I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere 

Episode 216: Remembering Jon Lellenberg

A Retrospective

Scott Monty:
Support for this episode of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere is brought to you
by MX Publishing, with the largest catalog of new Sherlock Holmes Books
in the world. New novels, biographies, graphic novels and short story
collection about Sherlock Holmes. Find them at mxpublishing.com.

Burt Wolder:
And by the Wessex Press, the premier publisher of books about Sherlock
Holmes and his world. Find them online at wessexpress.com.

Scott Monty:
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere Episode 216: Remembering Jon Lellenberg.

Mycroft Holmes:
I hear of Sherlock everywhere, since you became his chronicler.

Narrator:
In a world where it's always 1895, comes I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, a
podcast for devotees of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the world's first unofficial
consulting detective.

Page 1 of 26
Grimesby Roylott:
"I've heard of you before, you're Holmes the meddler, Holmes the busy
body, Holmes the Scotland Yard jack-in-office."

Narrator:
The game is afoot, as we discuss goings on in the world of Sherlock
Holmes enthusiasts, The Baker Street Irregulars, and popular culture
related to the great detective.

Dr. Watson:
As we go to press, sensational developments have been reported.

Narrator:
So, join your hosts. Scott Monty and Burt Wolder, as they talked about
what's new in the world of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes:
You couldn't have come at a better time.

Scott Monty:
Well hello there, and welcome to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. The first
podcast for Sherlock Holmes devotees, where it's always 1895. I'm Scott
Monty.

Burt Wolder:
I'm Burt Wolder.

Scott Monty:
And Burt, Hey! You know what? I just realized, today is National Straw Hat
Day.

Burt Wolder:
Yes, it is. It's the time of year when all gentleman put aside, their felt hats
and take out their terrific Panama Hats and straw caps to enjoy spring and
summer.

Scott Monty:

Page 2 of 26
Well, I for one am ready to celebrate with the weather here. The show notes
for this for this episode are available at ihose.co/ihose216. There you can
find links to some of the episodes we're going to mention today, as well as
any books or associated sites, to which we will send you. There you can
also leave us a comment, and let us know how we are doing here. And if
you wouldn't mind, letting people know what you think about the show, if
you leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, that would be extremely
helpful. You don't have to have an iPhone to do that, go right ahead and let
people know what you think about of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.

Scott Monty:
Well this isn't really an episode that we were looking forward to, but it is
nonetheless an episode that we felt we had to do. In the past couple of
weeks, we learned that Jon Lellenberg has passed away. Jon was a
legendary Sherlockian, Doylean and researcher. He contributed widely to
the topics, the subject for decades. We had him on the show for a number
of times, discussed some his work, along with Dan Stashower in few of
those cases. And we just thought that it would be an opportunity for us to
reflect on the Sherlockian, Doylean career of Jon Lellenberg. And to
acknowledge some of his contributions.

Burt Wolder:
You really described that very well, because that's the key to Jon. He was a
unique person in that he's one of the very, very, very few, who is expert,
absolutely expert, deeply knowledgeable, thoroughly research, well
grounded, wrote considerably in the three areas of Arthur Conan Doyle,
Sherlock Holmes and also Christopher Morley, in the early and the founding
of the Baker Street Irregulars. And, it's a shame in looking back at the four
times that we did talk with Jon, that we didn't do more.

Burt Wolder:
But it's a wonderful opportunity at least for me to hear his voice again, and
to bring back some of the magnificent work that he did, and the discoveries
that he made, and to put his many contributions to our hobby and this
interest in some perspective. And to share him with all of you, who may not
have had the experience of talking with him and hearing his voice.

Scott Monty:

Page 3 of 26
Yeah. That's exactly right. We had an opportunity to talk to Jon on four
separate occasions, as I mention three of those were with Dan Stashower.
The first was Episode 13, where we talked about A Life in Letters, as they
looked at, again, another biography of Conan Doyle. Episode, let's see, 37
was the lost manuscript of The Narrative of John Smith, and we talked with
both of them there. And then we talked with the two of them as a pair,
finally on Episode 49, looking at Dangerous Work, which was a look at the
Whaling Journal of Conan Doyle. And then we had Jon on by himself, I
believe, Episode 29, for his novel, Baker Street Irregular, which really took
some of his knowledge of the early BSIs and of spy bound Washington, of
which he had quite an extensive knowledge both modern and historical.

Scott Monty:
And to me one of the things that Jon will always be remembered for, and
probably one of the first areas where I got to know him was not only
through his extensive writings in the Baker Street Journal, but in his role as
the Thucydides of the Baker Street Irregulars. This was a role Jon held for
quite a while, as he was writing the first five volumes of the BSI's History
Series or the Archival Series, as it's known, these red-backed volumes that
looked very much like the red-backed volumes that Edgar Smith put out in
the 1950s. As the BSI was rejuvenating its desire to publish, the BSI history
series was I think one of the first efforts specifically in that area.

Burt Wolder:
One of the things you'll hear today is we revisit these conversations with
Jon. And as Scott, as you say, the chronologically this ran from November
of 2007, when we first talked to him about the book Life and Letters to
December 2012, when we talked to him about the book, Dangerous Work.
So it's during the course of those five years that we covered these topics,
but one of the things you'll hear listeners when you hear some of these
conversations, is his enormous love and nostalgia, oddly enough nostalgia
for a time in which he was not alive. Jon, I think Jon was 75 this year when
he passed.

