Sherlock HolmesC O L L E C T I O N S

June 2002Volume 6 Number 2

“Your merits should be publicly recognized” (STUD)

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Frederic Dorr Steele:The Definitive Illustrator

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100 Years Ago

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50 Years Ago

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From the President

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Acquisitions4

"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply"

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Musings8

An Update from theCollections

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Using the Collections12

Remembrances12

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 1

Frederic Dorr Steele: The Definitve Illustratorn the chapter titled “The Evolution of a Profile,” Vincent Starrett wrote of FredericDorr Steele’s illustrations for the Sherlock Holmes stories:

What illustrations they have been! No happier association of author andartist can be imagined…For Mr. Steele was destined for his task as surelyas Watson for his Sherlock Holmes. An ardent lover of the long detective,even before he undertook the drawings, his work has been from first to lasta labor of affection…Sixty tales, in all, comprise the saga of SherlockHolmes; and Steele has illustrated twenty-nine. While yet he lives andloves, and lifts his pencil, will he not do the other thirty-one? To someSherlockian friend among the publishers, one offers the suggestion – aDefinitive Edition – with all the stories pictured by Mr. Steele. (183-84.)

Starrett wrote this in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1930. It would benine years before George Macy of The Limited Editions Club contacted Steele aboutundertaking these illustrations, thirteen before the commission was approved and twentyyears before the first of the Limited Editions Canon was published.

Frederic Dorr Steele wasborn to an artistic familyon August 6, 1873 innorthern Michigan, andlived in Wisconsin andVermont before movingto New York City in1889. He foundemployment in an archi-tect’s office before mov-ing on to Harper’s andIllustrated American. Hisfree-lance work through-out his career was fea-tured in Life, Scribner’s,Harper’s, Century, TheMetropolitan Magazine,The Delineator, TheAmerican Magazine,Redbook, Hearst’sInternational, Liberty andMcClure’s.

I

Sherlock Holmes CollectionsSuite 111, Elmer L. Andersen LibraryUniversity of Minnesota222 21st Ave. S.Minneapolis, MN 55455

Telephone: 612-624-7526FAX: 612-626-9353

Timothy J. Johnson, Curator

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections12

Mailing list corrections requested—Because of the high cost of returned newsletters,we would appreciate being informed of changesof address or other corrections.

For any inquiries contact:Timothy J. Johnson, Curator612-624-3552 orjohns976@tc.umn.edu

RemembrancesIn supporting the Sherlock Holmes Collections, many donors have made contributions either in honor or in memory of special persons.

IN HONOR OF FROMNathan Patterson Dr. Howard and Margaret BurchellChristopher and Barbara Roden Laura KuhnRichard J. Sveum, M.D., B.S.I. Showsaku Mashimo

IN MEMORY OF FROMDavid W. Bradley Bill MasonW. Clark Russell John AddyHenry Swiggum Phil SwiggumJack Tracy Showsaku MashimoBill Williams Laura Kuhn

Using the Collections

arsha Pollak of San Jose, CA recently visited the Sherlock Holmes Collections while on a short trip to Minnesota.She is shown in the accompanying photograph holding the book of BBC Photographs, from John Bennett Shaw’scollectionM

Timothy Johnson and Marsha Pollak

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In April 1902 Mark Twain (SamuelLanghorne Clemens 1835-1910) pub-lished A Double-Barrelled Detective Story.He began writing this burlesque ofSherlock Holmes in August 1901 and itappeared in Harper’s Monthly forJanuary and February 1902. Since1902 the story has been reprinted inmany forms, but it is best known toSherlockians for appearing in TheMisadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944)edited by Ellery Queen.

Looking back 100 years it is interestingto speculate what American influencesmight have affected Twain. His friendJohn Kendrick Bangs was the editor ofHarper’s Weekly until December 1901and author of the humorous SherlockHolmes story, The Pursuit of the House-Boat (1897). William H. Gillette, who

began his famous stage portrayal ofSherlock Holmes in 1899, had been aneighbor of Twain’s in Nook Farm,Hartford, Connecticut. It is knownthat Twain helped pay for Gillette’searly training and got him a part in the1875 production of “Gilded Age.”Both Gillette and Twain were chartermembers of the Players Club at 16Gramercy Park in New York when itwas founded in 1888. He had previ-ously employed detectives in his bookssuch as Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) andTom Sawyer, Detective (1896). The pop-ularity of Sherlock Holmes in Americaby way of the original stories, parodiesand stage productions encouragedTwain to write his story. The MarkTwain Encyclopedia references Twain’sletter of September 6, 1901 to HenryH. Rogers, in which he writes that hehad read the first installment of TheHound of the Baskervilles, whichappeared in the Strand Magazine inAugust 1901.

A Double-Barrelled Detective Story isreally a novella or condensed novel of20,650 words in 10 chapters dividedinto two parts. It is an outrageous bur-lesque using grotesque violence andmelodrama concerning revenge andspoofing detective fiction. The doublebarrel of this story is by theme andstructure closer to A Study in Scarlet.The first barrel is a story of revengewith a man possessing the ability totrack like a bloodhound. The secondbarrel, also about revenge, makes funof Sherlock Holmes’ detective ability.The final seven chapters are set inHope Canyon, California whereSherlock Holmes visits his nephewFetlock Jones. The story is subtitled,“We ought never to do wrong whenpeople are looking.” Chapter 4 con-tains the famous purple prose passagewith, “far in the empty sky a solitaryoesophagus slept upon motionlesswing,” which in later reprints was fur-ther spoofed with serious footnotes andquotes from newspapers.

The Sherlock Holmes Collections hasboth states of the American first editionof A Double-Barrelled Detective Story.

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Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections2

The Bibliography of American Literaturelists it as number 3471 with the differ-ence in states of undeterminedsequence being the end papers and thelocation of the highest peak in a three-paneled picture. The Harper &Brothers Publishers edition had LuciusHitchcock’s illustrations with green bor-ders, which appear with red borders inthe first English edition by Chatto &Windus. Bernard Tauchnitz also pub-lished an edition in 1902 in Leipzig inhis Collection of British and AmericanAuthors vol. 3591. John Bennett Shawhad collected several early translationsof the story including a 1910 Frenchedition, a 1914 Danish edition and a1920 Spanish edition. Mark Twain’s ADouble Barrelled Detective Story wasadapted for the stage by Robert St. Clairin 1954 and published in a paperbackedition.

At the time Twain wrote this story, heand Arthur Conan Doyle had not yetmet. Conan Doyle, along with manyBritish authors, signed the telegramsent to Twain in 1905 for his 70thBirthday celebration at Delmonico’sRestaurant in New York City. Theyfinally met in England in 1907 andshared an interest in the Congo ReformAssociation. In 1979, Cyril Clemens,editor of The Mark Twain Journal,reported that Arthur Conan Doyle hadbeen a member of the Mark TwainSociety at the end of his life.

Richard J. Sveum, M.D., B.S.I.

References

Andrews, Kenneth R. Nook Farm: Mark Twain’s Hartford Circle. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1950.

Baetzhold, Howard G. Mark Twain and JohnBull: The British Connection. Bloomington:Indiana UP, 1970.

Dahlinger S.E. “The Sherlock Holmes WeNever Knew.” Baker Street Journal 49.3(September 1999): 7-27.

Lemaster, J.R. and Wilson, James D. eds. TheMark Twain Encyclopedia. New York: GarlandPublishing, 1993.

Rasmussen, R. Kent, Mark Twain A-Z. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 11

The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collectionsis a quarterly newsletter published by theFriends of the Sherlock Holmes Collectionswhich seek to promote the activities, inter-ests and needs of the Special Collectionsand Rare Books Department, University ofMinnesota Libraries.

Mail editorial correspondence c/o:

EditorJulie McKuras

13512 Granada Ave.Apple Valley, MN 55124

952-431-1934952-431-5965 Faxmike9750@aol.com

Editorial BoardJohn Bergquist, Timothy Johnson,

Jon Lellenberg, Richard J. Sveum, M.D.

Copyright © 2002University of Minnesota Library

The University of Minnesota is an EqualOpportunity Educator and Employer.

50 Years Ago Continued from Page 3

were published. The first volume was again reprinted in 1971, and the second andthird volumes in 1972. And Sandglass, the Heritage Club’s monthlynewsletter also is a collectible: it reprinted (in smaller format and as “Elementary,my dear Watson” and “You know my methods, Watson”) the earlier LimitedEditions Club newsletters.

Macy, who received his Investiture (“The Bruce-Partington Plans”) in the BakerStreet Irregulars in 1951, died in 1956, having brought to press and to the public(well, at least some of the public) an edition that was both attractive and well edit-ed, and Sherlockians are greatly indebted to him.

There were, eventually, many Sherlockians who wanted to read all those fine intro-ductions, but either couldn’t find or couldn’t afford to buy the Limited EditionsClub set; Edgar W. Smith reprinted his “Notes on the Collation” and all of theintroductions in 350 copies of Introducing Sherlock Holmes in 1959, along withother interesting introductions from earlier editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

George Macy’s wife Helen had continued his work, but sold the company in 1971,when it began a slow and then precipitate decline. Eventually it was rescued andresurrected as the Easton Press, which now is reprinting older titles and publishingnew ones. The Easton Press reprinted the Heritage Press edition in 1987 as theComplete Sherlock Holmes 100th Anniversary Edition in three leather-bound volumes,with full-color frontispieces by Frederic Dorr Steele. And the Easton Press issued a“Collector’s Edition” in 1996, again in three leather-bound volumes, but with all ofthe Limited Editions Club introductions (and with a new portrait of Arthur ConanDoyle by Richard Spark as the full-color frontispiece of the first volume).

There are, of course, more stories to tell about the Limited Editions Club set, butspace for only one. Observant readers will have noted, perhaps, the illustrationthat accompanies this essay, and recalling that Frederic Dorr Steele began illustrat-ing the Canon in 1903 in Collier’s, they may be wondering how there can be aSteele illustration for The Hound of the Baskervilles. There were in fact four Steeleillustrations for the story in the Limited Editions Club set, which noted for eachone that they were “drawn especially for this edition.”

