Watson

“ Professor Watson possessed extraordinary intellectual endowments. His quickness of perception nothing escaped. His mathematical intuitions scorned the ordinary processes of calculation, and gave him a masterly command of mathematical logic and formulæ, which made so many portions of his work on "Theoretical Astronomy" strictly original, and all parts virtually his own. Yet he never mentions any claim to originality, but pursues his majestic intellectual march with the dignity almost of an inspiration. ”

“ “Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.” ”

“ I don't quite know how to make her clear to you, Watson. Perhaps you may meet her before we are through, and you can use your own gift of words. She is beautiful, but with the ethereal other-world beauty of some fanatic whose thoughts are set on high. I have seen such faces in the pictures of the old masters of the Middle Ages. How a beast-man could have laid his vile paws upon such a being of the beyond I cannot imagine. You may have noticed how extremes call to each other, the spiritual to the animal, the cave-man to the angel. ”

“ Mr. Watson was a very retiring, quiet little man, awed into obscurity by his wife. After a long and persistent effort to interest him in conversation, I was compelled to give it up, and to leave him smiling blankly, with his gaze directed toward the Argand burner.
Mrs. Watson was immense in every sense of the word. Her moral and mental dimensions were awe-inspiring; and she delivered what I afterwards found, on reflection, to be very commonplace [88] utterances in a style in which unction, dogmatism, self-satisfaction, and finality were predominant. ”

“ Watson's honest face was twitching with anxiety. He knew only too well the immense risks taken by Holmes, and was well aware that what he said was more likely to be understatement than exaggeration. Watson was always the man of action, and he rose to the occasion.
"Count me in, Holmes. I have nothing to do for a day or two."
"Your morals don't improve, Watson. You have added fibbing to your other vices. You bear every sign of the busy medical man, with calls on him every hour." ”

“ Watson's skill, nay genius, more than the fact that his attempt is a great and conspicuous success. The sea, confined within its shores, never resting, yet never able to pass its bounds, at war with the winds, and serving the moon with its tides, is compared to man, with his unrest, his limitations, his aspirations. ”

“ The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. ”

“ Watson's activity, good judgment, and influence with her husband, preserved, for him, the esteem and respect of his parishioners, and the character amongst his acquaintance, of a very kind and attentive neighbour, and a most highly respectable parish priest. But, with her life, his energy seemed to depart; he became indolent from sorrow; shunning society—shrinking from exertion—and confining himself to what was absolutely unavoidable of his duties. ”

“ Only one, but a very formidable person. Strong as a lion—witness the blow that bent that poker. Six foot three in height, active as a squirrel, dexterous with his fingers; finally, remarkably quick-witted, for this whole ingenious story is of his concoction. Yes, Watson, we have come upon the handiwork of a very remarkable individual. And yet in that bell-rope he has given us a clue which should not have left us a doubt. ”

“ Watson, said she, I am going to introduce a lady whose brightest charms will soon be visible to you.—The best man in the world! whisper'd she, putting my hand in his;—which hand I could not avoid putting to my lips.—Thank you, Miss Warley, said her Ladyship, we all revere this gentleman.—Mr. Watson was affected, some drops stole from their dark prisons, and he bless'd me as if I had been his daughter:—my pleasure was exquisite,—it seem'd as if I had receiv'd the benediction of an angel. ”

“ And you, Watson, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened, we'll avenge him!”
Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor and nothing moved upon its dreary face. ”

“ Watson, smiling graciously.
"Do you, George?" cried the young lady; "no, no, he considers me, without exception, the most troublesome of all his encumbrances; a charge which he is always trying to get rid of, by inducing some one else to undertake it. There is no telling you the pains he is at to throw the burden on some other unhappy man." ”

“ But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.”
“What has he done, then?”
“His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. ”

“ Watson in 1782, ‘is in some respects an art which must be learnt,’ and he compared its practice to that required for playing ‘one of Handel's fugues upon the organ.’ He presents a rarely happy combination of the speculative and experimental faculties, his thoughts transcending, yet eagerly seeking the control of visible facts. ‘As a practical astronomer,’ Professor Holden says, ‘he remains without an equal. ”

“ His father, a schoolmaster, sent him to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected a fellow in 1760. About the same time he had the offer of the post of chaplain to the factory at Bencoolen, in the Straits Settlements. “You are too good,” said the master of Trinity, “to die of drinking punch in the torrid zone”; and Watson, instead of becoming, as he had flattered himself, a great orientalist, remained at home to be elected professor of chemistry, a science of which he did not at the time possess the simplest rudiments. ”

“ And here it is that I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systematized common sense, into a prodigy. When I tell my own story I have no such aid. ”

