#acd twis

[milquetoast27]

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES DOUBLE-BEDDED ROOM CONSPIRACY

I've seen a little talk of this online, and I must share my most recent Sherlockian scholarship.

Twice in the canon, Holmes and Watson are described sleeping in a 'double-bedded room'. There are two definitions for this term, for a room:

having two beds

furnished with a double bed.

Ignoring all other clues, I firmly interpret this to have the latter meaning in both cases, in 'The Man With the Twisted Lip' and 'The Valley of Fear'.

Holmes tells Watson in TWIS, "my room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one," and later says that, "Mrs. St. Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal." He says both to Watson in assurance that there will be space for him at The Cedars, seemingly leaving the choice up to him.

Watson then later again confirms, "a large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal." This indicates that Watson has made the choice to sleep in the same room as Holmes (which is honestly enough for me, but we must go on!)

In the same paragraph, Watson states "Holmes wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed." I was concerned that my theory may have been debunked here. HOWEVER!

"His bed" does not necessarily mean there is more than one, as it was very much likely 'his bed' before Watson began lodging there. Watson (bless his soul) may also be more likely to refer to it as Holmes's bed as he is not the guest actually occupying the room and using it as a base. This early in canon, Watson is still a little shy about accompanying Holmes and therefore lean more towards this perspective.

Another perspective could be that Watson considers the bed occupying the OTHER room to be 'his', and is fully acknowledging the fact that he is taking up what is Holmes's space, although I consider this less likely back in 1889.

In this time, Holmes also never occupies a bed. He creates a (cosy) fort for himself and smokes through the night instead. Why? Because he was too shy to sleep with Watson.

Why didn't he just take the other room? Think about it. Watson has welcomed himself to sleep in Holmes's double-bedded room. Wouldn't it be awkward if he now moved to sleep in the other one? Additionally, the whole reason he has brought Watson with him was to have him in his presence - not to mention a great opportunity to watch him sleep (which I am almost certain he has done).

Thankfully, my job for proving this in VALL is much simpler. In fact, Watson telling us that "the tall, lean figure inclined towards me," while he was in bed, suggests that, perhaps, Holmes was beginning to get into it?

In conclusion, I cannot prove definitively that they were indeed occupying double-beds, but any reader is 100% justified in believing so. The same goes for the reverse, and so any interpretation is completely valid >:)

[sarahthecoat]

agreed, mary as described in SIGN sounds like exactly the sort of level headed person people would turn to for sensible help.

Letters from Watson: The Man with the Twisted Lip

Published: December 1891 Set: June of 1889 (Canon Dates) June 1887 (Baring Gould: Ridiculous) Once again, Baring-Gould unnecessarily changes the year. He believes that Mary doesn't fit the description of "Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house," so he sets this during his invented first marriage for Watson. I think this is selling Mary short in many ways. What we know of her character from The Sign of The Four is that she solves problems decisively: when faced with a sketchy meeting with an unknown man she she hires Holmes and Watson to assist. Her statement of the facts of her case is organized and clear, and during the case she's helpful in all the ways that Holmes isn't - comforting the servants of the murdered Sholto, for example. It's a pity that she never gets to collaborate further with Watson and Holmes in later stories, and an even greater pity that I haven't encountered any modern treatments that let her bring her own specialties into the business of deduction. She has a good eye for clues and, especially in a Victorian setting, an untapped well of knowledge that Holmes and Watson would necessarily be ignorant of.

[tremendously-crazy]

new sherlock holmes headcanon just dropped

This text is from The Man with the Twisted Lip

First of all I love imagining this little face of disappointment that Mary (because I'm assuming it's Mary) is making here. ☹️

John being tired :( because he just wants to chill out with his wife

First of all we love mary for this ❤️😍 she is such a supportive loving queen

Second of all THESE TWO ARE WIVES END OF STORY

Who is James yall 👀 🤔 not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle forgetting the name of his own character 😭

Mary be like: "I can send my husband (who is gay for Sherlock Holmes) away and we can have some alone time (good luck babe is playing in the background)

(good luck babe gets louder) "old friend and school companion" come on guys we all know what THAT means

Kate: "My husband (who I married because I'm in denial about the fact that im in love with you mary) is being a druggie and I'm worried about him. Can you help me??

