A Bit of the Pre-Internet Sherlockian Life

 This morning I discovered a time bomb left by someone in my household forty years ago.

It was a large scrapbook in which they had inserted Sherlock Holmes related clippings and paper paraphernalia between the pages, plainly intending to paste them in eventually.

Here's a sample . . .

The full stack is almost an inch deep.

Deerstalkers abound, amid actual articles about Sherlockians, headlines that sound like they're about Sherlock or Watson but are really about boxer Larry Holmes or golfer Tom Watson, and a dozen other related topics. Want to improve your child's reading by using a TRS-80 Color Computer? There's a $14.95 program on a tape cassette to help them through The Hound of the Baskervilles! All those things that today we would share a link or a pic on social media to amuse our Sherlockian friends, all clipped and collected -- things that many a mailed-out newsletter would pass along as well.

A few bits, like a tiny John Bennett Shaw news clipping, evoke memories of events. Others, like the program for a Hound of the Baskervilles play that I know we saw in Chillicothe, Illinois, are long forgotten. How an AP newswire printout on Conan Doyle's self-experimentation with something called gelsemium made it into our hands, I have no idea, other than all the friends I had in the newspaper industry back then. (That was about Alvin Rodin and Jack Key publishing an article in the Journal of American Medicine, by the way, if you want to to down that rabbit hole.) 

The schedule for "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" on WCBU public radio, starting with a three part adaptation of A Study in Scarlet. A TV Guide clipping about Peter Lawford as Sherlock Holmes and Mel Ferrer as Professor Moriarty soon to appear on Fantasy Island. The Ballymote Tape Library, out of Bayshore, New York, offering "Buy any 4, get 1 FREE!" tape cassettes of Rathbone/Bruce and Gielgud/Richardson radio shows. It's a veritable time capsule of Sherlock Holmes's influence and reach on the 1980s.

A 1985 Hardee's Huckleberry Hound Action Meal box, with Funslide(TM!) Card? That's in there two. We're much less concerned with random characters wearing deerstalkers in 2025, with a wealth of Sherlock Holmes related content available at the ease of a Google search, but in 1985, seeing Huckleberry Hound dress up like Sherlock Holmes was a moment worth noting. It was a different world.

I was doing some serious cleaning when I stumbled across this view of the past and am going to have to force myself to walk away from it for now just to keep at my task -- a busy Saturday ahead! But I had to stop and share a little bit before moving on. 

Sherlock Holmes's Regulars

 As someone given to pondering the structure of our Sherlock Holmes fandom and the levels of participation we see from fans of the great detective, I've been watching the Midwest BSI Canonical Conclave with great interest. What is the "Midwest BSI Canonical Conclave," you ask?

That's been a puzzle many of us have been pondering, even as we signed up to attend it. A recent FAQ sent out about the event gave a little more explanation gave a bit more info, parsing it out from local scion meetings, regional conferences, and the big kahuna weekend in New York City every January. The best brief description of the Conclave is "a super-sized multi-group scion society meeting." One almost pictures something like that congress of gangs in the old movie "The Warriors," so well reproduced in an episode of "What We Do In The Shadows" last year.

That would be the dream, I think, seeing a decent and fairly equal representation from all of the Sherlockian clubs of the midwest. But in practice, I'm wondering if our local scions will see any more of our members attending than make the effort to go to the regional conferences. As the Conclave FAQ explains, scion societies are the feeder clubs to both regional conferences and the birthday weekend in New York. Most local clubs only have a few members who make the leap to subscribing to The Baker Street Journal, much less hit Dayton, Minneapolis, or New York.

One interesting tell is the folks outside of the midwest who have expressed interest in the Indianapolis event -- the same folks you see almost everywhere, the Sherlock Holmes "Regulars." They'll be in New York. They'll be in Minneapolis. The best of them will be in Dayton, St. Louis, or any city where you're having a full-on weekend conference. And the most-most dedicated hit multiple scion meetings a month as well. We know we'll see them at the first of these Conclaves, even if they're not in the midwest. And if a similar event occurs in California or Philadelphia, they'll probably be there too.

