HOUNDS BOUNDING FROM A YELLOW FOG: THE UNLEASHING OF JAY FINLEY CHRIST The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) was founded in 1943 by Vincent Starrett, along with Charles Collins who wrote the “Line o’ Type or Two” column of the Chicago Tribune, Stanley Pargellis of the Newberry Library, and Horace Bridges of the Chicago Ethical Culture Society. Vincent Starrett is one of the two or three greatest Sherlockians in history, but the Hounds have had others as well, and I want to talk to you tonight about Jay Finley Christ. As the BSI’s historian I have read hundreds, maybe thousands of letters written by Irregulars in the ’Thirties, ’Forties and ’Fifties, and Christ has become a favorite of mine. Of course, like every other even semi-literate Sherlockian, I knew Christ’s work long before I read any of his letters. In fact, the first costly item that I purchased for my Irregular library was his Irregular Guide to Sherlock Holmes. Christ was so tutored, so articulate in his writings, that for years I thought he had been a professor of English at the University of Chicago. When I finally discovered that no, he had been a professor of Business Law, my awe only increased. Christ made his mark among the Irregulars very quickly after first emerging into view. On June 29, 1945, for example, Edgar W. Smith wrote to Christopher Morley: “I am sending you a rather delightful paper by the pertinacious and perennial J. Christ, who has proved himself in this instance, I feel, to have been truly a Messiah in so far as it concerns the identification of the Island of Uffa. The piece is so good it deserves copying – and after you have read it, I shall have a few extras made for yourself and others.” In his fortieth-anniversary history of The Hounds, the late John Nieminski said about Jay Finley Christ joining the Hound pack, that in 1946 there was a spate of erudite commentary by a new contributor to the “Line” who signed himself “J. A. Finch.” It was soon revealed that Finch was in fact the Baskervillian, Jay Finley Christ, then just starting to make his presence felt in Sherlockian circles. One of the most scholarly of Starrett’s band of Holmesian acolytes, he eventually produced some of the landmark works in the field, including An Irregular Guide to Sherlock Holmes and An Irregular Chronology. His first “Line” piece appeared on September 19, 1945, and between that date and April 21, 1951, 126 more followed, as by Finch or Langdale Pike, another Christ pseudonym. A number of them were subsequently reprinted in chapbook form, and today command high prices among Sherlockian collectors. Here Nieminski referred to Christ’s private press, Fanlight House. Christ also devised the four-letter code which everyone uses today to identify the stories of the Canon. Christ was also the first to offer a college course about Sherlock Holmes, at the University of Chicago in 1947. And parenthetically, I think that Christ would be very pleased that his successor as an Irregular Guide to Sherlock Holmes is also a Hound, Bill Goodrich, whose Good Old Index took the science that Christ pioneered to new heights. But Nieminski did not seem to know how Jay Finley Christ first happened along. This is something I discovered recently while working in Vincent Starrett’s papers at the University of Minnesota. The Hounds were still pups when they came to Christ’s notice in July 1944. He learned of them from Vincent Starrett’s “Books Alive” column in the Tribune, and he wrote to Starrett on July 18th, commenting that: After reading Profile by Gaslight, I have been moved (by the true spirit of B.S.I., I hope) to commit an “Essay,” as a sequel to “Was the Later Holmes an Impostor.” I sent the thing to Mr. Smith, asking him whether or not he cares to see it. I should know in a few days. If he does not, would you care to? It is only about 16 pages, double spaced; and I have no ambitions, financial, literary, or otherwise, in connection with it. It was just fun to do. Starrett asked to see the essay, and upon reading it he wrote again, for on August 2, 1944, Christ replied: Dear Mr. Starrett: Your comment on my bit of Holmesiana and your invitation to consider myself a member of B.S.I., Baskervilles, gave me about the greatest pleasure I have ever derived from any of the productions of my typewriter. I accept your invitation eagerly, and shall look forward with a sharp relish to the next meeting, though I am in some trepidation as to my ability to meet the requirements of Article III of the constitution and by-laws. Such an exam could be formidable. I suppose the least the neophyte can expect is a “searching” quiz upon the field of his “thesis” and upon such other “collateral matters” as may occur to the examining commission; of course, too, a member of Baskervilles should know his “hounds” backward and forward, with appropriate yelps, growls, bays and barks at proper intervals; and above all one must come prepared to meet the demands of the Commissionaire, fiscal, fizzical and gastronomical. All this and more (left no doubt to the candidate’s imagination) is involved in the standard, “considered otherwise suitable.” Does the “Baskervilles” use a “Membership Card”? I should be rather proud of one – so much so that if none is now in use, I should be willing to finance the preparation of one. In that case, if I should have one designed and send you proof, would you be able and willing to do a little collaborating on the final text and make-up? This raises a point I want to make about the history of the Hounds, that our certificate of membership was composed not by Vincent