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| Having tea with Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson |
Today, The Grandma has received the amazing exciting wonderful visit of John H. Watson, aka Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective. They have been talking about The Watsons, The Grandma's new family in Sant Boi de Llobregat, and Dr Watson has explained her some secrets to help her family members to improve their English.
John H. Watson, known as Dr Watson, is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson is Sherlock Holmes' friend, assistant and sometime flatmate, and the first person narrator of all but four of these stories.
He is described as a typical Victorian-era gentleman, unlike the more eccentric Holmes. He is astute, although he fails to match his friend's deductive skills. Whilst retaining his role as Holmes's friend and confidant, Watson has been adapted in various films, television series, video games, comics and radio programmes.
In Conan Doyle's early rough plot outlines, Sherlock Holmes's associate was named Ormond Sacker before Conan Doyle finally settled on John Watson. He was probably inspired by one of Doyle's colleagues, Dr James Watson.
More information: Arthur Conan Doyle
William L. DeAndrea wrote that Watson also serves the important function of catalyst for Holmes's mental processes... From the writer's point of view, Doyle knew the importance of having someone to whom the detective can make enigmatic remarks, a consciousness that's privy to facts in the case without being in on the conclusions drawn from them until the proper time. Any character who performs these functions in a mystery story has come to be known as a 'Watson'.
Dr Watson's first name is mentioned on only four occasions. Part one of the very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, is subtitled Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department.
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| Sherlock Holmes & Dr. John H. Watson |
The preface of the collection His Last Bow is signed John H. Watson, M.D., and in The Problem of Thor Bridge, Watson says that his dispatch box is labelled John H. Watson, M.D.
His wife Mary Watson appears to refer to him as James in The Man with the Twisted Lip; Dorothy L. Sayers speculates that Mary may be using his middle name Hamish (an Anglicisation of Sheumais, the vocative form of Seumas, the Scottish Gaelic for James), though Doyle himself never addresses this beyond including the initial. David W. Merrell, on the other hand, concludes that Mary is not referring to her husband at all but rather to (the surname of) their servant.
In 1881, Watson is introduced by his friend Stamford to Sherlock Holmes, who is looking for someone to share rent at a flat in 221B Baker Street. Concluding that they are compatible, they subsequently move into the flat. When Watson notices multiple eccentric guests frequenting the flat, Holmes reveals that he is a consulting detective and that the guests are his clients.
Throughout Doyle's novels, Watson is presented as Holmes's biographer. At the end of the first published Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Watson is so incensed by Scotland Yard's claiming full credit for its solution that he exclaims: Your merits should be publicly recognised. You should publish an account of the case. If you won't, I will for you. Holmes suavely responds: You may do what you like, Doctor. Therefore, the story is presented as a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, and most other stories of the series share this by implication.
More information: Sherlockian
A Study in Scarlet, having just returned from Afghanistan, John Watson is described as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut. In subsequent texts, he is variously described as strongly built, of a stature either average or slightly above average, with a thick, strong neck and a small moustache.
Watson used to be an athlete: it is mentioned in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire (1924) that he used to play rugby union for Blackheath, but he fears his physical condition has declined since that point. In The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (1899), Watson is described as a middle-sized, strongly built man—square jaw, thick neck, moustache... In His Last Bow, set in August 1914, Watson is described as ...a heavily built, elderly man with a grey moustache....
John Watson is intelligent, if lacking in Holmes's insight, and serves as a perfect foil for Holmes: the archetypal late Victorian/Edwardian gentleman against the brilliant, emotionally detached analytical machine. Furthermore, he is considered an excellent doctor and surgeon, especially by Holmes.
For instance, in The Adventure of the Dying Detective, Holmes creates a ruse that he is deathly ill to lure a suspect to his presence, which must fool Watson as well during its enactment. To that effect in addition to elaborate makeup and starving himself for a few days for the necessary appearance, Holmes firmly claims to Watson that he is highly contagious to the touch, knowing full well that the doctor would immediately deduce his true medical condition upon examination.
My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action.
Your instinct is always to do something energetic.
Sherlock Holmes
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