Tag: On This Day

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On February 18th… “The Beryl Coronet”

Richard Carpenter as Arthur Holder

February 18, 1886: Arthur Holder asked his father for money for the third time. [BERY]

Richard Carpenter (left) played Arthur Holder in the 1965 BBC television adaptation of “The Beryl Coronet“. It was the eighth episode of the series starring Douglas Wilmer (as Holmes) and Nigel Stock (as Watson). [Carpenter has another Sherlockian credit, as writer for four episodes of The Baker Street Boys (BBC, 1983) –Selena Buttons]

Bridal Coronet Headpiece by Elnara Niall (Adi Mileva-Thigpen)

February 18, 1886: Part of the beryl coronet was stolen. [BERY]

Could the coronet have looked something like this beautiful bridal coronet by Elnara Niall?

Sources

Chronological information provided from the volume A Day by Day Sherlockian Chronology by William S Dorn DWNP, BSI. [Additional information about the BBC productions from IMDB –Selena Buttons]

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On February 17th… The Birth of a Sherlockian Scholar

February 17, 1888: On this date, the Reverend Monsignor Ronald A Knox, one of the most eminent original Sherlockian scholars, was born. Although he was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1912, he converted to Catholicism, becoming a Roman Catholic priest in 1918, later a Monsignor. He is best known for writing the paper Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes.

Cover of RONALD KNOX AND SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE ORIGIN OF SHERLOCKIAN STUDIES, edited by Michael J. Crowe
Available from Gasogene Books (Wessex Press)

If there is anything pleasant in life, it is doing what we aren’t meant to do. If there is anything pleasant in criticism, it is finding out what we aren’t meant to find out. It is the method by which we treat as significant what the author did not mean to be significant, by which we single out as essential what the author regarded as incidental. […] There is, however, a special fascination in applying this method to Sherlock Holmes, because it is, in a sense, Holmes’s own method. ‘It has long been an axiom of mine,’ he says, ‘that the little things are infinitely the most important.’ It might be the motto of his life’s work.

This paper has generated years of Sherlockian studies. It was presented to the Gryphon Club in 1911, published in The Blue Book Magazine in 1912, and republished a number of times, including in Knox’s Essays in Satire in 1928. [The link above will take you to a PDF file of the paper in Blackfriars v1 n3 (June 1920), hosted at the University of Minnesota. -Selena Buttons]

In a response to the paper, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that “Holmes changed entirely as the stories went on” but that “Watson never for one instant as chorus and chronicler transcends his own limitations. Never once does a flash of wit or wisdom come from him. All is remorsely eliminated so that he may be Watson.” [A frankly absurd assertion! -Selena Buttons]

My source for the information on Knox’s birthdate comes from A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (“Tressa”). [Additional information about the presentation and publication of “Studies of the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” and Dr Doyle’s response comes from The Ronald Knox Society of North America. -Selena Buttons]

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On February 16th… A Future Dr Watson?

I am a fan of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television show. So, for this date we go back to the sixth season episode entitled “Ship in a Bottle“. The episode is a call-back to a second season episode, “Elementary, Dear Data“.

LeVar Burton as Geordi La Forge as Dr Watson in “Elementary, Dear Data

Elementary, Dear Data

In that episode, Data (Brent Spiner), and Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) play Holmes and Watson on the Holodeck. Data, however, knows all the stories and solves them too quickly to be any fun at all for Geordi! Unable to explain to Data that the fun is in the process of figuring out the answer, Geordi issues the computer a challenge: create a new mystery with an opponent able to confound Data. It turns out that a Professor Moriarty who can outwit an android Holmes is capable of some nefarious business indeed! Data Holmes and Geordi Watson must thwart the Professor’s plot and rescue the ship’s doctor.

Ship in a Bottle
Four years later, Geordi and Data return to the program with another engineer to look into some anomalies. In the time since he was last seen, Professor Moriarty has somehow continued to exist and believes that he is a real person. He is also desperate to bring his love, Countess Regina, out of the digital realm and into real life, through any means necessary. With the Enterprise on a collision course with two gaseous planets and thoroughly under Moriarty’s control, it appears that the ship’s crew has no choice but to meet his demands. It is a problem thoroughly worthy of a twenty-fourth century Holmes and his Watson!

