The Summer 2012 Baker Street Journal includes these articles:
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp.
Crazy Like a Fox or Just Crazy?: Diagnosing Mental Illness in Sherlock Holmes
by Lisa Sanders.
Sherlock Holmes in Chicago
by Burt Wolder.
In Memoriam Sherlock Holmes
by Leslie S. Klinger.
A Detective We Can Believe In
by Taylor Blumenberg, Jenn Eaker, and Amy Thomas.
Life Imitates Art: “Silver Blaze” and George Edalji
by Robert A. Moss.
The Sinking of the Sherlockian Age: 15 April 1912
by Barbara Rusch.
Holmes and the Jubilees
by Michael Pollak.
Art in the Blood
by Scott Bond.
The Commonplace Book.
Baker Street Inventory.
“Maybe you collect yourself, sir . . .”: Hubert J. Norman: An Early Collector
by Nicholas Utechin.
“Stand with me here upon the terrace . . .”
Whodunit?
* * *
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp
“All I want is a room somewhere”
by Steven Rothman, Editor
Sherlockian pleasures come to us in myriad ways. One of the greatest joys we know is seeing the Baker Street sitting-room—that is, really seeing it, not imagining it. The first one we ever encountered is in the Sherlock Holmes pub on Northumberland Street, and on a recent visit the sight still stirred feelings of great joy. We also enjoyed the San Francisco room subsequently moved to a hotel near Disney World. The University of Minnesota has installed the room made by the late Allen Mackler (“Sarasate”), and Portsmouth has the one recreated by the late Richard Lancelyn Green (“The Three Gables”) in his youth. Others exist both on public exhibit—the Sherlock Holmes Museum, the installation at Lucens, Switzerland—and in private homes. There are also many miniature rooms for those lacking the luxury of space.
No matter what you think of the recent portrayals of Sherlock Holmes on the large and small screens, you must cherish those brief moments when we are allowed to spy on him in the sitting-room at Baker Street. Wherever we look the familiar clutter greets our eye: Turkish slippers, chemical experiments, bearskin rugs, jack-knifed correspondence—it’s all there and more. How wonderful to be allowed in to such sacred space! So Robert Downey, Jr., disguises himself as upholstered furniture? Who cares, so long as we can see his Holmes-as-armchair sitting 17 steps above Baker Street.
Though none of these rooms are the room, they let us dream that somehow, someday, we shall climb up to it from fogbound Baker Street and, perched on the settee, ask Holmes and Watson just a few of our many questions.
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp, Summer 2012, Vol. 62, No. 2.
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