Contents Canadian Holmes Fall 2014 Volume 37 Number 1

Traces of Bootprints 1 By JoAnn and Mark Alberstat

From Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen 2 By Wendy Heyman-Marsaw

Sherlock Holmes and some Astronomical Connections 4 By Bradley E. Shaefer, with additional information and photos by Mark Alberstat

Two Visits from Sir Arthur 12 By Jack Winn

Moriarty — The Invisible Man 13 By Howard Ostrom

From Petrenko to Cumberbatch: The Many 19 Faces of Holmes and Watson (Part 2) By Eddy Webb

A Medical Perspective on the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 22 By Dr. James Reed

From the Editor’s Bookshelf 32 A review of Fan Phenomena by Peter Calamai

Letters From Lomax 34 By Peggy Perdue

News Notes from across Canada 36

Bootmakers’ Diary 37 By Donny Zaldin and Chris Redmond

RACES OF BOOTPRINTS

Dial M for Moriarty Moriarty is known far and wide as the ultimate foe of the ultimate detective. When Doyle first introduced the world to him in FINA, he may not have realized the force he was unleashing. If you are playing the Great Game, however, you will know that in VALL, Moriarty was already on Holmes’ trail. Moriarty was famously described as the “Napoleon of crime.” This monicker was, of course, first used to describe Adam Worth, a real-life criminal upon whom Doyle is believed to have modelled his character. To today’s readers, Napoleon is an historical figure, far back enough in the past to mesh with the likes of Catherine the Great and Henry VIII. If this were written today, he would have to be the Al Capone or Vladimir Putin of crime. However, to the readers who were the first to meet Moriarty back in 1893, Napoleon was still fresh within memory, having been dead only 72 years. Many readers of The Strand may have had grandfathers who fought against the self- proclaimed Emporer. It is interesting to note that in GREE, Holmes claims to be related to “Vernet, the French artist.” If this were Horace Vernet (1789-1863) the link between Holmes and Napoleon increases, as it was Vernet who painted Napoléon sur son lit de mort (Napoleon on his death bed) in 1826. In this issue, we take an extended look at the professor. The first article, by Bradely E. Shaefer, examines the life, similiarities and connections between this professor and Simon Newcomb, who was born and raised in Nova Scotia, not too far from the home of your humble editors. This article draws surprising similiarities between the careers of the two professors, Thankfully, Newcomb did not turn his amazingly fertile brain to crime. The second look at Moriarty comes in a roundup article by Howard Ostrom. This piece takes a look at the many actors who have played Moriarty in a wide variety of media. From Eric Porter to Andrew Scott, Howard has this murky waterfront covered. Unlike the London underworld of the Victorian past, Moriarty has not taken over this entire issue. Between the covers, you will also find an article taking a medical perspective of the Canon; Peter Calamai reviews a book on the recent increase in fandom around the Holmes stories, and comments on that as well as many of our usual Sherlockian goodies and news from across the country and around the corner — where Moriarty’s minions might just still lurk in the shadows.

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 1

From Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen

This column is by Mrs. Hudson herself and dictated to Wendy Heyman-Marsaw, a Sherlockian living in Halifax. Mrs. Hudson provided this photograph of herself at age 24, taken on the occasion of her betrothal to Mr. Hudson.

“If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.” – Beau Brummel

eorge Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummell established the mode of dress for men that rejected overly ornate fashions for one of understated but perfectly fitted and bespoke (custom tailored) garments. This look was based on dark coats, full-length trousers rather than knee breeches and stockings, and above all, immaculate shirt linen and an elaborately knotted cravat. Brummell is credited with introducing, and establishing as fashion, the modern men’s suit, worn with a necktie. He claimed he took five hours a day to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson were always impeccably dressed and had all their attire custom-made. The only exception was Mr. Holmes’ unfortunate “mouse coloured” dressing gown. (‘The Bruce Partington Plans’ and ‘The Empty House’) He wore this robe most often between cases as it suited his rather morose mood at those times. Mr. Holmes had two more presentable dressing gowns: blue (‘The Man with a Twisted Lip’), and purple (‘The Blue Carbuncle’). Formal evening dress consisted of a frock coat, plain or narrow pinstripe straight trousers with a dark waistcoat, white bow tie, a shirt with a winged collar, and high top hat (which was also worn in daytime by many gentlemen, including Mr. Holmes). Gentlemen out for an evening’s formal entertainment, for example, attending the opera or symphony, may wear a dark cape with a silk or satin lining. Walking canes were often highly decorative. For Mr. Holmes, an expert practitioner of single-stick fighting, canes were also highly functional (‘The Illustrious Client’). Daytime attire was similar to evening wear, save for a dark tie or a fine Harris Tweed lounge suit. Bowler hats in winter were an option to the tall hat. Knee- length topcoats, often with contrasting trim, velvet or fur collars, or calf-length overcoats were worn in winter. In summer, light-coloured, lightweight trousers and a boater (straw hat with ribbon band) were seen. Men’s city boots and dress 2 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 pumps generally had built-up heels and a narrow toe. Mr. Holmes’ bootmaker undoubtedly contributed to impressions of Mr. Holmes being of greater height than his six feet. Savile Row, a street in London, was considered the “golden mile” of bespoke tailoring. Nearby Jermyn and Bond Streets were noted for fine haberdashery. Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson frequently sought refreshment when in the area day or night at the convenient and excellent Grand Café Royal on Regent Street. Mr. Holmes was actually accosted outside it by roughs who escaped through the restaurant and out into the street behind it (‘The Illustrious Client’). In 1894 the night porter of the Grand Café Royal was found with two bullets in his head. The case was never solved. Recipes from the Grand Café Royal Menu: Caille en Casserole — Ingredients: 8-12 quail, salt, flour, 1/3 C. butter, 1/2 lb. fresh mushrooms, chopped fresh parsley, dry white wine — about 2 C. Mode: Split the birds down the back. Salt and dust lightly in flour. Sauté in skillet until browned on both sides. Remove quail from skillet and place in a casserole with lid. Pour drippings from skillet over birds, add mushrooms and parsley. Pour enough wine into casserole to half-cover the birds. Cover and place in 350 degree oven for 1 hour. (Doves and quarters of pheasant may also be done this way. Allow only 45 minutes in oven for doves and 1 1/4 hours for pheasant.) Carré d’Agneau au Sauce Menthe — Ingredients: Three 8-chop racks of lamb, 6 tablespoons Dijon mustard, 3 C. fresh white breadcrumbs, 6 Tbs. chopped fresh mint, salt and pepper. Mode: Preheat oven to 450°F. Sprinkle lamb with salt and pepper. Spread 1 tablespoon mustard on each side of each lamb rack. Mix breadcrumbs and mint in medium bowl. Press onto lamb, coating completely. Arrange lamb, meat side up, on large baking sheet. Roast lamb 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F. Roast until lamb registers 130°F for rare, or medium-rare 20 min. longer. Tent with parchment (or foil); let stand 5 minutes. Cut lamb racks between bones into chops. Arrange on plates. Garnish with mint sprigs; pass Sauce Menthe separately. Ingredients Sauce Menthe: 2 C. good quality white wine vinegar, ¾ C. sugar, ½ cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves. Mode: In heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine sugar and vinegar. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then lower to simmer and cook until the liquid is reduced by half, 10 to 12 min. It should be thick and syrupy. Remove from heat and cool five minutes. Add mint leaves. Stir, then pour into a bowl. Cover the bowl, let it sit for about an hour like steeping a cup of tea. Serve at room temperature. Yield: 1 C. Sauce Menthe.

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Sherlock Holmes and some Astronomical Connections

By Bradely E. Shaefer, with additional information and photos by Mark Alberstat.

Dr. Bradley Shaefer is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Louisiana State University. In 2007, Bradley was awarded a share Gruber Prize in Cosmology, as part of the Supernova Cosmology Project, for the discovery of Dark Energy. In October 2011, this work was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, with the prize going to the head of the Supernova Cosmology Project.

Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared in The Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol.103, no.1, 1993.

oriarty. The name is used almost as an expletive in the Sherlockian world. However, what do we know about this character and the inspiration for the scientific and not the criminal side of this genius? Could Simon Newcomb, a Nova Scotia-born astronomer have been Doyle’s inspiration for the arch-villain? The facts laid out in this article will outline how the Napoleon of crime may have been from eastern Canada. Simon Newcomb was an astronomer/mathematician who specialized in celestial mechanics during the last half of the 1800s. He received an excellent education from Benjamin Peirce, an American mathematician who taught at Harvard. After graduating, he started work at the U.S. Naval Observatory and soon became the director of the Nautical Almanac Office. Newcomb either joined or led eclipse expeditions to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1860, Gibraltar in 1870, and Separation, Wyoming, in 1878. He received an appointment as a Professor of Mathematics at the small Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, although he was forced to resign when the requirements of government service became too pressing. He was famous enough to have been called in to help Alexander Graham Bell, another Victorian with strong ties to Nova Scotia, find the bullet lodged in the body of President James Garfield. Garfield was shot by an assassin on July 2, 1881, and lingered until September 9, when he died. Doctors at this pre-X-ray time could not find where the bullet had lodged in the president’s chest. Newcomb had been experimenting with a very early version of a metal detector that he had created. Combined with the amplification of sound on which Bell had worked, the two created a device that was used on the president. Unfortunately, due to the newly invented coil spring mattress, the

