What is REPLAY?
Following our meetings on the 3rd Saturday of each month, whether in-person or virtual, the Nashville Scholars will post notes, images, and perhaps a quiz on the story discussed in the meeting. Pre-meeting posts may appear to prepare us for the story to come. This will be a dynamic, ongoing page of scholarship. The reading schedule for 2024 is located here.

Nashville Scholars Story Archives for 2024

April 20 — The Adventure of the Three Students (3STU)
Presenter—John Besser

Professor Besser’s notes will be posted soon.

March - No story.
We had a farewell meeting for Gael and SuSun Stahl at their home on Old Hickory Lake.

February 17 — The Naval Treaty (NAVA)
from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (volume published in the UK, December 1893)

Presenter Drew Thomas

PowerPoint video of Mr. Thomas’s Presentation on YouTube
(This file plays as an mp4 video. Pause each slide to read it completely.)

January 20 — The Second Stain (SECO)

(from The Return of Sherlock Holmes (volume published February 1905)
Published as a story in The Strand Magazine - Dec. 1904

Our Discussion Leader is also our IT person. Jeff Steward.
The text and an audio reading of the story are here from
Lit2Go: The Adventure of the Second Stain.

Jeff’s online presentation
(edited from the full Zoom meeting video)

Mr. Steward included a clever crossword on The Second Stain. Good luck!

ACROSS

5. or war
7. city of murderer
8. where the letter was kept
11. Lord Bellinger
12. Abbey
13. common recovery drink
in stories
14. name of a maid and a chip
15. head of state
17. street of murder
18. Madame and murderer
19. number of spies Holmes suspected
20. they didn’t correspond
22. John Minton

DOWN

1. Inspector with bulldog features
2. the errant guard
3. most rising star
4. centerpiece of the story
6. floor covering
8. Indian and curved
9. alias
10. Lucas
15. word used for foreign ruler
16. Lady Hope
21. stains

Nashville Scholars Story Archives for 2023

October 14 /The Fiend of the Cooperage /
Dean Richardson, Presenter

An 1897 non-canonical story by Arthur Conan Doyle

Notes from Dean Richardson
“What is the secret of the island at the mouth of a river in central Africa? Why have two workers disappeared overnight on separate occasions from the warehouse on the island? What do the “curious looking plants” and the “fever fog . . . writhing out from among the thick green underwood” portend? As a storm and flooding seem imminent, what lies in store for those who dare to spend a night in the cooperage?”

The Fiend of the Cooperage first appeared in the Manchester Weekly Times on October 1, 1897. French illustrator, Maurice Toussaint, did 72 illustrations for Conan Doyle’s stories between 1913 and 1920.

Here is a major portion of the Zoom meeting we had at Corky’s BBQ when Dean shared The Fiend of the Cooperage with us. The video begins with Bill Mason’s toast to Irene Adler, followed by Jim Hawkins reading Ross Davies’ toast to Louise “Touie” Hawkins Conan Doyle, Arthur’s first wife. The rest of the video is our meeting with Dean Richardson guiding us through the story for the day.

September 16 / The Abbey Grange / Jim Hawkins, Presenter
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904)

The Conan Doyle story, The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, was published in the Strand Magazine on Sept. 28, 1904, and illustrated by the British artist Sidney Paget. The same story was then published in Collier’s Weekly on Dec. 31, 1904, with illustrations by the American artist Frederic Dorr Steele. Hawkins shared a comparison of the two artists, both of which illustrated all thirteen stories in the series The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

A special feature of the meeting on September 16th was a birthday cake to celebrate Jim Hawkins’ seventy-ninth birthday (on the 15th) and to highlight the Sherlockian artist whose work was featured in Collier’s Weekly, beginning in 1901, Frederic Dorr Steele.

(Background notes from Andrew Malec, who, in 1987, prepared a brochure for the dedication of the Frederic Dorr Steele Memorial Collection at the University of Minnesota Libraries.)

Steele grew up in Wisconsin and Michigan, having decided early to be an artist/illustrator. He went to New York City for that purpose in 1889. He spent time learning his craft at various magazines and was an art editor for The Illustrated American until 1897 when he decided to go freelance. His list of regular clients included Harper’s, Scribner’s, Century, and McClure’s Magazine.

In 1901, “Steel formed a connection with the periodical which was to bring him his greatest fame, when, at the author’s suggestion, he illustrated Richard Harding Davis’s mystery novelette, In the Fog, for its serialization in Collier’s Weekly.” Conan Doyle’s series, The Return of Sherlock Holmes was published at Collier’s between 1903-1905, and Steele did all of the illustrations and covers.

