Missions from Sherlock Holmes

We hear much of Sherlockians as readers and writers, as our center-point is one marvelous piece of literature. But Sherlockians have always taken their love of Sherlock Holmes with them wherever and whatever they're doing, so the great detective can wind up in some very unusual places. And sometimes, like a pre-cell-phone, pre-Pokemon-Go, pre-geo-caching motivator to get out of the house, Sherlock Holmes sends us on missions we would never otherwise go on.

Most of the traveling I've done in my life has been to Holmes-related destinations. Sherlockian weekends, events, visits with far-off friends. Great places that I never would have thought to seek out, if not for that lure of something Sherlock. But there's another level of Sherlockian destination-setting that some of us wind up on, and it came up today as I had a very inspiring lunch with my friend John Holliday, one of those great Sherlockians whom no one really knows is out there.

John had come up with a marvelous idea for sending himself on Sherlockian missions to cities and towns that were named the same as characters in the Sherlockian Canon. Now, that by itself is not a new concept. John Bennett Shaw lead pilgrimages to Moriarty, New Mexico before most of us were even in the cult. And Don Hobbs's decision to lead a merry band on his "Great Whimsical Sherlockian Tour of Oklahoma and Texas" led us to Watson, Oklahoma and Holmes Peak among other choice destinations in its 1,895 mile range. But as John Holliday laid out his new plan for Sherlockian missions, I realized that he had taken that notion to a whole new level.

He laid out his mission packet for a trip to the little town of Adair, Illinois -- a very non-obvious choice -- and I was happily entranced. I love small town Illinois, having gone on a few quests for historical data in them myself, and there is much to be gained from any one of them, with a little research, a few questions, and the general attitude of following whatever slim leads one might come across.

Adair, for example, might just have a Moran in its graveyard. And a fellow with a name that traces to the Von Herder clan. Would the local bar have a brandy on hand, the one alcoholic beverage mentioned in "The Adventure of the Empty House," the tale Ronald Adair is mentioned in? Do the street names hold any significant ties to that tale in particular or the Canon in general? With the aid of internet resources, one can find a lot out about a place before ever reaching it, but once all that data is collected and some goals decided, there is only one bit of research left to do . . . .

And that's go to the place in question.

It might seem an arbitrary sort of adventure to those without the imagination to find joy in the random new experiences life can bring, but to me, the whole thing fairly explodes as a mental exercise and a lesson in playing detective and exploring the world around you, as Sherlock Holmes was always glad to do. A Mycroft Holmes might be content with sitting in his rooms and letting others bring back bits of data, but a Sherlock . . . a true Sherlock . . . loves to get out in the midst of it. Local pubs, area botany, all of it.

I haven't gone too deep into John Holliday's methodology here, as that's his own set of missions from Sherlock Holmes. Hearing what he was looking into, however, caused me to start thinking of my own potential goals for making a Sherlockian Saturday mission when the weather is not as beastly hot as is is today. And these things are best shared, as well . . . whether it's heading out with a travelling companion or picking a spot midway between you and your Sherlockian friends and setting a rendezvous there for a group mission. Letting your creativity flow in just how you do it is a big part of the whole business of such little missions for Sherlock Holmes.

And these days, with blogs, YouTube, and social media, you can easily share such adventures with the rest of us.

Stay tuned.

The Ritual ain't so ritual this week.

There's a certain enlightenment that comes with a really good discussion of a Sherlock Holmes story.

I've found this true time after time with our local Sherlock Holmes Story Society, which met again  last night at Peoria's North Branch library. This round was "The Musgrave Ritual," and as much as I'd come to believe that was a lower-rung tale on the ladder of adventures, I found myself quite surprised by its strength and spectrum in returning to it again.

Of course, it might have helped that the goodly crew who gathered tonight was really into the tale, one notably having learned to read along with the Granada series, as her father checked the show's textual accuracy, and had memorized a good deal of the Musgrave case.

We talked so much of the rooms and people of Hurlstone that it began to have the feeling of a game of Clue. Reginald Musgrave in the library with the battle-axe. Janet Tregellis in the gun room with a billiard cue. Rachel Howells in Wales with a bag of gold. (Well, that last one is definitely a variant edition of Clue.)

