ATTENTA: This post is about a long-lost report on the first official Baker Street Irregulars dinner in 1934. It shows the value of the media reporting on the Irregulars and their activities. You can learn much more about the media and its relationship with BSI on September 21, when Mattias Boström will be the 2024 speaker for The Baker Street Irregulars Trust. For more information and to register, use this link.

A hidden gem

The last page of Vincent Starrett’s scrapbook has held a secret for 90 years.

Above: A photograph from the last page of Vincent Starrett’s scrapbook. Don’t try to squint too hard at the above photo. We will break it down a few paragraphs at a time in the post below.

One of my most valued treasures is a scrapbook that once belonged to Vincent Starrett. I purchased it at auction several years ago and have looked through it multiple times over the years. But like Dr. Watson, or maybe even Lestrade, I missed an extraordinary bit of news. In other words, I saw something but did not observe it.

To understand what I’m talking about, I have to describe Starrett’s particular style of what we used to call page paste-up. To get as many stories on a page of his scrapbook as possible, he would cut and paste stories to fit around each other.

More importantly, he would paste stories OVER other stories. In fact, on the last page of his thick scrapbook, he actually pasted stories three levels deep.

Perhaps that explains why I’ve never paid much attention to the story headlined “Book Marks for Today.” It was on a page next to a report on the death of Walter Paget, whom many (including Starrett) believed to be the model his brother Sidney used to draw Sherlock Holmes for The Strand magazine.

Certainly the headline for the story didn’t do much to attract the eye. “Book Marks for Today” sounds rather dull and offers no hint at what follows. In fact, “Book Marks for Today” was a regular feature headline used by Harry Hansen, literary critic and columnist for the New York World-Telegram.

Hansen’s column was published in the New York World-Telegram for December 12, 1934, as Starrett noted at the top. But if the headline offers nothing intriguing, the first paragraph is enough to send a thrill down the spine. Here’s a transcription.

Traffic was stopped on Fifth Ave. the other evening when Alexander Woollcott and Vincent Starrett went riding through the streets in a hansom cab. They were headed for Christopher Morley’s favorite restaurant at 144 E. 45th St., where a group of enthusiastic Sherlock Holmes fans, banded together as the Baker Street Irregulars, were holding their first annual dinner.”

It gets better.

Woollcott was wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat, which he had rented for the occasion and had in his pocket a large-size magnifying glass, which he produced from time to time during the dinner to examine various objects. Vincent Starrett is the man who displayed so well his love and knowledge of Sherlock Holmes in “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,” published last year. He came East from Chicago for the dinner and will sail on the 22nd for a West Indies cruise.

Let’s pause for a moment and consider the author of the column.

Harry Hansen was an old friend of Starrett’s. The two had been young writers for the Chicago Daily News together. Hansen was sent off to cover the Great War in Europe, a job Starrett coveted. When Hansen came back to the States, he became book editor at the Daily News. In the 1920s, like so many other talented Chicago writers, Hansen went East to New York, landing a prestigious post at the New York World-Telegram. Based on other evidence, Hansen wrote this column, although it’s not signed. That much is certain.

Now this is speculation, but I think it’s likely that Starrett was Hansen’s source for the column. After all, it was Starrett who raced down Fifth Avenue with Woollcott in that hansom cab. Starrett would also have known a good story when he saw (or lived) one. It would have been natural for him to contact Hansen with the details about the event. Hansen would not only have loved the drama of the race, but the celebrities involved who would have been known to the World-Telegram’s readers.

We will learn variations on details in this story that conflict with other accounts. For example, it is curious that Hansen says the deerstalker was rented. Again, it’s just speculation, but Woollcott—who knew the city’s theater scene as a critic and actor—could have easily rented it from one of the shops that kept Broadway plays in costumes. In my view, it also reduces the likelihood that Woollcott stole Bill Hall’s deerstalker, as was later recounted by Robert Keith Leavitt, a man who clearly disliked Woollcott—not an uncommon reaction. Bill Hall also laments the loss of his deerstalker in other accounts.

Let’s continue with the transcription.

William Gillette, who created the character on the stage for so many years, came down from Connecticut to be present, and great actor that he is, made a dramatic entrance about an hour late.
Dr. Gray C. Briggs, well known St. Louis physician, reached New York just in time for the dinner. It is he who made a sentimental journey to London in 1921 to locate and definitely identify the Baker Street house in which Holmes lived.
Harold W. Bell, the only Holmes specialist who believes that Dr. Watson married three times, was called on to defend his position because the others have knowledge of only two marriages. At the other end of the table William Gillette said, “What? What’s that? Dr. Watson married three times?” Then leaning over to Alexander Woollcott, who was seated at his left, he whispered, “That reminds me of the two bums who found themselves in the Lourvre standing before the Venus de Milo. ‘Hurry up,’ said the one man. ‘We’d better get out of here. They’ll think we did it.’ ”

As William Gillette scholar S.E. Dahlinger has pointed out when discussing this evening, Gillette was late because he came down all the way from Connecticut. The actor was 81 years old and apparently made the trip on his own—a spirited and brave expedition for someone his age. (Gillette would live until April 29, 1937.)

