An early exercise in textual integrity, for the 1977Pontine Dossier put out by the unforgettable Luther Norris of Los Angeles (“Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble,” BSI) — creator of The Praed Street Irregulars, an alternate Irregular universe devoted to the Solar Pons tales of August Derleth. (“Ebenezer Shawley” is my investiture in the Praed Streeet Irregulars, from “The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians.”) The Humbugging of Solar Pons by Ebenezer Snawley When The Solar Pons Omnibus was first announced by Mycroft & Moran, it seemed cause for celebration: a complete edition of the Pontine Canon, in two slipcased volumes, with a new introduction to the entire work, and as many as forty new illustrations by Frank Utpatel. The Garden City edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes hadn’t had it that good. Or so it seemed. The first hint that something was amiss came when The Missing Tenants, PSI, noticed its listing in Arkham House’s September 1975 catalog: the Omnibus would contain sixty-eight tales. Curiosity led to doubts, and doubts to inquiry — what did the publisher consider the Pontine Canon to include? The answer came from James Turner of Collinsville, Illinois, the managing editor. The Derleth Estate wished the tales to be presented in chronological sequence (probably a premature demand, considering that the late Robert Pattrick’s chronology is little more than a prolegomenon); and the Omnibus edition of the Pontine Canon would open with Dr. Parker’s Notebooks, making “The Adventure of the Bookseller’s Clerk” the first tale. Comprising the remainder would be the sixty-six other short stories in In Re, The Memoirs, The Return, The Reminiscences, The Casebook, and The Chronicles, and Mr. Fairlie’s Final Journey. Conspicuous by their absence were the two Praed Street Dossier “off-trail” stories written by Derleth and Mack Reynolds, “The Adventure of the Snitch in Time” and “The Adventure of the Ball of Nostradamus.” Why were these not to be included? Mr. Turner had his reasons. One was his decision, reinforced by Allen Hubin’s introduction to The Chronicles, that the Pontine Canon consisted of sixty-eight tales, and no more.1 A second reason was his assertion that the two collaborations were largely the work of Reynolds and not closely related to the chronological Canon. These two stories, he informed The Missing Tenants, were best relegated to non-canonical status and would not be published in the Omnibus. This rather preemptory decision, coming from someone unknown to Pontine circles, disturbed a number of Praed Street Irregulars, and a small campaign began to persuade Mycroft & Moran to include these two stories. Soon it seemed that it was Mr. Turner alone who opposed it, admitting that he disliked the idea of incorporating what he felt to be two unrelated episodes, even as supplementary appendix material. Mycroft & Moran had asked someone else to review the Pontine Canon for this edition, however — an Englishman named Basil Copper, best known in the United States as a writer of neo-Lovecraftian horror stories. Perhaps because of this predilection for fantasy, Copper too was enthusiastic about the two Reynolds collaborations. This view won out, and in September 1976 Mr. Turner acknowledged to The Broken Chessman, PSI, that the two stories would be included in an appendix. But other dismaying intelligence had emerged in the meantime. A July 1976 supplement to the earlier Arkham House catalog stated that some delay in publication would be required in order to make “extensive minor revisions as suggested by our British adviser.” Revisions? More inquiry was made, and it came to light that the text of the Pontine Canon was being subjected to two kinds of “editing” by Messrs. Turner and Copper. The first kind was stylistic in nature. Such spelling variations as “inquiry/enquiry,” “Pons’/Pons’s,” and “color/colour” were scattered throughout stories written over a thirty-year period, and Mr. Turner had decided to impose the British variant in all cases as being commensurate with Derleth’s preferences at the time of his death. This was unsettling enough, but it appeared that the alteration of the text would not stop there. Toward the end of Derleth’s life, the editor asserted, he had become increasingly sensitive to stylistic verisimilitude; he had asked his British representative, G. Ken Chapman, for example, to copyedit the entire text of Mr. Fairlie in terms of British usage. And now Mr. Turner was proceeding to extend this practice retroactively to the earlier volumes in the Canon. It was at this point that tempers began to rise. It was one thing for an author to initiate this practice, the Irregulars asserted, and quite another for someone else to impose it retroactively, over the author’s dead body. There was a very valuable distinction to be made between editing approved by an author, and editing done posthumously and never authorized or seen by him. This kind of editing tended to efface the development of an author’s style and skill, when such development allowed him to be seen whole. The argument fell on deaf ears. “To my mind,” the editor wrote to The Broken Chessman in a convoluted prose possibly intended to overawe, “the sole legitimate criteria for evaluating a literary work are aesthetic in nature, predicated upon the apparent artistic purpose perceived by the author when consecrating his intellectual efforts upon a specified creative endeavor.” Consecration is a suggestive word to use, and it seems that an effacement of the early and “less skillful” August Derleth is a deliberate objective of this edition. And in any event, the editor continued, the evolution of Derleth as pasticheur would be wiped out by the presentation of the tales in chronological sequence, since he did not intend to indicate the original periodical appearances of the individual stories. This was appalling enough, but the next made it seem benign by comparison. There was an even more egregious kind of molestation to which the text of the Pontine