I posted about this event last week but said it was July 30; it is in fact June 30, so this coming Sunday! come say hi if you’re in the LA area!
Finally, the last update in THE SIGN OF THE FOUR, following Watson’s proposal to Mary Morstan. Imagining hurtful scenarios involving fictional characters is a fun little hobby that anyone can enjoy!
The canon scene, which ends the novel, is achingly poignant in its own right:
“Well, and there is the end of our little drama,” I remarked, after we had set some time smoking in silence. “I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honour to accept me as a husband in prospective.”
He gave a most dismal groan. “I feared as much,” said he. “I really cannot congratulate you.”
I was a little hurt. “Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?” I asked.
“Not at all. I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way: witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment.”
“I trust,” said I, laughing, “that my judgment may survive the ordeal. But you look weary.”
“Yes, the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week.”
“Strange,” said I, “how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigour.”
“Yes,” he answered, “there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe,—
Schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus Dir schuf, Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.
“By the way, à propos of this Norwood business, you see that they had, as I surmised, a confederate in the house, who could be none other than Lal Rao, the butler: so Jones actually has the undivided honour of having caught one fish in his great haul.”
“The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”
“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.
That quote by Goethe is everything.
What I appreciate the most about your treatment of the relationship between Sherlock and Watson is the deep and mutual respect for the others temperaments insofar as it doesn't run affoul of each others best interests and even then, at least the respect to see where the decisions lead in order to pull each other back from the flame before being burnt.
Each imperfect and wanting more of what the other has to be better than what they considered ideal before meeting each other.
This is such a nuanced, thoughtful, and emotional portrayal of the gap in communication between Holmes and Watson, that incidentally also makes me want to cry
It makes me think of this quote from The Illustrious Client: “There was a curious secretive streak in the man which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend guessing as to what his exact plans might be. He pushed to an extreme the axiom that the only safe plotter was he who plotted alone. I was nearer him than anyone else, and yet I was always conscious of the gap between us.”
Holmes, you and Watson NEED to get some couples’ therapy 😭