Starrett, as I have found many think, but by Jay Finley Christ. The reason for the misunderstanding, I think, is because certificates were reissued, for the first time in some years, after a restructuring of the Hounds in 1964. Christ had died the year before, and his death was soon followed by those of Charles Collins and Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler; some of the early major figures were passing from the scene. According to Nieminski, some deterioration in the formalities led to a decision to restructure both the Hounds and Hugo’s Companions, with only twenty men formally recognized as Hounds as of 1964. Bob Mangler was appointed Master of the Hounds at that time (and I must say that we in Washington are always struck by how lasting these political arrangements in Cook County, Illinois can be). At the next Hounds dinner, in 1965, membership certificates were given by Vincent Starrett, the Needle, to those of the twenty who were present that night, and Nieminski, who was one of them, seems to have thought that they were of Starrett’s composition at around that time; at least he says that “The Needle himself presented certificates of membership to most of those twenty reconstituted Hounds, during initiation ceremonies conducted at the annual dinner.” But actually that rather wonderful formula had been written twenty years before, by Christ. The text read: THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS BASKERVILLES CHICAGO 221B CERTIFICATE OF MEMBERSHIP So & So, having emerged from a yellow fog, is hereby acknowledged and declared a member of this learned fellowship, with all the evasions, ineptitudes, incapacities, subtleties, and good company thereunto appertaining, Canonical, Conanical, or caninical. Short, agile, and unsurpassable. While Christ had asked Starrett to collaborate with him on the final text, Starrett apparently recognized that no help was needed. I read now a letter Starrett wrote to Edgar W. Smith on December 6, 1944, upon receiving one of the new illuminated certificates of membership that the Baker Street Irregulars had just devised for the first time: Dear Edgar: The certificate de BSI is really delishamous. I shall pay not less than four dollars for a frame, more or less at once, and very likely the dollars will be more than less. I seem to measure expensiveness at that figure because that is what a favorite frame cost me some ten or twelve years ago. What I mean is, I shall have my diploma adequately framed; suitably, I believe is the word. Anyway hearty thanks for my sheepskin; it makes me proud and happy and a little snobbish. Is the whole membership to have such a gorgeous thing per each? How can you afford it? (May I send you a check?) I am sending you your certificate of membership in the Hounds of the Baskerville (sic), which – believe it or not – was not rushed through in a hurry because New York was doing the same thing. Our new and most admirable member Jay F. Christ provided the certificates (composed them too) as a sort of gesture of gratitude at being made a member. Christ is a valuable addition to our ranks, being a prodigious student and worker, with apparently nothing in the world to do except teach a lot of classes at the U of C and write “papers” on various aspects of Sherlockiana. He is a controversialist, not to say commotionist, whose plan seems to be to upset nearly everything that anybody else has said about our hero’s entrances and exits, loves and losses, debits and credits, alarums and excursions. Let me close with two related items, as we look back through the years at the Hounds of yesterday. The first is a poem about that Golden Age of the Hounds, written in 1948 by another great Baker Street Irregular, Russell McLauchlin, founder of The Amateur Mendicant Society of Detroit. Its title is “On First Looking in on the Chicago Baskervilles”— Much have I traveled in the realm of books And goodly critics and collectors seen; Round many laden tables have I been, Which bore the works of admirable cooks; Oft had I heard of those Holmesian nooks That white-thatched Starrett rules as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe the pure serene, Or wax in wisdom of Chicago crooks, Till, ardently as in a waltz by Strauss, Myself, as stranger, bent a festive wrist (You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse) And kept a joyous, long-awaited tryst, One autumn evening, at the Palmer House, With Charlie Collins and Jay Finley Christ. The other item harkens back to the reconstitution of the Hounds in 1964. I want to read the names of those whom Vincent Starrett, The Needle, acknowledged as Hounds nearly thirty years ago. Some of them are here tonight. This would be more appropriately done by the Master of the Hounds – but he would blush to do so, since he too was one of the elect that night so long ago. So I hope he will allow a humble historian this liberty tonight. As I read the names, would those present please rise, and remain standing until the end. Vincent Starrett, The Needle George Armstrong Dr. Eugene F. Carey Henry Dierkes Matthew W. Fairlie James Gleason William D. Goodrich * Dr. Martin Grais Robert W. Hahn * David Levinson Robert J. Mangler * John Nieminski Prof. Orlando Park Franklin Rhode Dr. Richard Schwartz § Charles Shields * Jack M. Siegel * Walter Simmons Vance W. Smith David Whiting This is devotion – not to mention longevity. * Present at the Hounds dinner, October 9, 1993. § Still in the Hound pack, but absent that night. [Of those present or absent that night in 1993, still part of the Pack are Bill Goodrich and Jack Siegel.]

