BSI Archival History blog

The late Allen Mackler, BSI, broadcasts on "Sherlock Holmes and Music"

2011-02-10T05:38:00.000-08:00

At last August’s Sherlock Holmes Collections weekend at the University of Minnesota, significant attention was paid to the late Allen Mackler (“Sarasate”), including tributes by Dr. Paul Martin (“Dr. Leslie Armstrong”) and me at the installation at the Wilson Library of the marvelous 221B sitting-room Allen had created in his Minnesota home and left to the Collections.

It's largely thanks to another fabulous bequest by Allen that the new permanent E. W. McDiarmid Curatorship for the Sherlock Holmes Collections has been created. Before moving to Minnesota Allen lived in Washington D.C. and worked at its NPR affiliate WETA-FM, with his own weekly “Collectors Forum” program featuring music from his immense personal collection of vintage 78rpm classical records. On one occasion he presented “Sherlock Holmes and Music,” and E. W. McDiarmid Curator Timothy Johnson has just added a recording of that program to the University Libraries’ media section, at http://umedia.lib.umn.edu/node/91221/197384.

Coming up next week, Tuesday February 15th:

2011-02-08T07:04:00.003-08:00

From Dr. Wesley Britton of spywise.net:

Next Tues., Jon Lellenberg, literary agent of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate, will discuss Doyle and his most famous creation on Dave White Presents. Jon will also talk about a remarkable group known as the Baker Street Irregulars and his new novel—BAKER STREET IRREGULAR—a blend of fact and fiction, mystery and espionage. And a touch of Mr. Holmes as well . . .

The new edition of DWP debuts Tues. Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, then 7:30 Pacific over www.KSAV.org

On Wed. Feb. 16, the program will become available for download anytime you like at

www.audioentertainment.org/dwp

I’m interviewed for thirty minutes about the BSI and my novel, followed by other features on what is a 90-minute biweekly program in all. Even if you can’t catch it that night, it can be accessed at the second website above any time from the following day on.

Something new in BSI Archival History

2011-02-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

about Christ Cella’s Speakeasy.

http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Fischetti.html

Something unknown to Waal, also to Baker Street Irregulars: the tough cop who protected Christ Cella’s speakeasy during Prohibition when Christopher Morley and his kinsprits were cooking up the BSI there, and what he thought about Sherlock Holmes -- a minority report from around that fabled table in Christ Cella’s kitchen, and published long ago by one of the original Baker Street Irregulars, but entirely forgotten until now!

Julian Wolff, and the BSI of an earlier era

2011-01-29T06:13:00.001-08:00

Just added at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/dispatch-box.html, my Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter article of last month about “Julian Wolff and Still Waters,” with the kind permission of McDiarmid Curator Timothy Johnson and newsletter editor Julie McKuras. In addition to what it has to say about Julian Wolff personally, I think more recent arrivals to the ranks of the BSI may be surprised to learn how succession occurred in an earlier era, even if Julian bears responsibility for how this has changed, and not to the BSI’s betterment. The Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter is invaluable reading for all interested in the world of Sherlock Holmes, and if you don’t receive it already, contact the editor at Mike9750@aol.com.

Coming soon at the website, something entirely new: What happened to Sherlock Holmes when John Law came knocking at the door of Christ Cella's speakeasy in 1929!

Mea Culpa

2011-01-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

I am not as conscientious about this blog as I should be, for which I apologize. But since the holidays ended I have resumed the new Links of the Week at my BSI Archival History website, and added a bunch of stuff elsewhere there, including highlights of my own from the BSI weekend in New York, that are best accessed through the website's Editor's Gas-Bag at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html.

