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Sherlockian wandering: Galena

This week, the good Carter and I decided to get away from our electronic attachments for a few days and go travelling. We wandered up to Iowa and along the banks of the Mississippi. We looked in on the island city of Sabola, stuck a foot across the border of Wisconsin, and eventually came to settle for a time in the city of Galena, population 3300. What does this all have to do with Sherlock, you ask?

Well, after a couple of days of meandering explorations, one can hardly expect a less meandering column. We’re actually still wandering northwest Illinois as I write this – on a plain old yellow legal pad.

Galena, whose pretty name is just another word for the much less pretty lead ore that built the place, is one of those historic Illinois towns whose motto might be "We could’ve been Chicago." In the early 1800s, when lead was easy to dig, Galena was bigger and wealthier than Chicago. But the lead-mining got harder, the Fever River silted up, and all of the railroad’s found termini elsewhere, and the city’s growth was over by the mid-1800s. Civic pride, combined with the fact that Ulysses S. Grant lived in Galena for a time prior to the Civil War and his presidency, gave the citizens a good sense of historic preservation early on. The result is an attractive little town that remains as tied to the Victorian period as much as any other in Illinois.

Galena’s the perfect place for a quiet getaway, even though it does tend to get very full of tourists on a summer weekend. It gives one an excuse to wander the backroads of Illinois – there isn’t a four lane interstate anywhere near it, and these days wandering the two-lanes, one finds the fastest growing industry in small-town America: the antique mall.

I’ve written of our local antique mall in an earlier Sherlock Peoria column, and the more obscure the locale, the better a Sherlockian prospector’s chances that no other Sherlockian has panned for Sherlock-related gold there before. And apparently, no Sherlockians have been to Sterling or Dixon, Illinois lately, for in the course of writing this I’ve already picked up to nice little pirate treasures: a Donohue, Henneberry and Company edition of A Study in Scarlet and an A. L. Burt Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (no "The" in front of the title anywhere in or on the book). Both were at bargain prices, and an American News Company edition of Hornung’s The Amateur Cracksman was even a bonus find (the book is dedicated to Conan Doyle and inspired by Holmes if you need a connection).

But back to Galena. It’s hard to imagine Sherlock Holmes ever coming to this interesting little town during any travels to America, as its heyday was long before his. It’s a very American city, with more references to the Civil War than any other historical events, even in Main Street Fine Books & Manuscripts, Galena’s best dealer in books and paper artifacts. But that pleasant little shop has some real treasures, and I had to splurge a bit and bring home a couple of them.

One was, natually, Civil War related -- a copy of The Blue & the Gray, an old play that Sherlockian godfather Christopher Morley "revised and edified," with a neat signature page tipped in. ("This is to identify ………. Who by right of possession of this copy of The Blue and the Gray (or War is Hell) may attend any performance (once) free of any production at the Old Rialto Theatre, 118 Hudson St., Hoboken.") A second, and better still was a postcard Christopher Morley had sent to William McFee in June of 1944. Even in a little thing like a postcard arranging a meeting, the man of letters displays the wit and charm with which he set a movement into motion. (McFee, by the way, is a nautical author who once wrote "The world belongs to the Enthusiast who keeps cool.")

But is being a Sherlockian just about shopping, as it would seem from my little account of our travels? Well, take a look at the last half of the paragraph above. I had no idea who William McFee was at the time I purchased the postcard. Shopping is an exploration of sorts, where one encounters things one might not normally run across. And such chance encounters, when picked from wisely, can be the starting point for investigations of one’s own little mysteries in the true Sherlock Holmes tradition.

My investigations of the Morley postcard have just begun . . . there is still the mysterious Miss Maclean mentioned therein, and McFee’s friend Dudley. Who knows what trails such tidbits can lead to?

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver