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by The Hounds of the Internet My turn... One day, while in the 8th grade, I was sick and home from school. As a child, I was sick quite a lot, and my mother made a habit of getting my books and assignments from school. While lying in bed, I was flipping through the pages of my English Lit. anthology text and came upon "The Adventure of the Speckled Band". It was not an assignment, and never became one. As I read it, I was totally captured by the atmosphere, the tale, and the team of Holmes & Watson. When I was well enough, I went to the school library and checked out as much of the Canon as I could find. The following summer, I did the same at the public library. When the next Christmas came, I spent $25 of my gift money (a lot to a kid my age back then), on a copy of _The Complete Sherlock Holmes_. I still have that copy, and still read it. Ricoletti of the club-foot aka Lewis (who is always 14 yrs old in 1895) My Dear Fellow Hounds, After reading all the replies to this post, I have decided to share my "awakening" as well. In my Senior year in college, I decided to join one of those infamous book clubs. I was 2 books short for my initial order, so I purchased the 2-volume Doubleday "Complete Sherlock Holmes" in 1988. I had of course heard of Sherlock Holmes, and I though I knew who he was, but I had never read any of the stories. When I received this first shipment, I put all the books on my bookshelf, and there they sat, due to being young, foolish, and failing Electrical Engineering. In 1990, I was in Pensacola, Florida, for Navy Flight Training. During the first flight phase, you have about a month to complete 5 flights, and on any given day if you're not flying, you're doing nothing. I was getting too much sleep, and having trouble sleeping at night. It was at this point I pulled out the Sherlock Holmes. As much as I love to read, it does make me sleepy. I found that the short stories were perfect as a nite-time read. Short enough to keep my attention, and long enough to make me tired. I shudder to think at the two years of Sherlockian enjoyment I missed, but I must plead ignorance, I knew not what I did. I finished reading all of the Canon, and thirsted for more. The local library had the Granada series that had already been seen in the states, and PBS was soon showing the next series. I found a few pastiches and realized I was obsessed. I have now amassed a collection including two bookcases of books, approximately 20 movies, plus all the Granada and Ronald Howard TV shows, a couple of the Eille Norwood, a meerchaum lighter carved in Holmes' likeness, a matched set of Holmes and Watson Pipes, and much, much more. As you know, this obsession recently reached a climax with my first trip to London less than a month ago. I also recently aquired a STRAND magazine. I have been to two Sherlock Holmes Pubs - the one in London, and the one in Manama, Bahrain. Although my era of flight is long since over, the attraction for Sherlockiania I developed in Florida is still going strong.
Samkin Aylward
aka Mark Andersen I always enjoyed mysteries. My parents were avid mystery readers, along with one of my grandfathers and an aunt. I began with a book entitled "The Brownie Scout Mystery" and continued with the Nancy Drew books, along with occasional Cherry Ames, Dana Girls, Encyclopedia Brown, and similar books. Somewhere between ages 6-9 I saw Rathbone's "The Adventures of SH" on TV. I enjoyed it so much that I remembered nearly all of it, which surprised me when I saw it for the second time many, many years later. My parents used to read to us a great deal, in addition to encouraging us to read on our own. I can recall my father reading "Silver Blaze" and "The Yellow Face" from his copy of the Memoirs. He also read me "The Lost World" and then read it to us again when my sister was older. As I grew older, I began reading more adult books and found myself reading Agatha Christie mysteries. When I was about 11 or 12, my mother suggested that I try "The Hound of the Baskervilles" for variety. The next summer one of the local stations began showing the Rathbone/Bruce films on Sunday nights. I enjoyed watching them every week, and I was very disappointed when autumn arrived and the "no TV on school nights rule" went back into effect. Throughout junior high I continued with the Adventures, STUD, and SIGN. I also continued to read Agatha Christie and other mysteries. Early in high school I completed the Canon. I wanted to find an SH club, but the BSI was male-only, and no one I knew was aware of any of the scion societies. When I was in my early twenties, my mother saw a newspaper item asking for the address of the SH Socy. of London. I joined immediately. The first Sherlockian meeting I ever attended was the Centennial Celebration at the Reichenbach (otherwise known as the Swiss Pilgrimage of 1991). While there, I met other American Sherlockians who put me in touch with some of the scion societies, the closest most active (at that time) being The Cornish Horrors. (The Speckled Band is all-male.) On a trip to the NYC Fortescue Symposium I learned that the Bull-Terriers of Boston University had recently been formed, and I have been with them ever since. - Edith Presbury P.S. If anyone knows the name of the author of "The Brownie Scout Mystery" (or any other information), I would be much obliged if you would send it to me off-list. Vernet, responding to this question. When I was about 10 or so I received a "Hardy Boys" book as a birthday present from a friend. I was disappointed