time to be a Consulting Holmes Expert

[skysailor]

The Adventure of the Three Gables hasn't much for character traits unless you want to explore how racist Holmes and Watson can get. Oof.

[InspectorCaracal]

The Adventure of the Three Gables hasn't much for character traits unless you want to explore how racist Holmes and Watson can get. Oof.

I tend to file the (thankfully few) racist parts of the canon into the same parts as the spiritualist parts: "oops! author bias"

[InspectorCaracal]

Now then, let us begin going through these!

Watson is Holmes's drug.

I'm... not sure that particular phrase is really supported by the quote, although I can see the connection you're drawing. More relevantly tho, that whole paragraph is really just an explicit description of their entire relationship up to that point? I could probably cite several stories from each collection with supporting examples demonstrating it.

The statement of Holmes having become accustomed to and expecting Watson's presence could be claimed as a potentially unique point, but Watson has such a long history of stating that he or Holmes are accustomed to and easily identify each other's smallest habits that it's really more like a late entry into a consistent ongoing trend. I'm not entirely sure he doesn't state it earlier, even, but there are so many examples to go through it would take hours.

* * * * *

Watson has a "not inconsiderable" medical practice.

While the specific phrasing is not used earlier, the progression and success of Watson's medical practice is established extremely early! The information that he began medical practice again is established in A Scandal in Bohemia, which was the very first short story ever published. The success of the practice is established in various other stories, most explicitly within The Stockbroker's Clerk and The Engineer's Thumb - both of which are in the Memoirs.

One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888
[...]
"[...] I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession."

Shortly after my marriage I had bought a connection in the Paddington district. Old Mr. Farquhar, from whom I purchased it, had at one time an excellent general practice; but his age, and an affliction of the nature of St. Vitus’s dance from which he suffered, had very much thinned it. [...] I had confidence, however, in my own youth and energy, and was convinced that in a very few years the concern would be as flourishing as ever.
[...]
“Ah! Then you got hold of the best of the two.”

“I think I did. But how do you know?”

“By the steps, my boy. Yours are worn three inches deeper than his.”

It was in the summer of ’89 [...] My practice had steadily increased, and as I happened to live at no very great distance from Paddington Station, I got a few patients from among the officials. One of these, whom I had cured of a painful and lingering disease, was never weary of advertising my virtues and of endeavouring to send me on every sufferer over whom he might have any influence.

* * * * *

Holmes has hired a person named Mercer

This one is a chronological and situational detail, rather than a character trait, so it doesn't qualify. I'm idly curious if Mercer shows up in any other prior stories, though, so I may look into it at some point. (The question is complicated by the fact that Doyle-as-Watson often refers to recurring incidental characters by role instead of name, so I'd have to actually read for it.)

* * * * *

Holmes thinks people should not try to transcend "Nature" and believes in destiny?

Ahh, I thought you were talking about a different story at first, but I've found the source and, since it's the same passage as the spoiler'd bit, I'm assuming this is about the same thing.

So, I think to address this fairly would involve a lengthy analytical discussion on what exactly Holmes means by his idle philosophizing in that passage, which would involve drawing on past statements and behavior by Holmes as well as the language of the time and Doyle's own history and spiritualist beliefs, so while it is to me a potentially interesting topic, I don't think it's quite within the scope of this challenge and as such I'm going to leave it.

[InspectorCaracal]

Holmes has a habit of spending several days in bed from time to time

This one is easy! Here's just the first example that came from my text-search terms from the two collections I have open right now, which itself states that there are prior examples:

for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table.

* * * * *

Holmes would kill someone if they killed Watson and also has a deep loyalty and love for Watson that he masks continuously

Okay as much as I hate to admit it, that one's absolutely fair, it's not established before this that Holmes would do a murder on someone if they killed Watson.

I could come up with reams of support for Holmes' emotional masking and deep affection for Watson but that'd be an entire research paper and I'm giving you this one as a win anyway. xD

[skysailor]

Holmes has a habit of spending several days in bed from time to time

This one is easy! Here's just the first example that came from my text-search terms from the two collections I have open right now, which itself states that there are prior examples:

for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table.

* * * * *

Holmes would kill someone if they killed Watson and also has a deep loyalty and love for Watson that he masks continuously

Okay as much as I hate to admit it, that one's absolutely fair, it's not established before this that Holmes would do a murder on someone if they killed Watson.

