The Naval Treaty

Want to read this along with me? This essay is part of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1894. I used the epub version found on Feedbooks.com.

Aside from the cultural aspects, which I detailed in my previous essay, there is some more exploration of the subtler parts of the canon worth noting here. It’s easy to lose them between the introduction of Mycroft Holmes in the previous story and Professor Moriarty in the following one, but let’s take some time to pull them out.

Dating this case is straight-forward using only the canon as a guide, but history actually makes the case worse. This is a post-marriage case, and it is “the July that immediately succeeded” that event. However, there is a mention about a secret treaty between England and Italy which is, at the time of the case, just being discussed in the press. There was a real treaty, but historically it was drafted in 1887, not 1888. This gives more weight to the marriage being in 1887, unless you only use canonical cues.¹ I’m still inclined to think that Doyle muddled what year the treaty was signed in and assumed it was closer to 1888 – after all, this story was published six years after those events, and I sometimes forget whether something happened in 2003 or 2004, so that’s plausible to me.

Apocryphal cases pop up again in this story, such as “The Adventure of the Tired Captain.” Interesting, there’s a lengthy mention of “The Adventure of the Second Stain” here. “The Second Stain” is actually a canonical story, but it won’t be written for another eleven years, so at the time this story was written it was an apocryphal case – an example of Doyle going back to flesh out his own references in later years.

Watson’s past is fleshed out a bit more with the introduction of his old school friend, Percy Phelps. Although Phelps is modest and tries to downplay his status, it says something about Watson’s own status as a gentleman that he is able to become good friends with the nephew of a high-ranking government official. At this point in the canon, we’ve gotten hints and clues that both Watson and Holmes are so-called “men of good breeding,” even if they start off their relationship quite poor financially. This is also the first time we actually learn that Watson has a moustache, but that he didn’t have one while he was at school. We don’t learn much more about Watson’s moustache, but they were fashionable among military officers at the time, so I’m personally inclined to believe that Watson grew it during his time in the service, and the habit stayed with him after his retirement.

Holmes also gets some more development in this story, as Doyle continues to evolve his detective into a more emotional character. At one point, Holmes displays sudden reverence for a rose (although whether this was genuine or a sham is open to debate), and later Holmes admits that he “never can resist a touch of the dramatic.” He also gets positively sulky when Watson even hints that he has to go back to his medical practice.

We also learn more about Holmes’ relationship with the police, which he relates to the latest in a heap of Scotland Yard detectives, Mr. Forbes. He expressly admits that he has only taken credit in four of the last fifty-three cases he’s worked with the police on, which may explain why Watson was motivated to chronicle some of Holmes’ cases himself – out of a sense of injustice to the lack of credit his friend has received in the public eye (and indeed, Holmes has repeatedly mentioned in previous stories that Watson’s chronicles are much of the source of his fame, not through police reports in the newspapers). However, it appears that Scotland Yard has far more respect for Holmes than he does for it, as he can get away with threatening a junior Yard detective without apparent repercussions.

We have the first instance of someone not being impressed with Holmes’ deductions, when Joseph Harrison says “For a moment I thought you had done something clever” after Holmes rattles off his usual series of insightful deductions upon meeting him. I’m inclined to believe this is another case of Doyle getting a bit bored with the character, or at least of writing the same scene of amazingly deducing information about a person over and over.

Some more points of our previously mentioned canon-watching:

• There’s another appearance of the page-boy. I really have no idea why I completely missed this character in all my previous reads. Sure, he’s usually only in a sentence of two, but he’s shown up about as much as Mrs. Hudson at this point.
• Speaking of Mrs. Hudson, she is mentioned here, and we learn that she isn’t the most inventive cook, but she does do a good breakfast.
• This is another case that Watson brings to Holmes’ attention (much like in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”).
• There’s another long night-time vigil, and Holmes even mentions the one in “The Speckled Band” as a similar experience.

Compared to the stories on both sides of it, “The Naval Treaty” is an often-missed gem in the canon. Compared to many of the other stories in Memoirs or even Adventures, though, it stands up as a great story in its own right, even if it’s not one of the classics.