“ I had destined myself for a London practice; but Sir Thomas Watson—you have heard of 'Watson's style'? He was the Cicero of Medicine—well, Watson said, 'No, my dear Pie, it won't do. In ten years you will be at the head of the profession, and will have made £100,000. But, mark my words, the blade will wear out the scabbard. You are not justified in risking your life.' I was disappointed, of course. All young men like the idea of fame. ”

“ Don’t move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!”
The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. ”

“ With wide reading in all branches of standard literature, but especially historical and political, and with a retentive memory, Watson combined a rare power of coordinating what he knew. The characteristics of decision and determination which his features suggested were quite overborne by his gentleness and benevolence. Reserved and retiring to an unusual degree, he yet in social converse put his stores of wit and learning at the free disposal of his guests. Throughout his life he was a convinced liberal, and a considerable force in Oxford politics. ”

“ Enough that, thanks to a study of Spenser, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and therefore a delicate taste in word and phrase, and thanks also to an innate genius for verbal music, restrained from Swinburnian riot by a true artistic instinct, Mr. Watson is a poet most delightful to the physical and the mental ear. That he has taken pains with his study is avowed by himself. ”

“ Watson took a sip; and he made a mental note that if all things in the Thomahlia were on a par with this, then he certainly was in a world far above his own. For the one sip was enough to send a thrill through his veins, a thrill not unlike the ecstasy of supreme music--a sparkling exuberance, leaving the mind clear and scintillating, glorified to the quick thinking of genius. ”

“ Watson, with an air of great satisfaction, "I hope I can see through people a little. If there is one quality I pride myself on, it is my penetration. I am blessed, I acknowledge, with a singular facility for discerning characters, and what I think I must say. ”

“ Watson stated that he got 3,100l. from the English ministry, but he actually received 3,600l. In 1825 he wrote to an Elgin friend asking a loan of 100l., and describing himself as just returned from Greece, and as possessed of a valuable collection—Queen Mary's missal, Marshal Ney's baton, Napoleon's Waterloo carriage, &c. On 19 Nov. 1838 he strangled himself in a London tavern by twisting his neckcloth with a poker as with a tourniquet. ”

“ Watson has no rival in Victorian or in contemporary verse. The epigram is a quite definite form of art, especially cultivated by the poets in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their formula the terse expression of obscene thoughts. Mr. Watson excels the best of them in wit, concision, and grace; it is needless to say he makes no attempt to rival them as a garbage-collector. Of the large number of epigrams that he has contributed to English literature, I find the majority not only interesting, but richly stimulating. ”

“ For years I have endeavoured to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last the time came when I seized my thread and followed it, until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. ”

“ Watson is beyond the reach of further injury. I never intended him harm, though I have torn from him his sister and friend, and have brought his life to an untimely close. To provide him a grave is a duty that I owe to the dead and to the living. I shall quickly place myself beyond the reach of inquisitors and judges, but would willingly rescue from molestation or suspicion those whom I shall leave behind. ”

“ Warren further shows that the enemy, whoever they are, are themselves not aware of the substitution of the female lodger for the male. It is very curious and complex, Watson.”
“Why should you go further in it? What have you to gain from it?”
“What, indeed? It is Art for Art’s sake, Watson. I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?”
“For my education, Holmes.”
“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last. ”

“ It has become familiar to the English reader through the pages of Watson, who has deservedly found favor with the public for the perspicuity of his style,—a virtue, however, not uncommon in his day,—for the sobriety of his judgments, and for the skill he has shown in arranging his complicated story, so as to maintain the reader's interest unbroken to the end. ”

“ The Professor, Watson, is a man of European reputation. His life has been academic. There has never been a breath of scandal. He is a widower with one daughter, Edith. He is, I gather, a man of very virile and positive, one might almost say combative, character. ”

“ Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this opportunity to remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my various little inquiries it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own, to which in his modesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances. ”

“ I fancy that every one of his cases has found its way into your collection, and I must admit, Watson, that you have some power of selection, which atones for much which I deplore in your narratives. Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an instructive and even classical series of demonstrations. ”

“ Watson continued his classical studies, and through life devoted his leisure to literary pursuits. From 1844 he held the post of headmaster of the proprietary grammar school at Stockwell, a suburb of London, receiving a fixed salary of 300l. ”

“ An Oxford man, who took no degree, and a lawyer, who did not practise, Watson became an elegant writer of English and Latin verse. He won the patronage of Walsingham at Paris in 1581, and became a member of the literary circle of Lyly and Peele. His most important volume of verse is the Hekatompathia (1582) dedicated to the Earl of Oxford. At the time of his death in Sept. 1592 he was in the service of William Cornwallis, who afterwards wrote to Heneage that he ‘could devise twenty fictions and knaveryes in a play which was his daily practyse and his living’ (Athenaeum, 23 Aug. 1890) . ”