(Some will say that is because I haven’t figured them out yet.) I can, however, say that her precise mind and talent for organization drove her to devise better ways of running Holmes’ home-office, including keeping his evidence and his records in more orderly fashion. You may wonder to what extent Violet assisted in Holmes’ cases-her own investigations at her employers’ home in the Copper Beeches case showed that she could be intrepid in a good cause-but today I cannot share those details with you. Indeed, Watson was immensely valuable to the Holmes family as a conduit for popular culture-he saw to it that visits to family concerts and operettas, and even sporting events, alternated with the concert hall and long hours of work. I can assure you that he continued to be a frequent visitor to Baker Street. Awkwardness was averted by the fact that the Doctor had a separate residence as part of his current medical practice. One imagines Watson’s mixed feelings of joy for his friend and anxiety about his own place in Holmes’ future investigations.Īfter a discreet ceremony, Violet moved into Baker Street. Perhaps neither showed a romantic nature to the world, but there was passion within each of them and, as true concern, a united outlook, and feelings of assured mutual reliance brought them ever closer in ways they had not anticipated, it became clear to them that wedlock was the only decent next step. Hours passed in one another’s company, as they talked together, first on businesslike topics, but then on more personal matters soon there was more than talk.
Violet would have found it easy to discuss Holmes’ cases with him, giving him valuable feminine insights into the feelings of clients and, with her inquiring and organized mind, sharing an understanding of his approach to the world. At the close of the case Violet had naturally returned to London to consider her future, and so it was a simple matter for her to cross paths with Holmes again and again. I propose that the initial feelings of respect between the two grew into concern (as we ourselves saw in the story) and then affection. I feel we are at liberty to disregard Watson’s statement that Violet Hunter passed out of their lives at the conclusion of her case, and ourselves deduce what might instead have occurred. Now, Watson, at the end of the story, tells us that his imaginings of a romance had not panned out after all: “As to Miss Violet Hunter, my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems, and she is now the head of a private school at Walsall, where I believe she has met with considerable success.” However, experienced Sherlockians like ourselves well know that Holmes sometimes hid things from Watson (I quote: “the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone” ) and that Watson sometimes hid things from us (I quote: “It was, then, in a year, and even in a decade, that shall be nameless” ). In fact-leaving aside the question of the incomparable Miss Adler-you’ll recall that there is one client in an early story whose name was proposed as a “possible” by no less a person than John Watson, and that client is Violet Hunter, she of the self-reliant attitude and chestnut hair that had been “considered artistic.” In COPP, Watson made sure we overheard Holmes “muttering that no sister of his should ever have accepted such a situation” as had Miss Hunter, and he later let us know that Holmes termed her “very brave and sensible” and even (to her face!) “a quite exceptional woman.” A Holmesian marriage-well, what might have happened?
And the other proof is the “Well, I wonder” thoughts tucked away in our own minds. The possibility of love and marriage for Holmes is not beyond all conjecture, and the proof of that is the array of pastiches that have essayed the subject. And yet, much as he tried to conquer it, he was only human. “You would not call me a marrying man?” asked Sherlock Holmes of his longtime friend Watson in CHAS and Watson, startled, replied, “No, indeed!” No, indeed, we do not think of Sherlock Holmes, first thing, in terms of romance and matrimony. 3, 2017, pp 8-11 Featured Article THE HOLMES/HUNTER MARRIAGE
0 kommentar(er)
