Elementary, My Dear Companion

Perhaps you might recognize the phrase as Basil Rathbone uttered it in the 1940's:  "Elementary, my dear Watson."  I've long known that this phrase is NOT in the original Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes' stories, but I always thought it originated in the bone tired brain of some Hollywood hack screen writer.  Not so, as I discovered at Gillette's Castle on the Connecticut River at the East Haddam Ferry.

This house (now called a castle by the Connecticut State Park people) was built in 1919 by a very famous actor by the name of William Gillette.  As with so many famous people in the past, their fame doesn't outlast their deaths, so I was puzzled as to who this guy was.  However, Mr. Gillette was a stage actor who would have been instantly recognizable to the late 19th and early 20th century theater going public.  The reason?  He took the Sherlock Holmes stories, and wrote stage plays based

loosely on the stories, and then starred in them as Sherlock Holmes all over the world more than 1300 times for more than 30 years.  His tour of England netted him over $100,000 which is about 2.5 million in today's money.  It is Gillette's play that attires Holmes in the Deerstalker hat, smoking a briar pipe, in a caped great coat or, when he is at home in a silk dressing gown.  His Holmes dialogue included the phrase "Elementary, my dear companion" referring to the Dr. Watson character, which morphed into "Elementary, my dear Watson in the movies of the 1930's and 40's.  The Holmes we picture in our minds today is a creation of William Gillette.  

The more we learned about Gillette, the more fascinating he became.  He was the holder of over 40 patents because he devised several 'special effects' devices he used in his plays.  His house was also designed with some real quirks and reflected the ego we associate with actors.  In addition to the house, he also constructed a miniature railroad on his property with a 3.5 mile track.  Prior to building the house, his usual residence was a series of houseboat/yacht accommodations.  In fact, while the house was being built, he lived on his last house boat on the Connecticut River.  He also collected art, and was a devoted cat lover with over 20 cats in residence at his home.  He worked more or less continually in the theater until he retired in the late 1920's, but kept  coming out of retirement for special performances which were happily received by the public until the early 1930's.  He died in his 80's in 1937. 

The pictures are of his house and furnishings.  He used Connecticut limestone in the construction of the house, and it was not altogether the correct material for the design.  The interior is much more successful, but also has Gillette's individual stamp. 

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