“gifted with imagination” [SILV]
We enjoy the frivolities and the seriousness of the literary society the Baker Street Irregulars thanks to Christopher Morley, who founded the group in 1934.
Morley was widely known and admired in his day, a bookman, columnist, poet, novelist, and essayist, among other things.
One of our favorites of his is Prefaces Without Books, a compilation of 30 prefaces he wrote. Spanning from Tom Sawyer to The Complete Sherlock Holmes to The Essays of Francis Bacon and Kidnapped, the book is constructed in such a way that it doesn’t require a full commitment; you can read as many or as few essays as you like at a time, and you'll still walk away satisfied.
It’s an entire book that has no beginning, middle, or end, and is simply chapter after chapter of reveries and personal anecdotes, wrapped in the dust jacket of literature.
In his preface to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass we find a validation of People Like Us ― people enamored with books; people who can find meaning in pages that haven't been opened for decades (or longer); people who find inspiration in nearly everything they read. In this preface wrote of one of his own favorite tributes to Leaves of Grass, penned by another author:
“The passage I mean was written in 1887 by Robert Louis Stevenson. I wish it might be printed on the wrapper of every copy of the Leaves:
‘A book of singular service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation. . . But it is only a book for those who have the gift of reading.’
“How extraordinarily rare are those that have the Gift, is little guessed. To read not as a receptacle but as collaboratory; to read not merely to be amused or shocked or anaesthatized; to read, in short, to resensitize One’s Self — this is an achievement. It cannot and dare not happen too often.”
The collaboratory of Sherlockians is legendary, as we've build on Conan Doyle's original work and on the work of fellow students toiling in the vineyards, thanks in large part to Morley's encouragement.
Doubleday asked him in 1930 to write the preface to the memorial edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes upon the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His preface “In Memoriam Sherlock Holmes” was more than an essay summing up the 60 stories; it was an introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes devotees:
“One of the blissful ways of passing an evening, when you encounter another dyed-in-the-blood addict, is to embark upon the happy discussion of minor details of Holmesiana. ‘Whose gold watch was it that had been so mishandled?’ one may ask; and the other counters with ‘What was the book that Joseph Stangerson carried in his pocket?’ Endless delicious minutiae to consider!”
Minutiae indeed. Something that the boys at Baker Street Elementary best pay attention to.
Baker Street Elementary follows the original adventures of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, as they and their friends work through the issues of elementary school in Victorian London. An archive of all previous episodes can be viewed at the Baker Street Elementary website.
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