Volume 34 Number 4 Summer 2012

The Journal of the Bootmakers of Toronto Volume 34 Number 4 Summer 2012

Canadian Holmes is published by The Bootmakers of Toronto, the Sherlock Holmes Society of Canada.

Bootprints (editors) are Mark and JoAnn Alberstat, 46 Kingston Crescent, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, B3A 2M2 Canada, to whom letters and editorial submissions should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]

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ISSN 0319-4493. Printed in Canada.

Cover: Two Sherlocks. The Sherlock on the right is Bootprint Mark Alberstat, facing actor Kevin Pierson, who portrayed Holmes in Halifax’s Theatre Arts Guild’s presentation of The Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes. Mark helped out the community theatre company with costumes and props.

Canadian Holmes Volume 34 Number 4 Summer 2012 One hundred and thirty-second issue

Contents Canadian Holmes Volume 34 Number 4

Traces of Bootprints 1 By Mark Alberstat

We Always Mention Our Sherlock 2 By David Sanders

From Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen 4 By Wendy Heyman-Marsaw

A Toast to ACD 5 By Chris Redmond

Oh Sinner Man – Where You Gonna Run To? – Sir Arthur 6 and Sir George By Hartley R. Nathan and Clifford S. Goldfarb

Congratulations to… Barbara Rusch 14

Strictly Personal: Peter Calamia 15

Conan Doyle on Trial: The Murder of Sherlock Holmes 16 By Bll Mason

The Bootmakers have a new website 27

The House of Silk – A Review 28 By Trevor Raymond

From The Editor’s Bookshelf 33 By Mark Alberstat

Letters From Lomax 34 By Peggy Perdue

News Notes From Across the Country 36

Bootmakers’ Diary 38 By Donny Zaldin and Dayna Nuhn

RACES OF BOOTPRINTS

What if?

What if ACD had not written that first story? What if he did not have the family background he did? What if, gasp, Sherlock Holmes, had never entered his thoughts and our good friend Dr. Watson was merely the name of the general practitioner who lives down the street? Without ACD’s amazing story-telling abilities, which he apparently displayed since childhood, you would not be holding this journal, reading this editorial, and casting your mind back to conferences, meetings, presenations, toasts, laughs and good times we have all shared, thanks to Holmes. Would some other writer have developed a detective and sidekick nearly as completely and sucessfully as Doyle did? In Faulks on Fiction, Sebastian Faulks wonders what would happen if Shakespeare had never existed, or simply went into the family business and become a glove maker like his father. The world would indeed be a poorer place without Shakespeare, and it would also be a much different one without Doyle. No Sherlock Hemlock for the youngsters and no instantly recognizable silhouette for the rest of the world and no play for the Halifax club to attend which resulted in the cover image of this issue. In this issue, Cliff Goldfarb and Hartley Nathan examine the life of George Lewis, a Victorian character many of us have probably never heard of but was certainly much more flesh and bone then Moriarty and yet so much lesser known. Bill Mason puts Doyle on trial for the murder of Holmes in an article that starts on page 16. The trial of a real person over the murder of a fictional character? Just as Homer Simpson told his daughter, “Lisa, vampires are make- believe, like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos.” Holmes is as real as we want to make him and, at the moment, quite popular. The recent publication of The House of Silk received much praise and comment in and out of the Sherlockian world. Bootprint emeritus, Trevor Raymond, reviews the book for us. This issue also revives Strictly Personal, with Peter Calamai being the first Canadian Sherlockian to be examined with a new set of questions. Thanks also go out to Dayna Nuhn, who contributed to this issue’s Diary notes. As this is being written in late May, 2012, I pause and realize that Doyle was born 153 years ago, almost to the day. None of this, and so much more, would exist if ACD did not have that magic spark, that creative muse so many years ago. Thankfully, he did.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 1 We Always Mention Our Sherlock

The following song parody, sung to the tune of We Never Mention Aunt Clara, was written by David Sanders and performed by Karen Campbell, who led a singalong at the Blue Carbuncle Awards Dinner, on Jan. 28, 2012.

We always mention our Sherlock, His picture hangs proud on our wall, Though he lived in Victoria’s England, He still is alive to us all.

Sherlock was born on the sixth of the first, In the year of our Lord ’54, The year that the Light Brigade made its charge, In the ill-fated Crimean War. His father a gentleman farmer by birth, His mother a niece of Vernet, After giving her husband a son to his name, She said there’s one more on the way.

Chorus

To college went Sherlock as gentlemen do, To earn him a classics degree, But after solving the case of the Gloria Scott, He said, “A detective I’ll be.” He also helped Musgrave by pacing the lawn, Where oak shadow fell on the ground, And as well as Dick Brunton quite dead in the pit, The Stuart regalia he found.

Chorus

To chambers in Montague Street Sherlock went, And a reading-room ticket obtained, And reading of crimes both old and new, His knowledge of them he maintained. The movement of moon, and the sun and the earth, Of these Sherlock couldn’t care less, For if he filled up his brain with such useless old tripe, It would leave it a cluttered-up mess.

Chorus

2 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012

But rooms in that quarter they came at high price, A price Sherlock Holmes couldn’t bear, There was only one way to get out of the red, That was find cheaper chambers and share. Then into the lab at St. Barts Stamford came, With John back from Afghanistan. And there in the lab with Holmes’ blood in the vial, The world’s greatest friendship began.

Chorus

The cases they shared as the years flew on by, Were many and varied we know, And Holmes would take off at the drop of a hat, With Watson his Boswell in tow. There was Stoner, and Wilson, Bohemian King, They came both the rich and the poor, And all of them climbed up the 17 steps, And knocked on the detective’s door.

Chorus

But now Sherlock’s gone from his Baker Street rooms, And lives down near Shoreham by Sea, And instead of the murders, and thefts and the like, He’s segregating the Queen Bee. But we in Toronto, and over the Earth, Still are revering his name, For though he is fiction, to us he is real, Because we are playing The Game.

Chorus

Write for Canadian Holmes!

We are looking for articles, reviews, toasts and more. If you are reading these pages, you, too, can write for us. E-mail Mark today

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 3 From Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen

This column is by Mrs. Hudson herself and dictated to Wendy Heyman-Marsaw, a Sherlockian living in Halifax.

lthough my gentlemen prefer coffee at breakfast and dinner, they request a cream tea from time to time when expecting a client or a visit from Mr. Mycroft. At Baker Street we dine at 7 unless Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson plan an evening’s entertainment. They usually dine out after the performance and so will take tea at 4 or 5 o’clock. Some foreigners confuse a cream tea with “high tea.” High tea is the evening dinner for the nursery and the middle classes. It is a single course that includes a variety of dishes such as hot or cold meats and pies, stews and eggs. Cream teas were introduced when dinner in affluent households began to be served at increasingly late hours. A proper cream tea is a three-course service. I own a lovely and helpful three-tiered platter stand that permits me to carry all three courses at once up our 17 steps. Tea begins with scones, clotted or Devonshire cream, and preserves. Dainty, crustless sandwiches such as cucumber and watercress, chicken or egg salad are served in small, decorative shapes. These comprise the second, or savoury course, for women. Men prefer more substantial fare such as sliced beef with chutney, ham with mustard, and smoked salmon. Gentlemen’s Relish, an anchovy paste created by Mr. Osborne in 1828 according to a secret recipe, is served on buttered white-bread toast. The third course is a selection of small sweets such as petit fours, thin slices of Dundee or fruitcake. Battenberg cake has become popular since it was served at the 1884 marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria, to Prince Louis of Battenberg. Some people serve only thinly sliced bread and butter. That is rather inhospitable, to my mind. I purchase our tea at Twinings of London (Est.1706), located nearby on the Strand. Mr. Holmes is partial to Darjeeling, from the foothills of the Himalayas. Dr. Watson acquired a taste for Assam whilst in India. They are both varieties of black teas. Twinings informed me that tea drinking did not begin in England. The Dutch were first to import and partake of tea, followed by the French. It is my opinion, however, that none do it as well as we English. To brew a perfect pot you must begin with a kettle of fresh, cold water that has never been boiled. For black tea you will want the water at a full rolling boil. Remove it from the hob and let it cool a minute or two. Warm the teapot with a bit of the boiling water, swirl and discard. Add one teaspoon of tea per person, and one more for

4 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 the pot, and pour the boiled water over it. Let it steep for three to five minutes. To serve, pour tea into each cup through a porcelain strainer. Accompany with sugar cubes, honey, milk, cream or lemon.

The naming of teas is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your everyday games- Some might think you as mad as a hatter Should you tell them each goes by several names. For starters each tea in this world must belong To the families Black or Green or Oolong; Then look more closely as these family trees- Some include Indians along with Chinese. — T.S. Eliot

A Toast to ACD

This toast was given by Christopher Redmond at the Bootmakers’ annual dinner on Jan. 29, 2011.

When we say that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the man behind the man whom we admire so much, what exactly do we mean? That he plotted the problem of the Sholtos, the Cornish horror, the tragedy of Birlstone, and all the rest of the stories we read and reread — yes, that, of course. But so much more: it was he and no other who gave the world the thin man with the hawk nose and six-foot height; who decreed that the detective should have a partiality for shag tobacco, a weakness for cocaine, a taste for melancholy tunes played on the violin; who equipped him with a loyal and unimaginative friend, a stout, lazy but brilliant brother, an admiration for women from the state of New Jersey. For that matter, it was Arthur Conan Doyle who, after trying out a few other syllables in his little bold handwriting, decided to name his creation Sherlock Holmes, and not, say, Egbert Snope. A man who can conjure such a name as “Sherlock Holmes” out of the air (or out of his admiration for a judicious doctor and a better-than-average cricket player) is a good deal more than a literary agent, and indeed a good deal more than just an author. Grant Allen, Arthur Conan Doyle’s neighbour and friend in the artistic suburb of Norwood, was an author, and what deathless character did he create, pray tell? No, in Sir Arthur we have something more. We have a being with a spark of the divine, who could bring life into being where there had been no life before. No wonder he devoted his later years to experiments in piercing the veil between life and lifelessness, for he had long ago made a three-dimensional man rise from the two-dimensional page. That man is with us still, and so, I dare to say, is his creator. I invite you, then, to drink to the imaginative, the demiurgic, the immortal Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 5 OH SINNER MAN - WHERE YOU GONNA RUN TO?1 — SIR ARTHUR AND SIR GEORGE

By Hartley R. Nathan and Clifford S. Goldfarb Hartley Nathan is one of the founders of the Bootmakers of Toronto and has twice been Meyers. Cliff Goldfarb is Chairman of the Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library. Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part article. It is the fifth in a series based around the Jewish connection in the Canon. This article is based on a presentation given at the SinS conference in Toronto in October 2011.

