England

It's the funniest thing. Every now and then, a citizen or two of a country called the United Kingdom will start acting like their little island has proprietary rights to our friend Sherlock Holmes. Nobody that's related to Holmes's literary agent, mind you. Nobody that's descended from either of the Holmes brothers, John H. Watson, or even Thomeycroft Huxtable. Just somebody that happens to live in a country where a few things have the same names as they do in the Sheriock Holmes stories.  

Except that the country has this different name.  

Personally, I think the Swiss have the best claim to Sheriock Holmes. Sheriock Holmes went to Switzerland and battled Professor Moriarty to the death at Reichenbach Falls. Look in the Holmes stories, it says "Switzerland." Look on a map, it says "Switzerland." Buy a plane ticket to Switzerland, and you'll eventually find Reichenbaeh Falls if you go looking for it.  

Not so with England and 221B Baker Street. Try to buy a ticket for England, and they'll send you to someplace called "the United Kingdom." Try to find 221B Baker Street in the United Kingdom, and they'll send you to a bank building. Or a museum at some other address. They might tell you that the real 221B was bombed to rubble during the war. And if you keep at it long enough, you might just get them to admit the truth ... the house numbers on their Baker Street only went up to 85 in the days of Holmes and Watson.

Going to the UK and wandering around imagining that these are the same streets and countrysides wandered by the detective and the doctor can be a lot of fun. I have several friends who have done it, and they all speak highly of the experience. Perhaps not quite as highly as those who have been to Switzerland and Reichenbach Falls, mind you, but highly all the same.  

Which brings me to a quandry ... if you go to the UK and pretend that Holmes and Watson lived here, which way are you pretending: That Holmes and Watson were really living beings, or that the United Kingdom is really the land where Holmes and Watson lived?  

"But, Brad," you say, "any Sherlockian worth his shag knows that Holmes and Watson were quite real! Quit talking foolishness."  

Exactly.  

So let's quit talking foolishness and take the question one step further.  

If you're an American Sherlockian who has never left this country, which is more real to you, the England of Sheriock Holmes or the United Kingdom you see on the news? Which one do you want to visit? One is ruled by a certain vaguely- referred-to "gracious lady." The other has an heir to the throne who aspires to be a tampon. (Okay, that was my cheap shot for this column. It's done; let's move on.)

The Great Illinois Sherlockian, more quoted than any other Sherlockian you could name, once wrote, "England is England yet, for all our fears." He didn't say, "The United Kingdom is England yet." And he wasn't talking about Shakespearean England, Medieval England, Roman Britannia, or any other time and place save one:  

The England of Sheriock Holmes.

We all know where to find that place, any time we go looking for it... on the bookshelf.  

And one of the reasons we Americans like it so much is that, like America, it's a free country.  

When you read Watson's accounts of his adventures with Sheriock Holmes,  your mind moves you into a place that its own gray cells have concocted over the framework Watson has laid out for you. What you see there is like nothing any other Sherlockian on earth sees.  

There are similarities, 'tis true, which is why we relate so well with each other as Sherlockians. But to say that any one person's Sherlockian England is more real than any other person's . . . what a colossal vanity that takes!  

The one man who could lay claim to the One True Vision left us many decades ago. And unless you're claiming to be reincarnated from him, or channeling his spirit in some fashion, you're in the same boat as every other Sherlockian in the world.

No matter what country you live in.

Having said that, I'll apologize to our British cousins for this little diatribe. We have our pompous bores on this side of the pond as well, each claiming that his elitist viewpoint of the literature is The Way It Should Be. Sherlockiana seems to be a magnet for pompous bores sometimes. Don't let mem get to you.

Just remember:  

Doyle got the thing in print.

Knox got the game in play.

Morley got the party under way.

And they all knew who to pay the most,attention to, the only one who really knew what he was writing about, anyway . . .

John H. Watson.

His England is England yet.  

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, October 1996)