Collecting items for an imaginary exhibition

 I enjoyed the piece in The New York Times about the Sherlock Homes exhibit at the Grolier Club.

It’s one of those “the story of x in y objects” exhibits: Sherlock Holmes in 221 objects. The Grolier Club is for bibliophiles, so the objects are books, letters, manuscripts — that sort of thing.

In my mind, an even better exhibit would be images of the things that made that character so memorable. The images were all in A. Conan Doyle’s imagination. Now they’re in mine — and perhaps in yours.

For a start, here are three objects for an imaginary exhibition on Sherlock Holmes and His Friend Dr. John Watson:

• A dressing gown. Since I constantly lose pens, notecards, books, paper and phones, a robe with deep pockets has an appeal. Holmes either had several or, more probably, one that kept changing colors, as Doyle couldn’t remember what color he’d mentioned in the last story. Who knows, maybe Holmes had a bunch: blue, purple, mouse-colored.

• A Persian slipper with shag tobacco in the toe. Holmes had tobacco pouches scattered around the mantel. But he apparently kept losing them, and the Persian slipper, which he stuffed in the coalscuttle, was the place to go. Dr. Watson smoked Ship’s and Arcadia brands. I’m not sure about Holmes. Maybe the exhibition will enlighten.

• Dr. Watson’s service revolver. When the situation got tense, Holmes would ask Watson to come along and to put his revolver in his coat pocket. The stories never say what kind of pistol it was. We know that Watson served in the Second Afghan War and that his army career ended with a wound at Maiwand in 1880. Gun aficionados have proposed several options. This is a chance to settle a debate.

I’d also like to know what kind of jackknife Holmes used to pin his unanswered correspondence to the mantel. And I’d like to look at the scrapbooks — also called year-books, portfolios and journals — that held the records of Holmes’s cases. If you want to play along in this imaginary collection, please drop a note in the comments or email me at hebertaylor3@gmail.com.

• Source: The Times article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/arts/design/sherlock-holmes-exhibition-grolier.html?referringSource=articleShare