The Journal of the Bootmakers of Toronto Volume 38 Number 3 Summer 2015

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] and on Twitter at @CanadianHolmes

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ISSN 0319-4493. Printed in Canada.

Cover: Artwork by Laurie Fraser Manifold for Sonia Fetherston’s article on the letter V.

Canadian Holmes Volume 38 Number 3 Summer 2015 One hundred and forty fourth issue

Contents Canadian Holmes Summer 2015 Volume 38 Number 3

Traces of Bootprints 1 By Mark Alberstat

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

A Study in “V” 4 By Sonia Fetherston

Letters to the editors 11

The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane - Song 13 By Karen Gold

A Tribute to Leonard Nimoy and his Sherlockian Connections 14 By Barbara Rusch

A Tiger Tale Worth Telling — Arthur Conan Doyle’s 18 First Story By Donny Zaldin

A Game of Holmes 24 By Tim Kline

Sherlock Holmes and Scotland Yard 27 By Mary E. Campbell

From the Editors’ Bookshelf 34

Letters from Lomax 35 By Peggy Perdue

News Notes from Across the Country 37

Bootmakers’ Diary 39 By Bruce Aikin and David Sanders

RACES OF BOOTPRINTS

An actor and a rare one…

While we were putting the final touches on this issue, news broke that Sir Christopher Lee had died on June 7 at the age of 93. Lee’s career was a long one that spanned several decades and genres. He will be missed not only by the film world but also by the Sherlockian one. He was “an actor and a rare one.” Through his 65-year career he had nearly 300 film- acting credits, including Sir Henry Baskerville and both Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. The Sir Henry role came in the 1959 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, where Peter Cushing played Holmes. Lee took on the lead role in Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, an international film produced in Germany in 1962. Eight years later he was Mycroft Holmes in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. He played Sherlock again in the 1990s in two movies made for TV: Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and Incident at Victoria Falls. During the 1980s Lee became associated with Holmes when he hosted a retrospective titled The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes. This documentary, released shortly after Spielberg’s Young Sherlock Holmes, looked at the various portrayers of Holmes on stage and screen. This show can still be viewed on YouTube. Another actor who recently crossed over the Reichenbach is Leonard Nimoy. Although best known as Spock on the original Star Trek series, he also played Sherlock Holmes and is remembered in an article by Barbara Rusch on page 14. For the first time since we began editing the journal, we have a husband and wife team contributing to the same issue. This is done by Barbara’s husband, Donny Zaldin, whose article on Doyle’s first story begins on page 18. The cover art for this issue is by our artist-in-residence, Laurie Fraser Manifold, who created three unique pieces of art for Sonia Fetherston’s article on the letter V. That feature article begins on page 4. Keeping in mind that Sherlockians also have to look on the lighter side of our hobby/obsession, Tim Kline has an article on Game of Holmes.

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From Mrs. Hudson’s Kitchen

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

At Claridge’s

“You can report to me in London to-morrow, Martha, at Claridge’s Hotel.” Sherlock Holmes in ‘His Last Bow’

The venerable Claridge’s hotel appeared in two of Dr. Watson’s accounts of his cases with Mr. Holmes: ‘His Last Bow’ and ‘Thor Bridge’ — in which Mr. Gibson — the former U.S. senator and “the greatest gold mining magnate in the world,” stayed whilst in London. The hotel was well known to Mr. Holmes as he had dined in its remarkable restaurant many times with renowned clients. It is conveniently located on Brook Street in Mayfair, only a 15-minute walk from Baker Street. Claridge’s opened in 1812. Operating first under the name Mivart’s Hotel, it attracted the wealthy and royal even during its early period. Prior to his ascension to the throne, King George IV had a suite permanently reserved there. As the success of Mivart’s grew, so did the physical dimensions of the hotel. At the same time, William and Marianne Claridge were running their own successful hotel on Brook Street. They purchased Mivart’s 1854. The two merged properties were then known as “Claridge’s, late Mivart’s” until 1856 when it became simply Claridge’s. The hotel’s reputation continued to rise. In 1860, Empress Eugénie of France made Claridge’s her winter home. She invited Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to dine with her there and they were delighted with it. By the 1880s, Claridge’s was referred to as “the extension to Buckingham Palace” and it seemed everyone in the Almanach de Gotha, a directory of Europe’s royalty and higher nobility, visited. As a result, the hotel continued to have a steady stream of visiting royalty. The Savoy Hotel’s owner, Richard D’Oyly Carte, bought Claridge’s in 1894, gutted the old buildings and replaced them with modern hotel facilities, lifts and walk-in bathrooms. The refurbished hotel reopened in 1898 with 203 rooms and suites.

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The Ritz, The Savoy, Grosvenor House and London’s other grand hotels may compete with it in opulence, but none can hold a candle to Claridge’s when it comes to richness of history, its wonderful food and magnificence of clientele. The Chef, Edouard Nignon, was the former chef de cuisine to the Czar of Russia and the Emperor of Austria. He held his post at Claridge’s from 1894 - 1901. The following recipe comes from Claridge’s December 22, 1898 menu. “Hors d’oeuvres a la Russe” were offered because of the many Russian guests. This is an assortment of small plates of delicacies, including blinis and caviar, oeuffs à la Russe and smoked sturgeon. The hors d’oeuvres also had sparkling aspics, richly decorated pâtés, elaborate butter rosettes and carved vegetable flowers.

Recipe: Oeuffs à la Russe: (Serves 6) Ingredients: 6 hard-boiled eggs cut in half lengthwise, yolks removed, reserve egg whites. 2 Chef Edouard Tbs. mayonnaise, crème fraiche or sour cream; ½ tsp. Nignon, maitre chef mustard powder; 1 Tbs. Dijon mustard; 2 finely des cuisiniers, at chopped green onions or 3 Tbs. finely chopped Claridge’s from chives; salt & pepper to taste. 1894-1901 Garnish: caviar or capers and a pinch of paprika. Mode: mix all ingredients together and pipe or stuff into egg whites. Add garnish on top of each stuffed egg. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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A Study in V

“Make a long arm, Watson, and see what V has to say.” — Sherlock Holmes, ‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’

By Sonia Fetherston Artwork by Laurie Fraser Manifold

Sonia Fetherston, BSI (“The Solitary Cyclist”) is a freelance writer from the state of Oregon, USA. Though her work has appeared in Sherlockian publications around the world, this marks her debut in Canadian Holmes. Better late than never!

etters are problematic sorts of things. A literary letter is not as apparent a device as – for example – the scar upon the forehead of John Clay (symbolizing flawed thinking), or the serpent slithering upon the bed (an indication of Roylott’s sexual interest). The twisted lip of Hugh Boone stands for the lies Neville St. Clair tells, while the bridge where Maria Gibson’s body is found represents the transition between her life and death. So much is obvious. But letters are trickier. Interpreting them requires a much more subtle reading of the literary works in which they are found. And so we open the Sherlockian Canon, where one odd letter appears with drum-beat regularity. This is V. This letter is relatively uncommon in the English language, yet students of The Great Detective can easily see that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle assiduously planted V in character names, aliases, places, objects and descriptions.(1) In both the chronicled and unchronicled cases of Sherlock Holmes, V dangles before us at every turn. From the V.R. Holmes shot into his sitting room wall, to the quartet of girls called Violet, V is indelibly imprinted both on the Canon and on the subconscious of its readers. And why not? Presiding over the world of Holmes is that most pre-eminent of Vs: Victoria, Queen and Empress.

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Though it is omnipresent, the use of V is so skillful that we are barely aware of it. Why this letter? What are its implications for each case? And what should readers make of it all? Let’s take a closer look. V presents Sherlockian readers with a study in variety. This makes it exceptionally delicious as a literary signpost because the letter can be used to call attention to an array of distinctive objects, experiences and moods. At times V underscores sinister intentions. It may pirouette lightly on its pointed base, providing amusement. At the same time, V is incognito and occult. It can evoke wholesomeness, as well as corruption. And it is very, very good at contradicting itself in the blink of an eye. Consider for a moment how this dodgy letter manifests itself in other disciplines. For example, in chemistry, V stands for the element vanadium, a substance whose properties are both hard and malleable. In music, reclining Vs mark the opposites of crescendo and decrescendo. Similarly, mathematics uses the horizontal V to indicate greater, and lesser, numerical value. As if this was not confusing enough, police order suspects to “put ‘em up!” or raise the arms high in a V-shaped sign of surrender, while antithetically the second and third fingers held up (palm out) in the shape of a V stand for victory. Scrabble aficionados know that the V tile is the aggressive way to make a defensive play. V is therefore hard and soft, loud and quiet, more and less, capitulation and success, and aggression and defence. V is conflicted, frequently at odds with itself. For this reason, in literature – including our beloved Canon – V is almost always provocative. It is possible to group the Canonical Vs into several convenient categories and ruminate on the nature of each of them. Let’s begin with sinister uses of the letter, for in the world of Holmes the presence of V is most often a clue that something untoward is going on. Here, V contains the potential for

Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 5 destabilization, for loss of balance, and for that always-threatening V-word: violence. This is precisely why Salman Rushdie, in his critique of Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, characterizes the Kansas tornado as a V-gone-wrong. It is an “untrustworthy, sinuous, shifting shape,” Rushdie reveals.(2) That may explain why a lot of the villains and foreigners in the Sherlockian Canon have names that begin with the letter V. When the Canon first appeared in print, names like Venucci, Von Bork and Van Seddar would sound suspect. The blind man who creates the deadly air gun to Moriarty’s specifications is Von Herder. The man who gets away with murder in Frankfort is Von Bischoff. A man who steals state secrets is named Valentine. The list goes on and on. (In this same sinister vein, when Granada Television and writer Jeremy Paul manufactured a menacing butler for Charles Augustus Milverton they gave him a V name: Veitch.) When a poison is needed, the V- inspired vegetable alkaloids do the trick. Snakes in three of the Holmes tales are specifically referenced as vipers, while the birds that ominously circle little Lucy in the Utah desert are vultures. Kitty Winter destroys the face of Gruner by means of vitriolic acid. It’s interesting to note that place names are not exempt from the sinister list. Vermissa Valley is a frightening area where brutality and corruption are commonplace. Boscombe Valley is a refuge for old men with unsavory pasts and the only way out, for both Turner and McCarthy, will be death. The despicable Gruner lives in an estate called Vernon Lodge. One knows something is terribly amiss when the all-powerful Vatican requires the help of a consulting detective, and it did, at least twice. Wherever the reader turns, it’s as if V is intent on wreaking havoc. V is similarly well represented in our next category, that of incognitos and “never-theres.” These are furtive, enigmatic characters who disguise themselves, or to whom reference is made without their actually appearing in the pages of the Sherlockian oeuvre. So it is that the King of Bohemia selects a V alias – Von Kramm – when he stops in London. (Not coincidentally, the mask he wears while visiting Baker Street is yet another V, a vizard.) When Stapleton needs to cover up his identity he chooses the name Vandeleur. We find that Miss Burnet is really Signora Victor Durando. Vincent Spaulding is just another name for John Clay. Von Bork conceals his fateful network of spies before war breaks out. And while Eugenia Ronder is not a V per se, she will live out her life disguised by a V – choosing to live in the protective recesses of her veil. As she herself explains, “A poor wounded beast that has crawled into its hole to die – that is the end of Eugenia Ronder.” While these “visible incognitos” are interesting, even more intriguing are those who are never even there. Their ranks include mentioned-only characters like Verner, the doctor who buys Watson’s medical practice, as well as Holmes’s French relatives, the Vernets. Many others who don’t show themselves appear in the lengthy list of unchronicled cases. These include the tantalizing circumstances surrounding Vamberry the wine merchant; the challenge presented to Canonical archeologists by the oddly named Vanderbilt and the Yeggman; the case of Vittoria the Circus Belle; the

6 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 situation of Victor Lynch the forger; the intriguing Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder; the Venomous lizard of gila (“Remarkable case, that!” comments Holmes); and so forth. On occasion, V is at the root of a momentous transition. Here we must pause and weigh the circumstances of three characters with double V names – or names in which V occurs in both the first and last names. In each case, the double V character coincides with a time of marked change in the lives and partnership of Holmes and Watson. Just as flocks of wild birds assume a V formation when they mass migrate to a more suitable climate, V is the signal that wholesale directional change is taking place. One might also say that this sort of V is a fork in the road. Relying on the chronology developed by the late William Baring-Gould, we see that Victor Trevor was the first double V who came into Holmes’s orbit. Victor Trevor, who appeared in ‘The Gloria Scott,’ predated Watson as Holmes’s close friend. His story takes place in the late summer of 1874, when he and Holmes were students together. “He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college,” Holmes explains to the good doctor some years later. “He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and energy….it was a bond of union…” There has been speculation in some quarters that Holmes takes a romantic interest in Victor’s sister. Victor’s father is a kind man. Holmes’s own father is probably dead when Holmes visited Donnithorpe, so it is Victor Trevor’s father who — perhaps taking a paternal interest in his son’s college chum — steers Holmes into the field of detection. When young Victor exiles himself to the tea fields, he fades from Holmes’s life. Had Victor remained, Holmes may never have needed a Watson. Victor might have roomed with Holmes in Baker Street, and the course of literary history could well be different. Victor’s departure serves to transition Holmes to a new friend, Watson. Some years later Holmes is involved in another case, ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective.’ Our next double V, Victor Savage, has been murdered under mysterious circumstances (“very surprising that he should have contracted an out-of-the-way Asiatic disease in the heart of London”) and it’s up to Holmes to set a trap to catch the killer. Baring-Gould notes that this took place in November of 1887. In this story Holmes throws Watson’s feelings to the four winds, making his friend believe he (Holmes) is dying. It’s a trial run for a similar ploy a few years later in ‘The Final Problem’ and ‘The Adventure of the Empty House,’ when Watson is misled into believing Holmes actually has expired; then, it will be three years before the doctor learns the truth. In these stories Holmes treats Watson with callous cruelty. It would be understandable if the events following Savage’s demise prompted the doctor to walk away from his friend — transition out of the Canon, as it were — but he does not. In ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective’ we have a rare instance of a character, Watson, defying the power of V and staying the course as companion and biographer.

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The last of the double Vs is Violet de Merville, who is, as Watson enthusiastically records, “rich, beautiful, accomplished, a wonder-woman in every way. It is this daughter, this lovely, innocent girl, whom we are endeavoring to save from the clutches of a fiend.” That Holmes is lukewarm toward her is clear. From time to time some Watsonian scholars have speculated that Violet de Merville eventually became the second Mrs. Watson. As if her personal and physical attributes were not enough to claim the heart of the former Army surgeon, Violet was also the daughter of a high-ranking military officer. She in turn could admire Watson for his fame as a popular author, his maturity, and his own military career. Whether or not they married, some kind of continuing relationship is not impossible. The advent of Violet de Merville, a double-V, serves to transition Holmes and Watson onto largely separate tracks; within a year of this story, according to the Baring-Gould chronology, Holmes and Watson have largely gone their separate ways.(3) Violet de Merville is just one of the four ladies who bear this delicate first name. The others are the Misses Hunter, Smith and Westbury. Sherlockians 8 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 have long puzzled over the reason why four Canonical ladies were given conspicuously identical V names, which is our next category. After the first Violet was introduced, why were the others not given different flowery names, such as Daisy, Rose, Iris, Myrtle, Poppy, Lily, Daphne or Flora? Yet has any scholar considered the implications of the presence of V itself? A violet is a flower, to be sure, and a very pretty one, though it’s one with quite unfortunate associations. The violet flower figures in Greek mythology, for example, in a tale about the god Zeus’s infidelity and deceit. In Iroquois legend, the violet flower first grew to mark the spot where two lovers were brutally slain. Violets were the symbol of the political plot to return the exiled Napoleon to power. Be that as it may, “violet” is also a colour symbolizing death, precisely “the autumnal passage from life into death.”(4) For this reason, it is the colour of half-mourning (after black clothes are set aside). Why identify four wholesome young women with the flower/colour that connotes deception, intrigue and death? Consider the state of affairs in which each lady finds herself. Violet Westbury’s fiancé is suddenly dead, the poor girl widowed before she has even wed. Violet Smith is kidnapped, rendered insensible, and forced into a sham marriage with an odious ruffian. A scheming man tricks Violet Hunter into serving as the doppelgänger for the daughter he has unjustly imprisoned. Violet de Merville, whom Holmes concedes is an “ethereal other-world beauty,” opens her mouth and speaks with a “voice like the wind from an iceberg.” She’s been brainwashed and corrupted. Each of these ladies is an innocent victim of circumstance. None of the Violets enjoys the sort of life we would hope for our own daughters. For each of these V women the letter might represent a bent line, a change of direction from what ought to be to what needs to be fixed. The 30- degree angle of the letter V diverts these characters, and their stories, off along a rugged path and it is up to Holmes to set matters straight. V is the title of a slew of films and paperback books, a surprising number of which are of the horror genre. Does the appearance of V in our Sherlockian Canon coincide with shock and fright? Yes, indeed. To find horror we need look no further than tales such as ‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,’ in which a man, whose first name is a V, Victor Hatherley, is first threatened with death by slow crushing, then goes on to suffer a hideous epollicate tragedy. There is ‘The Adventure of the Retired Colourman,’ a story of terrifying asphyxiation at the hands of a jealous old man. The house where the hermetically sealed murder room is located has a V plumb in the middle of its name: “Haven.” A third Canonical V horror story is ‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.’ Here V calls attention to a young mother whose bloodied mouth marks her as a vampire – that über-V of the horror genre. That she is, in reality, a blameless defender of her infant is beside the point. And what of ‘The Adventure of the Cardboard Box,’ a story of murder and severed body parts that was so grisly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself appears to have suppressed it. (5) A close examination of the story reveals that it fairly bursts with words and phrases containing the letter V: Liverpool, brain fever (the severe type), river police, victims, visiting cards,

Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 9 verbatim statements, a devil of a sister with the devil’s own light in her eyes, sleeves, a round voyage, a circle of misery and violence, and much more. In order to relieve the relentless, funereal tolling struck by so many Vs, this is also the story in which we’re charmingly told from whence came Holmes’s beloved violin. Given all the mayhem, can V possibly be amusing? There are a handful of instances. The V.R. which Holmes shot into the wall of his sitting room is one. Watson, who is patriotic enough to have been wounded (apparently two times) in the Afghan campaign openly grumbles, “neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.”(6) Another light moment is found in The Sign of the Four, when Thaddeus Sholto, for whom being a simple hypochondriac isn’t good enough, reaches for a V to call himself a “valetudinarian.” These happen to be my two favourites. Can you spot a few others on your own? These are all fairly obvious Vs, but the letter likes to hide in unlikely places, from the angle of the Master’s steepled fingers to the shape of Altamont’s goatee. One fancies that the curve of the poker Dr. Grimesby Roylott bent was angled severely enough to be a V. So might the poker that did in Sir Eustace Brackenstall, bowed, as it was, “into a curve by the concussion.”(7) Each of the 17 steps one must climb to consult Holmes is shaped like an overturned V. Come to think of it, the Baker Street address conceals a V of its own: 2 + 2 + 1 = 5, and the Roman numeral for five is V. Continuing the Roman numerical reckoning, there are V orange pips, and Watson has served in the Vth Northumberland Fusiliers. Small black pyramids, which are nothing more than capsized Vs, appear in ‘The Adventure of the Three Students,’ silently daring Holmes to pick them up and make some sort of meaningful connection. The many obvious, and concealed, Vs tumble over one another often enough to be — beyond a shadow of a doubt — deliberate. Their very flexibility assures that those who pick up the Canon will have a fun read. Case closed. We started this article with a declaration that a letter is a problematic thing – various people will interpret it in diverse ways. And that is just how we will close. Think about the nature of V, and of other letters on display in the Sherlockian Canon, and one will see fresh ways to read, understand and engage with Holmes. For although V points us to villains and their misdeeds, to places where good and bad compete, where sudden transitions threaten to rend the very fibres of the Canon, and more, in the end V is merely the shape of a hook used to catch and hold fans and scholars alike, playing us on the line in Baker Street….and happily so! Notes (1) Cryptanalysts tell us that V is the 21st least-frequent letter used in the English language, with only five others used less often. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_analysis. (2) Rushdie, Salman, The Wizard of Oz, p21, London, British Film Institute, 1992.

