I was directed toward the Sherlock Holmes section of the used bookstore as per my request. There, at a screaming deal of a price, I found then purchased a 1967 edition of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Baring-Gould (Vols. 1&2). Upon pawing through my new get I saw sandwiched inside its black and teal front cover, folded in half width-wise, an Elks Magazine article from January 1979 titled "Sherlock Holmes: The Game is Still Afoot." by George M. Basler.
Still afoot and after some decent amount of searching, I located who I believe to be the article's author. I sent him a message via Facebook on 3 April; a few weeks back at the time of this writing. I have yet to receive a response but will make darn-tootin' sure to share any that might eventually occur. Was the book his research material for said article, and upon its publication he tucked it back home? Or did both kit and kaboodle belong to a Sherlockian whose appetite was whet by the article and the next stop was diving into the deep-end that is this book?
Why is mayonnaise so delicious? There are questions we have to be OK with never being answered. Also, please remind me to get more mayo next time I go shopping. It's one of those things I almost always forget.
But the article. It basically serves to offer-up an overview of Sherlockian endeavoring via a now somewhat four-decade-old snapshot. It reads, really, as if opening a buried time capsule. Which, in a way, can be stretched to its damned-near literal sense here. In it, Mr. Basler lays out the history of The Baker Street Irregulars, from Christopher Morley to the then-current Dr. Julian Wolff. He also, albeit somewhat secondarily, ponders the question of why people are so (psuedo-scholarly) attracted to this whole thing.
(My hyphenated-words but that was his I believe suggested gist). He cites nostalgia as a potential answer, at least as a reply to fandom in its entirety, which I feel to be a quite different thing than Sherlockian Scholarship (or the latter different from the former), and stops there--so we will for a tick, as well. "One theory is that Sherlockians are basically romantics who are nostalgic for the by-gone London of the 1890's when society seemed to be less complicated and the choice between good and evil less blurred (although in reality it wasn't that way at all.)"
I have my own take on the matter of why and in my view, nostalgia is not the reason. Although a case could be made it plays a role in fandom, it factors lesser-so in scholarship. Years down the road now we don't see, say, Starsky and Hutch growing to Holmesian proportions; although I'm certain they have their ardent fans. They and also the other more recent options like them, fail to attract many scholarly attentions. Cool car, though.
And that is key (not the car). Why this scholarly attention? Take Star Wars for a moment, a huge fanbase replete with what would be pastiche and parody--still, it falls short of The Great Game, landing securely in the realm of simple fandom. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)
Arthur Conan Doyle caught lightning in a bottle with Holmes. I realize that to be a real duh sentence. The cases were written, at times, perfectly. At other less frequent times, at least if you scratch through a fandom veneer--imperfectly. Simply, he made mistakes. The balance of this is struck divinely and lands at imperfectibilty. We who delve more deeply want to fix and continue to fix the fixes of these mistakes or inconsistencies in order to fully delight in the rest. There can always be more delight; more delight to be shared amongst the like-minded.
Only through a thing Ronald Knox wrote from within the primordial ooze of Sherlockian Scholarship, can this be done. "If there is anything pleasant in life, it is doing what we aren't meant to do. If there is anything pleasant in criticism, it is finding out what we aren't meant to find out." (From Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes.) This opens a rabbit hole that tunnels-into studies of late Victorian and early Edwardian era studies, as well as longer looks at Doyle's oeuvre, his work beyond Holmes. It's quite nice fodder for wrinkly-brained folk's mental masturbations.
ACD knew what he had done, and most likely had an inkling of what waited down the road, to boot. Then could not get the cat back in the bag, and to his mind, his career suffered on account of Holmes. Sherlockians in all their forms have long since adopted said cat. And seeing as it has never lived and so can never die--will eternally be committed to leaving saucers of milk out in various ways and growing locales. For now, my day to feed the cat is apparently Sunday (as this posts on a Sunday).
Tolkien called his fans "My deplorable cultus." I wonder if Doyle would feel much the same toward Sherlockians. "Here dwell together still two men of note / Who never lived and so can never die: / How very near they seem, yet how remote / That age before the world went all awry." - Vincent Starrett, 221B. OK, so maybe Basler had a point--we can both be right.
[additional] Resources for this article include: The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia (Ronald A Knox), I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere (Vincent Starrett's Classic Poem '221B).
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