Jul 08 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press John Baesch reports that Frederic Raphael, reviewing GRAHAM GREENE: A LIFE IN LETTERS (London: Little, Brown, 2008) for the Times Literary Supplement (Jan. 25), writes that "in a mock-modest late letter, to a postulant bib- liographer, Greene denied being a literary man, to excuse 'preferring Conan Doyle to Virginia Woolf or E. M. Forster.'" Raphael adds, "who doesn't?" Richard D. Altick died on Feb. 7. He was a noted literary scholar who had a long career at Ohio State University and wrote often about Victorian life and literature. His essay "Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Samuel Johnson" was published in Vincent Starrett's 221B: STUDIES IN SHERLOCK HOLMES (1940). "The Edwardians" was an excellent eight-part television series broadcast by the BBC in 1972; "Conan Doyle" featured Nigel Davenport in the title role, and four of the programs (including "Conan Doyle" were broadcast by PBS-TV in the U.S. in 1974 with commentary by Alistair Cooke. I'm not aware that any of the programs were ever issued on VHS cassettes, and it was nice to hear from Jon Lellenberg that the series will be issued in October by BBC Video and Warner Home Video as a DVD set ($49.98). Bruce Montgomery died last month (Jun 08 #5), and there will be a memorial service for him on Oct. 4, at the Zellerbach Theater of the Annenberg Cen- ter at the University of Pennsylvania; the program will feature performan- ces of several of his favorite pieces by some of the many performers whose lives and careers he guided. If you would like to know more, you should go to and "click here to subscribe to this site's general mailing list." "Without Robin, there is no Batman. Sherlock Holmes without Watson? Un- thinkable." That's the blurb for "Loyal Sidekick" sweatshirts ($27.95 to $29.95) and T-shirts ($17.95 to $19.95) offered in the new Wireless catalog (Box 2599, Hudson, OH 44236) (800-669-9999) . Reported by John Baesch. The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) are co-sponsoring the Second Newberry Library Sherlock Holmes-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Symposium at the Library in Chicago at 9:30 am on Oct. 4; the event is open to the public, and the pro- gram will feature Roy E. Pilot ("The White Company: Why an Annotated Ver- sion?"), Donald J. Terras ("The Sign of Four and Development of Sherlockian Chicago"), and Julie McKuras ("I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere..."). Artist Steven McGovney sculpts interesting literary teapots, some of which were in the shop at the de Young Museum in San Francisco earlier this year, and one of his sculptures is "The Hound of the Baskervilles". This black- and-white newsletter won't do justice to it, but you can see the teapot at . Evy Herzog discovered ANNABEL THE ACTRESS STARRING IN: HOUND OF THE BARKER- VILLES, written by Ellen Conford and illustrated by Renee W. Andriani (New York: Alladin, 2002; 83 pp., $15.00 cloth, $3.99 paper); for ages 9 to 12. "Mystery! Suspense! And a slobbering dog named Binky?!" (it's not Sherlock- ian except for the allusion in the title of the play). Jul 08 #2 Further to the report on the death of Bernard Archard (Jun 08 #6): Dave Morrill has reported that Gordon E. Kelley's SHERLOCK HOLMES: SCREEN AND SOUND GUIDE lists Archard in "The Absence of Mr. Glass" (broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on Nov. 28, 1989); based on a Father Brown story written by G. K. Chesterton, the radio dramatization starred Archard as Dr. Hood (who may be a retired Holmes) and Andrew Sachs as Father Brown. is the URL for the Unofficial Turds Website's new hand- painted poly-resin figurine (11 cm high) available for L9.80 and certainly one of the more unusual Sherlock- figurines. Note: that asterisk is in the URL so that the electronic version of this newsletter will make it through obscenity filters; just type the actual word. Thanks to Mattias Bostrom for reporting this item. John Baesch spotted a report in the Sunday Times (Mar. 30) that a new edition of T. S. Eliot's OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS will be published next year by Faber & Faber to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first edition, and the 80th anniversary of Faber & Fa- ber. The new edition will have illustrations by Axel Scheffler; you can see samples of his earlier work at . The Times' art editor Richard Brooks suggested that Scheffler's new creations "are likely to be as eager- ly awaited by figures in the political world as by young families," because British prime minister Gordon Brown's modus operandi "is said to bear more than a passing