Studying Scarlets:
Interviews with
The Studious Scarlets Society
L.A. Fields & Michelle Birkby
Studious Scarlets L.A. Fields, author of My Dear Watson (2013), and Michelle Birkby, author of The House at Baker Street (2016) and The Women of Baker Street (2017), sit down to talk Sherlock and more.
L.A. Fields is the author of The Disorder Series, the short story collection
Countrycide, the Lambda Award finalists My Dear Watson and Homo Superiors, and an annotation of America’s first gay novel, Joseph and His Friend.
Michelle Birkby has been writing all her life, whilst working in libraries and offices. She discovered Sherlock Holmes through the films of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce and was hooked when she was given a complete collection of the Sherlock Holmes stories. She has always been fascinated by background characters, especially women, and she decided it was time for Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson to step out of the shadows of Baker Street, and have adventures of their own. The House at Baker Street, the first book in her Mrs. Hudson and Mary Watson Investigations series, has recently been republished on Kindle as All Roads Lead to Whitechapel.
BIRKBY: What led you to write My Dear Watson? Did you have a moment of revelation whilst reading the stories or was it something you’d thought about over time?
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FIELDS: What led to the writing of My Dear Watson was my undergraduate thesis called “The Life One Does Not Lead: Double Life Narratives and Queer Criminal Codes.” That discussed the 19th century texts The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the Sherlock Holmes stories, pairing them each with 20th century texts/movies (The Talented Mr Ripley, Fight Club, and the Batman comics,
respectively) to show how much more sexualized those same narratives get over time and across the pond. That project focused more on the relationship between the main characters their other self: the real Dorian Gray vs his portrait, Jekyll vs Hyde, and Holmes vs who he might have been as a criminal, his one and only truly worthy adversary, Professor Moriarty. It was a project about closets and secrets and the terror of knowing one’s true self underneath it all, and there was no room for Watson in that, which left me wanting more. |
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I had already started reading Sherlock Holmes as a bachelor-for-a-reason, a homosexual that presents as 'married to his work' to deflect suspicion, and if that’s so, then what about the man who lived with him for years, Dr Watson? The man who cared for him so tenderly, who lionized him in stories, and for whom Holmes on several occasions is willing to sacrifice his ideals, his reputation, and even himself to protect? I had to write that story.
So what drew you to give background and agency to the women behind the men in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, Mrs Hudson and Mrs Watson? One of your bios says it came out of noticing Mrs Hudson's involvement in "The Empty House," how did you come to team her up with Mary Watson?
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BIRKBY: I’ve always been fascinated by background characters, especially when those characters are women. When I wrote fanfic, I found myself more and more drawn to not focus on the heroes doing heroic things, but what was going on around them. What were they thinking when the hero was showing off? How did events affect them? And I think stories that draw those characters out are fascinating. For example, stories like Jane Eyre and Rebecca seem to me be stories about women who are supposed to be in the background and step forward. Mrs Hudson was there all the time. She must have seen and heard almost everything. She literally washed the stains of all that crawling and fighting and chemical experiments out of their clothes (although in my book she sends them to the laundry – but she still knows!). And of course in moments like “The Empty House,” she takes part in their adventure – a quite dangerous part. If seen, she would have been shot – nearly was.
As for Mary Watson – every detective needs a partner, and I thought it should be someone who knew what being closely involved with Sherlock Holmes felt like. Besides, Sherlock Holmes says she’d make a good detective – she ‘could have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius this way.' Even Holmes is impressed – until she makes the unforgivable mistake of falling in love. |
She is an interesting character – born in India, grew up alone in a school in Edinburgh (a scientific city full of geniuses), and now earns her own living as a governess. She must have had incredible strength of will and courage, as well as intelligence, to cope with all that.
