Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 16
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Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
CARTOON, by Mark Bilgrey
FROM WATSONS SCRAPBOOK
THE IRONIC STORY OF THE STEVENSON–DOYLE LETTERS, by Gary Lovisi
WILLIAM S. BARING-GOULD AND SHERLOCKIAN SCHOLARSHIP, by Daniel DiQuinzio
A MEDIEVAL MYSTERY, by Peter James Quirk
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BIRTHDAY GIRL! by Richard A. Lupoff
HANGIN’ WITH IRON MIKE, by Stan Trybulski
INSPECTOR ROMFORD’S GREATEST CASES, by John Grant
THE LAST SONG, by Dianne Neral Ell
SANTA AND THE SHORTSTOP, by Steve Liskow
THE CASE OF THE ADDLETON TRAGEDY, by Jack Grochot
THE YELLOW FACE, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
COMING NEXT TIME . . .
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #16 (Vol. 6, No. 1) is copyright © 2015 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved. Visit us at wildsidemagazines.com.
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Publisher: John Betancourt
Editor: Marvin Kaye
Non-fiction Editor: Carla Coupe
Assistant Editor: Steve Coupe
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Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine is published by Wildside Press, LLC. Single copies: $10.00 + $3.00 postage. U.S. subscriptions: $59.95 (postage paid) for the next 6 issues in the U.S.A., from: Wildside Press LLC, Subscription Dept. 9710 Traville Gateway Dr., #234; Rockville MD 20850. International subscriptions: see our web site at
www.wildsidemagazines.com. Available as an ebook through all major ebook etailers, or our web site, www.wildsidemagazines.com.
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The Sherlock Holmes characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are used by permission of Conan Doyle Estate Ltd., www.conandoyleestate.co.uk.
CARTOON, by Mark Bilgrey
FROM WATSONS SCRAPBOOK
My dear friend Sherlock Holmes was so pleased with the previous issue, which was entirely devoted to him, that he is now a bit despondent, inasmuch as he will need to wait till the twentieth number before it happens again.
It also took some doing to let me reprint the “Norwood” adventure; it was, after all, one of his less successful efforts. He finally agreed, though he suggested that I do not allow this issue to lay about in our rooms for him to see. Ah, well…
In the ensuing pages, the estimable Mr Grochot has rendered my notes into an excellent and accurate recounting of the Addleton tragedy.
And now here is my colleague Mr Kaye…
—John H Watson, M D
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I am pleased to offer three articles in this, the sixteenth edition of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Peter James Quirk, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the New York branch of the MWA (Mystery Writers of America), reviews the evidence for and against the British monarch Richard III as to whether he killed the two princes, or whether someone else entirely was responsible. In this, of course, the great Josephine Tey did a fine job of defending Richard in her unusual mystery novel, The Daughter of Time. I never knew what her title meant until I mentioned it to my late friend José Ferrer, who explained that there is a saying that “Truth is the daughter of time.”
Dan Di Quinzio devotes himself to a history of W. S. Baring-Gould, who gave Holmesian devotees the “official” biography of the Great Detective, the Annotated edition of the sixty cases, as well as a biography of the sleuth rumored to be Holmes’s son, Nero Wolfe of West 35th Street, Manhattan.
Gary Lovisi tells of the fascinating correspondence between Dr. Watson’s literary agent Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson.
The other stories in this issue include one author new to these pages: John Grant. The other five have appeared here before—Dianne Neral El, Steve Liskow, Laird Long, Richard Lupoff, and Stan Trybulski.
The coming issue of SHMM will feature a new tale by the estimable Kim Newman as well as more stories by Laird Long and Steve Liskow. Our regular cartoonist Marc Bilgrey also will have a new adventure for us.
There will also be two remarkable articles about criminals, one of whom was friends to nearly all of the Brooklyn police force, while the other became one of England’s most important spies during World War II.
Till then, do write to Mrs Hudson—and remember that we are always interested in new articles, as well as fiction.
Canonically Yours,
—Marvin Kaye
THE IRONIC STORY OF THE STEVENSON–DOYLE LETTERS, by Gary Lovisi
Synchronicity in discovery can be a wonderful thing. When I came upon a two-volume set of The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson I had no idea what gold I would discover within the 900+ pages—some of it, my dear friends, of a Sherlockian nature!
It is not a story of horror, such as that written by Stevenson in his classic, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, but a tale that contains fascinating irony. In fact, it is a strange and interesting story, yet strikes a sad note about the wonderful relationship between two of the most famous and beloved writers of all time. Two men whose works still live with us today and have stood the test of time.
Letter writing was once the major communication medium back in the day. When famed author (and creator of Treasure Island [1883] and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde [1887] among many others), Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the first of four letters to Arthur Conan Doyle in 1893, it was because Stevenson greatly admired Doyle and his work. That feeling of admiration was very much reciprocated by Sir Arthur. Doyle admired Stevenson’s Treasure Island and considered Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde a masterpiece of Gothic storytelling.