resemblance to that of the Mystery Cat, Macavity, who honed the knack of slinking away at times of mayhem and mideameanour." Randall Stock spotted a story in the Clitheroe Advertiser and Times (July 16) about Stonyhurst College, where Conan Doyle was a student from 1868 to 1875; the college offers a guided tour that includes the table on which Ol- iver Cromwell slept before the Battle of Preston, and the desk on which Co- nan Doyle carved his name. According to the college web-site (the URL for the guided tour is you can visit "the Dark Walk which provided Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his inspiration for Sir Henry Baskerville's murder." The fourth issue of Albert Mendez' eight-page newsletter The Pipe Smoker's Thing (spring 2008) includes his article "Some Account of the Holmesian So- ciety" (a peripatetic society founded in 1966 and "precipitated from the heights of prosperity to the depths of adversity" in 1988, when a copy of Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 was stolen from the society's bookroom in Paris. Copies are available on request "in consideration of a small do- nation to help defray the costs of printing and postage" from Albert Mendez (142-35 38th Avenue, Flushing, NY 11354). The N.Y. Times has reported (July 22) on a surprise infestation of lion's mane jellyfish along the coast of New Jersey and New York. And on July 20 many of the athletes swimming in the New York City Triathlon were stung by the jellyfish; a 32-year-old triathlete died after being pulled unconscious from the Hudson River, but autopsy reports were said to be inconclusive. Jul 08 #3 Reported: ALAS, POOR SHERLOCK: THE IMPERFECTIONS OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE (TO SAY NOTHING OF HIS MEDICAL FRIEND), by Joseph Green and Peter Ridgway Watt (Beckenham: Chancery House Press, 2007; 370 pp., L16.95); "it would appear that no attempt has been made, since Da- kin's classic work, to review comprehensively the vast number of imperfec- tions in the Sherlock Holmes Canon." Columbia Pictures has announced plans to film a comedy that will star Sacha Baron Cohen as Holmes and Will Ferrell as Watson. "Just the idea of Sacha and Will as Sherlock Holmes and Watson makes us laugh," Columbia co-presi- dent Matt Tolach told Variety (July 1), "Sacha and Will are two of the fun- niest and most talented guys on the planet, and having them take on these two iconic character is frankly hilarious." And further to the report that Warner Bros. has hired Guy Ritchie to write and direct a film portraying Holmes as an "action-adventure sleuth" (Jun 08 #4), it appears unlikely that his wife Madonna will appear in the film: the [London] Sunday Mirror reported that she has decided to move permanently to America, while Ritchie plans to stay in England and wants their son Rocco raised there. "The L50 million he could receive from a divorce settlement planes into insignificance compared to his love for his son," a friend of Ritchie told the newspaper. Variety has reported (July 9) that Robert Downey Jr. has been cast as Sher- lock Holmes in the Warner Bros. action film, which will go into production before the Columbia Pictures comedy. Marni Soupcoff wrote in Canada's Na- tional Post (July 18) about some of "the more intriguing entries in Goog- le's latest Hot Trends, an index that tracks the search engine's fastest- rising queries." One of the queries is "deerstalker", Soupcoff said, add- ing that "the best guess I can offer is that the hat owes its renewed prom- inence to the limited imaginations of reporters sharing the news" that Dow- ney has been cast as Sherlock Holmes. "We're trying to bring a completely contemporary and entertaining perspec- tive on an intellectual action hero true to his origins where he was more of an action guy originally," Ritchie told MTV at Comic Con in Los Angeles this month. Producer Joel Silver explained that "It's like James Bond in 1891. "Nobody ever did the 'Sherlock Holmes' story as an action movie, and he really was an action guy originally." Ritchie also said that Professor Moriarty will appear in the film, which will not be based on any one story of novel; "it's true to the period, and authentic from where it derives its influence." Sherlock Holmes' comments on Edgar Allan Poe and Dupin were less than com- plimentary (in "A Study in Scarlet"), but Conan Doyle offered high praise to Poe in a speech on "The Poe Centenary" at the Hotel Metropole in London on Mar. 1, 1909. The Bronx Historical Society has started work on restor- ing the five-room Poe Cottage in which Poe lived his last years; the work will cost $250,000 and is expected to be completed next year, in time for