Apr. 7th, 2011 at 8:03 PM
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
And now a word about Watson. Dr. Watson is often represented as "bumbling" or "obtuse" and portrayed as staring open-mouthed at Holmes' remarkable deductions. But, lest we forget, it was Watson who was the biographer of Holmes, and we all know how engagingly those memoirs were written. Not only do they possess masterly touches of character study, but in each case, we seem to share in the adventures. The prose style is always impressive and, at times rises to heights of sonorous, descriptive beauty. This brief passage from "The Final Problem", in which Watson tells his thoughts as he looks down into the tumultuous waters of Reichenbach Falls (into which Holmes and Moriarty, locked in deadly embrace, were presumed to have tumbled and been lost forever) is a notable example of the vivid imagery often contained in these pages.
It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss.
We, too, should have marveled at Holmes' amazing powers had we, like Watson, had the opportunity of moving in the company of the great sleuth. After all, the man had made a lifelong study of the science of crime detection and was something of a prodigy in the field. Doubtless the average man of any age would have soon found himself beyond his depth in his company; small wonder that Holmes was often vain about his accomplishments.
(From "Elementary, My Dear Watson: A Series of Articles on the Great Detective, and Some Others" by Irving L. Jaffee)
Comments