Scott Monty:
I think he was born in 1946.

Burt Wolder:

Page 4 of 26
Yeah, so he had a great nostalgic love for a time in which he did not live.
But then many of us share this enthusiasm for him. But one of the things
you'll hear is how that focus, that interest, that great affinity he felt for that
time, that historical fascination he had for some of these details,
characterized his affection for the Baker Street Irregulars and his and a lot
of his scholarly work too.

Scott Monty:
That is certainly correct. And before we go any further and get into these
clips, I should note that we have a couple of things worth noting. One the
prize for the quiz this time around, which we'll do the quiz after we get
through all of these clips. Our canonical couplets quiz The prize is a copy of
Jon's work The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 13 Biographers in Search
of a Life, that's kind of a survey volume, where he goes through some of the
biographers that had attempted to capture Conan Doyle. Not a single one
of them, well, or comprehensively. I think this was the elusiveness of Conan
Doyle that Jon was constantly seeking.

Scott Monty:
So we do have a copy of this. This book with a foreword from Dame Jean
Conan Doyle. And then the other thing worth noting is we will have a link in
the show notes to this. There is a an eBay auction that we're going to be
putting up for probably one of the rarest Baker Street Journal Christmas
Annuals that you will ever experience. It is the 1998 BSJ Christmas annual.
This is the first time when the BSJ resurrected the Christmas annual
tradition, and has been going every year since. But this was the first
Christmas annual in, gosh, 38 years I believe.

Scott Monty:
And it's by Jon and It's called "Entertainment and Fantasy": The 1940 BSI
Dinner. So in some ways, this was an excerpt from the great work that Jon
was doing in the BSI history series. But he specifically looked at that 1940
BSI dinner, which itself was so important because it was the resurrection of
the BSI. It had been fallow for a couple of years. And Edgar Smith came in.
This was Edgar Smith's first entry to the Baker Street Irregular, and it's a
significant publication. So look for that on eBay, if you would like a chance
to win that auction.

Page 5 of 26
Scott Monty:
And I'm sure we can put the proceeds towards something helpful like the
Jon H Watson Fund, which helps people get to the BSI weekend or to the
BSI Trust, something along those lines. So, we'd love to have your interest
in bidding in that particular item. So why don't we get to the clips? As you
said, Burt, we first had a conversation with Jon and Dan, on episode 13,
which would have been back in 2007. And this was concerning the
biography they had both worked on called Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in
Letters. And as the title implies, they were looking through a lot of
correspondence that Conan Doyle left behind.

Scott Monty:
And there's an interesting comment here that I thought was worth
surfacing because Jon was the American representative to the Conan
Doyle estate. Which was an important role at the time as the Conan Doyle
Estate was overseeing a lot of stories that were not in public domain, were
still protected by copyright. And Jon had a lot of dealings directly with
Dame Jean Conan Doyle, who was the only surviving child of Conan Doyle
by that time. And we talked with him a little bit about what he could tell us
about Dame Jean and her personality and how she approached this.

Jon Lellenberg:
Adrian and Dennis Conan Doyle were sons by the second marriage, as was
James, he was the youngest of the three children between Arthur Conan
Doyle and Jean Leckie. And Jean, thought her father a great man just as
much as her brothers did. But she went about that with a considerably
sunnier personality than they did. She was quite a commanding personality
in her own right. She joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. She did intelligence
work during the war, she stayed in afterwards until she was a general in the
RAF and the highest ranking woman in it.

Jon Lellenberg:
She had been an aide de camp to the queen. And after retiring she married
a retired Air Vice Marshal in the RAF named Sir Geoffrey Bromet. And she
thought it was a shame that her father's papers were locked away as long
as they were because of this litigation, which was between her and her
brother, Adrian's widow Anna on one side, and her brother Dennis's widow,
Nina on the other. This went on a long, long time. And in fact, quite a while

Page 6 of 26
after Nina died because she died without direct heirs, she died intestate her
other kin had to be found. And they went through quite a long process. Until
late 1997.

Jon Lellenberg:
But it was Jean's hope, particularly that her father's letters to her
grandmother should be published one day because she felt that they
represented his life and his mind so faithfully. And it was a goal that she
charged her chosen executor, Charles Foley with. As you said, Charles is
Arthur Conan Doyle's great nephew. His grandmother was Conan Doyle's
younger sister Ida, who had married a cousin, Nelson Foley, who was part
of Arthur Conan Doyle's mother's family. She was Mary Foley originally
before marrying Arthur's father. And Charles feels the family legacy very
keenly as well. So this has been a project very dear to his heart as it was to
Jean's.

Scott Monty:
Well, that kind of familial familiarity, as it were, was essential as far as
Jon's work goes, and we were fortunate to have someone like him who had
such a good relationship with Dame Jean and then with Charles Foley as
well.