Anyway that's pretty much it. Mary Watson and Kate Whitney guys.

[dailyholmes]

"He took out a very large bath sponge." The Man with the Twisted Lip. Published in The Strand Magazine. Sidney Paget, 1891

Sources 1 2

[eastorhild]

from The Man with the Twisted Lip (part2, Letters from Watson)

“So much for the Lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was certainly the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. Clair.--"

The language used about disabled people here bugs me. Sinister? Bro, there's nothing sinister about him yet! The only thing he had done so far was to exist and be odd and poor, which was back then sinister enough for able-bodied people, clearly.

I say this as a life-long Holmesian: ACD used every bit of period-typical racism, xenophobia, prejudice and ableism he can get his hands on in service of providing shocking and thrilling content and let me tell you, 130 years later it is sometimes a bit cringy to read. "Oooh look at this spooky cripple in this thrilling detective story!" Shut up Arthur. (Sorry Arthur but you really are a product of your time.)

[sarahthecoat]

rb for additional discussion. it's odd that ACD's math is so bad, because his family was not well off, so he was sending money home to his mum just as soon as he was able, even when he was making do with very scant furniture. i have been very gradually reading the book of his letters, and he was barely scraping by early on. he definitely knew how much bread cost, at least back then, and even later when he was more well off, he often discusses finances in his letters.

totally going out on a limb of conjecture, could TWIS have been written when ACD was feeling ambivalent about making more money from writing than doctoring? like, "it's absurd that i am making more money from just making up stories, however fanciful, than from being a specialist doctor which i actually studied for, and helps people live better"?? hmm.

Obviously we know that the idea of someone getting £700 or more annually from "professional begging" - enough to make them wealthy - is bullshit.

But in case you needed more info about just how much it's bullshit, the fantastic resource that is VictorianLondon.org quotes this from 'Sketches in London' by James Grant, from 1838.

I have made inquiries of a gentleman who has been officially occupied with the subject for the last few years, as to what may be the average amount which the street-beggars annually receive from a generous but too confiding public; and he says that very few of them average less than thirty shillings a week. In order, however, that we may be under rather than above the mark, let us take the average at twenty shillings per week

This is almost certainly also bullshit, since it buys into the same "professional beggar" narrative. But James Grant only has his professional beggars earning 20-30 shillings, or £1-1.50, per week. Or 10 times less than Arthur Conan Doyle claims for Neville St. Clair, who he has earning a minimum of £2 per day.

But 1838 wasn't 1891. Surely 20 shillings was worth less by then?

Nope, it was worth more.

So even someone buying into the exact same bullshit as ACD provides a figure that makes ACD's claims look ridiculous.

[inkonice-main]

A maybe not so well known but still good story, The Man With a Twisted Lip, part 1, let's go!

Oh oh oh I know we don't get a lot of Mary Watson in the stories, so I treasure the bits when we do. She's such a sweetheart, and the way Watson describes her makes me melt. It seems Watson is attracted to lighthouse-like people, for who else does this description resemble?

Fun (or not so fun) trivia. This last line is part of what Baring Gould uses to justify his headcanon that this is not Mary but a first wife, because he (and some other sherlockian) didn't think it applied to the mild-mannered Mary. Jerkish!

Ah, the infamous "James". I am going to ignore the embarrasing fact that ACD just forgot his narrator's christian name, and follow the watsonian hc I heard from someone that JW was just trying out a nickname which he discarded later.