the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth. Construction already is underway on a $4.2 million visitor center, also to be completed next year. The cottage has a web-page at ; click on [historic house museums]. Jul 08 #4 Baron Von Herling's "huge 100-horse-power Benz car" was block- ing the country lane (in "His Last Bow"), and Fraser Smythe, in an article in the Sherlock Holmes Journal (winter 1992) identified the car as a Benz 39/100 PS. Now Carl Heifetz has found a photograph of the car at , and it's indeed an impressive vehicle. Spotted by Evy Herzog: ONE-MINUTE MYSTERIES AND BRAIN TEASERS, by Sandy Silverthorne and John Warner (Harvest House, 2007), with Sherlockian (and Watsonian) artwork on the cover of and in the book. If you've been wondering whether the Baskerville cut- lery (May 08 #5) actually sold at the auction on June 27, and how much someone might have paid for it, so am I. Neither Martin Heath nor Bigwood Auctioneers have responded to my queries. Peter Calamai notes that this year's Scene of the Crime Festival will be held on Aug. 9 at Wolfe Island in On- tario, the birthplace of Canada's first crime writer: Grant Allen. There's an interesting web-site for the festival at with a link to in- formation about Allen, who was a friend of Conan Doyle, and may well have given Conan Doyle a copy of THE ATTIS OF CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE, WITH DISSERTATIONS ON THE MYTH OF ATTIS, ON THE ORIGIN OF TREE-WORSHIP, AND ON THE GALLIAMBIC METRE BY GRANT ALLEN (1892), which in turn may have inspired the titles of some of the books mentioned in "The Empty House"; Conan Doyle completed Allen's unfinished novel HILDA WADE af- ter Allen died in 1899. is the URL for a detailed web-site about Grant Allen (reported by Christopher Roden). The new Sherlockian society McMurdo's Camp (Apr 08 #2) has a blog, as more and more societies do now, and the Internet offers an excellent way of mak- ing scholarship available: Bill Briggs has written an interesting and nice- ly-illustrated article ("That Train") about the railroad train that brought Jack McMurdo into the Valley of Fear, and it's available at their web-site at . Pat Ward has reported that Christopher Plummer's autobiography IN SPITE OF MYSELF: A MEMOIR will be published this year (it's due from Knopf in Octo- ber, $29.95). Plummer played Sherlock Holmes in the 30-minute television film "Silver Blaze" (1977) and in "Murder by Decree" (1979) More film news: it has been quite some time since the first report on the film "Death Defying Acts" (Aug 05 #1); Guy Pearce stars as Harry Houdini, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Mary McGarvie, an Edinburgh psychic who tries to claim Houdini's reward for anyone who can contact his mother. The film was screened at the Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 13, 2007, and it prem- iered in Australia on Mar. 13, 2008; it was scheduled for limited release in the U.S. on July 11. There is no mention of Conan Doyle in the cast and credits. Jul 08 #5 And there's more of interest to Houdini's fans: Houdini acted in silent films from 1919 to 1923, and HOUDINI: THE MOVIE STAR, a three-DVD set from Kino International ($39.95), has three of his feature films (some color-tinted as in the original release), almost all of his 15- episode serial "The Master of Mystery", and special features that include films of his escapes and an audio recording. The Independent has reported (July 27) that the University of London Libra- ry may sell the "magical library" of Harry Price because the Higher Educa- tion Funding Council has cut support to the university's libraries. Price was a famous psychic investigator and ghost hunter who clashed with Conan Doyle about spiritualism in the 1920s, and Price kept Conan Doyle's corres- pondence. is the URL for a cat- alog of an exhibition of "The Magical Library of Harry Price" at the Uni- versity in 2004; one of the highlights of the collection is a copy of MALL- EUS MALEFICARUM [THE HAMMER OF WITCHES], a treatise on witchcraft that was published in 1487 and is considered by modern magicians as the first book to reveal the secrets of magic. The summer issue of The Baker Street Journal offers Michael Dirda's amusing "A Study in Starrett" (the paper he presented at this year's annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars), Sally Sugarman's "Sherlock Holmes and the Children" (about Sherlock Holmes pastiches written for young readers), and much more, including editor Steve Rothman's announcement that the next BSJ Christmas Annual will be David F. Morrill's "SIGNs of the Times" (his dis- cussion of film versions of "The Sign of the Four" from Arthur