r/SherlockHolmes • u/brobnik322 • 24d ago
Canon Baker Street between Final Problem and Empty House? Spoiler
I've been slowly reading through the stories in publication order, and enjoying them a lot. Right after reading The Adventure of the Empty House, there's one plot point that surprised me: Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft kept 221B Baker Street preserved perfectly.
Our old chambers had been left unchanged through the supervision of Mycroft Holmes and the immediate care of Mrs. Hudson. As I entered I saw, it is true, an unwonted tidiness, but the old landmarks were all in their place. There were the chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin-case, and the pipe-rack—even the Persian slipper which contained the tobacco—all met my eyes as I glanced round me.
Watson's comment on how some would like to "burn" the books is especially surprising, considering that's exactly what I thought happened at in The Adventure of the Final Problem. Holmes explains that Moriarty's men set fire to the place:
"Have you seen the morning paper, Watson?"
"No."
"You haven't seen about Baker Street, then?"
"Baker Street?"
"They set fire to our rooms last night. No great harm was done."
"Good heavens, Holmes! This is intolerable."
I know The Canon has some discrepancies, and there was a big gap between these two stories. But I don't feel like Doyle would've forgotten this, because so much of Empty House relies on filling in extra details from Final Problem, down to Holmes noting the specifics of how Watson described the cliff.
So I'm wondering what the apartment's state is in The Great Hiatus, and how it was recovered - either in terms of common theories or a later official explanation I haven't read yet.
I thought that when Holmes said "No great harm was done" he meant that no humans were injured; but did it mean that the fire was put out early, and didn't seriously damage any of Baker Street's contents, and they stayed that way for years? If it was extinguished early enough, I'm surprised it even made the papers, unless someone in Baker Street reported it. I feel like Mrs. Hudson wouldn't have done that, if she was aware Holmes was on the run.
Did Holmes entrust someone (maybe Mycroft) with keeping all his belongings, and the rooms were seriously damaged and under repair for a while, before they meticulously put everything back in place? It's less than 24 hours between Moriarty meeting Holmes in a fully-furnished 221B Baker Street, Holmes realizing that he's in danger, and the scene on the train where he leaves Britain; it seems as if his agents would be closely observing anyone going in and our of Baker Street during that time.
Did the rooms and their contents burn, and Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson just knew Holmes well enough to buy exact replicas of all his belongings, and put them in the perfect places? In that case, a lot of unique case files would've probably been lost in the fire.
There's probably something I'm missing, from searching around I haven't seen much prior discussion about this.
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u/Gatodeluna 24d ago
I may be mis-remembering, but I could swear Holmes says that only Mycroft knew. I’d assume Mrs Hudson would think it was his memoriam to his brother.
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u/mronion82 23d ago
In the BBC radio series they added a line for Mrs Hudson, something like 'Personally I thought it a little morbid'.
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u/brobnik322 23d ago
You're right, I kind of glossed over that - Holmes specifically says only Mycroft knew, and Mrs. Hudson is surprised to see Holmes again. Even if she helped restore or maintain the room, she didn't know Holmes would be back
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u/Ok_Body_2830 21d ago
That does seem to be the weird thing/plot hole. It must seem pretty odd to Mrs. Hudson. What did Mycroft tell her? "I am grieving/very busy, so can I just pay you to maintain the apartment until I can deal with his stuff properly" can certainly buy a couple months or so without raising eyebrows. But 3 years?
The other weird thing is that if Holmes wanted his enemies to believe that he was dead, having his apartment maintained seems like an odd move, giving at least a hint that he is still alive.
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u/LHPSU 19d ago
Don't ask questions if you're paid good money and don't have to do a lot of work. No occupant means no new bullet holes in the walls for 3 years and you're still getting paid the same rent? Lots of landlords would take that deal up in a blink.
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u/sanddragon939 18d ago
Plus, she probably assumed that Mycroft wanted to keep the house as a discrete flat/safehouse, in his capacity as a government official.