I could come up with reams of support for Holmes' emotional masking and deep affection for Watson but that'd be an entire research paper and I'm giving you this one as a win anyway. xD

Woot

[InspectorCaracal]

I was digging around for the story I thought the spiritualist/nature/destiny comment was referencing at first and happened across this ideal passage to support the "Holmes masking his deep affection" quality, although it wouldn't qualify for the challenge in either direction as the story itself was published in 1910.

"Upon my word, Watson!" said Holmes at last with an unsteady voice, "I owe you both my thanks and an apology. It was an unjustifiable experiment even for one's self, and doubly so for a friend. I am really very sorry."

"You know," I answered with some emotion, for I have never seen so much of Holmes's heart before, "that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you."

He relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein which was his habitual attitude to those about him.

[skysailor]

The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier

• Watson is a companion "to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, [and as such] is, indeed, an ideal helpmate" and this is why Holmes "burden[s] [him]self with a companion in [his] various little inquiries"

• The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association.

• Holmes does the cold read thing to "impress clients with a sense of power".

• "I [Holmes] do not waste words or disclose my thoughts while a case is actually under consideration"

• "I have, as my friend Watson may have remarked, an abnormally acute set of senses."

  The context here relates to being able to smell something off on a piece of clothing while passing by it in a hall, then getting to within a foot of the clothing to confirm it as the smell of disinfectant.

[InspectorCaracal]

Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish Bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the dryingroom that I found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else.

This one is also a clear win; nothing of the sort is ever mentioned anywhere else. In fact, the vast majority of stories - certainly all the ones before 1900 - are quite firm on how the only hobby Holmes has which isn't about fighting crime is music. Everything else is a skill he's developed for the purpose of his detective work.

"[Holmes is] a bit of a single-stick [fighting] expert"

Ah! This is an excellent one and definitely a winner! It definitely doesn't come up earlier.

His physical prowess is established early on at least with the bent poker stunt in The Speckled Band, but while I was sure there was an example of his studying martial arts before the Case-Book, I have yet to find it.

"There was a curious secretive streak in [Holmes] which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend guessing as to what his exact plans might be. He pushed to an extreme the axiom that the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone. I [Watson] was nearer him than anyone else, and yet I was always conscious of the gap between."

This is certainly the only time Watson has been so melodramatic about it, but much like the "expects Watson's input" bit, it's just an explicit description of something that happens constantly throughout the entire canon.

* * * * *

I have to admit at this point that I strongly dislike the stories where Holmes is the narrator and feel that they undermine Holmes' character in multiple ways and as such tend to ignore them, but I'll do my best to do the Blanched Soldier later in good faith lol

[skysailor]

Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish Bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the dryingroom that I found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else.

This one is also a clear win; nothing of the sort is ever mentioned anywhere else. In fact, the vast majority of stories - certainly all the ones before 1900 - are quite firm on how the only hobby Holmes has which isn't about fighting crime is music. Everything else is a skill he's developed for the purpose of his detective work.

"[Holmes is] a bit of a single-stick [fighting] expert"

Ah! This is an excellent one and definitely a winner! It definitely doesn't come up earlier.

His physical prowess is established early on at least with the bent poker stunt in The Speckled Band, but while I was sure there was an example of his studying martial arts before the Case-Book, I have yet to find it.

"There was a curious secretive streak in [Holmes] which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend guessing as to what his exact plans might be. He pushed to an extreme the axiom that the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone. I [Watson] was nearer him than anyone else, and yet I was always conscious of the gap between."

This is certainly the only time Watson has been so melodramatic about it, but much like the "expects Watson's input" bit, it's just an explicit description of something that happens constantly throughout the entire canon.

* * * * *

I have to admit at this point that I strongly dislike the stories where Holmes is the narrator and feel that they undermine Holmes' character in multiple ways and as such tend to ignore them, but I'll do my best to do the Blanched Soldier later in good faith lol

Woot I have three points now.

[skysailor]

The Adventure of the Lion's Mane:

• "during the long years spent amid the gloom of London", Holmes "so often yearned" for the "soothing life of Nature"
  

  [*]Women have seldom been an attraction to me [Holmes], for my brain has always governed my heart

Not consulting-related but some thoughts:

Spoiler

Holmes and Watson drifting apart is so sad T.T
I'm definitely a Florida Boy because I figured out this mystery almost immediately. ...which made it kind of awkward when Holmes described it as his most difficult...

While this is a fun venture, late Holmes feels so much lower-quality to me than the earlier stuff. Especially the design of the mysteries. Probably because Doyle was plenty sick of it by this point.