The Notorious Canary-Trainers
A Scion of the Baker Street Irregulars
for friends and fans of Sherlock Holmes
-- celebrating our 40th year!

(For other Sherlock Holmes cases we've reviewed, click here.)

SEPTEMBER 2009: No case study (social gathering only to mark next month's conclusion of our current case study cycle).

AUGUST 2009: THE LION'S MANE
Tuesday, July 27 - Thursday, August 3, 1909.

This is one of the few case accounts written by Holmes himself, instead of by his good friend Dr. John Watson who Holmes, in retirement in Sussex, says "had passed almost beyond my ken."

This account was first published in the U.S. in Liberty magazine in November 1926 and a month later in the Strand magazine in England. Howard K. Elcock provided three illustrations for the Strand version and Frederic Dorr Steele provided seven for Liberty. It's now available in the collection, "The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes."

This case took was resolved 100 years ago to the month of our August meeting and too and took place nearly six years since the case of "The Creeping Man" which we studied at our July meeting.

Quotes to Note:

-- (Holmes describing Murdoch) "He seemed to live in some high abstract region of surds and conic sections, with little to connect him with ordinary life.

-- "'You certainly do things thoroughly, Mr. Holmes'. (Holmes) 'I should hardly be what I am if I did not'."

-- (Holmes) "I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles."

To read the full text of this story online, go to this Web site or The Sherlockian Net.

For a Wikipedia plot summary and related links, click here.

For a commentary on this account, try this essay.

For other questions to review after reading the story -- to test yourself on how well you have observed -- check out these links:

Hounds of the Internet

The Sherlockian Net

What else was happening in 1909? Click here to find out.

JULY 2009: THE CREEPING MAN
Sunday, September 6 - September 22, 1903

This account was first published in the Strand magazine in England and in Hearst's International in the U.S., both in March 1923. Howard K. Elcock provided five illustrations for the Strand version and Frederic Dorr Steele created six for Hearst's. It now is available in the collection, "The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes."

According to Baring-Gould's 1974 chronology, as set down in "The Annotated Sherlock Holmes," the case takes place several months after the case of "The Mazarin Stone" which is dated only to the summer of 1903 and which we considered at our June meeting.

Quotes to Note:

(Holmes to Watson) "Come at once if convenient--if inconvenient come all the same."

(Watson about Holmes) "The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable.

(Holmes) "The same old Watson! You never learn that the gravest issues may depend upon the smallest things."

(Watson about Holmes) "He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me -- many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead -- but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly."

(Holmes) "When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it."

(Holmes) "A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing moods of others."

(Holmes to Watson) "The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny."

To read the full text of this story online, go to this Web site or The Sherlockian Net.

For a Wikipedia plot summary and related links, click here.

For a commentary on this account, try this essay.

For other questions to review after reading the story -- to test yourself on how well you have observed -- check out these links:

Hounds of the Internet

The Sherlockian Net

What else was happening in 1903? Click here to find out.

For information on other Sherlock Holmes stories we've recently discussed, click here.