With Holmes in the Heartland coming up later this month, and a rough work week behind me, I decided to spend the day rolling down the road and then visiting St. Louis's most active Sherlockian society (not to insult any Harpooners with that claim, but they are, technically, a St. Charles scion). Between the meeting proper at the Ethical Society, the after-meeting hang at Spine Books, or the after-after-meeting hang in Rob Nunn's library, I got a full fix of relaxing discussion of Sherlock and Sherlockians.
I always enjoy meeting my fellow Illinois-sider, Rob, and riding into the city with him as warm-up to these gatherings, and was able to entertain him with a little Sherlockian history I'd recently learned, gathering up his insights along the way. We arrived right on time for the meeting to start, and after a few giveaways were set out, the meeting began with news of a brand new book, Emissions of a Brain on Sherlock Holmes by Mary Towell Schroeder, with cartoons by Art Schroeder, available now at all sorts of places online. (Thrift Books might sell it the cheapest.) Mary, a familiar St. Louis Sherlockian going way back, had collected up past writings for a tidy little volume, and the one author collections are definitely my favorite these days. (I still get a good multi-author collection, don't get me wrong. Both have their place.)
Some other announcements were made, and we were soon off to discuss what many considered the worst story in the Canon: "The Adventure of the Three Gables." (We did debate it's badness against that of "Mazarin Stone.") It always takes a while to get over the overt racism that begins the tale, to get to the other bad parts of the story, but we made that journey, and many present were definitely of the opinion that the story sure seemed like someone other than Conan Doyle may have written it. A fascinating comparison to "A Scandal in Bohemia" was made, which I shall remember, even if I don't remember who said it. (I bet Rob does a meeting recap over at . . . where did I ever see a Parallel Case recap? I thought . . . hmmm.)
It's interesting when a story discussion goes back and forth between "What was Conan Doyle thinking?" and "What was Watson thinking?" because it gets to the full range of Sherlockian thought, on both sides of our reality. And the "Three Gables" discussion definitely did.
I'll leave off the Isadora Klein/Isadora Persano rabbit hole that we went down at one point, which I contend did not kill the conversation on the story, as someone who announced we had exhausted the tale might have claimed. As "bad" Sherlock Holmes stories go, "Three Gables" is rich in weirdness for discussion, to be sure.
But I was left with one big question, that I didn't voice until the ride home: What dollar figure would need to be offered to you to leave your home and all your possessions behind, as was made to Mary Maberly? It's a bit like a non-sexual version of the old movie Indecent Proposal, where a couple was offered a million dollars for an infidelity, another very wealthy person coming into the life of an ordinary person and buying something that no one would think of selling.
Sherlockians have collections very dear to them, it is true, but the chance to start fresh, with enough money to travel, and see and shop the entire Sherlockian world anew? That might not be such a bad deal, and definitely has a dollar figure I, for one, would think would work for me.
Because then I'd get to go to all the Parallel Case meetings. And the Nashville Scholars meetings. And the Illustrious Clients meetings. And the Minneapolis Explorer meetings. And the Sound of the Baskervilles meetings. And the Barque Lone Star non-Zoom meetings. Annnddd I might even get to Chicago and the East Coast society meetings too at some point.
Collecting books is nice, but collecting memories is a pretty cool thing too. Despite the regrettable beginning of "Three Gables," that round-the-world trip that Holmes got for Mary Maberley as payback probably raised her to the Big Winner of all Holmes's clients.
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