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It’s Still Elementary After 100 YearsBy Scott Sandlin Albuquerque TribuneSANTA FE (AP) - In 1887, a pipe-smoking sleuth with a hawk nose, sharp eyes and a pal named Watson was loosed upon the English-speaking world. A hundred years later, Sherlock Holmes is more than remembered. He is nearly venerated.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 60 stories about Holmes' detections, known to serious fans as “the canon,” have inspired an international corps of devotees whose admiration stops just short of the worshipful.John Bennett Shaw of Santa Fe is one of the high priests of the faith.He is the “Simpson, or secretary, of the Baker Street Irregulars, a society named for the street urchins who provided the intelligence network on the London underworld for Holmes. There are fewer than 300 members worldwide, and they induct only five new members each year.Shaw’s east Santa Fe home boasts the world’s largest reference collection on Holmes, some 12,500 books and pamphlets, a storehouse full of clippings and periodicals and an incredible volume of related items.His collection climbs to the ceiling and stretches across the walls of a special Holmes room in Shaw’shome.There is a four-volume set in English that once belonged to the czarina of Russia. The red leather binding was added by the czarina, who also added her bookplate.There’s also a 17- by 22-inch Care Bears coloring book in which Pepper becomes a Holmesian detective. It has Shaw’s bookplate.“This was appalling to get for Christmas, because who has a bookshelf big enough?” he says.Shaw’s favorite book is The Hound of the Baskervilles.” He has 94 English editions and 25 editions in other languages.The collection also includes 78 T-shirts, more than 125 movie posters, 20,000 clippings, 5,000 periodicals and assorted dolls, mugs, potholders, miniature books and microbooks, clocks and board games. It includes a pipe tamper, a brassdoor knocker and the publications of the Sherlock Holmes Society of Western Australia.And it has a Texas license plate, CCXXI-B, Holmes' address: 221B Baker Street.“Imagine someone in Texas knowing enough I^atin to do that, Shaw says.Shaw once directed a Catholic center in Tulsa, Okla., after retiring from careers as an oil well drilling, undertaker and bookstore owner.“They all dealt with holes. One was holy. Oh, that’s bad,” says Shaw, a man with a predilection for puns.Shaw, 73, has been amassing Holmesiana diligently for half a century. He started casually in 1937 with two books and a notion that it would be nice to build a reference collection about Holmes.Over the years, Shaw built several collections. The University of Tulsa got those on Stephen Crane, T.S. Eliot and the history of printing. When the Shaws moved to Santa Fe, they kept only their cookbooks, books on the Southwest and the Holmes collection. The Holmes collection is still growing at an average of 50 books a month.My wife collects only miniature books, which is sensible,” says Shaw, looking around his packed, tidy study.Dorothy Shaw also spent five years constructing a miniature replica of 221B Baker Street. It’s now on permanent display at the University of Minnesota, where Shaw has willed his collection.Shaw’s collection beckons to the curious and the serious from near and far.He complains cheerfully aboutthe two days a British Broadcasting Co. crew recently spent filming at his home among the pinons. They photographed everything except the Sherlock Holmes bikini panties with a cartoon character in a deerstalker cap, he said.Smithsonian Magazine visited this past year. A German film crew came too. Shaw frequently allows visitors to use his library for research, and he answers a dozen or so letters a week. His phone rings constantly with invitations.What is it about Holmes that inspires the fervor?“He's a world figure, what Jungians call and archetype,” Shaw says. “Like Mother Earth or Uncle Sam.In the Sherlockian view. Holmes lives in a literal sense — in Sussex, raising bees, having learned the secrets of longevity through beekeeping.But he also lives as myth and symbol “because he has all the qualities of a hero, Shaw says.Holmes was a leader; he was successful — “Americans especially like that,” Shaw says — he was honest, he pursued justice and he was considerate and loyal to his friends.“We don’t have any real, unsullied leaders,” Shaw says.Shaw gives a lot of the credit for the mystique to Conan Doyle’s masterful creation of character.“If you know something about him, you want to know a lot about him,” Shaw says, citing three articles on the subject of Holmes’ supposed color-blindness as an example.DR. L.E. TRABAUDO, M.D,announces that he will be retiring from practice on 1 August, 1987DR. DUANE VANDERSLICE, M.D.Diplomate American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Fellow American College Ob stetrics and Gynecology will establish a practice in Obstetrics and Gynecology at 816 West Maple Street on 1 June, 1987 and has agreed to assume care of Dr Trabaudo s patients when he leavesCall 327-3634for appointments and information
Newspaper Details
Farmington Daily Times
Farmington, New Mexico, US
Sun, Apr 05, 1987
Page 17
Full Page
Clipped by
Hayner P.
IL, USA 28 Nov 2018
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