Hawkins introduced a quiz on ABBE in the tradition of John Bennett Shaw. The quiz with answers is located here and may be downloaded as a PDF for your enjoyment.

You must see the exquisite cake created by the Puffy Muffin, a local bakery in Brentwood for this occasion. The profile of Holmes is by Frederic Dorr Steele and captures the features of America’s own William Gillette who portrayed Holmes on stage for over thirty years.

Frederic Dorr Steele’s grave marker, located in the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menan’s, New York, was recently enhanced by a beautiful headstone provided by members of the Baker Street Irregulars. A video was created by a group of investors to tell Dorr Steele’s story and raise money for the project. Here is that video.

August 19 / The Copper Beeches / Kathy Peck, presenter

August 19
The Copper Beeches
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
Meeting at Corky’s in Brentwood at 11:00 AM

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the last of the twelve stories collected as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in June 1892.

Read the story online at The Camden House or here: ACD Encyclopedia

Presenter: Kathy Graham Peck (Nashville Scholars-2019, Irene Adler)

The opening lines of the story. 'To the man who loves art for its own sake,' remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, 'it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes celebres and sensational trials in which I have figured, but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province.'

Kathy Peck’s presentation and discussion. PDF download

July was our Potluck Meeting at Old Hickory Lake at the home of Gael and Susun Stahl. No story was assigned.
We had a fun time playing Sherlockian Trivia Pursuit, created by Jim Hawkins.

June 17 / The Creeping Man / Tom Vickstrom, presenter

Tom Vickstrom brought a most interesting perspective of The Creeping Man and shared it with the 16 Nashville Scholars at the meeting. The group concluded that the dog in CREE occasionally bit his owner because the monkey serum Professor Presbury was self-injecting was putting out a strong body odor.

The story is far-fetched, as Watson himself notes in the opening of the tale.

HOLMES: You may recollect that in the case which you, in your sensational way, coupled with the Copper Beeches, I was able, by watching the mind of the child, to form a deduction as to the criminal habits of the very smug and respectable father."

WATSON: "Yes, I remember it well."

HOLMES: "My line of thoughts about dogs is analogous. A dog reflects 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."

WATSON: I shook my head. "Surely, Holmes, this is a little far-fetched," said I.

Vickstrom paid close attention to the dogs part of the story and presented us with this collage of Doyle and his dogs, with a quiz on the reverse side. (See image below) Go ahead, give it a try.

May 12 / The Devil’s Foot / William Schwartz, presenter

May 20
The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
The Strand Magazine, December 1910
The Strand Magazine (US edition), January-February 1911
First book appearance in His Last Bow, 1917
”WHY NOT TELL THEM OF THE CORNISH HORROR—
STRANGEST CASE I HAVE HANDLED.”
(a telegram from Sherlock Holmes to Watson)

Bill brought illustrations by the British artist Halliday (often spelled Holiday). It was the only Sherlock Holmes story Mr. Halliday was asked to work on. It seems Conan Doyle was not impressed with the illustrations.

Schwartz also concluded that this was not one of Conan Doyle’s best stories. He felt the plot was quite thin and lacked the aura of the earlier Sherlock Holmes stories. It has been said that although Holmes did make a miraculous appearance after the Reichenbach Falls, he was never quite the same.

April 15 / The Reigate Squires / Tom Feller, presenter

Mr. Feller’s notes on his presentation include this quiz and research.

Winslow Hall - the house and blueprint

The Reigate Squires Discussion Questions - Mr. Feller’s notes

March 18 / A Scandal in Bohemia / Shannon Carlisle, presenter
(with assistance from Jack and Sam)

The quiz and game on SCAN were developed by Mrs. Carlisle and her students, Jack and Sam, from Sweet Cherry Publishing's abridged version of SCAN.

February 18 / The Illustrious Client / Bill Mason, presenter

My presentation in February for "The Illustrious Client" had three parts:
1) Who really was "the worst man in London"--Milverton (last month's story); or Gruner (this month's)? 
How can you logically decide between two such terrible and loathsome cads?
What about either or both of them was sadistic, manipulative, sociopathic, or just plain criminal?
Where does Moriarty place on the "worst" list?
2) Why does that plot sound so familiar?  Was ACD doing a little creative "borrowing" for the whole scenario?
3) And finally, the age-old oft-debated question, who, in fact, was "the illustrious client," and why was he so interested?

Notes from Mr. Mason following his presentation on The Illustrious Client.
Part of my Saturday presentation was original for this meeting (the part about parallels to Milverton and what was happening with Kitty Winter).
I will expand and polish that and see about publishing it somewhere.

