On the Fringes of a Sherlockian Collection

"He had the horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases," Dr. Watson writes of Holmes in the opening scene of "The Musgrave Ritual." It is one of many indications in the Canon that Sherlock Holmes had somewhat of a collector's mentality, even if he was only collecting papers which were in turn collecting dust. His commonplace book is plainly the work of a born collector, for a collection is what it basically is -- a collection of data. And since Sherlock Holmes was of such a turn of mind, can it not be expected that his followers, too, would tend toward collecting?

Rare indeed is the Sherlockian without some form of collection concerning his or her detective hero. It may only be three or four books on Holmes occupying a place of honour on the shelf, or it may be three or four bookshelves full. In the case of the truly devout Sherlockian collector, three or four rooms could even be envisioned as containing the collection, and we're sure that John Bennett Shaw would be more than hanpy to have three or four houses to give his collection a little breathing space . But size of collections is not what this column is about; what it is about is a strange phenomenon that begins to happen on your collection's way from three books to the Shaw-size ideal.

As the years go by, and bit by bit your Sherlockian collection begins taking over a larger and larger portion of your house, a gray area begins to appear. Somewhere between your Sherlockian books and your non-Sherlockian books a sort of literary twilight zone becomes established of tomes that don't really belong on your Sherlockian shelves, but can hardly be put in with the more general masses of books. Eventually, you run into quandaries of logical shelving, and, at its worst, this gray area surrounding your Sherlockian collection can start corroding your very faculties of organization -- a dread affliction that could cripple a librarian for life. As yet, there is no known cure for this collection creep, but it can be stopped in its early stages, if collectors are wary of its symptoms.

It all starts when you begin buying books like Cocaine Papers by Sigmund Freud. Such a book may seem like a harmless addition to your collection; after all, cocaine was a part of Holmes's life at one point, and the editor has even included one chapter devoted to Sherlock Holmes and his relationship to to cocaine and Freud. By itself, a Sherlockian would have no trouble sliding the book between Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Tracy's Subcutaneously, My Dear Watson, but in the end one must remember that only sixteen of the book's four hundred pages were really devoted to Sherlock Holmes. Soon, even that begins to seem like a hefty Holmesian content as the growth of your collection continues.

Next come such books as the fairly recent best-seller, The Name of the Rose by Unberto Eco. Sure, the main character's name is William of Baskerville, and his style of detection is amazingly close to Holmes's, but what you basically have on your hands is a book about a monastery in the 1300's. And it grows worse as the association pieces in your library need less and less of a reason to be connected with Sherlock Holmes. The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade is a book straight out of the Canon, the only book Holmes ever recommends to Watson by title. But what of Reade's The Veil of Isis? William Gillette's play Sherlock Holmes is as Sherlockian as you can get, but what are you to think when you find that you also possess the novelization of his play, Secret Service? Or a copy of Kitty Foyle, simply because it was written by legendary BSI Christopher Morley? Rod Serling may be about to step into your study at any moment and announce: "Another ordinary Sherlockian, until his collection slipped into . . . the Twilight Zone."

For some of us it is too late. We look at the shelves of our collections and dazedly wonder if we shall ever know the true meaning of the word "order" again. For many of those who read this, however, there's still time. We hope this warning will be enough, and they will be able to discipline their growing collections before the fatal day arrives. So even though a recent TV novelization is entitled The Murder of Sherlock Holmes, watch out! A major collecting affliction may be lurking behind its paper covers, just waiting to strike.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, July1985)