TELE-FOLKS DIRECTORY - LANGDALE PIKE

'SHERLOCK HOLMES'

"THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GABLES"

I don't want to think so, but I have a feeling that Earth Prime-Time's Dr. John Watson may have been bigoted against homosexuals.......

Jeremy Brett as THE Sherlock Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Watson met with celebrated gossip-monger Langdale Pike, whose columns were published in many of the newspapers and magazines of the day.  (Some of which would be bought up by Sir Richard Carlysle, no doubt.)  

Pike was an old University friend of Holmes and the detective often consulted with him for information that could prove useful to a case.  Pike compared himself to Charles Augustus Milverton, but as the opposite of the professional blackmailer in that he suppressed more information than he exposed.

As Wikipedia points out, "Watson is rather scathing about Pike, Holmes is more sympathetic towards him, suggesting that Pike is isolated, much like Holmes himself."

It's never stated outright that Langdale Pike was a homosexual and I don't take into account that the actor who played him, the great Peter Wyngarde, being gay has any bearing on the character.  That would be an insult to Wyngarde's talents as an actor.

But if we are to accept that Dr. Watson's original published story of "The Three Gables" (edited by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) are in the TV Universe, then Watson's own writings betray his feelings on the subject.  

In the story, Pike doesn't even appear,  but Watson describes him as "strange" and "languid" which to me would be code words regarding Pike's character and basic nature.  I'm not sure what St. James Street in London was like back in the 1890s, but Watson also claims that Pike spends all day "in the bow window of a St. James's Street club."

What could Watson be inferring with that?  That he was eyeing the young men who were going into the other gentlemen's clubs along the street?

I'm going to give Watson the benefit of the doubt and see his aversion to Pike being due to his association with what Watson calls "the garbage papers" rather than because of his supposed sexual inclinations.

BCnU!