Let's Hear It for the Purple, Blue, and Mouse!

 I’ve always loved the official tri-color tie of the Baker Street Irregulars. And I knew that its origins went back to BSI founder Christopher Morley. But I learned the details only recently. Jon Lellenberg tells the story in Irregular Crises of the Late ’Forties, volume 5 of his BSI History Project.

In a letter to his friend Helen Hare on December 15, 1949, Morley wrote:

I want to sell the BSI boys the idea of adopting colorsfor the club; to be sewn in either a rosette for the lapel, or even in a necktie. The colors, of course, to be Purple, Blue, and Mouse these being the three shades through which Sherlock’s dressing gown passed in its fadings. A fine rich purple; a pleasing “electric blue” (like the dress Violet Hunter had to wear in Copper Beeches!); and then a furry, soft, comfortable mouselike gray. Have you got a mouse at 7 Jackson Street to test the gray? That’s the trouble with new houses; no mice.  

I thought maybe, if not imposing yr gallant patience, you wd stitch together a small rosette in these colors for me to wear at the Dinner -- or even a necktie! The colors must be in that order of juxtaposition: purple, blue, gray. Don’t you think it wd be handsome? And say, what an idea for merchandising: the Sherlock Holmes Dressing Gown, in those three colors. Wyn’t you design it, & bet we cd sell it to some imaginative mfr. (pp. 384-385)

(Morley wrote briskly and with frequent abbreviations in casual correspondence.)

The woman who Morley soft-soaped earlier in the letter as “the most expert & subtle seamstress known” delivered the first BSI tie in time for Morley to wear it at the January 6, 1950 BSI dinner. He presumably wore it many times thereafter, including a June 1951 trip to England (photo, p. 417, Irregular Crises).

My purple, blue, and mouse tie is, of course, the bowtie version. It formerly belonged to my friend and supporter Monica Schmidt, who gave it to me as a present. It will look great with a tuxedo!

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Have good holidays!

Last post this year to wish you a great summer holidays!  Enjoy your time!

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It's Good to Be Back in Person

Ann Brauer Andriacco leads the discussion of "The Beryl Coronet"

The world of in-person Sherlockian events is slowly stirring back into action wherever possible in accordance with local health restrictions. On Friday, The Tankerville Club of Cincinnati had its first such meeting since “the world went all awry” last year.

I’m grateful that the club, which I coordinate as “Most Scandalous Member,” was able to meet four times via Zoom over the past 12 months, and it was wonderful to have friends join those meetings from around the country. But I’d forgotten how much fun an in-person meeting can be – the bon mots, the spontaneous interaction, the hugs.

The meeting took place in the same casual restaurant where we assembled in March 2020, about a week before the state shut down restaurants. Members and guests came from Indianapolis, Columbus, Detroit, and Dallas (by way of Columbus). We had some enthusiastic new members as well as about a third of 31 attendees whose names appear on the 1981 membership list.

Activities of The Tankerville Club are fairly typical for a Baker Street Irregulars scion society: toasts, Sherlockian Show-and-Tell, reports from members who have had Sherlockian adventures elsewhere, a quiz, discussion of a story, an auction of books for the benefit of the club treasury, and a recitation of “221B” to end the evening.

The focus of Friday’s meeting was “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet.” One peculiarity of our group is that our toasts are not always to people. Carolyn Senter lifted her glass to what Holmes called “an old maxim of mine”:

The iconic quote which appears in tonight’s story, that is, “when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” and how it relates to tonight’s meeting is the focus of my toast.  Specific reference is made to the three concepts contained therein, viz., impossibilities, improbabilities, and truth.

Impossibilities with respect to this evening are easy to eliminate. Unless we have the same magic as Hermione from the Harry Potter books, we cannot be in two places at the same time! 

That takes us to improbabilities. Now, if we take a moment and ponder the myriad events, quirks of happenstance, and all the serendipitous incidents which led each one of us to being first aware of tonight’s meeting and, second, having the interest in the topic of tonight’s meeting, both are most improbable – especially considering that the focus is on an entity whose literary agent died nearly a century ago!!  And yet, the truth is, we are here!

Let’s raise our glasses and toast all those impossibilities and improbabilities that led to the truth of our being together once again to celebrate scholarship, camaraderie, and friendship! Here! Here!  

Barbara Herbert, the woman of the Tankerville Club, brought some beryls given to her by her late husband, Paul D. Herbert, founder and Official Secretary of the Tankerville Club. She toasted the titular crown in these words:

Let us join in homage to a renowned object of history. Bent and tattered, with three stones missing, this unique object weaves a wonderful mosaic for Holmes and Watson to unravel as we become acquainted with colorful and interesting characters, while immersing ourselves in another fascinating mystery from the pen of Dr. John H. Watson. Now let us raise our glasses to “one of the most precious possessions of the empire” – the beryl coronet.

Even more precious is the company of good friends.

