THE DISTRICT MESSENGER The Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London Roger Johnson, Mole End, 4l Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DE no. 137 17th January 1994 We were privileged a couple of weekends ago to be among the unprecedented British contingent that attended the annual Sherlockian festivities in New York. The new investitures awarded by the Baker Street Irregulars included several to DM readers: Catherine Cooke ("The Book of Life"), Geoffrey Stavert ("The Shingle of Southsea"), Francine Swift ("The Wigmore Street Post Office"), T. Michelle Fromkin ("The Missing Three-Quarter"), Peter Crupe ("The Noble Bachelor") and Thom Utecht ("Arthur Charpentier"). Those are the ones I can remember at the moment; see the next issue of The Baker Street JourJournalnal for a full list. It's available on subscription from P.O. Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331, U.S.A., and it's a must among Holmesian periodicals. Tom Stix (“Wiggins” of the BSI) attended our Society's annual dinner at the Regent Hotel last Saturday and presented one further investiture, to our President, Tony Howlett ("John Hector McFarlane"). This represents a very graceful tribute, since Tom's own investiture (“Wiggins” is his title as head of the BSI) is "The Norwood Builder". (*An account of the dinner will appear in The Sherlock Holmes JournalJournal.*) Tony's, Catherine's and Geoffrey's investitures make the number of living British BSIs up to twelve - a Baker Street Dozen. Geoffrey is already being referred to among his friends as "Shingle". The place in New York to look for Holmesiana is still Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookshop at 129 West 56th Street, but other sources are the long-established Murder Ink (now under new ownership, we're told) at 2486 Broadway, and the two branches of Foul Play, at 13 8th Avenue and 1456B 2nd Avenue. There are less expected places of interest, though. The Warner Brothers Studio Store on 5th Avenue near Central Park, for instance, has a row of bas-reliefs above the big windows, illustrating the studio's various kinds of movie; "Mystery" is a scene from Deduce YouYou SaySay, with Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as Holmes and Watson. As in London, it pays Holmesians to keep their eyes open. Anthony Burgess died on the 25th November, best-known as a novelist (A Clockwork OrangeOrange, et al), he was also a critic, an essayist, and a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast. Even Dame Jean Conan Doyle liked his pastiche "Murder to Music" in the 1989 collection The Devil's ModeMode. Ian Henry's magnum opus has now appeared. This is The Return of Sherlock HolmesHolmes, the play by J.E. Harold Terry & Arthur Rose, written for the great Eille Norwood and produced to considerable acclaim in the West End in 1923. Astonishingly, this is the first published edition. There's a four-page introduction by Ernest Dudley, an actor himself, and Norwood's son-in-law. The play is very good, being based essentially on the case of Lady Frances Carfax, but cheerfully incorporating elements from other stories as well; Conan Doyle gave it his enthusiastic approval, and it certainly reads as well as The Speckled Band or even Gillette's Sherlock Holmes. It does have a large number of characters, though, and a professional production might need the resources of one of the major subsidised theatres. However, there's plenty of scope here for a good amateur company, and in fact a completely revised acting edition is currently in preparation. As to the book, I agree wholly with the publisher's announcement: "This is a limited edition of 500 numbered copies in a beautifully presented version, of 120 pages, cloth-bound, on high quality paper, with head and tail bands, and in a slip case, and reproducing 20 photographs of the original 1923 production that starred Eille Norwood at the Prince's Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, together with advertisements from the original programme. It is of large format to give optimum space for the photographs." This original version of the play will not be available again; the many of us with an interest in dramatic presentations of Holmes and Watson will find it worth the rather high price of £37.50/$61.00, which includes postage, Cheques or US bank checks should be payable to Ian Henry Publications Ltd, and sent to 20 Park Drive, Romford RM1 4LH, England. (*Unless noted otherwise, dollar prices quoted in the DM are in US dollars.