eligion does not appear as an important theme in Arthur Conan Doyle’s works of fiction, with the notable exception of The Refugees, a novel about the persecution of the Huguenots. Although he was aware of the Jewish presence in England and had a number of Jewish acquaintances, Jews appear only incidentally in his fiction and Jewish themes not at all.2 His Sherlock Holmes tales contain a number of Jewish characters but only in minor roles, or who are mentioned in unwritten tales. This article deals with a real Jewish person mentioned in the Canon. If you sinned in Victorian times – either civilly or criminally – then Sir George Lewis, solicitor, referred to in The Illustrious Client, was the ultimate fixer and the man to run to for help. The Adventure of The Illustrious Client took place from Wednesday, September 3 to Tuesday, September 16, 1902. It was first published in Collier’s Weekly Magazine November 8, 1924, and in two parts in The Strand Magazine in February and March, 1925. It begins with an envelope delivered to 221B Baker Street from the Carlton Club and containing this message:

Sir James Damery presents his compliments to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and will call upon him at 4:30 tomorrow. Sir James begs to say that the matter upon which he desires to consult Mr. Holmes is very delicate, and also very important. He trusts, therefore, that Mr. Holmes will make every effort to grant this interview, and that he will confirm it over the telephone to the Carlton Club. “I need not say that I have confirmed it, Watson,” said Holmes, as I returned the paper.3 “Do you know anything of this man Damery?” “Only that his name is a household word in Society.” “Well, I can tell you a little more than that. He has rather a reputation for arranging delicate matters which are to be kept out of the papers. You may remember his negotiations with Sir George Lewis over the Hammerford Will case.”4

6 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012

Sir James attends at 221B Baker Street. The retainer is on behalf of an illustrious client whom Damery will not name. Damery asks Holmes if he has ever heard of Baron Gruner, and Holmes responds:

“You mean the Austrian murderer?” Sir James then asks Holmes if he has heard of General de Merville and again the response is: “De Merville of Khyber fame: Yes, I have heard of him.” Sir James then states: “He has a daughter, Violet de Merville, young, rich, beautiful, accomplished, a wonder-woman in every way. It is this daughter, this lovely, innocent girl, whom we are endeavouring to save from the clutches of a fiend.” “Baron Gruner has some hold over her, then?”

We find out Baron Gruner is engaged to marry Miss de Merville. We will talk later about who this “illustrious client” might have been.

Let us now introduce Sir George Lewis, the man we believe is Damery’s real- life counterpart. Sir George Henry Lewis (1833–1911) was a unique figure in 19th-century England. He was the only solicitor ever to achieve the kind of fame bestowed on such great English barristers as Lord Carson and Sir Edward Marshall Hall. While the whole Victorian nation traced the progress of his courtroom dramas, Lewis himself strove to remain a mystery. He was Jewish – at a time of widespread anti-Semitism – yet he rose to take a distinguished place in the English establishment. He was a friend and confidant of Edward VII5, Oscar Wilde, Lily Langtry and Edward Burne-Jones. Among his famous clients were Whistler, whom he advised on his bankruptcy after his libel battle with Ruskin in John Singer Sargent’s 1878; W.T. Stead, of whom we mention more Portrait of Sir George later; and Charles Stewart Parnell. Lewis Some consider Parnell to be his greatest case. An Irish politician, Parnell was accused of involvement in the notorious Phoenix Park outrages. Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Undersecretary, were murdered in Dublin in May, 1882. The Times published Parnellism and Crime with copies of letters said to be written by Parnell expressing approval of Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 7 the murders. Parnell consulted George Lewis, who discovered the forgeries. A Special Commission sat for 128 days. After the flight and suicide in Madrid of Richard Piggot, who prevailed upon The Times to publish these forgeries, the Commission cleared Parnell in November 1889 of any involvement in the outrages. Lewis acted in the most notorious society scandals of the day. He was, however, also known as a “poor man’s lawyer,” championing inhabitants of the slums of the Ratcliffe Highway and Seven Dials. He was knighted in 1893 and created Baron Lewis on the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. John Juxon in his biography of Sir George stated: He fought for his clients with a ferocity that verged on ruthlessness;6 and he could be as single-minded in defence of the guilty as of the innocent. His second wife, Elizabeth7, was devoted to her fashionable salon – frequented by many artists, including Hardy, Gilbert and Sullivan, Paderewski, Beerbohm, Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. Prominent artists painted members of his family – Burne-Jones8, Alma Tadema and Sargent among them. Lewis devoted much of his phenomenal energy to the campaigns for legal reform for which he is now perhaps best remembered – particularly in extending the rights of married women, which resulted in the Married Women’s Property Act of 18709, and in the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907.10

Oscar Wilde wrote: “Brilliant. Formidable. Concerned in every great case in England. Oh, he knows all about us and forgives us all.”11 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on the Lives of the Law put it this way:

More colourful is Sir George Lewis (1833-1911), who appears to have acted in every lurid high-profile case at the end of the 19th century. It is said that “he cared for rules only so far as not to be caught breaking them” and that “he was a dangerous man to best.” But he took up the cudgels on behalf of several well-known victims of injustice, including Adolf Beck and George Archer-Shee.12

One cannot resist the following quote from The Dictionary of National Biography, even though it ends with a criticism of Sherlock Holmes’ investigative techniques:13

He possessed an unrivaled knowledge of the past records of the criminals and adventures of both sexes, not only in England and on the continent of Europe, but in the United States, which was peculiarly serviceable to him and to his clients in resisting attempts at conspiracy and blackmail … audacious, … playing the game often in defiance of the rules, and relying on his audacity to carry him through … he had methods of investigation which were his own, and intuitions beside 8 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 which the rather mechanical processes of Sherlock Holmes seemed the efforts of a beginner. Lewis was lampooned in Punch Magazine as “Sir Lewis George” in a mock trial, satirized by Gilbert and Sullivan in Trial by Jury and characterized by ‘Spy’ in Vanity Fair in September of 1876. He is to be respected in that Lewis did not take notes and destroyed his personal papers so that no one would be able to discover who his clients were and what he did for them. Lewis was well known to Conan Doyle both by personal interaction and by virtue of his reputation. Both were involved in assisting the unfortunate George Edalji, who was wrongfully convicted of horse maiming in 1901. They were on the Campaign Fund Committee together. Lewis went on to help Edalji get reinstated to the Solicitors’ Rolls. Punch Magazine’s satirical Juxon comments: image of “Sir Lewis George”

Lewis played a similar role in another case – not as famous as Beck’s perhaps but notable in that it displayed an element of racialism rarely found in the nineteenth-century England;14 and because not only Lewis but also the creator of Sherlock Holmes were among those who sought justice for the unfortunate George Edalji. Conan Doyle, then at the peak of his fame as a writer, took the role in the Edalji case played by George R. Sims, a respected journalist, in the Beck Case, the only difference being that he wrote more eloquently and in greater bulk of Edalji than Sims did of Beck. Lewis supported Edalji by a campaign of letter-writing and private agitation – for there were establishment figures who would listen to Lewis while they would have dismissed Conan Doyle as a sensational novelist seeking publicity.15

We are not sure if many Sherlockians agree with this last statement. Lewis was prominent in Victorian society as the pre-eminent fixer. His involvement in numerous high-profile scandal cases such as the Bravo Poisoning case in 1876, the Tranby Croft or “Baccarat Scandal” in 1891, and the Oscar Wilde trials in 1895, when he was consulted by the Marquess of Queensberry, were well known to the English public and highly publicized. Doyle certainly would have been familiar with these cases due to extensive press coverage. The following, from Michael S. Foddy’s The Trials of Oscar Wilde, gives us an idea of the role of the newspapers of the late 19th century:

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 9 By the time of Wilde’s criminal trials, it can be claimed that the “sex scandal” was already well established as a sub-genre within the genre of crime reporting. W. T. Stead, maverick editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, had earlier pioneered an exploitative brand of investigative journalism in his 1885 exposé of white slavery and child prostitution, titled “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon.” From a historical perspective, the Wilde trials should be seen as one in a long line of (mostly) sex-related scandals involving important persons that gripped the public imagination in the 1880s and 1890s: “the divorce case of the radical politician Charles Dilke in 1886; the unsolved Ripper murders of 1888; the divorce case of the Irish leader Charles Parnell in 1890; the scandal of the Cleveland Street homosexual brothel, 1889-90, said to involve the eldest son of the heir to the throne; and the Tranby–Croft gambling scandal of 1891, which involved the Prince of Wales himself.” Without a doubt scandals such as these and sex crimes in general, made excellent copy for the newspapers, and often boosted circulation to record levels.16

Another prominent person Lewis and Doyle both knew was William Thomas (W.T.) Stead.17 In addition to being a reformer, Stead was a devotee of the spiritualist cause. He was a contemporary of Doyle’s and they were “kindred spirits,” so to speak.18 In 1885, Stead “bought” a 13-year-old girl from her mother for £5 and took her to Paris. He was charged with abduction when no record could be found of the payment. Stead was convicted and jailed for two months. George Lewis appeared in Bow Street briefly on Stead’s behalf. In the trial proceeding, Stead conducted his own defence with a Mr. Lickford of Sir George’s firm, Lewis and Lewis, attending to advise him on certain legal points. Ironically, at the Cosmos Club in 1909, Stead pictured himself as shipwrecked and drowning in the sea and asking for a rope. Three years later he went down with the Titanic.19 Lewis and Conan Doyle certainly knew each other and had friends and acquaintances in common, including Oscar Wilde, but apparently did not move in the same social circles. For example, Lewis was not listed among those who attended Doyle’s second wedding on Sept. 18, 1907, although George Edalji was one of the guests. Doyle and Lewis were both at the funeral of Henry Irving on Oct. 20, 1905.20 Some, but by no means all, of the scandals Lewis was involved in centred around indiscreet letters from lovers or jilted lovers that could be used for real or social blackmail purposes. The fact that so few of these cases caught the attention of the public is evidence of how successful Lewis was in protecting his clients’ reputations. The full story of what he did for the Prince of Wales and for many other of his eminent clients in this direction will never be known. One case was a near scandal for the Prince of Wales and his old boon companion, Lord Beresford, who shared the favours of Lady Daisy Brooke, the future ‘socialist’ Lady Warwick.21 Lord Charles Beresford had had an affair with Daisy Brooke in late 1886. After his wife became pregnant and he

10 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 reconciled with her, Lord Beresford was then sent a letter of bitter reproach by Lady Brooke, claiming one of her children was his. The letter fell into the hands of Lady Beresford, who took it to the éminence grise of the day, the solicitor George Lewis. On this one occasion when he had to deal with the frantic Lady Beresford, Lewis was unable to keep the matter quiet and the resulting publicity reflected poorly on all parties. Lady Brooke regretted the letter to Lord Charles as soon as she had written it. Acting on Lady Beresford’s instructions, Lewis wrote to Lady Brooke, telling her that her letter was in his possession and warning her against causing any further annoyance to his client. Lady Brooke was furious. She wrote to Lewis, demanding the return of her letter. ‘It is my letter. I wrote it,’ she declared. Lewis explained that she was wrong. Legally the letter was the property of Lord Beresford, to whom it had been addressed.22 Lady Brooke asked her lover, the Prince of Wales, to recover it for her.23

