Memoirs and Numbers

With the change of the year, one finds one's self giving thought to the numbers of it all. We're now in 1993, and no Sherlockian worth his honeydew box of coarse salt can state that fact without thinking of the previous '93. While others may have a hard time writing 1993 instead of 1992 on their cheques, the more entrenched Holmes aficionado finds himself writing 1893 -- perpetually one hundred years behind. And that is as it should be.

A century ago, this was the year of Memoirs. The second set of Sherlock Holmes cases was being released to the public at a rate of one per month. "The Yellow Face" was in The Strand Magazine in February's issue, followed by "The Stockbroker's Clerk" in March, and so on. The year finally ended with "The Final Problem" in the December issue, and it wasn't until 1901 that another Sherlock Holmes tale appeared. Seven very long years in which the reading public believed Sherlock Holmes was dead.

Of course he wasn't dead in 1893 at all. Sherlock Holmes was really travelling Asia and Europe in the final year of his hiatus from the detective business. Sherlockians from Lhassa to Montpellier should be celebrating Sigerson centenaries all this year, in honor of the time the great detective passed through their lands.

But there's never a shortage of things to celebrate if you're playing with numbers.

One hundred and forty years ago, Sherlock Holmes was born (according to Brend, Grazebrook, Sayers and Tucker).

Ninety years ago, the first Holmes movie, Sherlock Holmes Baffled, was made in Denmark.

Eighty years ago, "The Dying Detective" saw print for the first time.

Seventy years ago, "The Creeping Man" saw print. In the modern day we often forget that the stories making up The Complete Sherlock Holmes came out over a span of forty years.

The waiting must have been awful.

Sixty years ago, Vincent Starrett's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes first saw print, marking the beginning of the Sherlockian Golden Age. It might have happened sooner, but the grim irony was that Sherlockiana couldn't really start until after Conan Doyle's death. Until that moment, nobody could be sure the Sherlockian Canon was complete

Fifty years ago, the first Illinois scion society, the Hounds of the Baskerville (sic), was formed.

Forty years ago, the world's only Sherlock Holmes ballet premiered in London.

Thirty years ago... well, you can't really celebrate anything that happened 30 years ago. John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and, according to Edmund Aubrey's infamous Sherlock Holmes in Dallas, Holmes couldn't solve that one.

Twenty years ago was the last year Sherlock Holmes had a fairly private life. In 1974, Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Per- cent Solution would start a pastiche boom that would force Holmes to incorporate every renowned personage of the last century into his list of acquaintances.

Fifteen years ago, in 1978, the Hansoms of John Clayton and editor Robert C. Burr made their first foray into publishing with the newsletter that soon became Plugs & Dottles.  The bronze age of Sherlockiana had now officially begun.

Ten years ago .... Hey,  if you can't remember what happened ten years ago, I'm not telling. If you missed it, hoo-boy, did you miss something.

In a way, being a Sherlockian is a little like being a baseball fan. If you want to get excited about something, there will always be some statistic to back you up. That's not to say there aren't moments which truly deserve celebrating. A lot of our favorite stories first saw print a hundred years ago this year. You may not want to invite all your friends over for a party, but you may want to sit down and give a hundred-year-old tale a fresh read.

February, for example, is the centenary of "The Yellow Face," a story of race relations that has as much meaning now as ever. A hundred years doesn't make a lot of difference.