Welcome to the Sherlockian world.

Who is it that welcomes us to the Sherlockian world?

We've got no official greeter. No "Welcome Wagon." No central society that wants that job . . . at least in America.

It really depends upon where you first land that you find a welcome that suits you. It's a lot like finding new friends . . . you never know when that chemistry is going to hit. There are those happy souls that will tell you the whole Sherlockian world is full of the best people, who will happily invite you into their midst with open arms. As a little discussion on my Twitter feed demonstrated again today, those open arms often have expectations.

Sometimes, those expectations are openly stated. A monthly library discussion group will announce that it's going to talk about a particular short story. A film night will publicize that a particular movie is going to be the focus. And unfortunately, there have always been groups that feel the need to restrict their membership . . . and yet want to proudly publicize their existence, and those restrictions they've chosen to impose, at which point the "open arms" require you to be a certain sort of person.

Being welcomed to the Sherlockian world simply means that someone was happy to see you. All the traditions of this club or that, all the fusses of this particular Sherlockian or that, can really mess that up for you sometimes. Let me tell you, even if you're in this hobby for decades, there are still going to be times when you feel like the Sherlockian world is not going to be happy to see you.

Because it isn't just groups that sometimes have expectations.

We enter any group setting carrying our expectations with us. I've known so many first-timers who walk into a local group feeling like they'll be a novice among experts, when, truth be told, half the people in said local scion haven't even read all the stories and just show up for the company. Even the Baker Street Irregulars of New York have had meetings in their past when people got invitations for non-Sherlockian friends who didn't care enough about Sherlock to shut up for the program. Imagine expecting the Sherlockian crème de la crème and walking into that mess.

Sometimes Sherlockian society welcomes us, and sometimes we don't welcome it.

Before the internet, you'd sometimes didn't find out who the assholes were until you met face-to-face and they inflicted their lack of grace upon you. And you hoped they weren't the one running the club meetings. Sherlockians, sad to say, are not always the best people. There's enough good ones that you could usually get past the awful ones, but now we've got some generational divides hitting us hard and a lot of random intel coming at us before we even meet people. Boomers who are sure things will always be as they were, post-millennials who grew up with fandom habits evolved from other media, people on every side of every spectrum, and as a result, some folks that might seem a lot worse than they really are just because we and they don't quite understand the other side.

Our Sherlockian world doesn't have any official greeters, which means we're all the unofficial greeters, if we're going to interact with others on the subject of Sherlock Holmes. Which is a good subject to have in your mind when you do greet someone, because Sherlock Holmes was, as a part of his detective being, interested in finding out just what other people were about, and what their story was. And there's no better place to start learning about someone knowing that they love Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson as a starting point.

Welcome to the Sherlockian world, if anyone hasn't greeted you yet. Some of us are still trying to figure out how that part works, if this little ramble on the subject hasn't betrayed that fact. Hope you can welcome us to your Sherlockian world as well.

The little worries

Some nights, you wake up with a worry or two. Little things, if you're lucky. Getting your word processing program to function again. The mental duress of the household feline. Little things.

And then your mind might wander to your hobby, as it tends to do, and you worry a little bit about the Sherlock world. Never Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, for despite the possibilities of drug issues or marital disharmony, moments of violence or ravages at the hands of sensational writers, they seem to do okay. But those who follow them, whether they call themselves "fans" or not, often have troubles as well. And you worry about them, in whatever far-off city they dwell.

One might blame social media for this, giving us glimpses into the lives of distant friends in ways we never had before, but distant friends sparked the occasional worry long before we had the internet. We're students of Sherlock Holmes, we tend to observe little details that betray bigger problems. And sometimes, those details aren't so little, seeming glaringly obvious, in fact. And, if you have a heart, they're the sort of details that make you worry.

There's a reason that the phrase "ignorance is bliss" has remained in use for so long. While there are things we can affect and need to be aware of, some others remain forever just beyond our reach, especially when dealing with other humans . . . the ones up close can be hard enough to navigate at times. Distance reduces our powers significantly. There was only so much even Sherlock Holmes could do with a letter or telegram.

