The Isle of Devils (56 page)


        
Watson and Holmes were very fond of paraphrasing Shakespeare, for numerous examples populate the Canon (including in
The Reigate Squires, A Case of Identity, The Red Circle,
and
The Empty House
).

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Warburton’s slight misquote about ‘infinite variety’ is of course from Antony and Cleopatra, and Holmes also misquotes this line while laying a trap for Sebastian Moran (
The Adventure of the Empty House
).


        
Quinsy,
acute inflammation of the tonsils and the surrounding tissue,
was the fabricated ailment of James Windibank to disguise his voice for his role as Mr. Hosmer Angel (
A Case of Identity
).  


        
One wonders whether the Cloister School of Mr. Warburton is in any way related to the Priory School of Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable, also thought to be a thin disguise for the Abbey School (
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
)?


        
By a strange coincidence, Watson’s first literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a fine series of books about Professor George Edward Challenger. One wonders if his inspiration for the Professor’s name stems from this expedition?


        
Watson perhaps later regretted his adventurous choice of breakfast. By 1888, he was back eating ham and eggs (Chapter VIII,
The Sign of the Four)
. Rashers are a thin slice of bacon or ham (
The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
).


        
This encounter with the negress serving-girl may explain Watson’s familiarity with them and why he was hardly startled when he saw the daughter of Mrs. Effie Munro (
The Yellow Face
).


        
Watson continued to claim that heat does not bother him thanks to his Indian training as late as 1888 (
The Cardboard Box
).


        
Watson clearly enjoyed strolling through the streets of towns that he and Holmes visited, such as the town of Ross (
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
), Birlstone (Chapter IV,
The Valley of Fear
), and Cambridge (
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
).


        
Five thousand pounds in 1880 would be the equivalent of at least $600,000 today! Not bad for a hunk of whale biliary secretion! Bermuda would become known as manufacturer of fine perfumes in 1928, when the Perfumery was opened. This moved its operations to historic Stewart Hall in St. George's in 2004.


        
Washington Irving (1783 – 1859) wrote a tale entitled “The Three Kings of Bermuda” which detailed the adventures of Misters Carter, Waters, and Chard. 


        
Yellow Fever, an acute viral hemorrhagic disease by the bite of the
Aedes aegypti
mosquito found in tropical and subtropical areas. It was a great killer of men during the Colonial Era, including Mrs. Effie Munro’s first husband, the lawyer Mr. John Hebron of Atlanta (
The Yellow Face
), and Rodger Baskerville (Chapter III,
The Hound of the Baskervilles
). While there is no specific therapy even today, vaccination (developed in 1937) and improved vector control have significantly blunted its impact.


        
In 1867, the house that would become the Globe Hotel was rented to Ralph Foster, the first of many proprietors. He died the following year at the age of thirty-three, but his widow continued to run the hotel and bar with billiard room for another fourteen years. It would have
been hard for Mr. Foster to stride the timber of the Globe Theater, considering it burned down in 1613. A second theater of that name was built on the same site by 1614, but it was closed in 1642 and vanished under the expanding morass of London. It wasn’t until 1997 that the new Globe rose from the ashes near its original site. It is true that the wreck of the
Sea Venture
almost certainly could not have served as the model for
The Tempest.
However, that does not mean that the author of that play could not have been inspired by the Isle of Devils, whose existence was well known to well-educated Elizabethans, having first been discovered in 1511 by the Spanish. Doubts regarding the authorship of the “Shakespeare” plays have existed since at least 1848, and the great American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) was indeed a skeptic of the merchant of Stratford’s authenticity.  Emerson and Watson may have doubted the authorship of the plays, but it is unlikely that they ever backed the most likely contender, Sir Edward de Vere, the 17
^th
Earl of Oxford, as his candidacy was not proposed until 1920. 


