221B by Vincent Starrett

Author:Vincent Starrett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

The Baker Street apartments would have to be the scene of this epoch-making evening, for, though Holmes himself often “found it a very soothing atmosphere,” the Diogenes Club would scarcely have proved an agreeable milieu for the expansive, clubbable Dr. Johnson. And if (as it was likely to do) the talk became too heated, the four of them could descend to the streets of the city and there again find spiritual communion; for they were among the most devoted Londoners of whom we have record.

They might walk first in the park, where Holmes and Watson were accustomed to stroll in the twilight. Dr. Johnson would ask, “Is not this very fine?” Boswell, “having no exquisite relish of the beauties of Nature, and being more delighted with ‘the busy hum of men,’” would reply, “Yes, Sir; but not equal to Fleet Street.” And Johnson, with an air of finality of which Holmes and Watson would heartily approve, would say, “You are right, Sir.”

And so for Fleet Street they would head, and in Fleet Street we shall leave them: four of literature’s most agreeable comrades, who may be depended upon, wherever they walk, to provide us with perpetually good company. My Holmesian addiction offers me fewer pleasanter moments than when I think of them, unsubstantial and yet as real as my next-door neighbor, still walking through the streets of their beloved city: Holmes and Johnson side by side, and their biographers following after them, listening “amused and enthralled” to their characteristic talk as they “strolled about together, watching the ever-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbs and flows through Fleet Street and the Strand.”

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