victorian221b | Entries tagged with crossposted from tumblr

This is a wonderful interview with Prim Hardwicke, Edward Hardwicke’s wife, posted on September 30, 2020. Prim talks about Edward and Jeremy and their friendship, sharing sweet and sometimes poignant memories (when she reminisces about Jeremy’s illness). But it’s such a pleasure to listen about behind-the-scenes things of the Granada series, about Edward’s gentleness and Jeremy’s joy of life!

Here’s one of her stories about Jeremy:

“I remember he was having lunch with us one day in our back garden. It was a lovely sunny day, and our next door neighbour decided to mow the lawn rather loudly, so we couldn’t hear ourselves. Jeremy leapt to his feet and shrieked over the top of the hedge, “Darling! Darling! I’m sure your garden’s absolutely lovely, but could you not mow your lawn at the moment?” There was dead silence on the other side, and then the sound of the door banging. I don’t think he [the neighbour] had ever been called ‘darling’ before by a man. He was fairly taken aback.”

Watch on YouTube

mightymads

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Vladimir Dashkevich, the composer who wrote the theme for the Soviet Sherlock Holmes:

“The screenplay was excellent. A story of friendship between two completely different people was wonderfully written, and it enthralled me. But it was still a very long way to music. I thought it would take quite a lot of time to shoot the film and then they would show it to me. I was in Moscow and suddenly Igor Maslennikov calls me from Leningrad, saying, “You know, I've listened to a BBC cultural programme theme and I think we need something like this for our Sherlock Holmes project.” It was a Saturday morning, when Igor wasn't busy with his film directing duties, and the programme had been broadcasted on Friday evening. A week passed, and of course I forgot to listen to that programme, and the next Saturday he called me again. I say, “I forgot to listen.” He says, “Please make sure you will.” Another week passed. I forgot again, and he called me again. I could hear that he was already getting annoyed. I promised to listen the next time and forgot again. And Maslennikov told me every time, “This is Britain, the Empire, with a gentlemanly spirit and irony, and power, and optimism, and nobility.” Every time he was saying this to me. Finally, when I forgot again and he called again, I became desperate, brought my phone to the piano, and played him the first thing which came to mind. This became the Sherlock Holmes theme Igor Maslennikov was talking about. As a wise man he told me, “Vladimir, don't leave it hanging in the air, take a pencil and jot it down at once because you'll forget.” Well, I have no memory problems, but anyway, but I wrote it down because the director is the boss and you should do what he says. I was happy that I didn't have to listen to that BBC theme anymore, so I still don't know what it is like.”

I tried to find that BBC theme, and the one which starts at 1:06 seems to fit Maslennikov’s description:

Watch on YouTube

mightymads

Uprooted and lonely, Watson meets Stamford at the Criterion in early 1881. It was pointed out by many sources that the Criterion Bar was a popular meeting place among queer men. Also, the Criterion, being a luxurious establishment, was visited by such celebrities as H. G. Wells and Winston Churchill. In addition, it was a venue for suffragettes to discuss their plans as the Bar was famous for its excellent afternoon tea.

So what role does the Criterion play in A Study in Scarlet? Is it just a fashionable place or a queer-coded message? According to Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 by Matt Houlbrook,

In the evening, what Muirhead’s Blue Guide described as “London’s most fashionable resort for afternoon tea” became somewhere to celebrate masculine beauty. The Criterion had been what George Ives called “a great centre for inverts” since around 1905.

Watson and Stamford met there about a quarter of a century earlier. Their meeting happened at a quite an early hour too as Watson writes:

In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom.

From the above it can be concluded that Watson visited the Criterion for fancy food and fancy furnishings rather than in search of a one night stand. The Holborn is another fancy restaurant which clearly shows that Watson has expensive tastes. By his own admission, Watson lived beyond his means, and eventually because of that he found himself in the need of a flatmate.

