A New Journey on an Old Path     

(Brazos Monthly Magazine, June 2023)

I have now read my way through half of all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, four novels and fifty-six short stories, none of which are short. Right now you’re thinking I’m either a dedicated Sherlockian or a nut; I never considered myself being the first and opinions vary about the second.

I inherited a copy of the classic 1936 Literary Guild hardcover Complete Sherlock Holmes from my mother. It’s not a first edition, and I confess I might have sold it to a bibliophile by now if it was.

When I was pretty young, I dug into that big book, reading the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and a few of the stories. Later, when I was not so young, I taught ‘The Red Headed League’ to high school freshmen for several years before I started teaching senior English. Then, when I was nowhere even in the ballpark of being young and was about to retire, a student gave me a complete set of the Sherlock escapades in a set of trade paperbacks. They’re easier to manipulate than that heavy tome that had been my mom’s, but larger than what we used to call pocket books that could be easily hidden away if they were something she didn’t want me reading. I thanked the considerate student for the books and put them on my shelves where they stared at me for five years.

Recently a series of unrelated events occurred that, when considered together, put Sherlock, the master solver of seemingly unsolvable crimes, and his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson on my mind.

When churning through television channels I stopped on one where one of the old movies with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson was underway and I fell right into the story.  A day or two later I was walking though one of the big busy hallways of the sprawling Methodist Hospital complex in Houston and wondered if the sleek R2-D2 type robot humming slowly towards me would yield right of way or expect me to.  It did, and I noticed its name, Holmes, was printed on the front.  A little clicking on my phone taught me that he and his companion, Watson, roam the place continuously (gathering data, eavesdropping, sending images?). Then, not many days later, I watched from Karen’s and my apartment balcony a bicycle rider making her leisurely way down the distant sidewalk as she did on most days, which made me think of … you guessed it. I found ‘The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist’ in Volume II of my patiently waiting set and read it, again, after no telling how many years.  Lately I am either cursed or blessed with the ability to read whodunits that I first enjoyed long ago and not remember the crime that was committed, the characters, or which one of them committed it. It’s cheaper than buying new books.

Watson’s inviting and clever narrative voice, the comradery of Holmes and Watson, and the vivid descriptions of Victorian England were enough incentive for me to make the commitment to read both thick volumes through. As Holmes often says to Watson at the beginning of an adventure, the game was afoot.

Should you choose to take the plunge yourself I recommend the Barnes & Noble Press two volume paperback edition.  It has an excellent general introduction, helpful footnotes (how was I to know that a ‘quinsy’ was a throat irritation or that ‘yellow-backed novels’ were cheap fictions bound in yellow covers?) and much more detailed endnotes relating historical, societal and geographic information. The editor of this collection even calls Conan Doyle out sometimes.  In one story Holmes solves a case where a baboon is used to carry out the crime by remembering that the villain “had a passion for Indian animals”. The note at the bottom of the page reads ‘As baboons are native only to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, how this one got to India is anybody’s guess’.

Am I enjoying my pilgrimage through the Sherlock and Watson adventures? Well, that’s elementary (you knew I’d use it eventually).  The ironic thing is that Holmes, while saying the word in several of the stories, never once said “Elementary, my dear Watson”.  Just as Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake” or Henry Stanley said “Dr. Livingston, I presume?”.

Such inaccuracies wander off the true path, something that would not have fooled Mr. Sherlock Holmes.