I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

The Tangled Skeins of Sherlock Holmes: An Interview with David Marcum

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"another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein" [HOUN]</h4>
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There are good pastiche writers, there are great ones, and then there is David Marcum who ranks among the very best. His short story collections, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1cPm6j4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Papers of Sherlock Holmes</a></i> are some of the top selling Sherlock Holmes books, with good reason. His mysteries are complex, and his Holmes and Watson come straight out of the canon. Doyle would be proud to see his characters continuing on in Mr. Marcum's writing.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to interview Mr. Marcum on his latest Holmes short story collection entitled <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1IQANil" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes:  Tangled Skeins</a></i>.  I contacted him via e-mail and asked about the book, his upcoming projects, and his view on nontraditional versions of Sherlock Holmes.</div>
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<b>IHOSE:  <o:p></o:p><i>Tangled Skeins</i> is an unusual title for a Sherlock Holmes book.  Where did it come from and what does it mean?</b></h4>
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<b>David Marcum:</b> The title for the new book, <i>Sherlock Holmes – Tangled Skeins</i>, is taken from the original title of <i>A Study in Scarlet, </i>which was first called <i>A Tangled Skein. </i>It also comes from a couple of quotes in that book, where Holmes states: <i>“</i><i><span lang="EN">There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it . . . ”</span></i><span lang="EN"> and also <i>“I have now in my hands . . . all the threads which have formed such a tangle.”</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">The phrase “tangled skein” is never used in <i>A Study in Scarlet</i>, but it has come to be somewhat associated with Holmes, much like the more well-known but never-actually-uttered-in-The-Canon phrase <i>“Elementary, my dear Watson.” </i>There have been a couple of other Sherlockian books with this phrase in their title, including <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1HiQhr3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Tangled Skein</a>, </i>David Stuart Davies’ Holmes-versus-Dracula pastiche. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">My use of the phrase in the title comes from my long-held belief that Holmes was much busier than it has always appeared, and that many of his cases overlapped one another. For many years, I’ve kept a chronology of Holmes and Watson’s lives, based on both the Canon and the thousands of pastiches I’ve collected and read since I was a kid in the mid-1970’s. (For an extensive explanation of this chronology, see <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7555285-a-view-into-the-great-watsonian-oversoul-part-two-of-the-interview-with" target="_blank">one of my previous interviews by Derrick here</a>.)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">By breaking down all of these thousands of pastiches into a day-by-day chronology, one can see that Holmes’s cases often overlapped each other. In this new book, Watson explains that when he assembled different stories for publication over the years, he had to pull out individual threads from the tangled skein of these intertwined cases, so that each story would appear to stand alone, rather than confuse the issue by referring to so many other simultaneous adventures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">In my first book, <i>The Papers of Sherlock Holmes,</i> there is a story called “The Haunting of Sutton House,” which tells of two nearly-simultaneous but unconnected cases. As I was “editing” Watson’s notes for this new volume, it occurred to me that every one of these tales was in some way related to another adventure, either because they were happening at the same time, or they were related to a past case. My initial title for the book was the prosaic <i>Sherlock Holmes: The Gower Street Murder and Other Stories. </i>Almost at the last minute, just before time to submit the whole thing to the publisher, I was walking in a local park, and the current title popped into my head. It seemed to encompass the idea of all of these interrelated cases. When I got back home, I ran it by my wife and son, and they liked it much better, and so it became <i>Sherlock Holmes: Tangled Skeins.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<b>IHOSE:  Your book has a great three part introduction about your time in England before writing, or perhaps I should say editing, this book.  My favorite part of the introduction was about your persuasion towards wearing deerstalker hats. What made you decide to write a personal and witty introduction about yourself?  Why didn't you just dive in with your stories?</b></h4>
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<b>DM:</b> The introduction worked backwards from the introductions to the three <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1eh3UQu" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes in Montague Street</a> </i>books, published in 2014. In those books, I explained how I was approached in London by someone who saw me wearing a deerstalker, during my Holmes Pilgrimage in September 2013, and given the Watsonian manuscripts that eventually led to those books. I’ve always loved reading those introductions in different pastiches that relate how Watson’s various “lost” stories have been discovered, right back to when I first read Nicholas Meyer’s <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1cPmoq8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Seven-Per-Cent Solution</a></i> and <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1eh4ldF" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The West End Horror</a> </i>in the 1970’s.</div>
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By elaborating on the introduction from the <i>Montague Street </i>books, and explaining in greater depth how I came across this additional batch of Watson’s notebooks, I was able to work in more details about my trip to England, where I traveled in order to walk in Holmes and Watson’s footsteps. It was a nearly religious experience for me. One important aspect of that trip was that my only companion was my deerstalker, as my wife and son stayed at home in Tennessee. As I explain in the book, I’ve been wearing deerstalkers as my only hat, from fall to spring every year, since I was nineteen years old. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I went to England and Scotland in 2013, I wore it literally everywhere to every one of the countless Holmes sites that I was able to track down, based on hundreds of hours of research using over a dozen Holmes travel books in my collection. (As I relate in the book’s introduction, if it wasn’t Holmes-related, I pretty-much didn’t do it. For example, I didn’t go on the London Eye, as it has nothing to do with Holmes, but I did visit The Tower – not because of its historic or tourist importance, but because it’s been so important in a great number of really good pastiches.) I wouldn’t have considered a trip to the Holmesland without taking and wearing my deerstalker to every single place.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’d considered writing an essay about wearing the deerstalker for a long time, and also composing one about my Holmes journey. This introduction seemed like a good way to lead from my long-standing deerstalker use to my trip, and from that to how I obtained the stories.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>IHOSE:  One of your stories, "The Matter of Boz's Last Letter," is a complex mystery involving the possible ending to Dickens's <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i>.  Was this story inspired by Dickens who is known for his intricate plots?</b></h4>
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<b>DM: </b>Actually, I’m a casual fan of Dickens, although it would seem as if I have a greater-than-casual interest in his works, based on the fact that my novel <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1eh4ptQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt</a></i> (2013) has such a Dickensian influence, and now he’s mentioned in this story too. When I sit down, I write very organically, without a solid plot in mind. I just listen to Holmes and Watson and transcribe what happens – it allows for things to occur that I couldn’t plan. All I knew when this story started was that Holmes and Watson were visited by an auctioneer who needed help recovering a stolen item. I found out as Holmes and Watson did what the item was. Later, when Holmes was facing the tedious business of interviewing numerous auction house employees, he and I were both very relieved when a note arrived from Mycroft, short-circuiting the process, and necessitating a visit to the Diogenes Club, where the whole matter turned out to be something of a Victorian wiki-leak. In the end, the Dickens letter was simply a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin" target="_blank">MacGuffin</a>.</div>
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<b>IHOSE:  Two of your stories involve the extended family of Holmes characters.  We meet the sister of Mrs. Hudson and the mother of Wiggins, the Baker Street Irregular.  How did you come about creating these new Holmes characters?  </b></h4>
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<b>DM: </b>Again, this all came about from simply dictating the conversations that I overhear when I let the characters talk. In the case of meeting Mrs. Hudson’s sister, Holmes and Watson encounter her on a train, and Holmes deduces that she is on her way to visit him, and not her sister, in Baker Street. I was as surprised as Watson when Holmes pointed out all of the clues that indicated that she was our favorite landlady’s sister. In the tale about Wiggins’s mother, I knew that I wanted to tell a story about why there are so many different Wiggins boys (and sometimes girls) in all the different pastiches that occur over several decades, and these children/teens never seem to age. I knew why I thought this was the case – there was obviously a whole family of them who had sworn service to Holmes for some reason. What could make them do that? When the story begins, Watson meets a grown Wiggins while both are sheltering in a doorway from a sudden rainstorm. (Coincidentally, it is the very same door where I hid from the rain one day during some of my London explorations.) As the story progresses, we learn what happened to Mrs. Wiggins over twenty years before, how a much-younger Holmes saved her, and why the family is so grateful.</div>
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<b>IHOSE:  You have stated repeatedly that you prefer traditional Sherlock Holmes stories and don't like modernizations or Holmes in alternative histories.  Are there any non-traditional Sherlock Holmes stories that you enjoy, or do you feel Holmes stories only work when they are traditional?  </b></h4>
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<b>DM:</b> My preference for traditional Classic Holmes goes back to the fact that he is the person that I encountered when I first started reading the Canon in 1975, when I was ten years old. Not long after, my parents gave me Baring-Gould’s Holmes biography, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1HvMpbA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street</a>. </i>I don’t agree with everything in that book, but it’s a great jumping-off place. One aspect of the book was that it taught me about "playing The Game<i>,</i>" where Holmes and Watson are treated as actual people who historically lived during the Victorian and Edwardian ages. It was Dorothy L. Sayers who rightly said that The Game “<span lang="EN">must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord's.”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">When I read a few years ago that BBC Wales was going to produce a new series of Holmes stories for television, with the actors younger and more age-appropriate than what has sometimes been portrayed in films, I was very excited. But then I was saddened to hear that the stories were going to be updated to the modern world. At that point, to me, they were no longer about Holmes and Watson, the historical figures. Rather they were stories about similar-behaving – but very different nonetheless – characters who just happened to have the same names.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">There have been other modernized Holmes tales, where the character has the same name and skills and actions, but he isn’t Holmes in those cases either. There were a couple of television films in the 1980’s where a cryogenically frozen Holmes was thawed out in modern times with a modern-day Watson. Then there was the cartoon series <i>Sherlock Holmes in the 22<sup>nd</sup> Century. </i>A series of Star Trek fan-fictions, published as <i>Holmes of the Federation</i>, relates investigations by Holmes and Watson clones in the days of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Even <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2012/09/in-animated-conversation-redh_11.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Daffy Duck makes a pretty good Holmes</a> in “Deduce, You Say,” facing The Shropshire Slasher. All of them try to accurately portray a Holmes-like character, but none of them <i>is</i> Holmes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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To me, removing Holmes and Watson from the Victorian and Edwardian eras means that they’re not Holmes and Watson anymore. As I’ve said to a few folks, it’s like if <span class="il"><i>Star</i></span><i> <span class="il">Wars</span></i> were reimagined and set in the Old West. Consider: Luke Skywalker, living in a dusty desert town, meets a crazy old prospector/ex-soldier named Ben Kenobi. They find out about a girl that needs to be rescued, and they hire a roguish wagon driver, Hans, and his big hairy unintelligible tobacco-chewing side-kick (named Chew ‘Bac’er) to take them somewhere. Then there is some big-shot with a pun-like name similar to Darth Vader who has built a Death Wagon, and so on. The character names are the same or similar, and there are all sorts of winks and nods to the original fans, showing that the creators are very familiar with the original material, but it’s just not <span class="il"><i>Star</i></span><i> <span class="il">Wars</span> </i>anymore.<span lang="EN"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">Some might remind me that Basil Rathbone portrayed Holmes in a modern setting in twelve of his fourteen films – all of the ones that he made for Universal. It’s my belief that the first three Universal films are actually <a href="http://www.solarpons.com/" target="_blank">Solar Pons</a> cases. (As I’ve said elsewhere, if you don’t know who Solar Pons is, find him and read about him. I expounded on this idea in a <i><a href="http://bakerstreetjournal.com/" target="_blank">Baker Street Journal</a></i> essay, “Basil Rathbone’s Solar Pons Films.”) The other nine universal stories, also set in contemporary 1940s times, could have all been cases taken from Watson’s notes, originally set around the time of World War I, and simply updated by filmmakers during World War II. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent to watch as someone portraying Sherlockian traits. (So was Hugh Laurie as Dr. House, for that matter.) Cumberbatch was excellent when he portrayed the true Victorian Holmes in a series of four audio readings on CD, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1LdRHq8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Rediscovered Railway Mysteries</a>. </i>(This set is about to be reissued.) I’ve always wished to see him play the true Holmes on film, and it looks like – if all reports are accurate – that we’ll finally have a chance later this year when a stand-alone episode will show Cumberbatch and Freeman’s Holmes and Watson in the correct time period, where it’s always 1895, or at least a decade or so on either side of that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">Don’t get me wrong – I do enjoy watching the Cumberbatch <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1Gr6mPe" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock</a></i> episodes that have come out so far. In fact, I’ve watched them multiple times. My 23-year-old son really enjoys them. They are extremely well done, and I’m glad that they’ve helped to open up and fuel the fires of the latest Holmes Golden Age. But to me, they’re just not about the <i>true</i> Holmes. Luckily, new pastiches and films about the Great Detective that was born in 1854 are always appearing for Holmes addicts like me.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>IHOSE:  What are your current projects?</b></h4>
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<b>DM:</b> The big thing on my plate right now is assembling and editing a massive anthology of new traditional Holmes stories, to be published in the fall of 2015 by <a href="http://www.mxpublishing.com/category/Sherlock+Holmes+Books" target="_blank">MX Publishing</a>. It’s going to be a two-volume hardcover set, containing approximately 60 new full-length adventures. All royalties will go to benefit the <a href="http://www.saveundershaw.com/" target="_blank">Undershaw Preservation Trust</a>, which, as many people know, was set up to protect one of Doyle’s homes, where he was living when he wrote <i>The Hound</i> and <i>The Return.</i></div>
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In late January, I literally woke up early one morning dreaming about this book. If I’d rolled over and gone back to bed, I would have forgotten about it. But I went ahead and got up, started making a wish list of authors that I wanted to participate, and emailed Steve Emecz to see what he thought. He was very positive, so I started sending invitations to authors. Initially it was going to be a paperback book, with one or two dozen stories. As it escalated, and the scope of the project grew, so did the book’s size. When it became too big, and seemed as if it were getting so fat that it might split in half, Steve upgraded it to two volumes. About 25% of the authors are from MX, and the others are a mixture who are with other publishers, along with a few first-timers as well. We currently have authors, many well-known, from the U.S., Canada, all over Great Britain, New Zealand, and India. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I think that this will possibly be the biggest collection of new Holmes stories that has been published as part of one collection. I’m so fortunate to be able to work on this. I’ve become acquainted with some really great people along the way, and the stories that I’ve received so far are all outstanding additions to the overall Holmes Tapestry.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>IHOSE:  Any last thoughts?</b></h4>
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<b>DM:</b> I want to thank Derrick for arranging this interview. I always appreciate the opportunity to ramble on about Mr. Holmes. As I mentioned, we’re living in the latest Holmes Golden Age, and this means that there are so many ways to appreciate The Master, whether it’s the traditional way that I favor, or approaching it from a more modern direction. I can’t wait to see what happens next!</div>
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More interviews with David Marcum can be found <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7432054-author-interview-with-david-marcum-author-of-the-papers-of-sherlock-hol" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7555285-a-view-into-the-great-watsonian-oversoul-part-two-of-the-interview-with" target="_blank">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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David welcomes comments or questions, and can be reached at:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="mailto:thepapersofsherlockholmes@gmail.com">thepapersofsherlockholmes@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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The Tangled Skeins of Sherlock Holmes: An Interview with David Marcum

