Paging Bonnie Tyler...Paging Bonnie Tyler...

To love chronology is to love a puzzle. A mystery that can't be solved. A jigsaw with pieces missing, or with some from another box. It is to accept that even when you think you've got it all figured out that an idea or finding will come along and challenge everything. I have said many times that what I love about Sherlockian chronology is that it's almost solvable. That little sliver of trouble is what keeps our fingers tapping on our overworked keyboards. The reason I mention all of this is because of something that I recently read by one of our very own ilk.

In the March 2024 issue of TIMELINE - the official newsletter of The Sherlockian Chronologist Guild - master chronologist Bruce Harris had a piece that talked about a controversial date for 'The Greek Interpreter' (GREE). That article was basically a response to a man named Don Robertson who had a piece in the February 2024 TIMELINE. You see, we timeliners are looney for Luna. Watson's mentions of the moon and its celestial dance work their way into a lot of people's work. I've used it, and I'm not at all alone. The articles talk about a total solar eclipse (timely, eh?) in 1887. It's used to date GREE to September of that year - not a popular opinion. Another factor in the debate comes in when Bruce tells us that 1886 was the first running of a still-held horse race called the Eclipse Stakes. Those two things may bolster Robertson's findings (though Bruce doesn't think so). Why is that significant? Well, remember that Holmes used this (partial) line at the very start of the case: "the causes for changes in the obilquity of the ecliptic." Do you see it? Holmes said 'ecliptic'. Not eclipse, but ecliptic. This is where the debate begins. See, most people place GREE after the publication of A Study in Scarlet (STUD) in December 1887. It's this sort of thing I'm talking about. Holmes uses a word that is related and close in pronunciation to two events of 1886/87, and may mean something. It rubs against the grain of a lot of chronologists, but it is an intriguing thought. (And according to a number of sources, the race's name and the next year's eclipse had nothing to do with each other.) Let me give you another example of what I'm getting at here.

This is from a post I did back in 2016 (which was based on a presentation I had done a few years before). It discusses the problem of identifying a site in 'The Cardboard Box' (CARD): Mary Browner and Alec Fairbairn buy tickets for New Brighton, as does Jim Browner. But, is this a reference to the New Brighton train station? That station was called simply New Brighton after it was remodeled in 1888. (Before that it was called Brighton Station.) Or is it just a reference to the town of New Brighton itself where there just happened to be a station? Whichever someone picks could completely change the dating. It should be noted that some chronologists do go with that 1888 date based on interpreting the reference as the train station. Oh, and above is a photograph of the newly opened station in that year.

The reason I bring these types of things up is that after I read Bruce's piece in the newsletter I started getting that old nagging feeling about exactly how far we should dig into the cases of Holmes and Watson. It seems like a lot of folks have built decent timelines using just story-to-story comparison. Yes, finding outside help does become necessary from time to time, but if it's possible to date cases just using those comparisons, do we need to go looking for anything else? I say that as the guy who started a whole journey with this blog and everything I've ever done with Historical Sherlock whereby I try and find instances from both the Canon and history that merge. Those merges are specifically for dating, or help in dating, the cases.

Personally I love the research aspect. I want to have many books open at one time, and facts scribbled on the backs of old receipts, and my bones begging me to stop but my brain wanting to continue. It is the best part about all of this. Whether I ever use even 10% of those facts is beside the point. I want to flip through 130 year-old books, newspapers, and other publications. I want to find correlations like Mr. Robertson's above. I want to upset the status quo by throwing out a possibility so farfetched that people have to pay attention to it. I am a huge proponent of the butterfly effect. Everything affects everything, and history is built on the backs of seemingly innocuous events. That's where I get excited. And since new information is uncovered by the minute, it will give me something to do for life. That's a comforting thought.

I'll draw this to a close. I've talked enough, though I could go on for a long time about this. Before I do, I want to cover two things. First, I know you know that the unofficial Roman name for the moon - Luna - is where we get the term 'lunatic' and thus 'looney'. I wanted to include it above, but couldn't find a spot that didn't upset the flow of the paragraph. Second, my sincere appreciation once more for getting all the way down here. It warms the cockles of my heart, and I don't want to be left with cold cockles. I'll see you next month, and as always...thanks for reading.