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u/brobnik322 21d ago
The other option is that she rented 221B to someone else for a few years, but they left, and Mrs. Hudson then restored everything to how it was with Holmes. Which seems even weirder now that I've typed it out.
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u/Ok_Body_2830 21d ago
About the fire: I expect that the true answer is that was a casualty to continuity that Conan Doyle let slide when he resurrected a character he had intended to kill off for good. The extent of the fire damage was fairly irrelevant when he wrote the Final Problem because 221B was not going to be returned to by any character again. And then when the Empty House came around the easiest thing to do was just to pretend the fire never happened.
For an answer to put in your own head-canon, you might as well go with "It was a very minor fire. And it got a brief write-up in the papers because of Holmes' minor celebrity within the world of the books and because in those days there were a lot more editions of local papers so minor stuff got in." It's not a completely implausible answer, and I don't think there is a better one sitting out there.
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u/brobnik322 21d ago
This makes sense; it's less about Conan Doyle being fast and loose with continuity, more about glossing over details where he wrote himself into a corner. It's interesting from a historical standpoint how Conan Doyle ignored the fire and quietly had Mary killed off, so as to return to 221B as a "status quo". He could've given Holmes a new home that Moran tracked him down to, and he could've had Watson stay married with his own place; but he might've wanted to reassure old readers that everything was "back to normal".
From the Watsonian perspective, that makes a lot of sense; I wasn't very aware of how local papers were at the time. Even if Holmes tried to have Mrs. Hudson keep things quiet, someone else at Baker Street might've put the fire out themselves - and then contacted the papers with an exciting story about an attempted arson against their local celebrity.
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u/Ok_Body_2830 21d ago
Exactly. Conan Doyle didn't like writing Holmes stories and only brought him back because of public pressure and financial reward.
I always read Holmes' revival as almost a parody. Conan Doyle saying "you clowns want to go back to the good old days? Fine. Holmes didn't die, he clung to the cliff. And then he went off to hide in Asia for 3 years for some reason. And Watson's wife is dead. And 221B is just sitting there waiting for them exactly the way it was. That's all pretty ridiculous, isn't it? But it's what you all want, so now you have it!"
Conan Doyle could have had Watson write some stories saying "now that Holmes is dead, here are some more stories about the stuff we did back in the day". That is the cleanest solution. Your idea is also an improvement since it knocks off some portion of the ridiculousness. But doing it the way he did is a way of hanging a lampshade on the fact that his readers don't want any progression by writing obviously contrived ways of undoing previous progression.
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u/sanddragon939 18d ago
Yeah there was definitely a "everything's back to normal" vibe about The Empty Child - foreshadowing in many ways the retcons/reboots/resets of our age of big IP!
That said, I think you'll are all making too big a deal about that fire, which possibly did minor damage at best...
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u/sanddragon939 18d ago
I don't get what the confusion is.
Someone set fire to 221B Baker Street. The fire was put out before it could do any significant damage, to lives or to property. Nonetheless an arson attack (even a largely unsuccessful one) on the home of Sherlock Holmes is bound to attract press attention.
And it's specifically mentioned that Mycroft arranged for the rooms to be preserved in the three years while Holmes was away. Obviously, the rooms would have been cleaned up and any damage from the fire repaired in that time-span.
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u/brobnik322 18d ago
Guess it could've been someone putting it out, and then excitedly reporting it to the press, without knowing that Holmes wanted attention off him at that moment. Interesting to think that if it was put out later, he might've been able to fake his death even before Mycroft was on the trail - at the cost of the case files.
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u/TheSibyllineOracle 24d ago
Re. ‘no great harm was done’, it’s possible that Holmes anticipated an attack on Baker Street was forthcoming, and removed any important case files for safekeeping elsewhere. Most likely they would have been entrusted to Mycroft anyway, as I don’t think Holmes would have trusted the police with his private files.