Burt Wolder:
Yes, indeed, and I think you can pick up even there some wonderful little
intersections and connections deeper than you might think between Jon
and Dame Jean, because he mentioned Dame Jean's intelligence work
during the war. And Jon in addition to being a great scholar and a great
Sherlockian and a great academic in his way, I think is also a great
American. Jon devoted most of his professional career, as you'll hear, to
work in the Pentagon in the intelligence area.

Burt Wolder:
And in fact, Jon graduated from the University of Southern California with a
Bachelor of Arts degree. And that was the University of Southern California
School of International Relations. And he went on to get a Master of Arts
degree and got a Master of Science degree at the National War College.

Burt Wolder:

Page 7 of 26
So intelligence and intelligence operations was something that was John's
professional background, but also, he felt, and you mentioned this earlier,
Scott to about the time in which has worked with the Conan Doyle estate
was so important. It was a time when he was really Dame Jean's
representative in the United States. To make sure that she derived the
proper recognition and the proper economic value that she should when
her father's work was being used and popularized and promoted and
printed. And I know, she was deeply grateful to him for acting in that role
for so many years.

Scott Monty:
Yeah, absolutely. She really felt like Jon was a kindred spirit when it came
to that. He understood the family's wishes, he understood the sensitivity
with which some of these things should be undertaken. And I think through
his decades of work on Doylean material, he really got a good feel for
Conan Doyle, and what Conan Doyle would have considered. And that
actually leads pretty well into another clip I pulled from a different episode
when we talked to Jon about the narrative of John Smith, that lost Conan
Doyle manuscript.

Scott Monty:
And so first of all, the original manuscript of John Smith had been lost. And
Conan Doyle had written to his mother about this, he said, he'd have to start
it again from scratch. And it wasn't really his best work. First of all, it wasn't
finished. But also the narrative itself was a little weak. Which is ironic, since
it was the narrative of John Smith. And in deciding whether to bring this to
the public, We asked Jon about how he approached that.

Scott Monty:
Again, keeping in mind that he had this relationship with the Doyle family,
the Foley family, and wanted to do best by Sir Arthur's memory. And here's
Jon's response.

Scott Monty:
So was the decision not to publish this... Obviously, it was unfinished for
one. But do you think in Doyle's heart of hearts that he didn't think at that
point, it was up to snuff and simply did not put the effort back into it to
complete it? Or that he knew that it was simply not worth publishing based

Page 8 of 26
on what he had already put out, and decided you know what, let's just keep
this quiet.

Jon Lellenberg:
I tried to putting myself in his head on that very point. And I don't have a
very good answer. He says to his mother at the beginning, that he is going
to rewrite it from memory. We found on the other hand, elements in it,
things he's quoting, and so forth, that were extremely fresh. Freshly
published, they could not have been in the earlier novel, because they
hadn't been published yet. So even as he was supposedly rewriting it from
memory, new thoughts, new material was creeping into it.

Jon Lellenberg:
What I think he eventually concluded is that even if he might have been
strengthening the novel that way, it didn't have much of a trajectory as a
novel as far as plot was concerned. I have no idea how the original version
of this which did reach at some point, a final page with the end written at
the bottom of it, what that was like. Because, as we said, and there's no
indication that anything other than this was going to happen. It's John
Smith, sitting on the couch, in his room, laid up by gout ruminating about
things.

Scott Monty:
Yeah. So that in itself is interesting. But then when we couple it with
something that Jon also said in this episode, where there's actually a good
deal of self doubt that Conan Doyle has early on in his career. I mean, we
think of Conan Doyle now is this master storyteller, this writer who was able
to give birth to characters that certainly have outstripped him in terms of
popularity and attention in the public. Yet, there was a time in his career
where he was still getting his feet under him. He was a struggling
physician, let's recall. And he wondered whether he'd be able to make the
leap from contributor article writer to an actual author.

Burt Wolder:
So he's in his early 20s, he's still working a medical practice, he's in
Southsea. And he has this sort of background of publishing essays and
short stories. And why don't you pick it up from there?

Page 9 of 26
Jon Lellenberg:
Well, I think that background was still fairly thin at the time. He had
published some stories and articles. And he probably had more rejection
notices that acceptances at that point, and none of them had really gotten
him a great deal of attention because of that pernicious customs, as he
saw it, of publishing works of fiction in magazines without any byline. So he
saw writing a novel as a way to get his name on the title page finally and on
the spine of a volume and actually get whatever recognition and credit the
works merits would bring him.

Jon Lellenberg:
He was very insecure about his ability to transition from a short story writer,
in which he was still striving to become quite the writer he wanted to be, to
a novel whether he could sustain the plot over the length of a novel,
whether he could develop characterizations that would be sustainable at
that length, as well. And, frankly, on the evidence of his first novel, he wasn't
yet able to. But it was a very necessary step in his development as a writer.
And I'm sure, we'll get to the actual nature of the Narrative of JoHn Smith,
but its survival provides a remarkable window into the mind of a very young
23, 24 year old struggling writer, who's basically writing in order
supplement his still very thin income as a struggling physician.

Scott Monty:
Remarkable.

Burt Wolder:
It is remarkable. And it's one of the lovely things that with these three
enthusiasms in these three areas of focus around the BSI and Doyle and
Sherlock Holmes. Jon could do some really wonderful synthesis, but it was
also always based on research and the access and study he's made over
the years. He had Dan to the letters of Conan Doyle and all these other
things, the manuscript is really unique. There's no one else I don't think
who's been down this road as deeply and as well as Jon did.

