Sherlock Holmes and Poetry

 “Cut out the poetry, Watson,” said Holmes severely, “I note that it was a high brick wall.”

 This unfortunate phrasing on the part of Holmes –“Cut out the poetry, Watson” – set back poetry in general, and English poetry in particular, for a generation. All would have been different had Holmes but said, “Cut out the excessive prose, Watson.” In fact, Watson was speaking prose and not poetry, but the damage had been done. Sherlock Holmes devotees immediately turned their backs on poetry, which from then on was anathema.  No matter that some claimed that Holmes was speaking metaphorically. “Not so,” the majority rejoined, “Of all people, Holmes speaks to the point. He said ‘Cut out the poetry,’ and cut out we shall.” And they promptly cut out the poetry from their itineraries in a poetrectomy that would have ornamented one of the medical treatises that Watson so liked to read when Holmes was updating his encyclopedia of cases and references, or engaged in his chemical researches. And all the millions of readers of Homes prompted followed suit.      

But even before the above could occur, Watson had of course immediately cut out the poetry himself. We may assume that his taste in poetry had run to Kipling because of their mutual Indian service and Tennyson for the latter’s patriotic and military themes, such as “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” even though Watson finished his military service in the somewhat ignominious position of being thrown over a packhorse by the faithful Murray after suffering a wound from a Jezail bullet at the battle of Maiwand, hardly the fitting subject of a poem.

Holmes had no need to cut out the poetry himself as he had never cut it in – it not being a subject scientific enough to merit his attention. While Watson might have read a bit of poetry in the first-class carriage in which Holmes and he occasionally traveled, Holmes would have had none of it, preferring to click off the telegraph poles in order to calculate the speed of the carriage.

Ironically, and unbeknown to Watson (let alone Holmes), Watson influenced English poetry, and T.S. Eliot in particular, by his chronicling of Holmes’ accomplishments. One need but look at Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to find an astonishing amount of borrowing from the canon.

Watson (source)                                       T.S. Eliot (borrower)

Holmes was lying on the sofa                         When the evening is spread out against

at 221 B Baker Street that                                       the sky

evening like a patient                                     Like a patient etherized upon a table:

etherized upon a table

when the doorbell rang.

 

“Let us go then, you and I,                             Let us go then, you and I,

Watson, to Goldini’s for …”             

oyster shells.”                                                 And sawdust restaurants with oyster

                                                                        shells:                                                 

 

“Oh, what is it, Watson?”                               Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

said Holmes, busy with a

chemical experiment.

 

A dense yellow fog settled                             The yellow fog that rubs its

down upon London                                         back upon the window panes

            and                                                                  and

…the opposing windows                                For the yellow smoke that slides       

loomed like dark, shapeless                            along the street rubbing its back

blurs through the heavy                                  upon the window panes

yellow wreathes.

            and

See how the yellow fog swirls

down the street …

 

One white arm and hand                                 And I have known the arms

drooped over the side                                     already, known them all –

of the chair, and her                                        arms that are braceleted and

whole pose and figure …                                white and bare

 

And his smoke had curled                              And watched the smoke that rises

up more thickly from his                                from the pipes

pipe …

            and

And leaning back in his chair

He watched the blue smoke-rings

as they chased each other up

to the ceiling.

 

“Malingering is a subject upon                                   Asleep … tired … or it malingers,

which I have sometimes thought

of writing a monograph.”

 

“That is not it at all, my                                              “That is not it at all,

dear Watson, that is not                                              That is not what I meant, at all.”

what I meant at all.”

 

In my relationship with                                               Deferential, glad to be of use.

Holmes, I was deferential,

glad to be of use.

 

“… he will be fluttering in                                         When I am pinned and wriggling on

our net as helpless as one of                                       the wall,

his own butterflies. A pin, a

cork, and a card, and we add

him to the Baker Street

collection!”

 

… which was composed of all the                              To spit out all the butt-ends

plugs and dottles left from his                                    of my days and ways?

smokes of the day before …

 

 

 

Proof of a rock solid nature is lacking, but the possibility is intriguing.