bakerstreetcrow:

love-in-mind-palace:

vivahate1988:

tendergingergirl:

bakerstreetcrow:

jcporter1:

isitandwonder:

callofthewilde:

bakerstreetcrow:

artemisastarte:

sussexbound:

Not to be that person, but “Thor Bridge” is Watson recollecting a case which occurred much earlier in his and Holmes’ timeline.  The actual case is thought to have taken place sometime around 1900.  Definitely post “The Empty House”, but about 10 – 14 years prior to “The Lion’s Mane”, when Holmes and Watson were, sadly, most definitely no longer living together.  

From “The Lion’s Mane” (considered the second last Holmes story chronologically):

It occurred after my withdrawal to my little Sussex home, when I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London. At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most that I ever saw of him. Thus I must act as my own chronicler. (X)

And in ‘His Last Bow’ which takes place several years after “The Lion’s Mane”, it is clear that Watson and Holmes haven’t seen one another in years:

But you, Watson”—he stopped his work and took his old friend by the shoulders—“I’ve hardly seen you in the light yet. How have the years used you? You look the same blithe boy as ever.”

“I feel twenty years younger, Holmes. I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you at Harwich with the car. But you, Holmes—you have changed very little—save for that horrible goatee.” (X)

This is where my own headcanon differs from ACDs, since mine allows for retirementlock.

I believe that by the time the last stories were written, the social climate had changed so much that ACD could never have allowed Holmes and Watson to live together, so he separated them perforce.

I don’t know if anyone here has read ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’ by Flora Thompson, but there is an interesting bit in it which I think refers. It’s set in the Holmes/Watson period and chronicles a young girl’s journey to adulthood. But one bit has always stuck in my mind. In her remote Oxfordshire village, people were only tangentially aware of the news: it was an agricultural area, and life was hard on ten shillings a week. But ‘big news’ did get through, and one of the ‘big news’ things that did was the Oscar Wilde trial of 1895 which introduced the concept of homosexuality to the general populace of her village. Immediately after this, the small cottage in her village inhabited by two old soldiers who’d served in the wars together, and then set up house together – perhaps as pals, perhaps as a pair, who knows – was vandalised and graffitied with homophobic slurs. (I can’t access my copy right now to check, so I’m not sure if there was physical violence as well.) Fortunately for them, common consensus of the village was against the perpetrators, and I don’t believe they were driven out.

But that this could happen says a lot about how attitudes changed from 1880 to 1930: if anything the world became less tolerant during the period ACD was writing, not more. Hell, ACD himself censored his own comments about his friend George Turnavine Budd because he thought they were too revealing about his crush. The writings of Havelock Ellis, Kraft-Ebbing and Freud over this period brought homosexuality out into the open, but in order to decriminalise and ‘allow’ it, they medicalised it, and they medicalised it as ‘other’ and ‘wrong’, so it became less, not more acceptable.

It is in this context that we can read any ACD that ‘separates’ or delegitimises Holmes and Watson as a pair, such as the ‘repudiation’ of the Turkish Baths in later stories as ‘expensive and relaxing’ (read decadent and feminising) compared to the ‘bracing English article’ (read ‘not at all gay: who, me?’ but manly and decorous). The later separation into Watson in Queen Anne Street and Holmes lonely in Sussex can also be read in the same way, as ACD’s penance for allowing them to be seen as too close: a gay unhappy ending.

It’s important, I think, not to forget that writers don’t write in a vacuum, and that ‘tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis’: times change, and we are changed in them. The ACD who wrote the latter stories had lived through all the changes, and he changed Holmes and Watson to make them acceptable in their time. Had he made them openly gay, they might, tragically, never have survived to be with us today.

So, to cut to the chase, I think it is perfectly legitimate to allow at least the possibility of retirementlock!

This is such important and historically relevant analysis.  Remembering also that his friend Wilder ended up going to prison for several years because of the homosexual subtext in his books.  

Wilde and Sir. Doyle were friends and it likely affected Dr. Doyle greatly.  He would not want the same to happen to him and would have been uniquely aware of the political climate he was writing in.  

I also think the point that @datmycroft is important about how their rooms at Baker Street -did not have a yard-.  The books mention Dr. Watson talking about looking outside their window to a tree in their yard, but where they lived in London had absolutely no room for a yard.  

We already know that Dr. Watson is mentioned as being an unreliable narrator and I think that the canon ‘slip’ is in there as a sort of wink that even though he was forced to write them as being apart, that does not necessarily mean that they were and they did not actually retire together.  Their living together in a house is the only way in which there could be a yard for Dr. Watson to see a tree in.  

@vivahate1988 has also made some rather interesting and relevant posts regarding the subject.  I found this post by them rather interesting.

Wilde’s death had been attributed to his time in prison having had a negative impact on his health.  Sir. Doyle had to think of the risks involved with writing and his own safety.  

It has been said several times that media does not happen in a vacuum and it is just as true back then as it is now.  Media, politics and social structure have always been intertwined and it goes both ways.  Just as Media affects culture, media is affected by culture and creators have to be aware of what fall out and reaction they may receive from their works.

This is going to sound terrible, you guys, but the way I always interpreted the canon was that John and Sherlock are in love, but they either separate due to the political climate of the time or personal reasons.

I think that because you can argue that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Watson and Holmes as mirrors for him and a combination of several men he seemed to harbor feelings for, and because Doyle inevitably permanently separated from all of these men, it would actually make sense within the narrative for John and Sherlock to separate. 

