blossomed, in the remarkable change that takes place when a girl becomes a mother—his admiration of women was sentimental, even for the time. He saw women as goddesses—many of them toppled, underappreciated, wronged, but all of them possessed of a quality entirely lacking in men. There could be no family without women, no society, no empire. They were the reason to build as well as the rock to build upon. He put the female sex on an absolute pedestal.
A multitude of factors led Watson to abandon Holmes for the gentle company of a wife. The cocaine problem was just the peak of it all, the snow that caps the mountain. Not only was Holmes in top form needling Watson about his overly romantic portrayal of their first case together, which Watson had just published in 1887, but Holmes was also flaunting a young admirer in his face. Builds himself up with the bricks he tears down from another, that’s what Holmes does. And he had done it to Watson one too many times.
In the injured silence after Holmes had disparaged A Study In Scarlet as nearly unreadable because it didn’t glorify him properly, he decided to twist the knife by tossing Watson a letter from young Francois le Villard, a French detective studying the Holmesian method with all the ardor of a true devotee. Watson was forced to look at the thing: “I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray magnifiques , coup-de-maîtres and tours-de-force , all testifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman.” It sickened him to read the letter, and to understand what Holmes was telling him: that while Watson’s words were insufficient, this man who didn’t even know Holmes could praise him perfectly, and in two languages no less.
Watson told Holmes sullenly, “He speaks as a pupil to his master.”
“Oh,” Holmes said without a hint of real modesty, “he rates my assistance too highly. He has considerable gifts himself.”
Watson was nearly wincing in pain while listening to this cruel talk, and he was eager to distract Holmes with any topic at hand. When Holmes started doing his blasted magic tricks, guessing at Watson’s morning errands and getting them all infuriatingly right, Watson handed him his pocket watch to decipher in the hopes that it would put a stop to the hurtful stream of comments coming from Holmes. It didn’t.
Noting right away that the watch must have belonged to Watson’s elder brother, Holmes launched right into a mechanical assessment of the man, completely overlooking that Watson might have cared for his brother: “He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died.”
Watson was bitterly stung by this; the fallout conversation is cleaned up a bit in the official narrative, and Watson did not give me a precise transcript of what really passed between them. It was not the sort of cooing excuses one imagines from what is written down, though Holmes did admit that because he was handed the watch as a puzzle, he completely disregarded Watson’s emotions. He did that with every puzzle. That was finally becoming clear.
Other than that, all I can say for certain was that Watson was reaching a breaking point with Holmes at the critical moment when Mary Morstan first came into their lives. Holmes was in a dystopic mind, relying more heavily than ever before on the crutch of cocaine, and he exuded gloom into the spaces around him just as easily as he could glow with light. When I read the story of this case, I’m filled with the same inexorable dread I get when attending a deathbed. I know that everything is ending, and I know how it is ending, and I am powerless to stop it.
Not for nothing, Holmes came to feel the same way when he realized just how much Mary Morstan would take from him. This is one of the few times I have ever found myself sympathizing with Holmes in all
A multitude of factors led Watson to abandon Holmes for the gentle company of a wife. The cocaine problem was just the peak of it all, the snow that caps the mountain. Not only was Holmes in top form needling Watson about his overly romantic portrayal of their first case together, which Watson had just published in 1887, but Holmes was also flaunting a young admirer in his face. Builds himself up with the bricks he tears down from another, that’s what Holmes does. And he had done it to Watson one too many times.
In the injured silence after Holmes had disparaged A Study In Scarlet as nearly unreadable because it didn’t glorify him properly, he decided to twist the knife by tossing Watson a letter from young Francois le Villard, a French detective studying the Holmesian method with all the ardor of a true devotee. Watson was forced to look at the thing: “I glanced my eyes down it, catching a profusion of notes of admiration, with stray magnifiques , coup-de-maîtres and tours-de-force , all testifying to the ardent admiration of the Frenchman.” It sickened him to read the letter, and to understand what Holmes was telling him: that while Watson’s words were insufficient, this man who didn’t even know Holmes could praise him perfectly, and in two languages no less.
Watson told Holmes sullenly, “He speaks as a pupil to his master.”
“Oh,” Holmes said without a hint of real modesty, “he rates my assistance too highly. He has considerable gifts himself.”
Watson was nearly wincing in pain while listening to this cruel talk, and he was eager to distract Holmes with any topic at hand. When Holmes started doing his blasted magic tricks, guessing at Watson’s morning errands and getting them all infuriatingly right, Watson handed him his pocket watch to decipher in the hopes that it would put a stop to the hurtful stream of comments coming from Holmes. It didn’t.
Noting right away that the watch must have belonged to Watson’s elder brother, Holmes launched right into a mechanical assessment of the man, completely overlooking that Watson might have cared for his brother: “He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died.”
Watson was bitterly stung by this; the fallout conversation is cleaned up a bit in the official narrative, and Watson did not give me a precise transcript of what really passed between them. It was not the sort of cooing excuses one imagines from what is written down, though Holmes did admit that because he was handed the watch as a puzzle, he completely disregarded Watson’s emotions. He did that with every puzzle. That was finally becoming clear.
Other than that, all I can say for certain was that Watson was reaching a breaking point with Holmes at the critical moment when Mary Morstan first came into their lives. Holmes was in a dystopic mind, relying more heavily than ever before on the crutch of cocaine, and he exuded gloom into the spaces around him just as easily as he could glow with light. When I read the story of this case, I’m filled with the same inexorable dread I get when attending a deathbed. I know that everything is ending, and I know how it is ending, and I am powerless to stop it.
Not for nothing, Holmes came to feel the same way when he realized just how much Mary Morstan would take from him. This is one of the few times I have ever found myself sympathizing with Holmes in all
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