Watson strikes a bibliophile!

The pavements of Victorian London on a given spring evening. Several obscure books, dear to the owner, fall to said pavement in the various ways books fall to the ground. To the ground. The spring, Victorian London, city pavement ground. You know the muds that a keen eye can spot on the shoes walking those pavements. You know what the horses pulling the cabs are dumping on those streets, getting dragged up to the pavements that aren't streets by those same shoes.

John H. Watson, M.D., did that to those books.

That same Watson is a quite popular author at that moment. At least four volumes are enjoying nice print runs due to his creation. When it comes to books, Watson is a god of books, a creator of so many books that his casual wounding of a few old specimens takes nothing from his karmic balance with the Parliament of Books, one might think.

Yet those books had brethren, those books had creators, those books had a caretaker . . . family, if you will. None of those would look kindly upon Watson's treatment of their kin. Except . . . except . . . well . . . that poor bibliophile who was carrying them when John Watson committed his crime of carelessness. One might even blame said bibliophile, whose later shift of personas might lead one to believe that he did not truly love books at all. Did he see Watson and allow the books to mingle with the pavement waste, just to give an excuse for future sympathies? Or was he as Watson perceived him -- just another accident of crowded London, who dashed away from the accident as soon as he was able, rather than deal with the man who devalued his rarities?

From the point of view of the books, there are no friends in this scene, playing out in "The Adventure of the Empty House." Even after the accident, the book-collector, whom Watson calls "strange" tries to sell his precious books away to Watson at first, then disregards them completely once their use to the supposed bibliophile is over.

Attentive scholars know that John Watson did not even give accurate titles for those books, not caring enough for them or remembering his crimes enough to know what was printed on their covers or title-pages. With gaps on his shelves and no known books that we are certain of his ownership of, did this creator of books even care so much for their ilk as his fans might suppose?

He doesn't even report helping pick those books up off the pavement.

Perhaps it's not all that surprising that the books turned on John H. Watson en masse and decided to carry his literary agent's name on their covers thenceforth rather than Watson's own. Books can be a vindictive breed, which is why the technocrafters undoubtedly invented the e-book, so what happened to John H. Watson and others like him might not happen e'er again.

Be careful out there on the pavements, my friends.