The Crooked Man
Jan. 24th, 2021 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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victorian221bIt was pointed out before, but the frame narrative of this story is rather curious. After a long and exhausting day, Watson stays up until a quarter to twelve for some reason. He is married just recently, but instead of joining his wife upstairs he reads a novel. Why? Then we find out that there are bachelor quarters for one in his house. This spare room isn’t called a guest room or something, but bachelor quarters. Does he keep this room especially for Holmes if Holmes chooses to visit and sleep over? Weird. Then it gets better still: Holmes tells Watson about his current case, and voila, Watson is lively and wide awake whereas before Holmes’s visit he was tired and sleepy. His practice is busy, as Holmes observes, yet Watson agrees to accompany Holmes the next day at once, without any second thoughts. “I’m sure my neighbour will be happy to take over,” says he.
Watson also reminds us that he can see through Holmes’s unemotional veneer despite Holmes’s “composure which had made so many regard him as a machine rather than a man.” So first Watson creates the machine myth himself and then goes like, but I actually know how sensitive and emotional Holmes really is, wink, wink.
Miss Morrison. The previous story left us perplexed as to who Annie Morrison was. This one also features a Miss Morrison. This name must have persisted in ACD’s imagination until he created an actual character, not a loose end.
I agree with other Holmes scholars—Granada handled this story much better in comparison with the original. It gave Watson something to do and made him an active participant instead of treating us to a double flashback (Holmes’s narrative and Henry Wood’s narrative). It made much more sense for Watson to help Holmes navigate through the aspects of military life than to be a passive listener.
A few words about Henry Wood. One wonders about his fate afterwards. Was he reunited with Nancy? Or was it that he didn’t have much longer to live? He was crouching by the fire on a warm day and mentioned that he came to see the old country before he died. In the Bert Coules adaptation Watson gives him advice to go to Nancy. I’d like to hope that Henry Wood followed it, and that he and Nancy could be together and relish the time which was left for them.
Watson also reminds us that he can see through Holmes’s unemotional veneer despite Holmes’s “composure which had made so many regard him as a machine rather than a man.” So first Watson creates the machine myth himself and then goes like, but I actually know how sensitive and emotional Holmes really is, wink, wink.
Miss Morrison. The previous story left us perplexed as to who Annie Morrison was. This one also features a Miss Morrison. This name must have persisted in ACD’s imagination until he created an actual character, not a loose end.
I agree with other Holmes scholars—Granada handled this story much better in comparison with the original. It gave Watson something to do and made him an active participant instead of treating us to a double flashback (Holmes’s narrative and Henry Wood’s narrative). It made much more sense for Watson to help Holmes navigate through the aspects of military life than to be a passive listener.
A few words about Henry Wood. One wonders about his fate afterwards. Was he reunited with Nancy? Or was it that he didn’t have much longer to live? He was crouching by the fire on a warm day and mentioned that he came to see the old country before he died. In the Bert Coules adaptation Watson gives him advice to go to Nancy. I’d like to hope that Henry Wood followed it, and that he and Nancy could be together and relish the time which was left for them.