Not quite: two illustrations, including this one, are signed and dated “Steele 1939”and were drawn for Twentieth Century-Fox, which published them in a full-colorsupplement in the Motion Picture Herald (Mar. 18, 1939); the supplement wasavailable to theaters to publicize the film, and one Boston newspaper used them,noting that “if the detective doesn’t bear a very close resemblance to BasilRathbone, the screen prototype—well, that’s because the fog was so heavy onDartmoor when Rathbone posed.”

Frederic Dorr Steele’s original artwork for this illustration, now owned by theSherlock Holmes Collections, came to the University of Minnesota in the collectionof Philip S. Hench, who also owned the two pages of manuscript that describe thescene that Frederic Dorr Steele illustrated. Lew David Feldman assembled the trip-tych for Hench, who framed and displayed it that way. Treasure trove indeed . . .

Peter E. Blau, B.S.I.

Mark Twain

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50“I suppose the only way we can keepour subscription list complete is toforce our subscribers not to meet eachother,” George Macy wrote a memberof the Limited Editions Club on Aug.2, 1930. “I can understand a man mar-rying some girl because she owns ourbooks; or I can understand a girl mar-rying a man for the same reason; butwhen two people owning our booksmarry each other, I suspect that thereare other forces at work. Let me sendyou hearty good wishes, impersonal asthese are.”

George Macy was the director of theLimited Editions Club, which he hadfounded in 1929 to pub-lish twelve books a yearfor subscribers whoenjoyed well-designedbooks that were oftensigned by the illustrators.The Club’s first book wasGulliver’s Travels (illus-trated by AlexanderKing); some of the moreinteresting, and certainlymore collectible, latertitles were Lysistrata(illustrated and signed byPablo Picasso) andUlysses (illustrated andsigned by Henri Matisse).

The subscriber whoreceived that letter in1930 was my mother.My father remained a subscriber, ofcourse, and I grew up in a housewhere books were meant to be read.Limited Editions Club volumes werewonderful books, and the prefaceswere just as interesting as the books.Over the years, Macy commissioned

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many fine writers to write prefaces,including George Bernard Shaw forGreat Expectations, G. K. Chesterton forVanity Fair, Fletcher Pratt for TwentyThousand Leagues Under the Sea, andRay Bradbury for The Mysterious Island.

There was discussion of a LimitedEditions Club Sherlock Holmes as earlyas 1935, and hopeful correspondence,and in 1943 George Macy announcedthat the Club would publish a five-vol-ume set, edited by Vincent Starrett andillustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele. Butthere was a problem. It was adual problem, actually: Denis andAdrian Conan Doyle. The story of theircampaign against the Sherlockianworld in general, and against the BakerStreet Irregulars in particular, has beentold by Jon L. Lellenberg in his excel-lent Baker Street Irregulars archival his-tories, and his Irregular Crises of theLate ‘Forties (1999) includes a detailedaccount of the trials and tribulationsthat George Macy faced and eventuallyovercame.

The Limited Editions Club set finallyappeared in 1950 and 1952, and it cer-tainly deserves to be celebrated fiftyyears later. There were eight volumes,edited by Edgar W. Smith, illustratedby Frederic Dorr Steele and otherartists (Steele had died in 1944, with

much of his work for the set undone),and beautifully designed by W. A.Dwiggins. The Adventures of SherlockHolmes was published in three vol-umes in 1950, with “Notes on theCollation” by Edgar W. Smith and anintroduction by Vincent Starrett; TheLater Adventures in three volumes in1952, with introductions by ElmerDavis, Fletcher Pratt, and Rex Stout;and The Final Adventures in two vol-umes in 1952, with introductions byAnthony Boucher and ChristopherMorley, and an epilogue by Edgar W.Smith.

There were 1500 subscribers to theLimited Editions Club, and thus 1500copies. And, demonstrating as usualthat limitation statements should notbe trusted, there were an additional 15stated “presentation copies” of TheAdventures, and 25 stated “editor’scopies” of The Later Adventures and TheFinal Adventures. Completists will alsowant The Monthly Letter of The LimitedEditions Club for June 1950

(“Elementary, my dearWatson”), whichexplained in four well-written pages the historyof the set; and for June1952 (“The Adventure ofthe MurderousIrishman”), which dealtwith Arthur Conan Doyle(the Irishman), his deci-sion to dispose ofSherlock Holmes, andsome of the interestingthings that Sherlockianswere doing.

George Macy alsopresided over theHeritage Press and theHeritage Club, which

later published its own three-volumeedition of the Limited Editions Clubset, offering the text and illustrations,but only Smith’s “Notes on theCollation” and the introduction byStarrett. The first volume appeared in1952 and was reprinted in 1957,when the second and third volumes

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections10

But it was his drawings for Collier’sthat began and insured his place inSherlockian history. His illustrationsof the Great Detective graced the pagesof the magazine for the 1903 –1905series of The Return of Sherlock Holmes.He would eventually illustrate “twenty-six of the last thirty-three SherlockHolmes stories for their initialAmerican periodical appearances.”(Malec) He met and correspondedwith many of the most prominentSherlockians of the day and attended anumber of the annual Baker StreetIrregulars dinners beginning in 1934,as well as maintaining a membershipin the Players Club for almost fortyyears.

His career declined during the 1930’sand a commission for The LimitedEditions Club was a promising one.The Archival History of the BakerStreet Irregulars, edited by Jon L.Lellenberg, B.S.I., gives a detailedaccount of the years, problems andefforts that went into publishing thisedition. In the series, portions of theNovember 1939 – June 1944 corre-

spondence, which con-sists of Macy’s originalsand Steele’s draft copies,are cited. (These letterswere donated to theUniversity of Minnesotain 1986 by Steele’s threechildren.)

The Club’s 1944prospectus for theCanon indicated thatseventy new illustrationsby Steele would be fea-tured. But as the sayinggoes, time waits for noman. Frederic DorrSteele died on July 6,1944, leaving his pro-ject unfinished but anumber of new draw-

ings as well as reworked illustrationsready for inclusion in The LimitedEditions Canon. Edgar W. Smithnotified the Baker Street Irregulars onJuly 8 of Steele’s passing,stating in a note that wasreprinted in the Fall 1991Baker Street Miscellanea, “It was Frederic DorrSteele, and not Sir ArthurConan Doyle, who gaveto millions of Americanstheir conception ofSherlock Holmes. Thatfact, one feels, is all themonument that FreddieSteele would want.”

Much has been writtenabout Steele. Featuredhere are several of Steele’sdrawings from the collec-tion of Philip S. Hench,M.D., that are now a partof The Sherlock HolmesCollections. For moreinformation on Steele,Andrew Malec’s The

Frederic Dorr Steele Continued from Page 1

Frederic Dorr Steele Memorial Collectionis available on the Web site for theUniversity of Minnesota Libraries athttp://www.umn.edu/rare/

Julie McKuras, A.S.H., B.S.I.

References

Malec, Andrew. The Frederic Dorr SteeleMemorial Collection. Minneapolis; University ofMinnesota Libraries, 1987.

Starrett, Vincent. The Private Life of SherlockHolmes. 1930. New York: The MacmillanCompany, 1934.

Continued on page 11

Steele's 1939 illustration for The Hound of the Baskervilles

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Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 9Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections4

From the President

am proud to announce thatSteven Doyle, B.S.I. (“TheWestern Morning News”) hasaccepted an invitation to be

the guest speaker at the annual meet-ing of The Friends of the SherlockHolmes Collections. Mark your calen-dars for this exceptional program to beheld at 7 p.m. on Thursday,September 19, 2002 at the Elmer L.Andersen Library.

The Friends of the Sherlock HolmesCollections had the opportunity torecognize and thank our CharterMembers with the last Newsletter.About one third of current member-ship has been with us since 1997when we started the Newsletter, andwe look forward to maintaining thatconnection. We are always looking toincrease our membership while recog-

I nizing the invaluable support wereceive from groups such as TheOccupants of the Empty House whoannually contribute proceeds fromtheir auction. In the words of mydaughters’ Girl Scout song, “Make newfriends, but keep the old, one is silverand the other gold.”

Theofanis G. Stavrou, President of theUniversity of Minnesota Friends of theLibrary, was honored at the AnnualDinner on April 18, 2002. TheUniversity Friends of the Library host-ed the Gala Grand Reopening ofWalter Library on June 5, 2002. TheWalter Library building was thirdhome of the University Library when itwas completed in 1924, and theArthur Upson Room located in theWalter Library was the original homeof Special Collections and Rare Books.

The new Walter Library will containthe Science and Engineering Libraryalong with the new Digital TechnologyCenter. The exterior of the RomanRenaissance building with red bricksand Bedford limestone trim and colon-naded portico was preserved alongwith some interior architectural detail;the rest is very high tech. If you can’tvisit in person you can visit their web-site at sciweb.lib.umn.edu .

The University Library’s CapitalCampaign will conclude in 2003. The Sherlock Holmes Collections isencouraging everyone to donate to theE.W. McDiarmid Curator Endowment.With your help we can reach our goalto be the World Center for the studyof Sherlock Holmes.

Richard J. Sveum, M.D., B.S.I.

he end of the academic yearbrings with it a final flurry ofactivity. This year has beenno exception. For the most

part we enjoy this frenzied pace,although we sometimes catch ourselvescoming and going (but hopefully notdouble-booked) as we move throughthe springtime days. Some of this year’sfrenzy is connected with our massivemigration to a new integrated librarysystem. I’ve received notice that ourfiscal-year-end programs ran successful-ly. This is a cause for some celebration,as this year’s fiscal close came early sothat our business office (and the rest ofus) might continue to prepare for themove to the new system scheduled tobe operational at the beginning of July.Like any move, this one has beenaccompanied by a bit of stress. Happilythat stress has (and continues to be)mitigated by a number of tours, presen-tations, conferences, and classesthrough which we have the opportunityto talk about the Sherlock HolmesCollections and in general enjoy work-ing in the midst of such a library andall its wonderful collections.

