graphy of Dr. Watson Compiled from his Writings By Deswono MacCamry Mhis is @ biographical age. At no other poried of literary history have biographers shown such brilliant independence of documents, such Ingenuity in surmise. Biographers of an earlier date would never have told us, for instance, that eats were playin the area, or a milk-cart was passing by when Keats was born, or have described the thoughts which Jay behind the cold grey eyes Napoleon at a moment when (conceivable) they filled with tears. Nor did it occur to them to introduce their hero, as it were, incognito, a minor figure in the midst of some trivial but brilliantly imagined seen They, the old biographers, began, you remember, in a different fashion. hey opened with a statement of the place and date at. which the Diographee was bors, and with an account of his descent. I cannot bring home to you more directly the drawback of such old-fashioned methods than by saying at once hat, if we still adhered to them, it would be almost impossible to write the life of the most representative Englishman of the latter end of the nineteenth century—I_ mean, of course, Dr, Watson, friend and chronicler of Sherlock Holmes. not take place, and to embody in them remarks uttered on other occasions. [shall then have an opportunity of narrating his life up to that date—without pinning myself down to tiresome particularities. He has told us himself that he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London in 1778. Well, from evidence it would take too long to marshal, we know he was not brilliant. Indeed, I have always suspected that when Holmes refused in "The Case of the Dying Detective," to allow Watson to presceribe for him and told him roundly that he was only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre "qualification the great man was not only acting a. Dart but also speaking his mind. No: Lieutenant Watson would not be our Watson' if he had passed his examinations quickly. He would have taken a full five years and more to qualify. If, then, he entered London University.at the average age he would be twenty-four when We do not know precisely the date and had not his agita ing a few melancholy facts deduced from his brother's watch betrayed him, we should know Jittle about any single member of this family. Dr, Watson, in all things typical of his generation, is none more unlike our own than in his reluctance to make family skeletons dance in public. Although the has never shown the slightest shyness about being drawn, so that not his moustache, his clothes and his bowler resemble those of ¢ountless other men, we should reeognise him in the streets, he has always, been exceedingly chary of acts about himself unless pertinent to the adventure: This self-respecting, self-effacing dradit proclaims his sound middieclags descent, for, though a proud reserve was once supposed the sign of -breoding, a flighty and confident exhibitionism has become almost the sole remaining peculiarity—of too many aristaers And T may add that both he and this friend also betray that descent their respectfully romantic, yet self-consciously independent attitude towards people of title. For Dr. Watson even a baronet or a coro-noted envelope adds to the unenvied glamour of the world, Let me add that here he has my entire sympathy: nothing is 40 dull as equality; where there is no inequality there is no fun.
"Elementary, my dear Watson." he took his degree, thus we arrive at the date of his birth, 1864. He Owing to this paucity wot direct] information, though, as I shall pre ently suggest, Dr, Watson has told as. more about himself than he per-Maps intended, you will not be sur-rised to hear that T have elected open my forthcoming and pro fossely illustrated biography of him the modern fashion, The second Afghan war is on the point of breaking out; the of the time pass rapidly acre page, diminished, however, to pigmy ize in the perspective of my own powerful and quizzical intellect, At} Jast, upon the crowded deck of a steamer destined for Bombay, the yeader is permitted to observe a young straight-backed, strong Backed Army surgeon. He attached to the Fifth Northumber-Jand Fusiliers, already stationed in India, He has a fair moustache and he is correctly if inexpensively dressed. Although it is his habit to cling to his bowler in roughest parts; of rural England he discards it in the Red Sea. wholesome and dietable, This, you perceive, is the new incognito method. The reader is gently tittilated by his shrewd guess, that this young man is no other dhan the Dr. Watson, though the young man himselt—and I Believe this is what the Greeks alled irony—is ignorant (not, of course, of the fact), but of its far-flung implications. Though reserved print there is no reason to sup-'Pose that Lieutenant Watson would be otherwise than modestly frank in conversation; and adopting the modern biographer's privilege ccording conversations which did arrived in India just in time for the battle of Maiwand, which took place honest caution would lead him to avoid, though scrupulously polite, female companionship on board. would be, then, in the deck smoking, room (minutely described) that he would impart the following facts about himself: that he had only his professional prospects, and neither kith nor kin in England'; that his Jate father had been an unsuccessful man but a conscientious parent who had emigrated to Australia; that! his elder brother had been 2 great cause of anxiety and disappoint mont; that he himself had spent hi childhood in Australia; then been sent to England to a small inexpensive school, where a nephew by marriage of a lord (you remember, of course, 'Tadpole' Phelps in "The 1 Treaty") was enough of rara, to attract a certain amount of irenic xagging.
Do you wonder at my temerity in allowing such definite statements drop from my hero's lips—as the steamer furrows its quiet way across the dark "blue circle of the sea?
Have no fear, if my reviewers pute them they will receive a erushing reply.
From Watson himself' we learn in Study in Scarlet" that his father was dead and that he had no rela tions in England; observe he did not! say that he had mone elsewhere. That the family had emigrated Australia and that it was from Australia the funds just sufficient for!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.