"another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein" [HOUN] There are good pastiche writers, there are great...

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by Belanger Books

Victoria Day

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"What a queen she...made!" [SCAN]</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8zRd_Ifv2OOUdDlV8fJzdxGvUs0t0_3TCASSPd0nmvSJ-t9sqs1ELyQ8eSMRwYIPY0raDjCb10HyUrjPInkYLkjG6HlONbH2LJ3xbhwoMne1OJUVMnCIA0VOzwRwBV_C6H-hglQoIEvcL/s1600/Happy+Victoria+Day+-+a+day+of+loafing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Victoria Day - a day of loafing for Canadians" border="0" height="528" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8zRd_Ifv2OOUdDlV8fJzdxGvUs0t0_3TCASSPd0nmvSJ-t9sqs1ELyQ8eSMRwYIPY0raDjCb10HyUrjPInkYLkjG6HlONbH2LJ3xbhwoMne1OJUVMnCIA0VOzwRwBV_C6H-hglQoIEvcL/s640/Happy+Victoria+Day+-+a+day+of+loafing.jpg" title="Happy Victoria Day" width="640" /></a></div>
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Today -- Monday, May 18 -- is Victoria Day in most of Canada, an occasion that patriotic citizens celebrate by shooting the initials "VR" into the sitting-room wall.<br />
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Well, maybe not quite that. In my experience, people who own cottages mark the Victoria Day long weekend by "opening up" the cottage for the summer season, and those who don't have cottages mark the day by cleaning the spiders out of the barbecue and stocking up on beer. In fact the event is often informally called "the May two-four weekend", referring both to its traditional date, May 24, and the standard size of a carton of beer, 24 bottles and known as a two-four.<br />
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The holiday honors Queen Victoria, who was born May 24, 1819, and reigned from 1837 to her death in 1901. The queen was clearly important to Sherlock Holmes, and not only because of the famous "VR" which Watson mentions with disapproval in "The Musgrave Ritual". (And wouldn't we like to know what Mrs. Hudson thought about that exercise in marksmanship!) <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh31H-eqOF2VRymJsC_XxWF8SnoaVRylcKovyfZMGf0piJgdsJFRKfW3Ttlow7exIqYUquKMtPQNnSPCwGzHqiUP7pNQnjjZewAupDJfaeKjWLbOBLYmfqZYw88llxzKAPszBZqdEceinzu/s1600/VR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh31H-eqOF2VRymJsC_XxWF8SnoaVRylcKovyfZMGf0piJgdsJFRKfW3Ttlow7exIqYUquKMtPQNnSPCwGzHqiUP7pNQnjjZewAupDJfaeKjWLbOBLYmfqZYw88llxzKAPszBZqdEceinzu/s400/VR.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Holmes had a closer brush with the queen at the end of "The Bruce-Partington Plans": we are told that he "spent a day at Windsor, whence he returned with a remarkably fine emerald tie-pin. When I asked him if he had bought it, he answered that it was a present from a certain gracious lady." Windsor Castle, west of London, was Victoria's favorite residence in her later years, and politicians as well as consulting detectives were obliged to go there if the Queen had business with them.<br />
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As happens so often in the stories, Holmes foreshadows that ending by something he says earlier in the same tale: "All the queen's horses and all the queen's men cannot avail in this matter." References to the queen (and the Court of Queen's Bench, and arrest "in the queen's name") are a canonical commonplace.<br />
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But Victoria was, if anything, more important to Canada than to Britain, for in the mother country she counts as merely one in a thousand-year sequence of monarchs. Canada, on the other hand, was essentially built during Victoria's reign, and is the only country where her birthday has become a public holiday. In the very year she came to the throne, the Rebellion of 1837 in what is now Ontario led to concessions in the direction of democratic government. (Quebec had a similar rebellion the following year.) A national government for Canada was organized thirty years later, as Victoria signed the British North America Act and personally selected a tiny remote lumber town to be the capital city, now called Ottawa. The country has not one but two major cities named for the queen, Victoria (in British Columbia) and Regina (in Saskatchewan). VR, remember!<br />
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As a result, Victoria's birthday was a holiday from the country's earliest years. My mother can remember a rhyme that children still chanted in the 1920s:<br />
     Twenty-fourth of May,<br />
     The queen's birthday!<br />
     If you don't give us a holiday<br />
     We'll all run away!<br />
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The "Queen's Birthday" was renamed Empire Day after Victoria's death, and more recently it became Victoria Day. It's now celebrated on May 24 only if that day falls on a Monday; otherwise it falls on the Monday just prior.<br />
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Until about twenty years ago, it was traditional to set off fireworks on Victoria Day, but that part of the celebration has now, under the influence of Independence Day south of the international border, been shifted to Canada Day on July 1. There are, really, no civic events associated with Victoria Day, just the cottage-opening and beer-drinking . . . and, perhaps, here and there, a little reading of Sherlock Holmes.<br />
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Happy loafing!<br />
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<i>Image credit: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Official_Birthday#/media/File:Bread_ticket_for_royal_birthday_1859_Toronto_Canada.jpg" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></i><br />
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Victoria Day

"What a queen she...made!" [SCAN] Today -- Monday, May 18 -- is Victoria Day in most of Canada, an occasion that patriotic ...