In “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” Kate Whitney runs to Mary for help. Watson says people run to Mary like birds to a light-house. I think it's interesting that Kate entirely bypasses Watson – the doctor and friend of Sherlock Holmes, to run to Mary for help (who's obviously used to this) and Mary promptly offers to send Watson to bed so they can get some peace. In the same story, Holmes says, 'I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.' Which is a complete turnaround from his underestimation of woman in “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Something must have changed his mind, and it's probably the women he sees most – Mary Watson and Mrs Hudson.
Often we only see the background characters – especially the women – through the eyes of the hero, and forget they have a life of their own. We only see glimpses, but the glimpses we see of Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson, even through the prism of Holmes's dismissal and Watson's old-fashioned chivalry – are so fascinating I had to write about them.
I notice the second Mrs Watson [in Fields' book, My Dear Watson], like the second Mrs de Winter, has no name. Was that a deliberate choice and if so, what led to that?
In “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” Kate Whitney runs to Mary for help. Watson says people run to Mary like birds to a light-house. I think it's interesting that Kate entirely bypasses Watson – the doctor and friend of Sherlock Holmes, to run to Mary for help (who's obviously used to this) and Mary promptly offers to send Watson to bed so they can get some peace. In the same story, Holmes says, 'I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.' Which is a complete turnaround from his underestimation of woman in “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Something must have changed his mind, and it's probably the women he sees most – Mary Watson and Mrs Hudson.
Often we only see the background characters – especially the women – through the eyes of the hero, and forget they have a life of their own. We only see glimpses, but the glimpses we see of Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson, even through the prism of Holmes's dismissal and Watson's old-fashioned chivalry – are so fascinating I had to write about them.
I notice the second Mrs Watson [in Fields' book, My Dear Watson], like the second Mrs de Winter, has no name. Was that a deliberate choice and if so, what led to that?
FIELDS: It was, but it was a choice that came about so gradually it felt like a matter of course by the time I arrived there. When I sat down to write this book, the first thing I had to contend with in a Holmes/Watson relationship was the indisputable fact of Watson’s wives. Question #1: how many wives did Watson have? This was playing a bit of the Great Game, as first I had to decide on a chronological sequence of the original stories, then I had to track possible wives. Mary is first, but sometimes she seems to come and go, as Watson comes and goes from living in Baker Street. There is one story that talks of a wife visiting her parents when Mary is an orphan, which some readers take to mean there’s a new, second wife, though in my timeline I framed it as a sloppy lie Watson tells to cover up marital separation and discord.
When Holmes returns from the dead, Mary is gone. There is at least one more wife somewhere after her, and that is the nameless woman I took for my narrator. Some readers count up to six Mrs Watsons, I stop at two, and the reason I didn’t invent a name for my second was because that’s history sometimes: in a story that presumes the grandest love affair is a secret between two famous men, why would the second wife be remembered at all? Both Holmes and Mrs Watson know this in My Dear Watson, and acknowledge it when they meet during a dinner party in 1919: it’s not fair, but it is what it is, just like Mrs Watson will be the one getting a widow’s condolences someday, and control over her husband’s estate, while Watson’s 'intimate old friend' Sherlock Holmes will not. They all live around these truths, sometimes in spite of them, and try not to let that reality get them down.
Regardless of how you view him as a literary figure, would you want to meet Sherlock Holmes in real life, why or why not?
BIRKBY: No. I'd like to watch him work. From a safe distance. And where he can’t notice me. I'd like to say being a woman he wouldn't notice me, but as the stories go on, he pays more and more attention to the women – Violet Hunter, Annie Harrison – so I'd probably have that gimlet gaze turned upon me and be battered by questions I have no hope of answering. And I would find it distinctly uncomfortable to be around someone who can tell my innermost thoughts by how I look round a room, as my innermost thoughts aren't usually as harmless as Watson's.
I’d like to ask you the same question, and also when did you first discover the Holmes stories?
FIELDS: I read the stories first as a college freshman (age 18), and then again with a scholar’s eye four years later, for my final thesis. To write My Dear Watson I had to go through them again line by line to find every bit I’d have to include, explain, or reframe, and since then, I haven’t read them again. Even though I’m working on a follow-up collection of Companion Stories where Holmes and the second Mrs Watson become more tolerant of one another, even curious about each other, I’ve moved past the timeline of the original Doyle stories for those, to the 1920s and 30s (assuming of course that Holmes would live as long as humanly possible).
