Watson in the dog-house (part 2)

Seemingly oblivious to these insults to the feelings of his wife, Watson risks yet more dramatic wifely disapproval in TWIS when he makes two blunders. 

The first is that on finding Mary's friend's errant husband (the old sot had repaired to an opium den) he doesn't rush back home - and this is after midnight, mind - but packs the drug-fiend into a cab with a hastily scribbled note and then dashes off with Holmes on an overnight adventure. 

Which is the second blunder - for on joining Holmes he finds himself spending the night in the house of Holmes' client, a Mrs Neville St Clair:

the door flew open and a little blonde woman stood in the opening [...] She stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light...

Mary must have blown her top over this one! It is the closest a Victorian gentleman could politely get to saying "phwoaarr" in print. 

In fact it is to be strongly suspected that here is the real reason for Watson's temporary return, in 1887, to his old rooms at 221b. He tell us in FIVE that:

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

But he has clearly forgotten that he has already told us, in SIGN, that she had no relatives in England...!

Watson by now must have realised that his writings had to be more scrupulously edited. This, I feel, is the reason for the inclusion in the 'Adventures' of the otherwise rather bland story 'A Case of Identity'. It is included not so much for its touch of humour - certainly it's no 'Adventure' - as for the fact it allows Watson to put one of his readers' mind (his wife's) at rest and assure her that not every female that steps across the threshold into Holmes' sitting room drives Watson into passionate throes. For Miss Mary Sutherland is a "large woman" with airs, such as setting her hat in a "coquettish Duchess-of-Devonshire fashion", that evidently come across as more pitifully comic than sexually attractive. When the Baker Street 'boots' announces her "the lady herself loomed behind like a full-sailed merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat."

This would certainly help put Mrs Watson's mind at ease - although a further thought presents itself. It is quite possible that Miss Sutherland (whether or not that was the client's real name) was in reality a very attractive woman to Watson's roving eye but he felt the need in print to wildly exaggerate and falsify the woman's features to make her out to be grossly fat as opposed to being, say, 'merely' ample-bosomed.

Another aspect of the story rings slightly false when he talks of how a "professional case of great gravity was engaging my own attention." Especially when elsewhere we have ample proof, including his own words, that his medical practice was "never an absorbing one" - for how else could he so often take the time to dash off on another adventure with Holmes at a moment's notice? 

No, I feel Mary was keeping a tighter rein on her literary husband and his absence on this occasion was to ensure, through his presence at home, that he was most assuredly not gallivanting around at the beck and call of Holmes or, more to the point, one of his endless succession of beauties who were lining up to employ him!

In conclusion: Poor old Watson!