On April 5th we enjoyed a visit fromMarshall Blankenship and his wife andhad the chance to show them theAndersen Library and the HolmesCollections. This was followed a fewdays later by a James Ford Bell Librarypublic lecture by the noted writer/pro-ducer James Burke and an end-of-weekmeeting in St. Cloud with other librari-ans on the subject of leadership devel-opment. The following weeks in Aprilwere equally energetic: a visit from UlfBeijbom from the Swedish EmigrantInstitute (a colleague from my daysworking with Swedish materials inChicago); a retirement party for theUniversity archivist; a visit from WalterHammady of the Perishable Press; apresentation and tour to a group ofTwin Cities librarians and media spe-cialists; a presentation to TheManuscripts Society on the HolmesCollections; the wedding of my assis-

An Update from the Collections

tant curator, SusanStekel, from theJames Ford BellLibrary; and akeynote welcomeand session pre-sentation to asymposium forlibrary paraprofes-sionals and sup-port staff.

May continued inthe same livelyfashion, beginningwith a visit from Marshall Weber fromthe Brooklyn book artists’ cooperativein Brooklyn, New York. (Is it a goodsign that these months both began withvisits from Marshalls?) This was quicklyfollowed by a three-day conferenceinvolving about 300 archivists, forwhich we played host. Two days laterwe hosted a reception for Cornell Westas part of the University’s “GreatConversations” series. Two days afterthat we had the double treat of a visitduring the day with about 60 studentsfrom Minnetonka West Middle School(during which we capped our presenta-tion with a view of the Hound manu-script) and an evening lecture byrecently retired Bell Library curatorCarol Urness. The week ended with theannual Festival of Greek Letters and alecture by Professor Andreas M.Kazamias from the Universities ofWisconsin and Athens.

On May 14th I was the luncheonspeaker for the St. Paul chapter of theAmerican Association of UniversityWomen. My topic for the day was“Sherlock Holmes and Minnesota.” Thenext day I attended a reception at theScience Museum of Minnesota for theexhibit “Mesopotamia in Minnesota:Cuneiform Texts in Twin CitiesCollections.” We had some of ourtablets on loan for this exhibit. The fol-lowing week I attended an all-day col-lection development symposium andthen a meeting the next day with an

expert from Indiana on copyright.There was a brief respite for theMemorial Day weekend (with someadded days off thrown in) and then anend-of-month lecture by Julian Planteentitled “Documenting the MinnesotaBook World.” My highlight for June willbe the opportunity to speak to the“Sub-Librarians” at the AmericanLibrary Association annual meeting inAtlanta.

You may wonder at this point at therecitation of this end-of-year calendar.Not all of these events deal with theSherlock Holmes Collections. That istrue. But it is also true that all theseevents allow me the opportunity to atleast mention Holmes in passing and togive the hearer some indication of thedepth and breadth of the world’s largestcollection relating to the consultingdetective. And who knows? Maybeamong those middle school studentswill come another member of theFriends and the Norwegian Explorers.Maybe among those at lectures orreceptions will be another donor whotakes an interest in keeping forevergreen the memory of the Master. Whatwill the rest of the summer bring? Whocan tell? But we have the sense thatwhatever comes it will be both interest-ing and relaxing. May this find you wellin all your summer endeavors.

Tim Johnson

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Acquistions

avid Hammer continues hisongoing donation of hisSherlockian library to theSherlock Holmes

Collections. Mr. Hammer recently for-warded three large boxes to add tothose previously received. One of thenewly arrived boxes contained manu-scripts, papers, ephemera and pam-phlets and the other two boxes con-tained books.

The STUD dinner, held on May 4,2002 in Chicago, was the perfectopportunity for Don Terras to presentthe 30th Anniversary poster of theCriterion Bar Association to FriendsPresident Richard J. Sveum. In addi-tion to the various images of Holmeson screen, the poster lists past presi-dents and the founders of the society.

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Hugo Koch donated The Frozen Pirate,by W. Clark Russell, published by TheBattered Silicon Dispatch box in 2001.The book carries the note “This editionis dedicated to the late CameronHollyer who first introduced the authorto the publisher and to Hugo Kochwhose Christmas offering first suggest-

ed the idea to the publisher.” Mr. Kochpreviously donated his referencedmonograph, privately printed forChristmas 1999.

John and Margie Pollack donated acopy of the playbill from “SherlockHolmes & The Curious Adventure ofthe Clockwork Prince,” described as “AVictorian Romp” written by CleveHaubold with music composed byJames Alfred Hitt. The play ran fromApril 5 thru May 4 this year at theSpirit of the North Theater in Duluth,Minnesota.

Leslie Klinger recently sent the manu-script material for The Hound of theBaskervilles: The Sherlock HolmesReference Library. This is the latest inthe series of Klinger’s reference library.

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Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections8 Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 5

Musingsaving been both a Scout anda Scout leader, I particularlyenjoyed Dick Sveum’s refer-ence to the Girl Scout song

“Make New Friends, but Keep theOld.” I believe we could reword thatto “Write new articles, but rememberthe old ones” to apply to the previousissue of this newsletter. Two fineSherlockians took time to commentupon different articles from the Marchissue.

Andrew Malec, B.S.I. referenced thelaw case brought by Charles Frohmanagainst the producers of “SherlockHolmes, Detective: or The Sigh (sic) ofthe Four” and pointed to the December1975 and March 1976 issues of TheBaker Street Miscellanea. JohnNieminski’s December article coveredthe brief but tumultuous run of theplay written by John Arthur Fraser.Nieminski wrote that “A stock compa-ny effort presented jointly with a groupof vaudeville acts…lasted for but fourof its six scheduled performances, allin Chicago in May 1901. The run wasterminated on May 10 as a result of acourt injunction stemming from a suitbrought by Charles Frohman…TheHopkins Amusement Company,Fraser’s producers, appealed the CircuitCourt action to the First District, butlost the case in October 1902.” TheDistrict Court opinion, quoted in thearticle, states “…it is apparent that thelatter [by Gillette] may suffer in reputa-tion by the production of an inferiorplay under a name so closely identified

with that produced by appellee.” Mr.Nieminski cited reviews which left noquestion as to the inferior quality ofthe play, including “…Mr. Fraser hastaken pains to excise every vestige ofexisting material in the tale and hasformed his play of the uninterestingincidents in a crude and unskillfulfashion.” The March 1976 editorialcomments gave further credence to themerciful cessation of the play. Havingnow read the script, the commentatorwrote “…the shade of Thespis assured-ly heaved a sigh of gratitude whenCharles Frohman’s injunction rangdown the curtain.” Our thanks toAndrew for this information.

Jon Lellenberg, B.S.I. has also con-tributed an article in response to theJohn Bennett Shaw- Jack Tracy lettersthat Christopher and Barbara Rodendonated to the Sherlock HolmesCollections. I would like to thank himfor his additional clarification as to the“good and the bad” aspects for those ofus who did not know Tracy. Also, asyou will note in both the lead and the50 Years Ago articles there are refer-ences to the BSI History series, editedby Jon. The first three volumes of thearchival series are hard to locate. If youdon’t want to go through the agony oftrying to find books you know youshould have purchased while they werestill available, check the web sitewww.bakerstreetjournal.com, whereVolume 4, Irregular Proceedings of theMid ‘Forties (including postage, $31.95U.S./$32.95 outside the U.S.) and

Volume 5, Irregular Crises of the Late‘Forties ($37.95/ $38.95) remain available.

We are truly pleased to have Peter E.Blau author our 50 Years Ago article.He brings his extensive personalknowledge of The Limited EditionsClub as well as his unique storytellingability to this piece. As you can seefrom Tim Johnson’s update, SpecialCollections and Rare Books has been abusy place this spring. Dick Sveumhas given us an overview of the activi-ties of the Friends of the Library aswell as the 100 Years Ago article aboutMark Twain. What connections wehave in this issue: Mark Twain was aneighbor of William Gillette, whoseportrait as Holmes was drawn byFrederic Dorr Steele, who illustratedone of Twain’s works. And all three ofthem belonged to the Players Club.

Lastly, in doing preliminary research forthis issue, we came upon the 1952 pam-phlet The Sherlock Holmes Hoax by PopeHill, Sr. This short pamphlet was but apiece of his original lengthy manuscriptwhich apparently was never published.If anyone has any information about thismissing manuscript, please contact me.We would love to solve the mystery ofwhat happened to it.

Julie McKuras, A.S.H., B.S.I.

H"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply" Investigated by Jon Lellenberg

n March’s newsletter, RichardSveum wrote about Barbara andChristopher Roden donating theJohn Bennett Shaw/Jack Tracy

correspondence that they acquiredfrom the auction of Tracy’s effects bythe Nevada county where he diedintestate. I was sorry to see, towardthe end of the article, Tracy tellingShaw that he had written to Dame JeanConan Doyle about including “TheStonor Case” (a version of the“Speckled Band” stage-play) in hisbook Sherlock Holmes: The PublishedApocrypha, and claiming that he had“received an extraordinarily nasty reply,categorically denying permission topublish.”

Not everyone knew Jack Tracy orDame Jean Conan Doyle. I knew themboth, and I knew which one was andwhich one was not capable of “anextraordinarily nasty reply.” It may befoolish to let something written byTracy in 1978 annoy me in 2002, espe-cially since both he and Jean have beengone for some years. But I knew herfor 20 years, represented her literaryinterests in America, and find it impos-sible to let Tracy’s remark standunchallenged.

Thanks to Chris Roden, I have a copyof Jean’s May 8, 1978, letter to Tracy.She was answering his of April 17th, inwhich he informed her of his plans forthe Apocrypha and asked to include“Angels of Darkness” (Conan Doyle’sunfinished play based on the Americanepisodes in A Study in Scarlet) and “TheStonor Case.” Jean replied:

There have been several enquiriesregarding “The Angels ofDarkness,” but my father did notwant it published, nor did mybrothers, and nor do I. The rea-son is that it was a very early effortand does not fit into what becamethe Holmes-Watson concept. My

father only kept it as a curiosityand, since his death, this is whatwe, his family, felt about it.1 I seethat Pierre Nordon refers andwhich I see you plan to include inyour collection anyway. In view ofthese facts I’m sure you will agreethat to publish these works couldhardly be described as “puttingsome (of my father’s) most inter-esting work in print at last.” It isbecause they were not worthwhilepieces of work that they were notpublished in my father’s lifetime. 2

I do not see anything “extraordinarilynasty” in this reply.