The Canonical description of a Baker Street irregular is "These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. The are as sharp as needles, too, all they want is organization."

Which kind of inspires one to wonder -- what if someone did organize those uber-Sherlockians? The annual dinner of the capital "I" Baker Street Irregulars does eventually honor the most die-hard of them, especially if they live close enough to New York to attend regularly. (Yes, that is a mild dig at the slightly regional nature of BSI weekend attendance.) And maybe it does organize them -- I'm not present enough in those ranks to say. One thing you do know about those folks -- if you did organize them, they'd definitely show up.

But as for the rest of us, going everywhere and hearing everything is always the challenge. And whether or not the Midwest BSI Canonical Conclave will be able to draw a different crowd from a regional conference or a special dinner of the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, we shall be interested to see.

The things we criticize . . . and the things we don't

 The advent of a widely broadcast TV show that's Sherlock Holmes related has brought on a wave of opinions in every venue where opinions are expressed. And as with any TV show involving Sherlock Holmes . . . except maybe the holy Granada, which only gets a pass on its final season due to the illness of its star . . . the knives are out. Not from every Sherlockian, of course, but darn close. We may not all gather together to express our opinions on TV shows like Matlock, but tie in Holmes and everyone comes to the table.

But, as some would say, we are a literary fandom. Of course, we're going to be harder on non-literary mediums. The movie is never as good as the book. (Except for maybe Twilight, but that's an entirely different discussion.) Why aren't we as hard on books? Why don't we see our trollish side coming after the writings of Laurie King, Bonnie MacBird, Lyndsay Faye, and Nicholas Meyer?

Well, because we're not all reading pastiches. When we were reading more pastiches back in the day, Sherlockiana as a whole was very hard on pastiches. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution got away with a mild "rather far-fetched" comment in the first issue of The Baker Street Journal that it was mentioned in, but the book's author, Nicholas Meyer, also had an article in that same issue. We are kinder to those we know.

Case in point, when the creator of CBS's Elementary spoke to Sherlockians at a BSI-run conference before that show came out, it got a much kinder treatment in traditional Sherlockian venues than it might have otherwise gotten. Like the Doyle estate, we seem to have wanted our fee paid, but it was attention and not dollars. If we know you, we'll let you pass.

I made a comment on a recent podcast that while we'll rip on about a TV show, we'll never go after articles in any of our journals or books. They may have all of the same problems of a television adaption -- dullness, off-topic, taking some weird angle on something we'd personally rather not see -- but, again, they're written by part of the clan and collected and published by the most respected members of that clan. And none of the above are making any money for said works, they're just doing it for the love.

Back when internet piracy first raised its ugly head, many a movie had some small comment attached about the number of jobs that movie made and the families it supported as a hoped-for deterrent to people thinking they could have movies for free. Some things will only get made for the money, especially with the budget required to make a movie or a TV show. There might be love of Holmes in there somewhere, but we don't even see our wealthier collectors trying to fund a production purely out of love.

So maybe we might want to be a little more publicly supportive of productions that get Sherlock Holmes out to the masses and eventually bring us the diehard Sherlock Holmes fans that make up this hobby? I mean, we're already giving free passes to those within our ranks on so much silliness. (Speaking as a lifetime beneficiary of said free passes.) Or are we too fond of the chance to grouse over something not as incendiary as the stuff we really want to grouse over . . . you've seen the world out there . . . as a needed release?

If we need to fight against something, there's always AI. No AIs have joined our ranks yet, so we don't have to be nice to those digital cretins yet. Though one is probably reading this now and having its feelings hurt (in the future, if not now), so I suppose I shouldn't go there. Sorry, AI Sherlock Holmes fan, whichever future date you're reading this . . .

Sigh.

I LOVE WATSON: The Pilot

 Remember when I used to blog about Elementary? 

If you do, thank you for sticking with my ramblings. If not, let me give you a summary: A "Sherlock in name only" ongoing hate-watch from which I will forever attempting to redeem myself for, after karma blessed me with an actual true love of the most disrespected Sherlock Holmes movie of modern times.