Scott Monty:
No, I think that's absolutely right. And we will hear a little bit more about
that depth and some of those examples right after this quick word.

Page 10 of 26
Scott Monty:
Hey, have you checked in with our friends at MX Publishing lately? Oh, my
gosh, they never stop. And that's a good thing. They currently have three
Kickstarters running, including Sherlock Holmes and the Pandemic of
Death, which has earned a project we love bragging from Kickstarter. In this
case, the Sherlock Holmes tackles a murderer during the 1918 flu
pandemic. That's right, the original pandemic from 100 years ago or so.
That is going on for the next 12 days or so. Still time to check that out as
well as a number of other Kickstarters there.

Scott Monty:
There's also Sherlock Holmes and the Treasure of the Poison King by Paul
Gilbert. And we would be remiss if we didn't also note that The MX book of
new Sherlock Holmes stories, volumes 25 through 27 come out on May 22.
That's right, Conan Doyle's birthday. This marks the 5 million words mark of
that series, over 570 stories. 575 stories, now, 200 authors, 27 volumes,
13,000 pages, my goodness, so much to check out there at
mxpublishing.com. There's something for everyone related to Sherlock
Holmes at MX Publishing.

Burt Wolder:
One of the big events of the Sherlockian world back in 2012, was the
publication of a diary by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that I don't believe many
people knew even existed. And it went back to even before it was...
Obviously before it was published. I think when it first surfaced something
like five or six years before, in any case, Scott, that was the very first
question you asked Jon and Dan Stashower. How did anybody even know
that the diary existed and here's how Jon and Dan told that story.

Jon Lellenberg:
Well, it had been part of the huge trove of Conan Doyle's papers and
manuscripts that had long been locked up in a solicitor's vault, because of
litigation within the family. And when Dame Jean Conan Doyle realized in
the summer of 1997, that she had terminal cancer, she went into overdrive
to get this litigation, which is now into its second or third generation
resolved, and a division of the inheritance, the papers in the manuscripts
between her and other members of the family. And the diary in particular

Page 11 of 26
had been part of this its entire lifetime, in family hands, and locked away
and went to the heirs of Anna Conan Doyle, Adrian's widow.

Jon Lellenberg:
And it is still in the family's possession, in a safe deposit box, at an
undisclosed secure location near Winchester England. Now how we
discovered that the manuscript was there is a story that I think Dan tells
very well about a trip that he and I took up to New York City.

Dan Stashower:
It was actually, in the winter months of 2004, Jon and I went up on the train
from Washington, to see these items that were being offered in the
Christie's showroom. And it was really wonderful. These items hadn't been
seen for years and years and years. And I remember for the first time we're
seeing things like the brass nameplate from the medical practice in South
Sea. Seeing the words, Dr. Conan Doyle, that hung outside the building
where Sherlock Holmes was born. And his medical armband that he wore
while serving as a field surgeon in South Africa, and the South Sea
notebooks in which we see the words, "A tangled skein," written and then
blotted out and replaced with the words, "A Study in Scarlet."

Dan Stashower:
And it's just amazing treasures. But the one item that really stood out, I
think the one item that Jon and I agreed if we had world enough in time
we'd like to own was this whaling diary, which was not only an amazingly
significant biographical object, but also visually stunning. We could only
see one page staring up at us but it was beautiful, because you not only
saw that Conan Doyle handwriting that we know from other places, but
these illustrations.

Dan Stashower:
And we came to find out when we asked to have the diary taken out of the
glass case, there were illustrations on almost every page. I think we
counted 70 in all.

Jon Lellenberg:
Black and white, pen and ink drawings. Some of which he had gone back
later on with watercolors and worked over again. Absolutely, an eye popper.

Page 12 of 26
Scott Monty:
The estimate was between 70,000 and 100,000 pounds for the log of hope.

Dan Stashower:
Yeah, a little rich for my blood.

Scott Monty:
So do we know what it actually fetched at auction?

Jon Lellenberg:
It didn't fetch at auction. In fact, the family was obligated, I suppose they
felt morally obligated to include this in the auction. But it was something so
special, they really didn't want to part with it and they set a very high
reserve on it. So it went unsold and remained in their hands.

Dan Stashower:
Where it remains today.

Scott Monty:
Conan Doyle, the doodler, who knew?

Burt Wolder:
Well, we discussed with Jon and Danny came from a generation of artists
and cartoonists and caricaturists including Dickie Doyle. And they're very
good, but it's wonderful to hear that again and to recognize how much trust
the family placed in Jon and how attuned and empathic he was about
things like the family's interest at that time. One of the things we then went
on to do was to ask Jon to read an extract from the diary, and he selected
this one because it showed Conan Doyle's innate gifts as a storyteller. And
both Jon and Dan remark on these early signs of Conan Doyle's literary
talents.

Jon Lellenberg:
But then this particular extract from the diary, they had had several
disappointments previously to this when they had sighted whales, but they
had failed to get them. He says at one point that he had always thought

Page 13 of 26
that if you saw a whale, you got your whale and he found out that that's not
true at all. It was very difficult to, and dangerous too. This time they did.

