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On Jan. 12, 2000, a Thursday in New York City, I encountered Paul Smedegaard
at the Algonquin Hotel after the unforgettable lunch hosted by David Hammer
(it was fully described in the March 2000 issue of 3PP Plugs & Dottles).
Paul and I retired to the second floor for a couple of hours of recorded
talk.
I usually preface these interviews with a profile of the interviewee.
They are time consuming to write and research and involve proofreading
by the subject because presumptions and mistakes of interpretation are
invariably made. One interviewee refused that office so rather than take
a chance of going to press with mucho mistakes, that long interview hasn't
been published - yet.
Rather than take that chance and delay bringing this delightful and informative
interview with Paul Smedegaard to you, I'm forgoing the profile and merely
transcribing the interview.
It is therefore longer than necessary, but less work. In transcribing
it, I noticed few sentences or phrases that needed editing. Paul is a
forthright and careful speaker.
When I interviewed Don Izban two or three years ago, he suggested Bob
Hahn and Paul Smedegaard would be good sequels. Unfortunately Bob Hahn
died before I got to him. My first serious long chat with Paul Smedegaard
was at the 1999 STUD Saturday evening pizza party at Alan Devitt's and
Susan Diamond's house in West Chicago.. I threw out a sentence about BSI
leaders. He flung back a retort, spanned the BSI decades with insight,
and I knew we'd have a sporting hour or two sometime. This is the result.
During the week of this interview, Paul and his wife Margaret were in
the group that attended the trifecta of annual Sherlockian dinners in
Denmark, London, and New York. The U.S. group consisted of Mike Whelan,
Mary Ann Bradley, Paul and Margaret Smedegaard, Herb and Adele Tinning,
Kate Karlson, Peter Blau, and Susan Dahlinger. The Scandinavians were
Bjarne Nielsen, Bjarne Rother Jensen, Jan B. Steffenson (of Denmark),
and Anders Hammarqvist (of Sweden). The Americans became honorary members
of the Danish Baker Street Irregulars, aka The Sherlock Holmes Klubben
i Danmark. I learned these names later from Susan Dahlinger.
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GS: With a name like Smedegaard, is your background Danish?
PS: Absolutely. My father was born in Denmark. He was one of the
last of the iron men who sailed the wooden ships. He was a professional
seaman on commercial sailing vessels from 1918 to 1923. He was once around
the Cape of good Hope, twice around Cape Horn. One of those times was
in the dead of winter in a gale and he and all of the crew including the
captain, which was a total of 10 were up in the yardarms trimming sail
for 12 hours. The captain's wife was steering the ship. In 12 hours they
made one mile in travel distance.
Danish sailing vessel.
GS: Why did it end in 1923?
PS: My father's last ship was a steamship. There were 26 men on
it. A day out of the port of New York, the cargo shifted. It went down
like a rock and the deck crew got off alive - 10 of the 26. He was on
a raft for six days, four without food, two without water.
GS: What month?
PS: I don't know. He was a 19-year-old kid. A bachelor. Most of
my relatives are in Denmark. He had three brothers, three sisters. I have
about 15 first cousins over there.
GS: Did he apply for citizenship in 1923 because he knew somebody?
PS: No, no, no. no. There was an international law at that time
that applied to shipwrecked seamen. Any shipwrecked seaman could stay
in the country they were shipwrecked in.
GS: Why did he gravitate to the Midwest?
PS: He knew somehow there was a Danish community around central
Illinois so he went there and enlisted in the U.S. service. He went to
the university high school to learn English, and later on went to the
University of Illinois, picked up a bachelor's degree and a master's degree
and worked towards a doctorate in math and physics.
GS: Maybe he was inspired by Niels Bohr [1885-1962] who was doing
work in Denmark in quantum physics at that time [and won the Nobel Prize
in 1927].
PS: Right.
GS: Then what? He met somebody and got married?
PS: Later on.
"U.S. AIR SERVICE"
GS: He was still a bachelor?
PS: Oh yeah. When he was in the U.S. Air Service, he was at Chanute
Air Base, a base with 600 men under Major Curtis Martin, later the Brigadier
General Martin who led the squadron of planes around the world. He was
in the air service there a year. Then he went to school and supported
himself doing all sorts of things.
GS: Where and when were you born?
PS: Chicago. Just before the war. November 1941.
