Date of Meeting: 21st October 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 hastily compiled essay which he pulled together just so that there could be an October meeting. It is very far from his best work:
Holmes and His Friends
“Why,” said I, glancing up at my companion, “that was surely the bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?”
“Except yourself I have none,” he answered.
In FIVE - set in 1887 - Holmes was explicit that he was a friendless man. Yet, four years later, during FINA, in 1891, his note to Watson betrays a change in the situation:
“ I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you.”
Note the plural: “…my friends…”. What could have changed so much in the four years between these cases?
The obvious suggestion would seem to be that this is the influence of sharing accommodation with Dr. Watson. We might propose that through the social-life and sociability of his flatmate, Holmes was brought into contact with more people in social settings. This in turn led to him becoming more sociable himself. But this theory does not hold water. Holmes and Watson had moved in together in 1881 (some scholars suggest 1882, but they are wrong). By the time of FIVE, they had been together six years. In all this time, Watson remained Holmes’s only friend. Clearly Watson had no effect on Holmes in this time. Why should the next five years be any different. Indeed, in July 1888, Watson married Mary Morstan and moved out of 221b (some scholars suggest other dates, but they are wrong). It was, therefore, in the years that Watson was absent from 221b that Holmes became more sociable.
It seems more likely that Holmes’s level of sociability was linked to his drug use. We know that in SIGN, Holmes was a user of cocaine and morphine. But in MISS, Watson claims to have weaned him from his drug mania. Perhaps, once clean, Holmes became a more sociable person. To be sure, we must look at the dates. SIGN, like FIVE, is an 1887 adventure. This, then, was a year when Holmes was using drugs a lot - in SIGN, he had been injecting himself with one substance or another three times a day for many months. MISS appears to be set subsequent to the return of Holmes from the Great Hiatus as it is part of the Return of Sherlock Holmes collection. Indeed, internal evidence in the story suggests a 1904 date (some scholars suggest other dates, and they might be right). It is difficult, therefore, to be sure from this whether Holmes was clean before or after the incident at The Reichenbach Falls.
We do know from TWIS - set in June 1889 - Holmes was still a user then. When Watson finds Holmes in an opium den, Holmes remarks:
“I suppose, Watson… that you imagine that I have added opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views.”
This serves as an admission that Holmes seems to be using cocaine still but, it also suggests he is registering Watson’s advice. Note also that morphine has ceased to be mentioned. Indeed, the same is true in SCAN - set in 1888. Watson says:
“Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.”
There are several points of relevance here: firstly, Holmes is no longer using morphine and the frequency his drug use is less than it was the previous year. But also, Holmes still loathes society and, it follows, being sociable. So, while Watson was beginning to wean Holmes off the drugs, his friendships had not yet started to increase.
(In support of this, 1888 also seems to be the year of GREE (some scholars suggest other dates, but they are wrong), in which Holmes confessed that he enjoyed the unsociable atmosphere of the Diogenes Club.)
The big clue on when Holmes quit drug abuse, for my money, comes from COPP. The story opens with a bored and grumpy Holmes in need of a case:
“Sherlock Holmes had been silent all the morning, dipping continuously into the advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last, having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very sweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.”
This is a very bored Holmes being incredibly tetchy. A Holmes in this predicament in 1887 would have reached straight for the needle. Here, he did not. This strongly suggests that Watson had weaned Holmes from his drug-mania by the time of this story. WIth the case set in March 1891 (some scholars suggest other dates, but they are wrong), this is just two months prior to FINA. My conclusion, then, is that the “years” Watson spent weaning Holmes from his drug-mania were 1888 - 1891. These are also the very same years during which Holmes went from considering himself friendless to having friends.
So, with the dates matching up, all that remains is to find out if is it possible that cocaine use could result in someone becoming friendless and vice-versa? For me, it seems entirely plausible. The use of cocaine produces a euphoric high and an increase in alertness and energy. The user tends to feel invigorated, energized, and invincible. As a result, they become incredibly annoying to any sober person unfortunate enough to be in their presence. Then, when the drug wears off, they crash and suffer symptoms such as paranoia, depression, and anxiety - conditions not conducive to a sociable manner. These extremes of high-annoying-twat and low-miserable-bugger could very easily make a person friendless.
Of course, there are many cocaine users in modern society who manage to get along perfectly well in everyday life. I have acquaintances who have been regular recreational users and they were certainly never without friends. But Holmes was not a normal man - he was a genius and was already set apart from the rest of society by his intellect. Added to this, many commentators have found good evidence in the Canon to support the theory that Holmes was neuro-divergent in some manner. Diagnoses vary from scholar to scholar but popular candidates are bi-polar disorder and/or autism. These are both conditions which also have an effect an individual’s sociability.
In his, case, then, the unsociable side effects of cocaine use would be on top of a genius which separated him from most people and a neuro-diversity which made it difficult for him to socialise. By removing the cocaine from the equation, Holmes had less to contend with and he began to feel able to turn some of his acquaintances into friendships.
We can see one example of this in Lestrade. When Watson first met Lestrade, it was through a case Holmes was called in on back in 1881 (STUD). There was no love lost between them - Holmes originally claimed to only be taking on the case to laugh at Gregson and Lestrade as they quarreled with each other and throughout the account he takes several opportunities to belittle Lestrade. Lestrade, in return, seems to harbour considerable resentment for Holmes and, at the end of the case, has little compunction about taking the credit for the case and leaving Holmes in the shadows. Over time, this attitude softens on both sides. In SIXN, set in 1900 (some scholars suggest other years, but they are wrong), Lestrade starts the account just hanging out at 221b as a chum. He then ends the case by praising Holmes so highly it moves the normally repressed Holmes emotionally.
The pained friends Holmes refers to in his 1891 Reichenbach note no doubt included many new acquaintances too (Shinwell, Pike and Mercer, perhaps) but an awful lot of them would be people he had already known for a long time who found his company a good deal more tolerable once Watson had weaned him off of cocaine. Lestrade was definitely one of these, but other examples most likely include the likes of Hudson, Baynes and Bradstreet. All in all, by the time he met Moriarty on that cliff edge, the preceding two years of sobriety meant that many more than just Dr. John H. Watson mourned the loss of a good Friend.
Any Other Business:
"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) started droning on about his new book - Finding Sherlock Holmes - and how it has just been published, just because it is the best book ever written about Canonical locations. It is available on Amazon:
UK - https://amzn.eu/d/0k0BZRb
All other countries - just search "Finding Sherlock Holmes" on Amazon. What am I? Your mother? Tsk.