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by Chris Redmond

The 1916 William Gillette "Sherlock Holmes" Is Available for Order on Blu-ray / DVD

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"the torture of anticipation" [3GAB]</h4>
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Last October, we helped break the news that the 1916 film <i>Sherlock Holmes</i> starring William Gillette <a href="http://ihose.co/1916film" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">had been discovered</a>. The film underwent restoration by the Cinémathèque Française and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival before being screened in Paris on January 31, 2015. The film is set for its American screening on May 31, 2015 at the <a href="http://silentfilm.org/" target="_blank">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a> (tickets may still be available!).<br />
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Today, we received word that <a href="http://amzn.to/1Fpo72u" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the film is now available for pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD</a>.</h4>
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<a href="http://amzn.to/1Fe0SFs" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><img alt="Sherlock Holmes (1916) starring William Gillette on Blu-ray" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3oBfEmyhsq5aVh_bH3rCBs3NgkARkbnVmGv7adPO-7Kv5yEqABQdQP8nu9kBXBs4ZAQ1XH-xwsU19lk8ZFA_HDdHRFhQqfhAviA3VU0Zu_YvE7KGIg2rauzk0sb6vAShM6-KfiDteQdIU/s320/Gillette+Sherlock+Holmes+1916+Blu-ray.jpg" title="Sherlock Holmes (1916) starring William Gillette" width="258" /></a></div>
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<b>From the description on Amazon:</b><br />
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In commemoration of the 99th anniversary of the film's original release, Flicker Alley along with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and la Cinémathèque française is proud to present the Blu-ray/DVD premiere of one of the Holy Grails of lost films: William Gillette's <i><b>Sherlock Holmes</b></i>.<br />
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Long considered lost until a complete dupe negative was identified in the vaults of la Cinémathèque française last year, this William Gillette film is a vital missing link in the history of Sherlock Holmes on screen. By the time it was produced at Essanay Studios in 1916, Gillette had been established as the world's foremost interpreter of Holmes on stage having played him approximately 1,300 times since his 1899 debut. This newly-restored edition, thanks to the monumental efforts of both the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and la Cinémathèque française, represents the sole surviving appearance of Gillette's Holmes on film. Presented with optional French and English intertitles and an original score composed and performed by Neil Brand, Guenter Buchwald, and Frank Bockius, Flicker Alley is honored to bring <b><i>Sherlock Holmes</i></b> onto <u>Blu-ray and DVD</u> for the first time ever.<br />
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The film faithfully retains the play's famous set pieces: Holmes's encounter with Professor Moriarty, his daring escape from the Stepney Gas Chamber, and the tour-de-force deductions. It also illustrates how Gillette, who wrote the adaptation himself, wove bits from Conan Doyle's stories ranging from "A Scandal in Bohemia" to "The Final Problem," into an original, innovative mystery play.<br />
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Film restorer Robert Byrne says, </div>
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"It's an amazing privilege to work with these reels that have been lost for generations. William Gillette's <b><i>Sherlock Holmes</i></b> has ranked among the Holy Grails of lost film and my first glimpse of the footage confirms Gillette's magnetism. Audiences are going to be blown away when they see the original Sherlock Holmes on screen for the first time."</blockquote>
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<b>Bonus Materials Include: </b><br />
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<li><i>Sherlock Holmes Baffled</i> (1900): Courtesy of the Library of Congress and presented in HD, this is the earliest known film to feature the character of Sherlock Holmes. </li>
<li><i>A Canine Sherlock</i> (1912): From the EYE Film Institute, the film stars Spot the Dog as the titular character. </li>
<li><i>Più forte che Sherlock Holmes</i> (1913): Also from the EYE Film Institute, this entertaining Italian trick-film owes as much to Méliès as it does Doyle. </li>
<li>HD transfers from the Fox Movietone Collection: Interview with Arthur Conan Doyle and outtakes from a 1930 broadcast with William Gillette showing off his amateur railroad (University of South Carolina). </li>
<li>A PDF manuscript of the 1899 <i>Sherlock Holmes</i> play by William Gillette. </li>
<li>A PDF of the original contract between William Gillette and the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company. </li>
<li>A booklet featuring images from the film and information about the restoration project.</li>
</ul>
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This film is not to be missed and is a must for every Sherlockian's video library.<br />
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What are you waiting for? <a href="http://amzn.to/1Fe0SFs" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pre-order your copy from Amazon today</a>. Available now for pre-oder, with release on October 20, 2015.<br />
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<i><b>A note:</b> if you order through the links we provide, it helps to support the operations of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.</i><br />
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The 1916 William Gillette "Sherlock Holmes" Is Available for Order on Blu-ray / DVD

"the torture of anticipation" [3GAB] Last October, we helped break the news that the 1916 film Sherlock Holmes starring Will...