LeVar Burton played Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge for 176 episodes between 1987 and 1994. He was born Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, Jr., on February 16, 1957 in Landstuhl, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Sources:

My source for this information comes from A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (“Tressa”). [With additional information from StarTrek.com and IMDB -Selena Buttons]

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On February 15th… An Early Screen Holmes is Born

“Even a master detective may lose his heart.” [Lobby card for Sherlock Holmes (1922)]
Future famous screen Holmes John Barrymore was born John Sydney Blyth (or possibly Blythe, spellings vary) in Philadelphia, PA, on February 15, 1882. His parents, Maurice and Georgiana Blyth(e), were well-known actors under the stage name of Maurice and Georgiana Barrymore. John and his two older siblings, Lionel and Ethel, also took their parents’ stage name as they began their own theater careers. Generations of Barrymores have been famous actors, including John’s son, John Drew Barrymore, and grandaughter, Drew Barrymore.

The senior John Barrymore became famous for us in 1922, when he starred in the silent movie SHERLOCK HOLMES. (The film was released in the UK under the title MORIARTY.) John Barrymore said that his film, based on the William Gillette play would bring out the more romantic side of Holmes. (Alice Faulkner, the love interest introduced in Gillette’s play, was portrayed by silent film star Carol Dempster.) Any of our readers out there feel that is so?

In 1920, Barrymore starred in DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE. Reportedly, in comparing his roles in the two films, he said:

“Holmes is a purely static person: by that I mean a character with practically no emotions. It is naturally more difficult to play a man with no emotions than to play a man with emotions, and one must continually vary the character to make it interesting.”

[I can’t find any source for this other than a list of Barrymore quotations on IMDB; if you know where it’s from, please let me know in the comments! –Selena Buttons]

What do you think?

Sources
My source for this information comes from A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime N. Mahoney (“Tressa”). [Additional biographical and film history information from IMDB –Selena Buttons]

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On February 14th… An Inconvenient Valentine

“PROFESSOR MORIARTY STOOD BEFORE ME.” (The Strand, December 1893)

Happy Valentine’s Day to all the Sherlockians around the world. A chronologically-relevant quote from the nefarious evil Professor Moriarty to Holmes for today comes from the story “The Final Problem”:

`You crossed my path on the 4th of January,’ said he. ‘By the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you’ [FINA]

Source:
My source for this thought is A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (“Tressa”). They feel as I do that the middle of February should at least be the 15th of February, though.

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On February 13th… Train Robbery!

Here, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, is what the evil criminal Count Negretto Sylvius was up to on this day, according to the “squat notebook” in Holmes’s table drawer:

“It’s all here, Count. The real facts as to the death of old Mrs. Harold, who left you the Blymer estate, which you so rapidly gambled away.”
“You are dreaming!”
“And the complete life history of Miss Minnie Warrender.”
“Tut! You will make nothing of that!”
“Plenty more here, Count. Here is the robbery in the train-de-luxe to the Riviera on February 13th, 1892. Here is the forged cheque in the same year on the Crédit Lyonnais.” [MAZA]


Could this 68-carat yellow diamond be the famous Mazarin Stone the Count was after? It was sold at a Christie’s auction in 2012 for $3.16 million.

Sources:
Information from A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (“Tressa”). [With additional information from Forbes and Jewelry News Network. –Selena Buttons]

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On February 12th…

According to William S Baring Gould, in his biography of Sherlock Holmes, today is Mycroft’s birthday. As with all facts in the Canon, you are welcome to believe or not. One can deny, accept, or create one of your own.

Fact from A Curious Collection of Dates, a great book by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”).

-Chips

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On February 10th…

February 10, 1932: Barrie Ingham was born in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, England.

Who is that, you say? He was the voice of the character Basil the Great Mouse Detective in the Disney animated feature movie, THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE, adapted from Eve Titus’s novel, Basil of Baker Street. I loved this movie.

Information from the book A CURIOUS COLLECTION OF DATES by Leah Guinn (JHWS “Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (JHWS “Tressa”)

-Chips

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On February 9th…

February 9, 1979: The Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper movie titled MURDER BY DECREE premiered in the United States.

