That sure wasn't written for me!

There's a lot of Sherlockian work out there that just wasn't written for us.

I can think of no better example of this than a work that goes back almost fifty years, entitled Sherlock Holmes, Bridge Detective. I mean, do you know of any current Sherlock Holmes fans who are avid bridge players? Whist makes sense as a neo-Victorian "Let's do something that almost happened in a Sherlock Holmes story!" kind of way, but bridge?

It feels like you should be gathering around a 1950s card table with mini-pigs-in-a-blanket and something in a highball glass. In 2005, fifteen years ago, The New York Times reported that about 3 million people still played it once a week, and that total bridge players were less than a third of those playing poker. In the 1940s, forty-four percent of American households had at least one person who played bridge, but as entertainment and game options grew, those generations to whom it was most popular starting aging out. Like fans of Bix Beiderbecke, you can still find loyal adherents out there if you look hard enough, but the chances of getting invited to a Dungeons and Dragons night far outpace those of a bridge night invitation.

I'm not trying to crap on bridge here, but what I am trying to say is, I cannot read Sherlock Holmes, Bridge Detective or its sequel, Sherlock Holmes, Bridge Detective Returns. Author Frank Thomas also wrote some other Holmes pastiches that I can read easily enough, but a book that walks through Holmes and Watson playing bridge, hand by band, showing the cards? That might as well be in a foreign language.

Foreign language Sherlock Holmes books? Also not written for those of us that don't speak the language. And most of us are smart enough not to get angry at Sherlock Holmes books written for non-English speakers in a non-English tongue.  We can also probably let a bridge book off the hook.

It gets a little harder is a book or movie in our own native language with our favorite and familiar characters to look at ourselves objectively to judge whether or not we are in that book's target audience. And most times, you don't know for sure until you're well into it, which makes it even harder to objectively go "my reaction is my own, and I shouldn't expect everyone to have the same feelings."

We all like what we like. The thing that keeps Sherlock Holmes, Bridge Detective on my shelf is the fact that I don't like it, and I don't dislike it. It just is. I wish we could react to more books, movies, etc., that other people love with that same cool distance. Some books just aren't written for us, but that doesn't mean they weren't written for somebody.

And sometimes, it's even enlightening to meet that person and have a little chat. Perhaps someday I'll have time to see what a bridge guru can tell me about that book.

The Sherlockian path

I've been pondering lately the paths we walk as Sherlockians. In the last decade it seems like I look to one side and see researchers and documentarians putting together collections and histories, and then I look to another side and see creators of every stripe expressing their passion in the same way this thing came to them originally, or as their muses call, expanding that universe.

Something about our human brains always wants to put things into a binary system, and did you see what I did there? I just tried to shove a diverse landscape into two distinct countries, probably just because I have a right hand and a left hand, a left brain and a right brain, etc. But the world isn't really that way. The world is what we see when we spin. All the things and all the things in between those things, and above and below as well.

And Sherlockiana is, most certainly, the world. With our added pop-ups for "Hey, that exit ramp is 221!" and "This Arby's sandwich is basically what Holmes put in his pocket in that one story!" or . . . well . . . history. We look at the world and try to capture those parts of it that bond us to characters we just want to hug with our brains, in a scholarly fashion, in a creative fashion, in a celebratory fashion, but mainly in a connective fashion. In wanting to hug Holmes and Watson, we seem to inevitably want to pull others close as well.

I mean, i can write about Sherlock Holmes all day long. Dig through the books, find all sorts of trivia and conspiracy theories that amuse the hell out of me, but at some point, I always want to share some of that joy with someone, just to prove that this joy I found actually exists. There's an affirmational aspect to our Sherlockian connections, a go-to place where we know that someone just might get it, more often than if you walked into a random venue full of people. And those core aspects of Sherlockiana are present in all of our endeavors, whether in tuxedo or t-shirt, whether in footnotes or video.

While it can be easy to get so wrapped up in your own Sherlock specialty that you start to judge others as lesser for their very different way of walking the Sherlockian walk . . . and boy, is that easy for some of us (Note the use of "us" -- lord, am I judge-y.) . . . it's important to get back to the root of it all now and then and just go, "It's all good." Because if you focus your eyes just right, it actually is.

And it's definitely not just two paths.

