Mycroft's plan

 I always enjoy listening to fresh thoughts on our friend Sherlock Holmes and his cases, and this morning's listen to the Highly Improbable podcast commenting on "Noble Bachelor" was very rewarding, especially on the point of a certain Sherlock Holmes quote. The podcast hosts calling it out for its oddity to a modern ear made me ponder it, and that pondering took me somewhere I don't think I had been before.

"I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes."

It's far too easy to focus on the flag imagery in that statement and overlook the rest. I've made one of those flags before. It's a fun little craft.

But let's get down to the meat of it: "world-wide country."

One Earth. One country. And a UK/US union ruling it all, apparently, given that choice of flag.

United Federation of Planets, this ain't.

There are some other curious parts to this statement as well: "I am one of those . . ."

It isn't just some idea Sherlock Holmes came up with. There are others thinking about this notion, apparently, which our history books don't tell us of. Where this all gets particularly interesting is when you combine Sherlock's statement with his later words about his brother Mycroft: "You are right in thinking that he is under the British government. You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government."

Sherlock Holmes wasn't someone who cared much for politics. Watson listed his original thoughts on Holmes's political knowledge as "feeble." But he did grow up next to a man who was very interested in politics and how the government should work. So where do you think this idea of UK/US global domination might have come from?

"One of those," he says. Is he just taking some boyhood fantasy of his brother's and pretending it is more widespread than it actually was? Or is he actually talking about a quiet movement to encourage such a future?

Sherlock's quote also has "the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years" as the thing that will possibly prevent such a future, and we assume "far-gone" to mean the past. But "far gone" just does not mean the past. It also means "a bad and worsening state." What if he's speaking of the folly of having a monarch in the future, or the blundering of too much power in a future prime minister? Like either of those could cause problems for this global plan?

Mycroft Holmes remains largely a mystery to us, with ties to things in the Sherlockian Canon as subtle and unknown as Professor Moriarty's works. But I can't help but think he's definitely behind this particular statement of his brother Sherlock's in "The Noble Bachelor."

How great were Mycroft Holmes's secret ambitions? Did such ideas pass with youth, or were they quietly being worked at throughout his career? That mystery, as large as the man himself, remains.

Sherlock Holmes gives someone a Valentine

 February 13 is a good day to create a Sherlockian Valentine’s Day, I think. We made it Watsonian Valentine's Day at the John H. Watson Society meeting for today, and shared valentines for John Watson. But today worked especially well because the number 13 is important to the one time a Sherlock Holmes actually gave someone a Valentine, which I was sure to point out today, as follows.

The scene is 13 Caulfield Gardens, in West London, a flat-faced row house with roof over the doorway supported by a couple of columns. It’s the kind of neighborhood that has children’s parties in the evening, and the residents are very used to the underground rumbling along behind their houses now and then.

In the study in this house, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes, and G. Lestrade are all seated, waiting for a very special visitor. A knock comes on the front door, Sherlock Holmes lets the new arrival in, and all is good until their visitor sees the other three men in the study, at which point Sherlock Holmes has to grab him by the collar and throw him into the room.

In that act, that simple act of throwing a man bodily into a room, Sherlock Holmes is literally giving his brother, his room-mate, and his favorite Scotland Yard inspector a Valentine.

Sure, it’s the handsome Colonel Valentine Walter, a delicate featured man with a long light beard, a broad brimmed hat, but Holmes whistles at the sight of him.

“You can write me down an ass this time, Watson,” Holmes says. “This was not the bird I was looking for.”

Sherlock Holmes says he was expecting something with wings.  And why not? Why shouldn’t a Valentine look more like a cupid, with wings and a bow and arrow.

So February 13th for Sherlockian/Watsonian Valentine's Day? I think so.

