I MUST THANK YOU FOR IT ALL
First page of the manuscript of A Study in Scarlet
"I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: A Study in Scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." --Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Watson, A Study in Scarlet
Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching and it seems appropriate to talk about gratitude for all things Doyle, and especially for the creation of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. With my scattered thinking of late I had forgotten to note the anniversary this week of the publication of A Study in Scarlet in the November, 21, 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual. Luckily for me, Mattias Bostrรถm posted a reminder on Twitter.
I think all of us who study Doyle and Holmes have a soft spot for the opening of STUD. The origin story of the Holmes and Watson partnership is irresistible.
I've written before of the intensely personal feelings I have about the beginnings of the partnership and about the securing of 221B as a home for the two of them--
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Finding Sherlock Holmes in Five Volumes
I’m sure I have forgotten some, but I know I lived in no fewer than sixteen houses in my childhood due to the constant moving and rearranging of households of my various parental units. Yes, “units” is the easier word. (It’s complicated, as in my-adoptive-father-was-my-biological-mother’s-stepfather complicated.) The number of people living in any one of the houses varied at any given time from three to eight, and the number sometimes changed in the course of a night. Rural West Texas, poverty, and alcoholism were a volatile mix.
One thing all these houses had in common: There were no books beyond a small Bible I once received as Christmas gift and a 1968 World Book Encyclopedia set that a door-to door-salesman sold to one of my mother units. I have no memories of adults reading anything except a newspaper. Certainly no one read to me.
By the time the World Books arrived, I was an eight-year-old second grader in her third school without any sense of belonging anywhere. Fortunately, I landed in a small school flush with tax money from Texas crude. There, among lavishly-carpeted and air-conditioned class rooms smelling oddly of freshly sawn wood and sour gas, were a large library and Mrs. Callahan, the school librarian.
Mrs. Callahan, a tall, beautiful, smartly-dressed woman, read to us, and then taught us how to use a library. I discovered I could read, and read well beyond my classmates moving along with Dick and Jane. By mid-year, I no longer borrowed reading primers from the library. With Mrs. Callahan’s help, I discovered something I liked better: Stories with a bit of a mystery to be solved. I borrowed my favorite, The Ghost of Windy Hill, again and again. Outside school, I read what I could in the encyclopedias. I found holding the sturdy, tightly-bound volumes containing the answers to a million questions was often a panacea to chaos.
Four years, five moves, and three schools later, I landed within walking distance of the public library. Still without any books of my own, I borrowed more than I could possibly read, multiplying, however temporarily, the sense of security and calm provided by the encyclopedias. I read two or three novels a week. Books provided a world I could borrow for a short while. I read many several times over simply because no matter what had moved in my life, the book world was still there – as sound, true, and complete as it had been upon the first read.
High School brought its own miseries, but the units were slowing down with only five moves and two schools. Somewhere in those moves the encyclopedias vanished, but I finally managed to own two books: A yellowed copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and an American history textbook. Borrowed reading continued with a large variety of authors, including the short story “The Red-Headed League”. I enjoyed it with no idea of how much it would matter a few years later.
A week after graduation, I found myself recruited by the local newspaper at scant wages. I moved into a small, furnished apartment at the back of a flower shop. The bookshelf was sufficient for the five books I now owned. Watson’s narrative of “The Empty House” has Holmes, disguised as a bookseller, assuring him that “With five volumes you could just fill that gap,” and in my case the five were the yellowed Rebecca, the history textbook, the Bible, a graduation gift copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and a woefully “Abridged” English dictionary someone at school had given to me. It seemed enough to be getting on with. I was terribly wrong. Scant wages coupled with poor decision-making equaled a decade of mostly failure. A failed early marriage and several jobs resulted in some thirteen moves of my own by my early thirties. My books numbered in the early thirties by then as well.
Eventually life became easier after I read many self-help books, applied some of their teachings, and made a more compatible choice of a husband. He arrived with a pile of his own books, fresh off five moves due to the whims of corporate America. Among his first gifts was an elegant winter coat (something long dreamed of but never possible) and a box of leather-bound classics from Barnes & Noble – definitely a keeper. We spent a lot of time reading, and watching a television program about Sherlock Holmes airing on the PBS channel. I had read several collections of Sherlock Holmes stories, but only recognized one in the program, “The Red-Headed League” from my high school reading. I did not understand until much later that I had actually read several pastiche collections. Somehow, in all the reading, I had missed Arthur Conan Doyle. I told myself to get that corrected soon, but “soon” proved to be several years out.