4 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 presence of which Bell and Newcomb were unaware, the apparatus failed to find the bullet. Newcomb was also famous enough to find his way into fiction. In 1895, H.G. Wells published The Time Machine. Well before the machine is built, Filby states, “But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago.” For Newcomb’s name to be used so easily in this story shows that most readers would know instantly who Newcomb was and his reputation. Newcomb was born in the small rural community of Wallace Bridge on Nova Scotia’s Northumberland Shore on March 12, 1835. The family could trace the name Simon Newcomb back to about 1666, when the first Simon Newcomb was born in Massachusetts or Maine. The family had the habit of naming the eldest son after this Simon Newcomb. Except for the fact that our Simon Newcomb’s father was not the eldest, he would have been the sixth Simon Newcomb in an unbroken line. A family with a penchant for naming sons with the same name rings a bell with a certain Moriarty family as well. A careful reading of the Canon shows that Professor James Moriarty may have had two brothers who were also named James. Simon Newcomb’s parents were Emily and John Newcomb. John was a teacher who moved around a lot, particularly through Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. It seems that despite his father’s profession, young Simon had little conventional schooling other than direct teaching from his father. Simon showed an early promise as a student, knowing his alphabet by the age of four, according to his 1903 autobiography, Reminiscences of an Astronomer. “What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies at stated hours under the constant guidance of a teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed. For the most part, when I attended my father’s school at all, I came and went with entire freedom…” Growing up in a small community like Wallace, far from the nearest city — that being the bustling port of Halifax, was holding the young Newcomb from the progress of the age. Newcomb writes in his autobiography that “the railway was something read or heard about with wonder; a steamer had never ploughed the waters of Wallace Bay. Nearly everything necessary for the daily life of the people had to be made on the spot, and even at home. The work of the men and boys was “from sun to sun,” — I might almost say from daylight to darkness, — as they tilled the ground, mended the fences, or cut lumber, wood, and stone for export to more favored climes.” Although it is believed that Newcomb didn’t return to Wallace, the small community certainly remembers him. The local museum (http://www.wallaceandareamuseum.com) has a display dedicated to its famous son and a short drive down the road is a cairn to Newcomb, in Newcomb-Boyle

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 5

Park. The text on this cairn gives a short biography, in English and French. This monument was built by the federal government in 1935. The Boyle in Newcomb-Boyle Park is Willard Sterling Boyle who died in 2011. In 2009, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit, now known as the CCD sensor, and found in every digital camera in the world. Newcomb’s mother died at the early age of 37. Simon, then in his mid-teens, headed to Moncton, New Brunswick, to live with his maternal grandfather. There he was apprenticed to Dr. Foshay, a charlatan herbalist. Simon only stayed with Foshay for two years of his scheduled five-year apprenticeship. Upon leaving Foshay, Simon headed, by foot, to Calais, Maine, a trek of 190 kilometres, where he took a ship to Salem, Massachusetts, where his father was working. The two Newcombs then travelled to Maryland, where Simon taught from 1854 to 1856. “The beginning of 1856 found me teaching in the family of a planter named Bryan, residing in Prince George County, Md., some fifteen or twenty miles from Washington. This opened up new opportunities. I could ride into Washington whenever I wished. The Smithsonian Library was one of the greatest attractions. Sometime in May, 1856, I got permission from the attendant in charge to climb into the gallery and see the mathematical books. Here I was delighted to find the greatest treasure that my imagination had ever pictured — a work that I had thought of almost as belonging to fairyland. And here it was right before my eyes — four enormous volumes — Mécanique

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Céleste, by the Marquis de Laplace, Peer of France; translated by Nathaniel Bowditch, LL. D., Member of the Royal Societies of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. … I dipped into it here and there, but at every step was met by formulæ and methods quite beyond the power of one who knew so little of mathematics.” With this stumbling block in mind, Newcomb studied mathematics and physics privately and supported himself by teaching before taking a job at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a human computer; a position in charge of calculations. Around the same time, he enrolled at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 1858. Newcomb’s great life program was a complete and rigorous analysis of all available data regarding the positions of solar system objects. The result was a consistent set of fundamental constants and orbital parameters which properly accounted for perturbations caused by the mutual attraction of the planets. This mammoth task resulted in a tremendous improvement in the accuracy of astronomical ephemerides, or calculation tables. So complete and accurate was this work that his equations provided the basis for the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac until the 1960s, when portions were replaced with computerized numerical integrations. Newcomb wrote more than 200 books and articles, primarily on mathematics and astronomy. His first research paper, which was never published, was completed at the age of 19 and titled ‘A New Demonstration of the Binomial Theorem.’ The binomial theorem remained a frequent topic of Newcomb’s, appearing in his various math text books, as well as in a long technical discussion in an unpublished treatise titled ‘Theory of Probable Inference.’ Newcomb’s first published paper was titled ‘On a Method of Dynamics.’ In the 1860s, Newcomb published several times about the dynamics of single asteroids. In one case, he used the perturbations of Jupiter on the asteroid Polyhymnia to measure the mass of the giant planet. In his most famous paper on the dynamics of an asteroid, Newcomb proved with high-powered mathe- matical arguments that the asteroid orbits could never have passed through a common point at any time in the past. This result was a direct test of the theory that the asteroids owe their origin to the explosion of a primoridal planet which orbited between Mars and Jupiter. Some of these papers could well have been Simon Newcomb (left) Professor Challenger titled ‘The Dynamics of an (right). Asteroid’ — the title of

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Moriarty’s book. The destructiveness of asteroids fascinated Newcomb and he even published a science fiction short story titled ‘The End of the World.’ McClure’s Magazine published the story in May 1903. The story features an asteroid that plunges into the Sun, causing a nova eruption and the death of most of humanity. In some respects, this story has features similar to Doyle’s own 1913 science fiction work The Poison Belt, featuring another professorial character, Professor Challenger, a man whose physical appearance is similar to Newcomb’s. Simon Newcomb’s honours were many, including the first Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and honorary degrees from 17 of the world’s most- distinguished universities. He served as president of many major scientific societies, including the American Astronomical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Psychical Research. His biographers have rightfully described Newcomb as “the most honored astronomer in the world during the late 19th century.” What was Newcomb like as a person? Little is said on this subject, although his subordinates were known to hold long grudges for his theft of scientific credit on a major discovery. But the most frank summary is given in a 1987 article by Joseph Tenn, titled ‘Simon Newcomb: A Famous and Forgotten American Astronomer’ who relates the general opinion that Newcomb was a “dynamic and intimidating individual; he was highly successful as a leader, in the sense that he got things done, but he was more feared than liked.” “More feared than liked,” is an apt description of another professor we all know — Moriarty. Professor James Moriarty is the archetypal scientific criminal mastermind. Holmes describes him as “the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. His agents are numerous and splendidly organized.” Moriarty’s “unique position depends on the fact that all he does must succeed,” so that his lieutenants all feared for their lives. Moriarty is “the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid — a book which ascends to such rarified heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there is no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it.” With that in mind, Moriarty must have been one of the astronomers/mathematicians so common in the era of positional astronomy. To modern historians, the epitome of the astronomer/mathematician is perhaps Karl Friedrich Gauss, the so-called “Prince of Mathematicians” (1777–1855). The book title The Dynamics of an Asteroid is a peculiar one. This work was published in the 1860s or soon thereafter. In 1867, Daniel Kirkwood had discovered and explained the ‘Kirkwood Gaps,’ or regions in the asteroid belts

8 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 where few asteroids are to be found since the orbits in the gaps are unstable to perturbations by massive Jupiter. But if Moriarty had anticipated or extended these discoveries, then his book title would have been something such as The Dynamics of Asteroids. By the 1860s, more than 100 asteroids had been discovered, so perhaps the singular asteroid which Moriarty studied had some special orbital property? But the first Earth-crossing asteroid (Eros) was discovered in 1898, while the first Trojan asteroid (Achilles) was found in 1906. (Trojan asteroids are bodies that revolve about the Sun in the same orbit as a planet and occupy a stable position either about 60° ahead of the planet in the orbit or about 60° behind it). Given this dilemma, Isaac Asimov concluded that the title could only refer to the single asteroidal planet, with an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, whose breakup created the many asteroid fragments seen today. Asimov points out that the mathematics of deriving the original orbit would have been a problem worthy of Moriarty’s genius and that the physical destruction of an entire world would have fascinated his diseased mind. The Sherlockian Canon has been translated into dozens of languages and is perpetually popular throughout the world. A sizeable fraction of the educated population has marvelled at Holmes’ ingenuity and hissed at Moriarty’s villainy. As such, Professor James Moriarty has a strong claim to being one of the best- known astronomers of all time — although not usually known for his astronomical work. To summarize the career of Professor Moriarty, one could say he was a mathematical genius of the highest order whose primary study was in astronomy (with particular interest in eclipses). He wrote treatises on the binomial theorem and the dynamics of an asteroid. He was made a Professor of Mathematics at a small university until he was forced to resign his position. He flourished in the late 1800s and reached a peak at which he was likely to be the most-renowned astronomer in the world. His leadership was based on his repeated successes, his intimidating personality and the fear of his associates. This short, five-sentence biography mirrors any mini-biography one would write on Newcomb, sentence for sentence. Although Newcomb was never mentioned in any of Doyle’s printed letters or memoirs, the astronomer was certainly famous enough to come to the author’s attention. However, a more tangible link has been discovered. This connection was almost certainly made by Colonel Alfred Drayson. Drayson was a close personal friend of Conan Doyle’s when both lived in Southsea. Their acquaintance was made while Drayson was a patient of Dr. Doyle’s. Their friendship blossomed when Conan Doyle was initiated into the mysteries of spiritualism through seances held at Drayson’s home. The friends met frequently, went on a vacation together and belonged to several of the same learned societies. Conan Doyle even dedicated a book to Drayson. The two men had many deep conversations that impressed Doyle enough that he would recount them in detail 30 years later. It was during these conversations that Doyle first heard of Professor Newcomb.

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Andrew Lycett writes in his Conan Doyle biography of the first meeting between Drayson and Conan Doyle at a Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society gathering where Doyle gave a talk on his Arctic travels. “The fact that Arthur met him (Drayson) at this stage, just as he was becoming aware of these areas (mainly spiritualism), was a case of synchronicity almost worth of the Society’s investigation.” Alfred Drayson was a career military man, first commissioned in 1846 after graduation from the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. He served in the Kaffir War of 1847 and against the insurgent Boers in 1848, during which his knowledge of the Kaffir and Zulu languages were of great service. Upon his return to England, he was appointed as instructor of surveying and practical astronomy at his old academy, while working part-time at Greenwich Observatory, starting in 1858. He was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1868, although his astronomical writings were of dubious quality. He deduced, for example, the gradual expansion of the Earth from observations for which others only saw errors. In 1876, he was sent to India in command of a brigade and served in Bengal. He retired from the army in 1883 and moved to Southsea. He wrote two books on the game of whist, at which he was an authority, and made a significant income. He also wrote two books, titled Sporting Scenes among the Caffres and Among the Zulus, which gloried in animal hunting in South Africa and the western Himalayas. Drayson sported a long moustache, a large forehead with receding hairline and deep-lined brows. Doyle describes Colonel Sebastian Moran as having two eyes that “shone like stars... He was an elderly man, with a thin, projecting nose, a high, bald forehead, and a huge grizzled moustache.” Drayson recalls in his book The Gentleman Cadet how in his youth he felt a sense of extra power at the ability to exponentiate numbers in his head with the aid of the binomial theorem. He has been correctly characterized by Doyle’s biographers as an astronomer and mathematician, and his Left: Colonel Moran being arrested in ‘The scientific interests Adventure of the Empty’ house. Right: Colonel closely match those of Alfred Drayson Professor Newcomb.