Wontner in 1932 to Matt Frewer in 2001). The BSJ, published quarterly, costs $26.50 a year (or $29.00 foreign), and checks (credit-card payments accepted from foreign subscribers) can be sent to the BSJ (Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331). There's an option for subscriptions to the BSJ and to the Christmas Annual for $36.50 ($40.00 foreign); Steve warns that the Christmas annual likely will go quickly out of print, as last year's did. The BSJ's web-site, at , also accepts subscriptions, and offers other material, including papers written by past winners of the Morley-Montgomery articles from recent issues, and additional BSI publications. Randall Stock continues to add to his "Sidney Paget Original Drawings and Artwork: A Preliminary Census and Checklist"; there's more detail, and mi- nor corrections, and new entries for more of Paget's non-Sherlockian work: . The summer issue of The Sherlock Holmes Journal (winter 2006) has "The Mas- ter's Birthday" (David L. Hammer's attempt to demonstrate that Holmes was born on Oct. 10), a fine article on "Sherlock Holmes and the Beginnings of Forensic Science" (by Vincent J. and Paul L. Cirillo), "Phantoms and Fair- ies" (June Thomson's discussion of Conan Doyle's belief in Spiritualism), and additional news and scholarship from Britain and elsewhere. The Sher- lock Holmes Society of London welcomes new members: associate members re- ceive only The Sherlock Holmes Journal, and full members also receive no- tices of meetings. Prices vary depending on where you are and on whether you're an adult or a junior, and details information is available from Rob= ert Ellis (13 Crofton Avenue, Orpington, Kent BR6 8DU England) and at the society's web-site at . Jul 08 #6 The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection of the Toronto Public Library will present a lecture by Leslie Klinger on Oct. 23 at 7:00 pm at the Lillian H. Smith Library (239 College Street) on his NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA, and a lecture by Steven Rothman on Nov. 15 at 3:00 pm in the Elizabeth Beeton Auditorium at the Toronto Reference Library (798 Yonge Street); on "Tincture of Conan Doyle: Christopher Morley on Sherlock Holmes". There's no charge for admission to the events, and all members of the public are invited. THE FATE OF FENELLA (1892) was an early round-robin novel, with each chap- ter written by a well-known British author, one of them being Conan Doyle; it's a tale of mesmerism and murder, and there's a new edition of the novel (Kansas City: Valancourt Books, 2008; 268 pp., $17.95), edited and intro- duced by Andrew Maunder. The June issue of the quarterly newsletter of The Friends of the Sherlock lock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota has Don Hobb's "100 Years Ago" discussion of "The Foreign Language Collector", John Bergquist's "50 Years Ago" report on Edgar W. Smith's THE INCUNABULAR SHERLOCK HOLMES, and curator Tim Johnson's announcement that he has won a Staff Development Grant from the Friends of the Libraries that he plans to use for a trip to Portsmouth to do research in the Richard Lancelyn Green Collection. Copies are available from Richard J. Sveum, (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . It was 25 years ago (Sep 83 #2) that I reported on "Angst in My Pants" (an LP recorded issued in 1982 with songs by the rock group Sparks). One song was "Sherlock Holmes" (with amusing Sherlockian lyrics), and you can read the lyrics on-line at ; you can also purchase an MP3 download of the song for $0.99 at (or listen to a brief sample). Ken Lanza gets credit for this discovery. Ken also spotted a report in the Daily Mail (June 6) on Rachel Rice, who at the age of 10 played Marina Savage in the Granada dramatization of "The Dy- ing Detective" in 1994. She's now starring in the British reality televis- ion series, and you can see recent pictures of her at . Another Internet item noted by Ken is Rod Mollise's "Sherlock Holmes Page: Homage to the Master" at , where Mollise offers his own annotated versions of seven of the stories, and his paper on "The Erotic Hound" (an examination of the story "using the discourse of Ro- land Barthes"). The summer issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has reports by Stephanie Thomas on cigarette cards held in the collection, and by Peggy Perdue on some recently acquired "realia", plus news of the handover of the chairmanship of the Friends by Doug Wrigglesworth to Cliff Goldfarb. Copies of the newsletter are available from Doug Wrigglesworth (16 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada) . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (301-229-5669)