(The Criterion and the Holborn)

( Read more... )

mightymads

This is Vitaly Solomin’s older brother Yury, also a very famous actor in Russia. A few days ago, on June 18, he celebrated his 85th birthday. I think if someone ever made a film about Holmes and Watson in retirement, he would be an ideal casting choice to play with Vasily Livanov.

rachelindeed

I recently browsed through the archives of illustrations at the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia website, and I had fun picking out some favorites from among the many hundreds of pictures that were created for the Sherlock Holmes stories during Doyle's lifetime. If you'd like to see some of those drawings, captioned with some casual commentary from yours truly, here's a link to the posts I made about them on Tumblr:

Early Holmesian art masterpost

mightymads

I was listening to a Bert Coules adaptation of DEVI again, and again the depth of Watson’s love and loyalty blew my mind away. Watson agrees to proceed with Holmes’s batshit crazy idea because he can’t talk Holmes out of it and wants to keep him safe. Watson would rather be poisoned too than let a convalescing Holmes expose himself to poison alone. I just ASCGHUJKL

Also a quick recap of things which were pointed out elsewhere:

- ACD and and his wife Jean had a holiday in Cornwall in 1910 (DEVI was published in December 1910) when ACD was recovering from a surgery and Jean was expecting their second child;
- DEVI features two lovers who can’t marry due to “the deplorable laws of England”: ACD and Jean could marry only after ten years of courtship after ACD’s first wife died. Also quite a parallel with Holmes and Watson;
- In Bert Coules version Holmes and Watson quote Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde when they are almost dying from poisoning:

“So let us die and never part
Together for the rest of time
No more waking
No more fearing
Nameless, endless,
Loving, sharing.”

- Holmes lets go of the man who avenged his beloved, saying that he’d basically do the same if someone killed a person he loved, and then, in 3GAR, “If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.”

mightymads

I have an ACD johnlock pwp collection called My Blushes, Watson! Recently I felt like writing something naughty and comforting, so I added a new installment to it.

Title: Allow Me to Assist
Universe: ACD
Paring: Holmes/Watson
Word count: ~2,100
Rating: Explicit
Summary: Holmes is busy contemplating a case, and Watson is too modest to disturb him, even though the doctor is in need of a sexual release after a long day. Having noticed Watson’s predicament, Holmes follows Watson upstairs to satisfy him.

mightymads

From Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, by Daniel Stashower:

Why, then, should he have wanted to make his detective a drug user? For the modern reader, the image of Sherlock Holmes plunging a needle into his arm comes as an unpleasant shock. To Conan Doyle’s way of thinking, however, the syringe would have been very much of a piece with the violin, the purple dressing gown, and the interest in such abstruse subjects as the motets of Lassus. With Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle intended to elevate the science of criminal investigation to an art form. To do so, he needed to cast his detective as an artist rather than a simple policeman. Conan Doyle himself, with his broad shoulders, muscular frame, and ruddy complexion, could easily have passed for a stolid London patrolman. Holmes offered a striking contrast. He was thin, languid, and aesthetic. He easily fit the pattern of a bohemian artist, with all of the accompanying eccentricities and evil habits—one of which, sad to say, was cocaine. “Art in the blood,” as Holmes was to say, “is liable to take the strangest forms.”

( Read more... )

——

To summarise, this excerpt supports the points previously discussed elsewhere:

1. The influence of the aesthetic movement and Wilde in particular on the image of Holmes. No wonder Holmes comes off as queer-coded. He is queer intrinsically.

2. Doyle admired Wilde and was vocal about it but chose to be more cautious in his own writing.

Picture credits: londonremembers.com, hauntedjourneys.com

mightymads

From the DVD commentary (thanks tremendousdetectivetheorist on tumblr for sharing!):

David Stuart Davies (author of Bending the Willow): You managed to get him to wear a deerstalker, and he hated that, didn’t he?

John Madden (director of The Priory School episode): He did! He didn’t want to be uniquely associated with that. I think he felt it was somewhat ridiculous. Not the most elegant headgear.

David Stuart Davies: Jeremy was very fond of certain props—the walking stick and the long black scarf—which are both from the terms of the stories uncanonical, but he seems almost to be attached to that scarf most of the time. Did he say anything about that?

John Madden: I think Jeremy was a dandy. And one of the qualities that he exhumed on the character was that kind of dandiness which was really there but not necessarily something which would need to be emphasised. But Jeremy loved that, the sense of showmanship in the character. The grace and style of his mind was externalised in the way he dressed. He wanted to look good!

mightymads

So I’m reading Lyndsay Faye’s The Whole Art of Detection, a collection of Holmes pastiches, and it’s wonderful. A proper review will follow, but for now some live-blogging.