In 1978, I was putting together thesystem to recapture the U.S. ConanDoyle copyrights for Jean under thenew Copyright Act in effect that year,and to represent her when recapturetook effect. I was also, with misgiv-ings, informally advising Tracy in hiseditorial plans, including the creationof his own imprint, GaslightPublications. So I corresponded withboth of them frequently. But a checkof my letters from Tracy turns up nocomplaint about Jean’s reply re: “TheStonor Case.” Instead, his letter ofJune 13, 1980, to Jean, discussingGaslight’s forthcoming CentennialSeries of early Conan Doyle novels,remarked: “Sherlock Holmes: ThePublished Apocrypha will be publishedby Houghton Mifflin next month. Iknow you’re not in sympathy with theproject, but if you will allow me topresent you with a copy I’m sure youwill find that the approach at least isserious and respectful.” And so it was,on the whole — though marred forJean by some gratuitously spiteful com-ments in Tracy’s introduction:

Sir Arthur was his own worst critic— in more ways than one, becausehis self-judgment was not alwaysgood. He bitterly resented the

unauthorized publication of thoseworks he considered unworthy,and following his death in 1930his children became even moreprotective, aggressively limitingwhich of their father’s writingsmight reach the public. For nearlyforty years Sherlockians railed,helplessly and politely, at these“recalcitrant heirs,” but recentlythe copyrights were sold, and thenew proprietors are more open toreason.

I informed Tracy with some asperitythat the copyright sale to which hereferred had in fact occurred sevenyears before, and was about to beancient history — for at that verymoment, Jean was in the process ofrecapturing her father’s copyrights.

I could hear his gasp of dismay all theway from Bloomington, Indiana. But,as others can testify, admonishmentseldom had much effect on Tracy. Inmy files is the subsequent September12, 1980, letter that I received fromhim, in which he wrote: “You’ll behappy to hear that since we spoke last,I’ve received two gracious letters fromDame Jean about the Apocrypha, andwhile she sticks to her guns about‘Angels of Darkness’ she doesn’t con-sider the book at all offensive. All yourelaborate doomsaying gone fornaught.”

Jean always acknowledged Tracy’sdevotion to her father’s work. “I’m sosorry that Jack Tracy has turned out tobe rather a disappointment to you,”she wrote to me on November 5, 1980:

He wrote to apologize for theremark in the Apocrypha, indicat-ing that he’d had a reprimandfrom you. In replying I passed itoff lightly, as I’m all for freedom toexpress one’s opinion, howevermuch one disagrees with it —

I

Continued on page 6

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 7Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections6

"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply" Continued

however, privately I thought itrevealed his ignorance of the truefacts, insensitivity, and a certaintastelessness. However, I thoughthis Afterwords, in both books [theother being the first Conan DoyleCentennial Series novel, The Firmof Girdlestone], were really splendidand they were good productions.I’m very sorry to hear now fromyou that the offensive paragraph[in the Apocrypha] is now the basisof the publisher’s publicity for thebook. That really is too bad.3

Tracy helped make Conan Doyle notonly respectable but the focus of seri-ous interest in Sherlockian circles, andJean was grateful to him for that.“Thank you very much for your letterand the Afterword for The Firm ofGirdlestone which I found interestingreading,” she’d written to him onOctober 6, 1980:

As I wrote to you before — howinterested, and flattered, my fatherwould have been to read your crit-icisms. It is a joy to know thatyou, and others, are paying suchtribute to his merit as a writer, atthis time. A university “Reader” ofLiterature was here only yesterdaywho felt strongly that he had beendenied his proper status in the lit-erary world. It was very hearten-ing to hear such opinions, and toread your words.

The Centennial Series titles were in thepublic domain in America, but Tracyalso pursued projects where Jean’s per-mission was required. One goal of hiswas to edit and publish an edition ofConan Doyle’s autobiography Memoriesand Adventures. On February 20,1981, he wrote to Peter Blau aboutseeking a commercial publisher for it,remarking that “what’s in Dame Jean’sinterest may not necessarily be inGaslight’s, although I hardly think

that’s actually the case.” Four dayslater he assured his editor at HoughtonMifflin that he was “reasonably confi-dent that we could prevail upon DameJean to write an Introduction to thenew edition.” More worrisome was herdislike of his (also never fulfilled) planto write a novel about her father.“Dame Jean hates the idea, of course,which is understandable,” he told Blauon August 5, 1981, “and won’t reviewthe manuscript, but perhaps she’ll besoothed when the book comes out andpeople tell her it ain’t half bad (unlessLellenberg gets to her first).” By now Iwas the villain of the piece, but I was-n’t the only one telling Tracy that Jeanwouldn’t care for the idea, judgingfrom Tracy’s letter to Blau on October5, 1981:

Your comment about Dame Jean inyour August 9 card is the secondtime you’ve suggested that shemight freeze out me or Gaslightbecause she is in disagreementwith some of my projects or state-ments. Such a thing is utterly for-eign to everything I’ve ever heardabout her and to my own experi-ence with her graciousness evenafter the appearance of theApocrypha.

Which is a far cry from the idea of JeanConan Doyle as a writer of extraordi-narily nasty replies.

“I don’t know why people insist onassuming my novel is in any way criti-cal of Spiritualism,” Tracy wrote furtherto Blau on October 19, 1981:

It isn’t. Quite the reverse. Indeed,Dame Jean has told me the mainreason she won’t read the book isbecause as a historical novelist Ican’t help but get little thingswrong, and that would disturbher. I don’t think the Spiritualismangle is the issue. She just doesn’t

like today’s trend of writing aboutthe recent past — pointed outBrian Garfield’s Paladin as a partic-ularly distasteful book. A lot ofpeople seem to be claiming tospeak for Dame Jean these days (Idon’t mean you). She speaksrather well for herself, and I thinkI’ll take her at her word.

So now we see Tracy as Jean’s defender(and of course, subtly, his own at thesame time). What Jean actually toldhim, in a July 2, 1981, letter that illus-trates both her views and her personal-ity, was this:

After all the reasons for thankingyou, and having agreed with youover so much, it’s with sadnessthat I have to tell you that I amutterly opposed to your latest ven-ture — writing a fictional storyabout my father. I’ve always hadthe deepest distaste for this mod-ern innovation — the use offamous people, living or dead, atthe centre of works of fiction. Theplays about Churchill, forinstance, disgusted me and onewas bound to question the author’smotives. In these times when allmoral standards seem to be slip-ping over the horizon, and “tomake money” is put before moralconsiderations, taking such liber-ties with the characters and livesof real people seems to be some-thing that should be resisted. It isa dangerous blurring of the marginbetween what is true and what isfalse. My views may seem veryold fashioned to you, but I knowmy father would have despisedthis type of “literature.” Hebrought me up to have a deeprespect for “facts” and for truth, soit follows that “faction” is ananathema to me, as it is to manyothers, I’m glad to say.I appreciate your book would

"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply" Continued

reflect the admiration you feel formy father, but however accuratelyyou may think you are portrayinghim, his family life, and hisSpiritualistic lecture tours, youwould be bound to get much of itcompletely wrong. How could itbe otherwise when you neverknew him, or us, and were notaround at the time? Of course youwill have had the advantage ofreading Our American Adventureand Our Second AmericanAdventure, which will have givenyou some of the facts. It’s true, asI remember clearly, that the NewYork press was extremely brash, byBritish standards at that time, butthe vast crowds which came to thelectures were not, and my fatherwas given a wonderful receptionwherever he went in public. Iremember that, as a family, wewere very happy on the tour; occa-sional controversies were only tobe expected, but both my parentsfelt the tours were immensely suc-cessful. So many accounts of myfather and Spiritualism, Houdinietc tell only half the story — writ-ers’ research lacks depth.I’ve too much on my plate to cor-respond about Spiritualism, a sub-ject which cannot be dealt with ina few pages, let alone paragraphs,but whenever I hear someone saythey do not believe in it, I wonderhow many years they have spentin practical investigation. It tookmy father many years before hewas convinced. He said that if aphotographer takes a whole roll offilms and only one comes out thecase for photography is proved;that it’s the same with Spiritualism,one may get many false messagesfrom the “departed,” come acrossmany fraudulent mediums, butevery now and again there is

irrefutable proof. My fatheradvised me to be sceptical,although not antagonistically so,until given proof of the genuinepowers of a medium. Excellentadvice.From the above you will havegathered that I do not want to beassociated with your book in anyway whatsoever, or with the pub-lishers, however well intentionedyour book may be. This letter isfar longer than I’d intended but Ifelt that your past courtesies to meand the great interest you have inmy father’s works, deserved morethan a curt denial of any co-opera-tion, and of my fundamentalopposition to fictional novelsabout my father (which I cannotoverlook) and therefore my per-sonal distaste for your project.

As Tracy noted, Dame Jean spoke verywell for herself. And the “extraordinar-ily nasty reply” he claimed to havereceived from her evaporates uponexamination.

Why then did Tracy say such a thing toJohn Bennett Shaw? People who knewTracy probably require no explanation.After a while, most of us who dealtwith him shrugged and went our ownway; we were able to take the goodwith the bad, for, whatever his person-ality, his work was first-rate, both hisown writings and his presentation ofother people’s work (including mine).But you never had to take the bad withthe good from Jean Conan Doyle, whowas a woman of firm views but also ofunfailing courtesy, even when she didnot agree with you. It had not alwaysbeen so among Conan Doyle’s children— so how fortunate it was for us thatthe last of them was her.

Thanks to Peter Blau and ChristopherRoden for the use of letters in their col-lections.

1. Tracy quotes from this letter in his introduc-tion to Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha(Houghton Mifflin, 1980): “the unpublishedApocrypha remain so. ‘My father did not wish itpublished, nor did my brothers, and nor do I,’Dame Jean Conan Doyle, the last surviving directdescendent, has written to us.”

2. In 1997, Dame Jean finally agreed to a BSI edition of “Angels of Darkness” with a scholarlyapparatus that would present the work in con-text, and the executors of her Estate, followingher death at the end of that year, also agreed tothe BSI edition that was published this year.

3. “For 40 years the Doyle estate suppressedefforts to anthologize the six pieces, from thehand of Sir Arthur, collected here for the firsttime,” opened the promotional flyer sent byHoughton Mifflin to Baker Street Journalsubscribers at the end of September 1980: “For the most part, they are known to only a handful of Holmes experts — but recently the copyrights were sold . . . and the new proprietors have finally granted permission to make this collected edition possible.”