Whether I would want to meet Doyle’s Holmes is about the same answer I’d give for my own version, that being, “It depends.” I would enjoy meeting him, but only if he would enjoy meeting me, and I’m not sure that he ever would. I think he’s very dismissive of women, sees most of them as simpler creatures who deserve his protection just as a child would, but not necessarily his respect. The way I see it, the only reason Irene Adler stands out for him is because she thinks like a man: calculating, adaptable, and while burdened by a woman’s sentiments, she still just manages to best Sherlock Holmes. The more I research, it’s actually a form of misogyny consistent with some homosexual men of the time, who resent and distrust the women who will marry their friends away.
I wouldn’t want to hang out with Sherlock Holmes on a bad day, he can be mean, and use his intelligence as a weapon. However, if he considered me an Irene, an equal but not a threat, that would be too interesting an evening to pass up.
How do you write? For example, do you plot beforehand or as you go? Writing period-specific fiction, what kind of research goes into your process?
When Holmes returns from the dead, Mary is gone. There is at least one more wife somewhere after her, and that is the nameless woman I took for my narrator. Some readers count up to six Mrs Watsons, I stop at two, and the reason I didn’t invent a name for my second was because that’s history sometimes: in a story that presumes the grandest love affair is a secret between two famous men, why would the second wife be remembered at all? Both Holmes and Mrs Watson know this in My Dear Watson, and acknowledge it when they meet during a dinner party in 1919: it’s not fair, but it is what it is, just like Mrs Watson will be the one getting a widow’s condolences someday, and control over her husband’s estate, while Watson’s 'intimate old friend' Sherlock Holmes will not. They all live around these truths, sometimes in spite of them, and try not to let that reality get them down.
Regardless of how you view him as a literary figure, would you want to meet Sherlock Holmes in real life, why or why not?
BIRKBY: No. I'd like to watch him work. From a safe distance. And where he can’t notice me. I'd like to say being a woman he wouldn't notice me, but as the stories go on, he pays more and more attention to the women – Violet Hunter, Annie Harrison – so I'd probably have that gimlet gaze turned upon me and be battered by questions I have no hope of answering. And I would find it distinctly uncomfortable to be around someone who can tell my innermost thoughts by how I look round a room, as my innermost thoughts aren't usually as harmless as Watson's.
I’d like to ask you the same question, and also when did you first discover the Holmes stories?
FIELDS: I read the stories first as a college freshman (age 18), and then again with a scholar’s eye four years later, for my final thesis. To write My Dear Watson I had to go through them again line by line to find every bit I’d have to include, explain, or reframe, and since then, I haven’t read them again. Even though I’m working on a follow-up collection of Companion Stories where Holmes and the second Mrs Watson become more tolerant of one another, even curious about each other, I’ve moved past the timeline of the original Doyle stories for those, to the 1920s and 30s (assuming of course that Holmes would live as long as humanly possible).
Whether I would want to meet Doyle’s Holmes is about the same answer I’d give for my own version, that being, “It depends.” I would enjoy meeting him, but only if he would enjoy meeting me, and I’m not sure that he ever would. I think he’s very dismissive of women, sees most of them as simpler creatures who deserve his protection just as a child would, but not necessarily his respect. The way I see it, the only reason Irene Adler stands out for him is because she thinks like a man: calculating, adaptable, and while burdened by a woman’s sentiments, she still just manages to best Sherlock Holmes. The more I research, it’s actually a form of misogyny consistent with some homosexual men of the time, who resent and distrust the women who will marry their friends away.
I wouldn’t want to hang out with Sherlock Holmes on a bad day, he can be mean, and use his intelligence as a weapon. However, if he considered me an Irene, an equal but not a threat, that would be too interesting an evening to pass up.
