How Sherlock and John became (in some universes) friends

Over the last decade, Johnlock writers have pretty much explored every possible way that Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson could become lovers. I know, "every possible way' might seem a bit hyperbolic, but it's darned close to the truth. Compare that to, in the previous hundred years, how little Sherlockians explored how the two men just became friends, and one realizes how little we think about that basic, yet important, relationship we call "friendship."

Some of us love to look at Sherlock Holmes and explore the similarities we find between the legend and ourselves, but this morning, as I was considering the co-workers I've become close to over the years, I suddenly found myself looking back at Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson.

(Here is the point in the blog where two things usually happen, and they are going to here: a.) I have to stop and go to work, and b.) I wonder for a moment why I don't save this and write it up for a journal or something. Off I go. Back soon, because I don't have the patience to wait for journal acceptance and publication -- an ironic flaw, given that I'm now editing a journal.)

One of the most common trails to friendship is shared interests. Sherlockiana is a grand grease on the wheels of interpersonal relationships, but how do we get there when there are no shared common interests? How do we get to be friends with someone whom our normal screening processes would judge "not friend material" and cross those lines of "Trekkie versus NFL fan" or "Fundy versus Free Spirit?" We're facing that question a lot of late, as we see ourselves more and more categorized and labelled, fenced off in our little paddocks.

When you look at Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson, what did they really have in common? They both had a bit of medical training, but beyond that? The military man and the "making up my profession" artist? The "women of three continents" dude and the seeming asexual with a touch of misogyny? Sure, we can shave off some edges, and shift our viewpoints, but these were not two guys who were going to naturally decide to be friends and just start going to Norman-Neruda concerts together after a chance meeting. Nobody talks about "friendship at first sight" all that much. What friendships get based on most quickly is shared experience.

And it doesn't even have to be an intense, life-or-death shared experience. When you shove two people into a box for an extended period of time, be it an apartment, a shared office, prison cell, what-have-you, if they're not working as hard as possible to ignore each other, they can't help but start to learn about each other, start to understand a bit about each other, relate to each other . . . and if neither one is just entirely awful . . . become friends.

Maybe not best buddies. Maybe not life-long pals. But just friends.

In those universes where Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson are just friends, their shared adventures may have deepened their friendship, but it was not what sowed the seeds. That came from just existing in the same space for a goodly amount of time, forced to see what the other was about, develop trust, and accept each other into their lives. Because John H. Watson was forced to share rooms with Sherlock Holmes, he came to know what an amazing person Sherlock was . . . a strange guy he wouldn't have dwelled too long upon without that time in each other's space.

Sometimes, with some of us, that's just what it takes to open our eyes to the grand qualities that a person so different from us has to offer. Like Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, we're not always social butterflies making friends wherever we go. Sometimes, the universe just puts us in a virtual 221B Baker Street with some stranger that we then get to be surprised and delighted by.

And, as with Holmes and Watson, that can be a very good thing, even if we don't become a legendary mystery-solving team. Getting a friend you might not otherwise have had is reward enough.

Sherlock Holmes's greatest quality

"What is it that we love about Sherlock Holmes?" the classic fandom question goes, and our answers are many. The mysteries to solve, the Baker Street base, the wit, the friendship . . . so many answers. And yet, at his core, Sherlock Holmes has one quality that is what makes us love him best: Sherlock Holmes is who we imagine him to be.

Conan Doyle laid the tracks for our mental train of thought to run Sherlock Holmes along, this is true. But adaptations, favorite ships, actor portayals, the never-ending supply of new Sherlock Holmes stories -- all of these tell us a different story. While Conan Doyle laid the tracks, we're all running entirely different trains down those tracks.

Some of us may agree on similarities between our mental Sherlock-trains enough to think they're the same at times, but are any two mental Holmeses exactly alike? Not at all.

Sherlock Holmes is who we imagine him to be, each and every one of us. And that's why we love him best.

Lovers can turn out not to be who we imagined. Presidents can turn out not to be who people imagine they are. Even our fellow Sherlockians, or a Sherlockian institution like the Baker Street Irregulars, can turn out to be not what we imagined they were. That's reality. That's real people.

Sherlock Holmes, however, never proves to be anything different from what we imagine him to be.

Even if your Sherlock Holmes came to you somewhere other than Conan Doyles literary railway tracks and you never go near those lines, Sherlock Holmes will remain a happy constant, unless you decide to let him be otherwise. No one can force that choice upon you, either. No cult brainwashing or attitude adjustment camps for Sherlockian re-education exist, other than the little bumps of cultural influence.

