Posted on 12/27/2017 10:51:56 AM PST by mairdie
No, why?
The Three Garridebs. THIS is why I loved the stories. A Holmes who really cared about his Watson. I always saw Holmes as someone less interested in justice than in satisfying his curiosity. On occasion he let people go if they seemed good people and they would explain what happened.
*****
Clearly our moment had come. Holmes touched my wrist as a signal, and together we stole across to the open trap-door. Gently as we moved, however, the old floor must have creaked under our feet, for the head of our American, peering anxiously round, emerged suddenly from the open space. His face turned upon us with a glare of baffled rage, which gradually softened into a rather shamefaced grin as he realized that two pistols were pointed at his head.
“Well, well!” said he coolly as he scrambled to the surface. “I guess you have been one too many for me, Mr. Holmes. Saw through my game, I suppose, and played me for a sucker from the first. Well, sir, I hand it to you; you have me beat and —”
There was a crash as Holmes’ pistol came down on the man’s head.
In an instant he had whisked out a revolver from his breast and had fired two shots. I felt a sudden hot sear as if a red-hot iron had been pressed to my thigh. There was a crash as Holmes’s pistol came down on the man’s head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair.
“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”
It was worth a wound — it was worth many wounds — to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.
“It’s nothing, Holmes. It’s a mere scratch.”
He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife.
“You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?”
I felt that too about his portrayal.
Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry,
Yes, I wish they hadn’t attempted to combine The Three Garridebs with The Mazarin Stone. They missed the key passage you cited.
Although I MOSTLY loved “The Master Blackmailer,” they missed the best part at the end, where Holmes toys with both Watson and Lestrade (played to a tee by Colin Jeavons) and the description of Watson.
The other bone I have to pick is with The Empty House. Col. Moran says neither “You clever, clever fiend,” or “You cunning, cunning, fiend.” The fault I have is not with Brett or Hardwicke, but rather with the writer/director.
Overall, though, even the weakest of the Granada Holmes entries is more faithful to the text than almost any other adaptation I have seen.
There is an excellent bio of Brett-as-Holmes, called “Bending the Willow,” written by Holmes expert David Stuart Davies.
CUMBERBATCH
A Little Help from My Friends
All I Know
All About Berries
Don't Think Twice
Future Days
It's Not My Time
The Long Run
She's Always a Woman
DOWNEY
Masters of War
MIXED SHERLOCKS
When I'm 64
STEPHENS
Dreams
BRETT
Everything I Do
Road To Find Out
So It Goes (3 versions)
The Road
Thank you. I’ll be sure to look it up.
Exactly - about the Cumberbatch use of that story. That passage was what MADE the story.
By the way, you remember how the pastiches often have the editor finding a Watson mss in an attic trunk?
That’s actually an old trope. From Henry Livingston in Feb 1793, New York Magazine. Journal of an Asiatic Expedition.
TIS NOT long since I happened to purchase at a venue, an old trunk, which a refugee from Hispaniola brought with him last spring to this city. The gentleman informed me that it had long been in his family, handied about from one garret to another, and was once the property of a French counsul who had resided many years at Aleppo. On a rainy day, about a month ago, I sat down to rummage it, and found nine tenths of it filled with accounts of tobacco, wines and sugars received; and opium, rhubarb and scammony shipped, copies of letters to Monsieur Capelet De la Porte Mammouzin, and epistles from a good old aunt, Madame De Vivre le Faucon’s, but at the bottom of the trunk, I perceived several rolls of parchment written very full, and to my surprise, in the English language. It was nothing less than a Journal of Alexander the Great, written by that splendid hero himself. The abstract I will now publish is copied verbatim, from the venerable original, and will shew, that all men are pretty much alike GREAT during their tramposing this planet; and that lapse of time, and rust alone make demi-gods.
Journal of an Asiatic Expedition attempted by me, Alexander the son of Olympia, (and perhaps the son of Philip.)
446th Olympiad, June 23. Eight o’clock in the evening. Confoundedly tired with marching through this sun-burnt oriental country. A puddle of fresh water is a natural curiosity, and my canteen is half full of sediment. But the hope of filling our knapsacks with Persian gold keeps us from repining. I mean to measure my mattrass in less than an hour, and if that slut Thais keeps me in bed till six o’clock to-morrow morning, I’ll know why. There is no campaigning with or without these trollops.