Chicago, IL
GS: What about your education and literary interests.
PS: Along the way I picked up a bachelor's degree and a master's
degree.
GS: What kind of work was your dad doing while you were in high
school? Did he go into scientific kinds of stuff?
PS: He was a hydraulic ad electrical engineer.
GS: What part of Chicago did you live in?
PS: First five years in Chicago, then Clarendon Hills [in West
Chicago] for a couple of years, then back to Chicago for a couple of years,
and then up to Racine, Wisconsin, about January 1952 and graduated from
high school in 1959 in three years.
Victory in Europe, Paris
GS: What kind of work did you go into?
PS: Manufacturing. Case tractors. I got interested in Sherlock
Holmes early on. My first association with organized Sherlockian activities
was in Denmark. Around 1963, I got into a dandy auto accident. I was in
the hospital for a month. Got out and had two months leave of absence
from my employer. My father said he was going back to Denmark. Did I want
to come along with him for a month and a half? I thought about that for
half a second and went over there. One of my uncles by marriage was a
very literate person. He did pleasure reading in English. We got to talking
and he found out I was interested in Sherlock Holmes.
A Kid and his CASE
"Oh, you're a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, of course?" he
said.
"I know what the Baker Street Irregulars are," I said. "They're a group
of street urchins. What are you talking about?"
"Oh, you don't know about the The Danish Baker Street Irregulars?" he
says. We had one of the very first Sherlock Holmes clubs [Sherlock Holmes
Selskabet i Kobenhavn started by Robert Storm-Petersen in 1946]. The
conversation dropped right there.
A week later he came back to me and said, "In a couple of days time
you have a meeting arranged with Mr. A.D. Henriksen [founder of the
Sherlock Holmes Klubben i Danmark in 1950], head of the Danish Baker
Street Irregulars.
So a couple of days later, and two trains and a bus later, I'm knocking
on A.D. Henriksen's door. He buzzes me in and takes me into the study.
I found half a dozen of his cronies there. They proceeded to grill me
about Sherlock Holmes. Evidently I passed, so they took me into dinner,
fed me, and plied me with all sorts of Sherlockian things - and literally
the world of Sherlock Holmes opened up to me.
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GS: I just read in Lellenberg's new book [Irregular Crises of
the Late 'Forties] how the two Danish clubs started. Storm-Petersen's
Sherlock Holmes Selskabet was limited to 12 members so when Henriksen
couldn't get in, he said, "OK, I'll start my own group, and he had 12
members in his group also. He was an archivist in the health service.
PS: Storm-Petersen, who started the first one, was a humorist and
cartoonist who was a writer and illustrator of Sherlockian things.
GS: The second group is the more active and more scholarly one.
Bjarne Nielsen joined it as a kid.
PS: Correct. The first one, Storm-Peterson's group, went by the
boards later.
GS: Did it take? Did you become a scionist at that point?
PS: Basically, yes. It wasn't really an immediate association because
I had a job and other things. It was another six years or so before I
got associated with Hugos Companions.
GS: I read in Lellenberg's BSI Crises that to be a Hugo's Companions
you had to belong to the Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) first, right?
PS: Well, things change over the years. You're right, when Hugos
Companions first started, you had to be a Hound to become a Companion.
Then after Hugo's Companions became established, the roles got reversed.
You went into the Hugo's Companions, and after a sufficient period of
time, if you were worthy, you were inducted into the Hounds. Over the
years a lot of things that were one way turned around the other way.
GS: When you joined, did Hugo's Companions still meet about every
six weeks as when Fairley first started them?
PS: Correct. They basically still do.
GS: And it's still an all-men's group of Sir Hugo's rowdy friends?
PS: It certainly is.
GS: You were still working with tractors when returning from Denmark
at age 21. Had you gone to college by then?
PS: Yes. I got a degree in business in two years at UCLA - University
College Lake Avenue - at Racine. It was one of the two-year extensions
of the University of Wisconsin.
GS: Did you have brothers and sisters?
PS: None.
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 GS:
Did you have books around the house?
PS: Absolutely. I was a sickly kid. I was home a third of the time
or so. My mother brought in armloads of books. That's where I got my interest
in Sherlock Holmes. And, I was reading Doyle, Dana's Two Year's Before
the Mast, Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables, Stevenson's Treasure Island
and Kidnapped, and various other books like that.
