The Norbury Chronicle

newsletter of the Holmesian Studies SIG of American Mensa

since '88, Baker Street Irregulars scion since '95

"Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed." (Mark 4:22)

Issue L                               Winter/Spring '17-'18

SIG News

Since this winter seemed to be spring-like and this spring winter-like I decided to combine the two. The newsletter was delayed because of the pesty windows upgrade, but at least it's still working.

Bruce Miller requested the scionym ''Grosvenor Mixture''. The Grosvenors and Imhotep (endnote 159) figure in my book Sherlock Holmes and the Mad Doctor. [The scionyms for this scion all come from ''The Yellow Face'' with numbers for the paragraph count and capital letters for the sentences. Alek Matthew Kristola = Young Man (22:A), Arden Cookie = Nurse (145:N, Q, 146:E), Bill Sheretz = One Who Throws Reserve to the Wind (33:C), Bruce Miller = Grosvenor Mixture (19:A), Dennis Tomlinson = Dear Mr. Grant (30), Joan Blumetti Santapaga = Woman Who Brushes (34:E), Keith W. Stump = Jack (40), Laura J. Brauer = Woman of a Frank ... Nature (60:B), Lu Ann Thompson = Her Mother's Pet (145:E), Mark Quire = Self-contained Man (33:B), Martin V. Ruppert = Man ... Intelligent-looking (144:B), Michael Halm = Friend at Norbury (122:E), Milton Toby = A Left-handed Man (21:G), Patrice Mooney = Woman of ... Open Nature (60:B), Peggy Stapledon = Mrs. Hebron (37:C), Peter Blau = Frank Open (60:B), Razilee Purdue = Amber Mouthpiece (11:G), Robert Hubbard = Muscular Man (16:D), Robin Trent = Person Who Is Watching (53:C), Shirley Starke = Faithful ... Woman (145:H), Stacey Shaffer = Woman of an Open, Frank Nature (60:B), Stanley Wyllie = Our Page Boy (4:A), Steve Emecz = Muscular Energetic Fellow (21:L)]

Elise Gibney had trouble with the links at the Holmesian Studies webpage. I have fixed some. If reader find any others please clue me in.

David S. Nelson mentioned that he is also a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle, which prompts the question, ''Which non-Sherlock Holmes work of Doyle is your favorite?'' Is it The White Company, the Prof. Challenger stories, the Brigadier Gerald stories or something else?

Holmes and Lovecraft

Bob Brinkman mentioned Shadows over Baker Street's ''wonderful content'' and that he's also a Lovecraft-lover, so I recommended the crossover novel The Dreaming Detective by Ralph E. Vaughan. I have yet to get his other Sherlock Holmes book, The Adventure of the Ancient Gods, mentioned in the back of that book, though I did recently re-watch the Night Gallery episode ''Prof. Peabody's Last Lecture'' by Jerrold Freedman. In searching for the Ancient Gods I found other crossovers: Vaughan's Cthulhu Mythos Adventures, The Coils of Time and Other Stories, Sherlock Holmes and James Lovegrove's Shadwell Shadows and Lois H. Gresh's Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu.

''New'' Old Stories

Bruce Miller recommended The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories edited by Otto Penzler, which I found at the local library. I was pleasantly surprised that many of them where new to me. My notes seemed to have gotten mixed however so I am not sure where the following came from:

''The Hebraic Breastplate'' is dated March 1894, involving a robbery at the Belmont St. Museum and ''Moonlight Madonna'' one at the Pembroke Museum and ''Murder by Proxy'' by Richard Gordon involves stolen corpses from St. Anthony's Hospital. ''The Case of the Disloyal Servant'' involved the kingdom of Molstein, ''The Case of Relative Jealousy'' the kingdom of Crolgaria and ''The Case of the Coptic Cross'' the Maharaja of Khirsu. ''The Singular Case of the White cockrell'' involves voodoo. ''The Adventure of the Haunted Bagpipe'' involved Moriarty and the Black Death. Arthur Chapman's ''The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes'' featured a visit by C. Auguste Dupin. In ''The Adventure of the Second Swag'' Doyle and Baronet George Newnes electrocute Holmes!

