MY HOUSE IS  LONELY

 

"It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London. At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most I ever saw of him...My house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the estate all to ourselves. Half a mile off, however, is Harold Stackhurst's well-known coaching establishment ... He and I were always friendly from the day I came to the coast, and he was the one man who was on such terms with me that we could drop in on each other in the evenings without an invitation."--Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane"

I thought about this part of LION today as I saw several reminders on Twitter that the full Sherlock Holmes Canon comes out of copyright protection this weekend. I was reminded of the recent claims by a certain body that the portrayal of Holmes as emotional or involved with people was a late feature of his nature.

I could imagine someone using this part of LION to back up that argument. "See here," that someone might say, "Holmes is lonely without Watson. And, look,  he has a friend he drops in on, and welcomes the friend into his own home unannounced. He was not like this before."

Well, baloney. I never read the part about Stackhurst without thinking of this:

'You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?' he asked. 'He was the only friend I made during the two years that I was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull-terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.
'It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days, and Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At first it was only a minute's chat, but soon his visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirit and energy, the very opposite to me in most respects, but we found we had some subjects in common, and it was a bond of union when I learned that he was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his father's place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation.'

Holmes was not apparently interested in cultivating a lot of friends at once, but he was willing to have a friend and to enjoy the friendship.  Canon places the Trevor friendship during the 1st month of a long vacation twenty years on from James Armitage's voyage of 1855, 1875-ish.  More than thirty years  before the stated time frame of LION, "towards the end of July 1907." He had Trevor, Watson, and Stackhurst  and those are just the ones we know something about.

I think I will always feel a twinge of sadness when I read "At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most I ever saw of him." But I won't think of Holmes as necessarily lonely, even if he missed Watson's companionship. 

His house may have been lonely  in that it was a half mile from his neighbors, and it might have been quiet with only two people in the household, but he was not necessarily lonely. My two person very quiet household has had visitors in it only four times this year but we are not necessarily lonely here. 

Holmes had his friendship with his neighbor, he had his work, he had his books, he had his old housekeeper to possibly annoy him. He also had Sussex and his villa "...situated upon the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a great view of the Channel." The ocean is a grand companion, always.

As for the occasional week-end visit, it can be very good indeed even when accompanied with a twinge of regret that it does not happen more often. The upcoming birthday celebration weekend is perhaps a perfect example. 

No, I don't believe Holmes was lonely in Sussex. I believe he was content. We should all be so lucky.