So, in the wee small hours of the night, when the worries come creeping around, even good old Sherlockiana can add its fuel to the fire. But the fires of worry come with the warmth of caring, and who knows where a little caring might take you?

It's good to have a few cares, even when they come with worries, just to remind you of the things you need to do in the daylight. Which makes me wonder what Sherlock Holmes worried about in the night. And when I'm back to just wondering about that guy, I know I'm relaxing and it's time to get a little more sleep.

Hope all your night-thoughts lead you back Holmes as well.

Time for focus

So I'm waiting for my computer to finish some little chore that I've instructed it to do, and I'm staring at the wall to the left of the screen. The view looks , in part, like the picture above. And as I contemplate this odd assortment of Sherlock-related bits, each tying to some particular memory . . . except maybe the goat hooves . . . it reminds me of a thought I've been having a lot lately: The need for a cure for loss of Sherlockian focus.

Now, we can get into the over-used amateur diagnosis of "attention deficit disorder," but given the breadth of this hobby we call Sherlockiana, I think we can actually call loss of focus a natural occurrence in the pleasurable sphere we've chosen to spend our free time in. There is just so much that calls to your attentions.

Do I listen to a podcast? Do I read some fanfic? Do I watch a YouTube video? Or do I sit my posterior down and write on one of the three projects aside from this blog that I'm whittling away on. There are more ideas out there these days than any Sherlockian can process, even if you're just taking it in. Add output to the equation, and you're looking at darting from Sher-thing to Sher-thing, as fast as you can go. And sometimes, you have to stop and wash the dishes.

Winter is starting to pass here in the midwest. And as it does, Sherlockian events are going to start picking up. Events one needs to be a little bit ready for. In two short weeks, the fifth "Holmes, Doyle & Friends" takes place in Dayton. Less than two weeks, now, actually. Yikes.

So it comes time to start looking for the outcroppings of this mountain of Sherlock that one really wants to put one's hands on. The ones that might lead to someplace worth climbing toward. Time to focus on something and move forward.

And on into 2018 we go.

The puzzle that is "The Cardboard Box"

Last night's discussion of "The Cardboard Box" at the Peoria library was a lovely mini-vacation after a very tough workday for me, showing once again the value of Sherlock Holmes in one's life.

Any time I look at that particular tale, however, the greatest mystery isn't within the story, but outside it, as "The Cardboard Box" is a tale suppressed by its own author for decades. The reason Conan Doyle suppressed his own work has been given that the tale has an extra-marital affair. But since the collections we know as The Adventures and The Memoirs contain all sorts of other human behaviors, like pre-marital dalliances, previous spouses, and really abusive step-fathers, one has to wonder why wandering spouses where sex wasn't even involved was such a radioactive topic to Doyle.

Especially in a story that involves bashing people's heads in and cutting their ears off.

Reading "The Cardboard Box" this time, it really sunk in just how much Sherlock Holmes distances himself from this case just within his own investigation. In later tales, he'd make a point of luring murderous sailors to Baker Street itself, but here? He just hands Lestrade a card with all the answers and basically says, "Go get 'em, boy!" like the Scotland Yarder is a golden retriever.

Holmes and Watson don't even go down to the jail to hear the murderer's story, as they did on occasion, they just get a nice transcription delivered to Baker Street. For a gruesome murderous case, their main adventure is talking to one nice lady and knocking on the door of another, then not seeing her when they hear she's sick. When it's over, you really had to wonder who told the nice lady that the severed ear she was keeping out back was her own sister's ear.

Even at this remove, Holmes is still a bit devastated by the case: "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?" (He leaves out the circle of loneliness, alcoholism, and manipulation which really drive the drama.) And that makes one wonder about Holmes's early intent of just sitting in Baker Street and consulting from afar . . . was he distancing himself for his own emotional health?