Stevenson’s four letters to Doyle appear in a rare two-volume edition The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson edited by Sidney Colvin (Charles Scribners Sons, 1901, New York), the first US edition of Stevenson’s letters. These attractive books are in red cloth binding with gold lettering on cover, spine and top pages edges. Volume One features letters to Stevenson’s friends and family from his younger days from 1868 to 1885. However, we are concerned with Volume Two, containing letters from 1886 to 1894, written to such luminaries as Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, J.M. Barrie, William Morris, Andrew Lang—and his four letters to Arthur Conan Doyle. While the two volumes contain over 900 pages of Stevenson’s letters, editor Sidney Colvin (who knew the author well) stated that they formed a mere 15-20 percent of Stevenson’s overall letters. Interestingly enough, it seemed Stevenson did not like writing letters very much, and he considered himself a bad correspondent.
In his letters to Doyle, Stevenson writes of his recognition of Dr. Joseph Bell as being the basis for Sherlock Holmes. Ironically, it seems the two authors—both Scotsmen who lived in Edinburgh—actually knew Dr. Bell. Even more ironic, Stevenson graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1875, a year before Doyle enrolled there to study medicine. But the irony of this tale does not stop there.
Stevenson was a fan of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and even commented on the Holmes story “The Engineer’s Thumb” in one letter, and on the influence that Doyle had on his classic novel, Treasure Island.
In the book Arthur Conan Doyle, A Life in Letters, edited by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Folly (Penguin Press, 2007), some of Doyle’s letters, most to his mother, Mary, are published. On page 430, Doyle mentions the four letters he received from Stevenson, and wrote about them, “I had the most encouraging letters from him in 1893 and 1894. ‘O frolic fellow-spookiest’ was Stevenson’s curious term of personal salutation on one of these, which showed that he shared my interest in psychic r
esearch but did not take it very seriously.” In fact, I believe Stevenson was lightly teasing Doyle about his spiritualist leanings.
However, as I have stated, there was much more. Stevenson writes about a meeting between the two great authors. This was a rather difficult accomplishment at the time, since in 1893-94—the time Stevenson wrote his four letters to Doyle—he was living far away in the village of Vailima, on the Pacific island of Samoa. Doyle was living in the UK. Almost ten thousand miles separated the two men. However, by this time Stevenson and Doyle had become famous authors and also world travelers—so that while such a meeting might be time-consuming or difficult to schedule—it was eminently possible. The two men very much wanted to meet and the logistics of such a meeting were mentioned in Stevenson’s letters.
In fact, Conan Doyle made definite plans to extend his September, 1894 American Tour. The plan was to leave from San Francisco and include a visit to Stevenson in Samoa—where RLS had made his permanent home since 1890.
Stevenson’s correspondence to Doyle is fascinating and quite lively, at times whimsical and even poetic. The irony and sadness is what we know so many years later, which does not come through in the letters, though Stevenson in his last letter to Doyle does mention his own death.
Now, in his own words, here are Stevenson’s four letters to Doyle, and one reply from Doyle that I was able to find. Here is the actual text of the letters:
Letter: to Doyle
VAILIMA, APIA, SAMOA, APRIL 5TH, 1893
DEAR SIR, — You have taken many occasions to make yourself very agreeable to me, for which I might in decency have thanked you earlier. It is now my turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. That is the class of literature that I like when I have the toothache. As a matter of fact, it was a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the moment effectual. Only the one thing troubles me: can this be my old friend Joe Bell? — I am, yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
P.S. — And lo, here is your address supplied me here in Samoa! But do not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist, from the same source; mine is wrong.
R.L.S.
Letter: Response from Doyle to Stevenson’s April 5, 1893 letter
I’m so glad Sherlock Holmes helped to pass an hour for you. He’s a bastard between Joe Bell [a famous Edinburgh surgeon] and Poe’s Monsieur Dupin (much diluted). I trust that I may never write a word about him again. I had rather that you knew me by my White Company. I’m sending it on the chance that you have not seen it.
Letter: To Doyle
VAILIMA, JULY 12, 1893
MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE — THE WHITE COMPANY has not yet turned up; but when it does—which I suppose will be in the next mail—you shall hear news of me. I have a great talent for compliment, accompanied by a hateful, even a diabolic frankness.
Delighted to hear I have a chance of seeing you and Mrs. Doyle; Mrs. Stevenson bids me say (what is too true) that our rations are often spare. Are you Great Eaters? Please reply. As to ways and means, here is what you will have to do. Leave San Francisco by the down mail, get off at Samoa, and twelve days or a fortnight later, you can continue your journey to Auckland per Upolu, which will give you a look at Tonga and possibly Fiji by the way. Make this a FIRST PART OF YOUR PLANS. A fortnight, even of Vailima diet, could kill nobody.