How do you write? For example, do you plot beforehand or as you go? Writing period-specific fiction, what kind of research goes into your process?
BIRKBY: First, I read. I read such a lot. I read textbooks about the time, and then I read books of the time, like Henry Mayhew's study of the London Poor. I read the newspapers of the time – usually the court reports in the London Times, and the Illustrated Police News. I read the literature – more Wilkie Collins than Dickens. There's a few books written at the time about female detectives, and they are a joy to read. I go to museums – when writing, I haunt the Museum of London, and I try and walk the streets the story is set in – most of Baker Street was bombed away in the war, but there are massive areas of London that still look pretty much how they would look in 1889. And I read a lot of true crime – not just Victorian (though I've become a bit of an expert in Victorian crime) but all true crime.
I start off with an idea. Perhaps a certain scene I want to write, or a story I want to explore. But beyond that, I don't plan. I make up the first draft as I go. As I write, I have a big piece of paper stuck on the wall, and as I create the characters, I write them on there, and when I uncover another part of the plot, I write it on the paper.
You reference a lot of other Victorian literature – Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray and so on. (And so do I!) Do you think reading those books gives a different insight into the Holmes stories?
I start off with an idea. Perhaps a certain scene I want to write, or a story I want to explore. But beyond that, I don't plan. I make up the first draft as I go. As I write, I have a big piece of paper stuck on the wall, and as I create the characters, I write them on there, and when I uncover another part of the plot, I write it on the paper.
You reference a lot of other Victorian literature – Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray and so on. (And so do I!) Do you think reading those books gives a different insight into the Holmes stories?
FIELDS: I do, especially since I didn’t read a single Sherlock Holmes story until I’d read everything by Oscar Wilde (and memorized some of it too). When I write Holmes, he is no longer fictional, he lives in the real world alongside Oscar Wilde, not in books with Dorian Gray. I couldn’t help but draw a few parallels between Holmes and Wilde, and I made sure that Wilde’s trial had a serious impact on Holmes, since it’s the moment his private life (shared with Wilde and other gay men) crossed over into his public life, his career that involves the police, the laws, and the courts.
I also felt particular delight in having both Watson and Holmes read The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and come away with very different interpretations of that tale. That clearly came out of my original academic research, and the more patterns and parallels I saw, the more confident I became while writing that I was onto something True in my own right, even though I was working with borrowed fiction.
What are some of your favorite portrayals of the Baker Street characters? Other books, stories, movies, or reimaginings?
I also felt particular delight in having both Watson and Holmes read The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and come away with very different interpretations of that tale. That clearly came out of my original academic research, and the more patterns and parallels I saw, the more confident I became while writing that I was onto something True in my own right, even though I was working with borrowed fiction.
What are some of your favorite portrayals of the Baker Street characters? Other books, stories, movies, or reimaginings?
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BIRKBY: Books – Laurie King's Mary Russell series is very good, I enjoy that. There was a series I read in the eighties about Irene Adler by Carole Nelson Douglas. That was the first book that made me think of what was happening in the Holmes world when Holmes wasn't there.
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My favourite Holmes and Watson – and Mrs Hudson – are Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke and Rosalie Williams, who just encapsulated the spirit of the books for me, especially in the relationships they have with each other.
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I really enjoy the Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman pairing, but the highlight for me has been Una Stubbs' funny, adventurous Mrs Hudson and Amanda Abbington as a quite frankly dangerous Mary Watson.
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I enjoy the gentler, kinder, damaged Holmes of Jonny Lee Miller in Elementary, and his closeness with Lucy Liu's clever and strong Watson. I would never have cast Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes but he does it wonderfully.
For that matter, I'd never have cast Robert Downey Jr as Homes, but I really enjoy those movies with him and Jude Law. Holmes, after all, is a man who can beat up a boxing champion, is a single-stick swordsman and can throw enemies over waterfalls using the ancient Japanese art of 'baritsu' (which is completely made up, by the way). His does prefigure the action man type hero of James Bond, but that tends to get forgotten in awe at his mind. So I do enjoy seeing that happen.
