In the
eleven years between Holmes’s retirement and the beginning of the World
War, Watson completed his transcription of all the adventures making up The
Return of Sherlock Holmes as well as the six which were to go into His
Last Bow. He also wrote twenty-two Shavian plays and, with some help
from Doyle, the longer adventure The Valley of Fear. In 1914, his
literary activities were suspended due to his return to military service,
but he was mustered out in 1916, and his output of theatrical works resumed
in that year. He wrote no dramas in the five years from 1924 through 1928
but concentrated on the nine adventures he then contributed to The
Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. He resumed the writing of plays in 1929.
Of all the Shavian plays, it was in his Pygmalion, later to
be made into the musical My Fair Lady, that Watson drew most freely
from his Baker Street recollections. His Professor Higgins and Colonel
Pickering are but slightly rearranged portraits of Sherlock Holmes and
himself, and Mrs. Pierce could easily pass for Mrs. Hudson. Perhaps his
most striking use of Canonical material was having Higgins deduce, on first
meeting Pickering, that the colonel had recently come from India.
All in all, Watson wrote fifty-six theatrical works and
fifty-six eyewitness accounts of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures. His output
thus is perfectly balanced between his two areas of creativity. His total
of one hundred twelve highly successful literary works represents a major
landmark in the history of world literature.
By
way of postscript, I might remark that the feminists have yet to latch onto
William Shakespeare. It is always possible that somebody someday will prove
that Shakespeare’s works were really written by Mary, Queen of Scots or
even Queen Elizabeth I. In such an event, I am prepared to show that all of
Shaw was written by Queen Victoria, who did not die as supposed in 1901,
but is this very day alive and well and keeping bees upon the South Downs.
|
The proprietor of this
site gratefully acknowledges the cooperation of Mr. Steven Rothman,
publisher of THE BAKER STREET JOURNAL, who granted permission for
this paper to be published in this space. You may subscribe to this
journal by sending $21 ($23.50 from
outside the U.S.) to:
The Baker Street
Journal
7913 Industrial Park
Road
Easton MD 21601
|
|