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by Scott Monty

Episode 77: The Speckled Band of Boston

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"It is a nice household." [SPEC]</h4>
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It's been exactly one month since our last episode, as is our tradition on the 15th of every month, we bring you another episode of our show. In this episode, come with us to Boston as we investigate the Speckled Band of Boston - the oldest scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars, which was founded in 1940.<br />
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In addition to a recap of some of the main Sherlock Holmes news of the last month, we bring you a number of special audio features. Burt and Scott both attended the 75th annual dinner of the Speckled Band of Boston and captured some audio of the evening, to give you a sense of what goes on at this august institution.<br />
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We ran into James O'Leary, a contributor of this site, and he presented us with copies of his entry in the <a href="http://johnhwatsonsociety.com/monographs" target="_blank">John H. Watson Monograph Series</a>, <i>Some Observations Upon the Early Writings of John H. Watson, MD, 1887-1894</i>. <b>We have an extra copy to give away</b> - please listen in to the show around the 12-minute mark to hear how you might win it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9MBsl1kdFMKRis3HvmL6nlUf5acJikdUM3QZmopLpbyUD60LBt9C5wU5cQlWbk5yaUkMD2Rpk_6HBiRYd4xAqc8p-zeB1JUj6I2ok0q_hI_kSa8tE9tl__SrvlrO1wVd9pD6LEh4gt8k/s1600/Dan+Posnansky.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Dan Posnansky, BSI, the Keeper of the Speckled Band of Boston" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9MBsl1kdFMKRis3HvmL6nlUf5acJikdUM3QZmopLpbyUD60LBt9C5wU5cQlWbk5yaUkMD2Rpk_6HBiRYd4xAqc8p-zeB1JUj6I2ok0q_hI_kSa8tE9tl__SrvlrO1wVd9pD6LEh4gt8k/s400/Dan+Posnansky.JPG" title="Dan Posnansky" width="298" /></a></div>
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Another treasure is Dan Posnansky, BSI ("Colonel Hayter"), the current Keeper of the Speckled Band. We've known Dan for years and have heard his talks about his very impressive holdings, but we never had the chance to get him on the show. We rectified that this time, and we have a 45-minute interview with him as part of this Speckled Band spectacular.<br />
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One of the names Dan mentioned is Dirk Struik, whose signature you can see on this program from the 1945 Speckled Band dinner:<br />
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<a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/265468333/The-Speckled-Band-5th-Anniversary-Dinner-Program" style="text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="View The Speckled Band 5th Anniversary Dinner Program on Scribd">The Speckled Band 5th Anniversary Dinner Program</a></div>
<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_97794" scrolling="no" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/265468333/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />
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Mental Exaltation</h3>
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We're pleased to bring you another entry in our "Mental Exaltation" quiz program, inspired by NPR's <i>Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!</i> and written by IHOSE quizmaster Nick Martorelli. <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/04/qualify-for-next-ihose-quiz.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Find our how you can qualify to win</a>.</div>
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"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.</blockquote>
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We're pleased to welcome Madelyn Covey of Emeryville, CA to the show as our contestant. Madelyn, who has written "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJaYiAz2fp0" target="_blank">Conductor of Light</a>," a song dedicated to John Watson, joined us for a band-themed quiz. Listen to see how she did.<br />
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We wrap up with our regular Gas-Lamp reading, this time taken from two unlikely sources: poems "The Fog Hangs Deep in Baker Street" from <i>The Tavern Club at 75</i> and "Report of the Poet Laureate at the Speckled Band Dinner May 15, 1959" from <i>The Third Cab</i>.</div>
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<a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/ihearofsherlock/ihearofsherlock077.mp3" target="_blank">Download</a> [Save As] | File size 54.1 MB, 1:55:24</h4>
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<h3><br /></h3><h3>
Links:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Stan Freberg passes away. Hear him on <a href="http://www.doctorfloyd.com/media/season7" target="_blank">The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd</a>.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://silentfilm.org/" target="_blank">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a> is screening the <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2014/10/breaking-long-lost-william-gillette.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">lost Sherlock Holmes film</a> on May 31.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/04/new-mr-holmes-trailer.html#.VUmPoPlVikr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">More Mr. Holmes trailers</a> have been released, including one with Nicholas Rowe</li>
<li>The <i>Sherlock</i> Christmas special <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32380304/benedict-cumberbatchs-sherlock-goes-back-to-1895" target="_blank">will be set in 1895</a>.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://bsitrust.org/" target="_blank">new BSI Trust website</a> is up.</li>
<li>Information about Sherlockian societies in Episodes <a href="http://ihose.co/ihose04" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">04</a> and <a href="http://ihose.co/ihose05" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">05</a>.</li>
</ul>
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Many more links, articles and images are available in our Flipboard and Scoop.it sites at <a href="http://ihose.co/flipsherlock" target="_blank">ihose.co/flipsherlock</a> and <a href="http://www.scoop.it/t/sherlock-holmes" target="_blank">ihose.co/scoopsherlock</a>, as well as on our accounts on <a href="http://facebook.com/ihearofsherlock">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/ihearofsherlock">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://instagram.co/ihearofsherlock" target="_blank">Instagram</a>.<br />
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Your thoughts on the show? Leave a comment below, send us an email (ihearofsherlock AT gmail DOT com), call us at (774) 221-READ (7323).<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>
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<h3>
Sponsors</h3>
This episode includes two sponsors that deserve your attention:<br />
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<a href="http://www.wessexpress.com/" target="_blank">Wessex Press</a> (check out the new <a href="http://wessexpress.com/html/newspaper.html" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in the Newspapers Volume 1</a>)<br />
<a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/" target="_blank"><i>The Baker Street Journal</i></a>, where you should get <a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/itemsforsale/subscriptions.html" target="_blank">your annual subscription</a> in now to secure all four issues and a very special Christmas Annual about <i>The Seven Per-Cent Solution</i>.</div>
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<b>Bonus photos:</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTqZgwS5PzA4sX2qpYb6lXnI9SjF5YHKcLbViFz-8HWDMuSFu6b6ixBT3ilfNz3w1T6KYqi3U-1prDX0WG-zVKm7EpYi5Llm-AaE3hxafR0JU8AGOFmEcUJ2p-b1Af4a55Kn0acjLIEqSI/s1600/Band+flag.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Speckled Band flag" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTqZgwS5PzA4sX2qpYb6lXnI9SjF5YHKcLbViFz-8HWDMuSFu6b6ixBT3ilfNz3w1T6KYqi3U-1prDX0WG-zVKm7EpYi5Llm-AaE3hxafR0JU8AGOFmEcUJ2p-b1Af4a55Kn0acjLIEqSI/s200/Band+flag.JPG" title="The flag of the Speckled Band" width="150" /></a>  <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFFw7DpL2uPCPU6CBpOzWhhl5LM35ugjaw2QXAmaGUrjJTwMVCfQczQbyPrZ7usuxyiRuX7wN-t3dR7qnKr_yjkaGhDR8YCBf7vPsxdZws_bPGxGV5jBN0isR1RNYtqqi9em9w_6MY2m5K/s1600/Tavern+Club.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Tavern Club, Boylston Place, Boston" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFFw7DpL2uPCPU6CBpOzWhhl5LM35ugjaw2QXAmaGUrjJTwMVCfQczQbyPrZ7usuxyiRuX7wN-t3dR7qnKr_yjkaGhDR8YCBf7vPsxdZws_bPGxGV5jBN0isR1RNYtqqi9em9w_6MY2m5K/s200/Tavern+Club.JPG" title="The Tavern Club of Boston" width="149" /></a>  <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2SdC5fHU42kzny1_ewnX87aFNcSrqDnY2EpxANCNGO1k-f9l6E03Nd_DFoAEKgocxRBdRvwHazMsQt8LFRSbNab1emVOrUd2aSMwbp3r0q-XD16Xw_39A01Z3YhshkakcT8WyDaRSUI3V/s1600/The+Band+dinner.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Speckled Band 75th annual dinner" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2SdC5fHU42kzny1_ewnX87aFNcSrqDnY2EpxANCNGO1k-f9l6E03Nd_DFoAEKgocxRBdRvwHazMsQt8LFRSbNab1emVOrUd2aSMwbp3r0q-XD16Xw_39A01Z3YhshkakcT8WyDaRSUI3V/s200/The+Band+dinner.JPG" title="Dinner at the Speckled Band" width="149" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[click photos to enlarge]</span></div>
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Episode 77: The Speckled Band of Boston

"It is a nice household." [SPEC] It's been exactly one month since our last episode, as is our tradition on the 15th...

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by Scott Monty

The Sherlock Holmes Exhibition Catalogue is Here

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Did you manage to make it to London between October 2014 and April 2015? Neither did we. What we missed was the <a href="http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archives/sherlock-holmes/" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes exhibit at the Museum of London</a>. However, we heard from many readers and listeners who did, and they were universally thrilled at the visit.<br />
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The exhibition was remarkably well done, and it included everything from props and costumes from the BBC's <i>Sherlock</i> to original Conan Doyle manuscripts and Sidney Paget illustrations. Material was culled from around the world, from collectors and institutions alike, and it made for what was probably the most heralded Sherlock Holmes display since the Festival of Britain of 1951 that brought us the recreation of the sitting rooms at 221B Baker Street - a set that is now housed by the Sherlock Holmes Pub.<br />
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But don't fret if you missed the opportunity to see all of these remarkable items together in one place. Now, courtesy of the Baker Street Irregulars Press is a remarkable catalogue - <i><a href="http://bakerstreetjournal.com/london.html" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die - The Museum of London Exhibition</a>.</i></div>
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<br /><br />Compiled by Nicholas Utechin, BSI ("The Ancient British Barrow") and Catherine Cooke, BSI ("<i>The Book of  Life</i>") with a foreword by Alex Werner, the Exhibition's curator, this volume provides an illustrated record of the Exhibition and the "wonderful stuff of Sherlockian collecting fantasy." </div>
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Highlights include the two most important sheets regarding the birth of Sherlock Holmes, three original Holmes manuscripts, two Beeton's Christmas Annuals, eight Sidney Paget original drawings and one by Frederick Dorr Steele. Accompanying the illustrations are the compilers' comments, as well as selected Museum of London captions and contributions by Glen Miranker, BSI ("<i>The Origin of Tree Worship</i>") and Constantine Rossakis, BSI ("St. Bartholomew's Hospital").</div>
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The volume is 96 pages and measures 9.75" x 7.5" and is <a href="http://bakerstreetjournal.com/london.html" target="_blank">available from the <i>Baker Street Journal</i> site</a> for $20 plus shipping.</div>
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We plan to buy one, even though the BSJ (our sponsors) didn't send us a review copy. (cough)<br /><br />
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And just in case you wanted to see more, below are some images from <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shsl/sets/72157648762051964" target="_blank">Douglas Wilmer's visit</a> to the Exhibition earlier this year, courtesy of the <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shsl/" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes Society of London's Flickr account</a>.<br />
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The Sherlock Holmes Exhibition Catalogue is Here

"the adequate cataloguing of one of those cabinets" [3GAR] Did you manage to make it to London between October 2014 and A...

