Canon Discussion: Five Orange Pips

(originally published in my personnel journal and on Holmesslash)

This discussion brought to you by sheer disappointment with the Tour de France, strange goings on with my Dictaphone and a sore knee.

I wish I had one of those transcribing software things on my computer, I originally did all my note taking via Dictaphone and it would have been easier to just plug it into the computer and go “here ya go, transcribe for me.” Ah well… nothing like almost TWO HOURS trying to figure out what you’ve just said (I have a heavy cold and currently talking in a very gravely voice… anyone want to hear my rambles heck I’ll put them up… lol)

PUB: Strand (UK) Nov 1891, Strand (US) Dec 1891

Date: September 1887.

Dispute(s):
… well, I don’t think there is any dispute. The evidence within the text all supports September 1887, and the reference to Watson having a wife will be dealt with later as will the one concerning him (Holmes) being defeated by a woman. Plus I’m not really into this part of ‘the game’, I like to believe Watson. There is also a question whether or not Watson wrote this story or if it is indeed is Sherlock Holmes.

Plot:
John Openshaw comes to see Holmes with a story about murder, oranges and secret goings on. Holmes gives him rather strange advice, and the guy falls victim to this secret gang.

Versions:
I cannot find any pastiches or anything, but there is an episode of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century based on this plot (which makes faaaar more sense), and there is a Basil Rathbone film based on this idea called ‘Sherlock Holmes Faces Death’. With the exception of the BBC Radio 4 adaptations, there have been *no* canon adaptations of this on TV. (For random trivia: the voice of Sherlock Holmes in SH22 is the guy who plays Lt. Randall Disher in ‘Monk’).

Discussion:
The opening line of the case begins:

“When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90, I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave.”

Why doesn’t Watson mention 1881? Gavin Brend suggests that during 1881 Watson was busy writing up STUD and was not involved in any of Holmes’s investigations, or at least ones which aren’t in the public eye all ready or didn’t have particularly interesting plots. However, Watson also drops some great hints about cases that he might write up at a later date… which we know he didn’t. I would have loved Watson to tell the tale of when Holmes wound up the guy’s watch to prove the case… That would have been great.

Holmes also has had a bit of press celebration (“Some, however, have already gained publicity through the papers.”). Why doesn’t Watson feel that these are worth mentioning? Does he feel a bit left out when Holmes is getting all this glory, has there been some tension between the pair?

One of the disputes about the date surrounds this line: “I have been beaten four times – three times by men, and once by a woman.” Which is why people dispute September 1887, and want the case to be after SCAN. However, what about Effie Munro (YELL)? Doesn’t she effectively beat him, she doesn’t beat him in terms of she beats him but she defeats him that it wasn’t what he thought (perhaps he should have thought about this later). Perhaps he is referred to Watson and the “wife” reference, he’s been beaten in love… I digress though :P.

Has Watson changed anything about this story? Has he covered up things or has he left them exactly as there were. We get a rather cosy view of them together by the fire, Holmes working on his index and Watson absorbed in a book that happens to make the weather outside a little more fun. Incidentally, we (in England) do get terrible weather in September, in fact at the moment we are having terrible weather with July. All the fun of being an island I suppose.  It’s all very domestic.

Watson mentions:

My wife was on a visit to her mother’s, and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.

This is September 1887 though, he doesn’t marry Mary until 1888, and Mary has no mother. Klinger points out that the Double-day editions of ‘The Adventures…’ follows the Strand version with ‘mother’, however in the first book publication of the story the word mother is changed to ‘aunt’. This wife reference is the reason people say “oh it can’t be 1887…” What if though Watson’s relationship with Holmes has been remarked upon by someone and struck by the domestic bliss that he seems to show he’s inserted a reference to a ‘wife’ just as a passing thought as if saying “I AM NOT A PUFF!”

Could the weather outside be reflecting his relationship with Holmes?

A guy called MacQueen (sorry I can’t make out his first name) suggests that Mary Watson was Doyle misreading Watson’s notes or being misled into thinking that he was already married by 1887. Instead of a wife, is a snide comment at Holmes? Is Holmes usually his wife, performing wifely duties for her husband (ie shagging him) but at the moment the ‘wife’ is away, meaning that Holmes is in a mood.

We also get to see Holmes’s social life:

“Why,” said I, glancing up at my companion, “that was surely the bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?”

“Except yourself I have none,” he answered. “I do not encourage visitors.”

which we know is pretty much true, but why didn’t Watson wonder if it was any of his friends randomly dropping by? Has his relationship with Holmes caused a rift between Watson and his friend, maybe it’s more that *Watson* has no friends other than Holmes, he doesn’t seem to mention many people (then again it is all about Holmes) and when he does it’s an acquaintance.

I always wonder if there is a bit of ‘Resident Patient’ parallel to it – does Holmes believe Openshaw? Does he give the guy pretty strange advice (considering how interest Holmes is in the case and how much it later affects him) as a warning to tell him the truth? I don’t think Openshaw is being completely honest with us, perhaps he sided with his uncle in attitude and we know that Holmes seems to be a pretty tolerant guy so perhaps he feels that whatever is going to happen the young man deserves it.

In the way Holmes is about the case… it confuses me because I think the doesn’t really believe him, but yet what is going on? Holmes berates the police as imbeciles and wants all the details but gives the guy some pretty shit advice really. What is going on in Holmes’s mind, or his life at this moment?

“I have seen the police.”

“Ah!”

“But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.”

Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he cried.

Considering Holmes is so into the case, his advice of bugger off, put a note on the sundial explaining it all and I’ll come visit in a day or two to clear up the rest of the matter. Why can’t Holmes come now? Is it his health? There is a reference at the end of the story where Holmes says: ” if God sends me health” — is the whole reason Holmes doesn’t do anything sooner because his health prevents it? With Watson being there watching over Holmes whilst his ‘wife is away… maybe Holmes is ill or too ill presently to leave Baker Street. It might not be illness he could be injured.

Just dipping into the dating ‘cos I know some people are into this. There are VERY precise dates within this story:

“The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks later, upon the night of May 2d.“

“Well, it was the beginning of ’84 when my father came to live at Horsham, and all went as well as possible with us until the January of ’85. On the fourth day after the new year…” (JAN 4th or 5th depending on how you take the ‘fourth day after new year’)

“It was in January, ’85, that my poor father met his end, and two years and eight months have elapsed since then.”

Which if Watson was going to fudge he’d have to do a lot of fudging of dates. There is a lot of work to do there, yet the reference to a wife (who mysteriously has a mother even though we know to be an orphan) and further this:

“I think, Watson,” he remarked at last, “that of all our cases we have had none more fantastic than this.”

“Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four.”

“Well, yes. Save, perhaps, that. And yet this John Openshaw seems to me to be walking amid even greater perils than did the Sholtos.”

I’d be more inclined to distrust SIGN than FIVE, there is more evidence agreeing with September 1887.
I have a feeling that the end of the story is fabricated by Watson, I don’t deny that Holmes was depressed and upset by the whole thing (it makes for some great hurt/comfort by Watson) but I think the putting in the orange pips and sending it off was fabricated by Watson.

Questions:
‘Wife’ – is this a reference to Holmes?

Holmes’s health – is Watson really there not because his ‘wife’ is visiting her mother but because Holmes’s health is bad?

Is John Openshaw telling the truth?

Are Holmes and Watson going through a rocky period of their relationship?

References:
‘The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes’, annotated by Leslie S. Klinger.