My friend, neighbor, and high school classmate Nino Catanzaro not long ago went to Dartmoor. On a visit to the former Duchy Hotel in Princetown, now a visitor center, he took with him a copy of my Baker Street Beat.
In this photo taken at the Duchy, Nino's British friend Dennis Moore is holding my book on the left of the photo and Nino is holding a nice edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which he later gave me as a gift. Sherlock Holmes, the Hound, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are behind them on the stairs.
None of my books was ever before in such good company!
The Duchy is significant because Arthur Conan Doyle and Bertram Fletcher Robinson stayed there in 190, forever associating the place with The Hound of the Baskervilles. Paul Spiring, a true expert on Robinson and the whole issue of his contribution to The Hound, clarified their relationship with the hotel in a Facebook message to me:
"ACD and BFR only stayed there for a night or two. ACD wrote to his mother when he was there, and said that he had already written half of it - presumably the first five London-based chapters. The remainder was written in the following two months presumably from notes that were crafted at the Duchy."
Paul wrote about this extensively on his website.
My wife and I plan our own pilgrimage to Dartmoor next June, and I will take with me a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Devon. In this book, Brian W. Pugh, Paul R. Spiring and Sadru Bhanji have put together an invaluable guide for a wandering Sherlockian such as yours truly.
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