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by Scott Monty

Ferreting Out Untold Tales from the Canon: An Interview with Author Hugh Ashton

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"His name is Hugh" [TWIS]</h4>
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There are a number of stories mentioned within the canon that were never actually completed by Dr. John H. Watson.  While <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> mentions Holmes's investigation into the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca, it is up to the reader to ponder the details of the case.<br />
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That is, until Hugh Ashton discovered a number of notes from the good doctor, and completed a number of untold tales. Ever wonder what happened in the Conk-Singleton forgery case? Now, dear reader, you can discover the answer! These stories as well as several other Sherlock Holmes tales make up the author's Deed Box and Dispatch Box series.  Not content to settle on only editing the works of Dr. Watson, Mr. Ashton also writes the delightful children's book series, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1QEcZAI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Ferret</a></i>, and has penned several thrillers and other short story collections.  I had a chance to interview the well-regarded Sherlockian via email from his home in Kamakura, Japan.<br />
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<b>I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere:  You are well known for your traditional Sherlock Holmes pastiches, particularly your stories in the <a href="http://221beanbakerstreet.info/" target="_blank">Notes from the Deed Box</a> series.  A number of your tales are untold adventures mentioned in the original Sherlock Holmes adventures.  How do you develop a full tale from a mere mention of a case in the canon?</b></h4>
<b>Hugh Ashton: </b>The case develops itself. By this, I mean that I have a rather cinematic imagination, the scene presents itself in my mind, and the characters play out their actions, depending on what happens to the characters. Watson doesn’t know the ending to the case until Holmes reveals it, and neither do I, many times. I am perfectly capable of getting about 75 percent of the way through an adventure without knowing how it will work out.<br />
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I’ve been told I have a criminal mind, which would either make me a good cop, or a replacement for Moriarty (though I lack criminal tendencies, which is a good thing for all concerned, I feel). So I think like the villain in the case, and the motive, the means, and the opportunity come to me. I may then have to backtrack in the story and plant some clues for Holmes to discover (and Watson to see, but not observe). But basically, I am living the story as Watson lives it. It’s stretching things to say that I become Watson, but I see the adventure through his viewpoint, and I don’t have an overarching overview most of the time. Sometimes I will wake up in the night, or while eating breakfast, and exclaim “So that’s how he did it!”. And the story has just written itself. All I have to do is filter it through Watson’s eyes, and put it into the computer. <br />
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Sometimes ACD leaves you with a wonderful opening, such as “the remarkable worm, said to be unknown to science”, and you just have to take it from there, as I did in my first collection, <i>Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson, MD</i>. In that case, the canonical reference is the climax of the adventure. Sometimes he leaves you with a very brief description, which nonetheless intrigues, such as the loss of Holmes’ left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross station. This formed the hook for “The Hand of Glory” in The Last Notes from the Dispatch-box, but it was not the climax, but just one of the events in the adventure, albeit one that Holmes would remember for the rest of his life!<br />
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I think it’s also important to have a reason why the untold tales remained unpublished. Scandal in high places (my “Giant Rat” or the uncanonical “Enfield Rope”) or embarrassment to Holmes (my “Phillimore” describes a very ambivalent relationship between Holmes and the police), or maybe there is some indelicacy (a sexual aspect, perhaps, which would prevent Watson from revealing all, as in The Darlington Substitution) are good reasons.<br />
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<b>IHOSE: The <a href="http://sherlockferret.info/index.html" target="_blank">Sherlock Ferret </a>series is your Sherlock Holmes book series for children.  What made you decide to turn the great detective and his friends into talking animals?  </b></h4>
<b>HA:</b> It was Vinnie, the ferret who shares her life with Andy Boerger, who does the fantastic illustrations for Sherlock Ferret, and has also published several books of his own writing with Inknbeans.<br />
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Andy loves his ferret, and puts drawings of her on Facebook. I asked him if he could produce a picture of a ferret as Sherlock Holmes. And he came up with this wonderful picture of a ferret with a violin.<br />
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From that, it was a short step to populating the Sherlock Ferret universe. Watson – we settled on a mouse. It suits him, and he has a very distinct personality (as does Sherlock Ferret, of course). He has very fine whiskers, of which he is particularly proud, and he is rather put upon by Sherlock Ferret, who is somewhat selfish and self-centered, but though he grumbles at times to himself and his readers about Sherlock, he is a very loyal and decent little beast with a big heart.<br />
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Andy draws lovely rhinoceroses, so we decided that Lestrade should be a rhinoceros (though not a very big one). Colonel Sebastian Moorhen was a no-brainer. Moriarty was originally going to be a crow, but eventually turned into a magpie. The Bakery Irregulars (Sherlock and Watson live under Mrs. Hudson’s bakery) are caterpillars. I had originally wanted Wiggins the Woodlouse, but they’re a bit icky to many people, so we settled on caterpillars.<br />
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In the second book, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1QEd8Eo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Multiplying Masterpieces</a></i>, we had fun with artists’ names. The villain is Pablo Pigasso, and Vincent van Goat, and Frieda Koala are mentioned. Thanks to Jo at Inknbeans for some of these. The Poisoned Pond has more of a message than the others, but it tries not to beat readers over the head with it. <br />
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I have no children of my own, but I found it easy to write in a style that seems to have found acceptance with younger readers, while still making the stories interesting enough for their parents. The process of writing was a two-way thing. Andy gave me plot ideas, either directly, or through details in his pictures, and I suggested some ideas for illustrations to him. We developed the stories together – it wasn’t a question of my writing a story and asking him to put pictures to it. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjus-KPsLheJy4WZTZbPesYIThYed3aIZLsR9BuMomhiyYqwpFv0E31PGypAf50DVCJHfcBIcO7Qav591bEN6hU5BC61a4Wd83YtWn33CJcNCIpjdi7I7XiH3afTypDjH6mhVcBVDs0L1BL/s1600/Sherlock+Ferret+-+Ashton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Sherlock Ferret with Inspector Lestrade and Dr. Watson" border="0" height="460" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjus-KPsLheJy4WZTZbPesYIThYed3aIZLsR9BuMomhiyYqwpFv0E31PGypAf50DVCJHfcBIcO7Qav591bEN6hU5BC61a4Wd83YtWn33CJcNCIpjdi7I7XiH3afTypDjH6mhVcBVDs0L1BL/s640/Sherlock+Ferret+-+Ashton.jpg" title="Sherlock Ferret at home" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sherlock Ferret and Dr. Watson with Inspector Lestrade</td></tr>
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<b>IHOSE: You have been residing in Japan for several decades now.  How has living in another country influenced your writing?</b></h4>
That’s an excellent question. I am very out of touch with contemporary UK memes and language. I always tell people that when I left the UK, a “mobile” was something you hung in a child’s bedroom, and “text” was a noun, not a verb. That means that I really can’t write contemporary fiction about the UK (or the USA, since I’ve never lived there).<br />
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So… it’s back to the past for me, or writing about Japan (we’re talking fiction here). There are two basic genres about Japan. One is the “cherry blossoms and mystic Orient”, and the other is the “ninja thriller”. Both are clichés, to my mind, and have been successfully exploited by better writers than me.<br />
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I’ve written a Japan-based thriller, <a href="http://www.atthesharpeend.com/" target="_blank"><i>At the Sharpe End</i></a>, which is now published by Inknbeans Press, and which deals with the bank crash of 2008 (where I had quite a lot of personal experience, at first- and second-hand). No ninjas! But, and this is what introduced me to Inknbeans in the first place, I had also written a few short stories about older Japanese people, <a href="http://amzn.to/1IxTOFY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Tales of Old Japanese</i></a>. Inknbeans had told me they wanted to publish these, and the Sherlock Holmes adventures leapfrogged over them. I do recommend these stories, by the way. They are the nearest thing to literature that I have had published so far.<br />
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But Japan doesn’t have the interest outside the country that once it did, and though there are people producing excellent work in these genres, really, it’s not for me.<br />
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So, back to the past. Inknbeans has just published a Jules Verne-type story, <a href="http://amzn.to/1PfoUYo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>The Untime</i></a>; I hesitate to call it a pastiche, though it’s written in a contrived style, as if it were a 19th-century translation from the French. Shades of Verne, Wells, Dr. Who, and a little H.P. Lovecraft stirred into the mix. I actually think it’s pretty good stuff.<br />
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And Sherlock Holmes, one of my loves from an early age, is a natural. ACD’s style is fun, and (for me at least) fairly easy to imitate. And I love mysteries. <br />
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But it is a little odd, maybe, that Sherlockian pastiches are coming from a Brit living in Japan.<br />
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<b>IHOSE: You have a story included in the upcoming anthology The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories.  Can you tell us a little about the story without giving anything away? Also, how did you ended up becoming involved in this project?</b></h4>
Yes, it’s set in Lichfield, Staffordshire, which is a city with which I have family associations (my father worked there) and I will soon have closer associations with the place (I won’t say more right now). It uses real locations (inn names, street names, geographical features, etc.), which is fun. You will be able to find all the places on Google Maps.<br />
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It’s a fairly straightforward locked-room murder. A father retains Holmes to clear his son’s name of the murder, but at the same time, he seems to want his son to be found guilty.<br />
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David Marcum contacted me, I asked permission from Inknbeans to contribute, and Jo, my editor, said “yes”, and I wrote the story. Simple.<br />
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<b>IHOSE: The question I ask all Sherlockians.  If you were stranded on a desert with only one Sherlock Holmes story, which would it be and why?</b></h4>
Probably SIGN. Though I love REDH and EMPT, SIGN has more to it, and the backstory doesn’t distract as much as in VALL or STUD. Why not HOUN? Because I don’t think Holmes is as effective outside London as he is in London, or the suburbs. I do find it hard to conceive of him roughing it in a Neolithic hut. He’s a townie, and the tweeds and deerstalker are those of a city-dweller playing at being a countryman.<br />
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<b>IHOSE: What are your current projects?</b></h4>
We’re talking fiction here, of course? A sequel to <i>The Untime</i>, which explores some more Jungian ideas (<i>The Untime</i> is very Jungian in many ways).<br />
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There’s a contemporary thriller/adventure/something, <i>Leo’s Luck</i>, which is coming out in July. I am waiting for an endorsement from my friend Jake Adelstein, the author of <i>Tokyo Vice</i> (his book has been optioned as a movie, and will star Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) as Jake). It’s a little weird – rock and roll, money, telepathy, and some sex.<br />
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And… another box has been discovered. In a Facebook conversation with Luke Kuhns, I discovered the springboard for another Sherlockian adventure, and I am in the middle of another where Holmes is of assistance to the Scandinavian royal family. It’s a tangled tale of deceit and betrayal. There’ll be another collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures published before the end of the year. That’s a promise.<br />
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<h4>
<b>IHOSE: Anything else you'd like us to know?</b></h4>
I can’t let this opportunity go by without thanking Jo, my editor, and all the staff (and other writers) at Inknbeans Press, who have produced not only my books, but many others from many other authors, on a wide variety of subjects. I’ve received nothing but support and encouragement from these people, and Jo has become one of the pillars of my life. A good editor is so much more than a spelling-checker on legs – and Jo provides the impetus and the constructive criticism that every writer needs, as well as sound advice on matters that have little or nothing to do with writing.<br />
<br />
Somehow, we have never met face-to-face, though this is something that I am sure will be remedied before too long.<br />
<br />
Working with Inknbeans has taught me that, however much fun self-publishing may be (and it is fun, though very hard work at times), there is no substitute for productive collaboration with a professionally-minded publisher.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><i>For more on Hugh Ashton, see his author <a href="http://hughashtonbooks.info/about-hugh-ashton.html" target="_blank">web site</a>, his <a href="http://221beanbakerstreet.info/author.html" target="_blank">221 Bean Baker Street</a> site.</i></b><br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
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</iframe>

Ferreting Out Untold Tales from the Canon: An Interview with Author Hugh Ashton

"His name is Hugh" [TWIS] There are a number of stories mentioned within the canon that were never actually completed by ...