Continued on page 7

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 7Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections6

"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply" Continued

however, privately I thought itrevealed his ignorance of the truefacts, insensitivity, and a certaintastelessness. However, I thoughthis Afterwords, in both books [theother being the first Conan DoyleCentennial Series novel, The Firmof Girdlestone], were really splendidand they were good productions.I’m very sorry to hear now fromyou that the offensive paragraph[in the Apocrypha] is now the basisof the publisher’s publicity for thebook. That really is too bad.3

Tracy helped make Conan Doyle notonly respectable but the focus of seri-ous interest in Sherlockian circles, andJean was grateful to him for that.“Thank you very much for your letterand the Afterword for The Firm ofGirdlestone which I found interestingreading,” she’d written to him onOctober 6, 1980:

As I wrote to you before — howinterested, and flattered, my fatherwould have been to read your crit-icisms. It is a joy to know thatyou, and others, are paying suchtribute to his merit as a writer, atthis time. A university “Reader” ofLiterature was here only yesterdaywho felt strongly that he had beendenied his proper status in the lit-erary world. It was very hearten-ing to hear such opinions, and toread your words.

The Centennial Series titles were in thepublic domain in America, but Tracyalso pursued projects where Jean’s per-mission was required. One goal of hiswas to edit and publish an edition ofConan Doyle’s autobiography Memoriesand Adventures. On February 20,1981, he wrote to Peter Blau aboutseeking a commercial publisher for it,remarking that “what’s in Dame Jean’sinterest may not necessarily be inGaslight’s, although I hardly think

that’s actually the case.” Four dayslater he assured his editor at HoughtonMifflin that he was “reasonably confi-dent that we could prevail upon DameJean to write an Introduction to thenew edition.” More worrisome was herdislike of his (also never fulfilled) planto write a novel about her father.“Dame Jean hates the idea, of course,which is understandable,” he told Blauon August 5, 1981, “and won’t reviewthe manuscript, but perhaps she’ll besoothed when the book comes out andpeople tell her it ain’t half bad (unlessLellenberg gets to her first).” By now Iwas the villain of the piece, but I was-n’t the only one telling Tracy that Jeanwouldn’t care for the idea, judgingfrom Tracy’s letter to Blau on October5, 1981:

Your comment about Dame Jean inyour August 9 card is the secondtime you’ve suggested that shemight freeze out me or Gaslightbecause she is in disagreementwith some of my projects or state-ments. Such a thing is utterly for-eign to everything I’ve ever heardabout her and to my own experi-ence with her graciousness evenafter the appearance of theApocrypha.

Which is a far cry from the idea of JeanConan Doyle as a writer of extraordi-narily nasty replies.

“I don’t know why people insist onassuming my novel is in any way criti-cal of Spiritualism,” Tracy wrote furtherto Blau on October 19, 1981:

It isn’t. Quite the reverse. Indeed,Dame Jean has told me the mainreason she won’t read the book isbecause as a historical novelist Ican’t help but get little thingswrong, and that would disturbher. I don’t think the Spiritualismangle is the issue. She just doesn’t

like today’s trend of writing aboutthe recent past — pointed outBrian Garfield’s Paladin as a partic-ularly distasteful book. A lot ofpeople seem to be claiming tospeak for Dame Jean these days (Idon’t mean you). She speaksrather well for herself, and I thinkI’ll take her at her word.

So now we see Tracy as Jean’s defender(and of course, subtly, his own at thesame time). What Jean actually toldhim, in a July 2, 1981, letter that illus-trates both her views and her personal-ity, was this:

After all the reasons for thankingyou, and having agreed with youover so much, it’s with sadnessthat I have to tell you that I amutterly opposed to your latest ven-ture — writing a fictional storyabout my father. I’ve always hadthe deepest distaste for this mod-ern innovation — the use offamous people, living or dead, atthe centre of works of fiction. Theplays about Churchill, forinstance, disgusted me and onewas bound to question the author’smotives. In these times when allmoral standards seem to be slip-ping over the horizon, and “tomake money” is put before moralconsiderations, taking such liber-ties with the characters and livesof real people seems to be some-thing that should be resisted. It isa dangerous blurring of the marginbetween what is true and what isfalse. My views may seem veryold fashioned to you, but I knowmy father would have despisedthis type of “literature.” Hebrought me up to have a deeprespect for “facts” and for truth, soit follows that “faction” is ananathema to me, as it is to manyothers, I’m glad to say.I appreciate your book would

"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply" Continued

reflect the admiration you feel formy father, but however accuratelyyou may think you are portrayinghim, his family life, and hisSpiritualistic lecture tours, youwould be bound to get much of itcompletely wrong. How could itbe otherwise when you neverknew him, or us, and were notaround at the time? Of course youwill have had the advantage ofreading Our American Adventureand Our Second AmericanAdventure, which will have givenyou some of the facts. It’s true, asI remember clearly, that the NewYork press was extremely brash, byBritish standards at that time, butthe vast crowds which came to thelectures were not, and my fatherwas given a wonderful receptionwherever he went in public. Iremember that, as a family, wewere very happy on the tour; occa-sional controversies were only tobe expected, but both my parentsfelt the tours were immensely suc-cessful. So many accounts of myfather and Spiritualism, Houdinietc tell only half the story — writ-ers’ research lacks depth.I’ve too much on my plate to cor-respond about Spiritualism, a sub-ject which cannot be dealt with ina few pages, let alone paragraphs,but whenever I hear someone saythey do not believe in it, I wonderhow many years they have spentin practical investigation. It tookmy father many years before hewas convinced. He said that if aphotographer takes a whole roll offilms and only one comes out thecase for photography is proved;that it’s the same with Spiritualism,one may get many false messagesfrom the “departed,” come acrossmany fraudulent mediums, butevery now and again there is

irrefutable proof. My fatheradvised me to be sceptical,although not antagonistically so,until given proof of the genuinepowers of a medium. Excellentadvice.From the above you will havegathered that I do not want to beassociated with your book in anyway whatsoever, or with the pub-lishers, however well intentionedyour book may be. This letter isfar longer than I’d intended but Ifelt that your past courtesies to meand the great interest you have inmy father’s works, deserved morethan a curt denial of any co-opera-tion, and of my fundamentalopposition to fictional novelsabout my father (which I cannotoverlook) and therefore my per-sonal distaste for your project.

As Tracy noted, Dame Jean spoke verywell for herself. And the “extraordinar-ily nasty reply” he claimed to havereceived from her evaporates uponexamination.

Why then did Tracy say such a thing toJohn Bennett Shaw? People who knewTracy probably require no explanation.After a while, most of us who dealtwith him shrugged and went our ownway; we were able to take the goodwith the bad, for, whatever his person-ality, his work was first-rate, both hisown writings and his presentation ofother people’s work (including mine).But you never had to take the bad withthe good from Jean Conan Doyle, whowas a woman of firm views but also ofunfailing courtesy, even when she didnot agree with you. It had not alwaysbeen so among Conan Doyle’s children— so how fortunate it was for us thatthe last of them was her.

Thanks to Peter Blau and ChristopherRoden for the use of letters in their col-lections.

1. Tracy quotes from this letter in his introduc-tion to Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha(Houghton Mifflin, 1980): “the unpublishedApocrypha remain so. ‘My father did not wish itpublished, nor did my brothers, and nor do I,’Dame Jean Conan Doyle, the last surviving directdescendent, has written to us.”

2. In 1997, Dame Jean finally agreed to a BSI edition of “Angels of Darkness” with a scholarlyapparatus that would present the work in con-text, and the executors of her Estate, followingher death at the end of that year, also agreed tothe BSI edition that was published this year.

3. “For 40 years the Doyle estate suppressedefforts to anthologize the six pieces, from thehand of Sir Arthur, collected here for the firsttime,” opened the promotional flyer sent byHoughton Mifflin to Baker Street Journalsubscribers at the end of September 1980: “For the most part, they are known to only a handful of Holmes experts — but recently the copyrights were sold . . . and the new proprietors have finally granted permission to make this collected edition possible.”

Continued on page 7

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections8 Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 5

Musingsaving been both a Scout anda Scout leader, I particularlyenjoyed Dick Sveum’s refer-ence to the Girl Scout song

“Make New Friends, but Keep theOld.” I believe we could reword thatto “Write new articles, but rememberthe old ones” to apply to the previousissue of this newsletter. Two fineSherlockians took time to commentupon different articles from the Marchissue.

Andrew Malec, B.S.I. referenced thelaw case brought by Charles Frohmanagainst the producers of “SherlockHolmes, Detective: or The Sigh (sic) ofthe Four” and pointed to the December1975 and March 1976 issues of TheBaker Street Miscellanea. JohnNieminski’s December article coveredthe brief but tumultuous run of theplay written by John Arthur Fraser.Nieminski wrote that “A stock compa-ny effort presented jointly with a groupof vaudeville acts…lasted for but fourof its six scheduled performances, allin Chicago in May 1901. The run wasterminated on May 10 as a result of acourt injunction stemming from a suitbrought by Charles Frohman…TheHopkins Amusement Company,Fraser’s producers, appealed the CircuitCourt action to the First District, butlost the case in October 1902.” TheDistrict Court opinion, quoted in thearticle, states “…it is apparent that thelatter [by Gillette] may suffer in reputa-tion by the production of an inferiorplay under a name so closely identified

with that produced by appellee.” Mr.Nieminski cited reviews which left noquestion as to the inferior quality ofthe play, including “…Mr. Fraser hastaken pains to excise every vestige ofexisting material in the tale and hasformed his play of the uninterestingincidents in a crude and unskillfulfashion.” The March 1976 editorialcomments gave further credence to themerciful cessation of the play. Havingnow read the script, the commentatorwrote “…the shade of Thespis assured-ly heaved a sigh of gratitude whenCharles Frohman’s injunction rangdown the curtain.” Our thanks toAndrew for this information.

Jon Lellenberg, B.S.I. has also con-tributed an article in response to theJohn Bennett Shaw- Jack Tracy lettersthat Christopher and Barbara Rodendonated to the Sherlock HolmesCollections. I would like to thank himfor his additional clarification as to the“good and the bad” aspects for those ofus who did not know Tracy. Also, asyou will note in both the lead and the50 Years Ago articles there are refer-ences to the BSI History series, editedby Jon. The first three volumes of thearchival series are hard to locate. If youdon’t want to go through the agony oftrying to find books you know youshould have purchased while they werestill available, check the web sitewww.bakerstreetjournal.com, whereVolume 4, Irregular Proceedings of theMid ‘Forties (including postage, $31.95U.S./$32.95 outside the U.S.) and

Volume 5, Irregular Crises of the Late‘Forties ($37.95/ $38.95) remain available.

