Elementary, My Dear (Wat)Son

Turning the keyboard over to the Great Detective's greatest fan for today's blog - take it away, Andrew!

From 1887-1927, a Scottish physician named Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, known by his friends as a bellowing, red-faced sportsman and occasional occultist, dabbled from time to time in what he called "charlatan" mystery stories. Inspired by his favorite professor at the University of Edinburgh's Medical School, who would dazzle his classes by deducing note-perfect diagnoses for patients after gathering the most seemingly insignificant details, good Sir Arthur got to spinning tales about a gifted, near-sociopathic, tortured consulting detective who prowled after criminals and all other sorts of tweed-jacketed wrongdoers  through the foggy streets and seedy back alleys of Victorian London, accompanied by an ever-faithful companion and documentarian. Conan Doyle published these stories, 60 in total, through the Strand Magazine, largely as a source of income when his patient clientele wasn't streaming through the examination room, and -- ironically -- was known to be quite dismissive of them, even attempting to kill off his star detective at one point before public clamor (and an empty wallet) made him reconsider and resurrect. These funny little stories, incidentally, are the most adapted body of material in literary history, generating over a century's worth of TV shows, radio dramas, theater plays, movies, and spoofs that number several hundred strong, and almost single-handedly gave birth to the fields of forensic science and criminology, at a time when Scotland Yard and police forces in general were just getting off the ground.

These stories wound their way, as they've done for billions of other readers, into the lap of an impressionable thirteen year old lad from Massachusetts, who then proceeded to read every line and consume every adaptation he could find about this most famous example of a gifted man doing literally whatever he could to escape boredom. While the bulk of those stories are narrated by the detective's trusty Boswell, two are notable for breaking from the formula, as the Great Detective narrates from his own point of view instead, and this particular post is following suit. Yes, we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming from the Blogfather to change hats, as it were, to shift for a moment into a deerstalker cap, with a pipe and magnifying glass to complete the ensemble. Today's casefile is brought to you all by Cook the Younger, that selfsame impressionable lad now grown into... a still-impressionable lad, who was able to make a pilgrimage on our London vacation to the most famous address in the world, and is here now to tell you all about it. 

Cook the Older and Lady Heather bowed out for this next portion of the trip, jonesing for what's believed to be the ONLY Dunkin Donuts in the entire U.K., which just so happened to be conveniently located right down the same block. You can lead a horse to English tea, but you can't make him drink it when wicked pissah iced coffee is right within reach (I'm unsure what his review of said coffee was/if the authentic recipe has made its way across the Pond... I just know he nearly cried when he got back onto MA soil and had a decaf iced mocha, cream only, back as his binky). My camera-shy mom Jackie, however, who's as beset upon as poor Mrs. Hudson by my day-to-day antics and housekeeping habits... or lack thereof... was on-hand to document one of the highlights of this bookworm's literary life.

We got to pay our respects at 221B Baker St., the home of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Some quick background, before we ascend seventeen steps (it's a canon detail) into Mr. Holmes' consulting rooms. There are probably some among you readers, who care about things like "Facts" and "Reality," who're scratching your heads right now and saying, "I thought these were fictional characters? How is this, like, a real thing that he's talking about here?" Well to you all, I say... good question, actually. For decades, there was really no map point for literary pilgrims like Yours Truly to go visit, no matter how many laps of Baker St. they walked or address markers they scrutinized. But luckily, Mr. Holmes has generated a fan club in literally every major city and region across the globe, and in 1990, the London-based chapter got sick of having to deal with such inconveniences (it's on their home turf, after all!), and so they got an official permit from the borough of Westminster and set up the official Sherlock Holmes Museum, complete with a real, genuine 221B address and a meticulous recreation from book and adaptation details of Holmes' and Watson's professional and personal quarters. And what do they look like, you may wonder? Well, come upstairs and see...

Nourished by a cup of Mrs. Hudson's best-brewed tea, thousands of innocents from London and all manner of places besides would sit right here in this chair before describing their deadly, annoying, awkward, tragic, or downright bizarre stories; a hawkish figure would be perched across the room, listening through his steepled fingers and veil of pipe smoke. His genius mind would deduce, a hansom cab would be ordered, and off they'd go down cobbled streets, chasing criminals who ranged in offense from pickpockets to ax-murderers, with even the occasional ghost (dog) or two thrown in for variety.