Canon was being subjected. Certain “factual errors” were being “corrected” where it could be accomplished by changing a few words. Gone, in other words, will be as many as possible of the inaccuracies, inconsistencies, anachronisms, and the like that have been the making and joy of Sherlockian and Pontine scholarship. If this is known as editing at Mycroft & Moran, it is called other names elsewhere. And the very example given, moreover, destroyed any hope that Mycroft & Moran at least had the competence to limit their “corrections” to real errors only. In “The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians,” Mr. Turner pointed out, there is mention of an inscribed copy of Edwin Drood — manifestly impossible, he intoned, for a posthumously published work. Therefore he would delete this title and substitute Martin Chuzzlewit in what he called the Omnibus “recension.” A minor inconsistency, he said; but one that would be corrected by the sharp eye and deft hand of Mycroft & Moran. Unfortunately for Mr. Turner, this particular example of his is not an inconsistency at all. Had it occurred to him to examine the original text of this story in its 1968 chapbook first edition, he would have discovered that initially there was no mention of Edwin Drood at all: “They were inscribed copies,” the reference goes, “of David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, and The Pickwick Papers.” It is in the rather later Chronicles edition of the story that Edwin Drood first appears: “They were inscribed copies of David Copperfield, Edwin Drood, and The Pickwick Papers.” In other words, it was August Derleth himself who deliberately made this alteration in the text of the story. But Mr. Turner intends to change it (and not even back to the original version, at that), on the grounds of its literary impossibility. Not surprisingly by now, he is wrong again. An inscribed Edwin Drood is not at all impossible. Dickens’ last novel was originally published in parts. Twelve monthly parts had been planned, of which six had been written at the time of Dickens’ death in June 1870. The first three had already been published, reportedly fifty thousand copies in the case of the first part, and the other three were published after his death. Frequently these six parts were gathered later and issued in volume form, and it is not very difficult to imagine one of these volumes with a first part that Dickens had inscribed before his death. An inscribed Edwin Drood, in short. Were there ever to be an annotated Solar Pons, there would be a note explaining all this and identifying just what this “inscribed copy” was. But unless Mr. Turner gives up literature soon and moves on to smashing statuary or slashing paintings, there will never be such a note. And probably no annotated edition. Ever. Did August Derleth ask for all this to be done to his writings? Of course not. Then why is it happening? A misguided attempt to enshrine him as the “master pasticheur,” it seems. It isn’t likely to succeed, and it may do serious harm to the excellent reputation his name has now. But the real losers will be the readers, especially the Pontine following of over thirty years that made it possible for an obscure and long-dead little group of stories in long-lost pulp magazines to be resurrected and expanded into what the Pontine Canon is today. The Solar Pons stories have always thrived upon an unusually close relationship with their readers, but that is now in jeopardy. Did Dr. Parker live much of his early life in the United States? Who will know or care when an Americanism like “stoop” — made famous in Pontine scholarship by Michael Harrison’s introduction to The Casebook — has been replaced by the British “porch”? What did England’s best Dickens collection contain? Not an inscribed Edwin Drood, or even 1968’s inscribed Little Dorrit, but Mr. James Turner’s Martin Chuzzlewit . . . . The giant has passed on, and his work has fallen into the hands of vandals. One suspects that Mr. Turner has been unfortunate enough to read Jacques Barzun’s fatuous essay on parodies and pastiches in Beyond Baker Street, and asinine enough to believe it. It’s a pity that he hasn’t taken a moment to imagine whether anyone would be grateful today had the same outrages been inflicted upon the Garden City Complete Sherlock Holmes by its editor in 1930. It isn’t likely, to put it mildly. It is worth imagining, in fact, whether The Baker Street Irregulars would even exist today. Perhaps not; we have thrived upon a joyous scholarship that may rapidly disappear in the case of Solar Pons. When The Solar Pons Omnibus is published, it will mark the decline of August Derleth and the rise of the epigones. Derleth’s text will be eviscerated in order to satisfy Mr. Turner’s literary pretensions, and the true Solar Pons will exist only in increasingly scarce original editions and in perishable Pinnacle Books paperbacks. It is certainly cause for mourning, reminding us of how right William Gillette was to take nothing for granted and to safeguard his remarkable Castle from molestation after his death: I would consider it more than unfortunate for me should I find myself doomed after death . . . to discover the walls and towers and fireplaces of my home . . . in the possession of some blithering saphead who had no conception of where he is or with what surrounded. 1 Mr. Hubin wishes me to state that this was an oversight on his part, and that in his opinion the Pontine Canon properly contains seventy tales. _________________________ Ebenezer Snawley would like to thank The Missing Tenants, The Broken Chessman, and The Black Cardinal for their assistance in the preparation of this article. 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An early exercise in textual integrity, for the 1977Pontine Dossier put out by the unforgettable Luther Norris of Los Angeles (“Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble,” BSI) — creator of The Praed Street Irregulars, an alternate Irregular universe devoted to the Solar Pons tales of August Derleth.

