Imagine if you will, that sleepy time between Christmas and New Year’s Day in 1942. If you are the “eccentric” Mr. Edward Martin Moore, you are spending the day in your converted barn, which serves as both your little home and houses your printing press. You have just come in from retrieving that day’s mail. There is the usual post-holiday bric-a-brac: Late Christmas cards, invitations to New Year’s parties which you will not attend, and circulars promoting January white sales for things you neither want nor need.

Among the postal litter, a postcard-sized envelope stands out. It is postmarked at midnight, Dec. 30, 1942, out of Chicago. The mark over the 3-cent Thomas Jefferson stamp urges you “Buy War Savings Bonds and Stamps.” On the front is

Mr. Edward Martin Moore, Esq.
Pony Barn Press
Warrenville
Illinois

And on the back is a pleasant surprise, as you recognize the signature of an old acquaintance from your Chicago days.

Inside was one of the most memorable Sherlockian holiday greetings ever created: A single sheet folded into four pages. (For those who want a more detailed history of “221B” and this particular holiday greeting, click on over to here.)

On the front page, in addition to the type announcing this as a piece of Sherlockiana which carried two sonnets by Christopher Morley and Vincent Starrett and the printer’s name and mark, is an added greeting from the sender. I am fortunate enough to own other copies of this greeting (including one that is a forgery, but that’s for another day).

This copy is even more wonderful, because it is signed by Starrett in his own particularly playful style with what I call the Starrett Smiley.

(OK, it’s just a little thing. But if you don’t find that kinda cool, I have to ask why you’re hanging out at a blog where little things like this make its owner—and I hope some of you—smile just a bit.)

The paper is toned from living in its envelope for so many decades. You can see the envelope’s outline in the images on this page. Cool.

I had so many questions:

Who was Edward Martin Moore?

What was the Pony Barn Press?

And why did Starrett share one of the limited 60 copies of this leaflet with him?

I’m still running down the all answers, but it’s a mystery worth investigating.

The mystery deepened somewhat when by chance I pulled down a copy of Brillig, the collection of Starrett’s poetry, to use on another project. I couldn’t help but notice the strong musty scent that arose when I cracked it open.

A little card fluttered down to the desktop and I was surprised to realize the card was addressed to none other than Edwin Martin Moore, Esq. (It is coincidences like this that make collecting a rare pleasure.)

The message reads:

Dear E.M.M.
Did I send you a copy of my new book of verse, Brillig, a few months ago? I’ve lost my list. If not, I’d like to send you one. Regards!
VS
27 July, 1949

And inside the book, on the front free endpaper, is the inscription:

Clearly Edwin Martin Moore admired Starrett’s work and wanted copies of his books. And, if my nose is any gauge, this book smells like it’s been in a musty barn for a while. That much we can guess. But we can learn so much more by jumping down a rather deep rabbit hole. Hang on. We’re going in head first.

Starrett himself offers some detail on their relationship in his “Books Alive” column for the Sunday, June 23, 1946 Chicago Tribune. Edward Martin Moore loved to print “nice little things,” just as Starrett had been doing with Sherlockiana leaflets for many years through the press of Edwin Bliss Hill.

And a later brief in Starrett’s “Books Alive” column for Sunday, Sept. 17, 1961, notes that a James Lamar Weygand was looking for biographical information on Moore, whom Starrett says is sometimes called, “The Weird of Warrenville.”

Curiouser and Curiouser.

We can learn a little more about Mr. Moore from Mr. Larry Porter who has conducted research into Moore’s life and leads a tour of the Warrenville cemetery where “Strutt” Moore is buried. According to an online version of the cemetery tour, Moore was born in June 1871 in Granville, Illinois and eventually made his way to Chicago as a young man. As Porter explains:

Early in his career, he collaborated with a fraternity of pressmen in Chicago affiliated with Blue Sky Press, founded by Alfred Gist Langworthy, the press’ business manager, and American historian Thomas Stevens.

In the early days of his career, printing didn’t provide enough income, so he worked in Chicago as a “brass pounder,” as telegraphers were known in those days, for Western Union and later the Postal Telegraph Company.

We can fill in a few more gaps from an obituary in the Chicago Tribune published June 21, 1956, which quoted a neighbor saying that Moore was “considered an eccentric, was a one-time tramp railroad telegrapher who helped found the Order of Railroad Telegraphers union.”

That would have been in the early 1900s. Perhaps it was during this time when Moore and Starrett crossed paths.

For reasons unknown, Moore left Chicago, and settled in the small town of Warrenville, Ill., about 40 miles west of Chicago. It was here that he purchased a barn and converted it into a two-story home/printing press office. As Mr. Porter explains:

The eccentric and somewhat radical pressman lived the rest of his life in a barn that he purchased in 1925 on the corner of Orchard and Warrenville Roads, naming his business Pony Barn Press in honor of his home.

Porter reports that Moore produced a number of small items on his hand press, including “placards, bookplates, bookmarks, and postcards under the imprint and signboard ‘Sign of the Hand.’ ”

He never married, and when he died in 1956 at the age of 85, he left an estate estimated at $50,000, the equivalent of a half-million dollars today. Not bad for an eccentric who kept to himself, and whom Starrett once called “The Weird of Warrenville” in a column. Porter says that Moore passed away, “leaving behind many stories of his larger than life personality.”

In his memoir, Starrett says there were many fans of his work who tried to collect everything they could. He called them his “disciples.” I wonder if Moore was one of those folks? It would be grand to know if a large number of Starrett’s works were among the “extensive library” mentioned in the Tribune story on Moore’s death.

There is however one more connection between the eccentric Mr. Moore and the sometimes eccentric Mr. Starrett that we need to work through.

According to Worldcat.org, a 1939 verse written by Vincent Starrett was issued by the Pony Barn Press titled Scottish Blood. The item is not in Charles Honce’s bibliography of all of Starrett’s work up through the early 1940s. I couldn’t find a reference to it anywhere else.

BUT, there is a poem in the July 8, 1939 issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine by the same name. So the Pony Barn Press publication is a separate printing of the poem.

And it just so happened that the Lilly Library at Indiana University, (and home of the BSI Archive) has a rare copy of that single page. Through the generosity of Erika Dowell, associate director and curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, you can see it here. (Many thanks to Erika for digging this up and sending the images.)

Five copies. The Lilly has one, but you know what that means, don’t you children? Yes! There just might be four more out there, giving me another rare Starrett item waiting to be hunted and collected.

And that, my friends, is happiness indeed.