HOUNDS BOUNDING FROM A YELLOW FOG:

THE UNLEASHING OF JAY FINLEY CHRIST

The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) was founded in 1943 by Vincent Starrett, along with Charles Collins who wrote the “Line o’ Type or Two” column of the Chicago Tribune, Stanley Pargellis of the Newberry Library, and Horace Bridges of the Chicago Ethical Culture Society.

Vincent Starrett is one of the two or three greatest Sherlockians in history, but the Hounds have had others as well, and I want to talk to you tonight about Jay Finley Christ. As the BSI’s historian I have read hundreds, maybe thousands of letters written by Irregulars in the ’Thirties, ’Forties and ’Fifties, and Christ has become a favorite of mine.

Of course, like every other even semi-literate Sherlockian, I knew Christ’s work long before I read any of his letters. In fact, the first costly item that I purchased for my Irregular library was his Irregular Guide to Sherlock Holmes. Christ was so tutored, so articulate in his writings, that for years I thought he had been a professor of English at the University of Chicago. When I finally discovered that no, he had been a professor of Business Law, my awe only increased.

Christ made his mark among the Irregulars very quickly after first emerging into view. On June 29, 1945, for example, Edgar W. Smith wrote to Christopher Morley: “I am sending you a rather delightful paper by the pertinacious and perennial J. Christ, who has proved himself in this instance, I feel, to have been truly a Messiah in so far as it concerns the identification of the Island of Uffa. The piece is so good it deserves copying – and after you have read it, I shall have a few extras made for yourself and others.”

In his fortieth-anniversary history of The Hounds, the late John Nieminski said about Jay Finley Christ joining the Hound pack, that in 1946

there was a spate of erudite commentary by a new contributor to the “Line” who signed himself “J. A. Finch.” It was soon revealed that Finch was in fact the Baskervillian, Jay Finley Christ, then just starting to make his presence felt in Sherlockian circles. One of the most scholarly of Starrett’s band of Holmesian acolytes, he eventually produced some of the landmark works in the field, including An Irregular Guide to Sherlock Holmes and An Irregular Chronology. His first “Line” piece appeared on September 19, 1945, and between that date and April 21, 1951, 126 more followed, as by Finch or Langdale Pike, another Christ pseudonym. A number of them were subsequently reprinted in chapbook form, and today command high prices among Sherlockian collectors.