And even though we didn't go there directly, enough curious coincidences came up to make me wonder how many Reglock shippers there are out there. Holmes speaks of Reginald Musgrave not being popular with the other underclassmen. (Remember how Sherlock likes fellows without any friends to speak of, as with Trevor and Watson.) He also retired to Sussex post-Watson, and who else lived in Sussex? "Confirmed bachelor" Reginald Musgrave. If one also suspects Victor Trevor of some college/Asian-hiatus Holmes dalliances, the only two pre-Watson flashbacks seem to take on a new reason for being there.

But one quickly leaves the shipping lanes when one considers the relative intelligence of Reginald Musgrave, as we did tonight, and he ranking as one of the most clueless and gullible-yet-nice characters of the Canon. Or Holmes's lack of interest or reaction in finding a dead body when there is still mystery to be unravelled. Or how high Musgrave's nose was on his face. (It's the little things.)

Queen Elizabeth's chastity belt. The Gregorian calendar. The metals used in 1600s items of value. Every Sherlock Holmes case has its detailed threads to explore and this, one, even though it does feature that treasure-responsive-reading from the title that draws the eye, has its own hidden chest of jewels. The master detective has always encouraged an eye for detail and a mind for possibilities, and "The Musgrave Ritual" certainly inspires the use of both.

I'm looking forward to getting back to just some of the mental notes I took  last night, saved for later development.

As old as we . . .

Our greatest resource as fans of Sherlock Holmes is the fact that Sherlock and Sherlockiana are older than all of us. Not a Sherlockian lives, at this point, who pre-dates the first appearance of A Study in Scarlet.  (Unless there's a 131-year-old out there keeping their existence a secret.)

So at this point, you can actually look at the year you were born and go, "I'm as old as the movie Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace!" or  "This Baring-Gould Annotated and I came out in the same year!" (Well, maybe you came out in a different year than the one in which you were born, but you can pick a different book for each occasion.)

We have solid Sherlockian collectibles that match our own lives on this Earth.

My favorite issues of The Baker Street Journal had always been the ones with my birth year on the cover, and the opportunity to see what the Sherlockian elders were doing the year I came screaming into their unknowing world. They, of course, looked aged long before I did, although I seem to be catching up. 

One starts to wonder how much of a shelf one could fill collecting Sherlockiana from the year one was born. Books and movies are easy to put dates on -- figurines, artifacts, and the like might be harder to pin down, unless they were part of a movie release. But in an era where there is far too much Sherlockiana to just collect everything, targeting a specific year might be an excellent quest to embark on . . . and the objects would possess their own magic, being tied to your lifespan like Voldemort's horcruxes without the side effects.

And even without collecting, it's just kind of fun to explore your natal era's Sherlockian history. You might even find the Sherlockian who passed just as you were coming in, whose spirit bumped yours and caused you to catch the spiritual virus we all share. Personally, I was in the nine-month spiritual waiting room when Christopher Morley was moving along to the house-boat on the Styx, so I've always liked that possibility. Who knows who you could have encountered, even if its just in your current imagination?

Time is fun to play in, as any companion of Doctor Who soon learns, and as Sherlockians, we have a whole lot of it for our playground. Take a spin on its merry-go-round sometime and see where you wind up!

Riff-raff and Respectables.

Chris Redmond used a couple of words in a tweet recently that sent me on quite a reverie about the Sherlockian world, one that I don't think I'll ever have time to explore to its fullest. The words were "riff-raff" and "respectable," and he was favoring the former, so don't be thinking it was a judgemental sort of thing. And since recent politics have given us "deplorables" as a noun that pops up every now and again, it seemed like converting "respectable" to a noun for Sherlockian purposes would be a fine thing to do as well.

Riff-raff and respectables.

Though it has all the dangers of a binary view, I love the way those two words capture so much of Sherlockiana as we know it. We have riff-raff, we have respectables, we have respectable riff-raff, and we have riff-raff respectables, as well as wannabees at each end of the spectrum. And never has there been a time when the extremes were stretched so far.