Woody Hazelbaker's World will take a while longer to resume. Working against a deadline, Dan Stashower and I are annotating the text of A. Conan Doyle's first, never published, attempt at a novel, and writing a critical introduction for it. The book will be published by the British Library in the autumn. The Narrative of John Smith (which in his 1924 autobiography Memories and Adventures Conan Doyle described not entirely honestly as having been lost forever in the post in 1883) is not the sort of work one usually thinks of as a Conan Doyle novel. But it is proving to be a source of considerable discoveries about his reading, thinking, and future literary trajectory at the time when he was a struggling young physician in Southsea, struggling even hard to become a published writer. Reading the ms., it can be difficult to believe that in just a year -- he was rewriting it from memory in 1884 -- he would create Sherlock Holmes and write A Study in Scarlet. But many elements of that first Sherlock Holmes tale asee light first in this earlier manuscript of his, not to mention of his subsequent Holmes tales and other literary work of his.

Robert Clyne has died.

2010-12-29T04:18:00.000-08:00

Bob Clyne was a co-founder of The Diogenes Club of Brooklyn, when an undergraduate at Fordham University in 1949, and was invested in the BSI in 1959 as "The Opal Tiara." His hometown newspaper obituary is here. Bob was eighty, and age and poor health had not permitted him to participate in BSI for some time, but his death removes a surviving link to the club as Christopher Morley and Edgar W. Smith knew it, just now as it increasingly becomes something it never was then, a fan club pretending to be an "international literary society."

EQMM reviews BAKER STREET IRREGULAR

2010-12-14T09:06:00.001-08:00

Jon Breen, in the February issue:

**** Jon Lellenberg: Baker Street Irregular, Arkham House/Mycroft & Moran, $39.95. The outstanding item in our annual birthday round-up is the latest novel about eminent fans of the Baker Street sleuth. Though it follows fictionalizations as excellent as Anthony Boucher’sThe Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) and Arthur H. Lewis’s Copper Beeches(1971), this quite different novel may be the best of them all. In an espionage saga extending from 1933 to the early years of the Cold War, New York lawyer Woody Hazelbaker helps settle the affairs of mobster Owney Madden, joins the BSI, and participates in intelligence activities before, during, and after World War II. Clearly based extensively on fact (and a whole second volume is projected to document and clarify), this extraordinary historical novel is recommended to anyone interested in the run-up to World War II in the United States and the role of codebreaking in the defeat of Germany and Japan. Excellent talk in place of physical action gives a much more authentic feel than the cinematic choreography of lesser novels. Historical characters abound from FDR and Churchill to the founding Irregulars, many of whom (notably radio commentator Elmer Davis) had an important role in the war effort. Also appearing is prolific British thriller writer Dennis Wheatley, who would have appreciated how Lellenberg draws several plot strands together for a startling ending.

"I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" interview

2010-12-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

Scott Monty and Burt Wolder were kind enough to interview me about my BSI novel Baker Street Irregular for their "I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" podcast series, and have just posted it. Hear it at
http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2010/12/episode-29-baker-street-irregular.html

Bob Mangler has died.

2010-11-29T13:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html

an Irregular Veterans/Armistice Day thought

2010-11-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html

New Material at the Website

2010-11-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

After returning from a pleasant visit with "The Greek Interpreter," BSI, in Napa Valley, Calif., new links of the week are finally up, an International Thriller Writers review article about my now-imminent novel Baker Street Irregular is linked at the website's Novel page (also at http://www.thebigthrill.org/2010/10/baker-street-irregular-by-jon-lellenberg), and Ch. 6 of Woody Hazelbaker's World is also up at last.

The hardest Archival History volume to find

2010-10-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

Irregular Memories of the 'Thirties came out in October 1990, and by the BSI weekend less than three months later, the entire 500-copy edition was gone and there were no copies to sell at the hucksters room for those who'd been waiting to buy it there. (We upped the press run after that.) A copy, described as mint, just came up for sale on eBay, with the bidding to start at $55.00, and the bidding to close on the 15th. It makes me cringe a bit, but nowhere near as much as when Bob Coghill told me last year what he'd paid a bookdealer for his copy. For those interested, go to
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sherlock-Holmes-IRREGULAR-MEMORIES-30s-LELLENBERG-MINT-/250694548742

Woody Hazelbaker's World continues

2010-09-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

Ch. 2's installment now up at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Woodys_World.html, a bit early thanks to an unexpected trip out of town this weekend. Back by Sunday night (and next week's new Links of the Week will go up then).

