It Is Always 1895

I've been a Sherlockian since I was a child, but over the last year my interest has been renewed, I don't know exactly why. I rewatched the entire Granada tv series (which aired from 1984 to 1994), was given The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by Leslie Klinger, for Christmas (I already owned The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by William S. Baring-Gould), attended a meeting of the Red Circle Society of Washington D.C., and bought a subscription to The Baker Street Journal.

Vincent Starrett said it best: "Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment? Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won ease....So they still live for all that love them well: in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895."

And in sonnet form:

221B

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

– Vincent Starrett