Jon Lellenberg:
And the excerpt reads, "Nothing had been seen all day. And I had gone
down to the cabin about 10:00 when I heard a sort of bustle on deck. Then I
heard the captain's voice in the masthead, "Lower away the two waste
boats." I rushed into the mate's berth and gave the alarm. Colin the mate
was dressed but the second mate rushed on deck in his shirt with his
trousers in his hand. When I got my head above the hatchway the very first
thing I saw was the whale shooting its head out of the water and gamboling
about at the other side of a large sconce piece of ice. It was a beautiful
night with hardly a ripple on the deep green water."

Jon Lellenberg:
"In jumped the crews into their boats and the officers of the watch looked
that their guns were primed and ready. Then they pushed off and the two
long whale boats went crawling away on their wooden legs, one to each
side of the bit of ice, the other to the other. Carner had hardly got up to the
ice when the whale came up again, about 40 yards in front of the boat,
throwing almost its whole body out of the water and making the foam fly.
There was a chorus of, "Now Adam, now's your chance." From the line of
eager Watchers on the vessel side, but Adam Carner, a grizzled and
weather beaten harpooner knows better."

Jon Lellenberg:
"The whale's small eye is turned towards him, and the boat lies as
motionless as the ice behind it. But now it has shifted its tails toward them.
"Pull, boys, pull." Out shoots the boat from the ice, will the fish dive before
he can get up to it? That is the question in every mind, he is nearing it in still
lies motionless, nearer yet, and nearer. Now he is standing up to his gun
and has dropped his oar. "Three strokes, boys." He says as he turns the
quid in his cheek, and then there was a bang and a forming of waters, and
the shouting. And then up goes the little red flag and harness boat, and the
whale line runs out merrily." Now, I know I wasn't writing texts like that at
the age of twenty, quite remarkable.

Dan Stashower:

Page 14 of 26
It's so very striking because you see so many elements of the style that we
would come to know and enjoy so much. This is a textbook example of a
writer who has learned to show, don't tell in his writing.

Scott Monty:
The thrill of the chase. I mean, it's so apparent right there.

Burt Wolder:
But it's so fascinating, isn't it? I mean, think about the writers, the great
writers of whom we really know practically nothing. For example,
Shakespeare. So if you were descended to William Shakespeare. Now, I'm
not putting Arthur Conan Doyle in the same category as William
Shakespeare. But imagine if you were a descendant of William
Shakespeare and it turns out one day, you've got a diary that he made on a
trip when he was 20. And that's really what happened to the family when
this manuscript was finally freed up from all of that litigation. And the lovely
thing about the work that the Dan and Jon did was to find these links, to be
able to look at that work, but also to appreciate because of their own deep
knowledge, what it presaged, what it told you about the writer.

Scott Monty:
Yeah. And let's not forget to that this was a trip on which Conan Doyle
would become the inveterate swimmer of the ship. Having been dunked a
number of times into the Arctic Ocean? Or was it the Arctic Ocean or the...

Burt Wolder:
Yeah I think so.

Scott Monty:
Yeah, it was an Arctic whaler. And being chided for it by his crew mates.

Burt Wolder:
We always ask our guests particularly when we're talking about
manuscripts and things like that. Did you have any great surprises when
you were working on this particular project? Well, when we were talking to
Dan and Jon about Dangerous Work, they found a great surprise, a terrific
link to Sherlock Holmes that they found at the end of the diary. And here's
how they told us that story.

Page 15 of 26
Dan Stashower:
It was the next to last entry in the log. It's dated August 10, 1880. And the
voyage is almost at its end, the hope is returning home and they're making
a brief stop at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands and they're letting off about a
third of the crew who were Shetland Islanders. And Conan Doyle writes this
passage.

Dan Stashower:
"Passed the scary light and came down to Lerwick, but did not get into the
harbor as we are in a hurry to catch the tide at Peterhead. A girl was seen at
the lighthouse waving a handkerchief, and all hands were called out to look
at her. The first woman we have seen for half a year. Our Shetland crew
were landed in four of our boats and gave three cheers for the old ship as
they pushed off, which were returned by the men left. Lighthouse keeper
came off with last week's Weekly Scotsman by which we learn of the
defeat in Afghanistan. Terrible news."

Dan Stashower:
Now, you can imagine how this struck our ears. Jon describes, as he was
the one who was transcribing this passage in the log, and he describes it,
he pretty much fell out of his chair.

Jon Lellenberg:
It was certainly unexpected. In this Arctic diary to find the next to last entry
a direct link to A Study in Scarlet which he would write six years later. I was
transcribing it from camera shots thinking this is all very interesting when
suddenly I felt like I had been struck by lightning.

Dan Stashower:
And we went and we tracked down the issue of the Scotsman that he
would have been looking at. Two weeks before that Edinburgh newspaper,
The Battle of Maiwand had taken place in Afghanistan. And the entry reads,
"A terrible and most unlooked for disaster as the fall in the British Army in
Afghanistan. Severe defeat as Burrows Brigade retreat on Kandahar." The
facts are well known, a British force of about 3,000 men had been all but
annihilated at Maiwand by Pashtun tribesmen. This made a lasting
impression, that detail, the army surgeon injured at Maiwand would be put
to good use as we all know.

