Wild Theories

"There is noticeable, to a keen observer, a tendency in the more recent Baker Street scholarship to advance -- one hesitates to use the word fanciful -- theories in which the scholar presses his thesis perhaps beyond the point of complete plausibility and in which the evidence is possibly not sound as one might desire."

H.W. Starr wrote those words as the lead to his article, "Some New Light on Watson," in the very first issue of The Baker Street Journal, over forty years ago -- but they may as well have been written today. In fact, those words could describe scholarship at any point in the history of Sherlockiana you would care to name. The fanciful scholarship, with wild theories backed by scant evidence, has always been with us, just as critics of such immature works have been with us as well.

I use the word "immature" not as an insult to the fanciful stuff, but simply because that is the word that best describes it. Personally, I love wild theories; the wilder the better, I say. And even though more conservative Sherlockians might not admit it, even to themselves, wild theories are what the game is all about. In the last issue of this monthly, Joe Eckrich reminded us that the grand game is simply that -- a game. This issue, I'd like to spend a little ti me pinning down exactly what the rules of this crazy game are . . . and how one wins at it. Along the way, we'll look at why the word "immature" is not an insult when used to describe Sherlockian scholarship.

Last issue, my fellow columnist made a case for those folk who play the game by collecting or participating in Sherlockian societies. This issue, I'd like to make a case for the writers anong us -- especially those of us who like to wander beyond complete plausibility on occasion.

As I've said, wild theories are the heart of Sherlockian scholarship. The whole "grand game" centers around one wild theory: the theory that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. At this late stage in the game, that simple thesis may seem a bit mundane, but it remains the core principle of the "scholarship." Every time someone locates a country cottage in Sussex that may have appeared in LION, that person is adding one more building block to the argument that Holmes did exist. And in the same manner, every time someone proposes that Sherlock Holmes was a Vulcan ala Star Trek's Mr. Spock, that person is working to prove Holmes's reality as well. The only difference is, the cottage locater came up with a bit more plausible, easy-to-back-up thesis, while the Spock fan reached just a tad too far in drawing his or her conclusions.

Even a treatise on Sherlock Holmes being from the logical planet Vulcan is still an attempt to show that he had a life larger than that which we see in the sixty stories. By helping fill in a bit of that life outside the Canon, the writer brings Holmes one step closer to reality -- a Star Trek reality, perhaps, but still reality. Anything that fleshes out the already so-real form of Sherlock Holmes for us is Sherlockian scholarship . . . and playing the game.

Playing the game well is a matter of backing up your wild theories by gathering your evidence from both the world of Holmes and the real world, and then building a case for your theory in a slow, careful manner that suckers the reader into your way of thinking. Done by a master, it can be a wonder to behold. Robert S. Morgan's Spotlight on a Simple Case is one of my favorites of the genre, Morgan building a totally believable case for his thesis that Holmes was pulling Jefferson Hope's cab in a horse suit on the night of Enoch Drebber's murder in STUD. By itself that thought sounds absurd, and it is. Yet Morgan has you believing it by the end of his text, and in that lies the brilliance of his gamesmanship. It's not so hard to make a believable case that any given house on Baker Street was 221B, but to prove Holmes was the horse in STUD (no pun intended!) ... that's an accomplishment.

Too often, however, those who shoot for the highest goals are the ones who most often miss. Wild theorists are often younger Sherlockians whose excitement over their theories causes them to race headlong through their research in an attempt to build a case. Their use of the English language as a persuasive tool is often not yet fully developed either, and the result is not up to standards that their critics have based on the works of seasoned veterans. But nonetheless, they play the grand game, and if they keep playing, then perhaps one day they'll measure up to those giants of old.

In no other game (except possibly tennis) is the player expected to serve like a grand master on his first try as often as in Sherlockian scholarship. A writer who work seems implausible or fanciful as he or she theorizes that Irene Adler was Queen Victoria's street persona may not have made the long shot, but you have to give them credit -- at least they had the spirit to try. And spirit it what the game of Sherlockian scholarship is all about.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, March 1988)