        
The Montrachet, a white Burgundy made from the Chardonnay grape, that Watson enjoys with his dinner was obviously not made in Marseilles, but that port is a logical locale from which a bottle of wine from the Bourgogne region of France could have shipped to Bermuda. Many years later he and Holmes enjoyed another bottle of Montrachet with some cold partridge (
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger
). 

CHAPTER VI: THE HEART OF THE ISLAND


        
Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) did indeed have a golden nose (or perhaps copper), having lost the original in a duel. And the eccentric scientist not only kept a tame moose (or elk) at his castle, but he fed it beer. The unfortunate creature one night had a bit too much to drink, fell down the stairs and died. True story. Only a few months later, Watson would profess great astonishment when his new roommate, Sherlock Holmes, proclaimed that he was “ignorant of the Copernican Theory” and did not care whether the earth travelled round the sun or vice versa (Chapter II
, A Study in Scarlet
). Evidence suggests that Holmes was possibly having a bit of fun with the somewhat gullible Watson.


        
Watson certainly enjoyed fishing, though his attempts to actually do so were often interrupted, such as when Holmes conveniently forgot their spoon-bait (
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place
). 

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The irony of course, is that the church of St. George’s ran into difficulties in 1894 and was never completed. The ruins today are known by the poetic name “The Unfinished Church.”


        
Watson’s admiration for General Charles George Gordon (1833 – 1885) continued to grow, such that sometime after the General’s death at the hands of the Mahdists Watson acquired a “newly framed picture” of him for the walls of 221B Baker Street (
The Cardboard Box
). Gordon’s “Ever-Victorious Army” was a sort of a French Foreign Legion in reverse. 


        
Boudica, the queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the Romans in c.60 CE, was very popular amongst the Victorians, who saw Queen Victoria as a sort of second coming of the ancient queen. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892), the Poet Laureate, wrote a poem about her (
Boadicea
) in 1865. Later, in 1905, London would see the erection of a great bronze statue of Boudica atop her war chariot next to Westminster Bridge and across from Big Ben.


        
Watson quotes a famous line from a poem of John Milton (1608 – 1674),
On His Blindness
(c.1655): “We also serve who only stand and wait.”


        
It is generally accepted that Watson was born in 1852. His birthplace is less certain, but there does appear to be a hint of the Scottish in various aspects of his history, such as his middle name and even his surname, so it is certainly plausible that the Bermuda Manuscript is accurate in its claim for Edinburgh. 


        
It is possible that the Watson family traveled on the
Rock of Gibraltar
, since the Adelaide-Southampton line’s new ship the
Bass Rock
, was not completed until near 1897.This would have been many years before Mr. Crocker served as its first officer (
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
). Watson’s father was fortunate to arrive in Australia by 1853, as the boom was largely over by 1854, plunging towns like Melbourne into severe depressions.


        
Watson’s early background (before he attends the University of London) is relatively obscure. One of the few certainties is that he attended boarding school in England with Percy “Tadpole” Phelps, who was two classes ahead of him (
The Naval Treaty
). Although not explicitly stated, it stands to reason that Watson would have known Phelps best if his older brother Henry was also in Phelps’ class. But it is even debated exactly which school Watson and Phelps attended.
The two major candidates include Winchester College, Hampshire and Wellington College, Berkshire. If the Bermuda Manuscript is authentic, the issue may have been solved. Watson’s old school number would stick in his brain for many years, as he continues to use it as a memory device as late as 1899 (
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman
).


        
There is an apocryphal tale (
The Field Bazaar
, 1896) by Watson’s first literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which bizarrely suggests that Watson did not have an MD, despite Watson’s clear statements to the contrary (The first line of
A Study in Scarlet,
as well as its title for Chapter VI, and
The Problem of Thor Bridge
). Why Sir Arthur would suddenly slander his friend Watson is one of the greatest mysteries of their relationship. Watson’s statement in the Bermuda Manuscript makes it clear that he was fully qualified to practice medicine.