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In 1875, Colonel Drayson published a paper titled Variation in the Obliquity of the Ecliptic. This article and several similar books advanced an incredible (and wrong) thesis regarding the obliquity on which Newcomb was the world’s leading authority. In addition, both observed the 1882 transit of Venus. It would only be natural that the colonel would meet with the professor during one of his four visits to Greenwich (where Drayson worked) before 1876, although no record of this meeting can be found. However, Drayson does refer many times to the Nautical Almanac, of which Newcomb was editor, and has disparaged an unnamed winner of the RAS Gold Medal — it can only be Newcomb — who has ignored his results on the obliquity. Finally, the professor and the colonel both shared a deep interest in spiritualism. When the professor was elected as the first president of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1885, we can expect Drayson and Doyle to discuss this new personality on the scene with detailed, possibly personal, anecdotes of his professional colleague. Thus, Colonel Drayson provides a probable conduit by which Doyle would have heard about Newcomb. As we all know, Colonel Sebastian Moran was the chief of staff for Professor Moriarty before his death in 1891. This colonel was also a career military man, belonging to the 1st Bangalore Pioneers. He served with distinction in the Jowaki Campaign, Afghan Campaign, Charasiab, Sherpur and Cabul. “He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger,” Holmes tells Watson in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House.’ In the 1880s, Moran wrote books titled Heavy Game in the Western Himalayas and Three Months in the Jungle. However, India became too hot to hold him, despite the lack of an open scandal. Upon Moran’s return to London, Professor Moriarty recruited him to a high position in the gang. After Moriarty’s death, Moran earned his living by cheating at whist in swank London clubs. In the ‘Adventure of the Empty House,’ we hear of the Colonel’s arrest for the murder of a prominent socialite who caught him cheating at cards. Apparently Moran was not hanged for this offence as of September 1902, when Holmes mentions in ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’ that the colonel was still living. A summary of the public information on the colonel would read thus: A career army man who served in the colonial wars and spent the bulk of his service as a colonel. He served with distinction in southeast India, until his retirement to England in the middle 1880s. In physical appearance, he had a “deep-lined brow,” “a high, bald forehead, and a huge grizzled moustache.” He was of high intelligence and wrote two books on hunting in the jungles of the British Empire and the western Himalayas. He was a good marksman for which stories are told of chasing wounded big game cats down drainage channels. After leaving the army, he made his living at whist until his death soon after the turn of the century.

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This description of Colonel Moran is also exactly correct for Colonel Drayson. As with the case for Professor Moriarty/Newcomb, the parallels are so many and close that coincidence can be ruled out. One hypothesis is that Doyle was casting around for characters and adopted (either consciously or unconsciously) the lives of Drayson and Newcomb for his stories. It is well known that Doyle did exactly this when he modelled Sherlock Holmes after Dr. Joseph Bell. Another hypothesis is that Dr Watson’s literary agent slightly changed the manuscripts so as to avoid the strict libel laws of England. If so, then mankind can at last know the true identity of the world’s best-known villain and astronomer, as well as the name of his chief of staff.

Two Visits from Sir Arthur

By Jack Winn

Jack Winn, founder of the Stratford Upon Avon Sherlockian Society, is a Structural Impressionist painter living in Stratford Ontario. "I seem to have a love for all things Victorian. Sir Arthur's mood instantly resonates with me."

reetings from The Stratford On Avon Sherlock Holmes Society. My goal of turning my friends on to this sport is going well. One couple is hooked on Jeremy Brett, my son draws Sherlockian tattoos, and Nancy is wearing tights in the pattern of Cumberbatch’s wallpaper. Our library growth, thanks to Dayna, Peggy, George, Chris, Cathy, Randi, Peter and several others. The quarter day fêtes seem to come so quickly. It is an interesting way to mark the passage of time. Our membership has bloomed to about 70. Our friendship with Bootmakers has become very special. We have met for three years now and some members are asking for a little more structure to the gatherings. Proof that there is a natural progression to Sherlockian Nerdyness. Good company and a Canon. And now to my magical experiences with Sir Arthur. I live in Stratford, Ontario, on the main street in a block of flats built in 1860, looking out at a three-story yellow brick building. After counting the 39 steps to my rooms, you come down a hallway into a large sitting room with two seven-foot windows looking out onto the bustle of urban life. On weekends, our chamber of commerce hires a wagon with a pair of beauties to tour people around. I actually gaze out of the window and listen to the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on the pavement. There is no need for me to be delusional. The first time that Sir Arthur dropped by was a sultry late summer afternoon. I was weary from the heat and longed for the beach or the breeze of the country. I was on the settee …Continued on page 40 12 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014

Moriarty — The Invisible Man

By Howard Ostrom Howard Ostrom is a Sherlockian living in Florida. He is a contributor to the Yahoo group Welcome Holmes and has an extensive, and growing, collection of Sherlockiana related to actors who have portrayed the great detective on radio, TV, stage and movies.

ith the vast number of Moriarty performers I’ve come across in my years of collecting Holmes in various media, I’ll admit I get a bit stunned when I’m asked such questions as, “Who is your favourite Moriarty actor?” or “Which actor most resembles Moriarty?” Yet I’m never as stunned as the person who asked the question is, when my response is Claude Rains. A sharp questioner might shoot back with, “Claude Rains never played Moriarty, did he?” Or the more common follow up might simply be “Okay,” followed by a blank stare. Still others will try to impress me by saying, “I thought for sure you’d answer Eric Porter, Jared Harris, Andrew Scott, Lawrence Olivier, Henry Daniell, Lionel Atwill, George Zucco or Lyn Harding, etc.” totally unaware Claude Rains ever played the Professor. I’m not attempting to deceive or show up these questioners with my response and I will explain why my answer is Claude Rains and not the other Moriarty media performers I might strew out in the following paragraphs. In his 1893 short story ‘The Final Problem,’ Arthur Conan Doyle introduces Holmes’ greatest opponent, the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty. The physical description of Moriarty comes directly from Holmes. “He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in this head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 13 reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his puckered eyes.” Watson, as a medical man, may have described Moriarty as having osteitis deformans, the aptly called Paget’s disease, named for the English surgeon Sir James Paget, of whom Doyle was surely aware. Paget’s disease is a chronic bone disorder that typically results in enlarged, deformed bones due to excessive breakdown and formation of bone tissue that can cause bones to weaken and may result in bone pain and bone deformities. I say aptly named ‘Paget’s disease’ since the illustration of Moriarty supplied in FINA comes from Sidney Paget. Is this the portrait of Moriarty I imagined from my readings? Sorry, Sidney, but not quite how I would have portrayed Moriarty in the media. Given this description by Holmes, put to illustration by Paget, I would have probably replied to the question of the performer that looks like Moriarty the most with Eric Porter, since Granada succeeded in finding a Paget illustration look-alike. Igor Maslennikov’s choice for Visilay Livanov’s antagonist in the Russian series, Viktor Yevgrafov, is another dead ringer.

Eric Porter (left) and Viktor Yevgrafov (right)

But wait — Holmes has told us more than a description of Moriarty. He has detailed Moriarty’s situation for us too. “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed — the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In

14 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 that case money is found for his bail or his defense. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught—never so much as suspected. This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.” Many Sherlockians have described Moriarty and Holmes based on these words as the light and dark sides of the same coin or the yin and yang. To a questioner who views Moriarty through those glasses, I would respond: the performer who best mirrored Holmes was Gustav von Seyffertitz in Sherlock Holmes (1922).

Barrymore and von Seyffertitz as Holmes and Many viewers were Moriarty. convinced John Barry- more actually played the dual role of Holmes and Moriarty, which is high praise of Gustav von Seyffertitz’s Moriarty abilities. Other actors have actually performed as both Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty on different occasions, which lends support to a yin and yang theory — at least by numerous casting directors. The legendary Orson Welles, who played Sherlock Holmes on radio in ‘The Immortal Sherlock Holmes’ (1938) for the Mercury Theater on Air, would return to Moriarty on radio in 1954, with John Gielgud as Sherlock Holmes and Ralph Richardson as Dr. Watson. Anthony Higgins, who played Sherlock Holmes, with Debrah Farentino in the Watson (Amy Winslow) role, in the 1993 TV movie 1994 Anthony Higgins as Professor Rathe, aka Baker Street: Sherlock Moriarty Holmes Returns, also

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 15 appeared in the 1995 movie Young Sherlock Holmes as Professor Rathe, the younger version of Professor Moriarty, with Nicolas Rowe as Sherlock Holmes and Alan Cox as Dr. Watson. Richard Roxburgh appeared as Sherlock Holmes, with Ian Hart as Dr. Watson, in the 2002 TV movie Hound of The Baskervilles, and then just a year later played Moriarty in the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Actor Michael Pennington shows up as Sherlock Holmes in the 1987 TV movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes, with Margaret Colin as Jane Watson, and returned to BBC radio as Moriarty in a 1991 version of FINA and a 1993 version of EMPT. Canadian actor John Colicos, who appeared on stage in 1975 as Sherlock Holmes with Donald Richard Roxburgh as Moriarty Symington as Dr. Watson, took on a dual role as both Inspector Lestrade and Professor Moriarty in a 1989 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode ‘My Dear Watson,’ which had Brian Bedford as Sherlock Holmes. Geoffrey Whitehead played Holmes in the TV series Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1980), with Donald Pickering as Dr. Watson. Whitehead later played Moriarty on radio in the BBC’s The Newly Discovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1999), with Roy Hudd as Sherlock Holmes and Chris Emmett as Dr. Watson. Luis Hector, the first actor to play Sherlock Holmes on TV in NBC’s ‘The Three Garridebs,’ with William Podmore as Dr. Watson, also played Holmes in 1936 Sherlock Holmes radio series, with Harry West as Dr. Watson, and Moriarty in the (1939 — 1947) The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio series with Basil Rathbone (and Tom Conway) as Sherlock Holmes, and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Juris Strenga (Juris Strang) (1937 — ), is a famous Latvian actor who played Sherlock Holmes in Here Is My Village (1972), a Latvian TV movie. Strenga also played Moriarty in the 1982 Sherlock Holmes, a Latvian musical based on the Gillette play. Curiously enough, even Dr. Watson actors have become Moriarty actors. For example, the aforementioned Alan Cox, Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes in

