I hope both The Baker Street Babes and in particular Lyndsey Faye will forgive me for pasting this but it is part of a much longer post detailing the activities at the BSI (Baker Street Irregulars) Dinner.

BSI DINNER:  Lyndsay delivered the toast to Mrs. Hudson at the Yale Club this year, an act made precarious by the fact she chose to wear six-inch fuschia heels.  She didn't fall down, forget her speech or her drink, or suffer any wardrobe malfunctions, so she considers the toast a relative success.  And here it is:


            That Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are the two most arresting men in the history of criminal detection is inarguable.  Watson, both a killer and a healer, an army veteran and a gifted storyteller, is a man of such ingrained contradictions that he had a leg wound in his shoulder.  As if this were not intriguing enough, he had between one and twenty-seven wives, an invisible bull pup, and—most mysterious of all—a moustache.
            Watson’s friend Sherlock Holmes, meanwhile, is the enigma of the 19th century, an ambulatory paradox.  Holmes’s childhood is as shrouded in the mists as that of a mythical hero.  Gravity has no effect on him, for he can survive a plunge into the most harrowing of Swiss waterfalls.  He keeps his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, his sandwiches in his pocket, and his eyeballs in the microwave.
            Both men are question marks wrapped in puzzles liberally sprinkled with je ne sais quoi.  (I really don’t.)
            And so I pose the question: which resident of 221 Baker Street would I most like to be, if I could magically transport myself into their skin?
            Mrs. Hudson.
            Mrs. Hudson, I believe it’s clear, was the bravest and most resilient occupant of the house she owned.  Not because she courageously faced down airguns and street urchins and even—if her first name was Martha—evil German spies.  No, Mrs. Hudson owns that title because she was a match for the likes of Sherlock “Shooting Walls Is My Angry Birds† Holmes, and John “Three Continents But Who’s Counting Really† Watson.  She was their one fixed point, and they owed her their domestic happiness—nay, even their lives, for would Sherlock Holmes ever have eaten had not Mrs. Hudson periodically placed trays of what experts refer to as “food† in front of his nose?
            And so I propose a toast to the woman who knew everything about these two ciphers—who was aware that John Watson had a mild dairy allergy and that Sherlock Holmes hummed Chopin ditties while shaving.  To the woman who knew them better than we ever will, and still—despite living with a pair of riddles—managed to produce a consistently good Scots’ breakfast.
            To Mrs. Hudson!