The Missing Three-Quarter
Want to read this along with me? This essay is part of The Return of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1905. I used the epub version found on Feedbooks.com.
Before I dive into this, I just noticed that the last post marked six months of me doing these essays, and that the post after this will be my 50th essay in the series. By my estimates that puts me close to 75% done with the entire tour. I hope you guys have been enjoying these as much as I have!
On with the story. Aside from a detailed look into the nuances of Victorian rugby, “The Missing Three-Quarter” has another frank appraisal of Holmes’ addiction. It’s set circa 1896 or 1897 (based on the publication date of 1904 and the comment of it being “seven or eight years ago”), so even relatively soon after the Great Hiatus Watson is still concerned about his friend’s drug habit. He talks about dreading Holmes’ bouts of inactivity – like all addicts, Holmes is not entirely cured, but is always one hit away from returning back to the needle. In fact, Watson’s quite explicit about the level of his concern:
Therefore I blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that dangerous calm which brought more peril to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous life.
However, Watson has “gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once check his remarkable career.” There’s no indication of when this might have happened, but it is fodder for one of the most infamous Holmes pastiches in the 20th century, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Although Solution has to declare certain stories in the canon fabricated in order to make the premise work (and takes some decidedly negative swings at some of the stories in the later canon to boot), it’s one of the first novels I read that focused on Holmes the man instead of his crime-fighting career, and it’s stuck with me ever since. I highly recommend it as a spiritual pastiche, if not a strictly canonical attempt at one, and I fully plan to reread it myself once I’ve finished with my reread of the original canon.
Adding to our growing collection of common Victorian ailments is a reference to “consumption,” a disease we now know as tuberculosis. One fact that has stuck in my head over the years is that consumption was originally believed to be the result of vampirism. That doesn’t really relate to anything particular in this story, but I’ve always thought that the presence of consumption in various horror novels around the mid to late 19th century was an unintentional nod to the triumph of science over superstition, and I’m glad it’s finally made its way into the Holmes canon here.
Speaking of the canon, there’s a nice little collection of canon-watching points in this story.
- There’s yet another reference to Stanley Hopkins, but he’s only mentioned in passing as the one who referred the case to Holmes.
- At this point, Watson claims that he has lost touch with the medical profession, so much that he didn’t recognize the name of one of the heads of the medical school for the University in which the story is set. And yet, we know from previous stories that he keep up to date with medical journals.
- We have another reference to Moriarty (or at least that Dr. Armstrong could fill in the gap left by Moriarty). As a twist, Dr. Armstrong turns out to be an ally rather than an enemy, but again we continue to build Moriarty’s sinister reputation even after the character’s demise.
- Pompey is introduced. He is a hound that fulfills much the same role as my beloved Toby from The Sign of the Four. And yet, Pompey succeeds where Toby failed.
- It is mentioned that Cambridge is an “inhospitable town,” which implies that Holmes might be from Oxford. And yet, it seems unlikely that Holmes would be ignorant of rugby if he went to any British University, given the popularity of the sport at that time. This reference is the grist for an entirely new set of arguments around the “which college did Holmes go to” argument.
Sadly, this is another story where Holmes doesn’t really solve anything – he just follows the doctor, and stumbles across the solution. But for all that, the story is worth reading for the opening references to Holmes’ addiction alone.