Explore Woody Hazelbaker's World

2010-09-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

Starting September 24th, and succeeding Fridays, a weekly rolling visit to the times, settings, and hero's woes in my forthcoming BSI novel Baker Street Irregular -- go to the website's Novel page at
http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Novel.html

Bernard Davies, "A Study in Scarlet," BSI

2010-09-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

died in London this morning. See http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html

First review of my forthcoming Baker Street Irregulars novel

2010-09-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

in Publishers Weekly at http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/reviews/fiction.html, and it's a starred review, which I never expected. Also at my website's Novel page, with more about the book, at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Novel.html.

How different "Baker Street Irregular behavior" lost us The Players

2010-09-13T13:06:00.001-07:00

A bit of magic, as it were, and Poof! -- the BSI dinner vanished forever from The Players, ancient club of William Gillette, Frederic Dorr Steele, and quite a few other Irregulars, at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Thucydides_dept.html

(Not to mention other scandalous bohemian matters at the Editor's Gas-Bag.)

Avoid "Baker Street Irregular behavior"!

2010-09-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

Good and perhaps all too relevant advice from an organizational science consultant, starting at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html

"Dear me, Father Knox, Dear me!"

2010-09-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

Sadly, another nail in the coffin of the Ronald Knox Myth at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html

"The March of Time" this Sunday (Sept. 5th)

2010-09-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

Some will remember the “March of Time” documentary news features shown regularly in American movie theaters between the mid 1930s and early 1950s, and those who don’t have an historical treat in store when Turner Classic Movies airs a four-hour marathon of them this Sunday night. New York Times coverage of the event is here, and TCM’s own story here. Four hours is a heavy dose at one sitting, but one can record the entire thing for more than a few watchings.

Back in 1994, at the BSI Cocktail Party on Saturday, January 8th, Clint Gould and I performed a “The March of Time” parody based on the BSI Archival History to that point (three volumes had been published by then), and I will post it on the website this Sunday. Check the website's Welcome or Editor's Gas-Bag pages for the link.

Did Bill Rabe ever ascend Holmes Peak?

2010-09-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know the answer to that, but memories of both "Colonel Warburton's Madness" and Holmes Peak with Richard Warner ("High Tor") as its Head Sherpla are accumulating at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Thucydides_dept.html

New at the Website

2010-08-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

More new material at the website, both at the Editor's Gas-Bag department, including a delightful discovery about Christopher Morley by Sonia Fetherston,
http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html,
and an associated new page about Vincent Starrett's own "Mermaid Tavern" in Chicago, Schlogl's (long-closed) restaurant on Wells Street beneath the El in the Loop:
http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Schlogls.html

Ask Thucydides!

2010-08-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

For questions about the BSI Archival History website or BSI history in general, a new department has been set up at the website, with the first two questions (and answers) already, from Bob Katz ("Dr. Ainstree") and Julie McKuras ("The Duchess of Devonshire"), at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Thucydides_dept.html. Questions or comments on the answers to questions should be sent to AskThucydides@gmail.com.

A BSI Archival History sampler

2010-08-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

Each book published in the series has its own page at the BSI Archival History website, with notes, table of contents, introduction or preface, and acknowledgments (and occasionally other material as well). I've now added to each a sample of text from the book which seems to me emblematic of the slice of history it covers. To go directly to the Books page of the website, click on http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Books.html

Ahead of Ronald Knox by Nine Years

2010-08-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

At the Sherlock Holmes Collections' weekend at the University of Minnesota two weeks ago, I pointed out, in debating Dr. Richard Sveum, that S. C. Roberts, not Ronald Knox, was the foundation of Holmesian scholarship -- but also that Knox had been preceded in Canonical exegesis by nine years by a Cambridge Review article by one Frank Sidgwick in 1902. Since then, Steven Rothman, editor of the Baker Street Journal, has asked me why I wasn't "giving all credit to poor almost forgotten Frank? Instead of knighted and well-laureled SCR?" A fair question, so (though this may not be what Steve had in mind) I've added first Frank Sidgwick's 1939 obituary at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Sidgwick_obit.html and his groundbreaking 1902 article at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Sidgwick_essay.html.

