Regarding Tin Dispatch Boxes

Ten years ago Nicholas Meyer presented the world with what at that time was a rarity, an unpublished work by John H. Watson. Meyer was sent the manuscript by his uncle, who had discovered it in a newly purchased home. The house had belonged to a typist who had done some work in a nursing home -- the nursing home that Watson supposedly wound up in. To that typist Watson had narrated one last tale, Meyer told us, a tale for which the world was now prepared.

Sherlockian scholars soon cast some serious doubts as to the tale's authenticity, but the damage was done. In the years that followed, over twenty new manuscripts turned up. Suddenly everyone had a connection with some descendent of the Vernet clan, a fourth-hand relation to one of Watson's wives, or, all else failing, a chance-in-a-million find in an antique store or bombed out bank. Many tales were simply just being released after some long-term prohibition by Holmes himself. And once an author/editor had put one manuscript before the public, the odds were very good that he would be sent another by one of his readers (very unselfish folk, those readers).

In the end, the sheer number of such discoveries was evidence against most of them being authentic. Tales featuring vampires, time travel, or numerous celebrities were easily discredited. Of those who claimed to have found the battered tin dispatch box, time has given us strong objections, for none of those finders has come up with the tales Watson said were in there. We have yet to read of the cutter Alicia, the missing James Phillimore, Isadora Persano, or the true facts concerning the Creeping Man. After so many years, it is probably safe to say that we won't be seeing them from those sources either.

In the wake of the great manuscript flood of the seventies the Sherlockian climate toward such discoveries appears to have changed. Pastiche writers are now hesitant about prefacing their stories with involved tales of just how their bit of Watson-work fell into their laps (with no consideration for the immense monetary value of such an item in itself). Interest in the unpublished works has taken a more scholarly approach, as is evidenced in the reconstructions of various cases by William Dudley, Donald Redmond, and others. Such works are stimulating reading and often admirable pieces of scholarship, but they nonetheless leave one with a feeling of longing to read such tales from Watson's own pen.

Does that chance still exist? Possibly, if the fabled tin box has managed to survive the London blitz and years of neglect. Unknown to the world, it may have already been found, now residing in the collection of some unscrupulous, egocentric collector who it is loath to even make its existence known. On the other hand, the box may still remain in the hands of its rightful owner, Dr. Watson, who retrieved it from the vaults of Cox and Co. sometime since he wrote THOR. If it is in his hands, the good doctor undoubtedly has his reasons for keeping the tales within out of the public eye.

Perhaps the unpublished cases are being kept that way to maintain the quality of the existing Canon. Watson himself has written that that many of the tales have no conclusion. Some may have been kept unpublished because Watson felt his own writing was not up to par in them. And there may be those stories for which, even now the world is just not ready. Whatever the situation, it may be some time before we lay eyes on those tales.

In the meantime, Watson will surely forgive us if we who are fond of his works manage to find our own tin dispatch boxes in the depths of our imaginations. The Watsonian Canon is now secure from any real fraud; too many students of the Sacred Writings know its contents too well. This does not mean that another chance to ride with Holmes and Watson in a hansom is unwelcome, even if the hansom's driver takes his turns a bit too tightly or misses his destination by a number or two. There was a good reason for the manuscripts which turned up in the seventies, and that reason is still good. Sixty stories of Sherlock Holmes are just not enough.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, December 1983)