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by Belanger Books

A Study in Fitzroy - Inspiration for a Canonical Character

<h4 style="text-align: center;">
"The chaplain, no less!" [GLOR]</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCBMl0KuZD2-HUi3RCuBn7sCm91Iy740842t7I0wYl_WLR93QpxQMVCCxevPLffP4JBrvwl9IvPnEyJuT4sSZU33yigCN4NhkJvHW5tgflnkTLJHfGiYqmam2tKRuKHd8rUL_ObSQgRpqi/s1600/macpherson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCBMl0KuZD2-HUi3RCuBn7sCm91Iy740842t7I0wYl_WLR93QpxQMVCCxevPLffP4JBrvwl9IvPnEyJuT4sSZU33yigCN4NhkJvHW5tgflnkTLJHfGiYqmam2tKRuKHd8rUL_ObSQgRpqi/s400/macpherson.jpg" width="312" /></a></div>
<div>
<br />
<br />
<div>
There were "some hundreds" of men named Henry Baker, according to "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", but how many Fitzroy McPhersons would you expect?<br />
<br />
The one we know is of course the hero of "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane", the victim of <i>Cyanea capillata</i>. But let me introduce you to the other Fitzroy Macpherson (note the slightly different spelling), who was — wait for it — a military chaplain. <br />
<br />
Ewen George Fitzroy Macpherson was born in 1863 and educated at the University of Durham. He entered the Church of England clergy and served as a curate for four years, then joined the military chaplains' department and in 1892 was posted to Portsmouth, which is the home of the Royal Navy. He arrived in Portsmouth just too late to overlap with Arthur Conan Doyle, who had moved to Norwood in south London, but they must have had friends in common, perhaps through the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society, where ACD had first encountered Spiritualism and many of the other ideas that influenced his life.<br />
<br />
And certainly ACD must have known about Macpherson during the South African War, in which the former was the harassed and unqualified doctor in charge of a field hospital, and the latter was chaplain for various British units. He served in Ladysmith during the famous three-month siege in 1899-1900, and came home from the war with two medals, eight "clasps", two "mentioned in despatches" distinctions and a promotion.<br />
<br />
The case of the two Fitzroys was first noted by my father, <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2014/11/remembering-donald-redmond-bsi-2s.html#.VVAPEvlViko" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Don Redmond</a>, in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1IsrS7T" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Sources</a></i> decades ago, but this more detailed information, and more, came to me from the very helpful David Blake, who is curator of the Museum of Army Chaplaincy at Amport, Hampshire. He was most interested to hear of a possible Sherlock Holmes connection to a long-ago chaplain — and I made a point of not spoiling "The Lion's Mane" for him by telling him exactly how Fitzroy McPherson, the one with "Mc" rather than "Mac" in his name, had met his painful end.<br />
<br />
E. G. Fitzroy Macpherson was still a chaplain when World War I broke out, and served briefly with British troops in France before being called home to take an administrative job with what by now was the Royal Army Chaplains' Department. He retired from the armed forces in 1922 and died in 1926.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8qH6wrlVgj0XnurjSTBpdzQvRSbeSPZjx3BSWHfS2L5zZtRN-1wIyuxMHPX3xOGBc-jRX0uvzyH5sHLd3vW-eitBc3aZ_f_nWLZzf62lHk9z2BQysLUP5v29_81UAHffhEUtg8wqhWXjK/s1600/LION+-+Elcock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Lion's Mane - the end of Fitzroy McPherson" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8qH6wrlVgj0XnurjSTBpdzQvRSbeSPZjx3BSWHfS2L5zZtRN-1wIyuxMHPX3xOGBc-jRX0uvzyH5sHLd3vW-eitBc3aZ_f_nWLZzf62lHk9z2BQysLUP5v29_81UAHffhEUtg8wqhWXjK/s1600/LION+-+Elcock.jpg" title="The unfortunate end of Fitzroy McPherson [LION]" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
To be exact, he died November 28, 1926 — the day after "The Lion's Mane" had its first publication in <i>Liberty </i>magazine. (Publication in Britain, in the good old <i>Strand Magazine</i>, came a few days later.) This can't possibly be coincidence. It can only be that ACD heard of Macpherson's final illness in time to honor him by transferring his name to "a fine upstanding young fellow whose life had been crippled by heart trouble", the hero of one of his last Sherlock Holmes stories.<br />
<br />
--<br />
<br /></div>
</div>

A Study in Fitzroy - Inspiration for a Canonical Character

"The chaplain, no less!" [GLOR] There were "some hundreds" of men named Henry Baker, according to "The Adve...

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by Chris Redmond

Sherlockian Activities During the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

<h4 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
"those weekend parties" [SOLI]</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjlnseP-WAtjkDkF8mv5J3GkFOM-J8-F0AUxvFLFxsrt0K6OhoGvsPJg-3QwtFTM5IGs8OXEIw1XKl36QuKVvMBV3K4Ghk05zFteIC763uAaTiZyucohpat5QcFxrL666TEErxxjw4exF/s1600/Gillette+sunglasses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="William Gillette - Mr. Hollywood, 1916" border="0" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjlnseP-WAtjkDkF8mv5J3GkFOM-J8-F0AUxvFLFxsrt0K6OhoGvsPJg-3QwtFTM5IGs8OXEIw1XKl36QuKVvMBV3K4Ghk05zFteIC763uAaTiZyucohpat5QcFxrL666TEErxxjw4exF/s1600/Gillette+sunglasses.jpg" title="William Gillette in sunglasses on the soundstage" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />As you may have heard, <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2014/10/breaking-long-lost-william-gillette.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the long-lost 1916 William Gillette film <i>Sherlock Holmes</i> was found</a>, restored and will be having its premiere in the United States at the <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/" target="_blank">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a> on May 31, 2015.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The festival itself runs from May 28 - June 1 and there are opportunities available to become part of <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/homepage/whats-new/join-the-baker-street-circle" target="_blank">the Baker Street Circle</a> of supporters. Such generous donors receive recognition in the program as well as admission for two with reserved seating and a special reception with Baker Street Irregulars and the restoration team.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If that seems beyond your ability, you can always stop by for just the film itself, where ti<a href="http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=124514~d9133282-4896-49aa-be18-b053ee8cefc3&epguid=9b9aa81f-61d7-4293-afdc-ddf4e632d0f8&" target="_blank">ckets are just $22 for the 7:00 pm showing on May 31</a>.<br /><br /><br />If you're in town for the weekend, you'll have ample opportunities to join fellow Sherlockians to celebrate the US premiere of the restored Sherlock Holmes starring William Gillette.</div>
<div>
<br /><h4>
Saturday, May 30, 3-5 PM</h4>
Price: Free (reservation required)<br /></div>
<div>
The Scowrers and Molly Maguires of San Francisco will host a reception. Join them for some complimentary Italian food and some good conversation. Toasts are especially welcome. No host bar.<br /><br />Please RSVP Cade Deverell at <<a href="mailto:hattydoran221@gmail.com">hattydoran221@gmail.com</a>> by Friday, May 22nd. Reservations are required in order to attend.<br /><br />Location: The Firewood Café, 4248 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114<br /><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/Cu7iR">Google Maps for The Firewood Café</a><br /><br /> <br /><br /><h4>
Sunday, May 31 at noon</h4>
Fortify yourself with lunch and good company at historic Catch Restaurant just around the corner from the Castro Theater. The group will order off the menu [roughly $14-$20 not counting drinks].<br /><br />Seating limited: if you can join, RSVP Marsha Pollak at <<a href="mailto:mlpollak@icloud.com">mlpollak@icloud.com</a>> by Thursday, May 28.<br /><br />Location: Catch Restaurant, 2362 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94114<br /><a href="https://goo.gl/maps/WnSp7">Google Maps for Catch Restaurant</a><br /><br /> <br /><h3>
Bonus Content</h3>
</div>
<div>
If you'd like to learn a bit more about William Gillette, we have <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/search/label/William%20Gillette#.VUrJ1_lVikr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a series of posts about him</a>. Just click through to read more. And if you'd like to hear an interview with Henry Zecher, a biographer of Gillette, <a href="http://ihose.co/ihose34" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">we interviewed him on Episode 34</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /><br />--</div>
<div>
<br /><br /><br /></div>

Sherlockian Activities During the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

"those weekend parties" [SOLI] As you may have heard, the long-lost 1916 William Gillette film Sherlock Holmes was found , re...

