This is the second story written from Holmes’s POV, but unlike BLAN, it doesn’t feel like Holmes at all. While the narrative in BLAN is always strictly to the point of the case (except those 9 times when Holmes mentions Watson, saying how he misses him), LION features a lot of romantic descriptions of nature, florid similes, admiration of a pretty lady… doesn’t it remind you of someone? The very voice of Holmes is off and there are too many inconsistencies:
Holmes yearned for Nature while living in the gloom of London? Oh please, Holmes didn’t care for it and loved the atmosphere of the metropolis. “…as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumor or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of Nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.” (RESI)
Holmes waxes poetic about the beauty and merits of a woman and compares her to a flower??
Holmes reads everything indiscriminately and stores “out-of-the-way knowledge without scientific system” in his brain attic??? “A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.” (STUD) Seriously, it’s Watson who reads anything all the time, from yellow-backed novels to decent fiction to medical literature and etc.
The relationship between McPherson and Murdoch is a curious parallel between Holmes and Victor Trevor. In both cases two men meet because the dog which belongs to one of them attacks the other. Murdoch resembles Holmes in many ways, being tall, thin, dark, and somewhat detached from reality, living in his own world.
Murdoch says a rather interesting thing after McPherson’s death: “I have lost to-day the only person who made The Gables habitable.”
Maud Bellamy, when asked whether Murdoch was an admirer of hers, says: “There was a time when I thought he was.” It implies that later she discovered that she was mistaken.
So there’s a picture which becomes quite clear: “for a year or more Murdoch has been as near to McPherson as he ever could be to anyone”, his feelings for McPherson being most likely unrequited. Then McPherson fell for Maud. And Murdoch, loving him selflessly, agreed to be a messenger between them.
Another interesting detail is that Murdoch is a math teacher and ACD makes him a prime suspect. As we remember, Moriarty was a mathematician too. It must have sprang from ACD’s distaste for math. “It is indeed, as you say, a very great consolation to know that I will never more need mathematics. Classics I like, and I shall always try to keep up my knowledge of them, but mathematics of every sort I detest and abhor.” (ACD in a letter to Dr Bryan Charles Waller, a family friend, September 9, 1876)
Holmes lives with “his old housekeeper” who is rather outgoing and knows every bit of gossip in the village. The very same housekeeper then takes care of an injured Murdoch, being obviously proficient in administering medical aid. And note that when Murdoch pleads for “oil, opium, morphia” to relieve his pain, there’s only oil in Holmes’s house. No opium or morphine, considering his past.
Taking into account all of the above, I’m pretty sure that it was Watson who wrote this story. From Holmes’s POV. But his obvious is showing. In BLAN Holmes tried very zealously to make an impression that Watson and he are estranged. In LION these two cunning gentlemen continue this charade, to protect their privacy, of course, as always. They live quietly together in retirement and have fun by still mystifying their readers.
One day in early spring [Holmes] had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms, and the sticky spear-heads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their five-fold leaves. For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately.
I was looking over the post-Return Sherlock Holmes stories, and finally put something together about the dates.
“The Three Garridebs” case begins in June of 1902. All signs indicate that Watson is still resident at 221B at this point. We all know how that case ends.
“Illustrious Client” begins on September 3, 1902, with the famous trip to the Turkish baths. At that point, Watson says, he was “living in my own rooms in Queen Anne street at the time.”
“Blanched Soldier” begins in January, 1903. Holmes is still in his consulting-room in London, but Watson doesn’t appear in this case and Holmes narrates. And he is BITTER: “The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone.”
“Creeping Man” is dated September, 1903. This is the one where Holmes sends Watson the famous “Come if convenient, if inconvenient come all the same” telegram, and Watson’s narration says that their relations were “peculiar” at that time. Watson is also manifestly annoyed at being summoned for a case about a dog. Turns out it’s a case about a man who is in love with a younger woman and wants to impress her by augmenting his sexual potency via monkey gland secretions.
Holmes’s retirement to the Sussex Downs happens sometime in 1904, since it is announced in the introduction to “Second Stain.”
“Lion’s Mane” is dated 1907 and is the only story set during Holmes’s retirement (he comes out of retirement for “His Last Bow”). He mentions that “my house is lonely” and that “at this period of my life, the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken.”
OK. So, in my own headcanon, I always located the Declaration and Consummation pretty soon after “Empty House,” based on the fact that the Return stories indicate a new level of physical and emotional intimacy (plus in “Norwood Builder” Watson sells his practice and moves back into 221B. Really, you don’t do that for a roommate).
However, if you look at these dates, it occurs to me that another narrative–one which I in no way like as well–would go like this.
Whenever someone says that johnlock couldn’t be canon, because it would ruin the source material, I always have to mention Granada Sherlock Holmes.
Produced in a time when suggesting that Holmes and Watson might have been in a romantic or sexual relationship could get you black listed from Sherlockian communities, this series thumbed its nose and pushed as many boundaries as it could.
One of the first screen adaptations to showcase the equality in the partnership between the two men, it gave us a Watson who was anything but the bumbling oaf he had been in previous works. This Watson was intelligent, strong, protective, and loving. When he wasn’t doctoring his Holmes after scrapes, he was comforting him in his failure, or helping to direct him toward success.
Rather than marry Watson off, Granada kept him a happy, if often put upon, bachelor. This deviation from the source Canon was handled smoothly, by occasionally sending Watson on much needed holidays or keeping him busy at his surgery, for stories that needed the men to be separated at the beginning.
Beyond the less than subtle hints into the nature of the relationship between Holmes and Watson, Granada is noted for including a story line in one of their most well known films that dealt with why that very relationship needed to be kept a secret. Working off of a few scant lines found in the original Charles Augustus Milverton, the film The Master Blackmailer featured a subplot of a soldier taking his life, when his love affair with a man is found out. This is a subject which leads to Lestrade making the remark that it isn’t the first time it has happened to a soldier, and it certainly won’t be the last, a remark that ends with Watson all but slamming the door to Baker Street behind the inspector.
There is hardly a scene throughout the show- which ran for a decade, and included five feature length films- that doesn’t show the gentle intimacy between Holmes and Watson. Whether he is threatening an armed man with a chair, insisting that his detective eat, or jumping between Holmes and a hired thug, Watson is every inch the devoted companion. As the series progresses, and the actors change, Watson subtly evolves from a man who loves the excitement of the world Holmes has shown him, into one that wants them to slow down and think of the future. There is a delightful scene in one of the later episodes, which shows Watson obviously relieved to learn that there is money in Holmes’ family.
And of course, nothing says canon otp, like giant floating rainbows splashed across the backgrounds of their scenes together.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 