We are in the midst of war here; rather a nasty business, with the head-taking; and there seem signs of other trouble. But I believe you need make no change in your design to visit us. All should be well over; and if it were not, why! You need not leave the steamer—
Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Letter: To Doyle
VAILIMA, AUGUST 23RD, 1893
MY DEAR DR. CONAN DOYLE, — I am reposing after a somewhat severe experience upon which I think it my duty to report to you. Immediately after dinner this evening it occurred to me to re-narrate to my native overseer Simele your story of THE ENGINEER’S THUMB. And, sir, I have done it. It was necessary, I need hardly say, to go somewhat farther afield than you have done. To explain (for instance) what a railway is, what a steam hammer, what a coach and horse, what coining, what a criminal, and what the police. I pass over other and no less necessary explanations. But I did actually succeed; and if you could have seen the drawn, anxious features and the bright, feverish eyes of Simele, you would have (for the moment at least) tasted glory. You might perhaps think that, were you to come to Samoa, you might be introduced as the Author of THE ENGINEER’S THUMB. Disabuse yourself. They do not know what it is to make up a story. THE ENGINEER’S THUMB (God forgive me) was narrated as a piece of actual and factual history. Nay, and more, I who write to you have had the indiscretion to perpetrate a trifling piece of fiction entitled THE BOTTLE IMP. Parties who come up to visit my unpretentious mansion, after having admired the ceilings by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last secret burst from them: ‘Where is the bottle?’ Alas, my friends (I feel tempted to say), you will find it by the Engineer’s Thumb! Talofa-soifuia.
Oa’u, O lau no moni, O Tusitala.
More commonly known as,
R.L. STEVENSON.
Have read the REFUGEES; Conde and old P. Murat very good; Louis XIV and Louvois with the letter bag very rich. You have reached a trifle wise perhaps; too MANY celebrities? Though I was delighted to re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your high water mark; ’tis excellently human, cheerful and real. Do it again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good. Have you any document for the decapitation? It sounds steepish. The devil of all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV is DISTINCTLY GOOD. I am much interested with this book, which fulfills a good deal, and promises more. Question: How far a Historical Novel should be wholly episodic? I incline to that view, with trembling. I shake hands with you on old Murat.
R.L.S.
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[This letter refers to articles by various authors in the magazine, Idler, under the title “My First Book.”]
Letter: To Doyle
VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1894
MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE, — If you found anything to entertain you in my TREASURE ISLAND article, it may amuse you to know that you owe it entirely to yourself. YOUR ‘First Book’ was by some accident read aloud one night in my Baronial ’All. I was consumedly amused by it, so was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt up back IDLERS and read the whole series. It is a rattling good series, even people whom you would not expect came in quite the proper tone—Miss Braddon, for instance, who was really one of the best where all are good—or all but one! …in short, I fell in love with ‘The First Book’ series, and determined that it should be all our first books, and that I could not hold back where the white plume of Conan Doyle waved gallantly in the front. I hope they will republish them, though it’s a grievous thought to me that that effigy in the German cap—likewise the other effigy of the noisome old man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage—should be perpetuated. I may seem to speak in pleasantry—it is only a seeming—that German cap, sir, would be found, when I come to die, imprinted on my heart. Enough—my heart is too full. Adieu. — Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
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Alas, with plans set and both men willing, the greatest irony of all is that these two giants of popular fiction would never meet. The most ironic event of all—obviously instituted by the Fates themselves—in the same month that Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls—Robert Louis Stevenson suffered a brain hemorrhage and died in his beloved Samoa. He was only 44 years old.
References:
The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Sidney Colvin, Charles Scribners Sons, 1901, New York. Stevenson photos are reproduced from these editions.
Arthur Conan Doyle, A Life in Letters edited by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley, Penguin Press, 2007.
“Dr. Doyle and Mr. Stevenson” by Mark Shanahan, Alley Theater website.
“Robert Louis Stevenson’s Letters to Doyle 1893-4” in Markings, internet, no author listed, June 21, 2012.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Lovisi is an MWA Edgar-nominated author for Best Short Story for his Sherlock Holmes pastiche “The Adventure of The Missing Detective.” He is a Holmes fan, collector, and writes various articles and short stories of, and about, The Great Detective, some of which have appeared in this magazine. He is the editor of Paperback Parade and Hardboiled magazines, and of the recent Sherlock Holmes anthology, The Great Detective: His Further Adventures (Wildside Press). You can find out more about him and his work at his website: www.gryphonbooks.com.
WILLIAM S. BARING-GOULD AND SHERLOCKIAN SCHOLARSHIP, by Daniel DiQuinzio
THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF WILLIAM S. BARING-GOULD TO MODERN SHERLOCKIAN SCHOLARSHIP
The writer William Stuart Baring-Gould was born in Minnesota in 1913. He was the grandson of the Victorian writer Sabine Baring-Gould, who wrote both novels and ghost stories. Sabine Baring-Gould also authored the sixteen-volume series The Lives of the Saints between 1872 and 1877. Although his grandfather died in 1924, William S. Baring-Gould inherited his grandfather’s passion for literature.
After high school graduation, Baring-Gould attended the University of Minnesota where he studied marketing. There he met Lucile Marguerite Woody, whom he married in 1936. After graduation, the marketing department of Hearst Publications employed him. In 1938, he left Hearst Publications for Time, Inc., for which he worked as the copy editor for several magazines while also contributing literary work to some of these periodicals. He became the creative director of Time, Inc.’s circulation department.