Oof this is such a pitiful convo, I think ACD does a good depiction of drug addiction here. It's just sad to witness. I know Holmes is not at this level but since I recently re-read SIGN, this bit hit a bit differently after that.

But isn’t this a hell of an introduction? I knew it was Holmes and still I could feel the tension coiling in W's body at being startled like this.

This part had me thinking about why a chronicler would be more of use than a trusty comrade, then I thought about the fact that Watson must have an excellent memory and he's constantly taking notes so Holmes can always fact-check with him.

Btw, rn in the UK a "double-bedded" room means a room with one bed big enough for two. Idk if it meant the same in 19th century but it also wouldn't surprise me (I don't think it'd surprise anyone)

This is just such a sweet thing to say. "Watson you're a gift when you're quiet and a gift when you speak." As someone mentioned, I really like the post-marriage stories for the encounters like this where they're both so excited about being back together and H is trying so hard fgnfg

It's incredibly ironic that THAT line was used by the Conan Doyle state in the case against Enola Holmes to justify their thesis that Holmes doesn't show emotions. They just took the part where he says he apreccites W's silences and completely ignore the next bit.

I think this is the biggest tease we've had so far! I laughed out loud at being left at the part where Holmes is about to finally explain.

[brackgiraffe]

TWI ACD

[tremendously-crazy]

YEAH!! Watson is out here publishing everybody's deepest secrets!!

There was also Neville St Clair (aka the man with the twisted lip) who said he'd rather DIE than have his real job as a fake beggar get revealed to his children. So of course WATSON has to PUBLISH THE DAMN STORY IN THE PAPER!! I wonder what his family thought of that.

no, I'm sorry, if I were victor trevor I would hop on a steamer back to england to kick holmes's ass. like what do you MEAN you gave his father's dying confession of his most deeply held secret to your roommate and he published it in a fucking magazine???? his father was so horrified at the thought of his misdeeds and original identity going public that he literally died and watson just puts it in the fucking paper. I'd be so upset, I genuinely think that would turn me into a supervillain.

[victorianfantasywatson]

(this sounds salty the way it starts but it’s not, really, read it)

Honestly Moftiss have no textual support for Sherlock being whatever kind of multi-drug addict they have portrayed him as, making a list, hallucinating... as far as I know there is one line (in SIGN) where Watson asks him “morphine or cocaine?” but aside from that we don’t ever SEE him using morphine or any other drug besides his cocaine, right?  but.....

see... the scene in HLV where John finds Sherlock in the drug den and he’s actually high, is taken from a scene in TWIS where Holmes is in a drug den but ISN’T high.... so what if... this is one of their fixing canon things, the way they did with Sherlock shooting Magnussen?  because the thing is... Watson doesn’t actually DO anything in TWIS after he finds Holmes, at all.  Holmes asks him along, gives him the whole case in an infodump, solves it overnight while he’s asleep, Watson... has barely any lines, doesn’t really help in any way??

This is really funny because you could say on a surface level that Doyle did a shit job writing this story, he comes up with a pretext for involving Watson in a case and then.... doesn’t.  doesn’t use his own character at all, not even a little bit.   or, if you wanted to read more into it... what’s actually happening is Watson finds Holmes in the drug den, this is after his marriage to Mary, Holmes is sad and lonely and stoned off his ass (like in HLV).

Watson : “Come on, I’m taking you out of here, you can’t go home in this state, we’ll take a room somewhere, I’ll look after you till you come down, I’m a doctor.  Mary?  Don’t worry about Mary, I’ll tell her we were on a case.  You can tell me one of your old ones later, or I’ll make one up, I’ll write it up and publish it, it’ll be fine.”

what really fucks me up about this is Watson doesn’t even bother to think up a role for himself in this story, if you read it this way apparently he has a low self-esteem, hmmm reminds me of John writing S4

[raggedyblue]

“I didn’t know what to do, so I came straight to you.” That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house.