However we came to Sherlock Holmes, the detective stays faithful to who we thought he was. Always.

When you come right down to it, I think that is what we really love best about Sherlock Holmes. He's there for us, being who we need when we need it. Inspiration, entertainment, and . . . just . . . well, Sherlock freakin' Holmes.

Long may he run.

Letting the Sherlockian spring breeze in

In the past week, two of the Sherlockian activities I've enjoyed tremendously were our local library discussion group and the Final Podblem podcast. It's easy not to stop and ponder why such regular events give us joy beyond "Sherlock Holmes!" but a tweet from the 221B Con Homeless Network put those bits in perspective this morning.

While their message was plainly about gatekeeping, it was also about folks who don't recognize the greatest source of Sherlockian joy when they see it. 

When I say "I've been an active Sherlockian for forty years" that might seem a brag, a citing of some supposed position in the fandom, or other puffery, but there's also an aspect of that forty years that is, to state it plainly, a curse. All of the first time joys are long past. The once-fresh eyes now gloss over things they might have once caught. Some names bring back decades-old prejudices that can spoil what might have been a good moment. And, worst of all, you can never go back. The magic spells of the past don't always fire in the present.

However, as I said at the start, I have found joy of late in what Sherlockians who are so much newer to the fandom have to say. They have fresh eyes. They don't get a thing or two right at times, but that's okay -- even mistakes can lead to fresh perspectives when considering how a new Sherlockian might see that old familiar thing you know too well.

New Sherlockians often have a bit of an identity crisis when they look at the filled bookshelf of Sherlock books of an elder Sherlockian, sometimes thinking they don't measure up. But what they don't realize is the journey that elder Sherlockian took to get all those books, starting from where the new Sherlockian is now. And how almost all of us would take that journey again, given the chance.

But after forty years in the hobby, one can't take that journey again, as much as one would like. The best we can do is watch someone else enjoy that ride, and you can't do that if you're constantly critiquing it for not being the exact same ride you took, decades ago. I get tired of hearing myself say "It's a whole new world!" but it so much is. And there is so much coolness going on in this world, so many Sherlockian joys that we didn't have forty years ago, so many new paths to explore . . . and guess what? Sometimes the guides for those paths are Sherlockians whose mental backpacks are still lightweight and not filled with crap to slow them down. Sometimes, the old bones have to follow the young energies. (And I'm not even talking about actual age here -- an Sherlockian who is new to the field and is older in age than I can lead an exploration as well.)

Don't ever close the doors and shutter the windows when the breezes of fresh Sherlock start to blow. Or at least open them up in the spring, which, curiously enough, is when 221B Con happens each year. 

And with winter coming on, I'm very much looking forward to that breeze already.

So I had this moment once. This good, good moment.

It's hard, even for those of us who lived it sometimes, to re-imagine the world of 1980s Sherlockiana at this point. The internet and how it turned the BBC Sherlock boom into a fannish nuclear blast changed the landscape as dramatically as any future apocalypse, but, for most of us, in a good way. Opportunities are abundant, my friends are all seeing their work published in book form, and you can read as much Sherlock Holmes as you could ever possibly want off a device you carry in your pocket. It's a different world.

Who is the greatest Sherlockian alive today? Who the hell knows! As with music, movies, literature, and every other art form, we have access to so many artists that no one has a clear view of the entire vista to make such a pronouncement with any authority. Ask a hundred Sherlockians, you could potentially get a hundred different answers. But in the 1980s, things were different.

For so many of the Sherlockian "children" of the 1980s, there was but one obvious leader of the Sherlockian pack, and his name was John Bennett Shaw. He was our celebrity fan, whose workshop weekends were like a concert tour of your favorite band. If you could go, you went.

While doing some other research this morning, I came upon one of the letters I got from Shaw back in those days. (He was great with letters, one of the reasons we loved him so.) He wrote it on April 2, 1988, and he wrote it because he had just read my brand new book, The Elementary Methods of Sherlock Holmes. A book I had spent the better part of a decade working out, a book that I felt filled a void that existed in Sherlockian writings at that time, and my very first book.

Shaw was, as Shaw was, kind and encouraging to a young-ish Sherlockian. (I had just turned thirty-one -- not young for most fandoms, but in Sherlockiana of the 1980s? I was a baby.) But to have the Sherlockian of the day come and and say that I had accomplished exactly what I set out to accomplish with what I had written --  what any writer wants, to have another person get what you're trying to say -- well, it was a glorious thing. I count it among the best moments of my Sherlockian life, right up there with walking into the center of the first 221B Con and going, "Look at all these people!" A Sherlockian life spoils you with moments, but this was one of my favorites.

