My First Encounter with Holmes

...my first real memory of Sherlock Holmes was watching "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution"(Posted 24 Aug 01)

I'm sure that I had seen Holmes in one form or another in my childhood, with my mother being a fan of old films (though it was mainly musicals for her), but my first real memory of Sherlock Holmes was watching "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" on HBO when I was around 10 or 11. Cable was a fairly new and exciting thing in those long ago days, and that film was showing frequently, so I saw it a number of times. But I didn't give this Holmes fellow any further thought (in those days I preferred watching and reading biographies or fact-based themes, with a few fictional exceptions here and there).

When I was 12 I developed a crush on both stars of "The Hardy Boys Mysteries", and so became an avid mystery reader, starting, of course, with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books and progressing to more adult fare. Soon after this (within months, I believe) I was exposed to "The Redheaded League" in school, and decided I needed to know more about this Holmes fellow, whose name I had heard so often. I went to the library and checked out "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" because I remembered it had
been made into a movie. I didn't know at the time that it was not part of the Canon. Once reading that, I became completely and irrevocably hooked. And devouring the Canon only strengthened my obsession, as did the Basil Rathbone films. (Subsequent crushes on Rathbone, Nicholas Rowe and Jeremy Brett did nothing to alleviate that obsession.) For years afterward I made a point to read the Canon at least once a year.

(I should point out that I managed to indulge in both my Holmes obsession and my Star Trek obsession [which was inspired by the Nancy Drew mysteries, oddly enough] simultaneously. Not quite sure how I managed that one.)

It's been over 20 years and I'm still as fascinated with Holmes, Watson and their world as ever. The fact that my reading and collection has not even begun to scratch the surface of all that is available in Holmes scholarship and material ensures that I will be hooked on The Master and his Boswell for a very long time.

For more about Carol Cyr, visit her web site.

(Aug 18, 2001)...from the Netherlands, Inge sends this account of her First Encounter with Holmes...(the picture is NOT of Inge, of course! with apologies to the Dutch painter De Vos, it's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!)

I started my crime reading career with Agatha Christie in my teens and read everything I could lay my hands on. I guess I overdid it: I distinctly remember a point at which I had begun a new story, and on page 3 knew who had done the dirty deed. My brain subconsciously must have cracked the Christie code somehow. I never opened a single Christie book again (although, I must say, I went to see the Mouse trap on one of my trips to London).

I think a complaint in this direction from me to my bookseller made him draw my attention to Sherlock Holmes and I started with a volume that held 20 assorted stories -- I think at age 17. At that time, I read them at face value - I think I read them as ACD had meant them - just for leisure, never giving them a second thought. I was highly intrigued by the existence of so illustrious a club as the Baker Street Irregulars and would have loved to join them dearly, were it not that my gender was in the way (of course I thought them to convene in the appropriate shabby outfits).

Some years later, I was given the whole canon (in Dutch) as a present and since there were differences in translation from my first book, I treated myself to the English version, a two volume Bantam. It was only by reading the introduction by Loren D. Estleman that I learned about the 2 or 3 Jameses Moriarty, a score of Watsonian wives and all the discrepancies so thoroughly digested and ruminated elsewhere. That was an eye-opener of the first order.

When Dutch television aired the Granada series, I taped them. I was delighted to see Holmes becoming alive. No cliché pipe/glass/deerstalker type hiding behind a lamppost, but a very real person, a passionate professional. I run these tapes over and over again, following the conversational exchange with my Bantam in hand. This certainly expanded my knowledge of the English language! "A matter of cubic capacity" (flap). Oh, I had a howl when that hat came over his ears!

Unfortunately, and without my realizing it, they never aired the fifth and sixth series ("Casebook"and "Memoirs") and because Carole McCormick drew my attention to this omission, only this year I obtained the rest of the episodes from the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London. For this, I am forever in her debt.

Joining the Hounds of the Internet added another dimension. Being a relative outsider and having no access to the English or American book market, I had never heard of Baring-Gould's annotated. Let alone Zeisler. This year, I obtained the B-G annotated, as well as a few other classics. So my Sherlockian education is still in scaffolds - I am learning every day.

I sometimes wonder if ACD would have given his details more scrutiny had he known that a century later so many people were still discussing his stories so lively on a world wide scale.

Inge M. Demmendaal
The Netherlands

(Nov 12, 2000)...from a new local Nashvillian, whom we shall meet soon...Peg Duthie (we did..she's great!)

