ancientsgate wrote:
He raised the issue in that setting because he was being a rude you-know-what, as he so often is. He spied a man of the cloth standing there, ripe for the baiting (a sheep in a clerical collar, if you will). Sherlock had just endured several minutes of actually having to be in a church (you're supposed to be quiet and respectful in church, something Sherlock wouldn't give two figs about) and witness the love of his life marry someone else, all the while with John actually having had the audacity to smile and be happy about it, and so.... yeah, Sherlock raised the issue, he didn't mince words, and I'm sure he thought he was giving everyone listening the benefit of his superior insight.
I never meant to imply that he wastes words or that he doesn't say what he thinks. But he is often the most unpleasant, rude, ignorant and obnoxious arsehole anyone could have the misfortune to meet, as he himself admitted.
I don´t really think Sherlock was deliberately rude here. In this scene, Sherlock reminded me a bit of Professor Higgins from G.B. Shaw´s "Pygmalion". In that play, this dialogue appeared:
HIGGINS: About you, not about me. If you came back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I can´t change my nature and I don´t intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering´s.
LISA: That´s not true. He treat the flower girl as if she was a duchess.
HIGGINS: And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.
LISA: I see. The same to everybody.
"And I treat duchess as if she was a flower girl." - exactly Sherlock´s philosophy. He doesn´t bait people, he just says exactly what he thinks in any situation without any regard for social niceties or feelings he can hurt with his too sincere words. It´s not deliberate maliciousness, it´s disregard of rules he sees as stupid or hypocritical.
He made it no secret that marriages are not his area. With or without the priest in the room, he would say exactly the same thing.
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I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window there. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?