The Guiding Plight

There are two things in The Canon of Sherlock Holmes which have bothered me since I first read them. One is that white whale I talk about from time to time. It's something that I can find absolutely no evidence for. It's the one I'll always work on here and there, and someday I'll justify Watson's words about it. (Sorry, still ain't gonna say what it is.) The other is one of those I'm-going-to-write-a-paper-about-this-one-day things. It's a Holmes line from 'The Redheaded League' (REDH) - "It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London." Well, I'm going to write a blog post about it instead. For now.

To be fair, I actually did start that paper years ago, but I found it was going to be a major undertaking, so it got put on the eternal back burner. However, I'm in a good mood, so I'll put my notes here (sort of) so you can see how far I got. (It's not much, though.) First, I had three links to Google Books for publications that had articles about the number of businesses in London at the time they were printed. I knew I would need many more - three of them wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface as this was an ever-changing aspect of the London life. Heck, it still is today...and that's everywhere. I had a link to an article from 1886 about London street names, and another one from 1891 about the changes to the city's streets and roads. I had two links to pieces which actually mentioned this very Holmes quote, and somewhere I found that London had 4.3 million people in 1893. But, like I said, I realized the depths that I would have to go to write the thing, so I put it aside.

I know it's heresy, but I was going to do my best to prove that The Great Detective could NOT have had an exact working knowledge of London. An exceptional one, yes, but exact? No. Think about it - he would have to know about every single street (road, alley, byway, place, mews, square, etc.). London was in the midst of a massive influx of people, and everything was growing. New buildings, businesses, restaurants, offices, shoppes, hotels, pubs, schools, hospitals, workhouses, manufacturers - you name it. He would have to know about cabmen shelters, urinals, drinking fountains, statues, stinkpipes, mansions, gardens, stables, churches, cemeteries, sidewalks, tunnels, bridges...it just goes on and on.

We get a little taste of this in the first episode of SHERLOCK with Benedict Cumberbatch as our hero. He has to recall his knowledge of the streets to cut off a cab he thinks may contain a murderer. We see that he remembers a closed road and an alternatve route. He also has to know about the timing of traffic signals and pedestrian signage and crosswalks, and he has to know what buildings he has climb the fire escape stairs on, and which he's going to have to jump between. Is this possible? Yes. In a small area. Could someone with an upper level genius IQ be able to do this with an entire city? No idea. Standard IQ here, but I still doubt it. None of this takes into account variables like broken or missing stairwells, full or empty parking areas, ever-changing potholes affecting traffic, emergency vehicles, jaywalkers, delivery people on bicycles - things like that. So again, I can't imagine this as a possibility. It makes for good TV, but it's not realistic to me.

Now, Holmes did have an advantage with his collection of articles and information about many things in and around London. He also had that brain of his. He didn't let it get gummed up with stupid, and only stocked it with necessary data. He had dozens of newspapers that had tiny type and many thousands of words about everything happening in the city and it burroughs, and he had books like Baedeker's Guides to have some of that info in a compact form. We know Holmes kept a huge index about people, places, and events that he often worked on, and we also know he had reference books on his shelves, so he had places to go for refreshing his mind. There's no mention of a Baedeker's in the canon, though I feel pretty certain that he had them, too. The problem is that we're talking about someone who would need this kind of information from day one in his profession, and have it all the time. He was in business for over 20 years, and the changes happening in the area were almost immeasurable, so we're not talking about a simple task. However, from a chronologist's point of view, this statement by Holmes has nothing to with whether or not REDH occurred in June or October, or in any year from 1887 to 1890, so there's that.

Along the lines of guidebooks, the above Francis Chichester - Guide To Good Living In London came into my possession recently, and as wonderful as it is to have and one day use to navigate London, I'm distracted by the fact that I cannot figure out when this thing was published. I know it's from before 2004, but that's all I have. There's no year of publication, no ISBN number, no anything anywhere in it to help me determine when it saw it's first sunrise. I found another one from 1999 which is very similar but the lettering is different. My copy has all upper-case lettering, but the one I found online has upper and lower-case. (And I have no idea how the website selling it knows what year it came out.) I have been through every single page of this thing, and have exhausted all of my clever research skills to figure this out, but nada. I am no closer now than I was when I received it. Any ideas? I would truly appreciate it.