We have literary scholars and we have pornographic shippers. We have institutions and we have iconoclasts. We have wealthy collectors and just-scraping-by fans. You can squee or you can lift your nose in a dignified manner and still fall under the heading of "Sherlockian."

You could remake the movie "Caddyshack" to be about Sherlockians instead of golfers easily enough, but perhaps I'm showing my particular bias there. It's just not the way things are now, though.

Adrian Conan Doyle surely considered the Baker Street Irregulars as riff-raff. BSJ editor Philip Shreffler was notorious for his thoughts on fans of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock.And when Julian Wolfe tore up the note from the college girls on the chilly street in front of the BSI's annual dinner venue, once again, we had a bit of a riff-raff moment.

I always wonder if Americans aren't particular prone to the "riff-raff and respectables" duality due to the Anglophilic aspect of our fandom and the idea of the classy Briton, whether it's a title, an Oxford education, or that accent -- the hope that being a follower of that most elite of British detectives will rub off some class on the likes of midwest farmboys and Jersey neighborhood kids. But it's more than that these days, when we have such a diverse array of ways to enjoy Sherlock Holmes.

The difference between writing an authoritative biographical piece on Conan Doyle and writing a nutty expose on Watson's secret voodoo medical skills is great, and the writers of each can both proudly self-identify as respectable or riff-raff. But that is always the key. Self-identification.

Want to be a part of the riff-raff? Join us, we'll be happy to have you!

Want to be a respectable? You do the work, and we'll all thank you for it.

But if you want to call somebody else "riff-raff," just to separate them from your rarefied stratosphere of Sherlockiana? Well, you might just be a balloon full of hot air, needing a prick.

Long live the riff-raff and the respectables of our wide Sherlockian world, though, because that combo pack is what gives this hobby a cache that has kept us going for many a year.

Sherlock Holmes, easing our social media guilt.

Step one: Wake up this morning, reached for my phone, and started flipping through Twitter.

Step two: Feel that concern that I am somehow over-using/addicted to my phone and its various feeds-of-the-moment.

Step three: Remember Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson.

It's very early in the Sherlockian Canon when we establish that Holmes and Watson are what we might call "voracious" readers of the news. In the beginning of chapter six of A Study in Scarlet, Watson condenses report from just three of the newspapers that he and Holmes read over breakfast, the Daily Telegraph, the Standard, and the Daily News. And this newspaper "addiction" doesn't stop there.

Sherlock Holmes might have found the newspapers "a valuable institution," but John Watson, who was definitely not using them for professional purposes, seemed to read them even more. surrounding himself with a "cloud of newspapers" in "The Noble Bachelor."

"But wait!" one might argue, "They were reading the news, not the folderol that composes Twitter and its ilk!"

There are two things we know Sherlock Holmes read in the papers to be sure: Criminal news and the Agony Column, a.k.a. the personal ads. Think about that for a moment. Yes, yes, he did occasionally find something to do with a case in the personals, and he complains of them being "Bleat, Watson -- unmitigated bleat!"  (Which sounds just like a lot of social media, doesn't it?) But the fact of the matter is that Sherlock Holmes read the personals every day when, if fully considered, that habit could not have solved all that many cases for him. You know he just enjoyed the flow of humanity in those words and all the "bleat" he could mock and fuss over. (Which, again, sounds just like social media.)

And even the supposed "news" in those days was just as slanted and full of irrelevancies as one of our modern propaganda outlets. That passage in A Study in Scarlet I mentioned earlier hits the level of parody in what it tells us about each of those papers. And yet Watson dutifully clipped the articles after he and Holmes finished with them. (Which makes one wonder -- Holmes also saved old articles and newspapers. Did they have to get two copies of each when a case they were on made the papers?)

In any case, when one goes back and looks at the amount of newspaper-time that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were spending in the Canon, it can make you feel a lot better about scanning Twitter or some other source for breaking news and unmitigated bleat.

Because, hey, Sherlock Holmes would be doing it today, wouldn't he?