GS: That was in grade school or high school?
PS: Grade school.
GS: One of my classmates had rheumatic fever as a boy and he got
ahead of us in his reading background.
PS: I had a fine literary background. I don't know why, but what
I read impressed the hell out of a lot of teachers. I never considered
it out of the ordinary.
GS: Was your mother also from Denmark.
PS: No, American born.
GS: Did you stay with Case?
PS: No, I was with a variety of firms.
GS: How did your Sherlockian career develop?
PS: I joined the groups and had fun associating with people. Two
people got into Hugo's Companions at the same time I did - Herb Tinning,
who was Dr. Leon Sterndale of the BSI, and Ely Liebow who is Dr. Gregory
of the BSI and an authority on Dr. Joe Bell. Herb is Danish, and we wound
up having a lot of fun in Chicago. He became a Companion and a Hound when
I did, and then for a variety of reasons, Herb moved to New York. The
following year, 1974, Herb got his shilling with the BSI. Well, we had
been progressing the same route together and - Bang - he got the shilling.
GS: You were aware of who the BSI were and all that?
PS: You betcha. That was a good year. Herb got his shilling. Jon
Lellenberg got his shilling. Mike Whelan got his shilling. A whole bunch
of luminaries. I was ignorant of a lot of things. I asked Bob Hahn if
he could get me an invitation to the BSI dinner. Bob was really involved
in Sherlockian affairs. He said, No problem. So, I got an invitation.
[Note: For more on the BSI, click here.]
GS: From Julian Wolff. You never knew Smith did you?
PS: No, Smith died in 1960. I go to the BSI dinner. I'm asking
how does one get the shilling. He says well, you get an invitation to
the dinner. Then you'll get your own invitations. And then somewhere along
the line you get a shilling. Bob suggested that I write. So I wrote a
few articles for The Baker Street Journal and for The Devon County Chronicles,
Bob Hahn's publication. A couple of years later, in 1977, I got my shilling.
What I didn't realize about Herb Tinning when he got his shilling was
that Herb was from the east coast originally. Herb was one of the original
subscribers to the BSJ. Herb knew Smith and Wolff, and all the others,
so that when Herb came back, he was coming back to people in associations
that he knew. He was a Sherlockian from way back before me. I didn't realize
his background. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been such an upstart to think
that I could come right along.
GS: He was probably older too?
PS: About 10 or 12 years older.
GS: Is The Devon County Chronicles still around?
PS: That died with Bob Hahn this past year.
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GS: Was Bob's group in Racine your main group?
PS: Bob's group was Hugo's Companions. The Hugo's Companions had
been moribund from about 1957 to 1960. And Bob was one of a couple of
people who helped to reactivate Hugo's Companions - about nine years before
me. He was in Chicago at the time. He moved to Wisconsin in 1981 where
he started The Merripit House Guests.
GS: Did anyone else in your family get involved?
PS: My wife, Margaret Smedegaard is involved. We were married in
1965. She is an invested Irregular too. In 1997.
GS: I was at that dinner. How did Margaret get involved if the
Hugo's wouldn't allow her to participate? Or did they?
PS: Absolutely not? How do you think she got involved?
GS: With you.
PS: No. Absolutely not.
GS: There are the books. She started her own group?
PS: Yes. Her family is in Chicago. She would drive me down to the meetings,
drop me off, and come pick me up afterwards. Sometimes, if the meetings
weren't over, she'd wait in the bar with another wife or two, and a couple
of the ladies thought, "Gee, we'd like to be involved also." But they
couldn't. So they founded their own group, the Criterin Bar Association.
GS: (Laughs) Because it started in a bar. What year would that
have been?
PS: 1972. She and Madeline Fairley, Matt Fairley's wife, who is
90 years old this month. Margaret, Madeline, and a woman by the name of
Debbie Christmann started the Criterion Bar Association. I won't say my
wife was the spark plug to the whole thing. They put together letters
of invitation to a few other people, put together the organizational meeting
and started out as a group for lady Sherlockians. But it rapidly evolved
into a group for all Sherlockians.
GS: The third Chicago group?
PS: It was the third group in Chicago and is now the largest group
in Chicago. The Criterion Bar meets about six times a year. About a year
later, I was one of the first males in it.
