I am enthusiastic about CRIME SCENE SKETCHES: about its concept of expanding the reader's knowledge of The Watsonian Canon, about its filling a need in the understanding of Holmes and his methods and results that we all want, and about the fact that this book is in the grand tradition of strict, careful, basic explication of The Sixty stories.

Many years ago Christopher Morley said, "Never has so much been written by so many for so few." This still applies and is more apparent and more amazing each year. The last decade or so has seen an incredible proliferation of material about Mr. Sherlock Holmes, his life, work, times and influence, and, alas, much that uses him and his milieu as a springboard into the fanciful world of perverted history, the frightening science fictional future, and worse, into what might have been. Most of these writings are pot-boiling puerile productions, poor in concept, shakily based on the rock of The Canon, usually written (I almost used the word 'executed' but that would be inciting to riot) in a style reminiscent of the ninth grade English class assignment to do a piece of fiction.

I should mention that I have been reading, expounding on and collecting Holmesiana for over forty years. As one who has attempted - and what a task to collect everything about Our Hero I admit that I have been remarkably uncritical about what I have acquired. But as one who never tires of reading the Holmesian stories, I do admit that most which has been added to my shelves (I refer here to material that is new, not to the many fine and valuable reprints of earlier works) is but a waste of paper and ink and my valuble space.

As far ago as 1942, Vincent Starrett wrote a letter to Edgar W. Smith in which he said, "Do you feel a certain mild dismay about the recent trend in our Sherlock scholarship toward facetiousness? I do. It was probably inevitable, but somehow it was more fun (I think) when we pretended to be serious. I know S.C. Roberts feels that way too. In a recent letter he said that some of the pieces now being written 'let down' the whole subject, and I agree with him. There is almost malice in some of them, I think. It's hard to draw the line, to be sure, between a playful scholarship and outright mockery and malevolence: but there is a line, and it should be drawn or we are going to make the whole subject (and ourselves) ridiculous." (1) And eleven years later in an editorial comment on the Starrett letter Edgar W. Smith said "There are enough facets of the saga still to be explored to make unnecessary any resort to the facetious or the half-baked. If we approach our task of writing about the Writings with the sincerity and the objectivity that Holmes himself would have liked ... we shall, after all, have more fun if we try heavily to be funny. And, if and when we do occasionally put our tongue in our cheek, we shall not run the risk of biting it off." (2)

Yes, it is an oft recurring problem: when does scholarship become cheap, mental exercise or a vulgar faked attempt to be counted a Scholar? Of course, of late some of it is being done just for money, one of the oldest professional motivations. In The Sherlock Holmes Centenary issue of JOHN O'LONDON'S WEEKLY Bernard Darwin addresses himself to this problem "... I am beginning to think that I too am a fundamentalist in regard to Sherlock Holmes. For a number of years some extremely clever people have been amusing themselves with irreverent speculation. They have remarried the sorrowing widower Watson; they have suggested that Holmes took a harmless professor of mathematics and foisted on him the character of the Napoleon of crime in order to excuse his own failures. Dates can prove anything; ... But the curious thing is that I do not seem greatly to care."(3) Earlier Mr. Darwin in his book EVERY IDLE DREAM said much the same thing. "It is so hard to recall the sensation of that first breath-taking plunge into delights, grown long since familiar. The Fundamentalist always goes back to the Book of Genesis, and I always return to the stories enshrined in the earliest volumes of the STRAND. They are the impregnable rock on which my faith is founded." (4)

On several occasions in recent years Chris Redmond, a young (then in high school) Sherlockian scholar and editor said much the same thing and with youthful vigor: "Current scholarship ... is based heavily on obscure outside materials. The footnotes in current articles tend to refer, not to the sixty Canonical tales, but to a multitude of non-Sherlockian volumes. ... And so where does it lead? I am not advocating the Sherlockian equivalent of the 'Back to the Bible Movement.' I am not - perish the thought - condemning outside scholarship. I am simply objecting to the Perversion of the great name of Sherlockian scholarship for things which transparently are not."(5) Two years later in the same periodical Mr. Redmond had this to say "That danger is the complete disappearance of anything with the slightest claim to being called Sherlockian scholarship. It has not yet happened, but it very soon may. Have you ever read an issue of THE BAKER STREET JOURNAL from its first few volumes, especially the Old Series of the 1940's? The quality of scholarship it carried was far, far higher than is the average in any Sherlockian forum today. The obvious question in response to that rather strong statement is, how was it better? The answer lies in several points. First, it was well-written and written with loving care, genuine Sherlockian admiration and gentle humor. Second, it was solidly based on the Canon for every detail, there were no wild extra-Canonical flights of fancy. Third, the conclusions it produced were well-documented, logically justified, and eminently sensible."(6)

All of these critica agree that there is much in The Canon that can be intelligently explored, that there are many doubts to be resolved, and that there is much that could be appended to the Watson narrative to make for a better understanding of Holmes' successes and his monumental personality. Lord Donegall, long the leader of the British Holmesian movement, said "Mr. Sherlock Holmes, "the greatest detective the world has ever known", and Dr. J. H. Watson, M.D., whom he called "my Boswell", grow in international stature as the years roll on. ... It is, indeed, remarkable that, although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dr. Watson's editor and literary agent, died nearly thirty years ago -- and that unremitting research by innumerable university professors, authoris, diplomats, business tycoons, historians, churchmen, erudite ladies and mere humble students, such as I, has been diligently pursued ever since -- so much still remains speculative." (7)

Recently I have been corresponding with a young woman, fifteen years old and a high school sophomore, from another city. Like so many of the younger Sherlockians I know either in person or by letter she is articulate, literate, enthusiastic and with a sense of humor. She is eager in her desire to contribute to the body of Holmesian knowledge. She has a considerable library and has read much in it and has come to the said conclusion that everything has been done. I hastened to say 'no' and I quoted to her the poem entitled FRUSTRATION written by Dorothy Gray almost thirty years ago: "Originally about / The Master of Whodunit / Seems hopeless, for no matter what / You want to write, They've Done It!"(8) I went on to point out that since that date at least two dozen volumes that are expert, serious in the Holmesian sense, and most readable have been published. No, it has not all been done.

It is still as Edgar W. Smith said in the quotation sited above "There are enough facets of the saga still to be explored to make unnecessary any resort to the facetious or the half-baked." And I am happy to say that in my opinion CRIME SCENE SKETCHES is worthy of the appellation "Higher Criticism."