The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes.
One particular imitation, Solar Pons, is so well drawn that he has inspired pastiches and study groups himself. The creation of August Derleth, also known for his horror and science fiction writing and publishing, Pons was admittedly not a copy of Holmes but a purported student of the Master. Set in the decades of the 1910s and 1920s, Pons’s adventures (with his companion Dr. Lyndon Parker) were meticulously crafted mysteries. Derleth’s first story of Pons was written in 1928, with the express permission of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; his seventieth was written in 1971. “Solar Pons is not a caricature of Sherlock Holmes,” wrote Vincent Starrett, in his foreword to the first Pons collection. “He is, rather, a clever impersonator, with a twinkle in his eye, which tells us that he knows he is not Sherlock Holmes, knows that we know it, but that he hopes we will like him anyway for what he symbolizes.” Indeed, Pons was so liked that in 1967, Luther Norris formed the Praed Street Irregulars, patterned after the Baker Street Irregulars, the Sherlock Holmes literary society, and after Derleth’s death, author Basil Copper wrote a number of additional volumes of short stories and a novel about Pons’s further adventures.
A different branch of imitations consists of parodies of the original adventures. The first known series, by R. C. Lehmann, began in 1893, almost immediately upon completion of the appearance of the Memoirs. These were the “Picklock Holes” adventures, which were first published in the magazine Punch. When the adventures comprising the Return began to appear in the Strand Magazine, Lehman revived Picklock, and “Picky Back” stories began in 1903. The parodies were not only British; John Kendrick Bangs, a well-known American humourist, wrote a series of parodies, under both the character name of “Sherlock Holmes” and later that of “Shylock Homes.” The first of these, The Pursuit of the House-Boat, was novel-length and appeared in 1897, dedicated to A. Conan Doyle. The largest series of parodies, with a lead character named Herlock Sholmes, were written by Charles Hamilton under the pseudonym Peter Todd. His efforts were published in various boys’ magazines, including, The Gem, The Magnet, and The Greyfriar’s Herald, between 1915 and 1925. Another early parodist was Maurice Leblanc, creator of the successful rogue Arsène Lupin, who matched wits with Herlock Sholmes in several tales. Modern parodies include such gems as John Ruyle’s “Turlock Loams,” among whose cases are found “The Five Buffalo Chips,” “The Freckled Hand,” and “The Giant Bat of Sonoma,” and Robert L. Fish’s priceless “Schlock Homes” (and “Dr. Watney”) of 221 Bagel Street.
“Picklock Holes.”
A third class of imitations is those using Holmes as an instructor. There are several series of stories relating to bridge (the card game), including Frank Thomas’s and George Gooden’s Sherlock Holmes, Bridge Detective (the series was continued by Thomas alone), and Alfred Sheinwold’s frequent columns. The great mathematician Raymond Smullyan created The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, and there are books on computer languages (e.g., Elementary Basic), numerology, life insurance, gardening, logic, mathematics, and balloon modelling in which Holmes teaches a novice Watson to master these pursuits.
THE STUDY OF THE CANON
SERIOUS study of Sherlock Holmes and the Watsonian Canon is generally considered to begin with Frank Sidgwick, who, under the signature “F. S.,” wrote an “open letter to Dr. Watson,” published in the Cambridge Review of January 23, 1902. Almost simultaneously, in America, Arthur Bartlett Maurice wrote “Some Inconsistencies of Sherlock Holmes” for The Bookman. In 1904, the English critic and poet Andrew Lang, best known for his collections of fairy tales, carefully analysed “The Three Students” in Longman’s Magazine. The real launch of Sherlockian studies, however, can be attributed to Father Ronald Knox, who wrote, as a parody of serious biblical scholarship, a paper entitled “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” (1911). He urged the reader of the Holmes cycle (which in a Biblical reference, became known as the Canon) to apply “the method by which we treat as significant what the author did not mean to be significant, by which we single out as essential what the author regarded as incidental.” There was a special fascination, he suggested, in applying this method to Sherlock Holmes “because it is, in a sense, Holmes’s own method. ‘It has long been an axiom of mine,’ he says, ‘that the little things are infinitely the most important.’ It might be the motto of his life’s work.” The essay became very popular among his fellow Oxford students, but not until 1928, when the essay was published in book form, did it have a more widespread impact. Other scholars in England and America began to publish works considering the biographical aspects of Watson and later Holmes, and in 1934, the first collection of essays, Baker Street Studies, was published in England (by an American, H. W. Bell).