I was bored silly in sixth grade English class and picked up _The Hound of the Baskervilles._ I didn't grasp the sexual aspects of the story at that age, but I found the rest of it a smashing good adventure, ordered _The Best of Sherlock Holmes_ through Scholastic (which I literally read to pieces - it contained "Speckled Band," "Silver Blaze," "Dancing Men," "Scandal in Bohemia", "Final Problem" and "Empty House,") and then picked up the rest of the Canon at the Eastern Kentucky University library, where I loved to hang out after school. The library also had copies of Harwick, Baring-Gould, and _The Baker Street Journal_ -- all essential for feeding the fierce crush I'd developed on Holmes after working my way through the short stories!

Aside from assorted fantasies far too embarrassing to commit to paper, my Holmes fixation led me to Dorothy L. Sayers (when WEKU finished broadcasting Holmes' adventures, they commenced with _Strong Poison_ and I wound up on the floor laughing) and several gorgeous folksongs I'd not have encountered on my own (thanks to a professor in Buffalo who ran a society listed in the BSJ), among other joys.

Also, my early exposure to Sherlockian criticism has been invaluable in both educating and exasperating the other mystery and sf fans within my circles, since I am capable of spinning endless scenarios from both Watsonian and Doylist perspectives.

To tie this to another thread, I'm not a collector or a completist - I don't personally crave to own every Holmes edition or read every pastiche or view every video. I couldn't afford it when I was younger, and now simply lack the inclination. But, when mood and opportunity coincide, I do take delight in well-done extra-Canonical productions: I saw an adaptation of Gillette's play several years ago in Ann Arbor which I found hugely entertaining - goofy and melodramatic, mind you, but so was Gillette's original script, IMNSHO. And yes, I get an exquisite thrill of satisfaction when I catch a Sherlockian in-joke in the works of other mystery writers.

This is not as brief as I'd intended, so I will stop here. There's more about me HERE if you're curious about my non-Holmesian pursuits.

Cheers, Peg Duthie

...from WitnessProtectionProgram, who (for obvious reasons)
shall remain anonymous...

My first introduction to Sherlock Holmes was under less than desirable circumstances. Not long ago, I was the victim of a violent crime, and as a result developed panic disorder, agoraphobia and post traumatic stress disorder. Nightime is especially difficult, and often I am unable to fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning.

On one such night, I was channel surfing and found The Hound of Baskervilles starring Jeremy Brett on A & E. To be honest, I didn't choose to watch it because of an interest in Holmes, instead it was the only thing on that wasn't an infomercial or some other such nonsense. However, I quickly became totally engrossed. That did it, I was hooked.

I had my mother rent every Holmes video she could find. After watching them, as well as anything Holmes on television, I decided to find what I could on the net. The number of sites was overwhelming. I had no idea there was such a thing as a Sherlockian Society, and had no clue as to what this Canon thing was. Luckily, I happened upon Carolyn and Joel Senter who introduced me to The Hawk.

Since that time, I have purchased the Canon and joined the WelcomeHolmes group, from whose members I am learning much. Hopefully someday I will be well enough to participate in meetings and celebrations. Until that time, I am slowly but surely reading the Canon from cover to cover and delighting in each discussion.

Heath

from Lindsy Fish bluesunfish@yahoo.com

My First Encounter with
Sherlock Holmes

My first encounter with the dear Sherlock Holmes was while I was still in grade school. It was not through the volition of the school board, but that of PBS.

My little sister loved a TV show called "Wishbone." I hated the show, and only watched it because it was the only thing to do at that time. "Wishbone" is about life in the eyes of a dog using scenes from a classic literary work to illustrate the moral of the show. The literary work of the day was "A Scandal in Bohemia," and I loved it. I thought it was so cool that this so-called "Master Detective" was foiled by a mere woman, the lovely and scintillating Irene Adler.

I, unfortunately, forgot all about my Holmesian rapture until one rainy day, a couple years later, when I got bored. There were some old-looking boxes in the back room whose contents, I decided, needed to see the light of day again. The first one I opened had a bunch of old books in it.

Being a bookworm, I had to go through them. On top there were some books about aquarium fish and indoor gardens. Being twelve, I promptly put them aside and went for the heart of the box. I dug my hand in and pulled out this green and gold hardcover book with a bust sporting a pipe and deerstalker. I looked at the spine and in gilded letters it said "Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes." I peeked inside for the table of contents and lo and behold, there was "A Scandal in Bohemia" listed first. I dove into that book that very day and dragged it along with me wherever I went, even school.