Another part, the part saying ILLU was simply a retelling of Dracula) My essay "A Tale from the Crypt" was a summary, first published 20 years ago
in The Holmes and Watson Report, then presented in Norwalk, Connecticut, at the Autumn in Baker Street conference in 2007, and finally published in
my book Pursuing Sherlock Holmes.

The section on Shinwell Johnson as part of the Sherlock Holmes organization was originally part of "Masters of the Victorian Underworld: Holmes,
Moriarty and the Criminal Class," a keynote talk I presented at the Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space conference in Minneapolis in 2013.
The attached article was adapted from one section of that talk, presented to the New Hampshire Sherlockian group via Zoom during Covid, and
published in the Spring 2022 edition of Canadian Holmes.

Bill Mason’s summary remarks on The Illustrious Client from February 18, 2023.
Zoom meeting video of Bill Mason’s presentation.

January 21 / Charles Augustus Milverton / Drew Thomas, presenter

The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
Notes are forth coming.

Nashville Scholars Story Archives for 2022.

November Story: NOBL (notes not available)

(The Adventures) YouTube audio
Guest Presenter: Dr. Marino Alvarez (BSI “Hilton Soames” - 2015)
His topic was Singular Traits in “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.”

(Notes from The Oxford Sherlock Holmes by Richard Lancelyn Green)—ACD came to have a low opinion of this story and once said that if he were to name the six best Holmes stories, “The Noble Bachelor” would be about the bottom of the list. (Sphere, 27 Nov. 1926). Perhaps Dr. Alvarez can raise our opinion to a higher level.

Marino Alvarez became a Nashville Scholar in 2000 and invested as Professor Coram. He will join us on Zoom and lead the discussion from their home in Estero, FL. For more about Dr. Marino Alvarez, please follow this link to his Member Listing on the Nashville Scholars Member page.

September Story: EMPT

Jim Hawkins served as our Discussion Leader and selected six members of our scion society to participate in a readers’ theater to present the story innovatively. Participants included Dean Richardson (Presenter), Bill Mason (Holmes), Shannon Carlisle (Holmes and other characters), Caryn Harris (Mrs. Hudson and others), and Billy Fields (Watson). Our tech guru, Jeff Steward, gave us the one line spoken by Colonel Sebastian Moran. Here is the script we used. It was cobbled together by Jim Hawkins from Conan Doyle’s story in The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
Highly recommended for background and understanding of this epic canonical story is Out of The Abyss, available from the Baker Street Books webpage. Here you can enjoy an interview with the editors of Out of the Abyss and Scott Monty, recorded in 2015 on I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, Episode 78.

Illustrations used in the creation of the script were by Sidney Paget and published in the Strand Magazine in 1903. Another illustration was the cover for Collier’s Magazine in 1903, the work of Frederic Dorr Steele.

June Story: MISS

Summertime always gets shaky for our meetings. Several regular attending members were away this weekend. Derek Martin did a fine job preparing for The Missing Three-Quarter by devising a quiz drawn from the pages of Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. This link will bring up the 21-question quiz, with pages referenced for the source of each question. Enjoy!

Here you see Derek, an avid movie buff with special interest in Sherlock Holmes and the films of Sir Christopher Lee, sharing a presentation on the porch/deck of Gael and Susan Stahl, the hosts for our annual picnic on Old Hickory Lake.

May Story: SUSS

Tom Feller led our 18 attendees on May 21 through The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, a story that was one of the last penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. We had lots to talk about other than the story for the meeting. Toasts were given to Mrs. Hudson (Bill Mason), John Watson (Drew Thomas), Inspector Lestrade (Jim Hawkins), and Sherlock Holmes (Billy Fields). Kathy Peck led us in the Ritual Reading (see the Home page), and recently returning member, Alben Shockley, shared a story published this week reminding readers that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born 163 years ago on May 22nd, was an innovator in the field of crime and detective work. Read the CNN article here.

Jim Hawkins brought the new scion pin, and everyone seemed quite pleased.

April Story: WIST

Presenter: Bill Mason
In-Person & Zoom Meeting April 16, 2022 / Easter and Passover Weekend, probably our lowest attended meeting for the year

Wisteria Lodge Notes by Bill Mason - a pre-meeting paper with questions to ponder

Mason’s presentation paper: Seven Problems in “Wisteria Lodge” (a pdf download)

Bill Mason, one of our most decorated and popular Nashville Scholars, and founder of Nashville’s Fresh Rashers scion society, has a page full of awards from several scion societies. Please visit his Member page.

For a full page of Bill Mason’s accomplishments including published papers and books, follow this link.

If you wish to re-read the story, you may do so here.
Wisteria Lodge is presented by Conan Doyle in two parts:
(From Camden House - ignisart.com/camdenhouse)
I. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles. II. The Tiger of San Pedro

March Story: SPEC

Presenter: Drew Thomas
In-Person & Zoom Meeting March 19, 2022 / Our first truly “hybrid” meeting.