The Prince went to Lewis’ house in the middle of the night and tried to recover the letter. Sir George let him read it but then sent the letter back to Lady Beresford. The Prince went to see Lady Beresford and threatened to banish her from the invitation list of Marlborough House - an action tantamount to social blackmail. She declared she would not destroy the letter, threat or no threat of ostracism. Instead she then, through Lewis, spelled out the terms on which she was prepared to return the letter to Lady Brooke. Lady Brooke was to stay away from London for the entire season – again a form of social blackmail. Lady Brooke refused to agree to this proposal. In the end, the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, had to intervene and the parties reached an agreement. On several occasions criminals sought to take advantage of Lewis’ reputation. Here is the lurid headline in the New York Times for Sept. 29, 1907, followed by a portion of the article:

AMERICANS CHARGED WITH BLACKMAILING; said to have personated Sir George Lewis, the Famous London Solicitor. USED HIS LETTERHEADS Communications to which Sir George’s Name was appended found in rooms – Now out on bail. LONDON, September 28 – There is probably no man in England who is the depository of so many scandalous secrets as Sir George Lewis. It has been said of this pleasant-voiced, white-haired, dapper little man that he holds the honor of half the British peerage in his keeping and knows that the other half has no honor to lose. However exaggerated this epigram may be, it represents a widely prevalent opinion as to the character of the cases the handling of which Sir George has made his specialty. This astute lawyer is considered to be even more proficient out of the Divorce Court than in it. The number of cases he has carried through that court, with the utmost possible advantage to his clients, is a tremendous tribute to his qualifications; but report will have it that he has been able

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 11 to keep out of the Divorce Court even more cases than he has carried through it, and that, in other directions his great professional acumen, united with his consummate knowledge of the world, and his alert judgment of human nature has saved his clients legal expenses in comparison with which his fees have been insignificant – not to speak of the advantages accruing from the avoidance of publicity. There was no little flutter in London devotees when the news first spread about town a few days ago that Sir George had appeared before a Magistrate in connection with an alleged case of attempted blackmail. The accused man, Montagu Newton, forged a letter stating that Sir George had undertaken to pay a woman named Violet Fraser the sum of £3,000, using a reproduction of the Lewis and Lewis letterhead. He pleaded guilty to conspiring with Violet Fraser and another man by false pretences to defraud. Violet Fraser was found unfit to stand trial.24

Blackmail in the Royal Family was old hat to Sir George Lewis. D.L. Leighton, in The Ripper Suspect,25 trying to deflect suspicion away from Montague J. Druitt as the Ripper, says this of the Duke of Clarence: At Bonhams in March 2002 two letters from the Duke were auctioned for over £8,000. They were written in 1890 and 1891 and were to his solicitor, George Lewis, about paying off two prostitutes with whom he had become involved. He wrote: ‘I am very pleased that you are able to settle with Ms. Richardson, although £200 is rather expensive for letters. I presume there is no other way of getting them back. I will also do all I can to get back the one or two letters written to the other lady.’ This predicament encapsulates the Duke’s naivety.

NOTES [1] From the song by Nina Simone, © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. [2] There is a very pro-Zionist letter dated Nov. 6, 1905, on file at the Jewish Archives in Israel from Conan Doyle to Israel Zangwill. [3] As lawyers we are accustomed to telling our clients when we are able to meet with them. It would be a very illustrious client indeed, who would tell us when we are to receive him! [4] A diligent search of the English law reports failed to provide any information on any Hammerford Will case. There was a Hannaford et al v. Hannaford et al wills case in the English Court of Queen’s Bench in 1871 but neither Sir George Lewis nor his firm, Lewis and Lewis, were instructing solicitors. The absence of a law report is also capable of interpretation as evidence of Lewis’ skill in hushing things up, although the fact that Holmes knew of his involvement in a case which, from the context, does not seem to have been one of his personal cases, does make it likely that the case was known to the general public. John Linsenmeyer theorizes that the Hammerford Will case was settled so it would not come to court. Fronia and Marc Simpson, in “The Case of the Illustrious

12 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 Aside” in Volume 13, No. 1 of Groans, Cries and Bleatings, Official Newsletter of the Baker Street Breakfast Club, cleverly point out the reference to Lewis cannot be fortuitous. They point to the opening lines of the story where Watson had asked Holmes “for the tenth time in as many years” for permission to report on it. While the story is set in 1902 it is chronicled in 1911, the year of Lewis’ death. One might be tempted to say it could also be the year after King Edward VII died. Now that both were dead, it would be permissible for Dr. Watson, aka Conan Doyle, to relate the story. Klinger does not annotate the Hammerford Will case in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, part of the Sherlock Holmes Reference Library (Indianapolis: Gasogene Press, 2007). [5] The upper class disapproved of The Prince of Wales’ friends, especially the affluent Jewish ones like Sir Thomas Lipton, the Sassoons, the Rothschilds and Baron von Hirsch. See Christopher Hilbert: Edward VII: A Portrait, Penguin Books Ltd (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1982) (“Hibbert”). [6] John Juxon: Lewis and Lewis, Collins, (London 1983) at p. 13 (“Juxon”). [7] His first wife, Victorine Kann, daughter of a German Jewish banker, died after two years of marriage in 1865. In 1867 he married Elizabeth Eberstadt, whose father was also a German Jewish banker. [8] The Strand, Vol. VI, July-Dec. 1893, at pp.650-1 describes a “picture of a little maiden lying at full length on a sofa, reading.” (Sir George’s younger daughter). [9] (33 & 34 Vict. c93). [10] Criminal Appeal Act, (7 Edw. 7, c.23) s.2. [11] Juxon, note 6, at. p.2. [12] The Beck case led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal (and Edalji helped to push it over the line) – See Juxon, pp. 290-295, esp. p. 294. C. H. O’Halloran’s in “Development of the Right of Appeal, in England in Criminal Cases” (1949) 27 Can. Bar. Rev. 153, wrote: “Until the constitution of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907 the review of criminal cases in England was limited to a degree now hard to realize. That it was then revolutionized is credited in some quarters to the public-spirited activity of Conan Doyle in the George Edalji case (convicted in 1903), which quickly caught the mind of a public already aroused over the Adolph Beck case (convicted in 1896).” Archer- Shee was the young boy accused of stealing a postal order in cadet school. Lewis engaged Sir Edward Marshall Hall, who established Archer-Shee’s innocence. He was killed in the First World War and was the subject of the play and movie The Winslow Boy. [13] See James G. Ravin The Most Famous Solicitor in England, (2002)52 B.S.J. 23 at page 25. [14] But cf Anthony Julius: Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England: Oxford University Press, (Oxford, 2010). [15] Juxon at pages 297-300. [16] Michael S. Foddy: The Trials of Oscar Wilde, Yale University Press (New Haven and London, 1997) at p. 50. It would appear that in 1888, London had 13

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 13 morning and nine evening national daily newspapers. See Andrew Cook: Jack the Ripper, Amberly Publishing (Stroud, Gloucester, 2009) at p. 15. [17] 1840-1912 [18] Conan Doyle mentions Stead extensively in A History of Spiritualism, Cassell & Co., (London, 1926). [19] See Ruth Brandon: The Spiritualists. Alfred A. Knopf (New York, 1983). [20] Their names are next to each other in The Times report on Oct. 21, 1905. [21] She was later to be the attempted blackmailer of King George V. Following the death of Edward VII, and having large debts, she tried to blackmail his son, the new King George V. She threatened to make public a series of love letters written by Edward VII. It was the cunning expertise of Lord Stamfordham that managed to stop publication by arguing that copyright belonged to the King. See infra, footnote 22. Lady Brooke found herself outmanoeuvred and died virtually penniless. [22] Under copyright law, the writer of unpublished letters has the right to control the first publication of those letters. While the writer owns the copyright in the text, the addressee owns the physical letter, but has no right to publish it. See John S. McKeown; “Fox on Canadian Law of Copyright and Industrial Designs”, 4th Edition, Carswell, (Toronto, 2009), Section 6:2(a). [23] The incident is reported in various books. See Hibbert supra, footnote 6 at pages 155-6 and Pearson: Edward The Rake, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc, (New York, 1975) at page 140. [24] Though the paper called it “blackmail”, that term does not appear in the account of the trial: Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 6.0, 01 September 2011), October 1907, trial of NEWTON, Montagu (34, of no occupation) FISHER, Joseph D (35, engineer) (t19071021

Congratulations …

… to Barbara Rusch, upon confirmation by the Governor General of Canada, that she has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, on March 5, 2012, “By Royal Command.” The new medal is to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne. Barbara was nominated for this honour by the Canadian Royal Heritage Trust, in recognition of her contributions to Canada over many years, including her outstanding cultural endeavours in the community, especially through Holocaust education, The Ephemera Society of Canada, and The Bootmakers of Toronto. For more information on this new award, visit: www.gg.ca

14 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 Strictly Personal

Canadian Holmes puts a prominent Canadian Sherlockian under the microscope.

Name: Peter Calamai Age, birthplace: 69, Bloomsburg, PA, U.S.A. Occupation: writer, editor Current city of residence: Ottawa In school I excelled at: editing student newspaper. A great evening for me is: British cosy mystery and peaty single malt. Goal in life: to get caught up. Other hobbies and interests: event and nature photography, collecting cypraea (cowry shells). Favourite dining experience: Languid lunch at rooftop restaurant in Hotel Danielli overlooking Grand Canal in Venice. First Sherlockian memory: Living around the corner from 221b Baker Street in London 1973- 1977. Three favourite Canonical tales: Hound, Six Napoleons, Final Problem Least favorite Canonical tale: Valley of Fear Favourite Non-Sherlockian reading: Golden age British mysteries, esp. Michael Innes. Favourite Sherlockian movie: Rathbone Hound Most prized item in my Sherlockian collection: The stage fiddle from Shaw Festival special production of The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes. If I could live anywhere in the world it would be: London, U.K. If I could live at any time in history, it would be: today If I could ask Holmes, Watson and Doyle each one question, they would be: Holmes: “How did you train your memory?” Watson: “What was the secret of your success with women?” Doyle: “Did you ever wish you had revised more?”

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 15 Conan Doyle on Trial: The Murder of Sherlock Holmes

By Bill Mason

Bill Mason is the author of Pursuing Sherlock Holmes. He is a frequent speaker at Sherlockian gatherings, the founder of the Fresh Rashers of Nashville, and a member of the Nashville Scholars. He is retired from a career in senior-level government service in the U.S. Congress and the White House and now lives in Greenbrier, Tennessee.

