The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Volume 3 Read Online

William Baring-Gould reasonably points out, “We must remember that Holmes in his college days had been bitten in the ankle by a bull terrier (Victor Trevor’s) and Watson’s bull pup may have found the same target irresistible. ‘Watson, that dog must go!’”

Several scholars doubt the very existence of the dog. L. S. Holstein, for example, does not believe that a “private hotel in the Strand” would have allowed Watson to keep a dog. W. E. Edwards, among others, takes the phrase “bull pup” to refer to a short-barrelled pistol (similar to the model referred to as a “bulldog”) rather than “a domestic pet impossible in Afghanistan, illegal on the Orontes, inappropriate for a private hotel, and invisible in Baker Street.” Similar identifications are made by George Fletcher (who believes the reference is to a military rifle) and J. R. Stockler and R. N. Brodie (a military revolver). Others point to Jacques Barzun, who writes, in Simple & Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers, without citing a source, that the phrase referred to a person with a hot temper. From this, scholars postulate that Watson fabricated the existence of the dog to warn Holmes to watch his step (Bruce Kennedy, “What Bull Pup?”). Perhaps most interesting is Arthur M. Axelrad’s suggestion, in “Dr. Watson’s Bull Pup: A Psycholinguistic Solution,” that “I keep a bull pup” was a “psycholinguistic” distortion under stress of “I keep a full cup” (that is, “I am an immoderate drinker”).

47 Baring-Gould suggests that this may refer to Watson’s experience of women—extending “over many nations and three separate continents” (see The Sign of Four, note 38, and text accompanying)—or his propensity for gambling (see, for example, “Shoscombe Old Place”).

48 In “The Mazarin Stone,” an unnamed narrator declares that “Holmes seldom laughed, but he got as near it as his old friend Watson could remember.” Clearly, that statement is disproved here. A. G. Cooper, in “Holmesian Humour,” claims to have counted 292 examples of the Master’s laughter, while Charles E. Lauterbach and Edward S. Lauterbach, in “The Man Who Seldom Laughed,” compiled the following table:

49 Watson quotes here from An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope (1688–1744): “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of Mankind is Man.”

CHAPTER
II

THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION

WE MET NEXT day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B,50 Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows.51 So desirable in every way were the apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem52 when divided between us, that the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we at once entered into possession. That very evening I moved my things round from the hotel, and on the following morning Sherlock Holmes followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus. For a day or two we were busily employed in unpacking and laying out our property to the best advantage. That done, we gradually began to settle down and to accommodate ourselves to our new surroundings.

Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning.53 Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the City.54 Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.55

Dustjacket, “Photoplay Edition,” A Study in Scarlet.
(New York: A.