Looking at the letter now, it's also a wonderful thing to see that it wasn't just my moment, it was a moment in our Sherlockian history when Shaw was deep in preparing things for Minnesota, and the grand collection that the university there was developing. John Bennett Shaw's greatness as a Sherlockian wasn't that he just wrote one book, one poem, started one club, all those things we typically associate with Sherlockian achievement. It was his thoughtful care and kindnesses to other Sherlockians and the hobby itself. He was as much a gardener of Sherlockiana as a collector of it, planting seeds, tending to the soil, and . . . on occasion . . . weeding a bit.

His example is something to think about as we move through our fandom careers. While we might not be able to hit that level entirely, sometimes something as simple as a single letter, e-mail, or tweet can mean so very, very much.

The Hot Beverages of Sherlock Holmes

Catching up on the Final Podblem podcast episodes this morning, I came to their discussion of one of my favorite Canonical moments. We all have our favorite moments of Sherlock being Sherlock, or Watson being Watson, but there are also those other little bits that touch us in ways beyond mere literature, like this one, from "Priory School":

"Now, Watson, there is cocoa ready in the next room. I must beg you to hurry, for we have a great day before us."

Well, of course, it's a great day! It's beginning with cocoa!

And not just some hot-water-and-powder instant mix. This was Victorian England cocoa, made by someone who actually cooked! It's fascinating to me that of the five Sherlockian cookbooks I own, the only one with a cocoa recipe is The Camden House Cookbook 2, which is called "Martha's Spiced Hot Chocolate" and is modern enough to call for Cool Whip as a topping.

Victoriana has some 1886 recipes that fill the bill melting an ounce or two of chocolate in water and then stirring that into milk, which follows my own pattern of making a sauce out of water, cocoa, sugar, and a touch of cinnamon in the morning, then stirring in milk, with perhaps a touch of vanilla at the last.

When you don't get into coffee or hot tea, as I don't, finding the right hot beverage can be tricky, and luckily the Canon of Holmes has more than one. In addition to that Priory School cocoa, we find Holmes's words in "Golden Pince-Nez," which our story discussion group hit tonight:

"Here's a cigar, and the doctor has a prescription containing hot water and a lemon which is good medicine on a night like this."

Now, Holmes wasn't saying that hot water and lemon were all that bartender Watson was serving with cigars on that stormy November night. Before Nyquil came the hot toddy, that mixture of hot water, lemon, honey, and whiskey or rum -- and we know whiskey was readily available in the Baker Street rooms. I'm more of a rum fancier myself, so I'll probably go that direction as the nights turn cold this year.

We don't get any references to mulled cider in the Canon, which is a true shame. Coffee and tea are plentiful, and when a special guest was at breakfast, as in "Naval Treary," Mrs. Hudson would actually bring both to the table. Put them all together and you get the four Hot Beverages of the Sherlockalypse: Coffee, Tea, Hot Chocolate, and Hot Toddy.

In other words, something for everyone! Something to keep in mind as the nights grow colder.

The H&W innocents

We hear a lot of unbelievable things these days, but there's one that has especially stunned me of late: How many Sherlockians there are that haven't seen Holmes and Watson, the top Sherlock Holmes release of 2018, that opened Christmas Day and continued well on into 2019. It's been available on video for almost seven months now, and, really . . .  has there been a Sherlock Holmes movie to top it yet this year?

Of course not!

Will there be a Sherlock Holmes movie released into theaters before the third Downey/Law outing in December of 2021, to end Holmes and Watson's reign as the latest and greatest Sherlock Holmes movie on the big screen?

Not really looking that way, is it?

So why, oh why, are so many Sherlockians purposefully choosing to remain unblessed by the insights of a writer-director who just gets an aspect of Sherlock Holmes that few have captured in the past? Why are they missing the first major motion picture where Sherlock Holmes and John Watson declare their love for each other so powerfully that only song can convey their feelings?

Well, I guess because it's not on Netflix yet. And competitive streaming services being what they are, that might be going to be not as quickly as it might have once been expected. Basically, you still have to purchase it, borrow it, or steal it to see the movie, which takes a little effort.

Still, those great mobs of innocent Sherlockians still out there, untouched by that long-faded mob of torch-wielding haters from back in January, offers Holmes and Watson another chance to add members to its cult-movie bad of happy followers.