Here Nieminski referred to Christ’s private press, Fanlight House. Christ also devised the four-letter code which everyone uses today to identify the stories of the Canon. Christ was also the first to offer a college course about Sherlock Holmes, at the University of Chicago in 1947. And parenthetically, I think that Christ would be very pleased that his successor as an Irregular Guide to Sherlock Holmes is also a Hound, Bill Goodrich, whose Good Old Index took the science that Christ pioneered to new heights.

But Nieminski did not seem to know how Jay Finley Christ first happened along. This is something I discovered recently while working in Vincent Starrett’s papers at the University of Minnesota. The Hounds were still pups when they came to Christ’s notice in July 1944. He learned of them from Vincent Starrett’s “Books Alive” column in the Tribune, and he wrote to Starrett on July 18th, commenting that:

After reading Profile by Gaslight, I have been moved (by the true spirit of B.S.I., I hope) to commit an “Essay,” as a sequel to “Was the Later Holmes an Impostor.” I sent the thing to Mr. Smith, asking him whether or not he cares to see it. I should know in a few days. If he does not, would you care to? It is only about 16 pages, double spaced; and I have no ambitions, financial, literary, or otherwise, in connection with it. It was just fun to do.

Starrett asked to see the essay, and upon reading it he wrote again, for on August 2, 1944, Christ replied:

Dear Mr. Starrett:

Your comment on my bit of Holmesiana and your invitation to consider myself a member of B.S.I., Baskervilles, gave me about the greatest pleasure I have ever derived from any of the productions of my typewriter. I accept your invitation eagerly, and shall look forward with a sharp relish to the next meeting, though I am in some trepidation as to my ability to meet the requirements of Article III of the constitution and by-laws. Such an exam could be formidable.

I suppose the least the neophyte can expect is a “searching” quiz upon the field of his “thesis” and upon such other “collateral matters” as may occur to the examining commission; of course, too, a member of Baskervilles should know his “hounds” backward and forward, with appropriate yelps, growls, bays and barks at proper intervals; and above all one must come prepared to meet the demands of the Commissionaire, fiscal, fizzical and gastronomical. All this and more (left no doubt to the candidate’s imagination) is involved in the standard, “considered otherwise suitable.”

Does the “Baskervilles” use a “Membership Card”? I should be rather proud of one – so much so that if none is now in use, I should be willing to finance the preparation of one. In that case, if I should have one designed and send you proof, would you be able and willing to do a little collaborating on the final text and make-up?

This raises a point I want to make about the history of the Hounds, that our certificate of membership was composed not by Vincent Starrett, as I have found many think, but by Jay Finley Christ.

The reason for the misunderstanding, I think, is because certificates were reissued, for the first time in some years, after a restructuring of the Hounds in 1964. Christ had died the year before, and his death was soon followed by those of Charles Collins and Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler; some of the early major figures were passing from the scene. According to Nieminski, some deterioration in the formalities led to a decision to restructure both the Hounds and Hugo’s Companions, with only twenty men formally recognized as Hounds as of 1964. Bob Mangler was appointed Master of the Hounds at that time (and I must say that we in Washington are always struck by how lasting these political arrangements in Cook County, Illinois can be).

At the next Hounds dinner, in 1965, membership certificates were given by Vincent Starrett, the Needle, to those of the twenty who were present that night, and Nieminski, who was one of them, seems to have thought that they were of Starrett’s composition at around that time; at least he says that “The Needle himself presented certificates of membership to most of those twenty reconstituted Hounds, during initiation ceremonies conducted at the annual dinner.”