"The Cardboard Box" never gets the full attention it deserves as one of the original twenty-four stories, because Doyle moved it so far back in the Canon and many a reader sees it as a case near the end of Holmes's career, both in detection and as a literary character. Readers also aren't quite as fresh by the time they get to the stories of His Last Bow. Doyle actually altered the way we see the story by his desire to hold it back for decades.

Why was the temptation of a married man, who only just reaches out a hand in his moment of trouble, such a problem for Doyle? Or was it the wife lured away for boat rides with a sailor? The mystery of Conan Doyle's treatment of this one story grows with each year we get further from the Victorian era and his mindset of the time.

From the estate of G. Lestrade

Part of the fine tuning of a Sherlockian mind is to sometimes look at the Canon of Sherlock Holmes from a historical perspective, rather than just as literature. Given, however, that so many of us fall into the collecting habit, there is another frame of reference that occasionally creeps in: that of the collector.

I realized this this morning as I was reading "The Cardboard Box" for tonight's gathering of the Peoria North Branch Library's Sherlock Holmes Story Society. (This particular reading was from the Memoirs edition of Les Klinger's Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, the more portable of his two annotated sets, and the more fan-centric of the two.)  The following line caught my eye:

"Holmes scribbled a few words upon the back of one of his visiting cards and threw it over to Lestrade."

While I have a few reproductions of Holmes's visiting cards that were given to me over the years, I am pretty sure I don't own an original. And I am doubly sure that I don't own that original.

Can you imagine, if at some point early in the last century, some fan of Watson's works had been of the good fortune and presence of mind to attend Inspector Lestrade's estate sale? Yes, yes, in such a world we would also have legacy items of Holmes and Watson themselves, but we would hope that Lestrade preserved a few souvenirs of his work with the famous Sherlock Holmes as well.

And that visiting card, that one particular visiting card, would be a wonderful thing.

How many other physical objects contain Sherlock Holmes's solution to a case, laid out before even Watson knew what the answer was? In Holmes's own handwriting?

That minute bit of manuscript makes this particular visiting card from "The Cardboard Box" the visiting card, the most sought-after of all its brethren for the collector. Should such a thing exist, its owner would be a proud Sherlockian indeed.

And that is something else I love about such imagined collectibles from Watson's records: No one has them. When it comes to those, the greatest of Sherlockian items, we are all on equal footing, regardless of our wealth or proximity to London. Perhaps I betray a jealous side in making that statement, but if you have been bit by the collector's bug at all and possess no envy upon occasion, either you are a true innocent or an absolute liar. A touch of avarice comes tied with collecting gene.

And it's that touch of avarice that makes one's figurative collecting mouth water sometimes when reading of an item like that calling card in "The Cardboard Box." Such a perfect, yet untouchable collectible is the sort of dream of which we can't help but dream of acquiring.

The Sherlock Holmes test

"Now we have the Sherlock Holmes test,and there will no longer be any difficulty."

-- Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

When considering adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlockians will always have their personal preferences. Those little warm spots in our hearts for our first Sherlock do, if we're lucky, stay with us a lifetime, regardless of what the opinions of other Sherlockians may be. And yet . . . we do love to rank our Sherlocks. We hold our worst Sherlocks as dear as our best Sherlocks, and it is as hard to let go of a truly laughable attempt at Holmes as a perfect rendition.

Given all that, should we have an criteria for an adequate Sherlock? A Sherlock Holmes test, if you will? Many is the Sherlockian of old who tried to formulate a "don't do this" list for future authors (who never read or cared about such lists). Story elements that have high market value (Mycroft, Moriarty, non-Canonical celebs) were pooh-poohed as it was suggested that writers attempt the impossible feat of emulating Conan Doyle, which is both dated and impractical a century later.

On the other side of things, slapping the name of "Sherlock Holmes" on the main character in a remake of the movie Die Hard will give you a Sherlock Holmes movie, but should we consider the resulting character a valid Sherlock Holmes among ourselves in the Sherlockian community?

Herein lies the core of what I believe is the one true test of a Sherlock Holmes, for Sherlockians.