We are truly pleased to have Peter E.Blau author our 50 Years Ago article.He brings his extensive personalknowledge of The Limited EditionsClub as well as his unique storytellingability to this piece. As you can seefrom Tim Johnson’s update, SpecialCollections and Rare Books has been abusy place this spring. Dick Sveumhas given us an overview of the activi-ties of the Friends of the Library aswell as the 100 Years Ago article aboutMark Twain. What connections wehave in this issue: Mark Twain was aneighbor of William Gillette, whoseportrait as Holmes was drawn byFrederic Dorr Steele, who illustratedone of Twain’s works. And all three ofthem belonged to the Players Club.

Lastly, in doing preliminary research forthis issue, we came upon the 1952 pam-phlet The Sherlock Holmes Hoax by PopeHill, Sr. This short pamphlet was but apiece of his original lengthy manuscriptwhich apparently was never published.If anyone has any information about thismissing manuscript, please contact me.We would love to solve the mystery ofwhat happened to it.

Julie McKuras, A.S.H., B.S.I.

H"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply" Investigated by Jon Lellenberg

n March’s newsletter, RichardSveum wrote about Barbara andChristopher Roden donating theJohn Bennett Shaw/Jack Tracy

correspondence that they acquiredfrom the auction of Tracy’s effects bythe Nevada county where he diedintestate. I was sorry to see, towardthe end of the article, Tracy tellingShaw that he had written to Dame JeanConan Doyle about including “TheStonor Case” (a version of the“Speckled Band” stage-play) in hisbook Sherlock Holmes: The PublishedApocrypha, and claiming that he had“received an extraordinarily nasty reply,categorically denying permission topublish.”

Not everyone knew Jack Tracy orDame Jean Conan Doyle. I knew themboth, and I knew which one was andwhich one was not capable of “anextraordinarily nasty reply.” It may befoolish to let something written byTracy in 1978 annoy me in 2002, espe-cially since both he and Jean have beengone for some years. But I knew herfor 20 years, represented her literaryinterests in America, and find it impos-sible to let Tracy’s remark standunchallenged.

Thanks to Chris Roden, I have a copyof Jean’s May 8, 1978, letter to Tracy.She was answering his of April 17th, inwhich he informed her of his plans forthe Apocrypha and asked to include“Angels of Darkness” (Conan Doyle’sunfinished play based on the Americanepisodes in A Study in Scarlet) and “TheStonor Case.” Jean replied:

There have been several enquiriesregarding “The Angels ofDarkness,” but my father did notwant it published, nor did mybrothers, and nor do I. The rea-son is that it was a very early effortand does not fit into what becamethe Holmes-Watson concept. My

father only kept it as a curiosityand, since his death, this is whatwe, his family, felt about it.1 I seethat Pierre Nordon refers andwhich I see you plan to include inyour collection anyway. In view ofthese facts I’m sure you will agreethat to publish these works couldhardly be described as “puttingsome (of my father’s) most inter-esting work in print at last.” It isbecause they were not worthwhilepieces of work that they were notpublished in my father’s lifetime. 2

I do not see anything “extraordinarilynasty” in this reply.

In 1978, I was putting together thesystem to recapture the U.S. ConanDoyle copyrights for Jean under thenew Copyright Act in effect that year,and to represent her when recapturetook effect. I was also, with misgiv-ings, informally advising Tracy in hiseditorial plans, including the creationof his own imprint, GaslightPublications. So I corresponded withboth of them frequently. But a checkof my letters from Tracy turns up nocomplaint about Jean’s reply re: “TheStonor Case.” Instead, his letter ofJune 13, 1980, to Jean, discussingGaslight’s forthcoming CentennialSeries of early Conan Doyle novels,remarked: “Sherlock Holmes: ThePublished Apocrypha will be publishedby Houghton Mifflin next month. Iknow you’re not in sympathy with theproject, but if you will allow me topresent you with a copy I’m sure youwill find that the approach at least isserious and respectful.” And so it was,on the whole — though marred forJean by some gratuitously spiteful com-ments in Tracy’s introduction:

Sir Arthur was his own worst critic— in more ways than one, becausehis self-judgment was not alwaysgood. He bitterly resented the

unauthorized publication of thoseworks he considered unworthy,and following his death in 1930his children became even moreprotective, aggressively limitingwhich of their father’s writingsmight reach the public. For nearlyforty years Sherlockians railed,helplessly and politely, at these“recalcitrant heirs,” but recentlythe copyrights were sold, and thenew proprietors are more open toreason.

I informed Tracy with some asperitythat the copyright sale to which hereferred had in fact occurred sevenyears before, and was about to beancient history — for at that verymoment, Jean was in the process ofrecapturing her father’s copyrights.

I could hear his gasp of dismay all theway from Bloomington, Indiana. But,as others can testify, admonishmentseldom had much effect on Tracy. Inmy files is the subsequent September12, 1980, letter that I received fromhim, in which he wrote: “You’ll behappy to hear that since we spoke last,I’ve received two gracious letters fromDame Jean about the Apocrypha, andwhile she sticks to her guns about‘Angels of Darkness’ she doesn’t con-sider the book at all offensive. All yourelaborate doomsaying gone fornaught.”

Jean always acknowledged Tracy’sdevotion to her father’s work. “I’m sosorry that Jack Tracy has turned out tobe rather a disappointment to you,”she wrote to me on November 5, 1980:

He wrote to apologize for theremark in the Apocrypha, indicat-ing that he’d had a reprimandfrom you. In replying I passed itoff lightly, as I’m all for freedom toexpress one’s opinion, howevermuch one disagrees with it —

I

Continued on page 6

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 9Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections4

From the President

am proud to announce thatSteven Doyle, B.S.I. (“TheWestern Morning News”) hasaccepted an invitation to be

the guest speaker at the annual meet-ing of The Friends of the SherlockHolmes Collections. Mark your calen-dars for this exceptional program to beheld at 7 p.m. on Thursday,September 19, 2002 at the Elmer L.Andersen Library.

The Friends of the Sherlock HolmesCollections had the opportunity torecognize and thank our CharterMembers with the last Newsletter.About one third of current member-ship has been with us since 1997when we started the Newsletter, andwe look forward to maintaining thatconnection. We are always looking toincrease our membership while recog-

I nizing the invaluable support wereceive from groups such as TheOccupants of the Empty House whoannually contribute proceeds fromtheir auction. In the words of mydaughters’ Girl Scout song, “Make newfriends, but keep the old, one is silverand the other gold.”

Theofanis G. Stavrou, President of theUniversity of Minnesota Friends of theLibrary, was honored at the AnnualDinner on April 18, 2002. TheUniversity Friends of the Library host-ed the Gala Grand Reopening ofWalter Library on June 5, 2002. TheWalter Library building was thirdhome of the University Library when itwas completed in 1924, and theArthur Upson Room located in theWalter Library was the original homeof Special Collections and Rare Books.

The new Walter Library will containthe Science and Engineering Libraryalong with the new Digital TechnologyCenter. The exterior of the RomanRenaissance building with red bricksand Bedford limestone trim and colon-naded portico was preserved alongwith some interior architectural detail;the rest is very high tech. If you can’tvisit in person you can visit their web-site at sciweb.lib.umn.edu .

The University Library’s CapitalCampaign will conclude in 2003. The Sherlock Holmes Collections isencouraging everyone to donate to theE.W. McDiarmid Curator Endowment.With your help we can reach our goalto be the World Center for the studyof Sherlock Holmes.

Richard J. Sveum, M.D., B.S.I.

he end of the academic yearbrings with it a final flurry ofactivity. This year has beenno exception. For the most

part we enjoy this frenzied pace,although we sometimes catch ourselvescoming and going (but hopefully notdouble-booked) as we move throughthe springtime days. Some of this year’sfrenzy is connected with our massivemigration to a new integrated librarysystem. I’ve received notice that ourfiscal-year-end programs ran successful-ly. This is a cause for some celebration,as this year’s fiscal close came early sothat our business office (and the rest ofus) might continue to prepare for themove to the new system scheduled tobe operational at the beginning of July.Like any move, this one has beenaccompanied by a bit of stress. Happilythat stress has (and continues to be)mitigated by a number of tours, presen-tations, conferences, and classesthrough which we have the opportunityto talk about the Sherlock HolmesCollections and in general enjoy work-ing in the midst of such a library andall its wonderful collections.

On April 5th we enjoyed a visit fromMarshall Blankenship and his wife andhad the chance to show them theAndersen Library and the HolmesCollections. This was followed a fewdays later by a James Ford Bell Librarypublic lecture by the noted writer/pro-ducer James Burke and an end-of-weekmeeting in St. Cloud with other librari-ans on the subject of leadership devel-opment. The following weeks in Aprilwere equally energetic: a visit from UlfBeijbom from the Swedish EmigrantInstitute (a colleague from my daysworking with Swedish materials inChicago); a retirement party for theUniversity archivist; a visit from WalterHammady of the Perishable Press; apresentation and tour to a group ofTwin Cities librarians and media spe-cialists; a presentation to TheManuscripts Society on the HolmesCollections; the wedding of my assis-

An Update from the Collections

tant curator, SusanStekel, from theJames Ford BellLibrary; and akeynote welcomeand session pre-sentation to asymposium forlibrary paraprofes-sionals and sup-port staff.

May continued inthe same livelyfashion, beginningwith a visit from Marshall Weber fromthe Brooklyn book artists’ cooperativein Brooklyn, New York. (Is it a goodsign that these months both began withvisits from Marshalls?) This was quicklyfollowed by a three-day conferenceinvolving about 300 archivists, forwhich we played host. Two days laterwe hosted a reception for Cornell Westas part of the University’s “GreatConversations” series. Two days afterthat we had the double treat of a visitduring the day with about 60 studentsfrom Minnetonka West Middle School(during which we capped our presenta-tion with a view of the Hound manu-script) and an evening lecture byrecently retired Bell Library curatorCarol Urness. The week ended with theannual Festival of Greek Letters and alecture by Professor Andreas M.Kazamias from the Universities ofWisconsin and Athens.

