I’ve
often expressed on this blog my special fondness for the Sherlock Holmes short
story called “His Last Bow,” relating how Holmes became a spy on on the eve of World War I. It’s only natural, then, that during the Baker
Street Irregulars & Friends Weekend in New York earlier this month I
snapped up a chance to buy a copy of Trenches:
The War Service of Sherlock Holmes.
This
latest in the wonderful Baker Street Irregulars Manuscript Service, edited by Robert Katz and Andrew Solberg like four of the previous volumes, makes
available a facsimile of the existing pages of the hand-written manuscript of
the story, which are in the hands of a private collector who wishes to remain
anonymous.
As a
writer and as a reader, it’s very special to me to see my favorite passage in
the entire Canon in Arthur Conan Doyle’s own handwriting, the closing paragraph
of the story. It begins: “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a
changing age.” I memorized that paragraph in 1964 or 1965 and have never forgotten
them.
The handwriting
is neat, readable, and contains only one correction. This may be a revised
version of that MS page, not his first attempt, but we know that ACD often wrote
stories straight off with very few changes. Either way, it’s very special for
me to see that beloved paragraph in the author’s own hand.
But
this book is more than the facsimile (and the annotated transcription). Like
all the volumes in the Manuscript Series, it is packed with fascinating essays –
in this case, about Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, and World War I. There
is even an essay about the war service of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, still
one of the most beloved Holmes-Watson screen duos.
I particularly
enjoyed reading Catherine Cooke on ACD as a prophet of the First World War,
Glen Miranker on Holmes parodies in trench magazines during that war, Burt
Wolder on “Altamont” and Irish secret socities, Maria Fleischhack on Germans
and Germany in the Canon, and Clifford S. Goldfarb on ACD’s war service as a
propagandist.
The
book is, of course, available from the Baker Street Irregulars website.
Dear Dan---Many thanks for your kind review. The Co-Editors had the privilege of working with an incredibly gifted group of contributors and collaborators. All credit for this book goes to them. We're glad that you had as much fun reading it as we had working on it!!!---Bob Katz
ReplyDeleteThanks to you and Andy for the great work on all five books that you edited in the series.
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