because I was hoping for something like a baseball. But I read it and got hooked - so much so that I recently purchased the book again in facsimile original form (The Secret of the Old Mill). It was soon followed by others in this series and I now have every book in the series including the recent stuff (which has really gone downhill). Unfortunately, I do not have the original versions of most of the stories. I believe there were three incarnations - one in the 1920's, when Frank and Joe were 15 and 16, a rewrite in the 1950's, when they were 17 and 18 (I suppose so it would be legal for them to drive), and another in the 1980's. Most of mine, of course, were from the 1950's rewrite since that is when I started reading them. But that incarnation still had plenty of 1920's flavor. I really loved reading about how the Hardy Boys drove their "roadster" around Bayport, and I was disappointed that the new editions seem to have made them much more "modern" and much less interesting. I have drawn a complete map of Bayport as it is described in the stories and attempted to date the stories. After about the 10th story the inconsistencies became intolerable. One must assume, given that their ages do not change much, that the stories as published are not in the sequence in which they happened (sound familiar?) and that Bayport has changed its geography a time or two. Anyway, that is how I got hooked on mysteries and on analyzing them for consistency and on collecting the whole series and such. Shortly after that we read a Sherlock Holmes story at school in class (I think it was "the Redheaded League") and I was so interested that I read others. I think it was on my 12th birthday or thereabouts when I saved up all my money to buy "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" in one volume from our local department store. It was $5 - a princely sum for a boy in the 1ate 1950's. But I loved that book and read the whole thing several times over the ensuing years. Years later we had a fire and that book was among the casualties, along with my original Hardy Boys books. But I have since purchased the Annotated, the Oxford, and some other editions of the complete Canon, plus over 1000 pastiches and other Sherlockian books. I really need to thank that guy who gave me the "House on the Cliff." (Actually, I think it is his mother whom I should thank.) Does anyone out there have a copy of "Ghost of the Hardy Boys"? I am trying to find the author, publisher, and other information that may enable me to track it down. It supposedly tells what went on behind the scenes. And of course when it comes to Sherlock Holmes, more has been written than I could ever hope to read. Regards, Vernet [aka Dennis J. Frailey] Edith Presbury (aka Kathy Piffat) wrote:
>While there, I met other American Sherlockians And we're glad that Kathy joined us. If her immediate charm and wit aren't easily observed, then she'll dazzle you with her absolutely expert knowledge of the Canon. Which leads me to my story, I suppose. It starts almost 12 years ago, when I was doing a research paper on ACD for a high school English class. My teacher saw this man on "Evening Magazine" who ran a SH society in Connecticut. She suggested I call him and ask him for some information, since the other primary sources in our library were nil. I called Harold E. Niver (Tyke to his friends) of Baskerville Hall (complete with hounds baying in the background), and not only did he give me valuable information for my paper, but he invited me to Gillette Castle for a meeting of The Men on the Tor. My dad drove me to that first meeting (I was but 15 at the time) and I knew I had found my niche. When I left CT for Boston University, I commuted for meetings, and eventually found The Speckled Band of Boston. That opened up many friendships for me, including a very valued one with our own Cardinal Tosca. Everyone I met was warm, friendly, and glad to see a younger face. I suppose I brought the age curve down by about 40 years. I began to take part in some of the other New England scions, such as Cox & Co. (which I was introduced to at my first Band meeting by the late Jim Duval), the Cornish Horrors (Rhode Island), The Friends of Irene Adler (Cambridge, MA). All have fun people and great events. For the longest time, I had been toying with starting up another scion in Boston and basing it at BU, since we needed younger people. It was not until the Fall of 1994 that I founded The Bull-Terrier Club, which has had rich history of events, despite its relative newness. Since that time, things have been picking up. I was invited to the BSI dinner for the first time last year, where I met all sorts of great people of whom I'd read or heard. Again, the one similarity I've found with Sherlockians is that they're NICE people. And I don't mean to sound trite, but that's the very way to describe us. We have this one underlying interest, but there's so much more to each of us which we gladly share with each other. Now, I'm working with the New England heads of scions to put together an outing this Fall. We're trying to gear up for a large- scale convention or symposium in Boston in the summer of 1999. If anything, it should bring some nice people together. Best, The Dook c/o James Wilder, the duke's personal secretary W. Scott Monty, Magistrate
The Bull-Terrier Club
1836 Columbia Road, #2
South Boston, MA 02127-4342
(617) 464-4153 (617) 895-6981
wsmonty@bu.edu SMonty@phcs.com
The Bull-Terrier Club Home Page:
http://www.hartingdale.com.au/~jpgareri/BT.html
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