Time Travel

We also recently discovered an interesting new way to time travel back to Holmes' era at https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1881. Many are medical terms that Dr. Watson would likely keep up on, being a better physician than Doyle. Each is a link to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, others which might or might not be in Holmes' encyclopedic brain. Some he may even have coined hiimself.

achondroplasia, actinomorphic, altocumulus, ampere, anaerobe, analphabet, Anishinabe, apraxia, aquanaut, armored scale, artificial insemination, Australian shepherd, autograft, babyproof, Barbizon, barquette, beachside, bedeviling, beneficiation, betweenness, big daddy, big name, bile acid, bile salt, bilharzia, blood sugar, bocaccio, book lung, breakaway, brow ridge, byssinosis, cardiac muscle, cardiopulmonary, Carolingian, carpospore, chocolaty, choppiness, cicatricial, clericalist, cliché,close call, closemouthed, coaxial, collotype, cologarithm, Colorado blue spruce, color phase, commandeer, convect, corker, cosmic dust, cotter pin, coulomb, countercampaign, cover glass, cowpoke, crackleware, craterlet, cryoscope, cue ball, cutting horse, detrain, diastatic, diphasic, diplegia, diplococcus, disassemble, dollar sign, dumortierite, earmuff, earphone, elm leaf beetle, endgame, endosteum, enzyme, equimolar, eroticism, eucrite, eurythermal, extraditable, fall armyworm, faunistic, firetrap, firing line, flair, floorboard, flyman, flytier, focaccia, fragmentation, fruitlet, fund-raiser, gall mite, geisha, general anesthesia, genital wart, gentle breeze, geoduck, geoid, goal kick, goldbrick, granolithic, gunplay, gynecomastia, hereditarian, hiddenite, hoverfly, hysteresis, implode, incandescent lamp, Indo-Aryan, indophenol, industrial archaeology, infrared, interannual, interassociation, interleague, interlining, interzonal, intracerebral, intravitam, invertible, isochron, isometry, Jacobian, jumping plant louse, Khmer, kilim, knickers, Kol Nidre, live wire, lobstering, lobsterman, manipulable, mascot, mastoiditis, mesenchyme, methyl orange, micelle, microsome, microstructure, moral hazard, motion sickness, mycetozoan, neo-scholasticism, newspaperwoman, nitro, nomen nudum, noncelebrity, nondescriptive, nondiversified, nongrowing, nonincumbent, nonstatistical, optical rotation, orb web, overfocus, overregulate, paleogeography, pari-mutuel, participatory, pastelist, pasteurize, peacock blue, pedal bone, pencil pusher, penni, petrolatum, phenom, photochromic, pilot light, plain-laid, plantsman, pneumoconiosis, polemicize, Port du Salut, Port Salut, precritical, preethical, previable, prismoid, prosecco, Przewalski's horse, punch card, pyrocatechol, raggedy, rattlesnake plantain, rebbe, reconstructionism, rent strike, retentivity, rising rhythm, salt cedar, sauna, scalloper, scissor-tailed flycatcher, secateur, semipermanent, Semitist, shoptalk, short ton, silicosis, simoleon, simplistic, slicker, smog, smoking lamp, sonnet sequence, sotol, spectrophotometer, Spencerianism, spermatogenesis, sphingosine, squatty, squawfish, stallholder, stenothermal, strudel, subsentence, subset, sulfonamide, summative, surtax, symphony orchestra, tap water, territorialism, three-bagger, throw-in, tilefish, tone color, too-too, toroidal, tree tomato, tuck-point, tung oil, ultrabasic, unarguable, unburnable, uncorrelated, unhumorous, unmanipulated, unpasteurized, vasodilator, verdin, violent storm, walkout, wing shooting, witches'-broom, YMCA, zoophilic