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(3) Baring-Gould dates ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’ to September 3 – 16, 1902. By the time ‘The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone’ takes place, less than a year later, in the summer of 1903, Watson has moved out of Baker Street and moved on. He helps Holmes in only two other cases. (4) Chevalier, Jean and Gheerbrant, Alain, Dictionary of Symbols (second edition), p1069, London: Penguin Books, 1982. (5) The Oxford Sherlock Holmes, p. xx-xxi. Introduction by Christopher Roden. (6) ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ (7) ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’

etters

Don Miller’s excellent article ‘Holmes on Fingerprinting’ (Spring 2015) usefully summarized the history of fingerprinting up to the time of the ‘Norwood Builder’ investigation of August 1894. It did not, however, consider why Holmes was certain that the bloody thumb mark of that case could have been transferred from elsewhere or why Lestrade initially refused to doubt its authenticity. During his recently completed hiatus, which probably took him through India, Holmes would have heard tales of forged or transferred prints. There was a generally held belief among the English that, as Lord Atkin, eminent judge and former president of the Medico-Legal Society expressed it, ‘India appears to be…the home of forgery of all kinds,’ and the medical jurist Ainsworth Mitchell thought that ‘the forgery of the finger prints used as a safeguard upon documents in India has become almost a fine art, the natives having invented a method of transferring them by means of the intestinal skin of the young goat.’ [Sengoopta, Chandak, Imprint of the Raj, p167, Macmillan, 2002]. Having heard rumours of such practices Holmes would have been quite ready to believe that the bloody thumb mark had been transferred to the hall wall from elsewhere. By contrast, in the England of 1894, where the use of fingerprints for the identification of criminals was being debated, it had not yet occurred to anyone that forgery or transference was a possibility. It was not until 1907 that Dr. Edmond Locard, the Father of Poroscopy, created a gutta percha mould of a forged fingerprint and so demonstrated the need for a more sophisticated analysis of finger marks. In the same year Dr. Thorndyke demonstrated to an astonished courtroom that the transference of fingerprints was perfectly possible. [Freeman, R. Austin, The Red Thumb Mark, House of Stratus, 2001]. However, this still does not entirely explain why Lestrade resists Holmes’s suggestion that the mark had not been on the wall earlier. The inspector insists Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 11 there had been no reason to study the area very carefully, but he knows that this is untrue. McFarlane had hung his hat there and might have left blood smears. Let us not forget that in A Study in Scarlet it is Lestrade, not Gregson or Holmes, who discovers the bloody word ‘RACHE’ written in a dark corner of the murder room. It would seem that Lestrade was in denial, but why? And how could the malignant but cunning Oldacre have been so confident that if he added the thumb mark later, Lestrade would be so excited he would conveniently forget it had not been there before? In October of that year the Troup Committee would publish its recommendations concerning which criminal identification system was to be adopted in Britain. Fingerprints were tempting, but so was the Bertillon System of anthropometric records. Oldacre may well have been following this debate. He was said to have been a secretive man rumoured to have grown extremely rich. What if that superlative hiding place he had constructed for himself was the result of a lifetime’s experience? Such special skills would have been in great demand. When, for example, Major Sholto of Pondicherry Lodge required a secret chamber for the Agra Treasure he would have searched the Norwood Yellow Pages in vain for listed criminal builders, but fellow gambler Colonel Moran could have put him in touch with criminal consultant Professor Moriarty, who probably had Oldacre on his payroll. Oldacre’s first name was most likely a nickname bestowed on him by the underworld, Jonas being the name of the prophet who remained in the belly of a whale for three days. What better moniker for a man building panic rooms for the criminal elite? Oldacre could have learned from the underworld grapevine and the papers that Inspector Lestrade was one of those who would be giving evidence to the Troup Committee and arguing for the wholehearted use of fingerprints. He would have realised how delighted Lestrade would be to have clinched a murder investigation on the basis of a bloody thumb mark. Not only would he be making history but supplying the Committee with proof positive that fingerprints were the future. If, though, after having confidently stated to the Committee that fingerprints were an infallible method of identification it were to transpire that he himself had been deceived by a transferred print, he would be humiliated. Oldacre knew, therefore, that once Lestrade had found the print and decided it was genuine, it would be almost impossible to change his mind on the point. But he had reckoned without Sherlock Holmes. The embarrassed Lestrade would not have mentioned the thumb mark in his official report save in passing, but Holmes saw to it that three constables witnessed their inspector’s humiliation and word would soon have got about. In October the Troup Committee recommended the adoption of the Bertillon System, with fingerprints only employed for the final confirmation of identifications. Lestrade never did get promoted. — Nick Dunn-Meynell

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The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane

The following song, sung to the tune of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ was created by Karen Gold and presented at the October 25, 2014 meeting of the Bootmakers of Toronto.

Verse 1: Down in Sussex, beneath the cliffs Oh, the Lion’s Mane awaits Down in Sussex, beneath the cliffs Yes, the Lion's Mane awaits

Chorus: A-wimoweh, a-wimomeh, a-wimomeh, a-wimomeh A-wimoweh, a-wimomeh, a-wimomeh, a-wimomeh Weee-e-e-e-e-e-um-um-a-weh Weee-e-e-e-e-e-um-um-a-weh

Verse 2: First McPherson and then his canine Succumb to its attack Next, it’s Murdoch, but he survives All the wounds upon his back

Chorus

Verse 3: Hush, my darling, don’t fear my darling The Lion’s Mane don’t dread ‘Cause Holmes and Stackhurst, they launched a boulder That crushed that creature’s head

Chorus

Verse 4: Down in Sussex, beneath the cliffs Oh, the Lion’s Mane is dead Down in Sussex, beneath the cliffs Yes, the Lion’s Mane is dead

Chorus Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 13

A Tribute to Leonard Nimoy and his Sherlockian Connections

By Barbara Rusch

Barbara Rusch has been a Bootmaker since 1983. She has served the Society in just about every capacity, including as Meyers in 2002. In 2012, Barbara was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, in part for chairing the Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet (SinS) conference in 2011.

was unexpectedly overcome by Leonard Nimoy’s passing in February, though I couldn’t quite figure out why. Of course, I had watched the original Star Trek series as a kid back in the ‘60s, but I was never a Trekkie, nor have I paid much attention to the succeeding variations on a theme in the years that followed, though Data’s interpretation of Sherlock Holmes on the holodeck was certainly worth watching. But it’s gradually occurred to me why I’ve been so affected when I came to realize how similar Nimoy’s character Mr. Spock is to our beloved consulting detective. Holmes began life as a literary character and has been admirably adapted for screens large and small countless times, while Spock was created for television, morphing onto film in numerous incarnations over the last half century. They resemble each other in physical appearance, both being tall, lean, austere- looking and sharp-featured. Though Watson never reports that Holmes is possessed of pointy ears, there is little doubt he is fascinated by the subject of ears in general. In a telling bit of dialogue in ‘The Adventure of the Cardboard Box’ he tells Watson, “As a medical man, you are aware, Watson, that there is no part of the body which varies so much as the human ear. Each Leonard Nimoy as Sherlock Holmes ear is as a rule quite distinctive and differs from all other ones. In 14 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 last year’s Anthropological Journal you will find two short monographs from my pen upon the subject.” Not one, but two! Interesting to speculate what he would have made of Spock’s auditory organs, certainly one of his most distinctive features. In character, both are proud and somewhat pretentious, measured and mannered, cerebral and articulate. They exude a sense of serenity, of calm resolve, Spock with his famous Vulcan hand gesture (first observed in a synagogue ritual when Nimoy was a child) representing peace and blessings, Holmes seated on the floor surrounded by pillows, smoking shag tobacco and unravelling difficult clues. Master logicians, they each represent the voice of reason — stoic and dispassionate — and no doubt on that account tend to be lacking in emotion, while at the same time projecting a distinct air of mystery. They each have a colleague with whom they reside and with whom they sometimes find themselves at odds — one a doctor, the other a Star Fleet captain — who in significant ways is their intellectual inferior, is less intriguing and who keeps a log chronicling their adventures together. In personality, they share similar robotic tendencies. Watson once describes his flatmate as “an automaton, a calculating machine,” which Holmes takes as a compliment. Spock certainly does when, in a fit of pique, Captain Kirk blurts out to his second-in-command, “What can you expect from a devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother was an encyclopedia?” “My mother was a teacher, my father an ambassador,” Spock responds with unruffled composure. And yet, they share a special bond with their respective comrades-in-arms which on occasion manifests itself in unexpected displays of affection when the more concealed emotional component of their nature breaks out all unawares. Even a tear or two is sometimes shed – as when Watson is nearly overcome by the devil’s-foot root for which Holmes blames himself, and Spock reacts with unabated joy when he discovers Captain Kirk has survived his attack upon him as a result of the influence of the pon farr, the strange and sometimes violent Vulcan reproductive cycle. On another occasion Spock is brought to tears when he realizes that he has become a better person once he comes to the realization that there is more to life than knowledge and logic. For Holmes, as well, it is how he applies those two qualities in the pursuit of justice that is truly important. Both express themselves in eternal truths and timeless wisdom which have become an indelible part of the lexicon. Spock: “Live long and prosper,” “Fascinating,” and “It’s only logical.” And Holmes: “You see, but you do not observe;” “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts;” and “You know my methods, Watson.” And the most iconic quote of all (if the one most often misquoted),” “ ‘Excellent,’ I cried. ‘Elementary,’ said he.” Both are engaged in similar pursuits: exploring strange, new worlds, boldly going where no man has gone before. And wherever their missions take them,

Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 15 whether to distant planets or right here on Earth, they change those worlds for the better, bringing enlightenment, reason and justice. Is it possible that Spock is, as some theorize about Nero Wolfe, descended from Holmes and Irene Adler? Could it be that Holmes is part Vulcan? Could Spock be a reincarnation of the great detective? One has to ask oneself if Gene Roddenberry had Holmes in mind when he created his inimitable character. In fact, he himself stated that Spock could have descended from Arthur Conan Doyle on his mother’s side. Indeed, they might well have been twins separated by time and space, yet whose DNA inextricably connects them, like Hugo Baskerville and Jack Stapleton. Ultimately, Spock himself provides the definitive answer when he says, “An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” So it’s true, then. Spock is descended from Holmes, separated by 400 years and about 20 generations. But on which side? We know Spock’s mother, Amanda Grayson, is an Earthling, his father, Sarek, a Vulcan. And which of Holmes’s parents, the country squire or his wife, about whom we know practically nothing, might be the alien entity? Is there something about his grandmother’s brother, the artist Vernet, about which we have been previously unaware? Or is it possible that Holmes himself was beamed down from outer space, placed on Earth to save it from itself? If Holmes is alien, in whole or in part — some weird Vulcan/human amalgam — it might go some way toward explaining his superhuman intelligence, as well as his emotional detachment. There have been those who have postulated that the great detective is schizoid or suffering some form of Asperger’s Syndrome, but I am of the opinion that Spock’s explanation is an equally cogent one. Perhaps this is the ultimate secret which Holmes somehow manages to keep even from Watson, and the reason we know so little of his antecedents. Spock explains how this dichotomy might work: “Being split in two halves,” he says, “is no theory with me, doctor [in this case his own physician/colleague, McCoy, known affectionately as “Bones”]. I have a human half, you see, as well as an alien half, submerged, constantly at war with each other … I survive it because my intelligence wins out over both, makes them live together.” For Holmes, as well, the duality of his nature has somehow resulted in a rich, inner life, a dynamic whole which elevates him to a higher life form, yet allows him to retain his humanity. In this way, both Spock and Holmes have melded (to use a Star Trek expression) into a curious hybrid, a kind of “Sperlockian” entity, a mythological Janus figure, part human, part alien, occupying a unique niche in the human hierarchy, near enough to allow us to relate to them as human beings, yet remote enough for us to worship them as demi-gods with awe and reverence. As one reviewer who eulogized Leonard Nimoy on his passing observed, “He lives forever in his art. In his enduring masterpiece, as well as in his life, we see values that our storytellers should never forget: rigorous and disciplined intelligence, genuine emotion devoid of sentimentality, an openness to fascinating possibilities, the determination to live out the best in ourselves and to

16 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 live gracefully with the worst.” These words might equally apply to Holmes. For Spock, Holmes and Nimoy, the final frontiers they explore are as much an inner journey as are the brave new worlds to which they travel. Not surprisingly, Leonard Nimoy donned the Inverness cape and deerstalker on more than one occasion, assuming both the mantle and the persona of Holmes on Broadway in the Gillette play in 1974 and in a short video which may be viewed on YouTube, in which Holmes expostulates to a group of eminent scientists who have gathered at 221B to decipher the meaning of a peculiar sphere, no doubt representing Earth, which has found its way into his hands. His reasoning is so complex, so profound, it seems to offer the secret of life itself. I can’t help but wonder: what if these two had joined forces? If Holmes had gone up in a spaceship or Spock had landed in Victorian London? Surely the world would never be the same. And yet, perhaps now they do inhabit the same astral plane, joining forces to unravel the mysteries of the universe together, two fixed points in a changing age who never lived and so can never die. Both are time out of mind, gifting their special brand of wisdom to mankind, like the fire of Prometheus, two godlike creatures who have come to define pure intellect and, surprisingly, the nature of friendship. For despite our whimsical assertions to the contrary, Holmes is far from constrained to the year 1895, but lives on eternally in our imagination, as fresh and vital as the day Arthur Conan Doyle conceived him. Likewise, Spock has taken his rightful place amongst the immortals of western popular culture. So there it is – the answer as to why Leonard Nimoy’s death has so affected me. It’s as though Sherlock Holmes himself has died, though this time his obituary has appeared in the Times to give credence to his passing – and draw meaning from his life. So to Leonard Nimoy, who brought both Spock and Sherlock to life, who embraced Spock throughout his life with a steadfast and unwavering loyalty (more than can be said for Doyle’s loyalty to Holmes), who himself lived long and prospered and has now entered, at warp speed, that final frontier — Peace and Blesssings be with you. Wherever that mystical place might be, we are certain the game is still afoot.

Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 17

A Tiger Tale Worth Telling — Arthur Conan Doyle’s First Story

By Donny Zaldin

Donny Zaldin is a past Meyers, former co-Quiz Master and former Diarist of the Bootmakers. He presently serves as organizer of the society’s annual Silver Blaze Event and as co-copy editor for Canadian Holmes. Donny, known as “John Hector McFarlane” in the BSI, has won all of the Bootmakers’ awards.

n April 19, 2004, Christie’s, the world’s largest auction house, held an historic auction at its main London salesroom of an extensive collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s papers and personal effects. This “lost” archive, consigned by the Conan Doyle Estate, included over 3,000 items of ACD’s personal letters, notes, handwritten manuscripts (the majority of which were unpublished) and personal effects taken from his writing desk after his death on July 7, 1930. Sons Adrian and Denis Conan Doyle took over custodianship of the papers from their mother Jean, their father’s second wife, following her death in 1940. During the decade after ACD’s death, Jean carefully sorted her late husband’s papers, often annotating them with personal memories. Lengthy legal disputes on the division of the contents and income derived from the literary estate caused this personal library to be tucked away and lost from view and the public record. The archive was rediscovered near the turn of the century in the London office of a firm of lawyers, its whereabouts having last been recorded some 40 years earlier. [1] [2] The collection went up for sale in 137 lots, 104 of which met their reserve price and sold, realizing a total of £948,546 (US $1,678,926) – albeit less than half of Christie’s pre-sale estimate of £2 million (about US $3.5 million). Much heralded, eagerly anticipated and bid up contestably were two handwritten manuscripts. Lot 19, ACD’s ‘Southsea Notebooks,’ which included the preliminary 1887 draft for the literary debut of the world’s most famous and iconic consulting detective in the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet (originally titled A Tangled Skein), attracted a bid of £139,650 (US $247,599). Lot 11, which included ACD’s as-yet untitled and unpublished first novel, The Narrative of John Smith, written in 1883 but lost in the post and reconstructed more than a decade later, garnered a bid of £41,800 (US $84,749). Less well known and acclaimed than Conan Doyle’s first Holmesian novel and first non-Holmesian novel was the partial manuscript in Lot 2 — sold for £5,378 (US $9,534) — which included a 157 mm X 75 mm (2¼ in X 7 in), 36- word autograph fragment of ACD’s very first story. These few scant words about a Bengal tiger were written in pencil in 1865 by the would-be author at the tender age of six years. The 14-line fragment reads as follows [3]: 18 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015

“ ... ? but each man Carring a Knife gun ? Pistle We ran on till We Came to a Cave on the Side of the rock we rushed in the first thing we saw Was a fine Bengal … ”

This jagged segment of a torn page of ACD’s first literary creation was authenticated by two accompanying holographic documents, which were also part of Lot 2. The first was a four-page, eight verso (including back pages), autograph letter written in 1911, signed by Conan Doyle’s mother, Mary Doyle, addressed to his second wife of four years, Jean (Leckie) Conan Doyle. It presents the fragment to her daughter-in-law, calling it “the actual very first of the famous A.C.D. long list of great books,” and also reads, in part, as follows: “If I cd frame it in gold, it will no way increase its value.” The second was an autograph note concerning an essay, titled ‘Juvenilia,’ which Conan Doyle wrote about his first story (of the Bengal tiger) and his first novel (about John Smith), published in 1893. Juvenilia commonly applies to literary, musical or artistic works by their author, composer or artist during his or her youth, prior to the development of a mature style. With some exceptions (e.g. publication of collections of a noted author’s or poet’s early stories or poetry), written juvenilia is usually retrospective, with publication taking place after a man or woman of letters has become well known for later works. Cover, March 1894 Conan Doyle’s essay ‘Juvenilia’ was first issue of The Idler published in The Idler, an illustrated gentlemen’s magazine, co-edited periodical, published in London and distributed in by Jerome K. America, which appeared monthly from February Jerome 1892 to March 1911.

