lightconductor | (no subject)

A thought, or something, on Watson as a character. More specifically, his choice in reading material. And this is totally not worthy of the actual main community or anything. But I want to make note of this and this is as good a way as any.

My eleven-year-old sister recently decided that in her ongoing quest to be Just Like Big Sister Jessie, she must also read Sherlock Holmes. She loves it. Madly. I am thrilled. But I've been meaning to re-read the canon (yes, the canon. There is only one) for a while now, and this seems as good an excuse as any to do it. So I've been doing that.

Start at the beginning. A Study in Scarlet. Part one: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department. Chapter five: Our Advertisement Brings a Visitor.

It was close upon nine when he set out. I had no idea how long he might be, but I sat stolidly puffing at my pipe and skipping over the pages of Henri Murger's Vie de Boheme.

It occurred to me that I did not know what this book might be. And, as looking up to see what random books mentioned in Sherlock Holmes has, in the past, served me well (although I am still not prepared to offer an explanation why Holmes, in diguise, might be trying to sell Watson a volume of a Latin poet known for, among other things, homosexual and mostly lesbian erotica), I thought I should look this up at the earliest possible convenience.

I did.

Scènes de la vie de bohème, published 1851, is a collection of stories that romanticize the bohemian lifestyle. According to Wikipedia, because they can put it better than I can:

The term bohemian, of French origin, was first used in the English language in the nineteenth century[1] to describe the untraditional lifestyles of marginalised and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities. Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or antiestablishment political or social viewpoints, which were often expressed through free love, frugality, and/or voluntary poverty.

So yeah. That's nothing new to me. Oh, and Holmes? Totally bohemian, as Watson keeps telling us.

Anywho, my French is pretty scanty and it's the wrong sort of French for this, but there's a link to an English translation of Scènes de la vie de bohème on Project Gutenburg. Curious, I start skimming. It's entertaining. It's funny.

I get to chapter three.

One evening in Lent Rodolphe returned home early with the idea of working. But scarcely had he sat down at his table and dipped his pen in the ink than he was disturbed by a singular noise. Putting his ear to the treacherous partition that separated him from the next room, he listened, and plainly distinguished a dialogue broken by the sound of kisses and other amourous interruptions.

"The deuce," thought Rodolphe, glancing at his clock, "it is still early, and my neighbor is a Juliet who usually keeps her Romeo till long after the lark has sung. I cannot work tonight."

Yes. He cannot work because his neighbour is having sex. The story goes on to detail a casual affair Rodolphe has with a beautiful girl named Louise, who then leaves him after a week to go shack up with someone else for another equally brief period of time before moving onto her next affair.

In 1851. Wow.

Also, Watson has interesting reading habits, clearly. I'll have to read more of this.