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by Scott Monty

The Sherlockian Origins of a Massive Jewel Heist

<h4 style="text-align: center;">
"All London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed" [EMPT] </h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4EYedR6AsvRQ7FOyBFJ6bA1xQuCQKOU64Iu7qzaXitenrDX94-pKKNQ2AfPgE9SH3-TYWVBLfF7YO37sKHqQyx76uWgkmKFTY8lKRSXhaaYBfrklTIYRRhkPbrmz-jvgsJkRdI33PxgHy/s1600/Hatton+Garden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Red-Headed League is alive and well" border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4EYedR6AsvRQ7FOyBFJ6bA1xQuCQKOU64Iu7qzaXitenrDX94-pKKNQ2AfPgE9SH3-TYWVBLfF7YO37sKHqQyx76uWgkmKFTY8lKRSXhaaYBfrklTIYRRhkPbrmz-jvgsJkRdI33PxgHy/s1600/Hatton+Garden.jpg" title="Hatton Garden bank" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Last month's spectacular diamond robbery in London's Hatton Garden was historic in more ways than one, and, while it's still unclear how much loot the thieves made off with, experts estimate the haul's value may exceed £200 million. No arrests have yet been made, but as police disclose more details of the crime, a sense of déjà vu seems inescapable.<br />
<br />
Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, Ltd., has been a leading secure facility for 60 years in the district which has been the hub of London's gold and diamond trade since medieval times. Yet on April 2, 2015, a six-man team entered the building after hours, rappelled down an elevator shaft into the basement, and drilled a six-foot tunnel into the vault, where they plundered 72 safe deposit boxes before absconding, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/09/europe/london-hatton-garden-heist/" target="_blank">according to DCI Paul Johnson of the Met's Flying Squad</a>.<br />
<br />
<h4>
"very willing to have a holiday" [REDH]</h4>
The thieves struck during the Easter holiday weekend, a stratagem which gave them as long as four days to complete the robbery. According to ex-Flying Squad chief Roy Ramm, the affair had "a sort of old-fashioned audacity about it." Police have confirmed that the gang exited the building, only to return at least once during the long bank holiday weekend before escaping again. Investigators have called the Hatton Garden heist "sophisticated" and suggest that only a few individuals in the UK might be capable of pulling it off.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHgHjnJcbZsEcrjRpfevJfef40Ooa5JGs5QFWtsUxN9VD8ilYhH1MaZwrz9cWG_pH_tMSwMXuItPKYUGQWC6tbH0LQKPJQb2Ji5cb8VkJaMNMa-uQp-mYCwP5TI5XsQ69ZS8NLB_gY6Kmr/s1600/hatton2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHgHjnJcbZsEcrjRpfevJfef40Ooa5JGs5QFWtsUxN9VD8ilYhH1MaZwrz9cWG_pH_tMSwMXuItPKYUGQWC6tbH0LQKPJQb2Ji5cb8VkJaMNMa-uQp-mYCwP5TI5XsQ69ZS8NLB_gY6Kmr/s1600/hatton2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
For students of the Canon, it's a case of life imitating art: A daring weekend robbery via tunnelling into a secure vault must instantly evoke John Clay's raid on the City and Suburban Bank in Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League," a scheme that was foiled by Victorian action heroes Sherlock "Hunting-Crop" Holmes and John "Quick-Draw" Watson.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnw5IZO-xZw8xB9OpYSIigp2wLKy2s0EER9bTXPq_jfHmuqv4aBNUzNMgLEd5JXliMCA1B-pNM1aaiHQb7McJMBOeOS6rchLXqhAtI9qxYpCzRZ1MAI4RBu_pQUQDJwzB5I6s7Iio_eFI6/s1600/Holmes+with+hunting+crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Can I crop that for you?" border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnw5IZO-xZw8xB9OpYSIigp2wLKy2s0EER9bTXPq_jfHmuqv4aBNUzNMgLEd5JXliMCA1B-pNM1aaiHQb7McJMBOeOS6rchLXqhAtI9qxYpCzRZ1MAI4RBu_pQUQDJwzB5I6s7Iio_eFI6/s1600/Holmes+with+hunting+crop.jpg" title="Holmes with hunting crop" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpE0hm8kTAewIIS-pDoql76fugSy_O25IhK4eXZUJcnaL_ixQvLhgGoX5_htnkHb3b0XaH48MHIsmqBWxSWZ-bK-Y-m8pY1wdc9Ur-J-vu8uDDP_JolD3vHwyShjWC6JCGN9Zyx2Tbj3QO/s1600/Quick+Draw+Watson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Quick Draw Watson" border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpE0hm8kTAewIIS-pDoql76fugSy_O25IhK4eXZUJcnaL_ixQvLhgGoX5_htnkHb3b0XaH48MHIsmqBWxSWZ-bK-Y-m8pY1wdc9Ur-J-vu8uDDP_JolD3vHwyShjWC6JCGN9Zyx2Tbj3QO/s1600/Quick+Draw+Watson.jpg" title="Watson with pistol in REDH" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Jewelry industry expert James Riley told the BBC that the Easter weekend job was "highly organized and very cleverly masterminded." Indeed it was, in a more profound way than Mr. Riley may realize. For as surely as the Hatton Garden caper was life imitating art, the John Clay gang is art imitating life, in the form of the great Boylston National Bank Robbery of 1869, planned and executed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Worth" target="_blank">Adam Worth</a>, whom <a href="http://www.vincentstarrett.com/" target="_blank">Vincent Starrett</a> called, "the original of Professor Moriarty."<br />
<br />
<br />
<h4>
"the Napoleon of crime" [FINA]</h4>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwtMHwrbb3pEL24Y8dRL6epY4XyTY3xHQ_WJkVHQUclQupT0xy5gM71NtMrwWw2E0o18nPP34orZTc1N_NvD6kLpDUS5YWMKOpfJkAuUCU_wxVZp5sBi8B3NEffxNP1AS8WFStYNu9lOeV/s1600/WorthBankJobNYT11231869.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Original Worth bank robbery article - New York Times" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwtMHwrbb3pEL24Y8dRL6epY4XyTY3xHQ_WJkVHQUclQupT0xy5gM71NtMrwWw2E0o18nPP34orZTc1N_NvD6kLpDUS5YWMKOpfJkAuUCU_wxVZp5sBi8B3NEffxNP1AS8WFStYNu9lOeV/s1600/WorthBankJobNYT11231869.jpg" title="Worth bank robbery article" width="166" /></a></div>
Worth, who rose from pickpocket to international master criminal, had a long career marked by audacity and an aversion to violence; his first big score was the Boylston job. In November of 1869, having chosen the Boylston National Bank in Boston as his target, Worth bought the premises next door and opened a shop selling a patent bitters that he claimed would run all others out of the market. The shop window was filled with bottles, preventing passersby from seeing inside, and a new interior wall was added, reducing the sales floor to a tiny area. One member of Worth's four-man team was always on duty dressed as a clerk, while the other three were in the back, tunnelling into the bank and piling the dirt behind the newly added partition. One week later, on a Saturday, the employees of the New Patent Bitters Co. cracked three safes inside the Boylston bank and made off with nearly one million dollars. Worth took his share to England, where he parlayed it into a criminal empire.<br />
<br />
"Everything comes in circles – even Professor Moriarty," said Sherlock Holmes to Inspector MacDonald in <i>The Valley of Fear</i>. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime."</blockquote>
<br />
To that end, you can learn more about Adam Worth in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1PpPjgV" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Remarkable Rogues:The Careers of Some Notable Criminals of Europe and America</a></i> by Charles Kingston, and in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1EYHAVM" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief</a></i> by Ben Macintyre.<br />
<br />
We would hope that police forces and bankers around the world would do the same.<br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
<br />

The Sherlockian Origins of a Massive Jewel Heist

"All London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed" [EMPT] Last month's spectacular diamond robbery in Lond...

+ Read more »