Meanwhile, the books continued to gather on the shelf. I spent some time with astrophysics and Einstein, metaphysics, art history, American history, English etymology, English political history, and a lot of poetry. I kept everything. The books, now numbering in the many, many hundreds, were getting difficult to move. Some of it had to go, but how? Colette’s words were my life: “Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me. Their presence, their smell, the letters of their titles, and the texture of their leather bindings.” I did not know how to find a unifying voice to make sense of it all.
Two moves later (corporate America still having whims), the answer appeared in a used book shop in the Texas hill country. For half off the $37.50 tag, I bought a 1992 two-volumes-in-one edition of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by William S. Baring-Gould. I read the introduction, was enthralled, and settled in for a good read. Of the first two in the chronology, “The Gloria Scott” was new to me, but not “The Musgrave Ritual”, as I had watched the Granada version many times. I liked them, but I did not understand how this was equal to the big fuss of the introduction. Then, finally, I read A Study in Scarlet. Dr. Watson’s words leapt off the page. I certainly understood the loneliness, the scarcity of funds, and the big question of “Where and how am I going to live?” For many years, I felt my life had often been “irresistibly drained” into a cesspool from which I had to be helped out. Here, then, was the voice I had been looking for.
I read the first part of the novel in one sit, virtually ignoring the annotation. For the moment, I wanted to absorb Watson’s words without distraction. I put Baring-Gould down, and went looking on the shelves. And there, among the volumes in that Barnes & Noble collection, sat The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as it had for eight years. I finished it within the week. I then spent several weeks reading the Baring-Gould.
As much as I could identify with Watson, especially after learning of the drunkard in his family, I could identify with Holmes as well. I understood his need to have his haven of too many books and papers, his unrelenting desire for answers, his scattered knowledge of many different topics, his sarcasm, and that little touch of the dramatic. I certainly understood when Holmes and Watson sometimes indulged in bad habits even when they knew better.
I knew I wanted to know them better. I bought the Granada series on DVD so I could watch them with fresh perspective. Luckily, the first volume of the Leslie Klinger New Annotated was published that year. I took to the internet, joining the Welcome Holmes group on Yahoo. I read about books about Holmes and Watson. I wanted to read so many of them, but I resisted buying beyond Klinger because there was still one more move to make.
After much planning – no quick move this time! – the keeper of a husband and I thought to disengage with corporate America. The disengagement would mean living modestly, in a much smaller house. One-half of the books would have to go. At first, I panicked. Then I remembered Watson’s words:
We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221b, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bedrooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows. So desirable in every way were the apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem when divided between us, that the bargain was concluded upon the spot, and we at once entered into possession. That very evening I moved my things round from the hotel, and on the following morning Sherlock Holmes followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus. For a day or two we were busily employed in unpacking and laying out our property to the best advantage.
Holmes and Watson moved into Baker Street with only a small amount of personal items, and yet this chosen property proved to be a perfect fit. They made it into a home that was to serve them in varying ways for many years to come. Surely I could do the same. We carried box after box to the Half-Price Books Buy Counter.
The property we chose has proven to be a perfect fit, and we have made it into a home that has served us well for twelve years and counting. We have a small home library which is my fixed point in a changing age. Of my original five books, the yellowed Rebecca is still with me, as are that Bible and The Power of Positive Thinking. The Ghost of Windy Hill, the 1968 Weekly Reader Books favorite, was added in 2014. It seemed only right to have it when I came across it in a Goodwill bin for ninety-cents. The books have been pared down twice more since the move. I keep Watson’s example in mind, always trying to maintain a gap on a second shelf.
We still have a lot of books for a small space, roughly about eight-hundred volumes, of which two-hundred or so are related to Holmes and Watson in some way or another. I keep them close, as I do the local Sherlockian society members who have become dear friends. They often fill this small space with as much quiet affection as can be found in Baker Street.
If you were to ask me where to find Sherlock Holmes, I would tell you: “Sherlock Holmes is where he always is. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are together in the home that cannot be taken away from you.”
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We are now almost 17 years in the house, and the book collection needs constant attention to stay at the proper size. My interests expanding to include a larger portion of Doyle's work has stretched the limits but no matter. I'll gratefully play two-in-and-one-out for as long as possible as I work to unravel all that Doyle, Holmes and Watson mean to me.