(Postscript: I really was intending to get philosophical and write this post before I watched the finale of The Good Place. Really I was. That inspired entirely different philosophical thoughts.)

Sherlock and John's Anniversary, belated

One hates being late to a party, but when one has to figure out the address of the party at the last minute, that will happen.

Yesterday the Johnlock tweets started flying with the word anniversary, it was plain something of importance happened ten years ago, and I knew BBC Sherlock is now about a decade old, but it seemed rather late in the month for show dates. Some fanfic event? The Crobabies nuptials?

Nope. The real deal. Chronology 2.0, baby!

It was this morning until I could start tracking things, and the RadioTimes was on it. According to John Watson's official blog, Sherlock and John met on January 29th, 2010. As with all Sherlockian chronology matters, some small amount of belief must enter the picture, and in this case it's the year -- not specified in the blog, but assumed as the year it came out.

The January 29th date is on much more solid footing than some other claims I've seen that Victorian Holmes and Watson met on New Year's Day, and I'd bet one could make a case for bumping those guys' meeting to January 29th as well, giving us a little rest from celebrating Sherlock Holmes's birthday before getting to the big anniversary. And as Holmes's birthday is based on the flimsiest of premises, putting the anniversary on the 29th is not a big deal. (Besides, Christmas on December 25? The biggest holiday in Christendom, and just as arbitrary. So why not?)

The anniversary of the day Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson met is a grand Sherlockian day no matter who you are, and the January 29th date seems a lot more popular than Christopher Morley's belief in January 1, 1881. That dude has messed with us enough picking Holmes's birthday out of a hat to honor his brother. And besides, we already have a holiday on January 1. Let's save a special day for our special boys.

So happy belated anniversary, John and Sherlock! I'll get you a card on time next year, I promise!

Breakfast with Sherlock and John

Breakfasts are kind of a big thing in the Sherlock Holmes universe. One Holmes cookbook author called them "the preeminent Sherlockian meal." And while we foodies might like to get into the details of the hard-cooked cooked eggs from a new cook at Baker Street (Wait! There was a new cook? What happened to Mrs. Hudson?) or why a Scotch-woman might think curried chicken went with ham and eggs (Oh, wait, maybe that's what.) the subject that has most interested me lately (until I started on these parenthetical side issues that I'm now wondering about) is not the what was for breakfast, but the who was in for breakfast.

Lord, was there ever a worse introductory paragraph?

In any case, like most Sherlockians would probably agree, having breakfast at 221B Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes and John Watson would be a treat most of us would give much for. More people get to eat breakfast with the boys than any other meal, but that doesn't mean they were just inviting anyone to breakfast. Let's take a look at who got their morning meal at Baker Street.

Well, speaking of the curried chicken with ham and eggs, served under fancy salvers, we have Mr. Percy "Tadpole" Phelps, an old school-fellow of Watson's and the only man ever to kiss Sherlock Holmes in the Canon. Sure, Holmes wants to prank Phelps at the breakfast, but given that Watson introduces us to Phelps by talking about how he used to play whacking pranks on the guy, it reveals what might be an ongoing friendly bit of fun between Percy and John. There's enough evidence of something there to elevate Percy Phelps to the level of Baker-Street-breakfast-worthy.

The Baker Street irregulars show up at breakfast time, but they don't get any of the ham and eggs, just the usual shillings, though I bet they'd have enjoyed sharing some of it. As it is, Watson just talks about giving the leftovers to Toby the dog. Poor lads.

Victor Hatherley, Watson's surprise patient in "Engineer's Thumb," gets a Baker Street breakfast, but as his invitation comes at a time when Watson is living out on his own, I have a feeling that Watson is using Hatherley to get himself a Baker Street breakfast again. Still, as I mentioned in this week's episode of The Watsonian Weekly, both John and Sherlock seem to get on very well with young Hatherley.

A second old friend of Watson's has breakfast with the pair, but the one time we know of, it's not at Baker Street but his own house. That friend would be Colonel Hayter, whom Watson took care of in his short time as an Army medico in Afghanistan. Watson has seen Hayter enough to get repeatedly invited down to Surrey, so might not one of those occasions involved a Baker Street breakfast as well? We don't know for certain, but I'd give it an increased likelihood.