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In all, ACD published seven short stories, one article and one interview in The Idler from 1892-95. The most significant of these contributions were ‘Juvenilia’ in 1893; ‘A Chat with Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle’ with interviewer Robert Barr, in 1894; and 10 installments of his novel The Stark Munro Letters in 1895. The Idler magazine was founded by the author Robert Barr, who brought in author, playwright and humorist Jerome K. Jerome (best known for his comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat) as co-editor. Jerome was a struggling writer from a working-class background who fancied the idea of a dreamy idealist who could idle away time by contemplating and enjoying life in general, although it was said about him that “a less inert idler never lived.” By 1895, the magazine was second “in circulation … to only one other English magazine [Punch],” with a spectrum of readers that included upper-class women and the newly prosperous, young, middle-class, single business people. The publication featured the standard format of serial novels (intended to induce the reader to purchase subsequent monthly issues) and mystery and ghost stories, plus interviews with authors and articles discussing public affairs and the social and political issues of the last decade of the Victorian era and of its decade-long successor, the Edwardian period. Other contributors to The Idler included many of the aspiring and leading writers (e.g. Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain) and illustrators (e.g. George Hutchinson, Aubrey Beardsley) of the time. Commencing in 1892, The Idler published a series of essays of 22 authors of the day, titled ‘My First Book.’ In January 1893, the magazine published the eighth essay in the series, ACD’s contribution, which, in part, records his remembrance of his first written story, penned 28 years earlier:

“I was six at the time, and have a very distinct recollection of the achievement. It was written, I remember, upon foolscap paper, in what might be called a fine bold hand-four words to the line, and was illustrated by marginal pen-and-ink sketches by the author. There was a man in it, and there was a tiger. I forget which was the hero, but it didn’t matter much, for they became blended into one about the time when the tiger met the man. I was a realist in the age of the Romanticists. I described at some length, both verbally and pictorially the untimely end of that wayfarer. But when the tiger had absorbed him, I found myself slightly embarrassed as to how my story was to go on. ‘It is very easy to get people into scrapes, and very hard to get them out again,’ I remarked, and I have often had cause to repeat the precocious aphorism of my childhood. On this occasion the situation was beyond me, and my book, like my man, was engulfed in my tiger. There is an old family bureau with secret drawers, in which lie little locks of hair tied up in circles, and black silhouettes and dim daguerreotypes, and letters which seem to have been written in the lightest of straw coloured inks. Somewhere there lies

20 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015

my primitive manuscript, where my tiger, like a many-hooped barrel with a tail to it, still envelops the hapless stranger whom he has taken in.” Regrettably, this proved untrue. In his 10-page essay, Conan Doyle also recalls, after 28 years, that his “second book, which was told and not written, but which was a much more ambitious effort than the first,” followed at age 10 after the lapse of four years “which were mainly spent in reading.” In the following year, 1894, all 22 essays were published in an anthology titled The Idler Magazine, Volume VI, with an introduction by Idler co-editor, Jerome K. Jerome. [4] Thirteen years later, in 1907, ACD was interviewed by his friend, Bram Stoker, author of the Gothic horror novel Dracula. The interview was 1894 edition of My printed in several international newspapers [5], First Book titled: ‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Tells of His Career and Work, His Sentiments Towards America, and His Approaching Marriage.’ In the interview, ACD is quoted as follows:

“My first book! That was written when I was six years of age! But if I am to tell you about myself, I suppose I had better begin at the beginning … When I was six I wrote a book of adventure—doubtless my mother has it still. I illustrated it myself. It must be an absurd production, but still it showed the set of my mind. When I went to school I carried the characteristic with me. There I was in some demand as a story-teller. I could start a hero off from home and carry him through an interminable succession of wayside happenings which would, if necessary, last through the spare hours of a whole term. This faculty remained with me all my school days, and the only scholastic success I can ever remember lay in the direction of English essays and poetry. I was no good at either classics or mathematics; even my English I wrote as pleasure, not as work.”

Yet, 17 years later, in 1924, in his autobiography Memories and Adventures, Conan Doyle makes no mention whatsoever of his “first” story of the tiger that became the hunter and the hunter who became his prey. Instead, he attributes the honour of “his first attempt at a connected narrative” to The Firm of Girdlestone, which he wrote in 1884-85, although it was not published until 1890, after A Study in Scarlet and Micah Clarke had seen print in 1887 and 1890, respectively.

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In any case, the precocious six- year-old author’s first “story” (as he described it in 1893) or first “book” (as he described it in 1907) was apparently not a part of the archive, of which Denis and Adrian Conan Doyle took possession of in 1940. Only the 36-word scrap of paper sold by Christie’s survived the 80-year passage of time. However, the partial fragment of a young mid-Victorian boy’s very first written adventure is not the only surviving legacy of that Drawing of a young ACD “in some six-year-old’s imagination. Conan demand as a story-teller,” printed in Doyle inarguably retained his ‘Juvenilia,’ The Idler, January 1893, early fascination with tigers, as “My First Book” evidenced in the Sherlockian Canon. Tigers figure in The Sign of Four and The Valley of Fear and a dozen of Conan Doyle’s other Sherlockian stories. In ‘The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,’ Holmes unmasks Henderson as the Central American dictator Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro. In ‘The Adventure of the Empty House,’ Watson describes Colonel Sebastian Moran’s “savage eyes and bristling moustache … wonderfully like a tiger himself.” Holmes employs the hunting stratagem of tethering a young kid under a tree, laying above it with one’s rifle, and waiting for the bait to bring up the tiger, with his empty house as his tree and the colonel as his tiger. The ploy allows Holmes to deceive and capture “the second most dangerous man in London,” shikari “Colonel Sebastian Moran, once of Her Majesty’s Indian Army, and the best heavy-game shot that [England’s] Eastern Empire … ever produced,” a man whose “bag of tigers still remains unrivalled.” In ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,’ Sir Eustace and Lady Mary Brackenstall’s dining-room floor is covered by a tiger-skin hearth-rug in front of the fire. In ‘A Case of Identity,’ Holmes pays heed to the old Persian saying, “There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.” In ‘The Adventure of Black Peter,’ Holmes endures a long and melancholy vigil with Watson, waiting either for “a fierce tiger of crime, which could only be taken fighting hard with flashing fang and claw” to steal upon them out of the darkness, or some skulking jackal, dangerous only to the weak and unguarded. In ‘The Adventure of the Bruce- Partington Plans,’ Holmes chafes against the inaction of criminal activity, decrying “the London criminal” as “certainly a dull fellow” for not taking

22 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 advantage of roaming the city on a dim, cloudy day “as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, and then evident only to his victim.” The Canon also contains innumerable references to knives, guns and pistols, used both as murder weapons and for self-defence. And tigers appear and are referred to in Conan Doyle’s non-Sherlockian writings, including ‘The Horror of the Heights’ (first published in The Strand Magazine in 1913), in which the author writes:

“A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them. I believe in time they will map these jungles accurately out …”

Thus, the lasting impression of a six-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle, of the regal tiger, the central character in his first written story, has outlived the ephemeral fragment and missing pages written exactly a sesquicentennial ago, initiating an illustrious writing career which spanned over four decades.

Sources [1] Christie’s, press release dated March 2004 [2] Randall Stock: ‘The Lost Papers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Christie’s 2004 Sale Information,’ dated September 27, 2012, which article has been literally and liberally quoted with the kind permission of the author URL: http://www.bestofsherlock.com/ref/200405christies.htm [3] Arthur Conan Doyle, age 6, partial manuscript, untitled story of a hunter and his prey, a “Bengal” tiger [4] Walter Besant (“Ready-Money Mortiboy”); James Payn (“The Family Scapegrace”); W. Clark Russell (“The Wreck of the ‘Grosvenor’”); Grant Allen (“Physiological Æesthetics and Philistia”); Hall Caine (“The Shadow of a Crime”); George R. Sims (“The Social Kaleidoscope”); Rudyard Kipling (“Departmental Ditties”); A. Conan Doyle (“Juvenilia”); M.E. Braddon (“The Trail of the Serpent”); F. W. Robinson (“The House of Elmore”); H. Rider Haggard (“Dawn”); R. M. Ballantyne (“Hudson’s Bay”); Israel Zangwill (“The Premier and the Painter”); Morley Roberts (“The Western Avernus”); David Christie Murray (“A Life’s Atonement”); Marie Corelli (“A Romance of Two Worlds”); Jerome J. Jerome (“On the Stage and Off”); John Strange Winter, really Mrs. Arthur Stannard (“Cavalry Life”); Bret Harte (“Californian Verse”); ‘Q,” pen name of Arthur Quiller-Couch (“Dead Man’s Rock”); Robert Buchanan (“Undertones and Idylls and Legends of Inverburn”); and, Robert Louis Stevenson (“Treasure Island”). [5] The World [US] on July 28, 1907; The Star [NZ] on December 9, 1907; and The Daily Chronicle [UK] on February 14, 1908

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A Game of Holmes

By Tim Kline

Tim Kline has been seriously collecting Sherlockian games since 1997 and has been a Sherlockian since the age of 7. He is a member of The Crew of the Barque Lone Star of Dallas, Texas; The Waterloo Station of Austin, Texas; The Fourth Garridebs Coin Society and many other Sherlock societies. Tim has written three books on collecting Sherlockian games.

he Game of Holmes is one where it is always 1895 and the mists of London roll in off the Thames with murder and crime in the air, surrounding an unknowing public. Or, in our case 1904, in which the first Sherlock Holmes card game is published by the Parker Brothers company. The Game: Sherlock Holmes was so popular even after the initial 1904 printing that it was printed with many various colours on the box covers and slight colour variations on the cards themselves for many years. This game kicked off the games of Holmes and still holds pride of place in many Sherlockian collections. Bringing Sherlock Home was a read the story, find the clues and solve the crime game produced by Heyday House in 1935. Puzzling Pastimes games also followed this format but was on a single card about the size of two playing cards published in the 1930s by a British company G. Delgado, Ltd. Following these games, evidence is thin as to the next actual game that would take us into the gaming world of Holmes. This lack of Sherlockian games might be a direct result of the Great Depression and Second World War. An unusual 1950s Swedish game simply titled Sherlock Holmes features a great cover that has Holmes smoking and looking through a magnifying glass. This game steals its concept from the popular Clue game, which had just recently hit the market in 1948 with the tag line of “The Great New Sherlock Holmes Game.” Cluedo became popular the world over and led to a variation named Murder at Tudor Close, with great cover art of Sherlock and Toby the crime dog tugging at a leash 24 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015

on both the Waddington’s British version and German printings. Clue has taken many forms over the years and Sherlock finally was awarded his own characters’ version in 2014, thanks to the BBC TV series Sherlock. The gaming world again seems to take a break from the Master Detective and finally makes a resurgence in the early The very Sherlockian cover of 1970s with several games, 221B Baker Cluedo? Street becoming the spark that would turn into a flame and burn the longest. The game combined mysteries to solve with a board and game play similar to Clue. It was made into a VHS/TV version, which never took off in the world of gaming. The Master Detective version of the game 221B Baker Street had mini plastic Sherlock busts in six different colours. The game’s final incarnation was a 1996 version with 20 new mysteries to tackle. The premise was that 1896 is A “Missing Year” in which H.G. Wells had created a time machine and issued a challenge for Sherlock to solve the greatest crimes of the 20th century, including The Black Dahlia, The Lindbergh baby kidnapping, JFK assassination, the Zodiac killer, and even the exit of Elvis. The 1967 board game Murder on the Orient Express is one of the enigmas of the gaming world. The Ideal toy company made the game and attributed it to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in big bold letters on the front cover and even adds the tagline A SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY GAME. It is better described as a logic problem disguised as a game. It certainly requires a good deal of thought to play. The rule book is 14 pages in length: six pages of rules, three pages showing how to fill out the tracking forms, and five pages giving an example of a single eight-turn play sequence. A deceptively complex game. Even more interesting are the figures for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. It is obvious from a casual glance that they look nothing like Holmes and Watson. On closer inspection they are recognizable, but as Dr. No and Auric Goldfinger from the James Bond movies. I think the “mystery” of this game is deeper than it seems. As Holmes would say “The game is afoot!” In contrast, Suspicion has a beautiful Holmes drawing on the cover and the paper board is full of many of London’s famous districts such as Hyde Park, Kensington, Soho and Battersea. What makes this game so suspicious is that it has no manufacturer listed anywhere on the box. Nor does it have any artist credited for the incredible artwork.