I  know, I know, I forgot Enola Holmes in my earlier movie forecasting, but we can't let her come in with a pretty Henry Cavill Sherlock before those folks have their lives touched by a John Watson cake-icing autopsy scene. 221B Con is less than six months away, though, and another round of Doyle's Rotary Coffin evangelizing might just be in the works.

Stay tuned. Or better yet, if you haven't seen Holmes and Watson, get out there and fill that hole in your soul that you didn't even know was there. You'll either be glad you did or swearing vengeance upon me. Enjoy either!

Watson Does Not Lie. And Keefauver Won't Either.

Tonight, after three days wait from its earliest potential arrival, the new book Watson Does Not Lie by Paul Thomas Miller arrived on my doorstep. Here, of course, is the place where I would give you an early review of my friend's book, and tell you how wonderful it is. Not because I call Paul a friend, not because he's on my Watsonian Weekly podcast, but because it's a really nicely done book. Nicely organized, well thought out, good and useful timelines. And only $14.99 American on Amazon.

Here's why I will tell you all of those good things about the book and then not review it: Because now I have to write about something else. What, you ask?

Sherlockian envy. Jealousy. The green-eyed monster that any Sherlockian with a soul and the slightest touch of ambition feels from time to time.

Remember Les Klinger's first annotated, The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, and Les Klinger's second annotated, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes?  Well, how many times in the late seventies and early eighties did I hear a Sherlockian who cut his or her teeth on Baring-Gould's Annotated think about how it should be updated and consider doing that very thing. How many Sherlockians made their own little annotations on note cards or in the margins of their books with that dream of furthering Baring-Gould? And then here comes Les, who actually does the thing . . . twice.

I don't know how many Sherlockians saw those come out and went, "THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ME!!!" but I know they existed. Maybe it wasn't you, and maybe it was you, except you're a liar, but I know it wasn't just me. Of course, with Les Klinger's masterwork, as with Ron DeWaal's amazing bibliography years before, you also had to go, "Man, that was a lot of work, and I'm way too lazy to have gotten that done." Or maybe not, if you're not as lazy as me. Maybe you could have gotten that done had not fate intervened with [INSERT FATE INTERVENTION HERE].

Okay, so we can be a little envious of Klinger, DeWaal, Baring-Gould, even that notorious ol' Jack Tracy and his little encyclopedia. But each of those grand Sherlockian achievements had, part and parcel with them, a grand amount of work involved. Time spent, and lots of it.

Who has that kind of time? Not you and not me, I'm sure.

And today, Watson Does Not Lie rolls off the presses, out of the Amazon warehouse, through the mail and into my hot little hands. Paul Thomas Miller has published a Sherlockian chronology, the thing of that rarefied height of Sherlockian achievement accomplished by so very few. Thousands of folks have written a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, I'd wager. But Sherlockian chronologists who've published a chronology in one form or another? Less than twenty. Maybe less than seventeen, because you can't count the show-offs who just updated their first one a second time. And tonight, Paul goes on the bookshelf with Zeisler, Bell, Hall, and the rest. Of course, I'll be taking it down soon to compare it to my own notes, and therein lies the hardest hit of pure Sherlockian jealousy.

Unlike with Klinger, DeWaal, etc., I can't look at Paul Thomas Miller's book and go, "Who could possibly have the time to do such a thing!" Because I've had the time. I've done the worst of the work. And I have been intending to do that little bit of work left to publish a book of chronology . . . actually having that very thing on my to-do list . . . for eighteen freakin' years!

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

So that is what is coming out of me instead of a proper review of Paul's very lovely book. So many emotions, not just envy, but even those weird combo emotions like William Shatner song-acted on his first album. (Though not like "psychopathic subservience" as he designated his rendition of "Mr. Tambourine Man." That was kinda disturbing.) Guilty laziness. Spiteful self-shaming. Egotistical disappointment. and worst of all, I'm actually blogging a celebration of a friend's book publication in a way that's all about me! I'm a monster! (But, I kinda like Lady Gaga, so I can just be one of her little monsters.)

So, anyway, that was my night. How was yours?

(And congratulations, Paul, you really did accomplish a great thing, and I'm proud to know you. And it's probably too late to murder you now, which really would just ruin our little podcast, unless I started leaving clues for the listeners and daring them to solve the mystery of our missing feature-producer. Though I think there's already been a Sherlockian who taunted investigators regarding a murder, so, damn, I missed that boat, too.)