by Tim Greer

Sherlock Holmes and Middle East Conflicts

<h4 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: start;">"All hell was loose in the country" [CROO]</span></h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTijPo-dwPXa0GVz1qrn8_Id4pZpNh6eEwbb80Mv1c8hTXWlzTjMiH-Aq8dYFykjRLgRm6LWzZ_srr8TAgSUwhvZ1zt8EHC4rv7vJv3g2lxjGird83qfMxYGjeUsFWUVRcJ3AOaNAEd9Z/s1600/The_war_in_the_Soudan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTijPo-dwPXa0GVz1qrn8_Id4pZpNh6eEwbb80Mv1c8hTXWlzTjMiH-Aq8dYFykjRLgRm6LWzZ_srr8TAgSUwhvZ1zt8EHC4rv7vJv3g2lxjGird83qfMxYGjeUsFWUVRcJ3AOaNAEd9Z/s1600/The_war_in_the_Soudan.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The year was 1895, and Islamic terrorism was much in the news. <br />
<br />
Long before the 21st-century skirmishes in Iraq and Syria and Yemen, long before the "9/11" attacks in 2001 drew certain kinds of extremism to the attention of most North Americans, there were terrorist incidents and guerrilla battles in parts of the Muslim world, and it will be no surprise that Sherlock Holmes was involved.<br />
<br />
Then as now, events grew from a combination of theological differences, economic forces, tribal rivalry, and resentment of western imperialism. From a western point of view, as Holmes might have read them in <i>The Times</i> any morning in the 1880s or 1890s, events unfolded something like this.<br />
<br />
The Muslims of the Sudan region, south of Egypt, were watching for a messiah. In June 1881, Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, a boat-builder who traced his ancestry to the prophet Muhammad, announced that he was the man, and quickly proclaimed jihad. Four years later his followers had defeated the Turkish and Egyptian rulers of the region and captured Khartoum. Britain had interests in the area too, and Charles George "Chinese" Gordon — the man whose portrait hung on Watson's wall at 221B Baker Street — led an army to rescue foreigners from Khartoum and, if possible, reestablish order. Instead he was hacked to pieces, and his army turned back, at a battle in January 1885.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOd4hDDIfhTOLR-YRknAUOqdeIf_Cfd2z5l2SCEcJwIu5PFoC3O3kiwfl-vO-25dOt0omLzrtggZhrTT0ARaG1EaY1vxargiccOOO7ISABBx54AOvYSwxHWph8_Rbpjr3nALmFTsrOAjng/s1600/General+Chinese+Gin+Gordon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="General Gordon" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOd4hDDIfhTOLR-YRknAUOqdeIf_Cfd2z5l2SCEcJwIu5PFoC3O3kiwfl-vO-25dOt0omLzrtggZhrTT0ARaG1EaY1vxargiccOOO7ISABBx54AOvYSwxHWph8_Rbpjr3nALmFTsrOAjng/s1600/General+Chinese+Gin+Gordon.jpg" title="General Chinese Gordon" /></a></div>
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Muhammad Ahmad died a few months later, though not before establishing sharia law in his domain. His right-hand man, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, succeeded him, with the title of Khalifa, or caliph — a word still used today for the leader of an Islamic state such as ISIS. This must have been the Khalifa whom Holmes visited "at Khartoum" — in effect, behind enemy lines — after his equally daring visit to Mecca, as Holmes narrates his movements in "The Empty House". Abdallahi was eventually defeated in 1898 by forces led by Horatio Kitchener, who would become Britain's great general in the early months of World War I (and whose face was well known from recruitment posters).<br />
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Within this broad narrative there were many incidents to catch the attention of western newspaper readers. Arthur Conan Doyle heard of such things during his own visit to Egypt in 1895. Conflict flared up just then, and ACD got himself appointed "honorary" war correspondent for the <i>Westminster Gazette</i> — an excuse to get as close to the excitement as possible. Later, he turned some events and rumours into the plot for a novella, <i>The Tragedy of the Korosko</i>, published in 1898. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTWjV2eBvppg-TkCqMGmxhkFTFcx3BDDm5wJ8Ah3UsFkjwFtxthcjyK084J7_LiO-p5RsVmpgcGEcll_XXVFdQVW7CAcjd_a59SlwEuFQk-rpo-eem83w8Zd6NaQfpk8Op7KUtV6n1AJL/s1600/Tragedy+of+the+Korosko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Tragedy of the Korosko, 1898" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTWjV2eBvppg-TkCqMGmxhkFTFcx3BDDm5wJ8Ah3UsFkjwFtxthcjyK084J7_LiO-p5RsVmpgcGEcll_XXVFdQVW7CAcjd_a59SlwEuFQk-rpo-eem83w8Zd6NaQfpk8Op7KUtV6n1AJL/s1600/Tragedy+of+the+Korosko.jpg" title="Tragedy of the Korosko" /></a></div>
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"There is nothing new under the sun," said Sherlock Holmes. Nothing new about confict between Islamic elements and western state power, at any rate.<br />
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<i>Image credit: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_war_in_the_Soudan.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></i><br />
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Sherlock Holmes and Middle East Conflicts

"All hell was loose in the country" [CROO] The year was 1895, and Islamic terrorism was much in the news. Long before the...

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by Chris Redmond

May 4, 1891

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"It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen" [FINA]</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDJy_0MrBsVDeWbU9Ubj7Wp12vhUqC_5-kygILfK-bQSGPHVxdTZbQh7rKNAo01A31pTYGHLvk5je0Kou79WQXUZ95jZyQ9sawB6LVNDDdHBoNXaDXLKFZ422hLBKP0e9P46rjqKS5iyOF/s1600/May+4,+1891.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="May the 4th be with you (Victorian style)" border="0" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDJy_0MrBsVDeWbU9Ubj7Wp12vhUqC_5-kygILfK-bQSGPHVxdTZbQh7rKNAo01A31pTYGHLvk5je0Kou79WQXUZ95jZyQ9sawB6LVNDDdHBoNXaDXLKFZ422hLBKP0e9P46rjqKS5iyOF/s640/May+4,+1891.jpg" title="May 4, 1891" width="640" /></a></div>
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The date of May 4 typically means melancholy for anyone who has read "The Final Problem," the short story in which Sherlock Holmes confronts his archenemy Professor Moriarty (who we've inexplicably never heard of up until this point in the Canon) and both of them tumble off the cliff into the Reichenbach Falls.<br />
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As you may recall, after Holmes appeared in Watson's consulting-room and recounted his interaction with Moriarty, the two fled to the Continent, eventually landing in Switzerland:<br />
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It was upon the 3rd of May that we reached the little village of Meiringen, where we put up at the Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter Steiler the elder. Our landlord was an intelligent man, and spoke excellent English, having served for three years as waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. At his advice, upon the afternoon of the 4th we set off together with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about half-way up the hill, without making a small d‚tour to see them.</blockquote>
It was here that Conan Doyle chose the final resting place for Sherlock Holmes - a rest that was intended to be eternal but that we now know lasted nearly a decade. The description of the Reichenbach Falls is a fitting one for the epic struggle of good versus evil that took place later in the story:<br />
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It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening, coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring for ever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing for ever upwards, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss.</blockquote>
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And after Watson was lured back to the Englischer Hof with the story of a patient in need (good old Watson!), he returned to the falls to find a note from Sherlock Holmes along with his alpenstock and silver cigarette case. He was led to conclude that that inevitable happened:<br />
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An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other's arms. Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation.</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgBj_Rty6GPVxwJDG5NNn8HzFp5CGj6KV6V2lcQryGJqpQPfepgMHBDJTNfxBO9qIzxDYPl7xULa-IowAwlEd6KUnyXG9flXchzjuhBysAVfMNPYjOvb17NP1kXImEAlpHQ3INA6J6s4Tw/s1600/Holmes_reichenbach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgBj_Rty6GPVxwJDG5NNn8HzFp5CGj6KV6V2lcQryGJqpQPfepgMHBDJTNfxBO9qIzxDYPl7xULa-IowAwlEd6KUnyXG9flXchzjuhBysAVfMNPYjOvb17NP1kXImEAlpHQ3INA6J6s4Tw/s640/Holmes_reichenbach.jpg" width="436" /></a></div>
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But aside from the colorful descriptions of both the setting and the action, this story above many others shows Watson's emotional side. Over the course of two short years, readers had gotten to know Holmes and Watson through 12 stories that made up <i>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</i> and 11 stories that comprised <i>The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes</i> (as well as the previously published <i>A Study in Scarlet</i> and <i>The Sign of Four</i>). That's less than half of what would eventually become the entire Canon of 60 stories - stories that would be published over the course of the following 35 or so years.<br />
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For Watson as well as for the readers, that's an intense run of stories - tales which fill us with wonder as we've been learning about the habits, eccentricities, limits and capabilities of the most intriguing detective that the world has ever known. Is it any wonder then that his sudden and tragic loss affected us so deeply?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkV5sKiNw_bJrVOh1VsGNp8IxfQpX79BEHh_JGTDTb70ep2HnKupNEYweW4K3DB8YMQYpo0ZGjaU9x-9BA84it5lP_UUlTa8haDM34CE9XqKUwKsUNjrANy4EGSt0HLnF_JslYGfbWVqjp/s1600/Watson+sad+%5BFINA%5D.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Watson realizing what happened to Holmes" border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkV5sKiNw_bJrVOh1VsGNp8IxfQpX79BEHh_JGTDTb70ep2HnKupNEYweW4K3DB8YMQYpo0ZGjaU9x-9BA84it5lP_UUlTa8haDM34CE9XqKUwKsUNjrANy4EGSt0HLnF_JslYGfbWVqjp/s400/Watson+sad+%5BFINA%5D.PNG" title="Dr. Watson, realizing the outcome at the Reichenbach Falls" width="400" /></a></div>
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Watson opens the story with the fateful line, "It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished." We'll never forget reading that line for the first time and feeling a little stab in the gut. The modern equivalent would be exclaiming, "Wait, <b><i>what</i></b>?"<br />
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He went on to describe how the scene affected him: "It was the sight of that alpenstock which turned me cold and sick...I stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I was dazed with the horror of the thing."<br />
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Even Holmes understood how his untimely departure would affect his friend, writing in his farewell note, "I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you."<br />
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The pain was palpable to readers at the time. There is an apocryphal legend that grown men in London wore black armbands in a demonstration of mourning. We have yet to see any definitive evidence of this occurrence (and the <i><a href="http://bakerstreetjournal.com/" target="_blank">Baker Street Journal</a></i> once offered a bounty for anyone who could prove it). But it rings true to the spirit of what happened at the time, which was an outpouring of grief over the loss of a literary character. Letters flowed to <i>The Strand Magazine</i> and to Arthur Conan Doyle himself, one even beginning "You brute!"<br />
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At least modern readers don't have to wait eight years for Holmes to reappear in <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> or ten years for the first of the stories that would make up <i>The Return of Sherlock Holmes</i>. Can you imagine what it must have been like to have to put Holmes to rest in one's mind and to blindly wait to see if he would ever reappear?<br />
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We're fortunate that the public outcry (and, let's face it, a hefty payday) convinced Sir Arthur to take up his pen once more to provide us with such rich and wonderful stories to fill our desires, fuel our imagination and enrich our friendships. While May 4 may seem one for us to mourn, we're fortunate that, as Watson observed upon Holmes's return in "The Empty House,"<br />
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...once again Mr. Sherlock Holmes is free to devote his life to examining those interesting little problems which the complex life of London so plentifully presents.</blockquote>
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