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| My Sherlock Gnomes |
My wife
Ann and I just had the great pleasure of spending a long Sherlockian weekend,
bracketed my talk to the Red Circle of Washington, D.C., on Friday and
attending a delightful meeting of Watson’s Tin Box of Ellicott City, MD, on Monday. It was great to see the faces of so many friends, and so many friendly faces.
The
Red Circle is presided over by Peter Blau, a wise and witty force of (benign)
nature who has been a member of the Baker Street Irregulars since 1959. He explained
that he doesn’t hold an office in the scion, however, so that he can’t be
impeached! Although "DC" is part of its name, the group actually meets in Bethesda, MD, where Peter also lives.
Peter’s
collection of Sherlockiana is beyond description – at least, it’s beyond my
description. Every shelf of his large and beautiful library contains gems I
never even imagined. I’m not a collector, but I love to look at the collections
of others.
Perhaps
my favorite item from our tour of the Blau shelves was the volume of Holmes stories
containing the signature of its original owner – T.S. Eliot. Peter believes
that when Eliot wrote the famous scene in Murder
in the Cathedral based on the Musgrave Ritual, it was to this very book that
the great poet went to refresh his memory of the ritual’s wording.
In
addition to thousands of books, Peter also has memorabilia – lots and lots of
memorabilia, from the tacky to the sublime. When Ann mentioned that she had
bought me a Sherlock Gnomes statue for Father’s Day, and where to get it online, a new edition to the Blau collection was in the mail as soon as Peter
could get to his computer.
As one
of the worst villains in the entire Canon remarked to Dr. Watson, “If a man has
a hobby he follows it up, whatever his other pursuits may be.”
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