On May 14th I was the luncheonspeaker for the St. Paul chapter of theAmerican Association of UniversityWomen. My topic for the day was“Sherlock Holmes and Minnesota.” Thenext day I attended a reception at theScience Museum of Minnesota for theexhibit “Mesopotamia in Minnesota:Cuneiform Texts in Twin CitiesCollections.” We had some of ourtablets on loan for this exhibit. The fol-lowing week I attended an all-day col-lection development symposium andthen a meeting the next day with an

expert from Indiana on copyright.There was a brief respite for theMemorial Day weekend (with someadded days off thrown in) and then anend-of-month lecture by Julian Planteentitled “Documenting the MinnesotaBook World.” My highlight for June willbe the opportunity to speak to the“Sub-Librarians” at the AmericanLibrary Association annual meeting inAtlanta.

You may wonder at this point at therecitation of this end-of-year calendar.Not all of these events deal with theSherlock Holmes Collections. That istrue. But it is also true that all theseevents allow me the opportunity to atleast mention Holmes in passing and togive the hearer some indication of thedepth and breadth of the world’s largestcollection relating to the consultingdetective. And who knows? Maybeamong those middle school studentswill come another member of theFriends and the Norwegian Explorers.Maybe among those at lectures orreceptions will be another donor whotakes an interest in keeping forevergreen the memory of the Master. Whatwill the rest of the summer bring? Whocan tell? But we have the sense thatwhatever comes it will be both interest-ing and relaxing. May this find you wellin all your summer endeavors.

Tim Johnson

T

Acquistions

avid Hammer continues hisongoing donation of hisSherlockian library to theSherlock Holmes

Collections. Mr. Hammer recently for-warded three large boxes to add tothose previously received. One of thenewly arrived boxes contained manu-scripts, papers, ephemera and pam-phlets and the other two boxes con-tained books.

The STUD dinner, held on May 4,2002 in Chicago, was the perfectopportunity for Don Terras to presentthe 30th Anniversary poster of theCriterion Bar Association to FriendsPresident Richard J. Sveum. In addi-tion to the various images of Holmeson screen, the poster lists past presi-dents and the founders of the society.

D

Hugo Koch donated The Frozen Pirate,by W. Clark Russell, published by TheBattered Silicon Dispatch box in 2001.The book carries the note “This editionis dedicated to the late CameronHollyer who first introduced the authorto the publisher and to Hugo Kochwhose Christmas offering first suggest-

ed the idea to the publisher.” Mr. Kochpreviously donated his referencedmonograph, privately printed forChristmas 1999.

John and Margie Pollack donated acopy of the playbill from “SherlockHolmes & The Curious Adventure ofthe Clockwork Prince,” described as “AVictorian Romp” written by CleveHaubold with music composed byJames Alfred Hitt. The play ran fromApril 5 thru May 4 this year at theSpirit of the North Theater in Duluth,Minnesota.

Leslie Klinger recently sent the manu-script material for The Hound of theBaskervilles: The Sherlock HolmesReference Library. This is the latest inthe series of Klinger’s reference library.

Don Terras and Richard J. Sveum

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Timothy Johnson with the class from the Minnetonka West Middle School

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50“I suppose the only way we can keepour subscription list complete is toforce our subscribers not to meet eachother,” George Macy wrote a memberof the Limited Editions Club on Aug.2, 1930. “I can understand a man mar-rying some girl because she owns ourbooks; or I can understand a girl mar-rying a man for the same reason; butwhen two people owning our booksmarry each other, I suspect that thereare other forces at work. Let me sendyou hearty good wishes, impersonal asthese are.”

George Macy was the director of theLimited Editions Club, which he hadfounded in 1929 to pub-lish twelve books a yearfor subscribers whoenjoyed well-designedbooks that were oftensigned by the illustrators.The Club’s first book wasGulliver’s Travels (illus-trated by AlexanderKing); some of the moreinteresting, and certainlymore collectible, latertitles were Lysistrata(illustrated and signed byPablo Picasso) andUlysses (illustrated andsigned by Henri Matisse).

The subscriber whoreceived that letter in1930 was my mother.My father remained a subscriber, ofcourse, and I grew up in a housewhere books were meant to be read.Limited Editions Club volumes werewonderful books, and the prefaceswere just as interesting as the books.Over the years, Macy commissioned

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Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 3

many fine writers to write prefaces,including George Bernard Shaw forGreat Expectations, G. K. Chesterton forVanity Fair, Fletcher Pratt for TwentyThousand Leagues Under the Sea, andRay Bradbury for The Mysterious Island.

There was discussion of a LimitedEditions Club Sherlock Holmes as earlyas 1935, and hopeful correspondence,and in 1943 George Macy announcedthat the Club would publish a five-vol-ume set, edited by Vincent Starrett andillustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele. Butthere was a problem. It was adual problem, actually: Denis andAdrian Conan Doyle. The story of theircampaign against the Sherlockianworld in general, and against the BakerStreet Irregulars in particular, has beentold by Jon L. Lellenberg in his excel-lent Baker Street Irregulars archival his-tories, and his Irregular Crises of theLate ‘Forties (1999) includes a detailedaccount of the trials and tribulationsthat George Macy faced and eventuallyovercame.

The Limited Editions Club set finallyappeared in 1950 and 1952, and it cer-tainly deserves to be celebrated fiftyyears later. There were eight volumes,edited by Edgar W. Smith, illustratedby Frederic Dorr Steele and otherartists (Steele had died in 1944, with

much of his work for the set undone),and beautifully designed by W. A.Dwiggins. The Adventures of SherlockHolmes was published in three vol-umes in 1950, with “Notes on theCollation” by Edgar W. Smith and anintroduction by Vincent Starrett; TheLater Adventures in three volumes in1952, with introductions by ElmerDavis, Fletcher Pratt, and Rex Stout;and The Final Adventures in two vol-umes in 1952, with introductions byAnthony Boucher and ChristopherMorley, and an epilogue by Edgar W.Smith.

There were 1500 subscribers to theLimited Editions Club, and thus 1500copies. And, demonstrating as usualthat limitation statements should notbe trusted, there were an additional 15stated “presentation copies” of TheAdventures, and 25 stated “editor’scopies” of The Later Adventures and TheFinal Adventures. Completists will alsowant The Monthly Letter of The LimitedEditions Club for June 1950

(“Elementary, my dearWatson”), whichexplained in four well-written pages the historyof the set; and for June1952 (“The Adventure ofthe MurderousIrishman”), which dealtwith Arthur Conan Doyle(the Irishman), his deci-sion to dispose ofSherlock Holmes, andsome of the interestingthings that Sherlockianswere doing.

George Macy alsopresided over theHeritage Press and theHeritage Club, which

later published its own three-volumeedition of the Limited Editions Clubset, offering the text and illustrations,but only Smith’s “Notes on theCollation” and the introduction byStarrett. The first volume appeared in1952 and was reprinted in 1957,when the second and third volumes

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections10

But it was his drawings for Collier’sthat began and insured his place inSherlockian history. His illustrationsof the Great Detective graced the pagesof the magazine for the 1903 –1905series of The Return of Sherlock Holmes.He would eventually illustrate “twenty-six of the last thirty-three SherlockHolmes stories for their initialAmerican periodical appearances.”(Malec) He met and correspondedwith many of the most prominentSherlockians of the day and attended anumber of the annual Baker StreetIrregulars dinners beginning in 1934,as well as maintaining a membershipin the Players Club for almost fortyyears.

His career declined during the 1930’sand a commission for The LimitedEditions Club was a promising one.The Archival History of the BakerStreet Irregulars, edited by Jon L.Lellenberg, B.S.I., gives a detailedaccount of the years, problems andefforts that went into publishing thisedition. In the series, portions of theNovember 1939 – June 1944 corre-

spondence, which con-sists of Macy’s originalsand Steele’s draft copies,are cited. (These letterswere donated to theUniversity of Minnesotain 1986 by Steele’s threechildren.)

The Club’s 1944prospectus for theCanon indicated thatseventy new illustrationsby Steele would be fea-tured. But as the sayinggoes, time waits for noman. Frederic DorrSteele died on July 6,1944, leaving his pro-ject unfinished but anumber of new draw-

ings as well as reworked illustrationsready for inclusion in The LimitedEditions Canon. Edgar W. Smithnotified the Baker Street Irregulars onJuly 8 of Steele’s passing,stating in a note that wasreprinted in the Fall 1991Baker Street Miscellanea, “It was Frederic DorrSteele, and not Sir ArthurConan Doyle, who gaveto millions of Americanstheir conception ofSherlock Holmes. Thatfact, one feels, is all themonument that FreddieSteele would want.”

Much has been writtenabout Steele. Featuredhere are several of Steele’sdrawings from the collec-tion of Philip S. Hench,M.D., that are now a partof The Sherlock HolmesCollections. For moreinformation on Steele,Andrew Malec’s The

Frederic Dorr Steele Continued from Page 1

Frederic Dorr Steele Memorial Collectionis available on the Web site for theUniversity of Minnesota Libraries athttp://www.umn.edu/rare/

Julie McKuras, A.S.H., B.S.I.

References

Malec, Andrew. The Frederic Dorr SteeleMemorial Collection. Minneapolis; University ofMinnesota Libraries, 1987.

Starrett, Vincent. The Private Life of SherlockHolmes. 1930. New York: The MacmillanCompany, 1934.

Continued on page 11

Steele's 1939 illustration for The Hound of the Baskervilles

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In April 1902 Mark Twain (SamuelLanghorne Clemens 1835-1910) pub-lished A Double-Barrelled Detective Story.He began writing this burlesque ofSherlock Holmes in August 1901 and itappeared in Harper’s Monthly forJanuary and February 1902. Since1902 the story has been reprinted inmany forms, but it is best known toSherlockians for appearing in TheMisadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944)edited by Ellery Queen.