How do you picture Holmes and Watson? Like any of the actors who have played them, or perhaps someone who has never played them? 
FIELDS: Basil Rathbone is the closest to the Holmes in my head, for that distinct profile. I think Holmes is thin to the point of skeletal, with wiry musculature, a hawkish face, and fingers as long as a pianist’s. Watson is not so clear to me, you could dress up just about any man up to be Watson, so long as he doesn’t act like a buffoon. A mustache, a boyish disposition, some sort of hat and maybe a physician’s bag, whatever. I don’t see Watson so clearly, but his personality is distinct: guileless but not stupid. I actually think one of the best portrayals of their characters is in the first encounter I must have had with the greater Holmes compendium, Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective: an ambitious independent detective meets an empathetic military doctor, and in the process of working well together, they find that also like and respect one another. That’s it in a nutshell. |
One last question from me: what is one of your favorite moments or images from the original stories? Can you juxtapose that with a scene from your own interpretations that you’re particularly proud of?
BIRKBY: One of my favourite images is Holmes dramatically revealing himself to the villain. Watson accuses him of being a bit of a drama queen on occasions, and he certainly likes the grand entrance. My favourite is in “The Adventure of The Solitary Cyclist,” where the villain cries out ‘You’re too late, she’s my wife!’ And Holmes’s companion replies ‘No, she’s your widow’ and shoots him. As dramatic entrances go, it’s one of the best. A moment later the other bad guy asks who Holmes is. ‘I am Sherlock Holmes.’ ‘Good Lord!’ the other man says. ‘You have heard of me.’ Holmes replies, perfectly certain that everyone knows who he is and what he does.
In contrast, in my book, no-one has heard of Mrs Hudson. When she confronts the villain – who is expecting Holmes – she steps out of the shadows and announces ‘I am Sherlock Holmes’ housekeeper. I am Mrs Hudson.’ The villain does not immediately quail in fear, as they do before Holmes. He is confused and disappointed. I felt the juxtaposition between Holmes' grand entrance, along with his expectation that everyone would know who he was (and they do) contrasted neatly with Mrs Hudson’s quieter entrance, and the villain’s completely bemused reaction. However, Mrs Hudson does get to tell him ‘Even I’m bored of you now’ and battle him and I love that final scene. She may not be as well known as Holmes, but she gets the job because she is so obscure.
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We’ve both said that Victorian literature played a part in creating our Holmes world — did you even think of having Holmes part of the fictional world rather than the real one — meeting Dorian Gray rather than Oscar Wilde for example?
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FIELDS: I don’t think so, mainly because considering the books that were in the forefront of my mind, if I’d kept Holmes fictional he would have had to deal with demonic portraits and mystical potions. Beyond that, there was too much I wanted to point out in history, like the effects of the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 which ultimately put Wilde in prison and caused a lot of homosexual men of the time to leave the country.
It ended up being more important than ever that Holmes is real for the follow-up stories I’m working on now, which feature the ‘gossip’ behind even more historical figures. All facts known to posterity now that presumably Holmes would have known at the time, and been willing to share with the curious audience of Dr and Mrs Watson: the true stories behind A.E. Housman, T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), Bram Stoker, Walt Whitman, and the friends of Oscar Wilde are all discussed, to name only a few. History is often stranger than fiction, the scandals more outrageous, the losses more tragic, and the framing of it all through Holmes, Watson, and the Baker Street characters creates a familiar, accessible window for readers.
BIRKBY: Oddly, I didn’t think so either, because although it would have been fun to have Holmes – or rather Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson – hunt down Mr Hyde, it seemed to me that Holmes, despite stories like “The Sussex Vampire,” belongs firmly in the real world. When I write, the places are real, some of the characters are real, and it just seems easier to slot the Holmes into reality than into fiction. Especially given how much the world is changing at this moment, especially for women, and I wanted Mrs Hudson and Mary Watson to be part of that change, not in a fictional world looking on.
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