And luckily, most of us are too old to have our mothers going, "If Sherlock Holmes jumped off a waterfall, would you jump off a waterfall too?" Because I bet they wouldn't like the answer to that, either.

Personal Sherlockian archeology

There's a popular myth that the human body regenerates itself every seven years. It's not true, of course . . . blood cells don't live very long, brain cells (with luck) last a lifetime. But there's a reason we like that notion. Live long enough, and it feels like you've led many different lives . . . even as a Sherlockian.

In trying to find a particular bit of info this morning, I ventured down to the ancient bowels of Castle Sherlock Peoria and found the spot pictured below.

Pulling open the top drawer, I was confronted with dozens and dozens of that physical incarnation of my computer desktop's many file folders.

After years of use and abuse, there was no order to them any more. A photocopy of an entire book next to a bunch of old Christmas cards. Miscellaneous details of a historical figure next to membership lists of Sherlockian societies. And those were the parts that made sense.

Opening up a folder called "Misc Info and Cool," I found the makings of Christopher Morley masks. Why I made masks of the founder of the Baker Street Irregulars, and what we used them for, I have no idea at this point. If I had the time, I could search through scion newsletters and the actual letters themselves that fill dozens and dozens of other file folders, and try to piece together a theory of just what kind of ceremony this crude mask from some "ancient" Sherlockian cult was used for.

It seems like a ridiculous amount of effort, one which I will never get to, of course, but it did put one thought in my head . . . I really need to make a pass through everything in this filing cabinet, after a decade or two of just ignoring it, and see what this earlier day Sherlockian who filled these files was up to. Much of it may be weird worthless triva, like the Morley mask, or the multiple mini-posters for the Ralph Bakshi film "Wizards," which was in the same folder . . . but one never knows. The journey of a treasure hunt is often as important as the treasure, if any, that results in the end.

And the catacombs of Sherlock Peoria are so much cooler in the summer, so it might not be a bad place to spend a little time.

The monthly Sherlockian bill?

This morning a movie chain I frequent announced a new monthly program where they automatically charge you a set amount each month to see up to twelve movies at their theaters. It immediately reminded me of the fitness center that dings my credit card ten bucks per month, the computer game that gets its monthly fee, the podcast I support with an automatic monthly donation, etc., etc.

The life has become a pay-by-the-month affair for a lot more than the good old rent and utilities that Monopoly games were built on. But aside from the Patreons of "I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" and "No Place Like Holmes," I don't think anyone else has yet embraced that model in the Sherlockian world.

And how soon will a Sherlockian society go for collecting dues via the monthly credit card ding?

I suppose it's how much they have to offer. Most club dues are small enough that they don't need a twelve-way split. Those with bigger print journals, however,  could probably offer a few more benefits or an added publication and easily justify "Twelve easy payments of just FIVE dollars!" each year. 

Getting a monthly credit card ding for Sherlockian purposes, however, would seem to justify something that happened each month to make it worth your while. Patreon supporters of "I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" get a lot of podcast content every month for their investment, and a lot of podcasts go that route. But it would be interesting to see some larger Sherlockian organization go that route and combine publications with web content for a total ongoing Sherlockian community experience.

The world has been moving ahead at a breakneck pace in the last decade, and while Sherlockians have made some great big ol' strides, there are still some opportunities out there left to be exploited. One wonders what the personality of a John Bennett Shaw would have done with the possibilities an energetic team of 25-year-olds might see currently. I say "team," because things have just gotten too big for the solo "sparking plug" of the 1980s to fully take advantage of. We are a culture of communities now, and a good community can do incredible things (for good or ill, sad to say).

So what manner of ongoing Sherlockian experience would be worth five dollars a month, or ten dollars . . . or even twenty? A package of publications, events, e-connectivity, and community? A Sherlockian box of goodies every month? (Or just one goodie, be it signed book or Canonical artifact.) Something that made one a part of an ongoing project? (Herding cats, of course, but you never know.)

There are places in Sherlockiana that we haven't made it to yet, but they're out there.  And if a really good one requires a monthly bill, I might not be adverse to that.