It Has Been Many Weary Months

[jessamygriffith]

Title: It Has Been Many Weary Months
Fandoms: Sherlock and Master and Commander
Rating: Teen for implied slash, Sherlock/John
Word count: 5K +

Summary: In the summer of the year 1812 at the beginning of the war between England and America, a Lieutenant S. Holmes of His Majesty's Royal Navy, banished to Upper Canada for insubordination, wrote a personal letter to his friend and companion Doctor St-J. H. Watson. He enclosed this letter in a package with several other objects intended to be sent to the Doctor via the next packet ship.

This parcel was never received by Doctor Watson, nor was its existence ever known of to scholars or historians.

Until now.

A nineteenth century fusion with Master and Commander, written as a slice of life, history and first meetings.


Notes:

For alltoseek.

This fic work is actually only a small part of what was an interesting package sent to alltoseek as gift, a kind of multi-media fan package containing a 19th century stye letter written with pen and ink and other items you will find described below. It was ostensibly a sent by one Lt. Holmes to his great friend and companion, Doctor Watson.

The inspiration came from a few things: that we both share Sherlock and Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander books as fandoms, the fact that my hometown was celebrating the bi-centennial of the War of 1812, and a kind of madness.

I had not intended to publish this, but alltoseek convinced me otherwise. It was fun to put together, though penning the letter was a strain on my hand, and I don't have very nice penmanship. I only wish all readers could open a parcel like it and see and handle the contents for themselves.

**Note - contains copious footnotes, some of which are explanatory of historical words, places and people, and some of which add to the story. I am all too aware that to some, the history notes will be completely unnecessary, but felt they should be included anyway, since I posted this on AO3 as well, and frankly a lot of Sherlock fandom won't know (or have much interest in) the background of such a fic,

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Ministry of Tourism, Parks and Recreation

Fort Malden National Historic Site

PO Box 38, 100 Laird Avenue

Amherstburg, Ontario

Canada

N9V 2Z2

Tel :

519-736-5416

Fax:

519-736-6603

Email:

ont.fort-malden @pc.gc.ca

Archeological Find Report - Bellevue House, Amherstburg, Ontario

OILCLOTH WRAPPED PACKAGE

Unique ID: FTM-AB79328

Object type certainty: Certain

Workflow status: Awaiting validation on two pieces within package [scrimshaw and stockings.]
 

Description: A package wrapped in oilcloth, containing the following items.

Item 1 - 1 letter

Item 2 - 1 brass telescope

Item 3- 1 carved piece of scrimshaw

Item 4 - 1 pair of silk stockings.

Item 5 - 1 piece of green wool broadcloth

Subsequent actions

Subsequent action after recording: Package and contents retained by the Crown and Province of Ontario for further examination and testing, as per Article 11, subsection 1 of the Historic Resources Act.

Chronology

Broad period: Nineteenth century

Subperiod from: Early 

Date from: Circa BC 1812, July? 

Date to: Circa BC 1812, early November?

Discovery dates

Date(s) of discovery: January 6th, 2012

Personal details

Found by: Patty Argente, during restoration work on Bellevue House in preparation for the bicentennial of the War of 1812 celebrations in Amherstburg, Ontario. 

A worker removing old wiring in what is believed to be Catherine Reynold's bed chamber found that a part of the panelling had cracked and come loose. Removing the panel for restoration, the package was found, relatively intact.

Bellevue House, built in 1808 by the British Army Commissariat Robert Reynolds for his French fur-trader heiress wife Therese Bouchette Des Rivieres and his sisters Margaret and Catherine, is one of the only remaining examples of Colonial Plantation style in southern Ontario.

How and why the package came to be secreted in this way is unknown as yet. The correspondence of Reynolds family should be examined for further clues.

Recorded and identified by: Dr Matthew Bondy, Professor of Archaeology, University of Windsor

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Item 1 - The letter

 [The letter, odd-numbered pages up]

 [The letter, even numbered pages up]

The letter is the most significant item in the package, as it was written by First Lieutenant Sherlock Holmes of the Royal Navy, assigned to the Provincial Marines in Upper Canada, who was to become the Admiral of the Blue later in his career. [See page 12 for notes on carbon dating and handwriting analysis.] 

Famed for his eidetic memory of all things concerning military actions and his use of unconventional tactical manoeuvres, this letter is a missing piece to the puzzle of Lt. Holmes' time as an officer of a fresh-water ship on the Great Lakes of Upper Canada. No other pieces of his personal correspondence from this time period exists, and as such this archaeological find will be of great interest to both scholars of the war of 1812 and biographers of Admiral Holmes' life.

The letter, written in an unusual and highly personal style, is addressed to Doctor Saint-John Hamish Watson, a noted Scottish physician and naturalist who sailed as a ship's surgeon with Holmes both before the time the letter was written, and after Holmes' rise in in rank from lieutenant to commander. Doctor Watson left the Service following Admiral Holmes' retirement.

This letter and the contents of the package have been noted as finds of great significance by the recorder.

Materials

The letter is written with iron gall ink on a polished linen paper of a type typically produced in Europe during the latter part of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth. Dating of events in this letter place it during the late summer of 1812.

The style of the letter is unusually personal for Holmes, and has many breaks and abrupt changes in topic. This is not uncommon in letters of the time, particularly for those in the Service, as ship duties often broke the flow of writing and one was forced to take up the pen when time permitted. Thus, letters would be written over several days or even weeks, as mail delivery was sporadic and dependent on ships heading in the correct direction.

Transcript of the letter with accompanying footnotes is as follows:

-----

My dear Saint-John, 

I hope your summer has passed with less excitement than my own. We had a neat little action off of Fort Amherstburg which resulted in the capture of the Cuyahoga¹. I received a trifling cut to my shoulder during the transfer of some unruly prisoners which has spoiled my second-best uniform, and you know, as I have written previously, about the ludicrous amount of time it takes to have anything like super-fine wool shipped from England to this backwater. Fort Amherstburg is, indeed, the furthest one can go into Upper Canada by ship². I feel grateful that my letters are not further mangled by being carried by fur-traders in leaky canoes. In this distance from civilization, you see my disgrace, Saint-John. Were it not for the humorous and detailed epistles of your life as ship's surgeon on-board the Fortitude to look forward to, I fear I would go mad from tedium.

But do not forgo describing your cases with proper Latin! I need it, lest the cogs of my mind seize. How I wish you might be with me! Not just for your learned discourse, nor your dry Scottish wit, nor even the pleasure of our musical interchanges. But enough of that for now, I find that ³

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Footnotes
 

1This line gives us the first reference by which we can date the latter. The capture of the American schooner the Cuyahoga occurred July 2nd, the day after the declaration of war between the United States and England arrived in Fort Amherstburg.

2An exaggeration on Lt. Holmes' part - Fort Amherstburg was one of the last posts for supplies sent from England, but Fort St.Joseph in Lake Huron was the furthest outpost of the British Army at this time. Supplies sent from England had to come down the St. Lawrence waterway 3,000 km, down Lake Ontario 300 km, portaged around Niagara Falls and shipped another 388 km to Fort Amherstburg. As a result, food sent from England for troops and ships tended to be of poor quality, tough, and salty from long-preservation.

3 Sentence is unfinished. The interruption apparently caused Lt. Holmes to abandon whatever he was about to write.

 

Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four // Part Five - Appendices