The Editor's Commonplace Book (ACD Journal vol. 8)
The Editor's Commonplace Book [Vol. 8] is an article written by Christopher Roden published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 8, 1998).
This article is a press-and-magazine roundup collecting recent Conan Doyle-related notices on subjects such as the Cottingley Fairies, copyright disputes, biographies, Holmes adaptations, auctions, and collecting.
Article
Recent months have seen a great deal written on the subject of The Cottingley Fairies, mainly in preparation for, and in the wake of, the movie FairyTale: A True Story.
The Guardian (17 July 1998) reported that 'a celebrated photographic fake, which once deceived the creator of Sherlock Holmes, sold at auction in London yesterday for close to £22,000, more than four times its forecast price. ... The collection containing the photos was sold at Sotheby's by her [Frances Griffiths's] daughter. It included a first edition of Conan Doyle's book. Mrs. Lynch [Griffiths's daughter] said: 'I wish my mother had been here today to see the sale. She would have enjoyed it, she would have had great fun. She said she really saw the fairies and that is how it all came about. She was telepathic.'
The Times for 27 June carried an brief article entitled 'Fairy-hoax cameras to weave spell for nation'. Headed by a delightful picture of a tiny Tinkerbell posing before a bellows camera, the article noted: 'Yesterday, the Midge camera they had used was given to the National Museum of Photography, Film and TV in Bradford. A Cameo camera which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave to Elsie, 15, and Frances, nine, to take further pictures was also given to the museum. He had their original pictures of the "fairies" published in the Strand magazine, and in 1922, he based his book The Coming of the Fairies on them. Geoffrey Crawley, the owner of the cameras, and the man who finally proved the pictures were a hoax, had intended selling them at auction in March. Enthusiasts had feared that renewed interest in the story, fuelled by FairyTale - A True Story would attract overseas collectors. However, Mr Crawley agreed to accept £14,000 in a private sale after an appeal was launched by Amateur Photographer magazine and the Telegraph and Argus in Bradford. The public donated £2,500; the rest came from Olympus and Canon, the camera makers, and Jessops, the Leicester photographic retailer. [Mel] Gibson had offered almost £20,000 but Mr Crawley wanted the cameras to say in England. He acquired them as part of his investigation into how the plates were created.'
A four-page review of the Cottingley episode appeared in Vanity Fair, October 1997, under the heading 'Fairy Tales Can Come True': 'A new movie starring Peter O'Toole and Harvey Keitel recalls the 1920 "fairy photographs" hoax that fueled the feud between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. But as the century ends, fairies are back-they may even oust angels as the mythological fetish of the moment'.
Ruth Rendell, the author who might have been thought to have better things to do, concentrated on the Cottingley episode in her review of Martin Booth's The Doctor, The Detective, and Arthur Conan Doyle (Sunday Times, 17 August 1997): not so much a review as a lifting of various appealing comments from Booth's book.
Tom Huntington also delved into the episode, though admittedly he took matters somewhat further in "The Man Who Believed in Fairies' (Smithsonian, September 1997). His article was a very general overview of Conan Doyle's Spiritualist beliefs and activities.
Sight and Sound (the BFI's magazine of film and television) carried a full page review of Photographing Fairies in its issue for September 1997. Release of this film in North America (in theatres or on video) is awaited with interest!
An amusing Holmes parody occupied the editorial section of The Times on 11 September 1997. Titled 'New Cornish Horror', it told of the case of 'Dr Watson and the case of the Mousehole fox'. 'You have always attempted to tinge my cases with romanticism. But the basic plot of a rattling good yarn is still the foxy smiler with the tooth, the mystery beneath the fur. The countryside of English agribusiness is naturally so safe and placid that we mystery-lovers cannot possibly ignore this curious incident of the fox in the night-time.'
Reported in The Bookseller, 26 June 1998: Paperback Preview: Greg Bear, Dinosaur Summer, Voyageur Original, £5.99: Written some time ago and now reworked, this is a sequel to Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and an original over here [the U.K.].' Haven't we been there before?
