The Mary Russell Companion Read Online Free PDF Page B

Doyle has the detective retired to the Sussex Downs, apart from the German spy case of 1912-1914, while the Memoirs make it clear that the retirement is more apparent than actual.  Certainly, he has maintained his contacts with the London underworld, and the bolt-holes he established in the great city appear to be kept well stocked. 
    It is not necessary here to describe the detective, his personality, or his techniques, since (as his brother Mycroft says) “I hear of Sherlock everywhere.”  However, it should be noted that Mary Russell finds the widespread belief that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character very troubling, giving her the occasional sensation of being somewhat fictional herself.
    (Holmes’ age and more are addressed in the essay collection Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes , available as an ebook.)

    Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes at breakfast
    Dr Watson is the narrator of most of the Conan Doyle Holmes accounts.  He and Holmes meet in 1881 ( A Study in Scarlet ) when Watson comes back wounded after serving as a medic with the British Army in Afghanistan, desperate for cheap housing.  A mutual acquaintance brings the two men together, and the world is changed.
    A large part of the success of the Conan Doyle tales is due to Watson’s Everyman character, providing access to the at times incomprehensible workings of Holmes’ mind—and even more so his heart.  Later film versions of Dr Watson chose to depict the Afghan Army veteran as a bumbling ignoramus, but in the originals, Watson is Holmes’ right-hand man, essential for his medical knowledge, his unflagging courage, and his loaded revolver.
    The Russell memoirs do not see a lot of Dr Watson, although Russell is clearly fond of him.  He does have occasional appearances, but the mentions of him are more of his absence, and when he is called upon, it is as a kind of distant Irregular.  The good Doctor seems to travel a great deal in his older age, spending considerable time in German spas.

    Mrs Beeton’s Labour-Saving Apparatus (1923)
    Mrs. Hudson is the landlady of 221 Baker Street, renting the two men a suite of rooms in central London (a sub-let that gives the “B” to the famous address).  Sherlockians argue over whether or not she has some connection with the villainous Hudson of “The Gloria Scott”, and if she is the “Martha” who appears in “His Last Bow”. In the Russell Memoirs, her name is given as Clara ( Locked Rooms ) and the husband’s criminality is what has brought her to Holmes’ attention in the first place.  All would agree, however, that Mrs. Hudson is the most patient landlady in all of London, fond of her tenant despite his endless demands and bohemian existence:
Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed an eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have sorely tried her patience. His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London. On the other hand, his payments were princely. I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him. ( The Dying Detective )
    In the Memoirs, Mrs Hudson takes young Russell under her wing, tutoring her in the womanly arts and providing an affectionate warmth at the center of the cerebral Holmes household.  In Sussex as in Baker Street, Mrs Hudson is no mere housekeeper: in “ Mrs Hudson’s Case ”, after Holmes flatly refuses to believe her suspicions, the doughty lady takes matters into her own hands and solves the case on her own, thank you very much.
    Interestingly enough, Mrs