Editors Note: A version of this paper was presented at the October 2011 SinS Conference.

urder! The crime of crimes. The subject of countless short stories, novels, motion pictures, localized tragedies and public sensations. We never say we’re going to read a “crime novel,” do we? We say we’re going to read a “murder mystery.” When we want to see a literary detective solve a mystery, what most of us really want is to see that detective find a killer. No one watches an armed robbery trial from start to finish on television. No. We watch the O.J. Simpson trial, the Casey Anthony trial or the Amanda Knox trial – trials that involve the murder of another human being. Now, it is true that Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation, the world’s first consulting detective, did not always or even almost always solve murders as did, say, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Perry Mason or Adrian Monk. And Conan Doyle believed in truth in advertising. His stories were honestly billed as adventures, not as murder mysteries or even just mysteries. But when the idea of actually eliminating Sherlock Holmes came to Conan Doyle, he had no notion of simply retiring him to Sussex. That idea came much later in life, long after the resurrection. And even then he didn’t really eliminate Holmes; he just moved him. Nor did he send Holmes off to some exotic locale or simply stop writing the stories. No, nothing less than an actual killing would do. Conan Doyle, with determined premeditation, killed Sherlock Holmes in his story The Final Problem, in December of 1893. It was a monstrous thing to do, a major literary event, a blow to the fans of Holmes throughout the English-speaking world and elsewhere. That “sin,” that killing, that deliberate elimination of Sherlock Holmes is what we must consider today. And you, acknowledged experts who read, study, respect and revere Conan Doyle, enthusiasts who have a soft spot in your hearts for his victim Holmes, will sit as a jury. You will be asked to determine if Conan Doyle deserves to be found guilty of murder, and you will be asked to go even

16 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 further than most juries. You will be asked to go into the mind of Conan Doyle and make a judgment about his actual motive in doing what he did to Holmes. Before looking at some possibilities, I want to set a stage, some rules of this deliberation. First, place yourself firmly in the spring of 1894. Forget that there was ever an Adventure of the Empty House. Holmes is dead and his creator has killed him. And we stipulate that fact, as we say in the courtroom.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 17 There will be no Perry Mason moment here. Willie Hornung will not break down on the witness stand and sobbingly confess that, “Yes, I was so jealous of my brother-in-law for creating Sherlock Holmes, who would be so much more popular than my own Raffles, that I drugged him and wrote The Final Problem. I then had it published in Conan Doyle’s name, hypnotized Arthur, and convinced him he had done it. By then it was too late to do anything about it.” No, that won’t happen. And such a conclusion is not an option here. Conan Doyle has admitted to killing Holmes. And he meant to do it. I ask you finally to set aside whatever preconceived ideas you have about what led up to the events depicted in The Final Problem, dismiss whatever stock answer you give to those less immersed in Conan Doyle and Holmes when they ask about this episode, and do some serious new thinking. To prove that someone is guilty of murder requires proof of three basic elements: means, opportunity and motive. Conan Doyle, as the creator, owner and chronicler of the character, of course, had the means. He wrote the stories and he had complete control over the events in those stories. So Conan Doyle’s means for killing Holmes was with his pen. We’ve all heard the timeless proverb coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” In this case, the pen was the sword. As for opportunity, Conan Doyle had a contract with The Strand Magazine. He had agreed to turn out a dozen Holmes stories. This one, the last one he was obliged to produce, was his golden opportunity to “do this dastardly deed.” And he did it in a memorable way. He transported Holmes to Switzerland and had him fall, while locked in a desperate struggle with Moriarty, into the Reichenbach Falls, a place Conan Doyle called a “worthy tomb” for his hero. I guess that was good enough, at least for Europe. Had I been making the choice, though, I wouldn’t have picked a second-rate waterfall like Reichenbach. I would have a picked one of the best and biggest and most powerful waterfalls in the world – Niagara Falls. Think how much fun we could have had with that, especially if some of the details were left a little vague. Every year, we could convene Sherlockians from Canada and the United States, and we could argue about which side Moriarty and Holmes went off of, where the inn was, where the bodies might have wound up, whether or not there was a barrel involved, do field trips, hang plaques, have a re-enactment on Goat Island. Romantic fantasists could think about honeymoons for Sherlock and Irene. The possibilities for us would be endless. Ah, well, we can only regret. But back to the subject at hand: there is no dispute about means and opportunity. So this case hinges on motive. If the motive were purely a malignant one, if there are no mitigating factors, if the killing were premeditated and ultimately unjustified, then Conan Doyle must be found guilty of murder. But if there are other factors, if they are real and credible, they deserve your full consideration, and some other verdict might be more appropriate.

Any trial requires an indictment, and there is no better indictment of Conan Doyle than that found in a contemporary essay by the humorist John Kendrick

18 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 Bangs. In a wonderful piece titled On Heroes’ Rights, written for the New York Times on November 19, 1898, and in which he defends the rights of heroes and heroines in fiction, Bangs wrote the following:

“Even that most wholesome, vigorous pen that Dr. Doyle wields has sinned. It has been dipped into the good red blood of Sherlock Holmes, and a superbly endowed creature in the very prime of his life and popularity is cut down, and for no reason at all save that the author felt it necessary to get rid of him for his own personal comfort. “In Dr. Doyle’s case, perhaps, there is the extenuation that self- preservation required the slaughter of Holmes. There can be no doubt in the mind of an intelligent reader that while Sherlock Holmes lived and remained a perfect mine of literary material, and easily worked once the start was made, backed by public appreciation, he was coming to dominate his creator; but he was an agreeable Frankenstein, and Dr. Doyle had no right to kill him.”

Conan Doyle, says Bangs, “should have found little difficulty in brushing aside a mere bit of abstract personality like Holmes; and to impress it upon him and his admirers that it was good to take a vacation once in a while, would have required little effort. A reasonable creature like Holmes would have understood and taken the suggestion in the spirit intended, but the author chose a more drastic choice, and with a compelling hand forced the great detective to his death. “A Grand Jury would indict a manufacturer for doing this to his right-hand man, and what is law for one should be law for all.” So Bangs lays out his indictment and we are justified in asking the question: Even if Conan Doyle had the legal right, as his creator, to kill Holmes, did he have the moral right to do so? Bangs says no, but do we agree? What was Conan Doyle’s responsibility to his readers? We have all heard the story that people in London wore black crepe in their hats because of the death of Holmes. Later on, apparently, this was amended to black arm-bands. This may or may not have been true, and Peter Calamai has researched the matter and has found no contemporary, first-hand accounts of the black crepe. This seems to be second-hand reporting. But true or not, there was great consternation about the termination of this very popular character. And lest we think that the entire world was turned against Conan Doyle because of this killing, as we are inclined to believe, that was not necessarily the case. The New York Times Review of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in book form closes with the observation: “The reader leaves Mr. Sherlock Holmes at the bottom of a Swiss precipice, smashed into smithereens, and with the sincere hope that Mr. Doyle will never resuscitate him.” There are many motives for murder. Some are very common, and some are more obscure. Conan Doyle’s own statements about his decision to kill Holmes vary, and his biographers are not uniform in their evaluations of his motives. A case can be made for quite a few possible motives for Conan Doyle in this case.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 19 Ask the average Sherlockian enthusiast of Conan Doyle why he killed Holmes and the answer will quite often hinge on a discussion of his perceived need for artistic liberation. Indeed, in his autobiography Memories and Adventures, in the chapter titled “The Great Break,” Conan Doyle makes that very case: “At last, after I had done two series of [the Holmes stories] I saw that I was in danger of having my hand forced, and of being entirely identified with what I regarded as a lower stratum of literary achievement … I fear I was utterly callous myself, and only glad to have a chance of opening out into new fields of imagination.” He had made the same case to his own mother a couple of years earlier: “He takes my mind from better things,” he had written to her. So Conan Doyle claims he did it for the sake of his art. We might compare it to Howard Roark dynamiting his corrupted housing project in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Her work is, of course, still controversial. As a proponent of egoism, she almost certainly would have approved of Conan Doyle’s killing of Holmes. But many, in fact most, critics and literary thinkers agree with Gore Vidal, who called her viewpoint “nearly perfect in its immortality.” And what about the artist who burns all his paintings, or the writer who destroys his manuscripts? Is that for art’s sake or is it just a selfish, petulant fit? Finally, as we consider Conan Doyle’s plea of justifiable homicide for the sake of artistic liberation, consider how much credibility the argument merits. It could be simple pretentiousness or it could be a smokescreen — a conscious or subconscious and self-delusional attempt to conceal his real motivation for killing Holmes. The claim of a need for artistic liberation may, in fact, have been mere window dressing for other, more base, primal motivations for murder – motives well-recognized by the police in any age.

Take old-fashioned jealousy and hate. Many, many writers don’t buy this benign-sounding excuse-making from a Conan Doyle who just wanted to do different things. John Dickson Carr asserted in his 1949 biography that Conan Doyle “loathed” Holmes. In 1965, James Playsted Wood actually gave his otherwise unremarkable biography of Conan Doyle the title The Man Who Hated Sherlock Holmes. Tage la Cour and Harald Mogensen, in their 1971 literary survey The Murder Book, asserted that “Conan Doyle gave way to a fit of hatred of Sherlock Holmes and killed him off.” And the idea appears more recently in the 2010 novel The Sherlockian by Graham Moore, in which a truly unlikeable and grouchy Conan Doyle raves at Bram Stoker: “I hate him more than anyone! ... I hate him.” To which Stoker, in the best line of the book, replies: “You’re the one who tossed the poor sod off a cliff. Imagine how he feels about you.” In business or politics, I can tell you that there is no greater hatred or jealousy than that felt for the former protégé or assistant, the person you brought in and trained and trusted, a person who in some ways is your own creation, who rises above you in prominence, success and acclaim. Though he never made such an admission, and in fact often expressed a certain degree of gratitude and affection

20 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 for Holmes, the idea that Conan Doyle found himself truly hating his detective hero for achieving greater fame and adulation is a very real possibility. Closely aligned with jealousy and hate, but certainly not exactly the same thing, is anger. We find Conan Doyle labouring away at his writing, and finding some critical success at it. He was justly proud of his historical novels, his pride and joy. Micah Clarke and The White Company are still worthy to rank among the best historical fiction ever written, and he described The Great Shadow as “near the front of my work for merit.” And yet, as he complained in Memories and Adventures, “It was still the Sherlock Holmes stories for which the public clamoured.” How could he help but be angry about that? The whole situation reminds me of a great Canadian actor, Christopher Plummer, who has made more than 100 films, including a very good one about Holmes, Murder By Decree. And yet, despite all his accomplishments, people remember Plummer pretty much for just one film, The Sound of Music. “It drives me nuts,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the movie. It’s just a relentless pursuing of this film that goes on and on, and I’ve gone on and on, far above and beyond it. And then to be reminded of it. God, almighty! What is the matter with people?” Conan Doyle must have been feeling this kind of anger as well. So, in the words of Scottish writer Gilbert Adair, Conan Doyle was “desirous of ridding himself once and for all of what had become a beaky, brilliant albatross around his neck.” Fear is another emotional issue that can lead to homicide. More than one observer has made the comparison that Holmes was Conan Doyle’s version of the Frankenstein monster: his own unique creation that had to be destroyed because it surely would destroy its creator. If Conan Doyle conceived a fear of Holmes, not because of what he had really done to him, but out of what he might do to him and his literary reputation in the future, he may have acted proactively, and killed Holmes out of an irrational fear of the power of his character. Fear, then, could have grabbed hold of Conan Doyle’s mind, making him lash out in an instinctive manner, killing Holmes. In this case, the killing may have been an act of paranoia, the result of an obsession, a form of mental illness. But if the fear is justified, if it’s not irrational, then acting on it bleeds into yet another, closely related motivation – self-defence. And Conan Doyle himself, in seeming contradiction to what he wrote in Memories and Adventures, made this claim in a very direct way. He did so in an appearance at the Author’s Club in March of 1897. His exact words, as recorded in The Southland Times, were as follows: “The chairman has alluded to another class of work which I have attempted – namely the Sherlock Holmes stories. I have been much blamed for doing that gentleman to death, but I hold that it was not murder, but justifiable homicide in self-defence, since, if I had not killed him, he certainly would have killed me.”

