The First Subscriber

By Brad Keefauver

A legion of grand Sherlockians has marched through our lives in the past century, and it would be hard to do any kind of end-of-the-millennium issue without paying tribute to them. But instead of making that tribute by praising each and every one of those folks, many of whom are already so heaped with laurels you can barely see the people beneath anymore, I’d like to salute the many by writing of the one: One Sherlockian, one of the very last of our tribe to leave us pre-2000, and the very first person ever to subscribe to The Holmes & Watson Report.

If you’re a Hansom of John Clayton or a former regular at the Dangling Prussian, you’ll remember Ed Connor. Ed was the kind of Sherlockian that has been with us from the beginning. Not just the beginning of this journal, but the beginning of Sherlockiana itself. Ed was a reader. Outside of feeding his herd of cats, I don’t know what Ed ever did besides read. His obituary in the local paper said he served in the army medical corps in World War II. I’d heard stories that he had a science fiction fanzine back in the sixties. And he had the stamp connections to come up with any Sherlockian stamp that came on the market. But even at those activities, I picture Ed with book in hand. His handwritten contributions to the Dangling Prussian Amateur Press Association were, most often, lists of Sherlock Holmes references from dozens of novels, which had to be just a fraction of what he had consumed in the two-month period between Prussians.

Like many another Sherlockian, Ed Connor was also a man who liked to keep after the details. Whether it was a typo in a journal, the finer points of a quiz question at a scion meeting, or that ever-present “it’s not really the end of the millennium” argument, Ed was quick to phone and make his views known. I think the first time I ever heard our mutual friend the Lascar seriously swearing was inspired by one of Ed’s nit-picks. Sherlockians can be some of the most irritating people on Earth when they turn their magnifying glasses upon your work, and any seasoned writer or publisher in our world got there by learning to take it all in stride. But when someone like Ed Connor leaves our ranks, you start to miss the nit-picking a little, and wonder if you’ve gone masochistic. (Note to all current readers: This does not mean we’re looking for Ed’s replacement. He was not alone.)

Sherlockiana is full of eccentrics, and every society has at least one member whose odd habits the rest of the group loves to talk about. For Peoria’s group, the Hansoms of John Clayton, Ed had to be our prize eccentric in a band of eccentrics. His mainline cat addiction had the rest of our quirks beat hands down. Ed could not turn away any friendly feline, and his house was raided more than once due to the sheer numbers of cats that took up residence there. He was quick to make friends with any Hansom cat that happened to wander through our meetings at members’ homes, and whenever a packet of papers or books from Ed came to the Keefauver-Carter house, our own cat tracked it down in an instant. I was never sure what Ed’s occupation was before he retired (or even if he had one at all), but in a more whimsical mood, I always liked to think it was “cat burglar.”

All cats aside, however, Ed Connor was a Sherlockian of the first order. He loved duking it out with his fellow Hansoms on Canonical quizzes and I can remember one such quiz, way back when I was younger and my brain was emptier, when I had all but memorized “Silver Blaze” word for word, determined to win that meeting’s quiz prize. Well, Ed had come similarly determined, with a brain thirty-five years older and with much less unoccupied space. When the lengthy and detailed quiz was finally done, the two of us had gotten every question right. Someone grabbed a copy of the Canon and started throwing obscure tie-breaker questions at Ed and me, and we went on for another twenty minutes, hitting every detail until finally a minor slip of wording on Ed’s part cost him the win. By then, however, the winning or losing hardly mattered. He’d proven that he knew every nook and cranny of “Silver Blaze” as well as any upstart Keefauver, and the Hansoms haven’t seen a performance like that since.

So as we turn the big calendar page to 2000, let us all take one more look back at those who won’t be physically accompanying us out of the 1900s: the readers, the nit-pickers, the eccentrics, the folks with the Canon permanently burned on their mental CD-Rom disc . . . and every other variation we Sherlockians come in. It’s been a grand time, gents and ladies, and we’re glad to have known you all. A simple change in the first two digits of the year’s numbering will hardly separate you from our hearts and minds, and your company will linger with us well until we all scurry up the seventeen steps to that giant 221B sitting room in the sky to wait for Sherlock Holmes himself to show up. And if Holmes never does show up . . . well, we’ll just raid his tantalus and coal scuttle and talk behind his back.

Just like always. See ya later, Ed.