Sherlock Holmes: Trifles

"that is the biggest mystification of all" [CREE]  You thought we were done with the Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes? Silly you. As Inspector Baynes said, "I thought I had squeezed all the juice out of it, but I see there was a little over." [WIST]   Now we turn to a fascinating study: dating the Apocryphya. Or at least part of it. An entry by Brett Graham Fawcett in Timelines , the newsletter of the...

"evidence was wanted" [GOLD]  The final installment in our series on the Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes brings us to "The Case of the Man Who was Wanted." Its discovery and provenance seems to have been both wanted and not wanted by the Conan Doyle brothers, who discovered it thanks to a biographer of their father in the 1940s.   How it came into their possession and the story behind what was once a...

"Oh! a mystery is it?" [STUD]    When Charles Dickens died in 1870, The Mystery of Edwin Drood was only six chapters into its 12-chapter run. There were no sketches or outlines of what would come next, so for a century and a half, scholars have puzzled over the solution.   In 1968, Colin Prestige, BSI ("Captain Jack Croker") made a bold claim: that Sherlock Holmes could have handily solved the cas...

"He sent in his card with a message" [CROO]    In our own digital age, business cards are nearly artifacts of the past. And calling cards? They're so outdated we had to create this episode.   Numerous individuals in the Sherlock Holmes stories present their cards to Sherlock Holmes and Holmes presents his card to a few people as well. What's the history behind calling cards and visiting cards and...

"Nine to seven." "Seven to five." [STUD]    For anyone who has first experienced Sherlock Holmes through A Study in Scarlet , Chapter VIII is a shock to the system, placing us squarely in the Great Akalai Plain with John and Lucy Ferrier, and narrated by... who?   Ben Vizoskie had that same question in the 2000 BSJ article "Who Wrote the American Chapters of A Study in Scarlet?" which was awarded...

"upon the track of the avenging angels" [STUD]  The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes series continues with a three-act play that wasn't published until over a century after it was written by Arthur Conan Doyle.   The story of its discovery and dating is even more interesting than the play itself, which is reminiscent of the American chapters of A Study in Scarlet and is... Well, you'll hear. It's just...

"all the main ones in the press reports" [THOR]  Sherlock Holmes knew how to use newspapers to his advantage. Time and again, we see him scanning the agony column and making clippings.   He told Watson "The press is a most valuable institution if only one knows how to use it." Just how did he use it and in which cases? It's just a Trifle.    If you have a question for us, please email us at trifle...

"thirteen in number" [HOUN]  Ask the average citizen about the number thirteen, and it is likely to inspire terror, or at least some slight trepidation. Right up there with black cats and overturned saltshakers, the number thirteen has a long history associated with bad luck.   But what about in the Sherlock Holmes stories? Where does the number thirteen pop up and what can we infer from it? It's...

"and actor and a rare one" [SIGN]  The monthly feature of Morley-Montgomery Award-winning articles continues apace, when we share these top-notch pieces of Sherlockian scholarship from the pages of The Baker Street Journal .    This episode is from S.E. Dahlinger's truly remarkable 1999 article "The Sherlock Holmes We Never Knew," which gives us a better understanding of William Gillette and the p...

"I have never seen so tall a man" [SIGN]  Our series on the Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes continues on, with a slightly different entry this time. Previous examples have been fully developed stories; this is simply a story outline.   How it surfaced is just as interesting as the outline itself, perhaps more. The reader/listener will be left to decide if this could have made a full-blown story. Ulti...

"proceed to Waterloo" [HOUN]  For those looking to travel from London west to Dartmoor (particularly those interested in stopping at Coombe Tracey), you might do well to do as Dr. Watson did and meet Sir Henry Baskerville at Paddington Station.   One small thing, though: there's another station that will get you our west. And if you're another character, you might fancy that. Why? It's just a Trif...

"so subtly influenced by it" [STUD]  It is well known that T.S. Eliot lifted lines from "The Musgrave Ritual" and appropriated them for Murder in the Cathedral , as well as found inspiration for Macavity in the Napoleon of crime.   In this "Mr. Sherlock Holmes the Theorist" episode, Don Hardenbrook, BSI ("Huret, the Boulevard Assassin") found a deeper meaning in Four Quartets , a collection of fou...