However, analyzing the details with the tree/yard and with a more optimistic eye is completely valid and arguable. Either way, I have always thought of the pair as desperately in love even when apart, as they do say things to each other like, “I have seldom felt so happy as when I got your wire asking me to meet you”. I think that if they did separate, it was politics and safety reasons rather than personal ones because of the fondness between them after all those years. It could also be possible that they didn’t live together, but visited each other more often Watson let on in his narration.

Just name dropping here, but also remember what happened to ACD’s friend Roger Casement in 1916 (whom  Doyle had used as an inspiration for the character of Lord John Roxton in his 1912 novel The Lost World). Shortly after Casement was hanged for treason in 1916, ACD wrote His Last Bow (published 1917). During his trail, the Black Diaries were published, once again creating an atmosphere of heightened homophobia combined with political mistrust. Nevertheless, ACD started a petition to pardon Casement, which was unsuccessful.

This case shows that still at the beginning of the 20th century even alleged homosexuality could cause social and physical death of the person labelled – it wasn’t just about some homophobic slurs. Being identified as homosexual could – combined with other factors – lead to physical extinction of the person involved. And ACD was made repeatedly aware of this fact in his social circle. Keep that in mind when reading Holmes and Watson.

Growing up in a small town in Texas in the 60’s every one who was gay either moved out of town or married and went deep into the closet, just hooking up at the one secret gay bar in town or cruising in parks. No one was open unless they enjoyed unemployment and gay bashing.
So as a kid reading about Watson getting married I just thought he was pretending to be straight so he and Holmes could avoid destruction.

All of theses are very good points.  I honestly agree with @datmycroft that the line in ACD’s book Thor Bridge is a dead giveaway. Watson writes:

It was a wild morning in October, and I observed as I was dressing how the last remaining leaves were being whirled from the solitary plane tree which graces the yard behind our house. [x]

The place where they lived in 221B Baker Street was a town house with no back hard.  Even back then the street that he chose for the fictional house was condensed and the buildings had no ability for yard.

It may look like upper Baker Street may have space, but there was a rail line that ran behind the houses.  The only time in which Dr. Watson could have had a yard with Holmes is if they were in Sussex.

Sir. Doyle and Wilde were close friends. 

Wilde’s books were used against him as evidence.  In addition @isitandwonder point about Sir. Doyle’s friend   Roger Casement being targeted for being homosexual, Sir. Doyle was uniquely aware of the issues of being homosexual and would have edited his books accordingly so as to protect himself.  

Even with that, there was still a lot of subtextual romanticism in the books, and probably only the amount he thought he could get away with and still be safe.  The cases were more important to write about then the underlying relationship yet somehow he still always emphasized Holmes and Watson’s dedication to each other.
 It is entirely plausible canon that Dr. Watson had retired with Holmes but both of them made sure to edit any writings so as to protect themselves.

What is it with Lion’s Mane? Some Sher!!oly was attacking me on Twitter, claiming that Holmes had a fling with Maudie? That proves that Sherlolly is canon & has the estate’s approval. The estate only approves of Het Holmes adaptations.

That isn’t true at all – The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane takes place when Holmes is in retirement, and Maud Bellamy is a young woman. The only thing Holmes says about her is that ‘Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart, but I could not look upon her perfect clear-cut face, with all the soft freshness of the downlands in her delicate colouring, without realizing that no young man would cross her path unscathed.’

He doesn’t say this to her, he doesn’t say anything else of the sort about her, and he certainly doesn’t have a fling with her. All he does is say that he’s not into women but that he can see that she’s pretty and that young (straight) men would like her. I’ve written about the fact that this reads as far more gay than straight (taking background information into account as well) for the second and fourth issues of @retiredbeekeepers’ Practical Handbook of Bee Culture if you’re interested, but honestly, I think it speaks pretty well for itself.

As to the rest of their argument, I have no idea what they think that has to do with Sherlolly, and they’re wrong about the Conan Doyle estate. There are two excellent posts on this subject, which you can read here and here. I want to reiterate, in particular, that all of the Sherlock Holmes stories have been in the public domain in the UK since 2009, so the estate couldn’t interfere with BBC Sherlock even if they wanted to, and even if Andrea Plunket ever did have any right to call the Holmesian shots (which she didn’t), she died last year.

In short: you can tell whoever you were arguing with that they were completely, embarrassingly wrong.

I remember the pointless fight lmao. The lengths people go to establish something absurd.

Plucket is who people are really talking about when they mention “The Estate” and heterosexuality.  Plucket was NOT actually a part of the Estate.  She simply claimed she was.  She was a homophobe trying to get money and with her death it is unlikely such behavior will continue.  I feel it is important to emphasize that

that Plunkett was not a descendant of Sir. Doyle and and to reiterate Vivahate’s point that Pluckett did not actually have legal ownership of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle’s works. She just wish she did and too many people just let her get away with it so as to avoid the legal hassle of dealing with her.  The REAL estate have generally been passive about the whole thing and have not come out as being against any kind of homosexual portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.

Also, Molly Hooper is an original character created and written by Mofftiss.  She is property of BBC.  While Sherlock Holmes is public , Molly Hooper most certainly is not.  Writers need to be aware of that because anyone who writes about her absolutely can be sued by BBC for taking intellectual property if they try to sell or make money off of their work.  

She is not Maud and most definitely not a part of the original ACD canon or public domain.

Any literature written and sold based off of Sherlock Holmes and possibly inspired by BBC needs to -not- include Molly for copyright reasons.