3rd Annual 12th Night Giveaway: Day 1

221B as seen during the Festival of Britain in 1951. That is indeed Sidney Paget’s “basket chair.”

A great deal of Sherlockian time and money has been spent on 221B–either trying to locate it (in London), or to replicate it (typically in one’s basement). Although we cannot now know for sure where Holmes and Watson spent their London years, the Canon does give us a fair picture of what it looked like. When the two friends-to-be first moved in, Watson wrote, their new flat was “large” and “airy,” “cheerfully furnished with, and illuminated by two broad windows.” By the time Holmes feels comfortable enough with the doctor to haul out his own tin box (and the memories that go with it) however, their rooms had become rather more…lived in:

[Sherlock Holmes] was…one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. (MUSG)

Over time, then, they put their own stamp on the place, and that once-anonymous sitting room with two bedrooms became a reflection of the “two men of note” who called it home…which bring us to tonight’s question:

One of the easiest ways to make your house your home is to put something on the walls. What might one find on the walls of 221B–and who put it there? (Extra admiration if you tell us what it reveals about that particular flatmate!)

And your prize for doing so? Why, something to make your own décor a little more Holmes-y. We cannot afford to redecorate your basement, but we can send you this lovely pillow….

Suitable for settee, bedroom, or throwing at recalcitrant clients!

Just send us  your answer, via FB PM, Twitter DM, or blog comments to be included in the drawing on 12/25 (on which date the winner will be announced. Please do not just put your answer in the FB comments, and for other rules, see the blogpost for 20 December. Happy reading!