"a huge expanse" [HOUN]  Credit: Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0   There are four main characters in The Hound of the Baskervilles : Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, the hound, and the moor. [Record scratch SFX]   Yes, the moor. Inspired by a clip from an old IHOSE episode, we explore why this ever-present setting looms large in the story, both when it's explicitly mentioned and when it's not. It's jus...

"traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech" [DEVI]  The Morley-Montgomery Award series rolls on, and this time we've jumped from 1979 (the last award granted, covered in Episode 453) to 1995. Dr. Margaret Nydell turns her philological attention to the Canon. She specifically looks at Sherlock Holmes's intentions in researching the Cornish language, with its roots in Chaldean. Her art...

"What good are you going to get out of your diamond?" [MAZA]  We're back in the theater for another Sherlock Holmes story in our series on the Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes. It seems that Conan Doyle saw great potential in other mediums (not just the seance type, either). The Crown Diamond: An Evening With Sherlock Holmes is clearly a rehash of the short story "The Mazarin Stone." Or was thought to...

"amused myself by visiting Lhassa...looked in at Mecca" [FINA]  The Great Hiatus, as the interval between "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House" is known, has inspired a great deal of speculation and interpretation, thanks to Sherlock Holmes's brief and tantalizing account of his time away.   Edgar Smith took it on in his famous essay (as referenced in Episode 334), but Don Pollock took aim at...

"lumbering upon its way" [DEVI]  Across the Sherlock Holmes stories, we find a few mentions of what seems to be a strange and magical place in English residences: the lumber room.   In old country houses and in the city at 221B Baker Street, as well as in descriptions of the mind, the lumber room is a place that deserves a little exploration. And it's just a Trifle.   Thanks to Kaj for the suggest...

"I was able to reach Baskerville Hall" [HOUN]  There are a handful of locations in the Sherlock Holmes stories that are regularly sought out by fans. Of course 221B Baker Street is at the top of the list, along with the Reichenbach Falls. For those who venture to the west, Baskerville Hall is always a source of inspiration.   But where exactly was it? Scholars have been debating that subject for d...

"took to the stage" [TWIS]  When faced with four months of an empty theater in a six-month lease in 1910, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did the only thing he could on a moment's notice: he turned to Sherlock Holmes. The Stonor Case (later renamed The Speckled Band ) went into production and is considered part of the group of stories categorized as apocryphal. While the name was the same as the short stor...

"Well, but China?" [REDH]     Our recent episode about real people who inspired characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories spills over into this episode for our monthly Mr. Sherlock Holmes the Theorist-themed episode. Jay Finley Christ wrote a piece in 1949 that wasn't widely published until 1975 (if one can call the audience of  Baker Street Miscellanea wide). Prof. Christ takes on John Dickson Ca...

"There are the originals" [LAST]     Sherlockians go to great pains to "play the game," meaning that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were real. If we can drop the mask for a moment, we all know they were creations of one Arthur Conan Doyle. We also know that every author is inspired by people, names, and places around them. So too was Conan Doyle when he created certain characters. Who were some of...

"entirely mistaken" [CHAS]     The Morley-Montgomery Award-winning article we're discussing this month is by the legendary Jack Tracy, author of The Encyclopedia Sherlockian a and founder of Gaslight Publications. "St. Saviour's, Near King's Cross" appeared in Vol. 27, No. 4 of the Baker Street Journal  in 1977 and looked specifically at the church where Mary Sutherland was supposed to marry Hosme...

"engage a special" [FINA]    This marks the fourth episode in our series of The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes — stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that are technically not part of the original Canon.  "The Story of the Lost Special" was written by Conan Doyle in 1898 about a train that has vanished from the face of the earth, but doesn't explicitly include Sherlock Holmes. How does this then tie int...

"play tricks with me and I'll crush you" [ABBE]    Was Sherlock Holmes too lenient with how he handled some of the criminals he defeated? There are a number whom he caught and set free, flouting the law in the process. Inspired by a recent article in The Baker Street Journal, we look at examples in a handful of stories and compare the fates of the accused in each. Did they get what they deserved?...

"another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein" [HOUN]    It has long been accepted that the original title of A Study in Scarlet was meant to be A Tangled Skein . While there is no surviving manuscript of the first Sherlock Holmes story, a single page of notes has long served as Sherlock Holmes's "birth certificate." However, Matt Hall discovered a letter in Sydney, Australia th...