When I was a kid I was always impressed that my mother knew where any street was in the towns in and around where I grew up. It was almost superhero-like. Now that I'm older and realize that the entire area I'm referring to could probably fit inside just one of London's train stations, it becomes less impressive. (Sorry, mom. I love you.) I think you can see, though, why writing a paper on this problem would be a massive...well...problem. Maybe I'll pick it up from time to time like the white whale situation, but I don't know if it's ever going to be finished. It's something to strive for, but don't be expecting it any time soon. What you can expect is for me to once again express my admiration for all of you readers. You keep my brain cramping for more posts, but I have aspirin for that, so I'll keep typing away. I'll see you next month, and as always...thanks for reading.

A Study In Red (Strings)

When I started this blog over a decade ago, the purpose was to try and tie the canon, Holmes, Watson, and any other players and events into actual late-Victorian history. And even though I sometimes step away from that goal to report on something else that is happening in my life or in the Sherlockian world, it is still the thing I want to do. The question I face all these years on is how serious I want to be in doing so. Please allow me to explain.

To me history is like the blood flowing through my veins - I need it to survive. It never lets me down in a way that causes me to want to turn my back on it. I don't think I would've enjoyed teaching history to students, but if a course had been developed called Weird and Offbeat History, I might've signed up. Still, standard historical facts and figures have their place. The only time I get discouraged with it is when a new find challenges something that was thought complete. I get discouraged because it means having to re-structure thoughts and beliefs about a subject. It makes me wonder how much we actually know, and whether or not we should actually have history teachers because they are likely wrong about so much without knowing it. Regardless, I'll continue to find history delicious.

I stepped away from the basic Sherlockian meeting because it no longer challenged me. Yes, they are an important part of the hobby, but I tired of toasts and songs and quizzes and such. That may seem cold, but it's true. I simply lost all desire to do those things. They just didn't fulfill me anymore. Now, I know that Sherlockians really enjoy this part of it all, and I'm not going to downplay it, but I know that (for me) it came down to preferring the scholarship side of The Game. I need to learn. I need for my brain to be titillated. It's what attracts me to chronology - something that doesn't get enough airplay at a regular meeting.

So, I oft wonder if it is necessary to go deeper with our beloved Sherlockian chronology. Many timelines play off of themselves with their dates. They can place a case based on a statement by Watson about what happened in a particular year, or if he mentions a situation in one that has to mean only one thing with dating. True, we still find a lot of disparity with dates because some chronologists simply think the canon is wrong and just go their own way. I'm good with that. I love seeing the date of March 4, 1881, attached to A Study In Scarlet, and that's probably because it feels right to have the partnership start as close to the beginning of the decade as possible. But, the more I look at the evidence, the more I have trouble tolerating that date. 1882 makes a heck of a lot more sense, but who wants the kick-off year to be 1882?

What started me thinking about all of this was looking at the bookshelves I have full of books on Victorian history. If it's about that time period, I will grab a title even if I never read it in full. Around that same time I started watching the fantastic James Burke series Connections for the umpteenth time, and my appetite for how things effect each other in the past was re-wetted. I started pondering the proverbial red strings on the wall of Sherlockian chronology, and getting that old familiar feeling about just how serious this side of the hobby needs to be. It will always be fun, but would making it a deeper dive take away that enjoyment? Would we once again be looking at a subject in the our Holmes-filled world that was once unattractive and dry? I don't know. For me, no. But I am not the majority. It has served me well for over twelve years, but do I want to erase the whole chalkboard and start over again? That I will have to look at a little harder.

If nothing else, this aspect of the hobby has always given me plenty to think about. I can turn to it when I need to stir my brain tanks. It offers so much just in the actual recording of all of the timelines I've collected, but then there's the actual case-dating part that keeps the members of our Guild busy wearing out keyboards. I may find other things that steal my attention from time-to-time, but deep down this is something I will always do. And be. And I love the fact that you justify my struggle every month. I silently thank you often, and look forward to doing to so in this font each month. So, I'll do it again. I'll see you all in February, and as always...thanks for reading.