Bell’s fine anthology marks the beginning of the “golden age” of Sherlockian scholarship. This era saw publication of such cornerstones as Christopher Morley’s introduction to The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1930), still in print; Vincent Starrett’s Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1934); 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes, an anthology of essays edited by Starrett (1940); Christopher Morley’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Textbook of Friendship (1944), the first annotated effort (five stories); Ellery Queen’s The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944), a collection of parodies and pastiches; Edgar W. Smith’s anthology Profile by Gaslight: An Irregular Reader about the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1944); and An Irregular Chronology of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street by Professor Jay Finley Christ.
While many other excellent scholarly works were published between the 1940s and the late 1960s, the year 1967 produced probably the most influential work of Sherlockian scholarship ever published, William S. Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Christopher Morley, in introducing his own modest effort at annotating some of Watson’s writing (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Study in Friendship, 1944), wrote, “The enthusiast likes to dream of the great omnibus volume in which the whole Sherlockian codex would be annotated from end to end for a new generation.” Baring-Gould’s two-volume work did precisely that: It included all 60 of the Sherlock Holmes tales, with numerous annotations collecting into summary form the scholarship of the golden age as well as Baring-Gould’s own theories, especially relating to the internal chronology of the stories. With numerous illustrations and useful introductory essays on a variety of Sherlockian topics, Baring-Gould’s work became the standard text of reference for every student of the Canon.
Baring-Gould, the creative director of Time magazine’s Circulation and Corporate Education Department, was known in Sherlockian circles for his chronology of the stories. He had achieved previous success with his biography of Holmes, entitled Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World’s First Consulting Detective, published in 1962. That book had the curious preface, “No characters in this book are fictional, although the author should very much like to meet any who claim to be.” The book was both hailed and criticised by Sherlockians for achieving great success in bringing the “serious” study of Holmes to the public’s attention and for its outlandish theories of Holmes’s encounter with Jack the Ripper, his romance with Irene Adler, and his death. Baring-Gould, the grandson of Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, author of numerous books of ghost lore and local colour, also wrote The Lure of the Limerick and, with his wife, Ceil, co-wrote The Annotated Mother Goose. Unfortunately, he died before The Annotated Sherlock Holmes was published.
A great deal of additional scholarship was written in the ensuing decades. The most important work was the publication of a bibliography by Ronald B. DeWaal in 1974. Entitled The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Classified and Annotated List of Materials Relating to Their Lives and Adventures, the work included a near-comprehensive listing of editions of the tales, foreign editions, scholarly works, pastiches, parodies, films, radio and television shows, stage plays, cartoons, comics, and even puzzles, games, and toys, with over 6,000 entries. This was supplemented in 1980 with another volume of
over 6,000 entries. In 1995, the entire work was reformulated as The Universal Sherlock Holmes, with over 13,000 new entries, for a total of over 25,000 listings. Now available on the Internet, the award-winning bibliography is also available in computerised format.
More recently, another milestone was achieved with the publication in 1993 of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, edited by Owen Dudley Edwards, Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh and author of Quest for Sherlock Holmes: A Biographical Study of Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as Christopher Roden, founder of the “Arthur Conan Doyle Society” and editor of its A.C.D. journal, W. W. Robson, professor emeritus of the University of Edinburgh and author of Modern English Literature, and Richard Lancelyn Green, co-author (with John Michael Gibson) of the definitive bibliography of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. As may be expected, the Oxford edition treats the stories as fiction and traces in detail the literary and bio-graphical antecedents for many of the references in the tales. As such, therefore, it offers little for the Sherlockian scholar, that is, the follower of Father Knox’s dictates, and virtually ignores the vast literature created in Knox’s wake. This deficit was partially remedied in 1998, with the commencement of publication by this editor of the Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, a series of heavily annotated editions of the original nine volumes of the Canon, designed to survey all Sherlockian scholarship to date.