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 21 Now what he meant exactly by that, he didn’t say. He sort of suggested that trying to come up with good plots would place so much stress on him that it would lead him to an early grave. But that seems pretty thin for such an inventive mind. If he really meant what he said, if he wasn’t just trying to make witty conversation for the Author’s Club, this hints again at some sort of mental disturbance. Had Holmes so overpowered Conan Doyle and his literary ambitions that the character was breaking his health, physically and mentally? Was killing the character the only way to regain control over his own life, to save it, and was the killing truly an act of self-defence? The author himself seemed to be making that claim.

Perhaps, though, we are giving Conan Doyle too much credit by reviewing attitudes and motivations that he was at least justified in holding, even if he might not be justified in acting upon them through homicide. What if he was just selfish? Martin Booth, in his biography, The Doctor and the Detective, says simply that Conan Doyle was “tired” of Holmes. Cynthia Adams, in her book, The Mysterious Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, notes that “he was quickly growing weary of his detective and began speaking of him disparagingly as a calculating machine.” And more than just getting bored with Holmes – writing those stories was hard work. “The difficulty of the Holmes work,” he wrote, “was that every story needed a clear-cut and original plot … I was weary of inventing plots.” He sounds like your 21-year-old son, the one you thought was finally out of the house, who quits his job because he just got tired of having to get up every morning and be at work, or dropped out of school because, you know, “it’s hard,” and announces to you that he’s moving back home. Did Conan Doyle just not like having to do the hard work of writing detective stories? Was he just getting bored and decided to do something different, like a playboy who gets tired of his latest mistress? Or like Henry VIII, who not only tired of his wives, but might chop their heads off just to get rid of them? Was selfishness or plain boredom Conan Doyle’s real problem, his real motivation? Well, that’s another possibility for you to consider. Other than the “artistic liberation” idea, the possible motives we have discussed so far – jealousy, hate, anger, fear, self-defence, even selfishness – are standard police-blotter fare. But another motivation exists, one that certainly would explain why Conan Doyle would kill a character that had, after all, brought him so much fame and fortune and certainly had not prevented him from writing other critically and financially successful books. That motivation transcends any desire for monetary gain or public acclaim: and that is a feeling of personal guilt. In October of 1893, two months before the appearance of The Final Problem, Conan Doyle’s father, Charles Altamont Doyle, suffering from depression and

22 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 alcoholism, and permanently institutionalized after a violent escape attempt from an insane asylum, died. Even more significantly, Arthur’s wife Louise was diagnosed with consumption, known to us as tuberculosis, and given only a few months to live, although she managed to survive until 1906. But in 1893, having learned of his wife’s condition, Conan Doyle took her to Switzerland. It was believed at the time that Switzerland’s climate was beneficial to those suffering from consumption. It was in Switzerland, as we know, he had heard about the Reichenbach Falls, and he decided on that location for the killing of Holmes. So, in 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle was confronting two personal tragedies. In both, especially the one involving his devoted wife, he must have felt a degree of guilt. Cynthia Adams had this to say: “He could not escape the guilt he felt over his wife’s illness. Busy writing the Holmes stories, he – a doctor, no less! – had ignored the signs of Louise’s illness. How could he have been so blind? All because he was working on those blasted detective stories.” Guilt has a legal aspect, as we all know, but it has an emotional one as well. Everyone, except the extreme and rare total psychopath, has a conscience that ensures that we have feelings of guilt for the wrongs we do, both intentional and unintentional. The concept of a “guilt offering” is an old one, dating in our culture to the time of Moses. Leviticus 5:17 reads, “If someone, without being aware of it, commits a sin … then he incurs guilt for which he must answer.” So the killing of Holmes may have been Conan Doyle’s blood atonement, a “guilt offering” or sacrifice intended as a form of repentance, a way to try to punish himself, perhaps, for his neglect of Louise – a neglect that might have brought about her certain death. Of course, accepting the idea that killing Holmes was a guilt offering also means accepting the idea that Conan Doyle felt personal guilt over Louise’s illness. But if he laid the guilt, not at his own feet, but upon the head of Holmes, then the homicide really was motivated not by guilt, but by revenge. In this case, the killing of Holmes was a matter of capital punishment, giving Holmes what he deserved in return for what he had done to Louise, Conan Doyle and their children. This points back to the motive of anger. But this is more than just anger. It is retribution. Do you remember why Watson was not at the Reichenbach Falls when Holmes encountered Moriarty? He was summoned back to the hotel to care for a lady who was hemorrhaging while “in the last stage of consumption” or tuberculosis, Louise’s condition. In The Adventures of Conan Doyle, Charles Higham asserts that “Holmes had to be killed off” because Holmes had been the root cause of the “death sentence” that had been assigned to Louise. When bad things happen, it is human nature to cast a look around in order to place the blame, and preferably not on one’s self. If Conan Doyle blamed Holmes for the impending death of his wife, then revenge was a natural response. He became a vigilante. His mother’s appeal and his publisher’s payments had saved Holmes up to this point, but the great

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 23 detective’s doom may have been sealed once and for all with Louise’s medical diagnosis.

There are three other possible motives that need to be mentioned, and even if they are rooted more in suppositions or elaborate theories than in actual statements and studies, they have a certain appeal that merits attention and at least some consideration. One of these other motives is greed. “Follow the money,” is the first rule of most criminal investigations, and people are killed every day for personal financial gain, whether directly in an armed robbery or in the desire for an inheritance or an insurance settlement from a next-of-kin. At first blush, this would seem almost ridiculous in the case of Holmes. As Russell Miller noted in his biography, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle, the author had resisted the demands of Greenhough Smith, the publisher of The Strand Magazine, to write the second series of stories, now known collectively as The Memoirs, “by demanding £1,000 – a truly phenomenal sum at the time – fully expecting Smith to refuse. He did not.” It is possible, I suppose, that Conan Doyle took a long and measured look at what he was doing with the Holmes stories. While understanding how profitable they were at that moment, he may have reasoned that, in the long run, they could lead to his ruin as an author if he limited himself solely to Holmes. The reading public, as fickle and unpredictable as they are, might lose interest. This is not a totally unreasonable supposition. There are uncountable actors who achieved fame and a devoted following in a certain role, but were forever typecast and never really given an opportunity to succeed when that role came to its conclusion. The late Johnny Sheffield, for instance, who is still beloved as “Boy” in the Tarzan films or as “Bomba” in a follow-up series of movies, never was allowed to get out of the jungle where people expected him to be. He had to leave acting and turn to farming, real estate, construction and selling seafood. To some degree, Conan Doyle could have been justified in fearing such a fate. Unfortunately, there are numerous Sherlockians – perhaps some of you reading this – who refuse to even read his other works, no matter how good they might be. It’s Holmes or nothing for them. But if Conan Doyle decided to quit while he was ahead and make a success with other types of writing while he still had the chance, then the decision to kill Holmes may have been financially motivated after all. His long-term cost-benefit analysis may have made killing Holmes, at least in his mind, the best option for his long-term financial security. Then there is the possibility that Conan Doyle killed Holmes as some sort of cover-up. This requires all sorts of conspiracy theory-style thinking but there are those among us who are anxious and willing to believe any conspiracy theory that comes along, despite all arguments or evidence to the contrary. Marc Lovell’s 1988 novel, The Spy Who Fell Off the Back of a Bus, concerns the search for a manuscript “that is purported to be an attack on Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.” Lovell postulates that Holmes was based on a real person, a severe cocaine addict, who was supplied by his brother, a doctor.

24 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 The idea is that Conan Doyle might have killed Holmes either to prevent the embarrassing truth from being revealed to the world or to prevent the real Holmes or his real-life model from making a claim on his estate. Maybe Dr. Joseph Bell was threatening a lawsuit if Conan Doyle didn’t stop stealing his persona. But there are other possibilities of a cover-up, even if they require unfounded suppositions and theorizing. Holmes might have been killed to cover up evidence of plagiarism if the Holmes series continued and more penetrating questions started to be asked, or to meet the blackmail demands of some unknown enemy. Such ideas are more likely the proper subjects of fiction than a realistic possibility for Conan Doyle’s decision but you may like the idea and even accept it.

Finally, it could be that Conan Doyle just lost his mind. He was unhinged, insane, off his meds. He was famous, successful, making money, doing great, the toast of the town, and his opinions on just about any issue were sought after and listened to. And he just up and kills the goose that laid the golden egg. This might have been what Edgar Allan Poe called The Imp of the Perverse in his short story of that name. It is that tendency to do exactly the wrong thing in a given situation. All these other possible motives might just be Conan Doyle’s way, or our way, of explaining the unexplainable, of hiding the terrible truth of the matter – that Arthur Conan Doyle was nuts. So there you have it. The sin is undeniable. Sherlock Holmes was killed by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is certainly true that the deed was inefficiently done. Don Richard Cox, a University of Tennessee English professor, wrote a biography of Conan Doyle and suggested that Holmes’ dead body was not produced because “he wanted to spare his readers the sight of their hero’s corpse and the awkwardness of a funeral and burial.” Cox agrees that Conan Doyle wanted to kill Holmes permanently, and made the conscious decision to do so, but he subconsciously left a crack in the door, just in case he wanted to resurrect him. And you can even subscribe to a brilliant observation by Michael Pointer, who wrote the following in The Sherlock Holmes File: “If Conan Doyle had really meant business when he attempted to get rid of Sherlock Holmes, he should have killed off Dr. Watson. That’s the key to it. Without Watson there really can be no Holmes.” Regardless of speculation, in December of 1893, Doyle had killed Holmes. As I stated at the beginning, we are setting ourselves in time right after the events of The Final Problem and passing judgment on the man who has admitted to killing Holmes. You be the jury. Is Conan Doyle guilty of unjustifiable premeditated murder? Is he guilty of the deed, but not really responsible because he was insane, even temporarily insane, or otherwise not really responsible for his actions? Or is he not criminally liable because Holmes deserved to die and Conan Doyle acted either through self-defence or through a justifiable imposition of the death penalty?

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 25 You can decide for yourself if the old-fashioned Tennessee defence of “he needed killin’” is sufficient grounds for acquittal. A vote of “not guilty” or “innocent” because Holmes wasn’t really dead, or because Moriarty did it, or because Dr. Watson wrote the story not Conan Doyle, is not being given to you as an option. Please decide which of these motives for homicide is the single-most applicable to the case at hand. I fully understand that Conan Doyle may have been motivated by more than one of the reasons we have discussed. What I would like to know from you is which of these you think is the dominant motive, the one that pushed Conan Doyle over the top, the one that really made the difference in his decision. I would like to think that the verdict of such an august group of the wisest and most knowledgeable heads in the Doylean and Sherlockian world will be notable, but I’m smart enough to know that, whatever you decide, it will not be the final word. There is no “final word” in our little universe, just as there was really not a “final problem.”

