Category: Events

After the tragic events of May 1891, it was a couple of years before Watson could publish the account in The Final Problem. He found even the mention of Switzerland, Meiringen, and especially the Reichenbach Falls profoundly upsetting, and any thought of returning to that fateful locale was abhorrent.

We will never know whether or not he had the opportunity to return and take the brave step of staying in a hotel in the town and exorcising his fears by looking upon that swirling torrent at the falls.

The Parkhotel du Sauvage in Meiringen has a plaque claiming that it was the Englischer Hof where Holmes and Watson stayed in 1891, but this claim is false, as is the town’s claim to have invented the meringue. The hotel is large and prominent and not the sort of place they would have wanted to stay for fear of attracting the attention of Moriarty or his henchmen.

Most of the town was destroyed by a massive fire shortly after their visit (was this the work of Moriarty’s henchmen avenging the death of their master?), and therefore, the town has changed a great deal. Still, the town of Meiringen has many references to Holmes and Watson, and underneath the English church next to the Parkhotel du Sauvage is a museum that reconstructs their rooms on Baker Street. In front of the church is a statue of someone you may recognise!

Back at the Falls, the many re-enactments of Holmes’s fight with Moriarty have been carried out in the wrong location because those staging these events have primarily been interested in the protagonists’ safety. They have generally not managed to climb the steep footpath which winds its way up the left-hand side of the falls when looking at them from below. This is the path that Holmes and Watson followed, and Sidney Paget’s drawing, based on Waton’s sketches, is reasonably accurate.

After visiting the Falls, Holmes and Watson intended to visit the tiny hamlet of Rosenlaui where the Hotel Rosenlaui still dominates the hamlet as it did in 1891. You can still obtain refreshments there before returning to Meiringen or continuing up the valley to the Grosse Sheidegge, which has some spectacular views.

If Holmes did follow this latter route after escaping Moriarty’s clutches, then he would have had no problems in either following the winding road or in following the more direct footpath which leads through the woods, even in the dark, for it would have been dark soon after he set out. There are, however, other paths in the woods above the Reichenbach Falls which provide more accessible routes towards Italy.

The publication of the 1921 Census in 2022 prompted me to published my reading of the 1901 Census in relation to Arthur Conan Doyle.

The 1901 Census was taken on March 31st and the return for that date shows us that Arthur Conan Doyle was staying at the Ashdown Forest Hotel in East Grinstead in Sussex. The entry for the hotel is at the bottom of the following image.

Along with Arthur were Mary Foley Doyle, his mother and the new lady in his life, Jean Leckie. Arthur’s wife Louise was very ill and his liaison with Jean’s presence seemed to have the approval of his mother. The transcript of the relevant entries appears below.

In Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, edited by John Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley, Arthur’s letters to Mary talk of his plans to spend three days at the hotel, ostensibly to play golf with Jean’s brother, Stewart, and asking his mother to invite Jean to join them. Arthur was still fiercely loyal to Louise and had already told Jean that he would not leave nor divorce Louise and he would neither hurt not be unfaithful to her.

Holmes and Watson do not appear on the 1901 Census, as often seems to be the case with the census. They were presumably away from Baker Street and out of the country on the night of the census. Watson had been a widower for nearly ten years by then and may have been abroad with his new lady friend who was soon to become his second wife.

Both Holmes and Watson might have been busy with the case of the Ferrers Documents and the Abergavenny Murder was coming up for trial. Holmes may have gone to France and taken with him the manuscript of The Hound of the Baskervilles which was to be published by Conan Doyle later that year. Holmes was shortly to return to take up the case of the Duke of Holdernesse that would be later published in The Return of Sherlock Holmes as The Priory School.

The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition that took place in the summer of 1951.

In the planning for the Festival there was a discussion about whether part of the exhibition should be dedicated to Sherlock Holmes and set in the public library in St. Marylebone. Among Dr Watson’s files, is a notebook that records correspondence and cuttings from The Times of November 1950.

According to the Good Doctor, it all began when News in Brief in The Times of Friday October 27th 1950 stated that the councillors of St. Marylebone opposed the suggestion by the borough library committee that a Sherlock Holmes exhibition should be staged in the public library as a contribution to the Festival. The leader of the council said that the borough had “many things to show off about without Sherlock Holmes”.

This caused Dr Watson, to consider writing to Alderman Dean but instead he wrote to the editor of The Times the same day. In his notes, the doctor says that he doubted that Holmes would have seen the article and also doubted that he would have risen to his own defence. Dr Watson states that he believed that many of the visitors expected from abroad would find such an exhibition of interest and he suggested, with indignation, that they should reconsider their decision.

This apparently provoked a good deal of interest with Councillor Sharp who invited Dr Watson to a meeting of the library committee the following Tuesday. Sharp informed Dr Watson that no final decision had been made and asked if any of Holmes personal effects might form the basis of just such an exhibition and indicated that he (Councillor Sharp) might have been one of Holmes’ clients and that he already possessed one of his violins!

Councillor Vernon says he supported the idea of giving Holmes his appropriate place as an illustrious former resident of the borough, and a letter from an Ivor Back suggests that Vernon “spoke so slightingly” of Holmes. Ivor Back even suggested that Dr Watson should try to persuade Holmes to open the exhibition which the doctor thought was about as likely as the life-size statue of Silver Blaze that Ivor Back had suggested.

Arthur Wontner, one of the actors who played Holmes at the cinema also added his support and Mycroft got involved but only to point out that he thought Dr Watson’s memory was failing. 

One of Holmes’ former clients wrote to say that she thought that Dr Watson’s letter was a forgery as she believed that Dr Watson’s first name was James and a colleague of Dr Watson’s also added support.

The following day, Mrs Hudson also wrote to The Times castigating Madame Tussaud’s round the corner from 221B for not having the pair’s effigies amongst its exhibits.

In a letter to The Times on November 4th, Oscar Meunier, who made the bust of Holmes that was used to trap Sebastian Moran, and was, by then, living in London, stated that Holmes had asked him to ensure that no likeness of either of us or any of those he brought to justice should be perpetrated by waxen images.

Nevertheless Dr Watson conveyed the good news about the exhibition to Holmes personally that day along with the copies of the cuttings from The Times that are included here. According to Dr Watson’s notes, Holmes was touched by this tribute but alas many of the relics of their cases that many hoped would form part of the exhibition were destroyed in that mysterious and disastrous fire shortly after the end of the war.

In reporting in The Times that Holmes had warmed to the idea, Dr Watson also replied to Mycroft and Kate Whitney. He states that he was surprised to see that Lestrade had added his voice to the chorus of approval though careful reading indicates that Lestrade may have just been trying to get his own back.

The Times editorial of November 7th sums the whole story up rather well and adds that should the Marylebone councillors feel in the future that they are “getting a little over-confident” in their powers that someone should kindly whisper “Baker Street” in their ears in a similar way to how Holmes asked Dr Watson to whisper “Norbury” in his!

But the final word is with Dame Jean Conan Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle’s daughter, who offered to provide much material for the exhibition.