As a quick disclaimer, I do not know, nor have I researched, the real reason behind why Mr. Freeman is not included or a part of this event. While many of you know I could go on and on about my respect for his career, artistic choices, and projects, thatâs not whatâs keeping me up at night in this case.
What is keeping me up at night, and whatâs been eating away at the back of my mind since I first saw this ad, is how a few small words, seen by now by millions of people, irreverently and carelessly trash what is widely regarded as one of the most loyal and beautiful friendships ever put to page.
âDr. Watson (or a more pleasant friend)â
Or a more pleasant friend?
A more pleasant friend???
When there is Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John H. Watson is inevitably by his side. They are inseparable for all time, inked together shoulder to shoulder for hundreds of years, and hundreds of years more.
They are the poor, ill soldier, meaningless and alone in the midst of hundreds of people, and they are the brilliant, lonely man, given too wide a circle by all, with nobody to celebrate with him over his achievements. They are the moment when Mr. Sherlock Holmes reaches out his hand, and sees the drifting and depressed man standing before him, gripping tightly to his cane, and he smiles and says, âHow are you?â which no one else besides Mike Stamford has bothered to ask Dr. John H. Watson since he returned from the hot and bleeding sand.
They are the moment Dr. John H. Watson declares to Mr. Sherlock Holmes that he will write down his cases, so that others may see his genius and appreciate his mind. Who tells him, âYour merits should be publicly recognized,â because he remembers that no one had been there to congratulate Holmes that first day they met in the lab â that he had been smiling over his test tubes alone.
They are that first blinding moment Watson follows him outside their rooms, with purpose in his step for the first time since being told to walk out of the hospital, after Holmes has looked at him and said, âGet your hat,â and Watson asks, âYou wish me to come?â and Holmes immediately says, âYes.â
Who is a more pleasant friend than Dr. John H. Watson, who sat in his armchair late on winter nights, with his healing bullet wound still aching, and no other friend in the world to come knocking on the door, and listened to Sherlock Holmes play music for him on his violin? Who was there for him, by his side, as their pipe smoke drifted together in the air of their home, and who begged him to be happy? Who asked him, as Holmesâ long white hand reached for the cocaine, and their knees knocked together from where they sat closely in their chairs, âPray, what remains for you?â because it pained him to imagine that Holmes, who had spent their day enrapturing the world, and smiling up at the sky, and bathing Watson in his brilliance, must end the adventure alone?
Who is a more pleasant friend than Dr. John H. Watson, who crouched beside Sherlock Holmes for hours in the dark, ignoring his discomfort and fear, and wrote down with the ink pen in his hand the exact moments when Sherlock Holmesâ hand closed protectively around his wrist in the shadows? Who ran across town with vague instructions in the dead of night, and chased masked criminals through the fog, and travelled all the way to Baskerville alone to investigate the snarling devil on earth just because Holmes asked him to?
Who is a more pleasant friend than Dr. John H. Watson, who stood in the swirling mist of the Falls and wept, holding a stained note in his hands, and later sat down in an empty room to write, âI shall ever regard him as the best and the wisest man that I have ever known.â
Who is a more pleasant friend than Dr. John H. Watson, who looked upon the small details of Holmesâ trembling lips, and his wild eyes, and realized as he started to fall to the ground from the gunshot in his leg that Holmes was revealing the depth of his loyalty and love? And who recognized them as the singular, exceptional, and unprecedented gifts that they were, right at the moment his friendâs wiry arms came around him?
Who is a more pleasant friend than the man who humbly accepted that he was the whetstone for a great mind, the stimulus for his genius, the necessary anchor upon which Holmes could always rely, and never asked for anything in return except to keep accompanying him on his adventures? Who kept his secrets for him, and stitched his wounds, and willingly wrote that he himself fainted â such an ungentlemanly thing to do â upon Holmesâ return, to explain the depth of his emotions?
Does Mary Morstan exist? Yes. Do countless iterations of bumbling, idiotic, useless Watsons exist? Yes. Does he for some time leave Baker Street? By all accounts, yes. Does Dr. John H. Watson physically beating Mr. Sherlock Holmes on the floor of a morgue exist? Unfortunately, yes.
But you cannot read Watsonâs letters to Holmes and doubt the fierce loyalty, the depth of appreciation, the gratitude, and the love. You cannot hope to doubt that he is exaggerating during the countless times that he puts to paper âmy dear friend.â
Dr. John H. Watson wrote nearly sixty letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, each word of them painstakingly written out by an aging hand, and every word a declaration of the genius of his friend â the strength, and the humor, and the wit. The struggles. The dark nights. The placement of his fingers on the neck of the violin. His laugh.
Those letters are not letters to us, the readers. Oh, no.
And those letters, those love letters to his dearest friend and fellow, the best and the wisest man that he had ever known, have made millions of people, for generations, fall in love with Mr. Sherlock Holmes themselves, again and again and again.
Who is a more pleasant friend than the man who convinces the entire world to adore someone who thought even himself unlovable? Who shows us the emotion beneath the cold mask, and the intimacies of his person, and the quiet moments in his home? Who narrates his adventures, and rightfully calls them so?
I hope you enjoyed your idiotic joke at Dr. John H. Watsonâs expense, a war veteran and a survivor. The Boswell who will eternally write through time. The dearest fellow of the greatest mind who ever lived, and, beneath that mind, the most fathomless heart.
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