Skeptical Inquier, vol. 22:2, March/April 1998, carried a seven-page article by Massimo Polidoro: 'Houdini and Conan Doyle, The Story of a Strange Friendship'. Polidoro is head of research at CICAP (the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), European representative for the James Randi Educa- tional Foundation, author of various books dealing with critical examination of paranormal claims, and a graduate student in psychology at Padua University. He is currently working on a book about Houdini's investigations in Spiritualism.
The Sunday Times, 15 March 1998, carried a fascinating article under the heading 'Curious Case of the return of Sherlock'. It reported that 'after a six-year legal wrangle for control of Conan Doyle's literary legacy, Judge Eliot Wilk of the New York State supreme court delivered his verdict last week on a bruising copyright case that began with a British bankruptcy and was complicated by an American divorce.' Judge Wilk rules in Andrea Plunket (née Reynolds)'s favour, appointing her as administrator of the copyrights, and confirmed that Plunket's mother, Etelka, Lady Duncan, remains the lawful copyright owner. Quite how an American judge can rule on a point of British law remains unclear to this particular editor; and in any case, no one has yet proved satisfactorily that Conan Doyle's copyrights were revived under the recent revision in European copyright law. Disregarding any of those questions, however, Plunket's first act was to announce that a competition will be held for new writers of Holmes stories, with possible publication of the winning entries. She also hopes to develop a new Holmes 'franchise' before the copyrights expire for a second time in 2000. Dream on Mrs Plunkett! New Sherlock Holmes stories are churned out by the score each year. Sherlock Holmes is public property-and nothing you have been told by an American judge is going to change those facts.
'Meeting Dame Jean Conan Doyle: A Study in Amity' by Michael W. Homer was an affectionate recollection of Homer's various conversations with Dame Jean. It appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune-Utah Life, on 16 February 1998.
A somewhat sensational view of Conan Doyle's private life, 'The secret love that haunted Conan Doyle' 'graced' the pages of The Mail on Sunday on 19 July 1997. Nothing new-just presented in the manner of tabloid journalists.
John Sutherland reviewed Martin Booth's biography for The Times Literary Supplement on 15 August 1997. 'Brisk and eminently readable' was his summary, though he concluded, 'It has little new to add... Booth rides very lightly over his evidence, even by the standards of Doyle's non-academic biographers... [it] has not a single footnote or citation of sources. But there's no need; we have seen them all before."
Biblio, July 1997, carried 'Sherlock Holmes and the Ghost Hunter' by David Thompson, a six-page overview of ACD's relationship with Harry Price.
Jim Hargan's 'Dartmoor of the Baskervilles' drew lightly on the Doylean connection when it appeared as an eight-page article in British Heritage, June/July 1998.
A disgruntled A. Bowler (Llandysul, Dyfed) wrote to The Radio Times, 30 May-5 June 1998: 'I've read the book, seen the film, investigated the web sites and, thanks to the BBC radio drama department, have heard, with repeats, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and now The Retired Colourman (5 May, Radio 4). No doubt the BBC is planning Son of Sherlock, I Was a Teenage Sherlock etc. Could we not, instead, have one episode in which he, the odious Watson, Lestrade and Professor Moriarty, together with any offspring they may have spawned, fall into a mincer and come out as pet food? Then, perhaps, we could be sure we have heard the last of them. But wait there is still The Spirit of Sherlock Holmes.'
What a party pooper!
The magazine of the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections (University of Minnesota) regularly provides highly readable and thought-provoking material concerning items in the collections. Contact Sherlock Holmes Collections, 466 Wilson Library, 309 19th Avenue South, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 for further details.
Finally, a first edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles, complete with its dustjacket, sold for £80,700 at Sotheby's in central London. Sotheby's said the book alone was worth about £3,000 and the remaining amount was paid for the rare dustjacket. The amount is thought to be a world record for a book in a dustjacket. It was sold to an American dealer [Heritage Books?]. This particular editor is glad he does not collect dustjackets!
With thanks to: Richard Dalby, James R. Dent, Michael W. Homer, John H. Lodge, Arnie Matanky, and Dolores Phelps.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