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1995, showed up as Moriarty in Big Finishes’ Empty House/Final Problem in 2011 with Nicholas Briggs as Sherlock Holmes and Richard Earl as Dr. Watson. Actor Daniel Davis appeared on stage in 1980 as Dr. Watson in the play Crucifer of Blood, with Peter Donat as Holmes. But he is better remembered for his sterling holo- deck performances as Moriarty in Star Trek the Next Generation, with Brent Spiner Daniel Davis as Moriarty (Data) as Sherlock Holmes and Levar Burton (Geordi) as Dr. Watson. The episodes were: ‘Elementary, My Dear Data’ (1988) and ‘Ship in a Bottle’ (1993). Even Colin Jeavons, Inspector Lestrade in the Granada Sherlock Holmes series, got into the act. He appeared as Moriarty in 1983’s ‘The Baker Street Boys,’ with Roger Ostime as Sherlock Holmes and Hubert Rees as Dr. Watson, in an episode titled ‘The Adventure of the Winged Scarab.’ Putting aside Holmes’ description of Moriarty, and the yin and yang theory of Holmes and Moriarty, what else do we really know of Moriarty? A blog of Sherlockian Ray Wilcockson came to the conclusion that it was the invisibility of Moriarty that secured his legendary status. He noted that this T.S. Eliot poem said it better than he could. Eliot was a great Holmes reader — Macavity is inspired, I believe, by Moriarty.

MACAVITY: THE MYSTERY CAT Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw - For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law. He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair: For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there! … There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare: At whatever time the deed took place — MACAVITY WASN’T THERE! And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are

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widely known [I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone] Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of crime!

Yes, Macavity/Moriarty was invisible to everyone except Sherlock Holmes! Moriarty is invisible to me. Claude Rains played the invisible man in the 1933 movie of the same name. An Invisible Man quote from that movie says, “Power, I said! Power to walk into the gold vaults of the nations, into the secrets of kings, into the Holy of Holies; power to make multitudes run squealing in terror at the touch of my little invisible finger. Even the Moon’s frightened of me, frightened to death! The whole world’s frightened to death!” That quote could just as easily be from the mouth of Moriarty. So now you know why I selected Claude Rains as the actor who best resembles Professor Moriarty, which leaves me with the question of who is my favourite Moriarty performer. Since this is only an opinion question, I will give you my opinion. A few years back my answer might have been Lyn Harding of the Wontner 1930’s Holmes films, or perhaps Daniel Davis from Star Trek the Next Generation, as they would have been the most memorable two that first came to mind. However, since the BBC Sherlock series debuted in 2010 my absolute favourite Moriarty, without peer, goes to Andrew Scott. He is the most exciting and haunting Moriarty in my mind palace of Moriarty performers I have given an honourable mention to a current Internet Moriarty, whom I also find extremely entertaining. Adrian Charlton, in the ongoing Mary Morston Mysteries, found on Ross K. Foad’s No Place Like Holmes website and YouTube, plays a classic style melodramatic villain to the tee! Moriarty fans, I recommend you check him out. The author’s least favourite Moriarty? In finale, the worst joke of a Moriarty for this author, is Natalie Dormer, Jamie Moriarty (or is she Irene Adler — I couldn’t care less) in CBS TV’s Elementary. Dormer, normally an excellent actress, is ruined by a terrible storyline, on a show that resembles a Sherlock Holmes story only in monikers. This author proudly admits to having quit Andrew Scott as Moriarty watching Elementary.

18 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014

From Petrenko to Cumber- batch: The Many Faces of Holmes and Watson (Part 2)

By Eddy Webb

Eddy Webb (with a “y,” thank you) is an award-winning writer, game designer and Sherlockian. Since 2002, he has worked on over 100 products, as well as continuing to crank out words for other people as long as they keep paying him. He lives a sitcom life with his wife, his roommate, a supervillain cat and an affably stupid pug. He can be found at eddyfate.com.

ast issue, I talked about the recent renaissance of Sherlock Holmes interpretations. I also dug into two of them (the Robert Downey, Jr. movies and the Igor Petrenko television series), and showed how they were similar to and differed from the Canon. This time, I’ll look at two of the biggest modern interpretations: BBC’s Sherlock and CBS’s Elementary. These two series are both evocative of the original material, but in extremely different ways, prompting intense differences of opinions between fans. As before, I won’t spend time focusing on which interpretations are good or bad. Instead, I’ll focus on some examples of how the characterization of Holmes and Watson in these shows do and do not evoke elements of the original stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (aside from them being set in the 21st century).

Sherlock (2010-present): Benedict Cumberbatch (Holmes) and Martin Freeman (Watson) Probably the most well- known interpretation of Holmes and Watson right now, this series not only re- imagines Holmes in a modern-day setting but it draws heavily from specific Canon references and twists them (such as the title of the first episode, ‘A Study in Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 19

Pink.’) Entire books have been written picking apart the specific Canonical points and references embedded in this series so I won’t go over those. Rather, I’ll focus on some overall trends. Holmes doesn’t use drugs. We see him once use nicotine patches, he smokes one cigarette, and he drinks a few times in a single episode. But on the whole Holmes’ drug use is very mild. Granted, how the Victorians viewed cocaine use isn’t much stronger than how we view smoking now (it’s a bad habit, it causes health problems but it’s not illegal, etc.), and an argument could be made that Holmes’ indulgences with cigarettes and alcohol are on par with his cocaine use but it in no way matches up with his Canonical smoking. Holmes loves technology. His use of cellphones and computers to get, store and process information is on par with the Canonical Holmes’ obsession with Victorian technology, and his use of the telegraph certainly resonates with 21st- century texting. The Canonical Holmes was even one of the first people in London to get a telephone! Holmes is awkward with women. This is something that comes up in a number of interpretations (including this one) but it just doesn’t match up with the Canon. Holmes may be dismissive of women but he can be quite charming when he wants to be. There is a nuance between Holmes being willing to concede Watson’s superior knowledge of women and Holmes treating women completely differently than men that gets lost in many interpretations. Holmes is a self-diagnosed sociopath. Cumberbatch’s Holmes calls himself “a high-functioning sociopath,” and while some have quibbled about the accuracy of that self-assessment, I feel it’s far from the Canonical Holmes. A sociopath is someone who acts as if he or she does not have a conscience but if anything, the Canonical Holmes has too much of one! His sense of justice is very strong and deep, and more than once in the Canon he’s let criminals go because he felt compassion for their situation. Yes, his sense of justice does not match up with that of the legal system but that’s far from being a sociopath. Watson is a soldier and a doctor. Of the four interpretations I’ve looked at, Freeman’s Watson is probably the closest to the Canonical Watson in terms of his occupation: he is a former soldier who comes back to London after being injured in war to establish a private medical practice. He is compassionate and he doesn’t put up with Sherlock’s eccentricities. He even has a moustache for part of one episode, to match with a few references to it in the Canon! Watson is not a good detective. But alas, Watson is just not on Holmes’ level. While the Canon has Watson regularly revelling in Holmes’ genius (much of it rightly deserved), Watson does have a good eye for detail and some decent deductive skill in his own right. But we don’t see much of that in Sherlock, although he is still miles away from the bumbling portrayals of Watson made famous by Nigel Bruce.

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Elementary (2012-present): Jonny Lee Miller (Holmes) and Lucy Liu (Watson) Holmes is a recovering addict. Unlike Sherlock, Miller’s Holmes goes the opposite way: he starts off recovering from heavy drug use, and much of the show revolves around his struggles with being an addict. We don’t see Holmes smoke or drink at all during the show but his drug use is central to the character. Again, it doesn’t mesh well with the Canon (Holmes never admitted to being an addict) but it’s a take that’s fresh and new. Holmes loves technology. On the other hand, Holmes’ love of using phones and technology is on par with Cumberbatch’s portrayal, and even expands into multiple televisions and tablet use. Holmes is quite the ladies’ man. Holmes has explicitly had sex with a few different women during the course of the show. All of those relationships are purely sexual (he only seems to be in love with Irene Adler), and it is implied that he is using sex as a replacement for the distraction that drugs used to provide. Further, he doesn’t seem any more or less awkward around women (or even transgendered women) than anyone else. Holmes is a self-diagnosed sociopath. Another similarity between Sherlock and Elementary is that both Holmes portrayals claim to be sociopaths. However, in the case of Miller’s Holmes, this is even less likely to be true. He forms connections with a number of characters throughout the show, and over two seasons starts to care for even relative strangers. Hardly the inclinations of a sociopath. Watson is a female surgeon who has no military experience. Aside from the fact that she’s a surgeon, Lucy Liu’s Watson has very little in common with the Canonical Watson. While this isn’t the first time that Watson has been a woman (1987’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes has that dubious honour), the character’s gender is only one aspect of Watson that is completely different from our Canonical understanding. Watson is a peer to Holmes. And yet, one of the most striking elements is that Watson is actually close to Holmes’ level. She is smart, perceptive and fearless. Her skills remind me a lot of both the Watsons who worked alongside Jeremy Brett’s Holmes. This is a Watson that, while she may not be Canonically accurate, certainly has the heart of our beloved doctor. When praising or disparaging any of the shows I have discussed in this series, one must always keep in mind that these are interpreations of the Canon that we all know and love so well.

