The Mystery of Mrs. Hudson's Mystery

I wonder how many Holmesians have had the same thought that went through my mind this morning - out of the hundreds of cases Holmes worked on or solved, Mrs. Hudson never had a mystery of her own. Why is that?

I do know for a fact that Holmes and Watson took on a case of a landlady's mysterious guest. I believe that the name of the mystery was The Adventure of the Red Circle. But why did Conan Doyle never write a mystery for Holmes' own landlady? Maybe because it would have seemed mere coincidence that the landlady of the famous consulting detective should have a mystery for her tenant to solve.

That being said, we may never hear of a Mrs. Hudson mystery. Unless, of course, I put into action the plan I've for awhile...being of a writing sort (in this way I can identify with Watson, who, I can say, has a real talent for using big adjectives to describe people and places), I thought it might be fun to write a Sherlock Holmes fan fiction (I've done that with two other books/movies, Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, and they turned out supurb!). I thought, why not use the opportunity of Mrs. Hudson's missing mystery and write one for her myself? So, stay tuned for developments. I'll post it here, chapter by chapter, if I do write something.

No post about Mrs. Hudson would be complete without mention to her relationship with Sherlock Holmes. In The Adventure of the Dying Detective, Watson writes a couple of really funny paragraphs about Holmes and Mrs. Hudson's apartment...

"Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of Sherlock Holmes, was a long-suffering woman. Not only was her first-floor flat invaded at all hours by throngs of singular and often undesirable characters but her remarkable lodger showed and eccentricity and irregularity in his life which must have surely tried her patience. His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London...

"The landlady stood in deepest awe of him and never dared to interfere with him, however outrageous his proceedings might seem. She was fond of him, too, for he had a remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women."

- The Adventure of the Dying Detective

That paragraph alone shows that Mrs. Hudson must have been a very, very patient woman, because I know that if my own tenant was shooting holes in my walls (even if they were the initials of the Queen of England) or playing his violin at 3 in the morning I would have probably kicked him out. It says a lot about her character, that she could put up with that for such a long time.

So, even thought Mrs. Hudson does not play a very big part in the Sherlock Holmes canon, she is most definately one of the most important. If not for her, Holmes would have probably been passed around from flat to flat, because most people probably wouldn't put up with his odd habits. I'm thankful for Mrs. Hudson.

(picture above: Rosalie Williams as Mrs. Hudson in the Granada Television Series of Sherlock Holmes)