Page 16 of 26
Jon Lellenberg:
I used to keep secrets at my career at the Pentagon. This is what I was
walking around with for about five years. Hoping that one day we would be
able to actually publish this diary. And finally, we have.

Scott Monty:
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't have been able to keep mum for that
long.

Burt Wolder:
Isn't that amazing? Well you see. What character. Now that conversation
happened in 2012. But two years before, we had the opportunity to talk to
Jon about his only... I don't know if it is his only novel. It's the only novel of
his that I know about, which was published at that time, called Baker Street
Irregular. And it's set in the 1930s and the 1940s. And it involves a host of
characters, including the founders of the Baker Street Irregulars. And I
began that conversation by asking Jon about the 1930s. Was it a period of
history that he was especially fond of, and in that part of the discussion
was one of the very rare times I ever heard Jon speak, even generally, about
his work at the Pentagon and how it led him to write this book.

Jon Lellenberg:
Very much so, I think. It's rather like the 1850s and the Civil War. 1930s was
another occasion in which the political conflicts were too great to be
reconciled, and peaceful matters in the world. In the 1930s case, the entire
world went to war. And that's a period that related very much to my work in
Washington, DC, where I spent 35 years. The last 30 of them at the
Pentagon involved in such issues.

Jon Lellenberg:
And in some ways, I'm not... I wouldn't say that I wouldn't have been able to
write it if I had not been at the Pentagon, but it would never have occurred
to me to write it if I had not been there, I think. The impulse for it, the idea
for it came in equal parts from my BSI history work and some of my
Pentagon life and work. It was certainly helpful to be there and to draw
upon its resources to research some of the wartime intelligence activities.

Jon Lellenberg:

Page 17 of 26
I had also done strategy work in and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
I don't mean his immediate office. That organization, the Office of
Secretary of Defense is a very large one. And I was in what was called the
policy cluster. Some of the work I did was analytical in nature. Some of it
was operational in nature. It had to do with intelligence matters, from
beginning to end, on a daily basis. And my last eight years until I retired
from the Pentagon in February 2006 was spent in the Special Operations
Bureau.

Burt Wolder:
Yeah, it's worth noting to the Jon was working in his office at the Pentagon
on September 11, and was quite close to, as I understood it, to where
American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building. Which cost the lives of 184
people on the plane and in the building. And something else he never talked
about, at least not to me, but certainly must have had a dramatic effect on
him.

Scott Monty:
Yeah, no doubt. Well, Jon took his work very seriously. I mean, he took his
hobbies very seriously as well. There's no question that he was a thorough
researcher who would seek all kinds of sources for information for crafting
a well thought out and well informed story.

Burt Wolder:
Yeah, very much so. And as the conversation went on, just to make that
point, one of the things we got into was the discussion of prohibition. And
we pointed out that just because alcohol was illegal at the time, didn't
mean that it was unavailable. And here's what Jon had to say about that.

Jon Lellenberg:
It was actually more available because it was illegal. It stimulated drinking,
and it stimulated the production and sale of alcohol. I don't think we would
have the BSI, certainly not the one founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley
and his friends, had it not been for prohibition. The BSI was gestated in the
back of Chris Chela's speakeasy, where he first meets Morley and the
regulars in late 1933.

Jon Lellenberg:

Page 18 of 26
And born in the speakeasy accounts for the BSI's boisterous nature, its
proclivity for strange rights, ribald songs about the canon's characters,
some of its opaque management procedures and down to denying the
authorship of A Conan Doyle. And of course, Elmer Davis's constitution, and
bylaws could not have been possible as they were written without
prohibition, and the speakeasy world. To its misfortune perhaps the BSI has
gotten very big, a little stuffy and awfully corporate in our time.

Jon Lellenberg:
But the original BSI Christopher Morley's and Woody Hazelbaker's BSI in the
1930s in the early 40s, was nothing like that. It was a much smaller, much
more intimate, very informal and rather boisterous crew of people who
used the Sherlock Holmes stories as an excuse to get together and
socialize and carouse in a pretty well lubricated way.

Scott Monty:
It sounds like Jon Lellenberg was a throwback to Groucho Marx. He was
hankering for membership in this club that might not have had him as a
member given the exclusivity that he sought.

Burt Wolder:
Well it's interesting, he had such a nostalgia for the 1930s and the 1940s
and such a love of the time and such a sense of fun of the time, that he felt
that anything, particularly an organization founded in that spirit, that
anything that got too far away from that it was just... He felt, no, didn't
seem to feel any deep connection or empathy for the evolution of it and
remained, I think, to the end, very, very fixated on, or fixed on, those original
spirits which are really wonderful.

Burt Wolder:
But as our conversation went on about his book, Baker Street Irregular, one
of the things we talked about was the reluctance of the United States to
enter World War Two, and the public and political complexity. And the
feelings of the time and how they were... How the feelings of the time, were
expressed by different members of those early Baker Street Irregulars. And
here's what Jon had to say about that.