I still have that book. It's sitting on my kitchen cupboards looking pretty between two at-home medical books. It's got a couple of maps and illustrations in it, so I take it down every once in a while for reference purposes.

The goal of "Wishbone" is to get kids interested in reading books. I guess it worked.

The Young Woman,

Lindsy ><>

from Charles Prepolec 31570523@3web.net

My First Encounter with Sherlock Holmes (or What I didn't Do Last Summer)

At the ripe old age of 10 years old, I encountered a paperback edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles. I was bored rigid by it. Where was this Holmes guy? At ten, I wanted something less atmospheric, I think, and more action laden. This was not it. Yet at the same time I was quite engrossed with a translation of Homer's 'Odyssey', not to mention a great book on 'Jason and the Argonauts'. Go figure! And so passed my first encounter with Sherlock Holmes.

Throughout much of my misspent youth, the local comicbook store was a home away from home. That Holmes fellow of the unfinished paperback would occasionally turn up. As he did on television, in the form of Basil Rathbone. Interesting guy, but what's with the black and white films? Nope, still no attention span for this stuff. My reading matter at this point was essentially Doc Savage, the Shadow and the Gor books by John Norman. Good action stuff, and the latter had the added benefit of having 'slave chicks' as I termed them. Hormone driven? Perhaps.

Fast forward to the mid-eighties and my early twenties. A new comicbook was making the rounds with artwork by Dan and David Day, but with text by Arthur Conan Doyle. Great art inspired by film and television. I was enthralled. A quick glance at the television listings introduced me to Jeremy Brett as Holmes on PBS. Great stuff, but the first episode I actually watched was "The Final Problem". Imagine my surprise when Holmes snuffs it the first time I watch. Well, that simply wouldn't do. Off to the bookstore and buy a copy of the 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'. At the same time, I had just experienced the break up of my first long-term relationship. At twenty years of age, this was traumatic, as I thought of myself as irresistable. This goes to prove state of mind, your honour, I will get to the point shortly! So I settle myself down to read the Adventures and, of course, the first words I read happen to be "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman". Synchronicity you say? Maybe? Hooked? Oh yeah, bigtime! Told you about the state of mind thing. So I read through the Adventures at lightening speed, and what happens at the end? The bugger dies again. Back to the bookstore, and again, and again, and as often possible since then. On one of my many trips to the bookstore I saw a flyer for a Sherlock Holmes club, plus an article in the local paper appeared on the same group. Off I went, and I have never looked back since. Oh yes, one more thing, within three years of reading the Adventures, I left University and opened a bookstore called "Mad For a Mystery", guess what I specialized in…

Click to visit Mr. Prepolec's new Baker Street Dozen site featuring the new Canadian version of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and other great Sherlockian information.

From: greypatches@webtv.net (patricia walsh)

Hi everyone, I've enjoyed reading all the first time experiences people have with Mr. Holmes. I read The Speckled Band when I was in the fifth grade, but never followed up with any other stories until I received a copy of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at Christmas when I was a senior in high school. Since I was off for Christmas vacation I had time to read the whole book through. It consisted of the Adventures, the Memoirs the Hound of the Baskervilles and the Return. The illustrations were the original Pagets from the Strand magazine which really set the wonderful mood. I was devastated when I read the Final Problem, but the Empty House was sufficient to elate me again! The experience of reading Conan Doyle for the first time really shoud be experienced by all.

Go Rams! (written just prior to Super Bowl XXVIV)
Trish

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From: Peter Sokolowski <psokolowski@m-w.com>

hi folks:

here is a double intro posting -- first to introduce myself to this auspicious gathering.

and to relate that my first encounter was the old-fashioned way: my parents gave me a splendid volume of 'the strand' facsimiles (with the two-column format and paget illustrations) in 1981 for my 11th birthday. i had read them all within a month and was hooked.

i was an avid hat collector and received a wool houndstooth deerstalker shortly thereafter (this was later augmented, during a trip to london, by a genuine brand-new bobby's helmet complete with brass -- the gem of my now dormant childhood collection!)

the granada series rekindled much for me. and i still watch nearly all of them each year.

i realized recently that i had never read 'a study in scarlet' as it was not a part of that original collection. i'm nearly finished with it now -- and this current reading inspired my joining your list.