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GS: Were those the flowering days of Sherlockians? We didn't organize
in Nashville until 1979 so I don't know.
PS: Yes. I think Bob Hahn was responsible for the national - and
for that matter, the international - resurgence of Sherlockian activities.
I can pinpoint that to one specific date, the 6th of January 1970. That
was the date that Hugo's Companions held the first Sherlock Holmes birthday
party in Chicago. Bob created a lot of public relations and media coverage
for it. It was held at the Baker Street Pub at Wacker Drive and Adams
in Chicago. It was a sell out. There were some 140 people in attendance
and about 20 people turned away. It was covered by all the major television
and radio networks.
GS: Well, I left Chicago for Nashville four months earlier, and
never heard of it.
PS: It had huge coverage nationally. In the 1960s, Bob had started
the Silver Blaze Race in Chicago at Arlington Race Track - the second
Silver Blaze race to be organized. Along with The Devon County Chronicle
that Bob started and various other Sherlockian promotions like the birthday
party in Chicago, I really think he was the catalyst for the resurgence
of Sherlockian activities in the '70s. In 1981, he moved to Sheboygan.
GS: The Devon County Chronicle wasn't attached to a specific group?
PS: It was Bob Hahn's newsletter and it basically reported the
news of Hugo's Companions. But when Bob moved to Sheboygan, the Devon
County Chronicle moved with him because he WAS The Devon County Chronicle.
GS: He was elderly when I first met him at a Door County Canonical
Convocation and Caper, much revered. Izban considered Hahn his mentor
also.
You've seen various leaders in the BSI; you saw what Wolff and Stix achieved.
How do they compare?
PS: I like to say Christopher Morley gave birth to the Baker Street
Irregulars. Edgar Smith laid the foundations for the Baker Street Irregulars.
Julian Wolff built the house and Tom Stix furnished it. All four had dynamic
and significant roles, although different roles.
GS: I've never interviewed anyone who knew Julian Wolff. What
was he like? When did he cease to be in charge?
PS: Tom Stix Jr. took over in 1987. Wolff's last dinner [at which
he retired as Commissionaire] was 1986. At that dinner. Wolff said he
was breaking tradition and rather than die in office, he was turning it
over to Tom Stix. That really wasn't quite true, either. It was true at
first. He was concerned that Morley abdicated his responsibility for the
organization of the BSI and Edgar Smith took it over. You need to check
the transition with Lellenberg's work.
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GS: I just read it in his Crises of the Late 'Forties. It happened
before 1949/50. That's when Morley replied to someone who asked him a
managerial question, "Don't ask me, see Edgar Smith about that. He's the
main panjandrum."
PS: Right. So Smith is taking over from Morley while Morley is
alive. Smith had it for more than 20 years, then Smith dies suddenly.
A committee of Baker Street Irregulars met. The Irregulars weren't that
big around 1960, no more than about 60 or 70 at that time. A committee
of people active in Irregular affairs tapped Julian and said, "You're
elected." They basically drafted Julian and he was good enough to take
it. For the majority of the time Julian was head of the BSI, not only
was he head of the BSI, he WAS the BSI. He put together the dinner, hesinglehandedly
put out The Baker Street Journal. He gathered all the articles in his
apartment, edited them there, typed them in his apartment and got them
mailed.
GS: Did he have a wife who participated too?
PS: Oh, yes. Eleanor participated to the extent that she was Julian's
wife and was a strong support for him, but she herself was not a Sherlockian.
The BSI cocktail party that goes on every year now was an outgrowth of
something that Julian did. The BSI dinner was basically a one-shot affair
on the weekend. Granted there were a couple of other things ancillary
to the dinner: a Martha Hudson Breakfast and the Gillette Luncheon. But
the breakfast was just an informal affair, a drop in/drop out breakfast
where people came on the morning of the BSI dinner here at the Algonquin
Oak Room. The breakfast is formal now to the extent if you want to come
to it, you are either a guest of the hotel, or you lay out $15 or whatever.
Back then, you could be a guest of the hotel, you could be putting up
at the Iroquois Hotel next door or the Royalton across the street. You
could be living in town or coming from out of town. All you had to do
was come into the Oak Room, sit down at the table, be handed a menu by
the waiter and order whatever you were going to order. It was that informal.
As now, there was no program, just one big revolving breakfast where people
moved around from table to table.