Looking back 100 years it is interestingto speculate what American influencesmight have affected Twain. His friendJohn Kendrick Bangs was the editor ofHarper’s Weekly until December 1901and author of the humorous SherlockHolmes story, The Pursuit of the House-Boat (1897). William H. Gillette, who

began his famous stage portrayal ofSherlock Holmes in 1899, had been aneighbor of Twain’s in Nook Farm,Hartford, Connecticut. It is knownthat Twain helped pay for Gillette’searly training and got him a part in the1875 production of “Gilded Age.”Both Gillette and Twain were chartermembers of the Players Club at 16Gramercy Park in New York when itwas founded in 1888. He had previ-ously employed detectives in his bookssuch as Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) andTom Sawyer, Detective (1896). The pop-ularity of Sherlock Holmes in Americaby way of the original stories, parodiesand stage productions encouragedTwain to write his story. The MarkTwain Encyclopedia references Twain’sletter of September 6, 1901 to HenryH. Rogers, in which he writes that hehad read the first installment of TheHound of the Baskervilles, whichappeared in the Strand Magazine inAugust 1901.

A Double-Barrelled Detective Story isreally a novella or condensed novel of20,650 words in 10 chapters dividedinto two parts. It is an outrageous bur-lesque using grotesque violence andmelodrama concerning revenge andspoofing detective fiction. The doublebarrel of this story is by theme andstructure closer to A Study in Scarlet.The first barrel is a story of revengewith a man possessing the ability totrack like a bloodhound. The secondbarrel, also about revenge, makes funof Sherlock Holmes’ detective ability.The final seven chapters are set inHope Canyon, California whereSherlock Holmes visits his nephewFetlock Jones. The story is subtitled,“We ought never to do wrong whenpeople are looking.” Chapter 4 con-tains the famous purple prose passagewith, “far in the empty sky a solitaryoesophagus slept upon motionlesswing,” which in later reprints was fur-ther spoofed with serious footnotes andquotes from newspapers.

The Sherlock Holmes Collections hasboth states of the American first editionof A Double-Barrelled Detective Story.

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The Bibliography of American Literaturelists it as number 3471 with the differ-ence in states of undeterminedsequence being the end papers and thelocation of the highest peak in a three-paneled picture. The Harper &Brothers Publishers edition had LuciusHitchcock’s illustrations with green bor-ders, which appear with red borders inthe first English edition by Chatto &Windus. Bernard Tauchnitz also pub-lished an edition in 1902 in Leipzig inhis Collection of British and AmericanAuthors vol. 3591. John Bennett Shawhad collected several early translationsof the story including a 1910 Frenchedition, a 1914 Danish edition and a1920 Spanish edition. Mark Twain’s ADouble Barrelled Detective Story wasadapted for the stage by Robert St. Clairin 1954 and published in a paperbackedition.

At the time Twain wrote this story, heand Arthur Conan Doyle had not yetmet. Conan Doyle, along with manyBritish authors, signed the telegramsent to Twain in 1905 for his 70thBirthday celebration at Delmonico’sRestaurant in New York City. Theyfinally met in England in 1907 andshared an interest in the Congo ReformAssociation. In 1979, Cyril Clemens,editor of The Mark Twain Journal,reported that Arthur Conan Doyle hadbeen a member of the Mark TwainSociety at the end of his life.

Richard J. Sveum, M.D., B.S.I.

References

Andrews, Kenneth R. Nook Farm: Mark Twain’s Hartford Circle. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1950.

Baetzhold, Howard G. Mark Twain and JohnBull: The British Connection. Bloomington:Indiana UP, 1970.

Dahlinger S.E. “The Sherlock Holmes WeNever Knew.” Baker Street Journal 49.3(September 1999): 7-27.

Lemaster, J.R. and Wilson, James D. eds. TheMark Twain Encyclopedia. New York: GarlandPublishing, 1993.

Rasmussen, R. Kent, Mark Twain A-Z. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 11

The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collectionsis a quarterly newsletter published by theFriends of the Sherlock Holmes Collectionswhich seek to promote the activities, inter-ests and needs of the Special Collectionsand Rare Books Department, University ofMinnesota Libraries.

Mail editorial correspondence c/o:

EditorJulie McKuras

13512 Granada Ave.Apple Valley, MN 55124

952-431-1934952-431-5965 Faxmike9750@aol.com

Editorial BoardJohn Bergquist, Timothy Johnson,

Jon Lellenberg, Richard J. Sveum, M.D.

Copyright © 2002University of Minnesota Library

The University of Minnesota is an EqualOpportunity Educator and Employer.

50 Years Ago Continued from Page 3

were published. The first volume was again reprinted in 1971, and the second andthird volumes in 1972. And Sandglass, the Heritage Club’s monthlynewsletter also is a collectible: it reprinted (in smaller format and as “Elementary,my dear Watson” and “You know my methods, Watson”) the earlier LimitedEditions Club newsletters.

Macy, who received his Investiture (“The Bruce-Partington Plans”) in the BakerStreet Irregulars in 1951, died in 1956, having brought to press and to the public(well, at least some of the public) an edition that was both attractive and well edit-ed, and Sherlockians are greatly indebted to him.

There were, eventually, many Sherlockians who wanted to read all those fine intro-ductions, but either couldn’t find or couldn’t afford to buy the Limited EditionsClub set; Edgar W. Smith reprinted his “Notes on the Collation” and all of theintroductions in 350 copies of Introducing Sherlock Holmes in 1959, along withother interesting introductions from earlier editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

George Macy’s wife Helen had continued his work, but sold the company in 1971,when it began a slow and then precipitate decline. Eventually it was rescued andresurrected as the Easton Press, which now is reprinting older titles and publishingnew ones. The Easton Press reprinted the Heritage Press edition in 1987 as theComplete Sherlock Holmes 100th Anniversary Edition in three leather-bound volumes,with full-color frontispieces by Frederic Dorr Steele. And the Easton Press issued a“Collector’s Edition” in 1996, again in three leather-bound volumes, but with all ofthe Limited Editions Club introductions (and with a new portrait of Arthur ConanDoyle by Richard Spark as the full-color frontispiece of the first volume).

There are, of course, more stories to tell about the Limited Editions Club set, butspace for only one. Observant readers will have noted, perhaps, the illustrationthat accompanies this essay, and recalling that Frederic Dorr Steele began illustrat-ing the Canon in 1903 in Collier’s, they may be wondering how there can be aSteele illustration for The Hound of the Baskervilles. There were in fact four Steeleillustrations for the story in the Limited Editions Club set, which noted for eachone that they were “drawn especially for this edition.”

Not quite: two illustrations, including this one, are signed and dated “Steele 1939”and were drawn for Twentieth Century-Fox, which published them in a full-colorsupplement in the Motion Picture Herald (Mar. 18, 1939); the supplement wasavailable to theaters to publicize the film, and one Boston newspaper used them,noting that “if the detective doesn’t bear a very close resemblance to BasilRathbone, the screen prototype—well, that’s because the fog was so heavy onDartmoor when Rathbone posed.”

Frederic Dorr Steele’s original artwork for this illustration, now owned by theSherlock Holmes Collections, came to the University of Minnesota in the collectionof Philip S. Hench, who also owned the two pages of manuscript that describe thescene that Frederic Dorr Steele illustrated. Lew David Feldman assembled the trip-tych for Hench, who framed and displayed it that way. Treasure trove indeed . . .

Peter E. Blau, B.S.I.

Mark Twain

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Sherlock HolmesC O L L E C T I O N S

June 2002Volume 6 Number 2

“Your merits should be publicly recognized” (STUD)

FR

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C o n t e n t s

Frederic Dorr Steele:The Definitive Illustrator

1

100 Years Ago

2

50 Years Ago

3

From the President

4

Acquisitions4

"An Extraordinarily Nasty Reply"

5

Musings8

An Update from theCollections

9

Using the Collections12

Remembrances12

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections 1

Frederic Dorr Steele: The Definitve Illustratorn the chapter titled “The Evolution of a Profile,” Vincent Starrett wrote of FredericDorr Steele’s illustrations for the Sherlock Holmes stories:

What illustrations they have been! No happier association of author andartist can be imagined…For Mr. Steele was destined for his task as surelyas Watson for his Sherlock Holmes. An ardent lover of the long detective,even before he undertook the drawings, his work has been from first to lasta labor of affection…Sixty tales, in all, comprise the saga of SherlockHolmes; and Steele has illustrated twenty-nine. While yet he lives andloves, and lifts his pencil, will he not do the other thirty-one? To someSherlockian friend among the publishers, one offers the suggestion – aDefinitive Edition – with all the stories pictured by Mr. Steele. (183-84.)

Starrett wrote this in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1930. It would benine years before George Macy of The Limited Editions Club contacted Steele aboutundertaking these illustrations, thirteen before the commission was approved and twentyyears before the first of the Limited Editions Canon was published.

Frederic Dorr Steele wasborn to an artistic familyon August 6, 1873 innorthern Michigan, andlived in Wisconsin andVermont before movingto New York City in1889. He foundemployment in an archi-tect’s office before mov-ing on to Harper’s andIllustrated American. Hisfree-lance work through-out his career was fea-tured in Life, Scribner’s,Harper’s, Century, TheMetropolitan Magazine,The Delineator, TheAmerican Magazine,Redbook, Hearst’sInternational, Liberty andMcClure’s.

I

Sherlock Holmes CollectionsSuite 111, Elmer L. Andersen LibraryUniversity of Minnesota222 21st Ave. S.Minneapolis, MN 55455

Telephone: 612-624-7526FAX: 612-626-9353

Timothy J. Johnson, Curator

Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections12

Mailing list corrections requested—Because of the high cost of returned newsletters,we would appreciate being informed of changesof address or other corrections.

For any inquiries contact:Timothy J. Johnson, Curator612-624-3552 orjohns976@tc.umn.edu

RemembrancesIn supporting the Sherlock Holmes Collections, many donors have made contributions either in honor or in memory of special persons.

IN HONOR OF FROMNathan Patterson Dr. Howard and Margaret BurchellChristopher and Barbara Roden Laura KuhnRichard J. Sveum, M.D., B.S.I. Showsaku Mashimo

IN MEMORY OF FROMDavid W. Bradley Bill MasonW. Clark Russell John AddyHenry Swiggum Phil SwiggumJack Tracy Showsaku MashimoBill Williams Laura Kuhn

Using the Collections

arsha Pollak of San Jose, CA recently visited the Sherlock Holmes Collections while on a short trip to Minnesota.She is shown in the accompanying photograph holding the book of BBC Photographs, from John Bennett Shaw’scollectionM

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