devoursjohnlock:

The Lion’s Mane is the second of only two stories narrated by Sherlock Holmes; the first of these was The Blanched Soldier. Both of these stories were published in 1926 and collected in The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes, which seems to have become a major source for Sherlock S4 (see my related meta here, partially about the erasure of John Watson’s character).

In The Lion’s Mane, Holmes opens by talking about his lonely life in his house on a hill in the Sussex Downs, with his housekeeper and his bees, and relates the story of a case that nearly stumped him.

“At this period of my life the good Watson had passed almost beyond my ken. An occasional week-end visit was the most I ever saw of him. Ah! had he but been with me, how much he might have made of so wonderful a happening and of my eventual triumph against every difficulty!”

Yes, it’s certainly a pity that John is being kept from writing these stories.

As I mentioned in my recent meta on The Blanched Soldier, Mofftiss appear to believe that Doyle removed Watson from that tale in order to tell a story about him in him allegory (this is the only explanation for James Sholto’s character in The Sign of Three). I think he did the same thing in The Lion’s Mane, but it’s difficult to tell, because the story is a bit like a game of musical chairs. In fact, past Sherlockians have observed that lines in The Lion’s Mane appear to have been handed out to the wrong characters.

“Why did you betray us?” (The Six Thatchers)

The only character in The Lion’s Mane that we recognize by name, Sherlock Holmes, isn’t acting like himself at all. John Watson is outright missing. The first manuscript of this story, most of which has survived, included a new and important character who was then cut out of the published version. Can we trust what we see on the page?

“That’s not what happened at all.” (The Six Thatchers)

… Victorian skinny-dipping, secret love notes, and lots of other spoilers for The Lion’s Mane under the cut.

Keep reading