Ballot Results

Guilty of the Crime of Murder 48% (30 votes) Not Guilty/Justified in the Killing 37 % (23 votes) Guilty, but Insane/Otherwise Not Responsible 12% ( 7 votes) Not Proved (write-in) 3% ( 2 votes)

Artistic Liberation 39% (24 votes) Jealousy/Hate 18% (11 votes) Selfishness/Tired/Bored 10% ( 6 votes) Self-Defence 8% ( 5 votes) Insanity** 8% ( 5 votes) Guilt 6% ( 4 votes) Greed* 5% ( 3 votes)

*Includes 2 who called it a “marketing ploy” **Includes one “God complex” and one “thrill of killing”

Works Cited Adair, Gilbert. And Then There was No One: The Last of Evadne Mount. London: Faber & Faber, 2009. Adams, Cynthia. The Mysterious Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 1999. Bangs, John Kendrick. On Heroes Rights. In: The New York Times, Nov., 1898. Booth, Martin. The Doctor and the Detective: A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Thomas Dunne Books [St. Martin’s Minotaur], 2000.

26 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy: A Play in Five Acts. London: Saunders & Otley, 1839. Carr, John Dickson. The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949. Conan Doyle, Arthur. Memories and Adventures. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1924. Cox, Don Richard. Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1985. Gostin, Nicki. Has Christopher Plummer Made Peace with ‘Sound of Music’? Oh, God, No. Popeater, June 2, 2011. Higham, Charles. The Adventures of Conan Doyle: The Life of the Creator of Sherlock Holmes. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976. la Cour, Tage, & Harald Mogensen. The Murder Book: An Illustrated History of the Detective Story. New York: Herder & Herder, 1971. Lovell, Marc. The Spy Who Fell Off the Back of a Bus. New York: Doubleday Crime Book Club, 1988. Miller, Russell. The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography. New York: Thomas Dunne Books [St. Martin’s Press], 2008. Moore, Graham. The Sherlockian. New York: Twelve [Hachette Book Group], 2010. New York Times, The. “Sherlock Holmes Once More.” [Review of Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.] March 11, 1894. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Imp of the Perverse. Graham’s Magazine, July 1845. Reprinted in numerous anthologies. Pointer, Michael. The Sherlock Holmes File. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1976. Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1943. Southland Times, The. Conan Doyle’s Struggles. March 6, 1897. Vidal, Gore. Two Immoralists: Orville Prescott and Ayn Rand. Esquire, July 1961. Reprinted in Rocking the Boat. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1962. Wood, James Playsted. The Man Who Hated Sherlock Holmes: A Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Pantheon Books, 1965. Bootmakers have a new website

Thanks to the dedicated work of Thelma Beam and Elizabeth Carbone, the Bootmakers have a new presence on the Internet. The new site was launched in the spring and brings the best of the old site together with a new and improved look and menu system. The new site will be easier to maintain and update. Drop by www.torontobootmakers.com to check it out.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 27 The House of Silk — A Review

By Trevor Raymond

Trevor Raymond has has been a Bootmaker since 1977, a Master Bootmaker since 1994 and was given a Baker Street Irregulars investiture as “Horace Harker” in 2006. He edited this journal for more than fifteen years.

ineteen fifteen. In an obscene gash of blood and mud across Western Europe, a generation is being decimated. Across the Channel, Dr. John H. Watson is in a nursing home, understandably lamenting, “I no longer understand the world in which I live.” His old wound plagues him and although he has “three children and seven grandchildren” (one of whom is named Sherlock), it is not enough: “I am alone.” If the guns of August ended the wider world in which Watson lived, his personal world cruelly collapsed shortly afterward when Sherlock Holmes was found dead in his Sussex Downs home. He dominates Watson’s thoughts. “I think of Holmes, often, waiting for me on the other side of that great shadow which must come to us all, and in truth, I long to join him.” Every Sherlockian pastiche must begin with a foreword that accounts for the existence and/or discovery of the chronicle it presents, although I can recall none more reflective and poignant than the preface which introduces The House of Silk. This affecting introspection soon turns, however, to the familiar time- honoured explanation for what follows: the one adventure (in this case, in 1890) that never was reported because “the events … were simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print. They still are. It is no exaggeration to suggest that they would tear apart the entire fabric of society … something I cannot risk.” And so, as he awaits death, Dr. Watson will record for us this sensational chronicle, which will then be sealed for a century. There is a certain familiarity to this. Readers of Sherlockian pastiches will have seen similar claims before: a shocking tale for which the world is not yet ready. A scandal that will take us to the portals of the highest offices of the land. A conspiracy that threatens the world with war. Pastiches, of course, continue to appear by the score every season; the current issue of The Merchant of Menace, from Sleuth of Baker Street, lists a dozen new such tales, including, apparently, an adventure in which Holmes is in the Yukon and another in which Irene Adler acts as a lure to trap Jack the Ripper. No thanks. What led me to The House of Silk, the first pastiche I have read in a considerable time, was its author, Anthony Horowitz, not because I have read any of his many novels but because I am in awe of his television work. The wonderful Foyle’s War is his creation. Most recently, some of us in Ontario, Canada were glued to our provincial public television broadcaster, TVO, for Mr. Horowitz’s five-part drama Injustice. Murder mystery-police procedural drama does not come any better. And what a great ending! 28 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 The House of Silk is not so original. Of course, if it were, then it would not be a Sherlock Holmes tale; we expect as obligatory particular scenes in our pastiches and we anticipate encountering certain canonical personalities as we look forward to meeting old friends. Mr. Horowitz does not disappoint; he begins traditionally with the dialogue in which Watson’s armchair reverie is interrupted by Holmes, who tells the good doctor just what he, Watson, has been thinking about. And in the titled chapters that follow, most of the usual suspects appear: Mycroft is here, as are the Baker Street Irregulars, Lestrade and Moriarty, but not Irene Adler this time. A feature I much appreciated about this book is what is not here. Although there is a passing reference to Mary Ann Nichols, she is but a gruesome exhibit in a sort of mini- chamber of horrors in a carnival show Watson visits; these pages are mercifully free of Jack the Ripper. Nor does Holmes cross paths with Lytton Strachey or Alfred Dreyfus or Dr. Jekyll or Bram Stoker or The Phantom of the Opera or any other on a seemingly endless list of literary and historical personalities that he has met in numberless pastiches. This innovation was great fun for a brief time, and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution remains a much-read favourite of mine, but the novelty became trite and forced long ago. A cull of my shelves a few months ago led to the discarding of many of these books, including some I decided I likely would never read. The House of Silk is a solid, old-fashioned mystery adventure that, one likes to think, Dr. Watson might perhaps have written, although I doubt that the editors of The Strand would have let him get away with qualifying the adjective, unique – an irritating faux pas. And one understands why the editors of The Strand approved of (and perhaps encouraged) Watson’s decision to disguise the locations of estates and inns and even streets with fictional names – perhaps because of what we now call libel chill – but since Watson is here writing for an audience a century away, one wonders why he maintains this prudence, telling us for example, of a fictional church on a non-existent street in Wimbledon. More important: during his years with The Strand, Watson seldom offered descriptions of the demimonde of London, of the wretched squalor that festered in large areas of his city. Granted, he described London in his first chronicle as “that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained” but “loungers and idlers” somehow does not hint at the appalling worlds of vice and depravity that he mostly ignored in the 59 accounts of Sherlock Holmes that followed. One recalls Peter Calamai’s 2010 Cameron Hollyer Memorial Lecture, “The Real World of Sherlock Holmes” in which we were reminded of the London that Watson seldom mentioned. In his paper at A Study in Scandal last October in

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 29 Toronto, Mr. Calami explored this theme again, mentioning, among others, the sensational journalism of William Stead, whose shocking series of articles “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” exposed monsters who forced children into prostitution with the London aristocracy. Sherlock Holmes, who read the more sensational press, certainly would have seen Mr. Stead’s exposés, as would have Dr. Watson. Perhaps they influenced some of what one finds in The House of Silk, in which Holmes’s companion not only considers this bleak and ugly side of Victorian London but offers an explanation of why he paid little attention to it when he wrote for The Strand: “It sometimes occurs to me now … that I should have described at greater length the sprawling chaos of the city in which I lived, perhaps in the manner of Gissing – or Dickens1 … I can only say in my own defence that I was a biographer, not a historian or a journalist, and that my adventures invariably led me to more rarefied walks of life – fine houses, hotels, private clubs…”

Still, since Holmes perhaps rightly called the villainy in The House of Silk as “a crime more unpleasant than any I had ever encountered,” one understands why Watson chose to have this manuscript held unpublished for a century. Dr. Watson shows a great sympathy for youngsters such as the Baker Street Irregulars. “Childhood, after all,” he observes, “is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child.” He expresses similar feelings a few times throughout this narrative. A nice touch. Indeed, his descriptions and comments about London and its denizens – the ambience in general – are very good indeed, and as the mystery developed, I was pleasantly engrossed, right up to Chapter 14, “Into the Dark.” Unfortunately, there are 20 chapters. My enthusiasm waned somewhat shortly after a meeting with Professor Moriarty to which Dr. Watson is forcibly taken. The immediate circumstances leading to their evening together keep one turning the pages, and the visit itself, over a dinner, is quite delightful. A fine touch is Moriarty’s request (well, demand), that Dr. Watson never mention their encounter to Holmes or anyone else. He must never write about it. Should Dr. Watson hear Moriarty’s name in the future, Moriarty instructs, he must pretend that he is hearing it for the first time and that it means nothing to him. Refusal would put Holmes in great danger. This great exchange follows. Watson speaks first. “Then I agree.” “You swear?” “Yes.” “On what?” “On my marriage.” “Not good enough.” “On my friendship with Holmes.” He nodded. “Now we understand each other.”