Inspector Lestrade supper and a nap on the sofa, but surely he had to get at least one morning meal with his Baker Street boys, though I'm not remembering one at the moment. I sure hope he got one in. It's a wonder we Sherlockians and Watsonians don't do more breakfasts rather than dinners in celebration of all the times Holmes and Watson were together at that particular meal. And when someone else got to share it with them in the stories, we can only live vicariously through that lucky soul.  Were there more than those above? Did Stamford ever get the "old friends" perk of breakfast at 221B?

It all makes me hungry just to think about it.                               

Knife versus chair

The Granada television adaptations of Sherlock Holmes are best known for two things: Jeremy Brett and faithful adaptation. Last night's close look at "Second Stain" with the Sherlock Holmes Story Society, however, brought my attention to something they weren't so faithful at adapting . . . and probably with good reason.

There's a point in "Second Stain" where Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope is describing the murder of the French spy Eduardo Lucas, she relays the following: "There was a savage struggle. I saw him with a chair in his hand, a knife gleamed in hers. I rushed from the horrible scene, ran from the house, and only next morning in the paper did I learn the dreadful result." Even in the first newspaper account of the crime, we read that Lucas died with chair in hand. They literally had to pry the chair from his cold, dead hand.

Now, perhaps I am more sensitive to weaponized chairs than most, having long watched professional wrestling and also been a fan of the movie Holmes and Watson where the good Watson uses a chair to take out the giant Braun Strowman, but chair versus knife and knife wins? I have doubts.

Perhaps it was his wife's complete rage that gave knife the advantage. Perhaps it was close quarters and Lucas couldn't get a full swing with the chair. Perhaps Lucas wasn't as strong as Watson, or picked too heavy a chair like some Serta recliner of the Victorian era. But I'd think a good chair smash would slow down knife lady enough to disarm her.

I would suspect myself of wrestling fantasy, much like many a gun enthusiast has wild west quick-draw fantasies of dealing with mass shooters, but we actually had a local case of an ex-soldier stopping a knife-wielding attack at a library with a chair in one of the Peoria suburbs in the last couple of years. Eduardo Lucas was no soldier, but still, the chair seemed to have done the trick.

Granada television plainly saw the problem with Lucas and the chair, as they disarmed him for their adaptation of the scene, letting him take on knife-lady with his bare hands. (Thanks to Mary Reilly for digging up that scene for me.) And I think it was a good choice.

Chairs have reach. Chairs have force. Saying "Don't bring a chair to a knife fight!" isn't nearly as effective as the old trope "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight!"  But in Eduardo Lucas's case, that chair doesn't seem to have worked out at all. Still, old wrestling fan that I am, I'd like to have seen him get a couple of chair shots in before taking that knife to the chest.

Maybe next adaptation?

Explain this one, Holmes!

Here's a little mystery that came up during tonight's Sherlock Holmes Story Society discussion of "The Adventure of the Second Stain," and it's a baffler.

At a key point in the story, Watson tells us: "Upon the fourth day there appeared a long telegram from Paris which seemed to solve the whole question."  Watson then goes on to reprint the entire "telegram," which he reads to Holmes.

What he reads, in the middle of its first line is the bracketed phrase "[said the Daily Telegraph]" giving the impression Watson is reading from the newspaper. But we were just told that it was a long telegram from that gave the information about who killed Eduardo Lucas. But the Daily Telegraph is a London paper . . . .

So the Paris police sent a long telegram of what they read in a London newspaper?

Don't worry. It gets worse.

If the Daily Telegraph was, true to its name, reprinting a telegram from the Paris police, where did the Paris police (or even a reporter for the Daily Telegraph) get a witness who was paying enough attention to Godolphin Street on a particular night to see a particular woman watching the house, along with somehow knowing that a woman who looked the same was being over-dramatic as she passed through Charing Cross station. The mix of Paris and London information in this single news source, combined with witness information that would have been extremely hard to coordinate without CCTV cameras or smartphone video, actually makes one start to wonder: Did somebody just make up this entire story, maybe a the end of a run of such stories, when they were getting tired and inattentive to detail?

Oh, heaven forbid, no!