it was after graduate school that i realized that my passion for literature was no doubt due almost exclusively to holmes, and that this influence was twofold. first, the pleasures of reading and language. second -- and perhaps most important -- the study of literature requires the student to assess the meaning of a work based upon the clues left by the author.

writers don't hold your hand and say 'this is what is meant by this image, allusion, syntax, etc.' -- it's up to the reader to interpret.

observation and precision of one sort or another have become native obsessions to me. i am now the french editor at merriam-webster (the first in the company's history), a job where research and accuracy are obviously valued.

also i enjoy trying to ply the 'method' whenever possible. a publishing contact i have in nyc was astonished when, after many phone conversations but never a personal meeting, i told her her own height, her hair and eye color, and her parentage. her name is french, and in nyc i'm sure many assume european parentage. but having been educated in part in france i recognized her name as a classic 17th century holdover: a quebecer! the rest was genetically inevitable (and incidentally describes me also for the same reasons).

elementary.

i assure you all that i'm not a boor and this is most decidedly not how i conduct myself as a matter of course. it just seemed to be the thing to do at the time and was a bit of fun.

other things about me: i'm a mad lover of music and a busy free-lance trumpet player (mostly jazz big band).and i work part-time for an npr affiliate as a jazz host.

and i spent a wonderful afternoon at the reichenbach falls a while back. very memorable!

thanks for indulging me!

cheers,
pete

From: "Adrian Nebbett" laundrybag@pd.jaring.my

My first encounter with Holmes came at infant school, back in the seventies. A Theatre In Education group appeared in our school hall with a performance of The Red-Headed League. I can still vividly picture us watching, and joining in - we had to help Holmes solve the crime with lots of audience participation and shouting - and see the set, a Victorian shop window frontage. I probably still have a scrappy piece of paper with the actors' autographs somewhere back at my parents' place. I don't remember much of the storyline - there were only 4 actors and the client had been transformed into Mrs Jabez. For kids growing up in a village in Norfolk who had never seen live theatre this was a really major event, having real, live actors (even if we hadn't seen them on telly) actually in our school. I hadn't realised how major this was until I started writing this - my first real encounter with theatre/drama, the field in which I eventually settled down to make a career.

I don't remember if I went away to read the story, I suspect not because I remember carrying Mrs Jabez around in my head for a long time, and how shocked I was when I discovered that she was really a man (My version of the "Crying Game" experience). I think my first exposure in writing would have been a comic strip version of "The Hound Of The Baskervilles" in "Look And Learn" magazine.

I would imagine that my first ventures into the canon would have been "The Five Orange Pips" and "The Six Napoleons" after watching the Rathbone movies on the BBC (Friday evenings at 6.00pm on BBC2 - real battles with my father because the news was on BBC1 at the same time). During the same sort of period I remember also watching the Tom Baker Hound of the Baskervilles series, the Guy Henry Young Sherlock series, and a documentary on the making of the Ian Richardson Hound (although I don't think I've actually seen the movie).

What finally got me truly hooked on the character though was Billy Wilder's "Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes". I probably had to sit up late to watch this, would have been in my early to mid-teens and probably didn't understand many of the nuances of the movie, but scenes like the midget funeral and Holmes & Watson lying in wait in a room bare of anything but a cage of canaries while a strange squeaking noise came closer and closer really gripped my imagination. This remained my favourite movie for years, and you can imagine how excited I was to discover the novelisation on a market stall several years later. This marks the beginning of my collecting days. By this time in my late teens, early twenties I'd read most of the stories and (horrors!) not been particularly impressed, but was absolutely entranced by the creativity of "The Last Sherlock Holmes Story", "Exit Sherlock Holmes", "The Giant Rat Of Sumatra" and Rohase Piercy's "My Dearest Holmes". It was the game as played in these stories that eventually drew me back into the canon, although it is still the pastiches (the one's that make serious use of the canon, not the utter tosh like that Mrs Hudson series) that I spend most time with.

The collection remained relatively small until '93 and my first trip to the USA. I was overwhelmed at how much Holmes you have over there. I travelled around on an Amtrak pass coming up with The Ectoplasmic Man in San Diego, Murder By Decree in El Paso, Klinefelter's ...In Portrait & Profile in Boston, SH vs Dracula in Fort Lauderdale and many more. Over the next few years I accumulated over 300 titles and though things have slowed down considerably since I moved out here to Malaysia it is much more exciting to discover a used M J Trow in a second-hand shop in Kuala Lumpur than to find the whole series re-issued at Barnes & Noble in Boston.