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 21

A Medical Perspective on the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

By Dr. James Reed

Dr James Reed is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, and works in a secure hospital in Birmingham, UK. He has a longstanding interest in the connections between medicine and the Arts, including literature.

lthough primarily famous as stories of detection and crime, the Sherlockian Canon can be looked at for methods of logical reasoning, deduction and the diagnostic process employed by doctors. Moreover, the stories owe a great deal in their construction and execution to medicine. “Included within the 60 Holmes adventures are references to 68 diseases, 32 medical terms, 38 doctors, 22 drugs, 12 medical specialties, six hospitals and even three medical journals and two medical schools. Conan Doyle often patterned characters in his writings after medical school professors and friends. Also on record are 42 of his real patients, with the nature of the illness available for 31 of them. Many of the real patients have their fictional counterparts in the Holmes adventures.”[1] While this article aims to explore the field in some detail, consider various other interesting medical references in the Canon, and also the relationship between Holmesian deduction and modern medicine. The most appropriate starting point is a consideration of important characters.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes Although Holmes apparently holds no medical qualifications, references in A Study in Scarlet show that he has a healthy interest in such matters.[2] Indeed, he is first encountered by Watson in a London hospital laboratory, devising a test for haemoglobin. In developing the character of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle drew heavily on his medical experience. One particular influence was Dr. Joseph Bell, a distinguished doctor who worked at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. In Doyle’s own words:

“The most notable of the characters whom I met was one Joseph Bell, surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary... . He was a very skilful surgeon, but his strong point was diagnosis, not only of disease, but of occupation and character... . [As his outpatient clerk] I had ample chance of studying his methods and of noticing that he often learned more of the patient by a few quick glances than I had done by my questions.” [3] 22 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014

Doyle recounts several examples of Bell’s deductions, which bear striking similarities to Holmes’ deductions. Bell is an undoubted influence upon the character of Holmes (Doyle was later to write to Bell saying: “My dear Doctor Bell, it is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes” [4]) but it would be wrong to say that Holmes is a direct fictional representation of him—the characters differ in many ways, not least in their chosen professions. Moreover, Doyle wrote that although Bell “took a keen interest” in Holmes and went so far as to suggest ideas for further adventures, these ideas “were not ... very practical”.[3]

Dr. John H. Watson Perhaps the most immediately obvious medical reference in the Canon is personified in Dr. Watson, Holmes’ companion and chronicler of all but four of the adventures. The first point to make concerns Watson’s intelligence. Watson is a man of education, graduating with an MD from the University of London in 1878. He then undertook further training with a view to being commissioned as an army surgeon. On completing this training, he caught up with his regiment in India, which had become embroiled in the second Afghan war. After being shot by a Jezail bullet, he was admitted to a field hospital where he contracted “enteric fever” (Doyle was later to work in just such a hospital). After a long period struggling for his life, he was sent straight back to England to recover, and seek some civilian employment. Watson has therefore had a far from humdrum background, and this lends him physical and mental toughness, which is often brought to the fore in the adventures. Few other professional ‘intelligentsia’ could have believably had such experiences, and they add considerably to Watson as a character. Many times over the course of the stories his experiences in India come into play. Also, whenever there is danger at hand, it is Watson who carries his trusty army revolver — and presses it into service on more than one occasion.[5] There is considerable evidence in the Canon and in some other related works that Watson strove to emulate Holmes’ skills — with (as he says himself) “indifferent”[6] success — but very often the deductions he produces are plausible and intelligent, even though the end result is incorrect. An example of this is the little-known, ‘How Watson Learned the Trick,’ a short dialogue published in The Book of The Queen’s Doll’s House Library in 1924. An extract is reproduced below:

“‘I am able to say that you were greatly preoccupied when you got up this morning.’ [said Watson] ‘Excellent!’ said Holmes. ‘How could you possibly know that?’ ‘Because you are usually a very tidy man and yet you have forgotten to shave.’

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‘Dear me! How very clever!’ said Holmes. ‘I had no idea, Watson, that you were so apt a pupil. Has your eagle eye detected anything more?’ ‘Yes, Holmes. You have a client named Barlow, and you have not been successful in his case.’ ‘Dear me, how could you know that?’ ‘I saw the name outside his envelope. When you opened it you gave a groan and thrust it into your pocket with a frown on your face.’... ‘Just a little [mistaken], I fear [said Holmes]. Let us take the points in their order: I did not shave because I have sent my razor to be sharpened. I put on my coat because I have, worst luck, an early meeting with my dentist. His name is Barlow, and the letter was to confirm the appointment... . But go on, Watson, go on! It’s a very superficial trick, and no doubt you will soon acquire it.’”[7]

Watson’s medical role An oft-quoted, albeit shallow explanation for Watson’s portrayal as a doctor is simply that Doyle chose the profession of which he had the most personal experience and which was closest to his heart. This is no doubt a contributory but not primary factor. Indeed, it might be argued that Watson’s medical role is purely incidental and serves no real purpose in the adventures. On cursory examination, this seems reasonable — Watson’s medical nature is never really asserted and he spends most of his time as an intellectual foil for Holmes. On further consideration, however, it becomes clear that Watson’s medical persona is indicative of deeper issues. It seems possible that (perhaps without realizing it) Conan Doyle was illustrating through his characters two sides to his own personality in a “Jekyll and Hyde” manner. Holmes represents one side of the coin, the one of exceptional ability, seized with bouts of intense activity and then relapsing into periods of lethargy. Watson, on the other hand is solid, reliable and capable – yet unable to match to any degree the bursts of frantic activity exhibited by his opposite number, nor has the ability to solve problems. With reference to Doyle’s life, both these traits can be seen in his personality. His time in Southsea represents Watson; his sudden passion for ophthalmology and dash to Vienna for training represents Holmes. It could be argued that there is an unspoken criticism of medical practice inherent in the adventures, accentuated by making Watson a representative of the medical profession. One could imagine Conan Doyle through the mouthpiece of Holmes scoffng at (as he sees it) the plodding, formulaic methods employed by some of his colleagues, as compared with those used by the likes of Bell. This criticism revolves around the use of imagination. At numerous times in the stories, Holmes is heard to extol the value of imagination – and to deplore its lack in his colleagues at Scotland Yard. For example, consider this extract from ‘The Norwood Builder:’

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“ ‘It strikes me, my good Lestrade, as being just a trifle too obvious,’ said Holmes. ‘You do not add imagination to your other great qualities’...”[8]

Similarly in this extract from ‘Silver Blaze:’ “ ‘See the value of imagination,’ said Holmes. ‘It is the one quality which Gregory lacks. We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the suppo- sition, and find ourselves justified...’ ”[9]

In Holmes’ constant pleas for imagination, one can almost perceive early stirrings of holistic medicine. One of the reasons for Holmes’ success is that he looks to the wider picture – he does not restrict himself to the bare facts but uses his imagination and knowledge to formulate theories beyond what is immediately apparent. The holistic approach to medicine encourages such strategies.

Mycroft Holmes There is one final aspect to consider in terms of symbolic representations and that is the character of Mycroft Holmes. He first appears in ‘The Greek Interpreter’ and is described initially by Holmes as being “...My superior in observation and deduction...”[10] On being questioned by Watson regarding why he has not come to the notice of public or police, Holmes goes on to say: “ ‘...he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.’ ”[10] The character of Mycroft can be regarded as a sideswipe at the more indolent members of the medical profession. Doyle, with his drive and enthusiasm, must have found lack of “ambition and energy” in his colleagues very difficult to understand and indeed to forgive.

Detection and the diagnostic process Diagnostic medicine may be likened to detective work, in so far as processes of observation and deduction are employed in order to arrive at a conclusion. Holmes’ methods have frequently been used [11] as a paradigm for the diagnostic process, due in no small part to the medical background outlined above. There are a number of parallels between detection and diagnosis which should be considered. The normal diagnostic process undertaken by a modern physician encompasses three separate components: history, physical examination and investigations, each contributing less than the preceding one. This process is mirrored closely by that of Holmes (especially in the short stories) and is characterized by a methodical and logical approach. Holmes is also a great advocate of observation, in which the trained eye picks up signs (otherwise missed) which have an important bearing on the solution to the problem. His

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 25 skill rests primarily on his ability to observe minutiae and use them to arrive at a conclusion. This is a skill still taught to modern medical undergraduates as being of great importance. In arriving at his conclusions, Holmes relies chiefly on his methodical approach — on only very rare occasions does luck play a part. His detective process consists of a detailed interview with the client (the history), followed by a similarly detailed examination of the scene of the events (where applicable) and concluded by a series of other investigations (such as telegrams, interviews with others, etc.). The solution to the problem is presented (usually with the arrest of the criminal) to the onlookers in the manner of medical case presentation, and is followed by discussion and questions. This methodical process is not seen nearly so clearly in other famous fictional detectives. For example, those portrayed by Agatha Christie generally make observations as they go along, without any obvious method (and indeed, often depending on lucky chance). Although one can admire the acumen of Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, comparatively little insight is given into the processes of detection they employ. It is interesting to note that Holmes himself criticizes other literary detectives of the time, who might be said to have similar methods. In A Study in Scarlet, he is heard to be very disparaging of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin and of Gaboriau’s Lecoq, describing the former as “a very inferior fellow” and the latter as “a miserable bungler.” [12]

Important textual references Many times throughout the adventures, Holmes comments on how he arrives at his conclusions. These comments epitomize his methods, and also can be used to demonstrate clearly how closely aspects of Holmesian detection compare with the diagnostic process. In A Study in Scarlet Holmes states: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence.”[13] The link to medical practice is clear in particular, the folly of making assumptions or guesses before the facts of the matter are ascertained as best as possible. This is better explained in ‘Black Peter:’ “One should always look for a possible alternative, and provide against it. It is the first rule of ... investigation. ... you should never lose sight of the alter- native.” [14] Again, these precepts are very important in the medical world. A very common mistake is to develop a preconception about what a particular diagnosis is, and attempt to make the various facts of the case fit with that preconception. The results cannot be good for the patient – leading to delay of correct treatment at best, or to incorrect and potentially harmful treatment at worst. Holmes explains this in ‘The Reigate Puzzle’ by stating:

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“It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.”[15] This is as true for medicine now as it was then. During an investigations, a doctor is bombarded on all sides by information, much of which is irrelevant to the problem under consideration. This is even more the case today, with the wide range of chemical tests, imaging and other investigations that are available. Having the ability to sift from all this data only what is important is of great value in diagnosis. In ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery,’ Holmes says: “[My method] is founded upon the obseration of trifles.”[16] Again, the importance of observing the fine details is stressed; such “trifles” taken together can be central to arriving at a diagnosis. For example, a bluish tint to the whites of the eyes may suggest a diagnosis of osteogenesis imperfect, aka brittle bone disease. Also, pitted fingernails in psoriatic arthritis are easily missed, but can be crucial in making the diagnosis. Finally, in The Sign of Four, we find Holmes’ most celebrated comment: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”[17] The simple truth of this is self-evident. Often in the process of differential diagnosis, the answer is arrived at by a process of elimination — and it is important not to discount the result even if initially it seems unlikely.