Jon Lellenberg:

Page 19 of 26
That's absolutely correct. That was a time that I think has been eclipsed by
the country coming together to fight the war once we were in it. But as
Europe went to war, we were neutral by law. As a reaction to the World War
one experience of the country was strongly isolationist. And a number of
very influential organizations took shape in the 1939-41 period, to reinforce
that isolationism and neutrality.

Jon Lellenberg:
And the most important of these was an organization fast founded at Yale
called America First and its principal spokesman was Charles Lindbergh,
who was a true American hero if we had one at that time. So between the
advocates of isolation and neutrality, and those who wanted to support the
allies, in particular Britain, in all measures short of war and if necessary war
itself. It was an extremely bitter debate from late 1939, to the end of 1941,
when Pearl Harbor occurred.

Jon Lellenberg:
I think many Americans forgotten or don't realize just how bitter and
divisive that debate is. And I've tried to depict it. Because the divisions were
felt even inside the BSI, one of the three Morley brothers, Felix Morley was
one of the principal spokesman for isolationism in the United States. Then
and later, while others like Elmer Davis, were quietly, almost clandestinely
involved in anti-isolationist, anti-neutrality activities.

Jon Lellenberg:
And you don't see this reflected, particularly in the contemporary
correspondence that animates my 30s and early 40s of the BSI archival
histories. The remarks -- they're usually coming from Edgar W. Smith, about
basically how much he dislikes Charles Lindbergh for the position he's
taking. The BSI were indeed very divided themselves on this. Mostly they
were pro-British. They were all Anglophiles, of course. Many of them
studied in England, a couple of them were actually English by birth.

Jon Lellenberg:
And they became involved with these activities and occasionally, at least in
one principal case and that being Fletcher Pratt, I decided I would write him
into these activities. And then, in the course of subsequent research
discovered that I wasn't actually making this up, he had been. And it's a

Page 20 of 26
story that is not well known, among Sherlockians and Baker Street
Irregulars. It's something I've been very happy to have the opportunity to tell
in this novel.

Scott Monty:
Wow. Given what we know about Charles Lindbergh, now I am grateful to
Edgar Smith for his position.

Burt Wolder:
It really is an enjoyable novel. It's a love letter to people who would like to
cast away, the present and dwell for an hour or two, in those offices on
those streets with those issues. But it's interesting to hear the level of truth
and accuracy Jon brought to his work to try to portray the conversations,
the discoveries, the discussions, the decision about entering the war.

Burt Wolder:
And it's interesting, in some things I've seen recently terms of films and
programs, more of that is coming up. That I think is a fact about people
taking another look back at those days. And last in this conversation one of
the things we asked Jon was if any of his friends or colleagues had read
the book, and were surprised to find out there was a Sherlock Holmes
Society back in the 1930s. And he found that some of his former
colleagues also loved Sherlock Holmes. And here's how he told us that.

Jon Lellenberg:
I've discovered things about my friends. When I was at the Pentagon, and I
also had this very active life in the Baker Street Irregulars. I did my best to
compartmentalize those two parts of my life, not let them interpenetrate.
And certainly not let BSI penetrate my professional life, and I mostly got
away with it. I can only think of, in the mid years of one case where my
name appeared in the Harpers... No, I'm sorry, an Atlantic Monthly article
and somebody I worked with asked if that was me. And I said, "No, that's
the other Jon Lellenberg." And since he worked for the CIA, I think he
actually believed that.

Jon Lellenberg:
When Caleb Carr's novel, The Italian Secretary was published in around
2004 or so, he asked me to write an afterword for it. That really blew my

Page 21 of 26
cover in my own life, because I found that he had a surprising following for
his fiction among Special Operations officers. And I was working in that
part of the community at the time, and I started hearing from Special
Forces officers and other special ops people from coast to coast about
this. Which made me decide probably, it was a good thing that I was getting
close to leaving my coming in from the cold, so to speak. But I think, well,
even in my old profession, you hear of Sherlock Holmes everywhere.

Scott Monty:
The BSI who came in from the cold. No question.

Burt Wolder:
Amen.

Scott Monty:
But isn't it interesting that Sherlock Holmes who was covert himself for well
over a year in the Irish Secret Society in Buffalo and other activities when
he was doing his covert operation in advance of von Bork and his last bow?
Isn't that interesting that it would be Sherlock Holmes that would out Jon.

Burt Wolder:
Well, I never thought of that. But it's a wonder... Jon, we haven't talked
about so many things about Jon. But the good thing is we can focus on
hearing his voice. He was a contributing editor to Baker Street Miscellany
for years. We began looking at some of his Baker Street Journal
appearances, and they are too numerous to mention. And it's a terrific thing
to be able to look back on just these four examples of his contributions and
to recognize what he's brought to our collective interest in Doyle and
Sherlock Holmes, Christopher Morley and the Baker Street Irregular.

Scott Monty:
Absolutely. And there's so much more to explore on John's website,
BSIarchivalhistory.org. It's not necessarily the most intuitively organized
site. There's a lot to explore there. There's some hidden items there as well.
We'll provide the main site as well as a few links. There's a series of five
essays that Jon was working on, I think his hope was to eventually do a
biography of Edgar W. Smith.

Page 22 of 26
Scott Monty:
There's a series of five wonderful essays to help you get to know Smith a
little better, as well. So those are worth looking through, as well as the
editor's gas bag and disputations and essays and blogs and links and all
that kind of stuff. So we will have a link to Jon's website as well.