TWIS 

Mary Morstan...in case there was any doubt that she was a facade ...

[obvious-things]

The Man with the Twisted Lip

Before Reading

Warnings: Addiction

Does anybody know what “double-bedded” means?

After Reading

Holmes talking about a man with a limp: “Surely your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that weakness in one limb is often compensated for by exceptional strength in the others.”

Watson either A) slept in his clothes because he was so tired and it’s well past midnight, or B) borrowed a nightshirt from Holmes, because he packed (rooms set aside, blue dressing gown, Gladstone bag) and wasn’t using one, and then omitted the details. Then, poor Watson gets about two hours of sleep. 

Dates: July 15, 1889 - Nevil St. Clair disappears, writes a letter to his wife, and is then arrested. July 19, 1889 - Watson coincidentally finds Holmes and then spontaneously joins him. July 20, 1889 - Holmes gets his dramatic reveal. 

[sarahthecoat]

honestly, i don't know quite what to make of it. the "hounds" bit seems like a typo, or an error made by a poorly informed sfx tech? except this is not a slapdash show, more than one person has to have seen that and okayed it before airing. and "opium" is also a snag, now we say "opiates", or call specific opiate drugs by name. "opium" invokes the victorian setting, the opium den of TWIS.

Sherlock’s Pressure Points

In The Lying Detective, John and Sherlock face off against Charles Augustus Magnussen. Through Magnussen’s eyes, we get to see the ‘pressure points’ (or things that can be used to exploit the person) for various people. When Sherlock’s is shown, it’s rather deceptive.

What is shown is a long, scrolling list, making it seem like Sherlock has quite a lot of pressure points.

In fact, he only has 6 (sorry that the gif quality isn’t clear enough to really read what they are). In order of appearance, they are:

Irene Adler (see file) Jim Moriarty (see file) Redbeard (see file) Hounds of the Baskerville Opium John Watson

After that, the list repeats. This little scene here is interesting, because not only do the writers make it appear like Sherlock has far more pressure points than he actually has, but the formatting of the list is interesting. Now, I would like to point out, I don’t think this list goes in order of ‘biggest weakness’ to ‘smallest weakness’. I think the order is largely random. But there are some interesting things I would like to point out. For one, Redbeard has a file. Originally, we thought Redbeard was just a dog, but we later find out that he was Sherlock’s childhood best friend. This little detail gives support, I think, to the idea that season 4 was real because why would he have a file on a dog? And if the ‘file’ IS about Victor, that begs the question: how exactly did Magnussen learn about him? The second thing I want to point out is ‘The Hounds of the Baskerville’. This is much closer to the original title of the ACD book, the Hounds of the Baskervilles. And this little fact is definitely interesting, because, ultimately, there was only one actual hound at Baskerville, and it’s now dead. And the HOUNDs (as in the people involved in the government project) are all dead to (I think; someone correct me if this is incorrect). So … what exactly is there here to ‘put pressure’ on? I suppose it could be the gas, but, after figuring out the mystery, Sherlock was able to determine that the fear he felt was caused by the fog and, armed with that knowledge, he was largely able to overcome it. Not to mention that isn’t what is stated in that line. It is specifically the hounds of the Baskerville. And I can’t quite figure out what that’s supposed to mean. 

This was just one of those little details that is kinda easy to overlook. I just happened to be looking at the list while watching the episode the first time, noticed that things seemed to be repeating, and then paused Netflix to get a good look. Turns out, I was right. I want to know everyone else’s thoughts on this.

[mydearsigerson]

Mary Watson, née Morstan, Big Lesbian in a marriage of convenience with her best friend: “Ah yes, I love my husband,”  [looks at smudged writing on hand]  “...James Watson”

[dailyholmes]

"He flicked the horse with his whip." The Man with the Twisted Lip. Published in The Strand Magazine. Sidney Paget, 1891

Sources 1 2

[inkonice-main]

Forever fucks me up.