*) Forthcoming from Ian Henry: The Singular Case of thethe Duplicate Holmes by Jan Walker (March), The Earthquake Machine by Adrian Mitchelson & Nicholas Utechin (this will be the first British edition, free of the original's numerous misprints), and SherSherlocklock Holmes Unmasked, an "expose" by Adrian Mitchelson (this sounds pretty outré ...). The latest book from the amazingly energetic Philip Weller is Elementary Holmes: A Pocket Reference Guide To The World Of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Publications, 6 Bramham Moor, Hill Head, Fareham, Hampshire PO14 3RU). The cost including postage (airmail overseas) is: £6.00 UK; £7.00/$14.00 Europe; £7.50/$15.00 rest of world. Postal insurance if required is £3.00/$6.00. The book is just what it claims to be, and it really does fit into the average pocket. The essentials of the Canon and the apocrypha are clearly set out, and there is a sensible suggestion for a basic Holmesian library (which includes an item or two that I lack, and at least one that I'd have replaced with another: Pohl & Hart's SherlockSherlock Holmes on the Screen has been more useful to me over the years than Steinbrunner & Michaels' The Films of Sherlock HolmesHolmes). There's a curious and idiosyncratic glossary, but the greater part of the book is taken up with "The Chronological Elements", and it is the author's careful work in collating the findings of the nine major chronologists that will prove of lasting value. For this section alone, Elementary HolmesHolmes is worth the price. The fourth Musgrave Monograph is I Looked in at MeccaMecca, in which Anne Jordan discusses Holmes' reasons for visiting Mecca, and tells us what he found there. Copies can be had for UK £3.50, Europe £4.00, USA $6.00. All prices include postage. Cheques should be payable to The Northern Musgraves; dollar payment in US dollar bills, please. (Anne Jordan, Fairbank, Beck Lane, Bingley, West Yorkshire BD16 4DN). An important new publishing venture is Otto Penzler's Sherlock Holmes Library (Otto Penzler Books, 129 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019, USA), whose first volumes are attractive paperback reprints of pretty well essential, but damned hard to come by, early commentaries: Vincent Starrett's The Private Life of Sherlock HolmesHolmes, T.S. Blakeney's Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction? and 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes edited by Starrett (all $7.95). The Teapot Press (P.O. Box 2048, Scotia, NY 12302, USA) has issued three interesting booklets at about $5.00 each: Sherlock Holmes Observed: A Field Guide to the Granada TV Series by Eleri Arden, Dressing Up Victorian: Inexpensive TurnTurn----ofofofof----thethethe----CenturyCentury Outfits You Don't Have to Sew by Cheryl Kurd, and Tea For Two: How to Plan, Give and Enjoy a Tea Party. Something I don't recall seeing mentioned elsewhere is a short-lived series for young adults, in paperback from Random House under the overall title My Name Is ParisParis. We found a copy of #3, A Scent of Murder by Elizabeth Howard, published in 1987 and now out of print; a pity, as it all seems to be rather nicely done. ("Paris MacKenzie is a sixteen-year-old from Chicago with an irrepressible personality and a passion for Sherlock Holmes. When she visits her namesake city at the turn of the century, Paris finds all the glamour and romance she ever dreamed of..."). If you can help me with other volumes in the series, will you please let me know? I couldn' t give a price in the last DM for The BakerBaker Street Briefs by S. Tupper Bigelow (Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, c/o George A. Vanderburgh, Box 204, Shelburne, Ontario LON 1SO, Canada). Now I can: it's Canada $14.95, USA $12.95, Great Britain £7.50 - plus $3.00 or £1.50 postage. Well worth it, too. I did note in the last DM that publication of Ron De Waal's long-awaited The Universal Sherlock HolmesHolmes has had to be delayed until (appropriately - it's Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday) the 22nd May. The price will not exceed $100.00 or equivalent, plus postage. We've now seen proof copies, both in spiral-bound format and hard-bound from loose pages, and it all looks very encouraging. (Specify when ordering if you want spiral-bound or loose pages; if the latter, you'll have to arrange for binding, as it won't be done for you.) The British and European agent for the book is Sherlock Publications (address on p. 2); if you live elsewhere, it's probably best to direct enquiries to George Vanderburgh. Tina Rhea (3-E Ridge Road, Greenbelt, MD 20770-1969, USA) is preparing a biography of the late Michael Harrison, and is interested in stories and articles by or about him, including three of his books: Battered CaravanseraiCaravanserai, TherThere’se’s Glory For You! and A Hansom to St James'sJames's. Meanwhile, she's published The Books of Michael HarrisonHarrison,Harrison a 48-page monograph, "available for $5 in the US and Canada, or £5 in Great Britain (international money order or five pound note)".