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The 1970s had board games with the title of Sherlock Holmes take on many styles of play with versions similar to Monopoly, a magnetic Battle- ship type game and even a cribbage type format in the name of the game Deduction! Making a debut at this time were also Sleuth and the biggest one, Consulting Detective. The Consulting Detective game is a role-playing game where the imagination was used to help create the London of 1895 and provide hours of fantasy fun. The game includes a large map of London, and facsimile newspapers of the era with crimes to solve within its stories. This game sparked versions in many different countries, including the U.S., Great Britain, Sweden, France, Germany and Italy. Posters, T-shirts and lapel pins were made to promote the game when it was issued. The game was so popular it went on to be one of the first computer games that was made for the CD-ROM computer format and included into the new emerging gaming systems of Nintendo and Sega. The best news is that now the box game version has been reissued with all new graphics, posters and even a T- shirt. I hear of Sherlock everywhere these days, the Robert Downey Jr. movies and two television series now being shown have given rise to an Internet explosion of printable playing cards, two tarot decks designed by fans, and numerous online games that feature Holmes as the main character. This segment of the Sherlockian gaming world is only going to grow. The last category of games I will discuss are computer/video games. Frogwares is the company that has made Sherlock Holmes a computer-based household name with titles such as Mystery of the Mummy and Sherlock Holmes vs Arsène Lupin. Frogwares has expanded its Sherlockian catalogue to include The Awakened, which brings Sherlock into the world of H.P. Lovecraft; Jack the Ripper vs Sherlock Holmes, where you can see if your Holmes can solve the real identity of this fiend; and most recently Crimes and Punishments, a game which features six cases.

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Sherlock Holmes and

Scotland Yard

By Mary E. Campbell

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the St. Jean Baptiste Day (Summer) 2003 edition of Canadian Holmes. Mary’s detailed list of sources and acknowledgements will follow the conclusion of this paper in the next issue.

Mary Campbell, MBt, ASH, BSI, died on March 17, 2003 leaving behind a rich legacy of Sherlockian scholarship and friendship. Mary was the Bootmakers’ long-time archivist, co-authored Lasting Impressions to commemorate the 25th anniversary of The Bootmakers of Toronto, and received the society’s Derrick Murdoch and True Davidson awards. Her final paper, ‘Images of Professor Moriarty,’ was presented to the Bootmakers, in her memory, in the fall of 2003.

Part I — Scotland Yard: Origins

o legendary Sherlockian Vincent Starrett: “ ‘Scotland Yard’ is one of the great mouth-filling phrases of history and literature and it is quite impossible to pronounce it, even in ordinary conversation without at least a minor thrill.” He also asks the question: “What did England — what did literature do — before the coming of Scotland Yard?” Chris Redmond points out that the earliest form of law, barely holding private vengeance in check, prescribed terrible punishment of crime and what today would be called ‘tort.’ The principle associated with an ‘eye-for-an- eye’ was an attempt to limit the penalties that could be extracted; the concept of punishment has been further curtailed by milder religious teachings

Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 27 and subsequent legal codes. In Britain, specific laws and Acts passed by Parliament have underlying them a great body of common law, a set of traditions and precedent-setting court judgements. Common law changes only very slowly as courts rule on specific cases, both civil and criminal, unless Parliament contravenes with new laws on a particular issue. Today we view police officers as persons who enforce the laws thus created; they generally act according to accepted rules of law and decency and are usually free of political and societal interference in their pursuit of inquiries. They are independent of the prosecution process, which in turn is independent of the judges and the prisons. Individual citizens are protected from police mistreatment by, among other things, the “Judges Rules,” a codification of long-standing prohibitions against torture, trickery, and other improper ways of obtaining evidence. David Ascoli’s models of law enforcement include the authoritative use of force based on fear; the delegation of responsibility for maintaining law and order to society itself, either within or without a system of judicial authority — a pseudo-democratic system which contains the seeds of anarchy but which served England as its model for over one thousand years, from Alfred the Great to William IV; and the present model of impartial police forces, independent law- making bodies, and separate administrative enforcement. The adoption in England of the delegation model arose with the Anglo-Saxon kings. The idea of mutually pledging and collective security was enshrined in Alfred the Great’s Book of Laws which, with changes, was fairly effective until it fell apart during the disorder of the 18th century. Based on a blend of Mosaic code with Christian beliefs and traditional practices, it imposed a ‘Social Contract’ known as The King’s Peace on both monarch and populace. It was short and unequivocal, understood and accepted by all. On the basis of the philosophy that ‘the people are the police and the police are the people’ each community was responsible for the behaviour of its residents and for apprehending offenders. Various leaders were required to pursue any culprit within the community’s borders and anyone failing to join in the chase was guilty of an offence. Over the next 1,000 years the simple, community-based model gradually broke down as successive administrations tinkered with it for their own advantages. It was never very effective in the burgeoning city of London, with its shifting population and a growing number of petty jurisdictions which viewed each other with suspicion as rivals and failed to co-operate with each other. The community leaders, unpaid for all their labours, grew weary of spending the required time, and delegated the enforcement duties to others, also unpaid and resentful. By Shakespeare’s day they were often seen as merely loutish fools, of little use to anyone. The situation with the judicial part of the system was no better. Also unpaid, those performing these tasks became hopelessly corrupt and greedy. The simple code and its simple enforcement degenerated into an impossibly complex set of

28 Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 rules, with totally inappropriately harsh penalties, incompetently enforced very unfairly and unevenly by a corrupt private magistery. The harsh class system, wherein the upper classes exploited the lower ones and the lower ones resorted to crime, was a downward spiral to vacuous anarchy. The stock, the pillory, public flogging, transportation (exile to Australia) and the gallows seemed ineffective to control the growing violence, street riots and conflict. Reform efforts, commencing in the early 18th century, were largely unsuccessful. Over the next 100 years, class struggles and conflicting political philosophies hampered efforts to bring about a new system of laws and their enforcement. Part of the problem was a deep distrust by the populace of any authority figures who might represent the state. The situation was dire but the people could not accept the idea of a paid constabulary; military interference on several occasions over the centuries left a bad taste for agents of the kingdom. Attempts at reform and bills in Parliament failed time after time as the situation deteriorated. The homes of the rich became gated, armed encampments against the raging mobs in the streets. The Napoleonic Wars temporarily kept the growing social disorder in check, but as the wars wound down, the prospect of many thousands of discharged soldiers being dumped back into the streets with no means of support, finally forced the foes of legal and social reform to re- evaluate their positions. The push for preventative rather than punitive policing finally gained some support. Small experiments began in local courts with individual magistrates paying their own police agents to assist them; a limited local force to police the Thames River was tried. Reformers also focused on simplifying criminal law and ameliorating the unduly harsh penalties for relatively minor offences. By the late 1820s, the hundreds of hanging offences were reduced to a few appropriate crimes; complex civil and criminal laws were streamlined, but not without a monumental struggle. Into this mess strode a man who had already achieved great success in law code and policing reform in Ireland — Sir Sir Robert Peel Robert Peel — who now

Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 29 took on the daunting task for England. Determined to successfully guide legis- lation through Parliament that included the separation of the executive and judicial functions of the magistrates and to provide for a publicly paid police force, Peel, now Home Secretary, presented his bill to establish a system of policing for the London metropolitan area to Par-liament. It became law on June 19, l829. The foundation of a unique organization had been laid.

Part II The Historical Yard

The new Metropolitan Police Force was the first modern police organization. It provided for a mere six stations plus a headquarters (located on the edge of Great Scotland Yard, former site of a palace used by visiting Scottish royalty); 1,000 men, minimal administrative staff and two Co-commissioners. Charles Rowan, an ex-military man, and Richard Mayne, a younger legal light, were quietly appointed in July 1829. Rapidly producing a detailed plan, they had the force on the streets by September 29 of that year — an amazing feat. From the beginning the project was fraught with problems — understaffed, underfunded, frustrated at every turn by political enemies and jealous bureaucrats and resented by the public and the formerly private policemen who were now out of a job. Recruitment was difficult; the pay was below that of an artisan, the job of low prestige, the hours long, the hierarchy unforgiving and unsupportive of the rank-and-file, and the rules governing the men’s lives bureaucratic and petty. Time and again politicians interfered with police activities, frequently ordering them to mix into matters best left undisturbed; on occasion Blue hertitage plaque at the the military was brought in to brutally aid site of the original Scotland in mob control. It was forbidden to wear Yard. regular clothes due to public paranoia over ‘secret’ government agents or spies, so there was no detective branch until 1842, when a very few were authorized. The force faced a constant struggle for adequate funding and salaries; they even had two shillings per week deducted from their already low pay for their uniforms. There were no pensions, and very bad working conditions. The force lacked respect and independence; they had to prosecute individually any offenders they apprehended. As if these external forces were not enough, there were internal class tensions between the ranks and their superiors that caused many resignations.

