Saturday Sherlock: Sign of the Four, Complete

What made it doubly interesting is that my Dover Thrift copy of Sign of Four (So4) is bound with Study in Scarlet (SiS) so I could do some immediate comparison of the infamous continuity glitches:

"I was struck in the shoulder by a Jezail bullet" (SiS, p2)
"...sat nursing my wounded leg. I had had a Jezail bullet through it" (So4, p95)

"Sherlock Holmes: his limits. Knowledge of literature, nil. Knowledge of philosophy, nil... Knowledge of politics, feeble." (Sis, p10)
"He spoke on a quick succession of subjects - on miracle plays, on medieval pottery,... on the Buddhism of Ceylon... handling each subject as though he had made a special study of it." (So4, p150)
"Let me recommend this book... Reade's Martyrdom of Man." (So4, p103)
"Goethe is always pithy" (S04, p126)
(redpanda13 has pointed out that the limits list was made very early in Watson's acquaintance with Holmes, and Holmes may have been jerking him around.)

Or Watson could be that unobservant, ( considering the internal glitches )

Perhaps this is to be expected of someone who routinely gets flustered and says things like "I told her one moving anecdote as to how a musket looked into my tent... and how I fired a double-barrelled tiger cub at it" and "overheard me caution him against the great danger of taking more than two drops of castoroil, while I recommended strychnine in large doses."

Maybe he didn't get sent home from the army because he got shot, y'know?

On the other hand, Sherlock's not so bright either, not when he keeps mentioning the "many" cases of his that Watson has published -- all of one at this point, which Holmes claimed was too romantic ("much the same effect as if you worked a love-story... into the 5th proposition of Euclid") and then turned around and himself says ( stuff like this )

Sign introduces the infamous 7% solution, and I notice that my annotated copy was very anxious to sidetrack by pointing out that at the time cocaine was legal, and then wandering off into a discussion of how likely it would be to be injected and if Holmes was actually taking a reduced dose. Certainly the straighforward Watson seems to be willing to eat his own stomach lining out in an ulcer over "many months" resenting the drug habit until he gets his courage up through his own Watson's Little Helper ("the Beaune [burgundy] which I had taken with my lunch".)

( We learn much about Watson; his nerves, his love life, and the reminder that he was a man of his time (read: dismissive and racist) )

So4 is also a little bit like that joke about Hamlet being nothing but cliches strung together - ( it's certainly a kickline of famous Holmesian moments )

And then there's the Holmes and Women issue. Watson's main issue in complaining of misogyny appears to be that Holmes "did not observe" if Mary was beautiful; in Holmes' defense, he's right that getting involved leads to biased judgment and that charm and looks have nothing to do with personal character. (Besides, Holmes is observant enough to realize that Watson's practically panting at first look at her, IMO.) Holmes insists throughout that it's not that he dislikes women, he dislikes "whatever is emotional [because it] is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things." He neither tries to split the newly formed couple apart (as Holmes does in the Ritchie movie) nor insults her. Instead, the supposed misogynist compliments Mary as "one of the most charming young ladies I ever met" and even higher, calls her "a decided genius."

Next Saturday is entirely devoted to the Team Wench Privateer Feast, our biggest fundraiser for the year. So I'll see the rest of the Saturday Sherlockians in two weeks, when we discuss The Red-headed League, A Case of Identity, & The Boscombe Valley Mystery.