A sort of Saturday Review of Literature

2010-08-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

We won't stick to Saturdays in the future, but a Reviews department has been added to the website, starting with a review of the brand-new Sherlock Alive: Sherlockian Excerpts from Vincent Starrett’s “Books Alive” Column in The Chicago Tribune 1942–1967, compiled and annotated by Karen Murdock, with an Introduction by Susan Rice. The reviewer this time is the redoubtable J. Randolph Cox ("The Conk-Singleton Forgery Case," BSI). Go directly to it at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Reviews_dept.html

Disputation, Confrontation, and Dialectical Hullabaloo! -- a new department

2010-08-18T17:31:00.000-07:00

Inaugurating a new department in pursuit of Old Irregular Robert G. Harris's description of the spirit of the early BSI annual dinners, we shall post occasional items to enliven the discussion. First on the docket is the recent debate about "Ronald Knox: Fact or Fiction?" conducted at the University of Minnesota Libraries' Sherlock Holmes Collections two weekends ago, between me and Dr. Richard Sveum of Minnetonka, Minn. The department can be accessed from the website's Welcome page, and new content will be announced both there and here. Comments on the debate posted here will be added to its text at the website as well. A direct link to this stirring debate is below.
http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/debate.html

WOMEN WITH THE RIGHT INSTINCTS

2010-08-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, contemplating things that keep the Manhattan of the BSI's golden age from disappearing altogether, I was struck by a New York Times article about a band of New York women, unconnected to the BSI and possibly with no interest to speak of in Sherlock Holmes, who nonetheless seem to be kinsprits of a real sort. Susan Dahlinger retrieved the article, and I've posted it on the website's Links page as a "Retro Link of the Week." (I hope to have more in the future, because an interest in the BSI's history must include a history of its setting and times.) For those interested in seeing what I'm talking about, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/dining/08dame.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=women+dining+vintage+clothing&st=nyt

The Original Series Baker Street Journal

2010-08-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

Philip Shreffler's award-winning chapter in Irregular Crises of the Late 'Forties, "The Original Series BSJ: Quintessence of Irregular," may now be read at the BSI Archival History website by clicking on its title in that volume's table of contents at www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/L40s.html, or directly from here by going to www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/OS_BSJ.html. His essay, written over ten years ago, prompts the reader to think about not only the traditions of the Baker Street Journal, but about the heartbeat and health of the BSI itself.

Correction to the Mid 'Forties page (Books)

2010-08-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

My good friend Donald K. Pollock has instructed me to add the word "formerly" to his (one-time) BSI investiture of "The Anthropological Journal," it being his firm position that he has formally resigned from the Baker Street Irregulars, and I have complied at www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/M40s.html.

More New Material at the Website

2010-08-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

I have also added what I hope are cogent excerpts from Irregular Proceedings of the Mid 'Forties and Irregular Crises of the Late 'Forties at those pages of the website, the first about a mystery regarding the Early and Mid 'Forties venue of the Murray Hill Hotel, the second about the turning point in the late-1947 crisis over whether the BSI would ever hold an annual dinner again, after Christopher Morley had become highly discontented with the previous one in January '47. Go respectively to www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/M40s.html and www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/L40s.html.

New Material at the Website

2010-08-11T06:52:00.000-07:00

At the BSI Archival History website, on the Books page for Irregular Crises of the 'Late Forties, I have added the 1951 annual dinner photograph taken at the Racquet & Tennis Club, 370 Park Avenue, and my notes from my research tour of the club in 1996. Go to www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/L40s.html.