But actually that rather wonderful formula had been written twenty years before, by Christ. The text read:

THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS

BASKERVILLES

CHICAGO

221B

CERTIFICATE OF MEMBERSHIP

So & So, having emerged from a yellow fog, is hereby acknowledged and declared a member of this learned fellowship, with all the evasions, ineptitudes, incapacities, subtleties, and good company thereunto appertaining, Canonical, Conanical, or caninical.

Short, agile, and unsurpassable. While Christ had asked Starrett to collaborate with him on the final text, Starrett apparently recognized that no help was needed. I read now a letter Starrett wrote to Edgar W. Smith on December 6, 1944, upon receiving one of the new illuminated certificates of membership that the Baker Street Irregulars had just devised for the first time:

Dear Edgar:

The certificate de BSI is really delishamous. I shall pay not less than four dollars for a frame, more or less at once, and very likely the dollars will be more than less. I seem to measure expensiveness at that figure because that is what a favorite frame cost me some ten or twelve years ago. What I mean is, I shall have my diploma adequately framed; suitably, I believe is the word. Anyway hearty thanks for my sheepskin; it makes me proud and happy and a little snobbish. Is the whole membership to have such a gorgeous thing per each? How can you afford it? (May I send you a check?)

I am sending you your certificate of membership in the Hounds of the Baskerville (sic), which – believe it or not – was not rushed through in a hurry because New York was doing the same thing. Our new and most admirable member Jay F. Christ provided the certificates (composed them too) as a sort of gesture of gratitude at being made a member. Christ is a valuable addition to our ranks, being a prodigious student and worker, with apparently nothing in the world to do except teach a lot of classes at the U of C and write “papers” on various aspects of Sherlockiana. He is a controversialist, not to say commotionist, whose plan seems to be to upset nearly everything that anybody else has said about our hero’s entrances and exits, loves and losses, debits and credits, alarums and excursions.

Let me close with two related items, as we look back through the years at the Hounds of yesterday. The first is a poem about that Golden Age of the Hounds, written in 1948 by another great Baker Street Irregular, Russell McLauchlin, founder of The Amateur Mendicant Society of Detroit. Its title is “On First Looking in on the Chicago Baskervilles”—

Much have I traveled in the realm of books

And goodly critics and collectors seen;

Round many laden tables have I been,

Which bore the works of admirable cooks;

Oft had I heard of those Holmesian nooks

That white-thatched Starrett rules as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe the pure serene,

Or wax in wisdom of Chicago crooks,

Till, ardently as in a waltz by Strauss,

Myself, as stranger, bent a festive wrist

(You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse)

And kept a joyous, long-awaited tryst,

One autumn evening, at the Palmer House,

With Charlie Collins and Jay Finley Christ.

The other item harkens back to the reconstitution of the Hounds in 1964. I want to read the names of those whom Vincent Starrett, The Needle, acknowledged as Hounds nearly thirty years ago. Some of them are here tonight. This would be more appropriately done by the Master of the Hounds – but he would blush to do so, since he too was one of the elect that night so long ago. So I hope he will allow a humble historian this liberty tonight. As I read the names, would those present please rise, and remain standing until the end.

Vincent Starrett, The Needle

George Armstrong

Dr. Eugene F. Carey

Henry Dierkes

Matthew W. Fairlie

James Gleason

William D. Goodrich *

Dr. Martin Grais

Robert W. Hahn *

David Levinson

Robert J. Mangler *

John Nieminski

Prof. Orlando Park

Franklin Rhode

Dr. Richard Schwartz §

Charles Shields *

Jack M. Siegel *

Walter Simmons

Vance W. Smith

David Whiting

This is devotion – not to mention longevity.

* Present at the Hounds dinner, October 9, 1993.

§ Still in the Hound pack, but absent that night.

[Of those present or absent that night in 1993, still part of the Pack are Bill Goodrich and Jack Siegel.]