Other medical references Other less immediately obvious aspects of medical practice are found in the stories. For example, Holmes could be said to be an expert history-taker. Medical students are taught to use open questions, allow the patient to talk as much as possible and only then ask precisely targeted questions to narrow down the range of possible diagnoses. Furthermore, the history should provide enough information to allow the formulation of a reasonable working diagnosis (or hypothesis). In Holmes’ consultation with his clients, he employs all of the above devices. A good example of this is contained in the ‘The Yellow Face.’ Examples of the open questions: “Might I beg you, as time may prove to be of importance, to furnish me with the facts of your case without further delay?...” “ ... Kindly let me have the facts, Mr Munro ...” Examples of the closed, directed questions: “... Tell me ... could you swear that this was a man’s face at the window?” “... How long is it since your wife asked you for a hundred pounds?” [18] The switch from open questions (eliciting the salient points of the client’s story) to directed closed questions (clearing up individual details) is marked. Moreover, Holmes has apparently formulated a theory while listening to the story, and then asks these questions in order to test it. This compares closely with the “ideal” method of taking a history — bearing in mind all the possible

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 27 diagnoses, and then asking appropriate questions to rule them in or out. Having no other information (and without any further investigation), Holmes is now able to construct a “diagnosis”: “[Watson speaking] ‘You have a theory?’ ‘Yes, a provisional one. But I shall be surprised if it does not turn out to be correct. This woman’s first husband is in that cottage.’” [19] In the event, this does in fact prove to be incorrect, demonstrating that even the most skilled of their profession are not infallible. This passage serves, however, as a good illustration of Holmes’methods.

Holmesian deduction and modern medicine Thus far, parallels have been drawn between the diagnostic process and the detective methods of Holmes. It is now appropriate to consider some problems (originally raised by Oderwald and Sebus [20]) with drawing such parallels. A commonly used metaphor for criminal detection is that of a jigsaw puzzle. The story begins with a problem (such as a murder), and is then quickly followed by a mass of facts. The detective then pieces together the available facts, asking the appropriate questions and finally is able to complete the puzzle, denouncing the criminal. Peschel and Peschel contend that the same metaphor can be applied to the diagnostic process: “Diagnosing an illness is often like trying to put together a complicated jigsaw puzzle with the hitch that you cannot have all the pieces.”[11] This argument, however, presents a number of problems. The reason why the jigsaw metaphor works for the detective story has much to do with the way in which such stories are written. The guiding principle of a jigsaw puzzle is that there is a final picture — the one cannot exist without the other, and likewise the existence of the one is instrumental in the manufacture (and very often the solving) of the other. The author of the detective story is able to construct the story in much the same way — that is backwards from the solution of the mystery. Since there is a final picture, generating a series of events which logically leads up to that picture is a manageable task. If done skilfully, the result is that an apparently meaningless morass of facts at the beginning miraculously comes together at the end to form a coherent whole. Unfortunately, clinical situations rarely have such a well-defined picture at the end. Not only (as Peschel and Peschel say) do we not have all the pieces, we may have pieces that do not fit very well or are from an entirely different puzzle altogether.[11] Oderwald and Sebus suggest [20] three main characteristics of a Holmes story than can be extracted from the jigsaw metaphor: 1. Holmes moves very smoothly from the initial problem through to the solution. Seldom does he follow rabbit trails or spend a long time casting around for ideas. This is a function of the story being written from back-to-front. 2. Since the picture is made complete at the end, it is possible to look back over the story and decide whether all the various facts, implications and hypotheses were correct or not.

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3. Coincidences and chance have little role to play in the stories. It is always comes down to Holmes’ genius rather than blind luck that facts are recognized as being of importance. These characteristics can be used to illustrate the diference between fictional accounts and real life, in which none of the above apply. Cold discussion of the diagnostic process in abstract and case histories fulfils the criteria for fictional accounts, rather than real life. Case histories are also written from end to beginning, the eventual diagnosis representing the “picture.” In doing this, it is possible to describe the various facts surrounding the case in such a way that all are accounted for and the result will form a logical whole. This is very often far from the actual process itself but merely a synthesis of the processes leading to the eventual result. With hindsight, it is possible to identify and extract only those processes which are important in producing the result and hence the case history as written is artificial. Oderwald and Sebus cite a typical example of a case history which falls into this trap. It is one of a series described by Peschel and Peschel [11] that purports to demonstrate Holmesian deduction. It concerns a man admitted with a mysterious liver necrosis. None of the usual risk factors are present and although the patient recovers uneventfully, the doctors are frustrated at not knowing what was responsible. Finally, a chance remark of the patient’s that he works in a dry cleaners and inhaled some fumes a few days before being taken ill give the doctors the clue they need to pronounce that tetrachloromethane was the cause of the trouble. The first thing to say is that this story does not illustrate a diagnostic process as such. Although the ‘case’ would not be solved without knowing the cause, the treatment of the patient would not necessarily be altered and, in the event, the patient recovered perfectly well without this knowledge. Secondly, the vital clue was delivered purely by coincidence, not relying to any degree on the acumen of the treating doctors, nor indeed to any process of logic. The final step between knowing about inhaling dry-cleaning chemicals and liver disease is a simple one, requiring only recourse to appropriate textbooks. The case is written up, however, in an outcome-oriented manner, whereby the final result (discovery of poisoning by tetrachloromethane) is seen to be the logical conclusion of the diagnostic process as a whole. This is not so — any logical progression seen is merely as a result of the retelling, rather than of the actual events. Peschel and Peschel have reduced the relatively complex sequence of real events to a single, simple line of logic (which in any case does not cogently hold together). The conclusion from this is that comparing Holmesian deduction to the process of diagnosis is an oversimplification. Very rarely does diagnosis of disease consist of a simple trail of logic from problem to solution. The facts of the presenting complaint are clearly important but at a more abstract level elements of the experience of the doctor (the “gut feeling”) come into play. One could imagine Holmes being very dismissive of such fancies.

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Added to this is the problem that real life is seldom so obliging as to provide unique sets of clues for the solution of each problem. Medicine contains few absolutes; the clinical pictures painted by the textbooks are seldom seen in their entirety in real life. The same set of clues could suggest different diagnoses to different people and likewise the same diagnosis can be reached by a variety of different routes. In either case, the route to the diagnosis could appear logical but still be incorrect. A Holmesian problem is proved or disproved by the train of logic alone. Finally, there are cases in which there is no solution in the manner discussed above. Owing to our very limited understanding of the workings of the brain, modern medicine is equally limited in its understanding of brain disorders (being both neurological and psychiatric). Such cases can present in a wide variety of forms and make the description of a logical sequence from symptoms and signs to final diagnosis much more difficult. Deductive reasoning as employed by Holmes undoubtedly forms an important part of the modern medical diagnostic process. The real skill of the doctor lies, however, in operating simultaneously on a variety of levels, pulling together straightforward factual knowledge with more abstract impressions and experiences to produce an appropriate response. This response may not necessarily lead to the solving of the “mystery” (the cause of the patient’s illness) but it should lead to the solving of the “problem” (helping a sick patient). The problem may not necessarily be resolved as a direct result of the medical interventions but simply as a result of an effort being made. A parallel can be found in the Holmes stories. In ‘The Yellow Face,’ Holmes develops a totally erroneous theory but in the pursuit of it uncovers the truth — not as a result of his knowledge or any deductive process but instead as a result of his presence and energy being directed at the problem. This is a situation in which doctors frequently find themselves.

Conclusion In conclusion, the medical background of the author shows clearly through the Holmes adventures. There are many medical overtones and allusions, not to mention direct references. Furthermore, at a more abstract level the characters in the stories can be thought of as representing aspects of medical practice at the time the stories were written. Further to this, many similarities can be drawn between the deductive methods of Holmes and the diagnostic process of modern doctors. As has been discussed at length, however, these similarities refer to only one level of what is in reality a multilayered process. It has been said that Holmes would have made a superb diagnostic physician but is this really the case? It seems more likely that he would have been severely frustrated by the lack of logic in medicine and by the number of occasions on which his carefully reasoned conclusions would be either proved incorrect by mere chance or never

30 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 proven at all. Medicine would offer little to keep him from returning to the familiar world of chemical bottles, magnifying glasses and fine tobacco.

References and notes

[1] Key JD, Rodin AE. Medical Reputation and Literary Creation: An Essay on Arthur Conan Doyle versus Sherlock Holmes 1887-1987. Adler Museum Bulletin 1987; 13:21-5. [2] Conan Doyle A. A Study in Scarlet. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. London: Magpie Books Ltd, 1993. Unless otherwise stated all references to the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are to be found in the compendium, The Complete Sherlock Holmes. [3] Conan Doyle A. Memories and Adventures. London: Hodder & Stoughton; 1924: 25-6. [4] Baring-Gould WS, ed. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. The four novels and fifty-six short stories completed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [2nd ed]. New York, NY: Clarkson N Potter Inc, 1967. [5] Conan Doyle A. The Hound of the Baskervilles: 757. [6] Conan Doyle A. The Return of Sherlock Holmes: 483. [7] Conan Doyle A. ‘How Watson learned the trick.’ In: Lucas EV, ed. The book of the queen’s doll’s house library. London: Methuen, 1924. [8] Conan Doyle A. The Return of Sherlock Holmes: 501. [9] Conan Doyle A. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: 344. [10] Conan Doyle A. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: 436. [11] Peschel RE, Peschel E. ‘What physicians have in common with Sherlock Holmes: discussion paper.’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 1989;82:33-6. [12] Conan Doyle A. A Study in Scarlet: 24-5. [13] Conan Doyle A. A Study in Scarlet: 27. [14] Conan Doyle A. The Return of Sherlock Holmes: 567. [15] Conan Doyle A. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: 407. [16] Conan Doyle A. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: 214. [17] Conan Doyle A. The Sign of Four: 111. [18] Conan Doyle A. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: 353-8. [19] Conan Doyle A. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: 359 [20] Oderwald AK, Sebus JH. ‘The physician and Sherlock Holmes.’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 1991;84:151-2.

Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 31

From the Editor’s Bookshelf

Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes; Edited by Tom Ue and Jonathan Cranfield Intellect Books, Chicago. $22.00 153 pages

By Peter Calamai

Ottawa resident Peter Calamai has been struggling for more than two decades to render suitable for publication a scrapbook of newspaper clippings which Mrs. Hudson kept about her famous boarder.

t one point in his life, composer Igor Stravinsky was under attack from critics in Russia for his interpretations of the music of Tchaikovsky. He responded by saying: “You respect, I love.” A similar dichotomy seems to exist today in the treatment of the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The respect end of the spectrum ranges from outright veneration – often accompanied by an aversion to pastiches – to a keeping-the-memory-green stance, where pastiches are welcome, just so long as it is always 1895. Some re-interpretations of the stories can be said to lie at the love end of the spectrum, with the BBC’s Sherlock TV series as the most outstanding example. A love case could also be made for books such as The Seven Per Cent Solution and movies like Murder By Decree. But where in the spectrum should we place a steampunk graphic novel like The Young Sherlock Holmes Adventures, or Shane Peacock’s The Boy Sherlock Holmes or CBS’s Elementary? Are these creators primarily motivated by respect, love or by the same sorts of commercial considerations that spurred Doyle to resurrect Holmes from the dead? Do not look to Fan Phenomena Sherlock Holmes for answers to these questions, or to insights into Sherlockian fandom despite this being one of the publisher’s Fan Phenomena series, which includes volumes devoted to Star Trek, Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This particular volume is very much a curate’s egg, a phrase coined in 1895 to indicate something essentially addled but with some redeeming features. The lead article ‘Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare,’ by co-editor Tom Ue, is a reprise of his 2011 Cameron Hollyer Memorial Lecture for the Friends of the ACD Collection at the Toronto Public Library and says nothing about fans. Four other pieces are reprints from the Baker Street Journal, including three Q&A interviews. Others, although not so identified, are by speakers at the Sherlock Holmes: Past and Present conference held last year at University College London – Jonathan Cranfield on fan culture, Benjamin Poore on super-sizing Moriarty, Jonathan Barnes on writing audio drama, and Luke Kuhns on a taxonomy of pastiches.

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The book is marred by copy editing and typography well below professional standards. As well, the editors have allowed statements that are misleading. At one point, a contributor repeats the old canard about young men wearing black armbands in mourning for Holmes after publication of ‘The Final Problem,’ referring to Andrew Lycett’s biography of Conan Doyle for support. But Lycett, like every other writer who has retold this fable, cites no primary source. Editor Ue himself slips up, stating that The Strand Magazine enjoyed “immense popularity” from its inaugural issue until its final in 1950. As Robert Veld documents in The Strand Magazine & Sherlock Holmes, the magazine was already dying in the early 1940s with circulation dropping below 100,000. (p 88) Despite such shortcomings, a selective reading of the volume can be rewarding. In crisp, clear prose, film historian Russell Merritt reveals how the Sherlock Holmes films from Universal Studios led the way for movies in general to be shown on television. Co-editor Jonathan Cranfield contributes one of the more strongly argued theses in the volume, although the central, most important, paragraph doesn’t appear until the fourth page:

The evolution of the Sherlockian fan letter can provide a microcosmic study in the slow legitimization and eventual commodification of fan phenomena.

What began in Edwardian times as letters often addressed to Conan Doyle or Scotland Yard morphed into letters addressed to 221B Baker Street after Doyle’s death, with answers provided by a secretary of the Abbey National, whose London headquarters was nearest to that non-existent address (and just across Gloucester Place from Dorset House, where I lived from 1973 to 1977). Now the Internet allows the “obsessive writer of fan letters” to communicate with other like-minded individuals and become “fully-invested participants and co-creators.” “No author need apply,” Cranfield concludes. In a related point, Poore notes that the two current TV shows and the Downey/Law movies provide a richness of high-profile adaptations likely unrivalled since Holmes and Watson first appeared. “Audiences, fans in particular, are not locked into one fictional world but able to freewheel between them, playing the game of conspiracies and hidden significances, …replaying and discussing details and incidents with others.” Such outcomes are precisely what triggers the heebbie-jeebbies among those at the respect end of the spectrum – Sherlock Holmes severed from his creator. Other contributors stop short of this abyss. Can someone with an attention span attuned to steampunk graphic novels maintain focus long enough to read The Hound of the Baskervilles? And which is more likely to inspire viewers to read the originals – Sherlock, which is a story about a detective, or Elementary which is a detective story? After reading this volume, I am no wiser about such matters. Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 33

Letters From Lomax

Musing and comments from Peggy Perdue, Curator of The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library

t will have been no surprise to anyone that Sherlock Holmes picked up several Emmys at the recent television awards ceremonies. After all, Mr. Holmes and TV are a natural combination. The way his wildly popular adventures were published at regular intervals when they first appeared in Victorian magazines did a lot to create an audience for recurring characters and, it could be argued, set the stage for serialized TV drama. Since the mid-20th century, television has returned the favour each time a popular TV show based on the Canon brings a new audience to the books. It’s all one big symbiotic, multimedia Sherlockian Circle of Life. Accordingly, although the library might not be the first place you think of for TV, the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection is a great place to find information about Holmes’ career on the small screen. To begin with a show that is a favourite of many Canadian Holmes readers, the Granada series Sherlock Holmes (1984-1994) has inspired an impressive number of printed works. Several of these works focus primarily on Jeremy Brett’s portrayal of Holmes. A few titles include Bending the Willow: Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes (Calabash Press, 2010), A Study in Celluloid: A Producer’s Account of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes (Rupert Books, 1999) and Jeremy Brett: The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes (Virgin, 1997). In addition to these books, there are many articles about the show in our Holmesiana periodical files. It’s particularly interesting to look at reviews that reveal what reception of the show was when it first aired. Not long ago, it was easy to look at the shelf devoted to the Granada series and think that no other actor could ever invite the loving tributes to his Holmes interpretation that Brett did. Then along came Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC series Sherlock (2010-) to beguile a new generation (and the older ones, too.) The show has led to a flurry of online content, including Facebook groups, Twitter posts and a never- ending supply of fan fiction. However, the printed book is still in the game, and the Collection has begun to acquire them whenever possible. A nice example is Sherlock: The Casebook by Guy Adams (BBC Books: 2012). It’s loaded with photos and serves as an official guide to the first two seasons. Another bit of eye-candy is the manga Sharokku (Sherlock) by the mononymous artist “Jay” (Kadokawa Comics, 2013, 2014). The two volumes in the series are adaptations of the episodes ‘A 34 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014

Study in Pink’ and ‘The Blind Banker.’ The manga is only available in Japanese at this time but even if you don’t read the language, you may want to visit the collection to look at the books’ artwork. If you think Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are cute in person, wait until you see their comic avatars. If you’d like to read essays by new Sherlockian scholars, try Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series, edited by Louise Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse, forward by Lyndsay Faye (McFarland & Co., 2012). Be prepared for a crash course in the jargon of modern pop culture studies. With section headings such as ‘Transmedia and Collective Intelligence’ and ‘Adaptions and Intertexuality,’ this book is a challenging read. Another new book in the collection, Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations, edited by Lynnette Porter (McFarland & Co., 2012), includes content on other recent adaptations such as the Elementary series (CBS, 2012-) and the Warner Brothers films while acknowledging the primacy of Sherlock in the public’s imagination. When we speak of “other” Holmesian TV shows, it’s not just Elementary, my dear What’s-on. The list of famous names that have played Holmes on TV is as long as your arm: there’s Peter Cushing, Douglas Wilmer, John Cleese, Roger Moore, Christopher Plummer, Vasili Livanov, Ian Richardson, Patrick McNee, Matt Frewer and Rupert Everett. Many of these actors portrayed the Great Detective on both the small and large screens. Another production of note was the 39-episode series Sherlock Holmes (Guild Films, 1954), featuring Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion as Watson. Nor can we can forget the many nods to Holmes in children’s programming and animated cartoons, from Sherlock Hound (TV Asahi, 1984-85) and The Adventures of Shirley Holmes (YTV, 1997-2000) to Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (Scottish Television, 1999) and the Olympic-class weirdness that is Tantei Opera Milky Holmes (Bushiroad, 2010-12). As well, if you want to talk about House, Star Trek, Gilligan’s Island and so on, we could geek out on this all day. Most of these programs don’t rate a shelf-full of books like the Granada series and new BBC Sherlock do but you can read about them in works that do a general survey of TV adaptations. Starring Sherlock Holmes by David Stuart Davies (Titan Books, 2001) is a good choice, but doesn’t include the most recent adaptations. Sherlock Holmes on Screen: The Complete Film and TV History by Alan Barnes (Titan Books, 2011), however, is quite comprehensive, thanks to frequent edition updates. You can learn all kinds of good trivia in books like this. For example, did you know that the first Sherlock Holmes TV program aired in 1937, the very same year that broadcasting began in the U.S.? It was an NBC adaptation of “The Three Garridebs” starring Louis Hector as Holmes. Isn’t that something? Just as in the case of the 1900 film Sherlock Holmes Baffled, we find Holmes adapted to a new medium almost as soon as that medium is invented. As always, you are welcome to visit the ACD Collection to learn more about the televised triumphs of Sherlock Holmes.

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ews Notes from across Canada

Vancouver — June 29: Movie night at The Tapestry, UBC, we watched ‘The Bruce Partington Plans’ starring Jeremy Brett. July 19: A dozen Petrels drove the Sea-to-Sky Hwy to Shannon Falls (half way between Vancouver and Whistler) for our Reichenbach Falls picnic. We trekked up to get a close view of the falls but because of rain, we moved our picnic to the home of the Haffendens on the North Shore. But not before Fran tossed the memorial wreath into the stream below the falls. August 16: ‘Silver Blaze’ races. A race event like none other. Using toy horses moving along on a large board, participants, after studying the tote board, place bets (with monopoly money) on their favourites. Petrels ending up with the most winnings at the end of the day receive chocolate horse-themed prizes. This year we also awarded prizes for best hat and best ascot. Followed by a pot- luck. We were very pleased that Bob Coghill aka Bob the Nomad was able to join us.

Montreal — June 5: An even dozen attended this meeting held at the Westmount Library. The quiz this time was based on ‘The Final Problem’ and Rachel Alkallay came away with the first-prize honours by getting 43½ out of a possible 56. Toasts were given by Chris Herten-Greaven, David Dowse, Patrick Campbell and Rachel Alkallay.