There’s a story written from Holmes POV, Memoranda Upon The Gaskell Blackmailing Dilemma, in which Holmes is working on a blackmailing case, having sent Watson away with Sir Henry to Dartmoor. Holmes fretting and missing his Watson and worrying about him is precious. I’ll just leave some of this goodness here:

“I wish the doctor were here. His advice would be invaluable—gallantry, thy name is Dr. John H. Watson. For all he was too thin and far too rootless and melancholy, he may as well have stepped down off a white charger that day at St. Bart’s years ago.”

“I found that he had neglected to pack his woolen muffler, despite the fact it is nearly October. Is this the act of a prudent medical practitioner? Honestly, he can be very trying at times.
I gave it to Mrs. Hudson to send by the first post on the morrow.”

“I hope his revolver is in his pocket. I told him never to be without it, and he generally follows my instructions, but a hound (whether supernatural or the common garden variety) can tear a man’s throat out.”

“Also, if Watson is dedicated to writing me detailed reports, then by God I am going to read them.”

“It fast approaches midnight. All is in readiness. Mrs. Hudson has finally retired, after accusing me of “pining”.”
👌👌👌👌👌

mightymads

I've recently watched Murder by Decree (1979) with Christopher Plummer and James Mason, a Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper movie which has a subdued thriller-like atmosphere (as one would expect) and a most human Holmes (a pleasant surprise). After that I just had to compare it with an earlier Ripper installment, and I liked it even more.

( Read more... )

mightymads

In TWIS Holmes says,

“My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one”

Then, a few pages later,

“Mrs. St. Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal,”

Dear me, Watson, your obvious is showing. Either you forgot to edit the former statement or you left it that way deliberately for your perceptive readers. Then again, Mrs. St. Clair could have given Holmes a double room suite with a bed in each room, but that would’ve been superfluous, right? Since Holmes had intended to be there alone and met Watson at the den after the arrangements had been made.

It seems that the Granada adaptation went with a room with two beds scenario, with Holmes sitting on one bed and Watson going to sleep in the other:

( Read more... )

mightymads

Jude Law

I was reading on Wikipedia about ACD's early novel The Narrative of John Smith, and there was a photo of the author at 23 when he wrote it. It immediately struck me that young ACD was a spitting image of Jude Law (or vice versa). Strangely enough, older ACD looks nothing like Jude Law. Was it due to weight difference? Or maybe it was just the angle that young photo was taken? I turned it over and over in my mind, staring at various photos of Doyle and Law, but eventually didn't arrive at any conclusion.

( Read more... )

mightymads

I'd like to back up here a very interesting discussion which took place on tumblr and was prompted by the stills below.

acdhw: Watson appears to be wearing a gold bracelet hidden under his cuff. It doesn’t look like an anachronistic wristwatch; I re-watched this moment several times. Any ideas/headcanons why he might be wearing it? Holmes’s present, obvs? 👀 @tremendousdetectivetheorist, @granada-brett-crumbs, anyone?

granada-brett-crumbs: I had never noticed that, good catch! all I know is that men didn’t usually wear “ornamental” jewelry around that era, if they wore any it was just practical jewelry like cufflinks a tie pin and a watch chain, and Watson being a practical man seems unlikely he would have chosen for himself an ornamental gold bracelet (even when it appears to be very simple and discreet) so if he’s wearing it, it’s very likely it was a present and honestly who else would give him something like that if not Holmes??? and that’s in the episode where he’s in a little vacation by himself writing letters to Holmes every day so clearly he’s not wearing it just because Holmes may see it, so, now I’ll be here imagining what would’ve been the occasion in which Holmes gave Watson the bracelet.

( Read more... )

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Victorian 221b

Entries tagged with crossposted from tumblr

Happy birthday Jeremy

Lenfilm Holmes theme

The Criterion Bar and queer-coding

What if there was a retirement Old Russian Holmes film

Early Holmesian Art

DEVI

Fic: Allow Me to Assist

ACD meeting Oscar Wilde

Dandy Jeremy

Some live-blogging

A Study in Terror (1965)

How many rooms and beds?

A+ casting

Watson's gold bracelet

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February 2023

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