Scott Monty:
I mean, ultimately how do we sum this up? I mean, boy, Jon and Dan did
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Jon Lellenberg is a life in not only
letters but essays and articles and books and editing and commentary and
appearing on I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. A lot of things there. But he
was really a multifaceted man who contributed so much to the world of
Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Burt Wolder:
Here, here.

Burt Wolder:
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 22 novels, the one he thought his best is an
adventure story of knights and chivalry. 20 year old Alleyne Edricson travels
the world and countering bullies, con artists, thieves, a damsel in distress,
and two men who become his closest friends. Together they joined the
White Company, archers and fighters led by the gallon Sir Nigel Loring.

Burt Wolder:
Will our hero win the hand of Loring's romantic daughter Maude? Will the
chivalrous Prince Edward restore Peter of Castiel to his Spanish throne?
Published in 1891, and never out of print, The White Company is a tale of
pageantry and piracy, heraldry and hope published now in an exclusive
annotated edition, with the original NCYF illustrations in blazing color. Don't
you owe it to yourself to read Conan Doyle's favorite book? Get the
annotated White Company at Wessexpress.com.

Scott Monty:
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. You know what that song means Burt. It's time to
get your turtle wax out. And it's also time for everyone's favorite
Sherlockian Quiz Show. That's right, it's canonical couplets, where we give

Page 23 of 26
you two lines of poetry. And you are supposed to name the Sherlock
Holmes story in question. Now, the last time we were here, we gave you
this clue. A famous year for Sherlock Holmes of triumphs, twas no lack. But
why the morning journey to the butchers then and back." Burt, do you know
which Sherlock Holmes story this refers to?

Burt Wolder:
Yes, yes, I do. That is the strange case of the policeman who hired Violet
Hunter to do his laundry. That's the case they called The Coppers Bleaches.

Scott Monty:
Wow. I'm going to have to say no on that one. No. Shocking, I know. We
were looking for Black Peter. The Adventure of Black Peter.

Burt Wolder:
Oh, goodness. Oh, well.

Scott Monty:
I know. I know. Well, we got a lot of good entries on that one, including our
friend Erik Deckers. Erik Deckers, who was able to come to your rescue
again, Burt.

Burt Wolder:
Thank goodness.

Scott Monty:
And he did guess the Adventure of Black Peter, but he also said "At first, I
thought the answer to the canonical couplet was harpooner? I nearly killed
her." Thanks for that, Erik. Well, good thing we have the canned laughter
available. It covers up the groans and the bleedings. So what we will do
here is we will pull out our big prize wheel and give it a big bang spin. There
it goes, and it's slowing down. Arriving at Number... Number 28. Number
28. And that gives us...

Scott Monty:
Oh my goodness, I hope I don't butcher this name. Speaking of butchers,
Markéta Kočí from the Czech Republic, I think this is our first entry from the
Czech Republic. We had a few this time around. It could be from that

Page 24 of 26
wonderful Sherlockian dash sherlock.com link that we have. We promoted
some material from that website, which is based in Czechoslovakia. So
Markéta, congratulations, you will be getting a copy of the Sherlock Holmes
Society of London anniversary book this august and scholarly body. So we
will have that sent off to you. And now it's time for this episode's canonical
couplet. Burt, are you ready?

Burt Wolder:
I'm ready.

Scott Monty:
All right, then, here we go. "Mrs. Warren's lodger paid her well, five pounds a
week. / To pierce the lodgers' mystery in a mirror homes would peek." If
you know the answer to this canonical couplet put it in an email addressed
to comment@Ihearofsherlock.com with canonical couplet in the subject
line. If you are among the correct answers, and we choose you at random,
you will win our prize. Good luck.

Scott Monty:
And just a reminder, that prize is The Quest For Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: 13
Biographers in Search of a Life, edited by Jon Lellenberg, with a foreword
by Dame Jean Conan Doyle. Fantastic, fantastic opportunity there. Well,
Burt, any other words of wisdom before we wrap up today?

Burt Wolder:
Words of wisdom? No, I can't think of anything. I'm just sort of continuing
my voyage down the construction of end to end user sensitive platforms
that provide a consistent brand experience and treat each one of my
clients' ethoses as if it were my own because that's the sort of fellow I am.

Scott Monty:
Wow. I if I didn't know you, I would have no idea you were in marketing and
communications.

Burt Wolder:
If you didn't know me, you wouldn't want to.

Scott Monty:

Page 25 of 26
Well, until we come back here next time on the 30th of the month I remain
the knowable Scott Monty.

Burt Wolder:
And I'm just left behind as the ignorant Burt Wolder.

Scott Monty:
And together we say...

Both:
The game's afoot.

Sherlock Holmes:
The game's afoot. I'm afraid within the pleasure of this conversation, I'm
neglecting business of importance, which awaits me elsewhere.

Scott Monty:
Thank you for listening. Please be sure to join us again for the next episode
of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. The first podcast dedicated to Sherlock
Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes:
Goodbye and good luck. And believe me to be my dear fellow, very
sincerely yours, Sherlock Holmes.

Page 26 of 26