The Spring 2020 Baker Street Journal includes these articles:
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp.
A Word from Wiggins
by Michael H. Kean.
Just His Type: An Analysis of the Découpé Warning in The Hound of the Baskervilles
by Jessica Schilling.
The Faith Life of Sherlock Holmes
by Wilson D. Rogers, Jr.
A Short Surplice
by M. A. K. Duggan.
The Intuition of Sherlock Holmes
by Jim Webb.
A Reexamination of the Reichenbach Fall
by Derrick Belanger.
A Harding Misadventure
by Nicholas Utechin.
The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes
by Bruce Dettman.
The Commonplace Book.
Baker Street Inventory.
The 2020 BSI Weekend in Brief.
Reflections on the “Building an Archive” Exhibition and Symposium
by Ashley D. Polasek.
“Stand with me here upon the terrace . . .”
Whodunit?
* * *
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp
“A real nice clambake”
by Steven Rothman, Editor
Ours is an unusual pastime. And our annual Sherlockian Birthday Weekend (which now lasts almost a week) may be the oddest part. Every year—during what are often the coldest, wettest days in the Mid-Atlantic region—Sherlockians come in the hundreds from around the globe. Months in advance, their calendars have been cleared to allow them to be away from work just days after the whole world had shut down at the end of December. They risk snow, flu, job security, and impoverishment to attend. Is this a way to celebrate Sherlock Holmes, that most rational man?
We gather in crowded, over-heated rooms to eat adequate food and deal with hostile waiters and barkeeps who seem to find us invisible. The noise can often be deafening. Yet it is the noise of happy, happy people. Almost all of them will admit in a quiet moment (if such a moment can be found) that though the crush of humanity and the constant roar of conversation overwhelm them, there is nowhere else they would rather be.
The whole is akin to a large reunion-cum-professional conference. Despite the meals, toasts, meetings, talks, lectures, and honors, it is more like a family reunion than a college reunion. Drawn together by a shared love rather than blood, business, or educational ties, everyone is genuinely happy to see everyone else: old friends and new. Though most have not been together since the year before, they all care about how what cards life has dealt one another over the previous twelve months.
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp, Spring 2020, Vol. 70, No. 1.
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