Unhappily, the tale loses some of its plausibility soon afterwards but it is impossible to explain without giving plot away. (Is there anyone reading this, I 30 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 wonder, who has not yet read The House of Silk?) Suffice to say that Moriarty, like Holmes, wants to see the House of Silk destroyed, but the assistance he offers Watson to save Holmes from a terrible fate would have been, as the next chapter reveals, of no use. Surely Moriarty would have known that his help, although it would have relieved Holmes very briefly, would not have been enough to enable Holmes to escape the peril he was in. Why then this elaborate kidnapping and dinner meeting? It advances the plot in no appreciable way. Is it there only because we would feel cheated if we did not see Moriarty at some point? It is an irony that arguably the most entertaining scene in the book seems rather pointlessly and clumsily inserted. Action is plentiful from here on though. A prison escape. Safe houses about London. Disguises. A gunfight. A dramatic chase of horse-drawn vehicles. And then a solution, explained at stupefying length by Holmes, of a second mystery that the book offers. Watson does tell us in his preface that his tale contains two adventures, which he calls “The Man in the Flat Cap” and “The House of Silk,” two mysteries which were, we are not surprised to read, “in some respects, the most sensational in Sherlock Holmes’ career.” There is, of course, some overlap of and connection between the two mysteries, but the lengthy explanation at the book’s end of the solution to the “Flat Cap” murders seems to come abruptly from nowhere, and strains credulity given the hectic and dangerous events that have occupied Holmes in his search for the House of Silk. (Unlike our narrator, most readers will have realized early on, in Chapter Six, where the House of Silk was; what it was we learn only at the conclusion of this reminiscence.) Something quite charming in the book is a sort of tweaking with our affection for the Canon as Dr. Watson looks back on his life and times. We glimpse something of his family: that his daughters visit him occasionally, for example; one of them is to be entrusted with this manuscript. We find out that Jack Murray, the loyal orderly who “managed to carry me over two miles of hostile territory and back to British lines” after the Battle of Maiwand, died himself soon afterwards in Kandahar and never knew that Watson was safely invalided home. We learn that Mycroft Holmes, now retired, became the chancellor of “a well-known university” and was knighted. We come to know, sympathetically, something of Inspector Lestrade. Watson regrets some of the harsh words he wrote about the late Inspector, even though, he writes, the policeman had “the general demeanour of a rat who has been obliged to dress up for lunch at the Savoy.” Lestrade, whose first name we find, was George, ended his career as Assistant Commissioner in charge of the CID at Scotland Yard, “even if a large part of his reputation rested on the cases that Holmes had, in fact, solved, but for which he [Lestrade] took the credit.” In his retirement, Lestrade occasionally visited Watson to reminisce about the old days. During one such “long and pleasant conversation,” Lestrade admitted that “he may well have been intimidated when he was in the presence of Sherlock Holmes, and that this might have caused him to function less than effectively. Well, he is gone now and won’t mind, I am sure, if I break his confidence and

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 31 give him credit where it’s due. He was not a bad man. And at the end of the day, I knew exactly how he felt.” We discover that the portraits of Henry Ward Beecher and General Gordon on the walls of 221B were not there because Holmes had any particular affection for them, but because the former “was left behind by whomever had the room before me, and I simply chose to leave it in its place” (“Do you seriously imagine that I went out and purchased that portrait…?”) and the latter was there “at the insistence of Mrs. Hudson.” All in all, with some caveats, The House of Silk is an entertaining diversion. But it does leave us with two bothersome puzzlements which linger after the book has been closed. We learn that a memorial service was held for Sherlock Holmes at Westminster Abbey. One wonders who attended. Holmes appears to have had no friends. Might appreciative clients have shown up? A grateful Dr. Percy Trevelyan, fallen on hard times since Holmes helped him in “The Resident Patient,” has a vital role to play in saving Holmes’ life in The House of Silk but that was many years before Holmes died. One wonders how many of his clientele were still alive in 1914. Perhaps some one-time Baker Street Irregulars were among the mourners. Likely the pews were partially filled by the curious and by readers of The Strand who had never met the great detective. But we are left with a still greater question. Watson tells us that he “respectfully declined” an invitation to speak at the memorial service. Who, then, gave the tribute that Sherlock Holmes deserved? No doubt Scotland Yard would have had a representative at the abbey. Would Mycroft, who was still alive, have spoken? Possibly, although this seems somewhat doubtful. But if neither Mycroft Holmes nor Dr. John Watson gave the eulogy, who did?

Notes 1 In 1915, Watson would have assumed that his readers would be familiar with Robert Gissing (1857-1903) and Charles Dickens (1812- 1870) but during the century when The House of Silk was sealed, posterity has selected only one of these authors for immortality. Gissing is remembered only by students of the era; one of his nearly two dozen novels, The Nether World (1889) is described by Chambers Biographical Dictionary as “one of the most graphic accounts of Victorian poverty ever written. … He lacked the sense of humour that made Dickens a favourite but he never shirked from depicting the unpalatable and few have caught so memorably the drudgery of day-to-day existence.”

32 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 From the Editor’s Bookshelf

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – The Giant Rat of Sumatra – Richard Boyer – Titan Books. 2011. 245pp. $10.95. Titan Books has ferreted out a series of almost 20 novel-length pastiches and republished them as a series throughout 2011 and 2012. This series includes The Giant Rat of Sumatra, Daniel Stashower’s The Ectoplastic Man, Davis Stuart Davies’ The Veiled Detective and most recently, The Titanic Tragedy by William Seil, released to correspond with the 100th anniversary of the sinking. The series also allows any Sherlockian who likes a good pastiche an easy way to find some gems that are often difficult to track down. The covers of the series all have a similar look. A blog posting about the cover design can be found at: http://titanbooks.com/blog/anatomy-cover-sherlock-holmes/ The Giant Rat of Sumatra is, of course, the telling of the well-known alluded- to tale from the Canon. This adventure is well crafted and even brings in an old foe that many Sherlockians may have wondered about.

Masters of Mystery – The Strange Friendship of Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini – Christopher Sandford – Palgrave MacMillan. 2011. 281pp. $31.00 Can. The friendship between Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle is a familiar topic for Sherlockians who have read any of the myriad of Doyle biographies. This book takes an in-depth look at that friendship by first giving the reader bios of both principals. For the Sherlockian who is unaware of Houdini’s rise to superstardom and his battle against bogus spiritualists, Sanford’s book will provide a good grounding on who the escape artist/stuntman (etc.) was and how his friendship with Doyle evolved. For Sherlockians who are acquainted with Houdini’s background and have read about the feud between the two, there is little new information in this book. But the work does convey Doyle’s unabashed belief in the spiritualist movement and shows that Houdini’s scepticism was as much about debunking as it was self-promotion. Sandford’s book is an easy, enjoyable read. “I knocked down several The first half of the book, however, consists of books which he was background on both men, rather than delving into carrying.” – Empt their friendship.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 33 Letters From Lomax

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

n the last issue of Canadian Holmes, this column took a look at Doylean dogs and canonical cats in the Toronto Public Library’s Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, and I promised to continue in this issue with the rest of our animal friends. After all, we can’t all be dog or cat people. Some of us are bird or snake people. Some of us, like Professor Presbury, are even monkey people. What’s the first animal that you think of when you think of Sherlock Holmes? After dogs/hounds, for most of us I suspect it would be horses. The horse-drawn carriage is so much a part of our image of Victorian England that we will picture them in the backdrop even when they aren’t explicitly mentioned in the stories. There’s little need for imaginary horses, though, since they so often are mentioned. Use of the word “horse” is ubiquitous in the Canon, from the packhorse that helps save Watson’s life in the second paragraph of A Study in Scarlet to the race horse “Prince Shoscombe” in the third from last paragraph of The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place. Horsey reading in the ACD Collection is also plentiful, including many editions of that quintessential horse story, Silver Blaze. To dig a little deeper, Donald Jewell’s Sherlock Holmes Natural History Series offers Horses of Different Colors: A Monograph on Horses in the time of Sherlock Holmes (Pinchin Lane Press, 1995). Jewell’s series has many volumes, including titles for Sherlockians pursuing studies in reptiles and amphibians (The Herpetological Holmes), birds (A Few Hours to the Birds), fish and fishing (A Trout in the Milk) and insects (Butterflies and Blind Beetles). This last is far from the only book on insects in the ACD Collection; there are enough titles related to bees alone to make a third column on the topic of animals. Here are a few titles, to give a sample: The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture: with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen, purportedly by Holmes himself (Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 1998), Bees in my Bonnet: Obsessions by John Ruyle (Pequod Press, 1997) and Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Dancing Bees by Allen Sharp (Cambridge Univ, 1987). Another interesting entomological title is Maggots, Murder and Men: Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist, by Holmes fan Dr. Zakaria Erzinclioglu (Thomas Dunne, 2000). I hope all this talk about bees and maggots isn’t making anyone uncomfortable because we are not half done with vermin; we can’t take a complete look at Holmesian fauna without also considering rats. Holmes originally referred to an adventure involving a giant rat as a “story for which the world is not yet prepared.” Well, it seems to have become ready at some point

34 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 because there are more than a dozen pastiches about the Giant Rat of Sumatra in the collection. Again, enough for a column of its own. One wonders, is the world prepared for a mole detective? Well, it has also gotten one in Detective Mole by Robert M. Quackenbush (Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1976). Quackenbush’s mole series became a popular addition to his Sherlockian picture books for children. Once we get started with the children’s pastiches, you can find just about any animal working as a Holmes stand in. They are invariably depicted sporting a deerstalker cap and holding a magnifying glass – with or without benefit of opposable thumbs. There are chickens (Quackenbush at work again with a Sherlock Chick series), mice (Basil of Baker Street, Eve Titus’ clever little mouse who became The Great Mouse Detective in the 1986 Walt Disney movie of that name), ducks (Daffy Duck as Doorlock Homes), bears (The Berenstain Bears in The Bear Detectives, Stan and Jan Berenstain, Beginner Books, 1975) and pigs (Freddy the Detective, Walter R. Brooks, Knopf, 1932). One exception is that there don’t seem to be any sheep in Sherlock’s clothing. I suppose that’s one way of mitigating bleat. (Sorry.) Children’s books are made for fluff and nonsense but there have also been some thoughtful adult pastiches of late that feature insects and animals. Think of the parrot in Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution: A Story of Detection (Fourth Estate, 2004) or the dramatic use of Holmes’ beekeeping preoccupation in A Slight Trick of the Mind (Mitch Cullin, Nan A. Talese, 2005.) All in all, there’s something of an animal nature for everyone in the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection. Ours is a peaceable kingdom where a Sherlockian reading Sherlock Holmes and the London Zoo Mystery by Willoughby Lane (Magico, 1986) can sit side by side with a Doylean admiring photographs of a visit Arthur Conan Doyle made to the real London Zoo with his young children. As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions about the ACD Collection.

Arthur Conan Doyle and his children at the London Zoo, 1914. Toronto Public Library, Arthur Conan Doyle Collection.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 35 ews Notes From

Across the Country

Halifax — Fifteen members of the Spence Munros attended the March 4th luncheon meeting, held at Stayner’s Wharf pub on the Halifax waterfront, for the unveiling of the club’s 30th anniversary pin. The dainty decoration, which sold like hot cakes, bears the inscription: The Spence Munros, 2012, 30 years at 221B. The story assigned for this meeting was A Scandal in Bohemia. Grant Bradbury administered his first test as quizmaster and it was a challenging four- part test that covered such topics as math, geography and economics, plus a bonus round. Rebecca Gadsden achieved the high score and walked away with top prize, a copy of The Murder Room. On April 29th the club attended The Reluctant Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes at The Theatre Arts Guild. The photo on the cover of this issue of Canadian Holmes is from the kick-off event for this Canadian play. May 27th saw nine of the faithful come through the doors at The Spitfire Arms pub in Windsor. The club held its meeting in the Officers Mess area of the British-style pub. The Second Stain was the story examined at this meeting. Doug Pass came away with a win on Grant Bradbury’s quiz.