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Indeed, turnover was a constant problem, between those fired for drunkenness on the job and those who quit in disgust. There was a constant need for new recruits and a constant lament about their quality. Brawn over brains prevailed and many of the newcomers were country labourers looking to improve their lot, if only slightly. They soon were gone. From the beginning Rowan and Mayne made a conscious decision not to recruit ‘gentlemen’ or former military men — it was to be a preventative force, not a combat unit. No aura of ‘militarism’ was needed — public acceptance was poor enough. In spite of these problems, by June 1830 there were 17 divisions and over 3,000 men; by 1835 there were 6,000. Given the turnover, at least double that number had been recruited and trained but were already gone. The uniforms were extremely uncomfortable, hot in summer, and had to be worn all waking hours whether on or off duty (an armband was added on shift). The families of married men had to live in the neighbourhood of the assignment and a transfer meant dislocation for all. Wives were forbidden to work at any paid employment whatsoever. The force’s area of geographical responsibility gradually increased to cover 700 square miles in Greater London (all except The City, which has always had its own separate force). The headquarters building quickly outgrew its staff and became hopelessly overcrowded but was not replaced until 1890. Very gradually public respect grudgingly grew as crime statistics slowly fell. Some improvements were finally achieved as Rowan and Mayne struggled with their political masters over the next 30 years. Salaries improved slightly, shifts were less gruelling and the turnover rate slowly stabilized, although it was still too high. Staffing levels in the divisions varied, wealthier areas were assigned more constables per 1,000 population than poorer ones. The cop in the street came to see himself as the paid servant of the privileged with the duty of being respectful to his betters and keeping the lower classes firmly in their place. Successive Home Secretaries waxed and waned in enthusiasm, support and interference. A fledgling pension scheme quickly collapsed and wasn’t replaced until many years later. Editorial savaging and cartoons of kitchen-consorting constables did not help. W. S. Gilbert poked fun at them in The Pirates of Penzance, where they are portrayed as cowardly buffoons. Traffic control became a major category of duty by the 1850s as the number of private carriages and public omnibuses grew. Licensing of public vehicles and their drivers and assigning of cab stands: what had these tasks to do with keeping the Queen’s Peace? Precious little, in the men’s opinions. But it was all worth the effort. By the 1850s forces were ordered established in many other local areas of England. Members of the Metropolitan London force even acted as consultants, although these new forces reported locally rather than to the Home Secretary. Rowan retired in 1850, Mayne hanging in until his death in 1868 (too long, in the estimation of his men, as Mayne became increasingly petty and bureaucratic). By 1864, there were 23 divisions and over 10,000 men.

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The new Commissioner, Henderson, was a military man too. His 17 years in office were to see far-reaching changes and the first demonstrations of mutiny in the police ranks, as well as a major police corruption scandal. The detective bureau was exposed in 1877 as grossly corrupt, resulting in its disbandment and the formation, in 1878, of the Yard’s new Criminal Investigation Division, the now-legendary CID home of Lestrade & Co. The population of London exploded to several millions while the force grew only slowly. There was great tension between the detectives of the CID stationed at headquarters, and those in the divisions, and between the rank-and-file and these divisional detectives. Technology, in the form of the telegraph, helped police communications, as did the bicycle and, eventually, the telephone. Complaints about working conditions still festered; in 1877 a series of protest marches were held in divisions — slight improvements resulted, but it wasn’t enough. Howard Vincent became the first head of the CID upon its establishment on April 6, 1878; the next-in-command was the same questionable Frederick Williamson who had taken five years to notice the corruption in the old detective bureau he then headed. Not an auspicious beginning! But they were able to ‘abate the power of felons,’ and so they did. It would be barely three years until Scotland Yard encountered Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet. No wonder they needed him so often! And there were still problems with public outrage about these ‘hidden’ spies. Fenian attacks in 1883 and 1884 resulted in the formation of ‘Special Branch’ for anti-terrorist activities, becoming a part of the CID. Scotland Yard headquarters itself received a direct bomb hit in 1884. A new building would be required. James Munro succeeded Vincent in 1885. The 20 years of relative social peace between the mid-l860s and 80s meant the police were now inexperienced at mob control, and Commissioner Henderson mishandled a mob confrontation on February 6, 1886. He resigned as the inquiry proceeded. A succession of incompetent autocrats followed in quick order — three of them resigned in just over four years, all plagued by scandal and trouble with the ranks. A full-scale battle with a mob took place in Trafalgar Square on November 13, l887; the 2,000 police were augmented by two companies of Foot Guards. The rank-and- file police hated having to confront these mobs of their fellow lower-class citizens. The Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 went unsolved; is it any wonder, with all this internal chaos? By 1890, when the mess finally settled down, Scotland Yard’s CID stood at 800, and the force was 17,000 strong. When the dust had settled, Lestrade and his colleagues were reporting to Sir Edward Bradford. A series of mutinies in June and July of 1890 brought the woes of the rank-and-file to management’s attention, with refusal of duty by several squads of police and mishandling of the subsequent disciplinary action of firings, reductions in rank, and transfers to other stations. Perhaps typical of these discontented, fed-up policemen is the story of Constable Henry Bendell, whose diary from 1886 to the end of 1890 survives.

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Bendell was attached to the Paddington station house, less than a mile from Baker Street. His complaints range from low pay, poor pensions and heavy- handedness and pettiness of discipline by superiors to totally incompetent management by ex-military bosses and lack of respect all around. Bureaucrats with no experience of street duty are severely criticized. Being assigned to hassling cab drivers for illegally stopping to discharge and take on passengers particularly irked Bendell. He is especially critical of Sir Charles Warren (one of the worst of those short-lived Commissioners), who appears to spend the force’s money on horses and filling useless offices with old soldiers; top jobs needed experienced policemen, Bendell thought, and the money saved by ridding the force of these unneeded feather-bedders could be used to provide for a properly paid, well-trained and larger police force without any extra burden on the ratepayers. In 1890 Bendell himself was punished for some (unspecified) offence committed while on duty and was transferred to another station house; perhaps he refused duty in one of the mutinies that summer. At any rate it meant uprooting his wife and children and disrupting his family. The force was demoralized and the life of a constable was not easy. Some reforms were finally put in place and a decade of relative calm ensued with a new management and a new palatial headquarters on the Thames embankment. Police got more respect and gained the vote. Standards for recruits rose and turn- over rates fell. Society gradually came to see the police as a positive social force — even the lower classes eventually changed their views. By the turn of the century the policeman’s lot had greatly improved and his social position was slightly higher (although he still had to use the back door in many upper-class homes); his family enjoyed a more comfortable life. Still ahead was the wizardry of the 20th-century technological explosion and the professionalization of the force. Fingerprints as identifiers arrived with Edward Henry, an experienced policeman who became CID head in 1901 — the Bertillon system of head measurements had prevailed up to then. As Sherlock Holmes prepared to retire, circa 1903, Bradford stepped down as Commissioner, Hemy stepped up, and promotion from within the ranks became possible; there would be no more imposed military or political leaders at the head of the Metropolitan London Police Force. A professional police force was on the horizon. A police training school was established; one for detectives had been in existence for some time. Almost a century had passed since the concept of an independent public, paid, preventative police institution, separate from the legislative, judicial and punitive functions of the law, had first been seriously considered; two centuries had passed since the reform movement had first raised its head. The world’s first public force was well underway.

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From the Editors’ Bookshelf

Sherlock Holmes and the Plague of Dracula by Stephen Seitz. (MX Publishing. $18.95.) The merging of the horror genre in the Sherlockian mystery world and bringing together famous literary characters like Dracula and Holmes together is nothing new but can be, for some, a guilty pleasure. Seitz has set his book apart from the Holmes/Dracula crowd by cleverly weaving Holmes and Watson into Bram Stoker’s original tale. The story starts with Mina Murray asking Holmes to locate her fiancée. Holmes and Watson travel to Transylvania on Harker’s trail and meet up with the legendary count. The confrontation with Dracula brings near disaster to our favourite duo, but Watson’s medical skills come to the fore. The story also lets Holmes’s reasoning and scientific approach to whatever comes his way be explored and even goes so far as to recast what happened at the Reichenbach Falls. Anyone who likes a good pastiche and the original Stoker novel will enjoy the careful blending done in this book. – Mark Alberstat

The Detective The Woman and The Silent Hive by Amy Thomas. (MX Publishing $9.99 Kindle or £9.99.) This is the third Sherlockian novel by Thomas, one of the Baker Street Babes. The story opens with Irene Adler coming to Holmes with the mystery of her dead bees. In this timeline, Adler is the bee keeper and Holmes is merely an interested observer in the ways of the hive. When Holmes discovers the dead bees involve a much larger plot that threatens to envelope everyone he holds dear, he and Irene are forced to work together to save their friends. Thomas’s ability to write a mystery is unquestioned. Thomas develops a good storyline and leaves clues about for the reader to find. She also brings in all of our old friends from Mrs. Hudson, to Billy and Mycroft and even Wiggins. Thomas is currently at work on her fourth Sherlockian novel. – Mark Alberstat

A Novel Journal: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Canterbury Classics. $16.95) This is far from your average reprint. In fact, at first glance the book looks like blank pages for a diary. On closer inspection, possibly with a magnifying glass for those of Holmes’s years, you realize that the lines on the page are actually words and are, in small print, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. With this book you can, quite literally, write you own adventure in the original stories. – Mark Alberstat