GS: And the Gillette Luncheon?
PS: The Gillette Luncheon was something people came to, and the
program consisted of Julian getting up, blowing his Commissionaire's whistle,
saying a few words, and that was it. Period. It's much more formal and
structured now.
GS: You said the BSI Cocktail reception was an outgrowth of Julian's
tenure?
PS: The cocktail party was a farewell gathering for out-of-town
Sherlockians and for very close in-town Sherlockians and friends of Julian.
After the dinner, everybody stayed over Friday night and headed out of
town on Saturday. On Saturday, Julian threw a little party at his residence
at 33 Riverside Drive. He was up on the 14th floor at 14C, I think it
was. It was one of these magnificent apartment buildings with nine-foot
ceilings and six rooms. Julian laid in a stock of booze and hired a couple
of bartenders. You came up to the apartment with your suitcases, piled
them in Julian's spare bedroom, sat down for a couple of hours, and just
relaxed before you headed out to the airport and got on your plane. Julian's
brother Ezra, who was quite a cook, would make a liver pate for this affair.
Ezra was also a poet, and he would recap the prior evening's doings with
a poem about the BSI dinner event. That's where the recap [currently written
by Al Rosenblatt] started.
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GS: It all seems rather more informal than it was in 1947-1950.
PS: More and more people got interested in Sherlock Holmes and
more and more came to the BSI dinner. Basically, at that time if you wanted
to come to the BSI dinner and were male, you contacted one of the luminaries
and one of the scion societies, and that person would get hold of Julian,
and Julian would say, Sure. So, more and more people came, which meant
that more and more people were going back out of town, and Julian's apartment
was getting fuller and fuller on a Saturday and so it got a little crowded
when I started coming in 1975 and 1976. So about 1977, Julian moved it
to the Grolier Club where he had a membership. It was a rare book club
- fine printing, rare books, that sort of thing. The Sherlockians met
there. Julian hired a couple more bartenders. There were about four bartenders
with a bar at each end of the big book room. There were a couple of tables
of hors d'oeuvres. Towards the end of the party, Ezra would get up and
do his recap of the dinner. Since it wasn't up at Julian's apartment,
various area Sherlockians heard about it and were crashing the event.
It got to be a massive affair - a little too big for Julian to handle.
Julian was footing the entire bill. It was getting out of hand, so Tom
Stix, Julian's righthand man, announced at the '77 dinner or right after
that the cocktail party was going to be open by invitation only, and if
you crashed it, don't xpect to get another invitation to the BSI dinner.
That slimmed down the cocktail party. Then Tom Stix, John Bennett Shaw,
and a few other key figures of the BSI got together and said, "Julian,
it isn't fair that you're footing the bill for all of this. Why don't
we doing something different. Have the cocktail party but make it so everyone
pays their own way. Then everybody who wants to come can come. That's
how it turned into an affair for everybody. It wasn't Julian's affair
anymore. It was an Irregular affair.
GS: Who started the Martha Hudson Breakfast?
PS: That was Bill Raby's affair.
GS: Who started the Gillette luncheon?
PS: It was Clifton Andrew, and Lisa McGaw took over for Clifton.
The Gillette Luncheon used to be held at Keen's Old English Chop House,
which is really a delightful place. But they outgrew Keen's. Lisa McGaw
is another story too. Lisa was the second woman given a shilling in the
Baker Street Irregulars. After the 1980 Gillette Luncheon, Julian made
the announcement and gave Lisa her shilling there.
GS: At the luncheon?
PS: Right. Lisa knew the rules and even though she could have come
to the Baker Street Irregulars' dinner, she wasn't going to let anything
become a difficulty for Julian. The first woman to get a shilling was
Lenore Glen Offord back in 1958. She got her shilling under Edgar Smith.
Smith got a hold of Dean Dickinsheet who at the time was the head of the
Scrowers and Molly McGuires in San Francisco and said, "I'm coming out
to San Francisco and I'll give a shilling to your most notable member.
Who is it?" And Dean said, why that would be Glen Offord. So Edgar came
out and gave Glen Offord a shilling. The only thing is that Glen's real
first name was Lenore. Edgar didn't go back on it. He gave Lenore a shilling.
She knew the rules also and didn't attend.
...now read part two... How Paul
Smedegaard tried to rush history a bit.
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