January 18, 2018

A Well-Deserved Baker Street Irregulars Reward

I’m still a bit gob-smacked about this news from the recent Baker Street Irregulars weekend, even though it has nothing to do with me. It’s just that I’ve never personally known a member of that august group of Sherlockian superfans before. The speed of going from a Bacon number from infinite to 1 can be dizzying.

But it popped up in my feed this post from I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere that Denny Dobry, who runs the White Rose Irregulars group I attend, has been inducted into the group. He was given the investiture name “A single, large airy sitting-room,” a phrase made memorable in “A Study in Scarlet.”

(For those who don’t know, the BSI is the premiere Sherlockian group — one hesitates to call them a fan club — in the U.S. It earned its status honorably. It was the first group formed, founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley as an informal dinner. He scheduled it for Jan. 6th to mark Holmes’ birthday (as he saw it). Rather than crib from the society’s site, I’ll just link to the BSI’s history page here.)

Anyway, about me. In 2016, I heard that Denny was letting perfect strangers visit his basement, where he had created a replica of the sitting room at 221B. Being as perfectly strange as you could get, I convinced my wife that I had to see this.

The first indication that we were in for a very special visit started on the stairs down to the room. I can’t recall if there were 17 steps, but it felt like we were haunted by Sherlock’s presence in some strange, unfathomable way.

Sherlock sitting room stairs — “Dear, do you get the feeling you’re being watched?”

Now that I’m looking back at these photos, I’m particularly taken by this one of Eille Norwood, the British actor who portrayed Sherlock in a number of films during the 1920s. He went to great lengths to perfect his portrayal, going over the stories and noting the slightest detail, and even shaving his hairline to match the Paget drawings.

At the bottom, we waited patiently in line. And then, we were ushered into the presence.

The photo does not do it justice. What you’re seeing represents years of time, effort, and money in acquiring or making the artifacts, not to mention securing the cooperation of a loving, tolerant spouse willing to turn over part of her house to this, what I think is the ultimate achievement of a Sherlock Holmes fan.

The details are amazing. I took a lot of photos, but my aging Canon couldn’t capture the details the way I wanted. Many of them are just too fuzzy. But trust me, if you know the stories, you can find everything there. The pipes, the Persian slipper with the tobacco, the Sporting News paper (called “the Pink’Un” because it was printed on pink paper — it was an original, sealed in plastic, and time has faded its color, but it was authentic). Even the VR on the wall, written with the help of his trembling Wembley (couldn’t resist a Firesign Theatre reference).

There are even false windows that look out over Baker Street. The effect is so perfect that it’s easy to forget you’re in a basement in central Pennsylvania. I couldn’t resist dropping into Holmes’ chair to read the local newspapers, in my case the Sun newspaper from Hummelstown.