When one fully considers the details of this murder mystery that Sherlock Holmes allows this telegram/article by the Paris police/Daily Telegraph to solve for him, one quickly starts to suspect that there was a much longer, more involved case here that someone decided to shorthand in a way that could condense two greater parts, the murder solution and the recovery of the letter, into one short story. Not exactly novel length in the whole, but a bit too long for The Strand Magazine, a thirteenth story tacked on to a series of twelve for unknown reasons, there is plainly more to "The Adventure of the Second Stain" than meets the eye.

We already know that this "Second Stain" isn't the one we were teased in the opening of "Naval Treaty." Or was it, and the true story is much longer an more involved than we ever realized.

Something is definitely going on here. But what?

Why wasn't the world prepared?

"It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."

-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"

Robert Perret brought up this particular little gem of a line today, pointing out what a gatekeeper Sherlock Holmes is about that big rodent. Holmes quickly changes the subject to vampires the minute it comes up and makes Watson pulled down a book to look up "vampires," even though Holmes plainly knows what they are, as he refers to them being "a Grimms' fairy tale."

Why the distraction? Why not just tell Watson? By the time of "Sussex Vampire," Watson has surely been privy to England's greatest state secrets among Holmes's cases already. And if Watson was editing it out of the story, why even include the line at the end of the letter that requires Holmes to remark on the name "Matilda Briggs." No, Sherlock Holmes has a secret, and he's plainly keeping it from even his most trusted friend.

So now our question becomes, why so secret?

"We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs," E.J.C. of the law firm Morrison, Morrison, and Dodd writes. Even "E.J.C." seems to want to keep his full name a secret. But why? What action could Holmes have taken that he wouldn't want Watson to know about? Time to spin some theories!

Theory One: 

Sherlock Holmes was lying and Matilda Briggs was the name of a young woman. I mean, the first words out of his mouth after reading the letter are "Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson," before Watson even says a peep. Did Watson's eyes light up in a "Oooooo, Sherlock might have had a girlfriend!" teenage gossip way? Or was "young" Holmes overplaying his hand a little bit, because it was a young woman. And Holmes pulled an "Agatha" on her, getting engaged while in disguise, and maybe even going further with Matilda and pulling a Hatty Doran on the wedding day. Holmes definitely wouldn't want to tell Watson he bailed on an actual marriage. Maybe Sherlock Holmes was the actual "giant rat of Sumatra."

Theory Two:

Whoa, I like that Theory One way too much. I should stop here. But let's go on . . .  what else is the world not prepared for? Holmes quickly turns to the supernatural subject of vampires and dismisses it with "No ghosts need apply." Was Matilda Briggs a ghost story? Was that why E.J.C. sought Holmes out for vampire dealings, as he'd already dealt with a ghost for Morrison, Morrison, and Dodd? But Watson wrote a whole novel about Holmes's successful action against a demonic hound, so the world would probably be okay with that. Unless Holmes himself served as John Constantine in the matter and actually performed some hoodoo. "You're a wizard, Sherry!"

Theory Three:

Rats are gross. A great big rat is probably the grossest of all. The world is not prepared for something involving a whole lot of rat feces on any given day. 'Nuff said.

Theory Four: 

Holmes was using the word "ship" as slang for "relationship" way before anyone else, thus making it a ship called "Matiggs" or "Brilda," as the hidden love of Matilda and Briggs was not something the world could handle. Frank A. Briggs, the fifth governor of North Dakota, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, the progressive writer who spoke out for women, Native Americans, and other causes long before we tend to think of such activism existing. The mere thought of shipping her to a North Dakota politician is pretty nuts, so, yeah, world not prepared.

Theory Five:

WHO THE HECK IS E.J.C.?  Is he the whole reason for the dodge? Edward J. Cullen? You mean the Twilight novels are true, and Holmes was covering for those sparkle vampires all along? "Hey, Sherlock, somebody's about to expose us! Deal with it so I can keep going to high school and dating young girls, and not get found out, like Matilda Briggs almost did. Good job on that! Love, Edward J. Cullen, actual vampire." I suspect Matilda Briggs as being the mother of Edwards earlier Bella Swan.

Okay, if I've wandered onto Twilight turf, it's time to shut this theory session down. Logical synthesis is a rather tricky bit of the Holmes method, eliminating the impossible needs to come in quick, but I'll have to let you handle that part. Good luck!