Halifax — Stakes are high at Spence Munros’ seaside gathering. Sherlockian gatherings can be a pain in the neck but there was no bloodshed during the September 30 gathering of the Spence Munros, which met at the seaside home of Doug and Elizabeth Pass in the village of Prospect. Eleven of us enjoyed a picnic lunch in the lovely backyard garden. We also sampled several desserts, including two made by Doug, who did a fine job of hosting (with help from Roxy aka Carlo) in Elizabeth’s absence. Our story was the ‘Sussex Vampire,’ and Rebecca Gadsen prevailed on the quiz with a score of 19 out of 30. She earned a copy of Amy Thomas’ latest book for her efforts on Grant Bradbury’s quiz, supplied in absentia with answers in a sealed envelope. Discussion about this strange tale included Jacky’s relationship with his father, Doyle’s portrayal of Ferguson’s nameless wife, and Holmes’ suggestion that the misbehaving boy be sent to sea. Mark Alberstat brought several Dracula books and comics for show and tell. And Julia Weldon ensured that everyone departed with a gift – a sample of Ferguson & Muirhead tea. 36 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014

OOTMAKERS’ DIARY

… it is a page from some private diary. - The Five Orange Pips

Editor’s Note: Thanks go out to Donny Zaldin and Chris Redmond for compiling this edition of Bootmakers’ Diary.

Monday, May 19, 2014: Victoria Day

Canada is the only country in the world that commemorates Queen Victoria with an official holiday. The 195th birthday of “a certain gracious lady” (from whom Holmes declined a knighthood) begins for early-rising Canadians with a passionate CBC Radio interview with Barbara Rusch, who discusses the significance of the day and her collection of the Queen’s memorabilia. Her Majesty not only lent her name to the era in which she reigned, she bestowed an emerald tie-pin on another symbol of her age. Up at Holland Land- ing, Doug and Nancy Wrigglesworth host their annual Victoria Day barbecue for like-minded celebrants to honour the birthdays of two famous Sherlockian icons, the lady of the day and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. More than 25 Bootmakers and guests gather in homage and enjoy burgers and beer in the backyard garden alongside the running water of a small pond.

Saturday, July 12, 2014: Silver Blaze Event (Woodbine, Toronto)

Thirty-seven Bootmakers and guests (Bruce Aikin, Thelma and Larry Beam, Kathy Burns, Karen Campbell, Craig Copland and Mary Engelking, Noreen Crifo, Joyce Crook, Philip Elliott, Arlene Gelman, Cliff and Doris Goldfarb, Ruth Greenwood, Gary Latour, Dorion and Bernie Liebgott, Susan Murray, Iris Peretz, Dayna Nuhn and Michael Lozinski, Harold Oades, Tara Oades and Ryan Farrugia, Jean and Doug Paton, Peggy Perdue, Michael Pollak and Laurie Manifold, David Sanders, Anne Tanner, Trevor and Jan Raymond, Edwin Van der Flaes, Donny Zaldin and Barbara Rusch and Ronald V. Zaldin) attend this year’s 27th annual Bootmakers of Toronto Silver Blaze Event in the second floor Favourites Dining Room at

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Woodbine Race Course, Toronto. The sporting/social/culinary activity is arranged by Colonel Ross, aka Donny Zaldin. The giant Woodbine trackside toteboard, ubiquitous grandstand monitors and the day’s racing program proclaim that the third race, ‘The Silver Blaze Event,’ is presented by “The Sherlock Holmes Society of Canada.” Before the running of the Bootmaker-sponsored race, Colonel Ross reads aloud this year’s annual celebrity horse quote: “Horses are dangerous at both ends and crafty in the middle. I don’t want to have anything with a mind of its own bobbing up and down in between my legs.” However, its authorship is uncertain, being attributed by differing sources to either Arthur Conan Doyle or Ian Fleming. This year’s Silver Blaze Event is the 1-1/8 mile, $62,300 purse, Allowance Optional Claiming Race number three of six fillies and mares, three years old and upward, who have enjoyed limited success to date in their career. Chedington (no. 2), She’s Popular (no. 3) and Player’s Club (no. 1) take win, place and show and pay $14.10, $5.10 and $3.70; $2.90 and $2.40, and $4.20 respectively. There is a three-way tie (verified by photo finish) for the winner of Donny and Barbara’s Notional Betting Contest, between Bernie Liebgott, Jean Paton and Peggy Perdue (who each back the winner, Chedington). The engraved trophy of a horsehead framed by a brass horseshoe is awarded by random draw to one of our trio of knowledgeable (or lucky) punters. Following the race, five members of our company grace the winner’s circle to present the winning owner and trainer, M.J. Doyle. and jockey, Sheena Ryan, with an engraved trophy from the Bootmakers of Toronto, depicting a jockey astride a thoroughbred in full gallop. The unusual suspects are: Ronald Zaldin (dressed in a familiar- looking Inverness cape and deerstalker cap), flanked by New Yorker Michael From left to right: Michael Pollak, Pollak (wearing a life-like rubber Ronald Zaldin and Donny Zaldin, chestnut-coloured horse mask with a aka Colonel Ross silver blaze) and Donny (wearing a beige horse’s costume with a silver blaze), Craig Copland (dressed like a 21st century “dandy”) and Doris Goldfarb, in a co-ordinated red and black ensemble topped off by a matching fascinator. About 15 other Bootmakers and guests, many outfitted in red and black, complement the photo opportunity by appearing in the background. Donny Zaldin and Barbara Rusch also hold their 17th annual contest for selecting the best Sherlockian link from the names of the four-legged entries,

38 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014 program numbers, owners, trainers, jockeys or colours, in the featured third race:

No. Horse Name Jockey Trainer Owner(s) 1 Players Club G. Boulanger J.F. Walls Carol and Mickey Walls 2 Chedington S. Ryan M.J. Doyle M.J. Doyle Racing Stable 3 She’s Popular E. Wilson R. Baker Brereton C. Jones 4 Floral Sky L. Contreras M.E. Casse John C. Oxley 5 Honey Lake S.R. Bahen V.H. Oliver G. Watts Humphrey Jr. 6 Two to Tango D. Moran B.A. Lynch Jim and Susan Hill

Peggy Perdue earns the winner’s trophy of an engraved horsehead for her entry of the no. 4 horse, Floral Sky, which calls to mind Holmes’ soliloquy on a moss-rose, in ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’: “… Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers … this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it … so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” Several runner- up entries name the owner/trainer, Michael J. Doyle, in the third race and the jockey, David Moran. Karen Campbell submits the horse, She’s Popular, as descriptive of “the woman,” adventuress Irene Adler (SCAN); Michael Pollak suggests the horse, Player’s Club, as indicative of murder victim Ronald Adair, who played whist at the Baldwin, Cavendish and Bagetelle card clubs (EMPT); and, Donny Zaldin proposes the horse, Two to Tango, as a link to Mr. James Windibank (IDEN). Many attendees heed Colonel Ross’ call to the post to wear red and black, the colours of the cap and jacket, respectively, of Colonel Ross’ prize thoroughbred Silver Blaze, winner of the 1888 Wessex Cup (or Plate). Dapper Craig Copland (smartly dressed in a black suit with a red shirt and black bowtie) wins a Dick Francis mystery novel, typically about crime in the English world of horse- racing and involving seemingly respectable persons. Honourable mention goes to Peggy Perdue, stylishly dressed in a pattern of alternating colours: red dress, black jewellery, red handbag, black shoes, and red and black-painted nails and toenails, and to Doug Paton for his red and black Team Canada hockey sweater. Everyone enjoys the ambiance of a Victorian/Edwardian day at the races, sponsoring, wagering, participating in a notional betting and a Sherlockian Link contest, dressing up, and choosing from the sumptuous buffet luncheon of cold appetizers, hot entrées and sweet desserts. Thanks to the Woodbine Entertainment Group and its catering representatives, Carol Bowes and Kasia Kuzinska, hostesses Anita and Tiffany, betting guide Ebenezer, and our servers, Teena and Antonella, for their assistance and gracious hospitality. Saturday, August 16 At least one Canadian — Chris Redmond from Waterloo — is on hand for GridlockDC, a one-day ‘con’ held at the Holiday Inn Old Town in Alexandria,

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Virginia. Program and participants lean heavily toward the BBC Sherlock series, and there’s even a “safe space” session offering a chance to talk about controversial and emotionally-charged aspects of the plotline. Other topics range from Victorian forensic medicine to military history and the likelihood that Watson, as an army doctor, could have brought his revolver home from Afghanistan. Speakers include veteran Sherlockian Peter Blau and the team behind the popular Three Patch Podcast.

…Continued from page 12 smoking a cigarette and reading Sir Arthur’s first published story, ‘The Sasassa Valley.’ I was amused by the narrator’s name, Jack. This is a wonderful short story and contains the seeds of many an idea that the author more fully developed in Holmes. So I was firmly in a Doylean place. Across from my rooms is a bicycle shop. On days like these there is a row of colourful bikes on the pavement. I moved on to another story, ‘The Mystery Of Cloomber,’ (with another Jack). At the climax of the story, a bell rings. And, at the same time a kid rang one of the bicycle bells outside. Not a little before or a little after but exactly as I read, “our bell-our astral bell, the use of which is one of our occult secrets-shall ever remind you of what have been and what is to be.” The hair stood up on my arms and I said, “Hello Sir Art.” No bike bells have been touched since. Last week, late one evening about the time that one has his or her first yawn, I was deep into Tupper Bigelow’s Baker Street Briefs, edited, as you know, by George Vanderburgh and Cameron Hollyer. My copy is autographed so I feel The Old Tup right here with me. Sitting in the overstuffed armchair by the window, thick smoke replacing the air, a bumper of port by my side, mystery and mischief were in the room. I received a cold chill when I read on page 79 “My readers -if any-I know I have one-(Hello, Jack, how are you getting along?)-must have been wondering what this has to do with Sherlock Holmes.” Hair standing on end I said, “Hi” to both Tupper and Sir Arthur that time, and drank a toast. My agency’s feet are not planted firmly on the ground. The dog would have done something in the night time. His psychic powers would surely have alerted him to danger and he would have helped his friend Blaze. If we can have fractal time, entanglement theories and quantumchromodynamics, surely there is room for Sir Arthur to ring my bell. Imagine the odds of either of these incidents. Impossible. And, as we all know, when you eliminate the impossible, we are left with the very communication in which Sir Arthur believed. For me, another aspect of Dr. Doyle’s genius is his belief in the occult, and his balancing character of Holmes. Conan Doyle has honoured me by his august presence not once but twice. I will also wager, that upon reflection, many of you have had similar communications. Believe them. They are true. Our hearts are also a thinking tool.

40 Canadian Holmes  Fall 2014