Whose pivotal, vital, and indispensable role in the Canon is not sufficiently understood or remarked upon. For if Sherlock as “Altamont” was a partial salvation of Conan Doyle’s father, can it not be said of Mary that she is nothing less than “the Mam”?
Moriarty, Moran, Morstan. From Holmes’s point of view, the three greatest challenges of his career, each one inextricably linked by ethnicity and etymology. Moriarty and Moran we have already considered. Let us now turn our attention to the formidable Miss Morstan.
The literary parallel between her and Colonel Moran should be obvious. He was an officer in the Indian Army; her father was an officer in the Indian Army. Their names are, in fact, nearly identical, and indeed “Morstan”-with its wonderful frisson of implicit death-is anagrammatical for “St. Moran.” Thus, Mary Morstan is the “good side” of Colonel Moran.
Holmes, however, takes an instant dislike to her. When at the conclusion of The Sign of the Four Watson announces their engagement, Holmes coldly tells his Boswell that he cannot congratulate him. For Holmes has instantly sensed an enemy, however innocuous she might appear, and realizes, with the chill wind of death blowing past him in the shape of Tonga’s dart, that the world will not be able to contain both him and Miss Morstan.
One of them will have to die.
Now, it may be objected that Mary Morstan is not Irish. Apparently born in India, her mother dead, she is sent to school in Edinburgh (much like Watson himself, who was packed off to boarding school in the Scottish capital as a youth), and later comes down to London. But consider the evidence:
1. Her Christian name is Mary, the most common Irish name for a girl. Conan Doyle’s own mother was named Mary.
2. By her own admission, she has no relatives in England.
3. She goes to school in Edinburgh, with its large Irish population.
4. She earns her living as a governess, a standard occupation in England for an unmarried Irish girl.
5. She is described by Watson-a man who boasts of great experience with women-as blonde with pale skin and large blue eyes: typical physiognomy of the west of Ireland, with its heavy Viking influence.
6. While the name Morstan is unusual, there is a district in County Down, near Belfast, called Morstan Park.
It’s very likely, therefore, that Captain Arthur Morstan-interesting choice of a first name-was born in Northern Ireland (there’s the Home Rule problem again), raised in Edinburgh, joined the Indian Army, not the regular Army (which might indicate that he was a Catholic, not a Protestant). In charge of a convict settlement in the Andaman Islands-a fit duty station for an Irishman, perhaps, but not an Englishman-he later dies of heart attack brought on by an attack of furious temper.
When Watson marries Mary Morstan, Holmes’s world is shattered. Other than scorn, he has no way to fight back. With Dr. Roylott, he could unbend the poker; with Moriarty, he could jiu-jitsu him over the side of the Reichenbach Falls; with Col. Moran, he could outsmart him and deliver him into the hands of the police.
But against Mary, he could do nothing.
And so Holmes “dies” at the conclusion of The Final Problem, the best and wisest man Watson had ever known.
There follows the three years-note the symbolic number three-of the Great Hiatus, during which we read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, time in Tibet, a meeting with the Dalai Lama, a visit to-tellingly-Persia, Mecca, and Khartoum (just after the death of General Gordon, whose portrait hung upon the wall in Baker Street), and the coal-tar derivative research in Montpelier. Complete bunkum, of course, as Edgar W. Smith, the best and wisest member of the Baker Street Irregulars, pointed out. Holmes did nothing of the sort. Without the linguistic skills of Sir Richard Burton, the look-in at Mecca would very likely have ended at the business end of an Arabian scimitar.
For the truth is, during the period of the Great Hiatus, Sherlock Holmes was, in fact, dead. As dead as Mordred and Mordor and Moriarty.
And what recalls him to life? What brings him back to face the villain Moran (and thus the ghost of Moriarty) in The Empty House? Only one thing.
The death of Mary Morstan. The shape-shifter, Fata Morgana’s sister. Without Watson’s sad bereavement, there can be no return of Sherlock Holmes.
In order for Holmes to live again, Mary must trade places with him.
Thus does Holmes’s greatest enemy make the most heroic sacrifice. Mary Morstan gives up her husband and returns Watson to the embrace of Sherlock Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, and Baker Street.
Just as “the Mam” had to sacrifice herself for her family in the face of Charles Altamont Doyle’s alcoholism and penury, so does Mary Morstan sacrifice herself that “Altamont” might live. After all, it was “the Mam” who entreated her son to resurrect Sherlock, after his death in The Final Problem; and upon relenting, what did Conan Doyle say to her?
He still lives.
Just as Conan Doyle had to kill first the Irishman in him and later the Catholic, so that the Scottish-born English gentlemen and knight of letters could fully flower, so must the Irish girl die that the Englishman and his Scottish amanuensis-the two presentable sides of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-may fully live again, reborn through a woman’s love. It is one of the noblest and most moving self-sacrifices in all of fiction-and for Conan Doyle, one of the most daring selfportraits in all literature.
HOW THE CREATOR OF SHERLOCK HOLMES BROUGHT HIM TO AMERICA by Christopher Redmond
Christopher Redmond grew up in Kingston, Ontario, graduating from Queen’s University. He received his MA from the University of Waterloo, where he is currently director of internal communications, editing the university’s daily news bulletin. Redmond is the author of In Bed with Sherlock Holmes; Welcome to America, Mr. Sherlock Holmes; and A Sherlock Holmes Handbook. He was formerly editor of Canadian Holmes, the journal of The Bootmakers of Toronto, Canada’s Sherlock Holmes society, and now operates the Web site Sherlockian.Net. Redmond is a member of several Sherlockian societies, including the Baker Street Irregulars of New York.
Arthur Conan Doyle-the creator of Sherlock Holmes and so many other characters and achievements-lived, from his birth in 1859 to his death in 1930, precisely 25,978 days. A little arithmetic shows that the exact middle of his life came on December 14, 1894, a winter day that saw him, at the age of thirty-five, aboard a ship in the North Atlantic, returning home from his first visit to North America.
Conan Doyle was British through and through, but nevertheless he loved America and visited the continent four times, and enthusiasts can trace many of his steps on this side of the water, and imagine how he felt as he saw views that we still can see today.
At thirty-five, Conan Doyle presumably considered himself a young man still, even if now carrying the responsibilities of middle age including two children and a wife, the former Louise Hawkins, who was slowly dying of tuberculosis. Young though he might still be, it was because of his considerable achievements already that he had been invited to come to North America to tour and lecture. He had managed to acquire an education-something not to be taken for granted by a youngster growing up in poverty in smoky Edinburgh, capital of Scotland-and then a medical training. After a few false starts in his medical practice, he had managed to earn a respectable income from it, in the Southsea suburb of Portsmouth, England’s largest Channel port. He succeeded there sufficiently, supplementing his medical income with occasional modest payments for magazine stories and newspaper articles, to become a principal source of financial support for his extended family, and be able to start a family of his own. He had married Louise in 1885, and initially they had lived in Southsea and then in South Norwood, a modest suburb of London, but Louise fell ill and they spent time at a number of resorts in the hope of finding a climate that would bolster her health.