IDK why they're not fandom catnip either. Bunny is more flawed than Watson but also more endearingly aware of what a wet spaniel he is being, not to mention how he's both too besotted to resist being corrupted, but still fascinated and repulsed by it. Holmes seems to sort of exist in a bubble where his own social background (and Watson's) are immaterial, not to mention what either of them actually lives on. With Raffles, there's much more of an interesting socio-cultural backdrop. Raffles wants to live like a gentleman, his cricket fans want him to be a gentleman... which means he isn't supposed to need to do anything venal like 'earn a living' - but he's not actually well-off enough to do that. And Bunny, who does come from a slightly 'better' class and more established money, is weak-willed and gullible and has frittered his own fortune away. All of which drives them both: Raffles in particular gets fabulously bitter and bitchy about his own status as the kind of unpaid entertainment to the gentility, which is part of what fuels his joy in robbing them blind, and possibly in morally ruining Bunny too. Eh, they're both amazingly fucked-up, really, and it only gets worse as the stories go on... Plus, I think the stories are very evocative and skilfully written, with a real sense of the life of the times, from various different social perspectives.
As for the racism, well, it's the late-Victorian mindset, in this case either Hornung's itself or, more likely, him reflecting what he sees as accurate for his characters. The same way Raffles in particular can be monstrously snobbish and amoral in all sorts of ways, neither of which I think is true of Hornung himself. TBH, I found the casual and totally unnecessary racism of the BBC's recent Sherlock a thousand times more troublesome: in a contemporary setting and characters, there was absolutely no excuse for it.
As for the racism, well, it's the late-Victorian mindset, in this case either Hornung's itself or, more likely, him reflecting what he sees as accurate for his characters. The same way Raffles in particular can be monstrously snobbish and amoral in all sorts of ways, neither of which I think is true of Hornung himself. TBH, I found the casual and totally unnecessary racism of the BBC's recent Sherlock a thousand times more troublesome: in a contemporary setting and characters, there was absolutely no excuse for it.
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