The Editor and the Secret Life of the Bearskin Rug

It was a bright, sunshine-drenched February day when the bear’s manuscript first crossed my desk. Neatly type-written on heavy paper with an old, cloth-ribbon typewriter, the work immediately set itself apart from the laserprints and photocopies that covered every inch of free space surrounding my Macintosh. It’s physical aspects were not the only thing that made the bear’s work differect, either.

When I returned from the moutains this January with the inspiration to do a new Sherlockian journal, I had told very few people of my plan – just enough to get material to fill the journal. And yet here was this bear’s manuscript, unsolicited, with a polite letter offering me the work for The Holmes & Watson Report. How had the bear known?

To make matters worse, the bear wasn’t even a real bear at all ... he was a bearskin rug. To put it more specifically, he was the former bearskin rug from 221B Baker Street, where he shared lodgings with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. And his manuscript told an amazing tale. Secrets were revealled. Previously unrecorded conversations now found their way to paper. As I read, two thoughts rose to the forefront of my brain: (1.) Sherlockian scholarship hasn’t come close to uncovering all the treasures that are truly in the Canon as we know it. (2.) A bearskin rug will never know if I bury his manuscript and slip the facts it contains out to the world a few at a time under my own by-line. True, the latter seems a less noble reaction than should be worthy of a Sherlockian, but it’s a bearskin rug, for pity’s sake! See how you react when an Afghan rug sends you the true tale of Watson’s war years.

Ah, but there are higher powers that deal with such things as manuscripts written by bearskin rugs and unworthy thoughts. A reshuffle of the desktop papers or two later, the manuscript was nowhere to be found. Hours of searching proved a lost cause, the bearskin rug’s work was gone forever.

The point of this slightly delusional tale, however, is not that the editor-in-chief of this publication will lose your paper if you send it to us. The point is that the staff here knows for a fact that the Grand Game of Sherlockian scholarship did not die out with its first generation of players. The playing field has plenty of room, even now, and there are new players wandering on to the turf all the time. Some of them need a place to be published as they work up the confidence to submit to The Baker Street Journal. Some of them need a chance to see what goes on out there in the Sherlockian world that many of us take for granted. Some of them just want one more thing to add to their collection.

The staff of The Holmes & Watson Report is here to try to fill some of those needs. And we’re even going to try to fill them six times a year. It won’t be an easy pace, it might even turn into a marathon as time goes by, but we’re going to make the attempt.

Care to join us? Whatever you expect from a Sherlockian journal, you’re certain to get a surprise or two from this one as we roll onward. Toss your shilling up to the hansom driver and enjoy the ride.

-- Brad Keefauver, editor-in-chief

1. Sherlock Holmes.

2. Dr. Watson.

3. Edgar Smith’s ghost keeps eating all your Snackwells.

4. Web pages are a little too biodegradable.

5. Your last name is Kegley, Farrell, or Kovacic, and you’re already doing a helluva job with Baker Street W1.

6. It keeps you from spending all your time watching Xena, Warrior Princess.

7. You can use your press pass to get into those wild slumber parties the Jeremy Brett fans have.

8. Save the trees! Or at least save them from suffering the indignity of being used for an issue of Cosmopolitan.

9. You need to score points in the hope that theBSI will forget you’re a member and invest you again with a new name.

10. You were drunk, honest!