Holmes and Me

“But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson…Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment, as one writes? Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea-coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won case…So they still live for all that love them well; in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895.”
― Vincent Starrett, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

I remember when I was a kid, I always thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person. One famous enough that I always say people imitating him on tv, any time some character was playing at being a detective. Often one of the side characters played at being their Watson and being astonished at the main character’s brilliance. Of course, as I grew older I learned that Sherlock Holmes and Watson were actually a fictitious beings born of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fertile imagination. When I became even older still, I learned that this too, was a misapprehension.

Because then I learned of the Game, and of the undeniable fact that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were indeed real. They lived and breathed. They cried, laughed, were encouraged, horrified in their measures, and they saw both the best and worst of humanity. They walked the streets of London, in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and even to the Reichenbach Falls of Switzerland. The world changed during Holmes’s life, and we are left trembling still.

My first proper encounter with Holmes came when I had just entered adulthood. I found a complete set of Sherlock Holmes adventures. I devoured them. I read every story and I couldn’t get enough of them. Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, Mrs. Huston and the rest. I wanted more.

I discovered the Jeremy Brett series, and got lost in the mystery and romance of that most excellent TV series. I dived into pastiches. I read up theories. I watched, then regretted watching, BBC’s Sherlock. I looked into other works of Conan Doyle. They too, were extraordinary, but they weren’t quite the same.

I returned the canon, over and over again. I discovered podcasts such as I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. I subscribed to The Baker Street Journal. I found past editions of the magazine to read what men and women of the past have thought of the great detective. I read the contemporary and rivals of Holmes. It has become an quite obsession.

Holmes has been a source of comfort and joy in both good and hard times over the years. Often I can let my mind wander to foggy London nights, listening to the soft rhythmic sound of horse hooves on cobble stone. I can faintly smell pipe tobacco reach my nose. Hear the far off, haunting singing of a violin. For better or worse, when I look at quiet, peaceful homes out in the country side, and hear Holmes whispering in my ear:

“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

Yet, on the other hand, when I look upon a rose, I too, hear Holmes’s voice.

“What a lovely thing a rose is!

There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it.

It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

Those, I think, can give a glimpse into the way Holmes can change a life. The ways he can change how one thinks and views the world. He, in many ways like Watson, is a life long and loyal companion. I read the canon, and follow in his foot steps. Curiosity, Holmes shadows mine, too.

I think it’s fitting to end this first post, with another piece of writing by Vincent Starlet. A beautiful, simple, sonnet he wrote in the 1940s. It is titled, 221B.

221B

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.