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Letters From Lomax

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

don’t hear of Sherlock everywhere. That’s right, my friends, it pains me to tell you this, but in her continuing travels away from the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, your faithful correspondent Lomax has found a place on Earth that has never heard of Sherlock Holmes. If you happen to have read the last installment of this column, you will be aware that I’m currently on leave of absence from the library. In that last column, I described a most enjoyable busman’s holiday of meetings with students of the Master in England, Sweden, Germany and Italy.  The next leg of travel, on the other hand, was something else altogether. My stay in a small town on the coast of Kenya was a fascinating experience for many reasons, but I’ll only address the one relevant in this context; that is, what a world without Sherlock looks like. It was the first place I’ve visited where people would look at me blankly when I told them what I did for a living. It is a place where books are rather hard to come by, and leisure reading therefore an uncommon pastime even though there is a fairly good rate of literacy. I didn’t see a single television set during my time there either, nor was there a movie theatre anywhere in the area. Imagine trying to explain the Holmes phenomenon in these circumstances. One must start by explaining the concept of crime fiction, and I was amused to note that some of the people that I tried discussing the matter with seemed to think that reading about murder and crime as a hobby sounded rather distasteful. Mind you, it would likely have been quite different in a place like Nairobi, where all these forms of media are far more available, and where one might even hope to come across a member of Dr. Sterndale’s Lion Hunters, the Sherlockian group initiated by Bootmaker George Vanderburgh many years ago. However, in rural Kenya, a stone’s throw from the Equator, I had the chance to spend time in a place where the subject that occupies so much of our time and enthusiasm is completely… irrelevant. In this quiet corner of the world, elephants roam the forest unmolested by any of Dr. Sterndale’s ilk, the clear, clean air is free of the stench of Victorian crime, and footprints found on the pristine white beaches were those of great sea turtles, not gigantic hounds. Eden might have once been like this. One day I’d like to visit Kenya’s neighbor Tanzania, home of the first African Holmes pastiche Mzimu wa watu wa kale (“Shrine of the Ancestors” by Muhammed Said Abdulla ) and check on the Sherlockian environment there. However, since I did not explore any other African countries on this trip, I’ll conclude this travelogue instead with an account of what’s happening in Japan, Sherlock’s home away from home in the Far East. I spent all of May there and found Holmes alive and well. The primary force keeping him in this robust state Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 35 of health is the Japan Sherlock Holmes Club (JSHC). The club is one of the world’s largest and most active, and I was fortunate enough to be in Tokyo in time to attend their May meeting. The main event was a presentation by Hirotaka Ueda, BSI. Mr. Ueda spoke about the early days of the club, which started in 1977, and shared memories of adventures with various Sherlockians of international repute. After Ueda-san’s presentation, I gave a short talk about the Toronto Public Library’s Arthur Conan Doyle Collection and the Bootmakers. Members of the JSHC have long been generous supporters of the ACD Collection and after the talk I was given enough donations for the Collection to put my suitcase in danger of bursting at the seams. These donations were a good sampling of what’s hot in Japanese Sherlockiana right now, so I’ll mention a few. First of all, Yumiko Shigaki donated a DVD introducing the NHK TV series ‘Sherlock Holmes’, in which all characters are played by puppets. This program is currently being prepared for the English-speaking market. Yuichi Hirayama donated a Japanese version of the board game Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and Mitch Higurashi added a sample box of Holmes-inspired teas, proving that fandom teas are not just for North Americans anymore. Eiichi Nakahara donated a number of different things, including a magazine with an article about ‘Detective Opera Milky Holmes.’ This oddly-named Japanese franchise is set in a futuristic Age of Great Detectives in which crimes are solved by four saucer-eyed girl detectives based loosely (oh so loosely) on Holmes, Nero Wolfe, Hercule Poirot and Cordelia Gray. Throw in some magical powers and pastel-coloured deerstalkers, and you have quite an odd pastiche. However, something must be working because the concept has already been turned into a radio drama, anime series, manga, novel and game. These donations will be available for consultation in the Collection in the near future for those who would like to further investigate Japanese takes on Holmes. My short “hiatus” has been a great opportunity to see Sherlockian places and faces around the world, but it will soon come to an end. By the time this issue of Canadian Holmes comes out, I’ll be back in my favourite corner of the Holmesian world, the Arthur Conan Doyle Room at the Toronto Public Library. I’ll hope to see you there soon.

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Halifax — The Spence Munros continue to grow. The group most recently met on June 7 at The Celtic Corner pub in Dartmouth. Eighteen of the faithful attended the lunch- time meeting, including two new members. The story discussed at this meeting was ‘The Adventure of the Three Garridebs.” Grant Bradbury, quizmaster for the society, produced another tricky set of questions. Doug Pass took home the prize with 16 points out of a possible 20. For his efforts Doug won a copy of the latest Laurie R. King Sherlockian novel, Dreaming Spies. Mark Alberstat brought a large number of books he has received lately for show and tell. Doug also brought a book to add to Mark’s collection, this one being a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles in Spanish Doug bought in Buenos Aires. Also on the theme of foreign language editions, Mark passed around an Italian version of A Study in Scarlet he bought recently in Como, Italy. After the meal the group migrated to The Dartmouth Players theatre for the matinee performance of The Game’s Afoot. This award- winning play by Ken Ludwig ran in Dartmouth from June 3-20. The assembled Sherlockians enjoyed the play, which even featured a calabash borrowed from Mark’s collection.

Edmonton — The Bootmakers of Toronto have a new scion society. The Wisteria Lodgers is a small but enthusiastic group that has been active for the past three years. Constantine Kauikakis heads up the society. The group meets about once a month. You can visit them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SHSEWL/timeline

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Vancouver — Approximately 20 Petrels met on May 19 in an upstairs room at the historic Columbia Theatre (built in 1927), currently being restored, and home to the Raymond Burr Performing Arts Society. Upstairs the group was treated to a large buffet supplied by member Tim Mustart, who is affiliated with the theatre. Since the upstairs room is also the home of a comedy club, Tim suggested each Petrel tell a joke or funny story. This was a lot of fun, as most members put a Sherlockian twist to their jokes and stories. Well-fed and full of humour, the group then moved the meeting downstairs to the main theatre. At the back of the room, tables were set up to have the regular meeting, at which time ‘The Final Problem’ was discussed. President Fran Martin reports the biggest problem was deciding which cake to try, as Tim had set up a table with several cakes for dessert. Several prizes were awarded this evening. The prizes were packages of Baker Street Blend tea (made by Murchies), complete with a silhouette of Holmes on the front of the box. This club has a busy summer planned with a Classic Movie night on June 26, where they will be watching Rathbone’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A few days later lucky Petrels will have the opportunity to see an advanced screening of the new Ian McKellen movie Mr. Holmes. July 11 the faithful will be enjoying our annual ‘Reichenbach Falls’ picnic. The club also takes this opportunity to visit the gravesite of Vincent Starrett’s mother, who is resting at Capilano View Cemetery in North Vancouver. July 16 the club is meeting again. This time guest speaker Sonia Featherstone will be giving a talk on the restoration of the William Gillette film. August 15th is their Silver Blaze race in Surrey (not real horses) and it is also a pot luck lunch. The summer fun is wrapped up on September 17 with a Murder Mystery dinner at Crescent Beach.

Montreal — The Bimetallic Question continues to meet regularly at the Westmount Public Library. The June 4 meeting’s quiz was based on “The Cardboard Box,” with Carol Abramson capturing first prize, and Chris Herten- Greaven and Karl Raudsepp winning second and third place respectively. A set of miniature hand-painted lead figures of Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, and Moriarty were a big hit during the show and tell portion of the meeting, brought in by Jack Anderson. It was also discussed how Montreal Gazette political cartoonist Terry Mosher aka Aislin has promised Bimetallic Question members that he will create a Sherlock Holmes cartoon for the newspaper, as soon as the right Holmesian political inspiration takes place on the local scene. Mosher was a much enjoyed special guest speaker at the Society’s Sherlock Holmes birthday dinner last January, and the cartoon is eagerly anticipated.

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OOTMAKERS’ DIARY

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

Editor’s Note: Thanks go out to Bruce D. Aikin and David Sanders for compiling this edition of Bootmakers’ Diary.

Saturday March 28, 2015 Fifty-two were in attendance at the Beeton Auditorium at the Metro Toronto Reference Library for the second story meeting, The Sign of the Four. Among the guests present were longtime Bootmaker and former Meyers Bob Coghill, who has become a world traveller after his retirement; Bob has been in Thailand since September. We also welcome back Linda Mazur-Jack, who retired to the Bay of Quinte area with her husband David a number of years ago. Toronto Star reporter Patty Winsa is on the scene with her crew, interviewing guests for a feature story. As well, there was private detective Lou DiLorenzo, from The Ariston Group, who spent 32 years on the Toronto Police Force, first in uniform and later as detective. He showed an episode of the TV series Cold Case Files, which detailed the sexual abuse and murder of 11-year-old Allison Parrott, and afterwards related his part in the capture of her killer. He was followed by Kathy Burns, who gave a comprehensive introduction to the story. Bob Coghill, in a paper titled, “I am Lost Without my Boswell,” revealed that as well as being referred to as Holmes’s “Boswell,” Watson also shared with Johnson’s biographer a love of women, drink and Lou DiLorenzo gambling. The quiz was then distributed by James Reese, and the break called by 2015 Meyers, Thelma Beam. Meyers also doubled as Mrs. Hudson, and, with the assistance of Bruce Aikin, served an Indian-themed collation of goodies. Slipping back into her Meyers persona, Thelma called the assembly back to their seats and Jim took up the quiz. The winners were Don Roebuck, Doug Wrigglesworth, David Sanders, Dave Drennan and Garry Marnoch. Canadian Holmes ™ Summer 2015 39

Frank Grossman presented “The European Alliance System,” detailing the alignment of the nations of Europe for or against each other and how the ‘Naval Treaty’ was important for maintaining European stability by Britian’s security. Karen Gold, with the audience joining in on the chorus, sang Pearls are a Girl’s Best Friend, to the tune of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best friend. The Moment of Zen for tonight featured the best man speech from Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. During announcements, Dorothy Palmer told about a theatre game she had heard of called Lockquest, where the participants are locked in a room and must find the killer and the way out, suggesting it might be a possible future Bootmaker event. Donny Zaldin reminded us that night was Earth Hour day. Meyers then thanked the presenters and those Karen Gold assembled for coming and declared the meeting adjourned.

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Whether you write with an old- fashioned pen like this fellow or the the latest laptop, we are looking for you. All types of articles, toasts, thoughts, pastiches or reviews are welcome. It is up to you to make Canadian Holmes the stand-out journal it can be. Contact the Bootprint, Mark Alberstat, today with your thoughts. [email protected]

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