Many authors and film-makers would seek to overturn this in the years ahead, but as far as the canon goes we find ourselves visiting Sherlock Holmes’ first ever case.
Avast ye! It’s time for…
‘The “Gloria Scott”‘ (1893)
The Case
Holmes relates the story of a visit to the home of his friend Victor Trevor while still an undergraduate, during which Victor’s father receives both a visit from an insalubrious seaman from his past and a mysterious note — The supply of game for London is going steadily up. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen-pheasant’s life — and drops into a fatal collapse on the spot. How do the initials J.A., tattooed on Mr. Trevor’s forearm tie into the mystery? And what of the miserable final voyage of the good boat Gloria Scott?
The Characters
Mr. Victor Trevor, undergraduate; patient enough to put up with Sherlock Holmes.
Mr. [Redacted] Trevor, Sr., JP; probably has a long shadow.
The Timeline
I have no doubt that someone has sat down and plotted out the likely dates in Holmes’ life, but all we really know here is that he was an undergraduate. Mind you, he was still fairly fresh out of university in A Study in Scarlet (1887), so how much time can really have passed between this inciting event and his full-fledged career as the world’s only consulting detective?
The Tropes
This is proto-Holmes, so there are no undocumented cases to tantalise, except a few deductions — two keys ones (“You have been in New Zealand.” and “You have visited Japan.”) going unexplained.
Points of Interest
Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but does this even qualify as a case? Holmes deduces the connection to someone with the initials J.A. (because Trevor, Sr. has the initials J.A partially burned on his arm) and demystifies the note, but the details of the situation itself are relayed via letter. So…what does he solve? This is really just a day out for his various abilities more than anything that would inform his decision to pursue detection, kind words from an older man or not.
There are still a few stories remaining in this collection, but this one really feels like Doyle is running out of ideas — entirely understandable when you consider the rate at which he was writing these, no doubt to keep up with demand. Though it’s to be wondered if the framing of this had an influence in the influx of origin stories that have stunk up so many IPs in recent decades. Thankfully we’re saved the story of How Holmes Got His Deerstalker (yes, I know he only wears it in Sidney Paget’s illustrations — but you get the idea), but this glimpse backwards at who he was before he was Sherlock Holmes feels like the tip of an iceberg that has loomed ever more into view in almost every form of media.
Seriously, how could you tell a man had been to Japan just by looking at him? Unless he’s wearing a kimono bearing some text he definitely doesn’t understand, I mean. Thoughts below…
Also, who tattoos their own initials on themself? The name of a loved one — though I find that weird, since you’re hardly likely to forget it — or a humorous picture of a dog skateboarding, sure, but why your own initials? I now want to do a deep dive into the culture of Victorian tattoos, and I don’t think that’s the impression Doyle hoped to leave with this one.
~
The Sherlock Holmes canon by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on The Invisible Event
A Study in Scarlet (1887)
The Sign of Four (1890)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [ss] (1892):
- ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (1891)
- ‘A Case of Identity’ (1891)
- ‘The Red-Headed League’ (1891)
- ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’ (1891)
- ‘The Five Orange Pips’ (1891)
- ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ (1891)
- ‘The Blue Carbuncle’ (1892)
- ‘The Speckled Band’ (1892)
- ‘The Engineer’s Thumb’ (1892)
- ‘The Noble Bachelor’ (1892)
- ‘The Beryl Coronet’ (1892)
- ‘The Copper Beeches’ (1892)
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes [ss] (1894):
- ‘Silver Blaze’ (1892)
- ‘The Yellow Face’ (1893)
- ‘The Stockbroker’s Clerk’ (1893)
- ‘The “Gloria Scott”‘ (1893)
- ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ (1893)
- ‘The Reigate Squires’ (1893)
- ‘The Crooked Man’ (1893)
- ‘The Resident Patient’ (1893)
- ‘The Greek Interpreter’ (1893)
- ‘The Naval Treaty’ (1893)
- ‘The Final Problem’ (1893)
The Invisible Event 
Piece of advice: do not Google “Man in kimono” with your wife in the room . . .
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William S. Baring-Gould, in his The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, dates this story as taking place July 12 to August 4 1874, about six years before A Study in Scarlet. For his book, B-G determined dates for every story, using internal details, including historical daily weather records. Sherlockian “scholarship” taken to a somewhat absurd extreme.
I don’t mean to recommend the book. After the first dozen or so stories, in which the annotations describe most of the common stuff like dogcarts and gasogenes and Victorian London mail service, they largely bog down into the many details of the dating. B-G also annoying presents the stories in chronological order according to his dating, rather than in order of publication. If this was your first exposure to Holmes, the first story you read would be The Gloria Scott.
A better book is The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Leslie S. Klinger, who appears to have written it in part to make up for the deficiencies of the B-G version.
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That’s…incredible — imagine the effort that Baring-Gould has gone to, even if it does seem rather tedious. Wow, the fandom of this stuff will never, ever cease to amaze me.
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It’s possible that this was originally outlined or drafted without any intention of making it a Holmes story, and then at some point Doyle changed his mind. The problem for Doyle was that Holmes was so popular that stories featuring the character could command a substantially higher price, so that there was always a temptation to add Holmes and double his fee. I’ve previously quoted an 1901 letter from Doyle to Herbert Greenhough Smith, the editor of the Strand magazine, offering him the option of buying The Hound of the Baskervilles with or without Holmes:
“The price I quoted [£50 per thousand words] has for years been my serial price not only with you but with other journals. Now it is evident that this is a very special occasion since as far as I can judge the revival of Holmes would attract a great deal of attention. If put up to open competition I could get very particular terms for this story. Suppose I gave the directors the alternative that it should be without Holmes at my old figure or with Holmes at £100 per thou. which would they choose? … Holmes is at a premium in America just now.”
The Baring-Gould book is a mixture of three kinds of response to the text: first, factual annotations explaining sources, allusions, historical background and so on; second, critical opinion; and third, exegesis amounting in many cases to fan fiction. Doyle was not a writer trying to construct a consistent fictional universe, and he was not notably careful in his attention to series or even story consistency, so that when Baring-Gould spends half a page trying to reconcile various contradictory date (the voyage of the Gloria Scott can’t have been in 1855, and also thirty years prior to Mr. Trevor senior writing the letter to his son, while also being Holmes’ first case), he is allowing his enthusiasm to mislead the reader, since the real explanation is that Doyle made a mistake.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with fan fiction, and applying the methods of the “higher criticism” to fiction can be entertaining, but it is better for the reader if you clearly distinguish the factual and fictional responses to the text. Baring-Gould wrote a novel, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, in the form of a biography of the character, and that’s a better place to put the fan-fiction material. I note that Baring-Gould’s grandfather Sabine was a hagiographer (a writer of the lives of saints), a discipline that also freely mixes factual and fictional material.
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