24th. Ten in the morning. Just finished reviewing my troops — Adjutant-general Parmenio is as formal as his old maiden sister — to receive and return the salutes of a thousand fellows is worse than to be engaged in a decent skirmish. I ever hated ceremony. Give me a girl, a bottle, and a battle, sans souci.
25th. Three in the afternoon. My scouts have this moment come in and inform, that I can easily reach the banks of the Granicus in two hours; and that the Persians, gay as gems and gold can make them, and numerous as locusts, line the eastern shore as far as the eye can reach. My men expect a scratch, but I and Darius’s general perfectly understand each other. I have promised him a province when I shake his hand at Babylon, and I know the coward will rely upon me. I am to make the onset with great play fury, and he is to retreat as ostentatiously as he pleases.
—Seven o’clock. Well, the farce is over, and we Invincible Macedonians have got the Granicus in our rear! My opponent behaved pretty well; although he ought to have pretended resistence a little longer than he did. I believe the rascal thought more than once that we were in earnest. I will give one of the half starved poets that hang upon me, a pistareen and mug of grog, to describe this days’ bustling as a battle of amazing magnitude: Paint Bucephalus as plunging thro’ the foaming current, and bearing me resistless at the head of thirty thousand veterans on a foe, valiant, tho’ unequal — describe the eagle of victory hovering over my helmet — and the Fates fainting onthe shore. The fools of posterity perhaps may read the nonsense and believe it.
26th. I could not get down my bohea and mulcovado this morning for vexation — Poor Bucephalus has got the wambles most furiously — I feared some mischief might befal, when I lent him last night to that pimp Hephestion, to ride to a watermelon frolic. I am confident that the varlet tied him up to a post without a morsel to eat, while he was cramming fruit and cutting capers with the girls. I will punish the puppy by keeping on scout for a fortnight altogether — he hates fatigue almost as much as he does fighting.
[Here a roll or two appear to be missing.]
April 10th. Huzza! the battle of Arbela is over, and I have got, with the Persian empire, an exquisite bevy of bona-roba’s; thanks to my good friend Darius. A betrothed wood-chuck would have defended his oney-doney more magnanimously than this Asiatic poltroon did his Haram. I will treat the high mettled dames very ceremoniously by day — they have already hinted that they will be perfectly accomodating by night.
14th. Of all the bamboosing bouts I ever was in, that of last night exceeds. Thais, and I, and Parmerio, and Antipater, Hephestion, Philtas, and every mother’s son and daughter of us as drunk as so many Kickapoos. Persepolis in flames served as a flambeau to light us to our paviloons — Glorious perogatives pertain to us heroes, and we generally are careful not to neglect their exercise — To-morrow it seems I am to make, what they call my triumphant entry into Babylon. I ever did, and ever will, abominate parade and fuss.
15th. Eleven at night. The raryshow is past, and I am as tired as a carman’s horse — the flattering rascals called me the son of Jupiter, at the very time that I felt like a puppy, the son of a bitch. I could with good will kick the cringing Persians to the devil — the avaricious Macedonians after them — burn this metropolis of the world — and turn farmer at Wethersfield and raise onions.
R.
(To be continued.)
Oh, that is WICKED. ;) ROFL!!!
Really wonder what Clement Moore thought of it. Henry was of Clement’s father’s generation and his father was a subscriber to New York Magazine in the years that Henry was publishing pieces like this there. I’m sure they were a lot more fun to read than a lot of the stuff in Moore’s library.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the modernized version of Holmes as played by Benedict Cumberbatch. But, sort of like Sean Connery as James Bond, Jeremy Brett was the real thing.
I fully agree with both of your statements. Though that last season of Sherlock was starting to lose me.
As everyone says, Brett was Holmes, no doubt.
Last time I visited London, I went to the recreation of Holmes’ flat at 221B Baker St. It’s just around the block from the Baker Street tube station. They have done a terrific job with all the furnishings and atmosphere that Conan Doyle described, right down to the Persian slipper of tobacco hanging from the mantle. I was prepared to be disappointed in what could easily be a tourist trap but somebody did a most credible job in the recreation.
(At the time of the novels/stories 221B Baker St. did not exist, but they have since sandwiched it in on Baker Street.)
ENVIOUS!!!
KEWL!!!
Any photos?
I had a video camera at the time and don’t know how to clip and paste segments of the video.
Here is a link to their website:
http://www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk/
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