This movie starred Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes and James Mason as Dr Watson. It was quite a difference in ages between Plummer and Mason, but I think their acting skills carried it off quite well.

-Chips

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On February 8th…

This note is not Sherlockian, but is a note about the best non-Sherlockian tale written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That is, in my opinion, THE LOST WORLD. The silent film of the book premiered on February 8, 1925 for an industry audience at the Astor Theatre. Though silent, the dinosaur models were filmed in stop action motion and were fantastic, and still are to me.

Again kudos to A CURIOUS COLLECTION OF DATES by Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime Mahoney (“Tressa”) for the information.

-Chips

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On February 7th…

Pickwick by Kyd 1889

Charles Augustus Milverton was a man of fifty, with a large, intellectual head, a round, plump, hairless face, a perpetual frozen smile, and two keen gray eyes, which gleamed brightly from behind broad, golden-rimmed glasses. There was something of Mr. Pickwick’s benevolence in his appearance, marred only by the insincerity of the fixed smile and by the hard glitter of those restless and penetrating eyes. [CHAS]

This use of the name Mr Pickwick in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton” brings the Canon and Charles Dickens together. Mr Charles Dickens, who created the jolly Mr Pickwick, was born on February 7, 1812.

Thanks, Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime Mahoney (“Tressa”) for the information found in your book, A Curious Collection of Dates.

Posted by Chips

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On February 6th…

February 6, 1922: Patrick Macnee was born Daniel Patrick Macnee in London, England.

He played Sherlock Holmes twice and Dr John Watson three times. You can have fun looking up where and when in film books, or I recommend A Curious Collection of Dates, a book by two JHWS members, Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime Mahoney (“Tressa”).

February 6, 1943: Gayle Hunnicutt was born in Fort Worth, Texas.

She played one role in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series: that of Irene Adler, the woman. Her performance is something to watch again and again for how well she became the role.

Posted by Chips.

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On February 5th…

Sir robert peel

The phrase “Peeler” or “Bobby”, used to describe the London police constables, are a result of our next Birthday.

On February 5th, 1788, Sir Robert Peel was born.

He was appointed Home Secretary in 1822. He reorganized the criminal code, which had become too complex and bowed under to be effective. He had a fascinating, interesting, frustrating career well worth reading about. I recommend you pick up a copy of the book, A Curious Collection of Dates, by Leah Guinn and Jaime N Mahoney, both members of our group. [“Amber” and “Tressa” -Selena] They have written a very informative and interesting volume to read. Leah has given me permission to quote from her book for my column for our enjoyment.

Thanks Leah and Jamie,
Chips

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On February 3rd…

Sherlock Holmes Museum Study 4

February 3, 1825: The birth of General Edward Mounier Boxer, Inventor of the Boxer Cartridge which by all sources was a definite improvement in 19th Century ammunition.

The cartridges were used by Holmes when he “in one of his queer humours would sit in an armchair, with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V.R. done in bullet-pocks” [MUSG].

This information as well as the previous two days’ posts came from a new and great informational book, A CURIOUS COLLECTION OF DATES by Leah Guinn, JHWS “Amber”, and Jaime Mahoney, JHWS “Tressa”, two talented and dedicated researchers who have created a great reference material volume that all will enjoy. Leah has graciously given me permission to reprint information from this volume for our enjoyment.

Posted by The Game is Afoot.

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On February 1st…

Terror by Night 1946Something a little different today: rather than a Canonical happening, an event in the Sherlockian world 71 years ago today.

February 1, 1946: The world premiere of the film Terror by Night, the thirteenth film (of fourteen) in the Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

The film borrowed elements from Canonical stories, including poisoned darts from THE SIGN OF FOUR. The film also borrowed from “THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE” with the introduction of Colonel Sebastian Moran and the full name of the murdered first victim. The film lastly borrowed from “THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY OF FRANCES CARFAX” with the use of an oversized coffin that fits two people stacked up.

Watson was played in typical Bruce style, unfortunately. I liked the film – how about the rest of the Watsonians?