If a Sherlockian who read only Conan Doyle and a Sherlockian who watched only BBC Sherlock meet, they still have a common base of knowledge for discussion. Mycroft, Irene Adler, Moriarty . . . even "Charles Augustus Magnussen? Oh, like Milverton!" are all in their common language, meaning basically the same thing. 221B Baker Street is still a cherished address. Sherlock may or may not have a drug problem in either. The Conan Doyle Sherlockian and the Gatiss/Moffat Sherlockian can have a lovely dinner conversation, as, in the end, they are speaking the same language.

It's a bit like speaking across Britsh/American language lines. You don't stop the conversation and go "COOKIE!! It's a COOKIE!! I do not accept that your biscuits are cookies, and beyond that I insist that Nestle's Toll House cookies made according to the exact recipe on the back of the package of chocolate chips are the only real cookie worthy of the name!" No, you let them say biscuit while you say cookie and you go on to debate what the best beverage to accompany said food is.

And like language, new variations on Sherlock will come to be accepted by the Sherlockian community over time, and the generations pass. The bigger the change, the more time we have to get it, to work its way down from the cool hipster Sherlockians to the steadfast conservatives, who may only give ground through attrition. But the basic shared concepts and characters will remain, no matter what Lestrade's first name is or Irene Adler's current gender identification.

And that is where the true Sherlock Holmes test will always lie, I suppose . . . not only in being close enough to the Sherlock in another's mind to share thoughts and feelings on the detective, but also being a Sherlock impactful enough that we want to communicate about him/her, good, bad, or . . . YIKES!

Watson between the sheets

It's not often that Dr. Watson describes a situation in which he finds himself that every one of us can relate to in an instant, feeling a rough approximation of what Watson felt, and knowing that seem little twinge of emotion that comes with it . . . exactly. Perhaps the best of these comes from The Man with the Twisted Lip and reads as follows:

"A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure."

Now, let us avoid those spinning-off-into-porn urges here and look at exactly what he's saying. Watson is weary from the stresses of walking into an opium den where murders happen and a long buggy ride out to the suburbs, all of which happened past his normal bed-time. It's late and he just wants to experience that simple joy of finding one's self between the bed-sheets with nothing else to do but let sleep take hold.

Is there any better moment?

For all we can go on about a perfectly-prepared meal, a lover's touch, a thrilling jump into unknown territory, none of that . . . NONE of that . . . compares to that blissful feeling of being in the sheets knowing that slumber is near. We tend to take it for granted until we are deprived of it. Few joys come so often as this one when all is well.

Imagining that moment, however, feeling it's familiar sensations on the skin in our memories, the immediate question becomes: "Hey! What was Watson wearing? He didn't pack his jammies to go to the opium den!"

While Mrs. St. Clair apologizes for being "wanting in arrangements," the room she provides for her two guests seems very nice. Would some nightshirts have been rustled up? As Watson agreeably gives her a "don't worry, I'm an old campaigner" line to let her off the hostess hook, she may not have gone to any such trouble, but then we are left with some choices.

a.) Watson gets between the sheets fully clothed, but takes off his shoes.

b.) Watson takes off shoes and trousers, tie and collar and any other paraphernalia, and gets between the sheet in shirt-tails and undies.

c.) Watson strips down to his Victorian skivvies to slide between the sheets.

d.) Watson . . . well, I shall politely hide my blog eyes for this one.

Other variations are possible of course, but what is the most probable? Personally, I feel the trousers had to come off. But, hey, it's the Victorian era and maybe he would have been concerned about having to get out of bed without them in a crisis.

Sherlock Holmes spends the night sitting on pillows wrapped in a dressing gown over his shirt and pants, and as he knew he would be spending the night, he may have packed a night-shirt along with that dressing gown and loaned that to Watson.

So many options! We should have Sherlockian micro-debates and have panels present quick points and counter-points over such issues! (And, yes, cutting through the whole thing and getting to sexy-time might be a crowd-pleaser, but restrain yourself.)

For now, however, I feel the call of the sheets myself, and am trying to determine the best way to pay tribute to Watson in that moment. Those details, of course, shall remain between me and my doctor (Watson).