Valentines for our dear John

 A call went out for the next Zoom meeting of the John H. Watson Society for folks to bring their valentines to the good doctor at Saturday's meeting, and I'm curious as to what that will bring. A lot of us in America were used to the old grade school routine of buying the variety pack of little cards of featuring some cartoon characters and scrawling classmate names on the little envelopes, but how many of us have actually created a valentine, be it poem, art, craft, or just lovely sentiment?

John Watson deserves our valentines, if anyone does, since he had to take a bullet wound to see any sort of affection from his closest companion. And our love for that good friend and his chronicles certainly makes him deserving in our eyes. But with only a few days left until that Saturday Zoom, I still haven't gotten my act together to produce a proper valentine, due to several job-related distractions this week. But February 13 is coming, and even though Watson might forgive me for not getting him flowers or a card, I will certainly feel pretty guilty showing up at the JHWS meet empty-handed. 

(Not saying, of course, that anyone else has to have a valentine to attend -- our meetings are open to all comers. You can email podcast@johnhwatsonsociety.com for the zoom invitation.)

But what suits Watson best? A man of words, so poetry? A man who liked to describe the attractive client, male or female, so something of visual beauty? A man who didn't get enough chocolates, so . . . well, I might feel bad eating Watson's chocolates for him, being a sort of Santa-and-cookies situation.

Perhaps Watson would like a valentine from some character in the Canon he admired. There were a couple I know that he was sad never to hear from again. Or it might be fun to construct a hypothetical valentine from a particular moment in the Canon -- one is tempted to write Holmes's card to Moriarty from 1891 when he "inconvenienced" the professor around Valentine's Day in mid-February, but that wouldn't be for Watson. Moriarty deserves no cards.

The John H. Watson Society meeting will be a show-and-tell for Watson's valentines, so I guess it's time to dig out the red paper and paper doilies. Little Tonga-Cupids probably might be too much, or just weirdly inappropriate, even though he was a bow-and-arrow kinda guy. Who knows?

But I'd better get to work now, in all the senses of that phrase. Happy VD prep! (Apologies to anyone with actual VD for that line. Take care of yourself, and take care in spreading your Valentine's Day cheer! Even John might have had it once, according to some Sherlockians.)

The dear old ruddy-faced woman

"You're letting him . . . kill Martha . . ."  

"What does that mean? Why did you say that name?"

A couple of silly lines from a very silly movie where that single first name changes everything. In Sherlockiana, that name has not had nearly so much impact. In fact, it's the name of one of the few characters in the Sherlockian Canon that people seem to actively want to erase.

A woman, seen through a window with a lamp beside her on a table. "A dear old ruddy-faced woman in a country cap." She knits and pets the cat  on the stool next to her.

"She might almost personify Britannia," the villain's friend says, thinking it an insult to the country they're working against. Not knowing the very real irony in his words.

Eventually she's curtseying and smiling at Sherlock Holmes, who expresses his utmost confidence in her, a very rare thing for a man who started his career with an admitted distrust of those of her gender. She's his agent, reporting to him the next day at Claridge's Hotel in London, a five star hotel in Mayfair. It's a hotel so nice, so tied to royalty and artistocrats, that we seldom, if ever, hear of Sherlock Holmes fans staying there, even though it still exists.

No common servant is going to be reporting to Sherlock Holmes at Claridge's.

She is something of a mystery, Holmes's Martha, and, ironically, some Sherlockians seem to hate mysteries. They cast Holmes's landlady, Mrs. Hudson, as the skilled spy, or the singing star Irene Adler, which is a sort of "Martha erasure." Hudson and Adler were remarkable women, but don't we have room in Holmes's life for a third remarkable woman?

Yes, yes, there were more than three total -- not forgetting Kitty, Maud, Mary, the good Violet, etc. But this Martha . . . this intriguing, mysterious Martha whom a cat respects as a friend . . . Martha is something special and never seems to quite get her due.