Montreal — The Bimetallic Question met on April 5th at the Westmount Public Library. Eleven members showed up to discuss, among other things, The Veiled Loder. At this meeting members of another Montreal based Sherlockian group showed up, these five were from a student group at McGill University. Toasts were given by Susan Fitch, Roger Burrows (read by Karl Raudsepp), Raf Jans, and Rachel Alkallay.

Vancouver — The Stormy Petrels in British Columbia had a meeting on February 7th with 14 members joining in at Audrey Woods’ apartment. This meeting featured a special guest, Eric Swanick, head of Special Collections at the SFU library. He gave an update on how the ACD collection was progressing. Up for discussion at this meeting was the first part of SIGN. The club will have a June meeting and on July 14th will have its annual “Reichenbach Falls” ceremonial wreath tossing and picnic at Shannon Falls.

36 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 Stratford – This newest of the Bootmakers’ scions had a fabulous f te on March 18th. Five new members attended and Luna made a guest appearance as the hound. The meetings are becoming more annimated as people gradually get into the Sherlockian energy flow. The club even has some members who are reading the Canon for the first time. Stay tuned for a report on this club’s June meeting, which will have a dominatrix theme as attendees watch A Study in Belgravia. Bootmakers Diary continued from page 40

Monday, May 21, 2012 Thirteen Bootmakers and significant others make the journey to Doug and Nancy Wrigglesworth’s home in Holland Landing to take part in what has become an annual BBQ to celebrate the birthdays of two people near and dear to our hearts: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (May 22) and Queen Victoria (May 24). The food, conversation and lovely weather were enjoyed by all.

Saturday, May 26, 2012: The 11th Annual Fall and Rise of Sherlock Holmes Pub Night Twenty-three Bootmakers and their guests gather at the Duke of Kent Pub for our annual Pub Night, ably organized by Dayna Nuhn. Before and during our buffet dinner, various toasts are made. Barbara Rusch, a recent recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, is the perfect choice to toast our two gracious ladies, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria. The birthday boy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is toasted in fine style by Renee Mactaggert. Meyers 2012 David Sanders raises his glass to Sherlock Holmes, dispelling various myths in rhyme. Karen Campbell pays homage (but not in song) to Dr. Watson, the everyman to whom we easily relate. She remembers various screen Watsons and how important it is to get the relationship between our two heroes just right (which Jude Law does not quite master; however, he looks so great that she forgives him). The founder of the feast, James Moriarty, is given his due by our resident thespian, Dave Drennan. Every great hero needs a great villain and so we must recognize Professor Moriarity for the perfect foil he is. Last, but not least, Doug Wrigglesworth praises The Dog in the Nighttime, for what it did not do. Get-well cards and wishes for a full and speedy recovery are signed for Bootmaker éminence grise Trevor Raymond, who is recovering from a recent surgery. All in all, the get-together is a relaxing and fun evening of Sherlockian catering, content, camaraderie and conversation.

Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 37

OOTMAKERS’ DIARY

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

By Donny Zaldin, BOT Diarist. (Readers are encouraged to submit Diary entries to [email protected])

Friday, February 25, 2012: First story meeting, Charles Augustus Milverton Three “Baker Street Dozen” Bootmaker members and guests are greeted by Marilyn Penner at the Beeton Auditorium of the Toronto Reference Library for the year’s second story meeting, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (CHAS), organized by Meyers 2012, Dave Sanders. Doug Wrigglesworth introduces the story by referring to his usual sources of the “Higher Criticism” (begun by Monsignor Ronald Knox in 1911), raising several fascinating facts and interesting issues. The manuscript of this story sold for only $75 in 1923 (when ACD was still alive) and under $500 in 1942 and 1960 (c.f. the current going rate of over $300,000). A Duet with an Occasional Chorus, diva Karen Campbell and accompanist Craig Brtnik, entertain us with two Sherlockian parodies, Please Mr. Postman, sung to a Carpenters’ melody, and There’s a Kind of Hush in Milverton’s House Tonight, sung to a Herman’s Hermits’ tune. Karen Campbell leads an outside-the-box discussion of the story, dividing the group into four, to consider: how Victorian society made it possible for Milverton to ply his nefarious trade; why Holmes would have made a highly efficient criminal; and, what illegal acts Holmes and Watson committed during the course of the Master’s career as a consulting detective. Sue McInness provides us with a Mrs. Hudsonesque repast of sliced meats, vegetables with dip and baked goods, with cold beverages. Former and now returning quizmaster Chris Redmond, assisted by Elizabeth Carbone, tests our knowledge of the evening’s story, emphasizing atmospheric details of the ways in which words are used to advance the plot. Prize winners are Karen Campbell, Garry Marnoch, Bruce Aikin and James Reese. Christine Newhouse amuses us with her presentation on the limerick. She composed the following for The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton: “There was a vile man from Hampstead / Schemes of blackmail ran oft in his head / Lady Eva his victim / And no conscience pricked him / But death got his number instead.” For show and tell, Barbara Rusch displays a 1914 letterhead of Parker’s Dye Works Limited, 785-791 Yonge Street, Toronto, situated on the grounds where the Toronto Reference Library now stands. The company was founded in 1876 (before

38 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 dry cleaning was invented) and although the building is long gone, the 137-year old firm carries on still, operating as Parker’s Dry Cleaners, with six Toronto locations. The evening’s programme closes with Sherlockian Ladies in Unexpected Places, delivered by proxy by Bootmakers Dayna Nuhn and IT expert Doug Wrigglesworth. The PowerPoint presentation was written and produced by Dean Clark of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who was made an honorary Bootmaker together with Don Hobbs of Flower Mound, Texas. In this latest presentation, featured are three distinguished Sherlockian ladies, each of whom had long performing careers in non- Sherlockian roles. Sherlockian Grand Dame Edith Meiser (1898-1993) wrote more than 300 radio scripts of Sherlock Holmes over 18 years, spanning the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, and portrayed Mrs. Phoebe Littlefield in two 1952 episodes of I Love Lucy. Inga Swenson (born in 1932) played Irene Adler in the 1965 Broadway play Baker Street, A Musical Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, written by Jerome Coopersmith, directed by Hal Prince and produced by Alexander H. Cohen, and was later cast as the cook, Gretchen Wilhemina Kraus, a regular on the 1979-86 sitcom, Benson. Mary Ellis, a soprano and operatic star, frequently appeared on the pre-WW II Broadway and London stage, and one-half century later, while in her mid-90s, played Lady Florence in the 1993 production of The Eligible Bachelor. She also portrayed Mary Maberley in the 1994 production of The Three Gables in the 1984- 94 Granada television series with Jeremy Brett. Her 105-year lifespan (1897-2003) extended over three centuries and two millennia.

Saturday, March 24, 2012 Doug Wrigglesworth speaks to an audience of 30 members of the local Historical Society at the beautiful new library in Bradford, On., about Sherlock Holmes and the “really fascinating literary game that Sherlockians play.” Doug speaks of his fascination with Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: author, medical man, scientist, poet, playwright, sportsman, spiritualist and author – of not only ACD’s 60 stories of the world’s most famous consulting detective but also many other works, from historical fiction to science fiction. The audience includes local MP and PC Government House Leader, Peter Van Loan.

Saturday, April 28, 2012: Second Story Meeting, The Six Napoleons Rescheduled from March 31st because of the unavailability of the Beeton Auditorium on that date, about 40 Bootmakers and guests meet at noon at the Duke of Kent Pub for the year’s second story meeting, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (SIXN), organized by Meyers 2012, Dave Sanders. Doug Wrigglesworth introduces the story by referring to his usual sources of the “higher criticism” of this singular case. Eighty-nine years after Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, the SIXN was published in spring 1904 in Colliers Weekly (illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele) and in The Strand Magazine (illustrated by Sidney Paget). The manuscript resides in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The newly-formed acting troupe, Sherlockian Thespians, performs a short “radio” play, adapted by Darlene A. Cypser, titled The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, which was first performed on January 24, 2009, in Denver, Colorado, at the annual dinner of Dr. Watson’s Neglected Patients. Our production is narrated by Barbara Rusch and stars Dave Drennan as Sherlock Holmes, Frank Quinlan as Dr. Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012 39 Watson, David Sanders as Inspector Lestrade, Trevor Raymond as Horace Harker and Donny Zaldin as Mr. Gelder. Donny Zaldin presents a paper titled Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle and the French Connection. Part 1 sets the stage with the historical background of the Napoleonic Age (1799-1815) and the adventures and exploits of ACD’s Brigadier Etienne Gerard of the Army of the first French Emperor. Part 2 details the influence upon Doyle and Holmes of Edgar Allan Poe and his literary creation C. Auguste Dupin, and of pioneer French forensic criminologist, Edmond Locard, who earned the sobriquet of The Sherlock Holmes of France. Part 3 lists the many French themes and references to French people, places and things in the Canon, including Vernet, the French Legion of Honour, Holmes’ research into coal-tar derivatives at Montpelier during the Great Hiatus and Inspector Lestrade. Part 4 culminates with the recent claim of Monsieur Thierry Saint-Joannis, President of La Société Sherlock Holmes de France, “Les Quincaillers de la Franco-Midland,” that Sherlock Holmes was not English but French and lies buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. A Duet with an Occasional Chorus, songstress Karen Campbell and accompanist Craig Brtnik, entertains us with two Sherlockian parodies written by Karen, referencing the Italian connection of jewel thief and murderer Beppo: Speak Softly, sung to the tune of Speak Softly Love from The Godfather, and That’s Napoleon, sung to the tune of That’s Amore. The Duke of Kent serves up food and drink from its menu and earns our appreciation and an award as honourary Mrs. Hudson du jour. Quizmaster Chris Redmond (in absentia) tests our knowledge of the evening’s story and its relation to other stories in the Canon, by his proxy, Bruce Aikin, who takes up the answers. Prize winners are Trevor Raymond, Karen Campbell and Frank Quinlan. Philip Elliott offers up his presentation titled After the Ball is Over: The Period Between the End of the Victorian/Edwardian Ages and the Beginning of the Modern Twentieth Century. There is a handout of the lyrics and the history of that 1891 song written by Charles K. Harris and performed by John Philip Sousa every day during his band’s six-week engagement at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. The paper covers Britain leading its European rivals, including Germany, in the 19th-century game of “Empire,” which included the British-Chinese exchange of opium for tea. The presentation concludes with a moving recitation of the First World War poem of Canadian physician and soldier John McRae, “In Flanders Field.” Finally, Christine Newhouse (now known as the “Limerick Lady” following her presentation on these five-line metered poems at the last story meeting) presides over the reading of numerous clever Bootmaker entries on The Six Napoleons. Don Roebuck’s entry reads: “I hid it – I thought this was smart / In a bust of Monsieur Bonaparte / There were six of them though / And where did they go? / And how will I tell them apart?”

…Continued on page 37

40 Canadian Holmes  Summer 2012