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.