"The Spirits of Sherlock Holmes"

2010-08-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

Every three years the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries and The Norwegian Explorers of Minneapolis/St. Paul sponsor a weekend conference at the University's Andersen Library, this year dubbed "The Spirits of Sherlock Holmes." As the last day dawns, the entire weekend has been a delight, with Friday afternoon an especially good day for BSI history. Ray Betzner ("The Agony Column," BSI) opened the weekend's program with "221B": A Study in Starrett, a superb examination of Vincent Starrett's famous sonnet of 1942 -- its origins, significance as a wartime expression of the abiding nature of Sherlock Holmes, and emergence as a lasting anthem for the Baker Street Irregulars. And Baker Street Journal editor Steven Rothman ("The Valley of Fear," BSI) presented a splendid illustrated account of the BSI's first journal of record in Stranded on the Shelves: A Leaf Through the Saturday Review. Yesterday the audience was subjected to a debate between me and Dr. Richard Sveum ("Dr. Hill Barton," BSI) of The Norwegian Explorers on the irrelevance of Ronald Knox and his "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes" paper of 1911 -- he defending the faith that Knox is the fountainhead of Holmesian scholarship and movement, I re-examining this dogma in terms of the curious incident of the dog in the night-time: the near complete absence of any attention given to Msgr. Knox and his paper in the early scholarship and stirrings of the men and women who suddenly plunged into Holmesian studies in the early 1930s and then founded both the BSI and England's first Sherlock Holmes Society in 1934. The final word on this subject has not been spoken yet!

'EDUCATION NEVER ENDS, WATSON."

2010-08-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

For those interested in the Baker Street Irregulars and our colorful history, welcome for the first time to my BSI Archival History blog and its website, accessible at www.bsiarchivalhistory.org. I have posted there information about my BSI Archival History series (click on “History Detective” at the Welcome page), the tables of contents and introductions to the seven volumes since 1989, other Archival History papers, a page about my forthcoming historical novel Baker Street Irregular, and more— with much more to come.

This blog's sub-title of "Disputation, Confrontation, and Dialectical Hullabaloo" borrows from the late Robert G. Harris of Detroit ("The Creeping Man," BSI): his striking description of the spirit of the BSI and their annual dinners at the Murray Hill Hotel and Cavanagh's during the 1940s and '50s. I hope this blog will capture that spirit of exchange. The medium here might have been eyed quite skeptically by Bob Harris, one of the BSI's great curmudgeons — yet the father of cybernetics himself, Norbert Wiener of MIT, was a member of the BSI's Boston scion society, The Speckled Band. "These are deep waters. . . ."

Comments and suggestions are welcome! Over the coming weekend I will be in Minneapolis attending "The Spirits of Sherlock Holmes" —the always splendid triennial conference sponsored by The Norwegian Explorers and the University of Minnesota Libraries' Sherlock Holmes Collections, and will report on it next week. For information about it, go to http://www.norwegianexplorers.org/2010_conference.html.

BSI Archival History blog

The late Allen Mackler, BSI, broadcasts on "Sherlock Holmes and Music"

Coming up next week, Tuesday February 15th:

Something new in BSI Archival History

Julian Wolff, and the BSI of an earlier era

Mea Culpa

Robert Clyne has died.

EQMM reviews BAKER STREET IRREGULAR

"I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" interview

Bob Mangler has died.

an Irregular Veterans/Armistice Day thought

New Material at the Website

The hardest Archival History volume to find

Woody Hazelbaker's World continues

Explore Woody Hazelbaker's World

Bernard Davies, "A Study in Scarlet," BSI

First review of my forthcoming Baker Street Irregulars novel

How different "Baker Street Irregular behavior" lost us The Players

Avoid "Baker Street Irregular behavior"!

"Dear me, Father Knox, Dear me!"

"The March of Time" this Sunday (Sept. 5th)

Did Bill Rabe ever ascend Holmes Peak?

New at the Website

Ask Thucydides!

A BSI Archival History sampler

Ahead of Ronald Knox by Nine Years

A sort of Saturday Review of Literature

Disputation, Confrontation, and Dialectical Hullabaloo! -- a new department

WOMEN WITH THE RIGHT INSTINCTS

The Original Series Baker Street Journal

Correction to the Mid 'Forties page (Books)

More New Material at the Website

New Material at the Website

Recommended Reading

"The Spirits of Sherlock Holmes"

'EDUCATION NEVER ENDS, WATSON."