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Books Galore at Prices to Adore

Denny Dobry at his 221B

Denny Dobry is probably best known in the Sherlockian world for his incredibly detailed and accurate recreation of 221B Baker Street his home in Reading, PA. He is also in charge of selling books for the benefit of the Baker Street Irregulars Trust Historical Archives. You can tour the sitting room and get a great deal on Sherlockian materials at Denny’s Book Fair and Open House on Aug 21.

“Thousands of books will be available for purchase at rock-bottom prices,” Denny says – and neither part of his statement is an exaggeration. He has a vast inventory of donated books priced to sell quickly. Included are many editions of the Canon, rare Sherlockian scholarship titles, hundreds of pastiches and parodies, a variety of non-Sherlockian Conan Doyle works, titles from other mystery writers (Sayers, Christie, Queen, Starrett etc.), extensive selections from Christopher Morley and P. G. Wodehouse, and lots of crime and British reference works. 

This is where Ross Davies would say, “But there’s more!” Denny also has statues, glassware, mugs, games, jigsaw puzzles, and posters, as well as publications by the Baker Street Irregulars Press. In terms of both volume and variety Sherlockian items, nothing else compares.

So, mark your calendar now for Aug. 21 and build a few days of vacation around it. Carpool with a Sherlockian friend! The hours of the Open House/Book Fair will be from 10 a.m. until everyone is gone. The address is 5003 Stony Run Drive, Reading, PA.  Reading is 100 miles from Manhattan, 80 miles from Baltimore and 40 miles from Philadelphia.

Lunch will be available.  If some out of towners stay over Friday and/or Saturday night, Denny would be happy to arrange for getting together for dinner.

Any questions? Contact Denny at dendobry@ptd.net.

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Sherlock and Chicago with the Izbans

"I started my pilgrimage at Chicago . . . " Sherlock Holmes, "His Last Bow"  

I've always admired the incredible effort that Sherlockians, as individuals and as scion societies, have  put into writing and publishing chapbooks, pamphlets, and the like. This has gone on for decades.

Recently, through the kindness of Don Izban, I acquired a copy of the short book Investigating Chicago, by Don and his wife, Patricia. They are Sherlockians. The late Susan Z. Diamond, who wrote the Prolegomenon; the late David Hammer, who wrote the Preface; and George Vanderburgh, whose Battered Silicon Dispatch Box published the 84-page book in 2006, are all Sherlockians of note.

And yet, the text of the book has little to do with Sherlock Holmes, a well-known former resident of Chicago whose name appears on the cover. But that hardly matters. It's a great little guide to the Windy City through the Izbans' eyes. 

Don and Patricia tell how how to best spend a single day in Chicago, the best attraction (and it's free), a very special place (the Walnut Room restaurant at Marshall Field, which is now Macy's), Chicago's 10 Commandments (#1: Eat a Chicago-style hot dog), Vincent Starrett, statuary, architecture, where to eat, and where to billet.

All of this is supplemented by dozens of photos, delightful Sherlockian-themed cartoons by Paul Churchill, and a comprehensive four-page index that covers everything from "221B, The poem" to "Wrigley Field." 

By now, some of this is information in Investigating Chicago is outdated. But it's still fun to read. And I'm taking it with me on my next Sherlockian foray to "that toddlin' town."  

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The Unique and Memorable Mycroft Holmes

Those who know Sherlock Holmes and his world only through film, television, and general cultural awareness likely assume that Irene Adler, Professor Moriarty, and Mycroft Holmes appear in dozens of stories.

They do – but only in film, television, and pastiches; their appearances in the Canon are few. Yet so unique and powerful are these characters that they have captured the imagination of readers and writers from the beginning. It’s hard for pasticheurs, in particular, to avoid these characters, often putting them on center stage to the detriment of Sherlock Holmes.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s current Mycroft series is the latest of at least three on my shelves in which the smarter but lazier Holmes brother is the protagonist.  

The earliest example of Mycroft Holmes pastiche appears in a chapbook called The Resources of Mycroft Holmes: Solver of Historical Mysteries, published by Aspen Press in 1973. It brings together three supposed interviews with Mycroft published in The Bookman in December 1903, a few short weeks after the return of Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Empty House.”

Note that this was six years before the second canonical story, “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” was published, meaning the author didn’t yet know that “at times [Mycroft] is the British government.”

The titles of Charlton Andrews’s three stories in interview form say it all: “He Repudiates Sherlock,” “He Solves the Mystery of the Shakespearean Authorship,” and “He Solves the Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask.” Clearly, these are to not be taken seriously.

However, the illustrations by Enid Schantz for the chapbook are wonderful, as are Tom Schantz’s afterword and checklist. The afterword summarizes what we know of Mycroft from the Canon, then surveys the speculative literature from W.S. Baring-Gould to (possibly) H.G. Wells. He concludes by saying:

“Mycroft, we hardly knew you – and it’s a pity.”

And with that, I heartily concur.

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