"So long as you were here I was easy in my mind," Sherlock Holmes says of her. He's not worried about her. He trusts her skills, even when circumstances have him waiting overlong for her signal. She knows Holmes's plans -- really think about that -- she knows Sherlock Holmes's plans ahead of time. No one ever gets to know Sherlock Holmes's plans ahead of time. But Martha does.

She is called an "old lady" by Watson, but Sherlock Holmes is sixty and looking like Uncle Sam at this point, and we always suspect Watson of being older still. Martha seems to be a contemporary of the two. And it's been many years since their comfortable partnership in Baker Street. The tale of how Martha came to be working for Sherlock Holmes, gaining his trust, is one of the great untold tales of the Canon. How many years was that trust being built? Was she around for the Watson era, unwritten of for her infiltration skills in service to Holmes, if Watson even knew of her?

Trying to trim dear Martha with a Mrs. Hudson or Irene Adler shaped cookie cutter leaves a lot of good dough left over, and we have to be careful with such trimming.

We may not know what Martha means, but we certainly know why a Sherlockian might say that name. Martha is definitely a character worth returning to, and a woman who is fascinating all by herself.

Erratum Moriartium, or yet another rise and fall

 

So, at the beginning of 2020 I was doing a little cleaning, looking at the filed of letters and other tidbits from my Sherlockian past, and thought, "I should gather all this info and do a book on the Sherlockian eighties." The pandemic hit, time at home became the standard lifestyle, and it seemed like the time was right, especially with the occasional mandatory furlough week from work during the roughest spots. 

I sorted all the paper ephemera into ten piles by year, 1980 to 1989, and as I did, realized that the 1980s was such a decade of Sherlockian amazement that my resources, while hefty, could not fully do justice to a full history of that decade and Sherlock Holmes. There was so much that happened in that decade that I didn't come close to getting the full story of, nor know proper details of. But I had my story, and curiously enough, my story from 1980 to 1989 had an arc. A rise and fall, if you will. Maybe not A Star is Born level, where I walk into the sea at the end, but a definite journey through the best and worst of Sherlockian fandom.

So I wrote it, got a couple of great beta readers in Paul Thomas Miller and Rob Nunn, commissioned some nice cover art from Chris Aarnes Bakkane (who does such great seventies Holmes and Watson art), and then ran it by the good Carter, who did as much caretaking of the work as I would allow her time and agreeableness to do. There was just one little last detail . . . since I was mentioning all of the aforementioned people in the acknowledgements, I didn't let any of them read it. And it was in those heightened excitement last moment of putting the book together that I apparently didn't read those acknowledgements as closely either.

And Moriarty appeared. Literally.

And extra "Moriarty" in the acknowledgements that makes no sense at all, which, when the new book arrived and I let the good Carter read with all pride and joy, she saw immediately. One more rise and fall.

Appropriate, somehow, and I can live with it. If nothing else, the Sherlockian eighties taught me that I'm far from perfect, and that's the way life goes. So, anyway, I have this new book, and you can read it if you want. Still not sure I want to let all that decade of my life out there, but too late now!

Find it at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08VCKZBFF .  I promise not to go on and on about it,

Scanning the clickbait

 If you do news searches for Sherlock Holmes related headlines, or really, are just interested in anything at all and look at a news aggregator like Google News, you know clickbait -- those lovely headlines that only exist to lure you into clicking on them in hopes of something you want. Season five of Sherlock is very popular with clickbait producers.

A second level of clickbait is the "Well, duh!" headline that directs you to an opinion piece, like "Netflix's Best New Sherlock Holmes is Lupin, Not Enola Holmes" from a site like Screen Rant. They like Netflix's Lupin right now, and also have a headline "Lupin: Why Sherlock Holmes Can Appear in Part 2," an example of a third level of clickbait headline -- the one that might supply a tidbit of info you didn't know, but is fairly common knowledge among longtime fans. (Yes, Lupin and Sherlock Holmes had crossovers in Lupin's original books -- but in this series, Lupin is a fictional character that the main character has based himself on, so, hmmm . . .)