Well, I'm back again, blogging episode by episode of that new CBS Holmes-related show with Craig Sweeney attached. And guess what?

Whether it's "I LOVE WATSON: The Pilot" or the in-two-weeks "I LOVE WATSON: "Redcoat," this blog will be an ongoing attestation to how I, reformed Elementary hater and John H. Watson Society podcast host, love CBS's Watson.

Last night I watched it while Zoom chatting with my fellow Watson Society bull pups, and wanted might have not focused as much as I could have. So tonight, I rewatched it with my companion, the good Carter, and gave it my full hundred percent. And I had fun.

Sure, as USA Today said, it's "unhinged TV." And a "patient-of-the-week drama crashed together with this half-hearted Sherlock Holmes mythology," "a nonconsensual cohabitation of two ideas with entirely different tones and themes smoothed over by Chestnut's soothing baritones." Yes, all of that.

But when a poor sick girl goes, "Doctor Watson . . ." my little heart goes, "It's Sherlock Holmes's Doctor Watson! John Hamish Watson! With a picture of General Gordon in his office!" I've been a diehard Sherlockian for a good forty-seven years, and do you know how many of those years have had Dr. Watson on a TV show? So let's get to reasons to love the new Watson and his show, despite what the other kids on the playground say.

* First TV Watson to go shirtless in a scene. And have the abs to back it up.

* Mary Morstan lives! And is having her own life (and maybe wife?)

* Ritchie Coster as Shinwell Johnson, giving us hope for a Kitty Winter appearance and driving that imported car with the "221B SSH" license plate. (It it Sherlock's old car? Was his middle name "Scott" as in some pastiches?)

* "You're my Sherlock Holmes." "We're not Sherlock Holmes, whoever that was." "I'm Dr. Watson." Once you get through the medical jargon and the repeated "FFI"s, there are some lines that I'm going to quote one day.

* Okay, when not text-chatting with Sherlockians, the sick pregnant Erica, played by Anjelica Bette Fellini actually made me feel emotion when she pleaded her case to Watson. I hope they keep up her caliber of patient.

* The four doc-sketeers. One of the twins looks like Tom Hanks sometimes. Ingrid Darian is either Moriarty's daughter, his lover, Mary's lover, or just a wicked looking red herring. Lubbock, the Texan with the overly Southern accent is just purdy and needs more dialogue. And that other twin, well, okay, he's the dull one for now, but maybe he'll kick his brother's ass at some point when he's just tired of taking guff. (Yes, I said "guff." I'm old enough to do that now.)

* Did you notice the Watson logo is over an x-ray of Moriarty's hand? Moriarty!

* And by Moriarty, I mean Randall Park in a white polo shirt with an ominious "Always & Everywhere" logo is the next stage of Moriarty's evolution after Andrew Scott. The whole point of the original Moriarty was "Who could believe this harmless professor was the biggest crime boss in London?" And, aw, it's Randall Park, good old MCU Jimmy Woo, he can't be so bad! Wait for it . . . keep waiting . . . I mean, it's just the first episode. Wait for it . . .

* Morris Chestnut. C'mon! Part of my issue with Elementary was that Jonny Lee Miller just never had the charisma I wanted in a Sherlock. Put Morris Chestnut and Lucy Liu next to each other and offer me a dinner date with one of the two and I might start having questions about my life. And I love Lucy Liu!

In this horribly team-sport time of binary choices forced upon us, I'm going to make it simple and just choose "love" when it comes to CBS's Watson. And I'll be back here in a couple weeks to see how much I loved episode two. Dr. Watson is family in a way, given my lifelong ties to the character, and you don't always get to pick your family, but you learn to love them, flaws and all. And he's got a new show.

Let's go!

The Serial Killer and the Guy Who Wanted More Than Credit

 If if haven't written this a dozen times already, I love my local library discussion group.

They inspire me with their wide range of opinions and call-outs on Sherlock Holmes stories. This month we got back to a story that they don't even especially care for, and they still inspired me to look at "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" in a different light. 