The Baker Street Journal.
Notwithstanding these valuable books, the deepest source for the study of Sherlock Holmes remains the same as at its inception: the scholarly journal. The leading publication is, and has been for over fifty years, The Baker Street Journal, the official publication of The Baker Street Irregulars, a nonprofit organisation whose headquarters is in New York. To understand the origins of the Journal and its numerous companions, one must first consider Holmes’s friends, the various Sherlock Holmes societies and literary organisations around the world.
THE FRIENDS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
ALTHOUGH recent studies suggest that there may have been an organisation of students of Sherlock Holmes in Germany in the 1910s, the first-known formal organisation dedicated to “the study of the Sacred Writings” (as the constitution of the organisation states its purpose) was The Baker Street Irregulars. Officially founded in 1934, it was an outgrowth of the literary critic and author Christopher Morley’s “3 Hours for Lunch” club, an informal group of his literary cronies who met “irregularly” to discuss art and literature over long, alcoholic lunches. Morley had a regular column entitled “Bowling Green” in the Saturday Review of Literature, which he used frequently to write about Holmes, and from Morley’s great love of the Canon sprang the notion for a more formal organisation dedicated to Holmes. Initially, the members exchanged notes of research and contributed “papers” to the general knowledge of Holmes, much as did other scientific and literary groups. In late 1934, a formal meeting was held: a dinner at Christ Cella’s restaurant in New York, attended by luminaries including Morley, actor William Gillette, bookman Vincent Starrett, well-known wit and Algonquin Round Table regular Alexander Woollcott (who wrote a long report on the dinner), and retired boxer Gene Tunney. Morley resisted the notion of regular meetings, however, and the organisation proceeded in a desultory fashion until Morley ceded the leadership to Edgar W. Smith, a vice-president of General Motors overseas operations and a loyal fan of the Great Detective. With the ascension of Smith, the Irregulars took on “regularity.” Membership expanded nationally and today stands at around three hundred diverse individuals. The current head of the Irregulars is known as “Wiggins,” after the head of the gang of street urchins first mentioned in A Study in Scarlet from which the organisation takes its name. Membership is not “open”; it is conferred autocratically on a select few each year by “Wiggins” using criteria shrouded in mystery. Members are young and old and include actors, doctors, lawyers, writers, businesspeople, teachers, librarians, and others who love the study of Holmes; they hail from the United States, England, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Australia. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were Irregulars; so, too, were leading literary figures such as Christopher Morley, Vincent Starrett, Ellery Queen (both of them!), Rex Stout, Isaac Asimov, and Poul Anderson. The Irregulars meet once a year in New York City at a formal dinner attended by Irregulars and specially invited guests that includes toasts, rituals, papers, remembrances, and camaraderie.
Christopher Morley.
In 1946, the Irregulars undertook to publish their “papers” in an academic journal known as The Baker Street Journal. The original Journal was a financial fiasco, and it ceased publication in 1949, after thirteen issues. In January 1951, however, Edgar Smith revived the Journal on a more modest scale, and it flourished. The Journal has been published continuously since 1951 on a quarterly basis and, in celebration of its fiftieth volume in 2001, released its entire run as a CD-ROM archive, containing over 16,000 pages of Sherlockian study.