One final note. Does anyone share this experience? Up until last year when I forced myself to do it and make a note that I'd done it, I had no idea at all if I'd ever read The Hound Of The Baskervilles. I knew the story perfectly, but couldn't recall ever opening the book. The story is one of those that is so pervasive, appearing in so many different formats and versions, that you don't have to have read it to know it. I am still in the same position with A Christmas Carol - I know that at various times I've owned at least three different copies, I know the story and I can quote from it, but have I ever read it??

Adrian

A typical witty Nebbett post: Sherlockian Pastiche Decalogue

From: YGoodwriter@aol.com

How Holmes entered my life:

I first saw him on TV as a young boy. My father was watching one of the old Basil Rathbone Holmes movies. ("Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon".) I thought he was OK, but nothing great. I saw all the rest of the Rathbone movies on TV over the years, and liked them well enough, but I still wasn't a Holmes fanatic. I especially didn't like the bumbling and stumbling Watson.

When I first saw "The 7 Percent Solution" I was shocked to see Holmes portrayed as an drug user. It was several years later that I found out that ACD wrote him that way.

It wasn't until the 80's, when I saw the excellent Granada Television MYSTERY series, starring Jeremy Brett, that I started to realise that there was more to Holmes and Watson than Hollywood had let on. I borrowed a book from my Uncle which had two dozen Holmes stories in it, and read it in one weekend. I was hooked from that moment. I had to read the rest.

So I read all the ACD Holmes stories ("The Sign of 4" is my favorite) but had no one to discuss them with. That's why I joined this list.

Bob

From: Stuart Shiffman <roscoe10@home.com>

I was one of those kids who read SPEC in an elementary school reader, and it stayed with me. Of course, I think that I had already been exposed to the greatest film incarnation of Holmes, Basil Rathbone, when the films were shown on television. Local New York City TV in the 1960s had many programs showing old movies (sometimes the same film for 5 days in a row as on the afternoon Million Dollar Movie) which is where a lot of horror and sci-fi (sic) film buffs had a chance to first be exposed to the classics. Nigel Bruce always made me uncomfortable, how could his Watson be such an obtuse numbskull and still have become a doctor?

Stu

From:Nancy Beiman <peachdoggie@worldnet.att.net>

The Hawk asks about our first exposure to the Canon....I can only remember that it was when I was approximately 10 or 11 years old. I was quite the bookworm and would hover around the library shelves after school, picking up books that looked interesting.

A series of Great Books, name unrecalled, had grey wrappings with the name of the book written in white script on a colored panel on the spine. I saw THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and since I was very fond of dogs, I figured I'd try it out.

After I read it I got the Complete Sherlock Holmes and read it in order, starting with the STUDY IN SCARLET.

I remember seeing the Rathbone films on Saturday morning television but I never connected what I saw on the screen with anything that I read in the books. I also listened to rebroadcasts of his radio shows in the late Seventies. As the years went on I got more and more disenchanted with the films that I saw featuring Holmes. After the distressing experience of watching the Stewart Grainger HOUND in 1972 I vowed never to watch another film with this character--and I kept this vow until 1988. Since then a couple of people have changed my mind about representations of Holmes on screen. Yes, the stories could be adapted to a visual medium. They are very visual to begin with.

I never lost my fondness for the stories, though I didn't really start digging around in the Canon until discovering the Hounds online in 1998. I wish I had been in a Scion group long before, but I never knew where they were. So there you are. If it sounds distressingly visual, please remember that I am a visual artist...

The Redheaded League

From: RonaldSKritter@aol.com
Mr. Kritter is Co-Moderator of WelcomeHolmes

The messages regarding the first time we read the canon reminded me of this post that I sent to the Hounds a couple of years ago when we were discussing the same topic.
Ron

"A moment later we were in an Arabian Nights drawing-room, vast and wonderful..." (1031) This sentence from 3GAB evoked a special boyhood memory-- I was recuperating from a serious illness when I was given two books: my parents gave me 'The Complete Sherlock Holmes,' and our neighbors, Mr and Mrs Fletcher Bunny (it's not a funny name when your own is Kritter) gave me 'The Arabian Nights'. Those charming storytellers Dr. Watson and Scheherazade reduced the frustration of spending July and August indoors. It was a summer of Sherlockian Days and Arabian Nights...