.
In conclusion, I believe Holmes and Watson were the same person. I believe that neither Holmes nor Watson were aware that they were the same person. And I believe that Split Watsonality Theory solves more problems in The Canon than it creates. In which case, I propose we all close our eyes and recite the new rules of Sherlockiana:
Rule One – You do not talk about Baker Street.
Rule Two – You do NOT talk about Baker Street…
Any Other Business:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) asked whether there was any beer. There was no beer.