Some clickbaits look at other clickbaits to create their headlines, like "New Lupin Theory Says Sherlock Holmes Could Appear in Season 2," where someone plainly had to do nothing more than scan the headlines was just creating their own clickbait based on the others out there.

There's the teaser headline that you know is just there for you to argue with if you're looking for a reason to have an argument with the air: "Sherlock, Mycroft, or Eurus: Who The Most Intelligent Holmes Sibling Is." (Not clicking it, but guessing Eurus, unless one wants to debate the meaning of "intelligent" which is something for a field more professional than Sherlockiana.)

And, of course, Hollywood gossip where the headline is all the info you need: "Robert Downey Jr. Reportedly Pushing For R-Rating On Sherlock Holmes 3." Do I care why? No. Am I worried that it might be R-rated and my parents won't let me go? Or that I can't send my under-age kids without accompanying them? It seems like you would have to be a very specific sort of Holmes/Downey fan to click on that one.

And eventually we come full circle with the other Hollywood gossip headline, the celeb opinion: "Martin Freeman Thinks Sherlock Season 5 Could Definitely Happen." Good for him, but again, do we need to read past the headline? I'm surprised those season five Sherlock clickbaits still get enough clicks to exist at this point. Is there just a handful of desperate, over-caffeined Sherlockians out there biting on that bait every single time? Or folks that just finished binging the series?

Once you wade through the clickbait, you always get local theaters putting on Holmes plays, or some feature from an actual news source, but it's a long scan. I don't know how often I would do it if I didn't check for news nuggets for the Watsonian Weekly, since it's all pretty much the same week after week. 

But it's a part of Sherlockian life that's definitely something Sherlockians of old didn't have in their quiver of activities. Ah, the internet.

A new Sherlockian paradigm?

We all know how much the world has changed in the last year, but for me at least, it's slowly sinking in how much the Sherlockian world might be changing long-term based on the changes pushed on us in the last ten months or so. (It hasn't even been a year. Astounding.) Yes, yes, Zoom meetings, we know, we know. But without actual social gatherings to delight in the company of our friends in person, a lot of energy had to find somewhere else to go.

Now, I don't want to suggest it had anything to do with the ACD Society that raised its flag this morning -- one can see the signs that it has been building up for a while now. But the much less ambitious Sherlockian Chronologist Guild? Probably wouldn't have happened without a series of pandemic-triggered events (one of which I hope to be letting the world at large know about on Friday). But it's more than that.

How many new Sherlockian friends and acquaintances have you made since we've been locked down? I know I've gotten to know more than a few new folks. And so many of those new connections have brought new opportunities for collaboration and creativity in ways that will pay off for a long time to come, I suspect. You can see it all over the place, where the human energy batteries that fully enthused Sherlockians are got plugged into something more than a local scion society or single event. 

Unlike a new Sherlock, a Brett or Cumberbatch, charging up the old hobby, the things we're seeing now seem to be "coming from inside the house," as the old horror movie trope goes. Why?

Because the more we connect as Sherlockians, the more energy each individual Sherlockian has for the thing itself, all the parts and pieces and related side interests of Sherlockiana itself. The scholarly side gets more energy. The goofy side gets more energy. The films get more consideration. And the Canon, that good old philosopher's stone of a book, gets more users tapping it for whatever magic at which they excel.

I had a lovely two hour chat over zoom on Sunday with perhaps the oldest Sherlockian friend who doesn't live in my house, and it really made me think about the opportunities we've been given by this horrific world-wide event that's knocked us out of our routines. There has been loss, there has been pain, and our lives will never be the same. But amid all that, there has been hope for better things. We've seen that things can be different, and a "different" thing can sometimes be an "improved" thing.

I have a feeling 2021 is going to be a very memorable year for Sherlockians. In a good way, too.