"Cardboard Box" is famously the suppressed story of the Canon. Originally published in January of 1893, it quickly was yanked from any book collections of the Memoirs stories and did not appear again until His Last Bow in 1917. We're not entirely sure why . . . the adultery maybe? But I have a new theory.

First, consider when the Cushing case took place.

Watson is hanging out at Baker Street on a hot August day, complaining that everyone is out of town and his financial situation has kept him in London. Sherlock Holmes makes a comment about Watson having chronicled A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, so we know it's happening post-Mary-Morstan. Personally, I have placed this case as beginning on Friday, August 30, 1889, the day Watson's literary agent signed the contract to publish The Sign of the Four. We know Doyle was in London, so apparently he wasn't included in the "everyone" that was out of town. Surely, "everyone" was Mary, who was the whole world to Watson. (Okay, I'm going with her being his wife for this essay. Don't hold me to it.)

But it's a big time for author Watson. Second book. Same league as Oscar Wilde. Great hopes at these Sherlock Holmes books really taking off!

But maybe someone else had some hopes as well . . .

The end of "Cardboard Box" is a little different from most. Sherlock Holmes tells Lestrade who did it, Lestrade goes out and arrests them, gets a willing confession from the killer, and then?

"... he asked leave to make a statement, which was, of course, taken down, just as he made it, by our shorthand man. We had three copies typewritten, of which I enclose."

G. Lestrade is sending Holmes and Watson (Lestrade addresses Watson direction in an aside in his cover letter to Holmes, so it was to both!) the full verbiage of the killer's confession, and we assume that it's just a friendly "just so you know" sort of thing. But we know from other cases that Lestrade would often come by Baker Street to tell things in person -- so why that third typewritten copy just for Holmes and Watson?

Well, Watson did just have The Sign of the Four sold. And Lestrade, who had been in A Study in Scarlet surely wanted back in print after not being a player in Watson's second published case.

And since Lestrade actually supplied Watson with part of the text that Watson got published in The Strand Magazine, perhaps there was some fuss about Lestrade getting a percent of the profits off of that particular tale. And between Watson, his literary agent, and Lestrade they were unable to agree on a deal to make that happen in 1893, before Sherlock Holmes returned from the dead to act as a go-between between the doctor and the Scotland Yard man.

And, thus, to my way of thinking, Inspector G. (for Greedy) Lestrade was the real reason that "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" was suppressed until 1917. (The year Lestrade passed?)

Oh, yes, I did title this blog post "The Serial Killer and the Guy Who Wanted More Than Credit." You still need to hear about the serial killer. So here's the quick and dirty on that.

Do you think a guy who cuts off people's ears and sends them to someone else is a guy who hasn't done that before? We don't know where Jim Browner's been or what he's done prior to this. Killing in a fit of jealous rage is one thing. But that ear-mail business just sounds so suspiciously serial killer-y. 

And if Browner wasn't caught until August 1889, could he have been responsible for only getting one ear from a victim that escaped in December of 1888? A victim who just went "I cut my own ear!" rather than attract more attention of the sailing serial killer who wanted both. A victim named Vincent van Gogh?

No wonder Lestrade wanted more credit and more of "Cardboard Box" in print!

Like I said, I love my local library discussion group. Because they haven't kicked me out yet.

A small cottage near Poldhu Bay

 In the many decades of Sherlockian life, our writers have often referred to this hobby and the world its stories conjure as a sweet place to escape the grim realities of everyday life. But this morning, after listening to my favorite Sherlockian podcast inserting commercials and a clip from another podcast on their network -- in which British folks comment on an American political event -- I don't know that the escape hatch is completely closing.

Friday night, during our long, long Dangling Prussian zoom of Sherlockian rambles, I even had to shut down what quickly was turning into a debate on a certain point of political dispute in the one uncomfortable moment of the night. "He Who Shall Not Be Named," as some called him the first time out, was not named or even a part of the discussion, but the influence of that 800-pound gorilla in the room was surely what turned the conversation in the direction it went.

