The Saga of Holmes and Watson Endures

(“Chips’s Tid Bits” returns with a very special message from our dear friend, Chips. – Carla Buttons)

Hello to my fellow Society members,

The passage of our beloved Don hit me hard as it did all of us. As I am want to do in times of turmoil I submerge my self in rereading the Canon and the Scholarship about those tales. I found a passage that reminded me of Don. In the words of Christopher Morley:

What other body of modern literature is esteemed as much for its errors as its felicities? The saga of Holmes and Watson endures as a unique portrait of a friendship and of a civilization. It is not strange that in our recent years of turmoil and dismay there has been so keen a nostalgia for the shape of things gone by. The Victorian age had many cruel faults yet in some phases it reached the highest accomplishment and assurance human beings have known. When Watson is talking we know where we are. Right is right and wrong is wrong; an aristocrat always looks like an aristocrat; he has a high beaky nose, wide-open haughty gaze, and sags a little at the knees. Mrs. Hudson’s joint of cold beef is on the sideboard (no one dreamed of an icebox in those days), and Holmes is smoking the cherrywood pipe which he reserves for disputatious mood. Let us enter the argument. So, in Vincent Starrett’s phrase, we revisit a world ‘where it is always 1895.'”

I can see Don with Holmes and Watson sitting and discussing the Case.

I miss him so much.

“Chips” aka Ron in Denver

4 Replies to “The Saga of Holmes and Watson Endures”

  1. Such beautiful words—Morley’s and yours. I can’t imagine how great it would have been to dine and converse with Morley and, actually, with Starrett and Libey as well.

    1. Margie, Thanks for the kind comments about my words.
      The words of Morley and scholar pioneers in our sherlockian world flow so wonderfully that I can always count on them to transport me to 1895 there to forget all thoughts but those they create.
      Chips

      Chips

  2. Yes, indeed. We need comfort in times of turmoil, stress, and sorrow. Like others in this wonderful world we inhabit, I turn to the canon and immediately am back in the 1880’s and 90’s. I also turn to the canon of good times, just to make them better.
    Daisy

  3. Dear Chips,
    Thank you for the lovely words … Don would have loved it. He was always so grateful for your contributions to the Society.
    Best,
    Asta

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