A middle-aged William Gillette as Holmes, from a photo reprinted in Starrett’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

Starrett takes credit for asking Gillette to the dinner. The actor was the hit of the evening. Starrett was also responsible for Woollcott’s presence. Woollcott was in full form, which meant he was the center of attention.

There is no photograph of the dinner, but we learn here that Woollcott and Gillette were seated next to each other. I’m guessing that Starrett must have been in the next seat, since he was close enough to hear a conversation between the two guests.

Gray Chandler Briggs provided Starrett with images of Baker Street for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The correspondence between the two is a fascinating insight into the development of the book. “Dear Starrett—/Dear Briggs—”, edited by Jon Nieminski and Jon L. Lellenberg, offers valuable details. Hunt down a copy if you don’t have one.

Harold Wilmerding Bell was a man of many interests, including Sherlock Holmes. In the introduction to the Baker Street Irregulars reprint of Bell’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: The Chronology of Their Adventures (1953), Edgar W. Smith calls Bell “one of the first and one of the greatest Sherlockian scholars.” Originally published in 1932, Bell’s book laid out an early chronology of the Holmes adventures. Along the way, he suggested that Watson was married three times—a point of view that has been hotly debated many times since.

Let’s return to the last two paragraphs of Hansen’s colum.

About twenty-five men gathered for the celebration. Christopher Morley sat at the head of the table, and around him were William Rose Benét, Earle Waldridge, librarian of the Harvard Club; Frank Henry and Malcolm Johnson, of Doubleday, Doran; Frederick Dorr Steele, who illustrated the original Sherlock Holmes stories for Collier’s Weekly many years ago; A. C. Macdonnell, the visiting English novelist, who is secretary of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, a similar group, also about a year old; Basil Davenport, Allan M. Price, Lawrence B. Dodge and others.

Included in the decorations about the room was a bust of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but not once during the evening did anyone speak of him. Because it’s almost an unwritten rule of the organization that this name must not be mentioned. It isn’t that they are angry with him. In fact, they’re quite pleased that he wrote about Holmes. But once he tried to kill Sherlock Holmes off, and for that they won’t forgive him.

I wonder where that bust of Arthur Conan Doyle is today? And who brought it to the dinner? It is a genuine piece of BSI history. That is IF existed at all. There is no other account that mentions a Conan Doyle bust, so far as I can recall.

Also intriguing is the incomplete list of attendees at the dinner.

In their highly detailed and well-researched book Aboriginals, Harrison (Terry) and Linda Hunt have a list of those documented to have attended this dinner.

(I’m reproducing the relevant section from Appendix 1 here, with permission.)

The list of names Hansen records agrees with the Hunts in most ways. Some names that the Hunts have are part of the “and others” in Hansen’s report. But one name is referenced by Hansen that is not on the Hunts’ list: William Rose Benét.

Benét was the older brother of Stephen Vincent Benét, who is the better known of the two talented siblings. Both were accomplished poets who would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes for their efforts (William in 1941 and Stephen in 1944.). For us, it’s worth noting that William Rose Benét wrote the introduction to Starrett’s 1943 collection of verses Autolycus in Limbo.

More importantly, Benét was also an editor for The Saturday Review of Literature, which was Christopher Morley’s home for many years. So far as I can tell, this is the only indication older brother William attended a BSI dinner.

It is also worth noting the the younger Benét attended the 1936 dinner at Morley’s invitation. This connection warrants greater research. (Linda and Terry Hunt: The game is afoot.)

Terry also notes that Morley would have not been pleased that the address of Christ Cella’s was published by Hansen. Indeed, word did get out and Morley and friends stopped going there a few years later.

Readers of the New York World-Telegram weren’t the only ones to see Hansen’s account of this legendary dinner. At least one other newspaper in New York state ran a slightly altered version of his report. (Many thanks to The Baker Street Journal Editor Emeritus Steven Rothman for first bringing this to our attention.)

The Watertown Times is based, unsurprisingly, in Watertown, NY. The town is not only a 5-hour drive northwest of Manhattan, it is equally far removed from the city’s revels. On December 20, Watertown’s Beulah Rector offered readers a large heaping of Hansen’s report in her “Of Making Many Books” column. Her piece starts differently than the original.

The play boys among New York’s literary intelligentsia pleased us “no end,” as the English would say, with the Sherlock Holmes dinner held the other evening at Christopher Morley’s favoirte restaurant at 144 East 45th street.”

She then offers a brief version of the hansom cab race down Fifth Avenue before picking up the main section of Hansen’s account. At the end of the story, she quickly segues into a quiz borrowed from the Wilson Bulletin.

It is entirely possible that Hansen’s column showed up in other newspapers too. Like The New York World-Telegram, many smaller state papers are not available online and their contents lie in the dusty microfilm rooms waiting to be explored.

For all the fun Hansen’s report serves up, it is important to note that it was not the first newspaper report about that legendary dinner. It was also not the most extensive report. Next time, we will look at two additional news stories that came out just after the dinner and speculate on the role that Starrett might have played in them.

Until then, be careful crossing the street. You never know when a hansom cab might come flying by.