Future Muttoneater inductee Kfactor has designed an especially snappy emblem for the upcoming November 9th meeting. Kudos and Congratulations! “We can’t do anything in a minute, run through the free Latin translator comes out something like
Nos non proficio quisquam in brevis vicis.
Everything always sounds better in Latin- or at least it sounds more legitimate and important! Membership cards for the Second Street Irregulars is the next project.
Second choice for the vote
The curved pipe, deerstalker cap and Inverness cape were not the invention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sidney Paget, the illustrator for The Strand magazine which first published the Sherlock Holmes stories, concocted the pipe and cap, but it was American actor, William Gillette who made these props famous.
Mr. Gillette was a big star of the late Victorian stage, under the wing of the legendary Charles Frohman who managed the careers of many famous actors such as Maude Adams, Billie Burke, John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, Nat Goodwin, George du Maurier, Marie Tempest, Seymour Hicks, and Ellaline Terris, to name but a few. Frohman would die in 1915 in the sinking of the Lusitania, quoting Barrie as the ship was going down in lines from Peter Pan – “Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.”
A proposed field trip for the spring or summer meeting is Gillette’s Castle- a bizarre construction of Gillette’s own design which was finished in 1919. The castle overlooks the Connecticut River in East Haddam, and can be reached by a ride on an old steam train from Essex station. Even Conan Doyle would approve! http://www.essexsteamtrain.com/gillette.html
About the only time it is good to be “irregular”is when it has to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his super sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes, from time to time, would employ the services of the street urchins, from London’s lower rungs of society to perform small but important tasks in his quest to unravel the deepest mysteries . This little impromptu brigade became known as the “Baker Street Irregulars”, and were praised by the Master Holmes himself, - for every person, even a child, can be sharp, observant and useful – and indispensible in helping to solve a crime.
Watson first encountered the Irregulars in A Study in Scarlet, describing them as “six dirty little scoundrels [who] stood in line like so many disreptuable statuettes.” Their chief was the energetic and inventive Wiggins. Holmes said to Watson about them: “There’s more work to be gotten out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force…The mere sight of an official looking person seals men’s lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organization.”
The original Second Street Irregulars also began with six “urchins” in 1993, borrowing their title from Conan Doyle’s little sleuths. And so, the new band of Second Street Irregulars can take a page, literally from their book!