Speckled Band Notes by Drew Thomas

Drew Thomas, one of our most scholarly Nashville Scholars, was given the investiture name of Conductor of Light, but he is more like Holmes himself than Dr. Watson.
A visit to his website will convince you.

When Mr. Thomas volunteers to be the discussion leader for one of our meetings,
he goes into Publisher Mode, and we are in for a treat. Here are the notes he prepared
for The Speckled Band, a tale from the first published book of Sherlock Holmes stories,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Mr. Thomas referred to the 1910 production of The Speckled Band as a play. Sherlockian scholar Leslie Klinger, BSI, published a book on the subject. The Illustrated Speckled Band: The Original 1910 Stage Production in Script and Photographs by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Edited by Leslie S. Klinger Follow this link

And here is the Meeting Report of our March meeting. It includes the poem, A Long Evening with Holmes by Bill Schweikert, recited from memory by Mr. Thomas.

A LONG EVENING WITH HOLMES

William P. Schweikert, BSI

Watson binds up the client's poor face
While Holmes soon extracts all the facts of the case
Then off in a hansom to Brixton we race
When I spend a long evening with Holmes.

The Adventure is solved, Holmes makes it all right
So it’s back to the lodgings by dawn's early light
And a breakfast by Hudson to wind up the night
When I spend a long evening with Holmes.

So the modern rat race can't keep me in a cage
I have a passport to a far better age
As close as my bookcase, as near as a page
I can spend a long evening with Holmes.

An interesting bit of dialogue ensues between Holmes and Watson as they prepare to keep watch on Stoke Moran for the night.

Watson: "You speak of danger. You have evidently seen more in these rooms than was visible to me."
Holmes: "No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine that you saw all that I did."
Watson: "I saw nothing remarkable save the bell-rope, and what purpose that could answer I confess is more than I can imagine."
Holmes: "You saw the ventilator, too?"
Watson: "Yes, but I do not think that it is such a very unusual thing to have a small opening between two rooms. It was so small that a rat could hardly pass through."
Holmes: "I knew that we should find a ventilator before ever we came to Stoke Moran."
Watson: "My dear Holmes!"
Holmes: "Oh, yes, I did. You remember in her statement she said that her sister could smell Dr. Roylott's cigar. 
Now, of course that suggested at once that there must be a communication between the two rooms. 
It could only be a small one, or it would have been remarked upon at the coroner's inquiry. I deduced a ventilator."
Watson: "But what harm can there be in that?"
Holmes: "Well, there is at least a curious coincidence of dates. A ventilator is made, a cord is hung,
and a lady who sleeps in the bed dies. Does not that strike you?"
Watson: "I cannot as yet see any connection."
Holmes: "Did you observe anything very peculiar about that bed?"
Watson: "No."
Holmes: "It was clamped to the floor. Did you ever see a bed fastened like that before?"
Watson: "I cannot say that I have."
Holmes: "The lady could not move her bed. It must always be in the same relative position to the ventilator and to the rope--
or so we may call it, since it was clearly never meant for a bell-pull."

February Story: 3GAB

Presenter: Jeff Steward
Zoom meeting Feb 19, 2022

Mr. Steward prepared a PowerPoint presentation on The Adventure of the Three Gables for our meeting. Here are his discussion points and background research on the story—in a PDF format.

Access background notes on the story here
(The link takes you to the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia)

An article on issues in 3GAB by Leslie S. Klinger, BSI. The Elephant in the Room (July 2020) Was Holmes or Conan Doyle racist? (lesliesklinger . com)

Included was a bit of a celebration of the 43rd anniversary of the Nashville Scholars. For the occasion I had Gael Stahl read Vincent Starrett’s poem, 221B.
Here is that audio file as delivered by Mr. Jeff Steward, our IT guru.

January Story: YELL

A Question from David Hayes on January’s story: YELL

David Hayes’ Notes on The Yellow Face
(Zoom meeting January 15, 2022)

The canonical story selected for Saturday’s Nashville Scholars meeting was “The Yellow Face.” In preparing to lead the discussion, I was surprised that some well-known Sherlockians did not like it. Baring-Gould even changed some of the text with which he did not agree. That strikes me as a bit aggressive.

We’ll have a quiz followed by some background information and time for discussion. While you read through the story, ask yourself at what point did the conclusion appear obvious to you. Were you right or did it change as you kept reading? Does Watson’s conclusion that “The Yellow Face” and “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” were two stories where Holmes “erred, but the truth was still uncovered” seem correct?

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