The friends of Christopher Morley were not alone. Coincidentally, in 1934, a small group of English aficionados formed the Sherlock Holmes Society, which sadly languished.38 As an offshoot of the 1951 Festival of Britain and a magnificent exhibition on Sherlock Holmes, the organisation re-formed as the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and today boasts hundreds of members. The English group has published The Sherlock Holmes Journal regularly since 1951, and it contains much serious “Holmesian”39 study as well as reports of the meetings of the Society. Numerous other national groups have formed as well, including Australian, French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, German, Canadian, and Japanese societies.
While the national-based groups were growing, local interest was also rising. Known as “scion societies”—many of which have been “officially” recognised by the national “root” societies—local or special-interest groups arose to further the study of Holmes. The first of these was The Five Orange Pips of Westchester County, formed in 1935, followed by others in metropolitan areas around America. In Canada, the Bootmakers of Toronto was formed. In Great Britain, independent organisations called the Northern Musgraves (based in northern England) and the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, billing itself as an “international Sherlock Holmes study group,” were formed and fostered their own offspring. Other occupation-based groups arose, such as the Sir James Saunders Society of dermatologists interested in the Canon, The Practical but Limited Geologists, and the Sub-Librarians. A blemish on the history of The Baker Street Irregulars is its evolution into a group that excluded women from active membership. This was rectified in 1991, but not before the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, a national organisation excluding male members, was formed. In 1989, Christopher Roden founded the Arthur Conan Doyle Society, dedicated to the study of all of the works of the author. An incomplete list of the current societies is included as an appendix to these volumes.
Not every “scion society” has a publication, but many produce elaborate, carefully edited journals, rivalling the output of academia. Donald Hobbs’s checklist The Crowded Box-Room, published in 1998, listed over 200 publications, most of which remain active. Among the leaders are Canadian Holmes, the publication of the Bootmakers of Toronto; The Ritual and The Musgrave Papers of the Northern Musgraves; The Camden House Journal of the Occupants of the Empty House; The Passengers’ Log of the Sydney Passengers; and the Shoso-in Bulletin, published by a consortium of Japanese and American scholars. While some societies’ releases consist only of local news, many include high-quality essays and “papers” written by members and other contributors, rivalling those that appear in The Baker Street Journal or The Sherlock Holmes Journal. DeWaal’s bibliography lists thousands of such scholarly works, but thousands more have been published since 1995. With the advent of the Internet, scholarship has expanded into electronic format as well, with scholars around the world contributing their views and thoughtful essays. In addition, dozens of websites feature articles about Holmes and Watson, parodies,
pastiches, and other material relating to their lives and times. Especially noteworthy are the websites of Christopher Redmond, www.sherlockian.net, the centre of the “spider’s web” of Sherlockian materials; The Sherlock Holmes Society of Lon-don (www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk) and The Baker Street Journal (www.bakerstreetjournal.com); and the invaluable reference tools online at the University of Minne-sota Sherlock Holmes Collection website (http://special.lib.umn.edu/rare/ush/ush.html). See the appendix “The Sherlockian Web” for further references.
The topics of Sherlockian scholarship seem inexhaustible. While the classic issues—Watson’s wounds, Watson’s marriages, Holmes’s education, the Great Hiatus, and of course, the chronology of the tales—were amply debated in the golden age, some student always seems to find a new approach. For example, Carey Cummings has daringly created a biorhythmic analysis of the tales and constructed part of an excellent chronology. Also, studies related to the author’s own interests persist. Such a formula follows the logic, “I am interested in the study of X. I am interested in the study of Sherlock Holmes. Therefore, Sherlock Holmes must have been interested in X.” Scholarly works have demonstrated that Holmes was a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a druid, an agnostic, a Catholic, a Stoic, a deist, an atheist; that Holmes studied medicine, law, music, graphology, phrenology, early computer science, astronomy, astrology, numerology, and endless other subjects; that Holmes travelled to Russia, China, India, Tibet, the South Seas, America, Canada, Japan; that Holmes was an American (a thesis asserted by no less than Franklin Delano Roosevelt), a Canadian, a Frenchman. No student of the Canon need fear that, even after 100 years of study, there is nothing left to write about!
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books) Page 6