Doctor Watson's work table is situated nearby, equipped with everything an accomplished Victorian military doctor might be expected to own, as well as a variety of writing utensils, should the particulars of a client's story or any deductive feats... or domestic peculiarities... of his remarkable friend require writing down at a moment's notice.

Brief aside for literary buffs who care about this kinda stuff: Conan Doyle was generations ahead of his time by playing fast and loose with metafiction: aka, there's an explanation in the stories themselves about how/why the stories are set down into writing. Within Holmes' textual universe, Dr. Watson relates every case after its conclusion to the best of his memory, before sending it off for publication, leading several Victorian readers to actually send fan-mail directly to Dr. Watson himself, whom they believed to be a nonfiction author!

Those domestic peculiarities, which made life hellish for Holmes' housemates during times when there was no arch-criminal to stimulate the detective's powers or Parisian espionage to engage his mind, famously included such pastimes as composing violin concertos at 3:00 in the morning, smoking tobacco kept handily close in a velvet Persian slipper, doping from a cocaine-syringe on the mantle (in the days before usage of the drug was discovered to be as devastating as we in the 21st century know it to be), staring longingly at the picture of a woman... The Woman, who's on record as being the only person to have ever successfully duped the super-sleuth, or, in his most manic episode-- 

-- shooting the initials VR (for Victoria Regina, the Latin translation of Holmes' revered female monarch) into the wallpaper with a revolver, to the sheer horror of Mrs. Hudson and the extreme concern of Dr. Watson.

Continue upstairs to the next floor, and you'll find a suitably ghoulish and macabre trophy museum of sorts, memorializing all the crime fighting duo's most famous cases, including (but not limited to):

The Adventure of the Speckled Band:
- Note to fathers: attempts to murder your daughters for inheritance, through the use of venomous snakes concealed in the central heating vent, tend to end poorly for all involved parties. Just talk it out over brunch, next time.

The Hound of the Baskervilles:

-Note to PETA: no spectral demon hounds were harmed in the making of this exhibit.

The Final Problem: 

- Note to everyone: Professor Moriarty, the OG supervillain, the Joker to Holmes' Batman, is intimidating as hell to face down in a staring contest, even in wax form.

In a trip that contained a Baker(Street)'s dozen highlights for the whole family, any one of which could've individually been the crowning highlight of another vacation, this pitstop will forever stand out as being really special for me personally. We visited some historic landmarks where "real" history has been made for millennia, places that were already considered ancient centuries before the Pilgrims ever set foot in this New World, clubs and stages and bars where social & cultural revolutions were born out of sheer guitar electricity. I own the fact that a fan-made museum for a "fictional" character, no matter how meticulously curated, may not seem like it holds up in comparison.

However, for the billions that have visited... have come for consultations in... this abode in its textual form, and followed breathlessly along with its inhabitants on their adventures -- as if the criminals they stalked would become alerted by your disturbing the air -- this place is magic made tangible brick and mortar. It's a loving monument not so much to a particular figure, per se, but to the flesh-and-blood status he claims in the imaginations of billions across the globe. Children in kindergarten and hermits in the desert can identify Holmes at a glance from his deerstalker silhouette, and associate him as the mascot and reigning master of an entire literary genre; that collective imagination and admiration is so strong, so-deep rooted, so widespread, that it's actually managed to spring from one world to land at a map point for all the people here in this one, blurring the lines between both.  To this budding writer and bibliophile, there's nothing elementary, my dear Watson, about that.

Thanks all, for following along here through my ramblings. The next post will be returning you to your regularly scheduled programming, where, sneak peak, I'm guessing you'll learn about our Herculean efforts to understand the impenetrable rules of cricket, and where I'll discover the sheer glory of a hearty English breakfast. In the meantime, pick up a book and escape into some other universe for a while... if it's anything like this one, who knows?...maybe I'll be able to meet you there one day.

 "But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson...Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment, as one writes? Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea-coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won case...So they still live for all that love them well; in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895."  - Vincent Starrett, 1920