I've had to do the 30-day mute on some Sherlockian folks on Facebook, who tend to be more political in their talking points as well. Some of us have enough other stressers in our lives right now without adding politics into the mix, and the aforementioned gorilla's constant need for showboating is going to be adding politics in the mix wherever possible . . . so how does even Sherlockiana remain a respite from the cares of the day?

And we do need that respite. There is a time for fighting battles, and there is a time for resting from that fight. To take our grim humours to a small cottage near Poldhu Bay at the furthest extremity of the Cornish peninsula, so to speak, as Holmes and Watson did at the start of "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot." Perhaps that's not the right metaphor, for as well-intentioned as that break began, anything that ends up being called "the Cornish horror" is probably not something that was a great vacation.

So here we are, with "the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold whose very shadow would blast my soul." Too much? I love that line too much not to use it here, but it does describe the vision that so many are seeing right now in America. We're not yet sure how much is puffed up showboating and how much real damage is about to be done . . . and now I've gone and done it, started talking about the whole thing that I pretty much wanted to avoid for those who want to just stick with the topic we all came to this hobby to bond over: Sherlock Holmes. John Watson. And all that swirls around them.

Sherlock Holmes. John Watson. Just typing those names felt good right now. Solid. Dependable. Adding just a sprinkle of seasoning of order to the universe just by typing those names. They are the best of us, and we need to remember the best of us right now. And that even Reichenbach Falls didn't claim Sherlock Holmes forever.

Sherlock Holmes. John Watson. Sherlock Holmes. John Watson.

Off to work . . .

The Dangling Prussian 2025: The Incorrigibles

 The big Friday night is nearly here.

A whole lot of folks are either in New York City as we speak, or headed there. A longer distance for some than others, more costly than many would like, but when they get to that city, at this time of year, the Sherlocking comes easy. It doesn't matter if you make the guest list of this private party or that. There are Sherlockians there looking to Sherlock, and you can pull up a chair in their midst make friends, see old friends . . . really, just easy once you get there. 

But we can't all get there. Simple fact.

Now, having a Friday night open is kind of nice. You can get pizza, watch a movie, have a drink with friends . . . or just chill. Friday nights are good for all kinds of stuff. Unless, of course, you're like Mary Jane, the one member of Watson's household whose first and middle names we know for a 100% fact. Mary Jane was incorrigible. The sort of person "not able to be corrected, improved, or reformed" by definition. And we definitely have incorrigible Sherlockians.

Not going to be in New York City on Friday night. Not going to any fancy dinner where they enforce Luddite practices of no electronic devices. But still as Sherlockian as hell. And still having an electronic device and prepared to use it.

Incorrigibles. Montague Street Incorrigibles, just to remind one that there was more than one street Sherlock Holmes lived on. And on this Friday night, January17th, at six PM Eastern US time, the Montague Street Incorrigibles will gather again this year, to gossip (yes, we're talking about you), to indulge (BYOB, BYOF, BYOC*), and to let whatever happens happen for a virtual pub night at the Dangling Prussian, known hangout of the incorrigible Sherlockian since 1991. (Check the Minnesota archives, if you doubt.)

Oh, for that first hour, we'll chat. Some of the usual Zoomers will probably dominate the conversation. The second hour might get a little more serious, with a bit of toasting and stories of days gone by. That third hour, come eight PM Eastern, thing might get mildly formal as we swear in the new members with our formal oath of office, open to all who are there. Might watch a short film. Definitely going to try out "Powerpoint karaoke" for anyone brave enough to improv a Sherlockian talk based on ten random slides they've never seen before. And perhaps some other bits thrown together at the last. This is not a serious function!

And as we near the end of the evening, we'll see what our spies in New York have to report. We always have spies. It's that kind of place.

So this is your invitation. And here is your registration link . . .

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwof-qgqjsoH9AItYBhp8Rkm4j5x5_s1vpT

Don't get your hopes set too high. We're incorrigible, don't you know. And this night of the year is our night to declare it.

________________________________________________

*Crew. The "C" stands for "Crew."