(“Ebenezer Shawley” is my investiture in the Praed Streeet Irregulars, from “The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians.”)

The Humbugging of Solar Pons

by Ebenezer Snawley

When The Solar Pons Omnibus was first announced by Mycroft & Moran, it seemed cause for celebration: a complete edition of the Pontine Canon, in two slipcased volumes, with a new introduction to the entire work, and as many as forty new illustrations by Frank Utpatel. The Garden City edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes hadn’t had it that good. Or so it seemed.

The first hint that something was amiss came when The Missing Tenants, PSI, noticed its listing in Arkham House’s September 1975 catalog: the Omnibus would contain sixty-eight tales. Curiosity led to doubts, and doubts to inquiry — what did the publisher consider the Pontine Canon to include? The answer came from James Turner of Collinsville, Illinois, the managing editor. The Derleth Estate wished the tales to be presented in chronological sequence (probably a premature demand, considering that the late Robert Pattrick’s chronology is little more than a prolegomenon); and the Omnibus edition of the Pontine Canon would open with Dr. Parker’s Notebooks, making “The Adventure of the Bookseller’s Clerk” the first tale. Comprising the remainder would be the sixty-six other short stories in In Re, The Memoirs, The Return, The Reminiscences, The Casebook, and The Chronicles, and Mr. Fairlie’s Final Journey.

Conspicuous by their absence were the two Praed Street Dossier “off-trail” stories written by Derleth and Mack Reynolds, “The Adventure of the Snitch in Time” and “The Adventure of the Ball of Nostradamus.” Why were these not to be included? Mr. Turner had his reasons. One was his decision, reinforced by Allen Hubin’s introduction to The Chronicles, that the Pontine Canon consisted of sixty-eight tales, and no more.1 A second reason was his assertion that the two collaborations were largely the work of Reynolds and not closely related to the chronological Canon. These two stories, he informed The Missing Tenants, were best relegated to non-canonical status and would not be published in the Omnibus.

This rather preemptory decision, coming from someone unknown to Pontine circles, disturbed a number of Praed Street Irregulars, and a small campaign began to persuade Mycroft & Moran to include these two stories. Soon it seemed that it was Mr. Turner alone who opposed it, admitting that he disliked the idea of incorporating what he felt to be two unrelated episodes, even as supplementary appendix material. Mycroft & Moran had asked someone else to review the Pontine Canon for this edition, however — an Englishman named Basil Copper, best known in the United States as a writer of neo-Lovecraftian horror stories. Perhaps because of this predilection for fantasy, Copper too was enthusiastic about the two Reynolds collaborations. This view won out, and in September 1976 Mr. Turner acknowledged to The Broken Chessman, PSI, that the two stories would be included in an appendix.

But other dismaying intelligence had emerged in the meantime. A July 1976 supplement to the earlier Arkham House catalog stated that some delay in publication would be required in order to make “extensive minor revisions as suggested by our British adviser.” Revisions? More inquiry was made, and it came to light that the text of the Pontine Canon was being subjected to two kinds of “editing” by Messrs. Turner and Copper. The first kind was stylistic in nature. Such spelling variations as “inquiry/enquiry,” “Pons’/Pons’s,” and “color/colour” were scattered throughout stories written over a thirty-year period, and Mr. Turner had decided to impose the British variant in all cases as being commensurate with Derleth’s preferences at the time of his death. This was unsettling enough, but it appeared that the alteration of the text would not stop there. Toward the end of Derleth’s life, the editor asserted, he had become increasingly sensitive to stylistic verisimilitude; he had asked his British representative, G. Ken Chapman, for example, to copyedit the entire text of Mr. Fairlie in terms of British usage. And now Mr. Turner was proceeding to extend this practice retroactively to the earlier volumes in the Canon.

It was at this point that tempers began to rise. It was one thing for an author to initiate this practice, the Irregulars asserted, and quite another for someone else to impose it retroactively, over the author’s dead body. There was a very valuable distinction to be made between editing approved by an author, and editing done posthumously and never authorized or seen by him. This kind of editing tended to efface the development of an author’s style and skill, when such development allowed him to be seen whole.

The argument fell on deaf ears. “To my mind,” the editor wrote to The Broken Chessman in a convoluted prose possibly intended to overawe, “the sole legitimate criteria for evaluating a literary work are aesthetic in nature, predicated upon the apparent artistic purpose perceived by the author when consecrating his intellectual efforts upon a specified creative endeavor.” Consecration is a suggestive word to use, and it seems that an effacement of the early and “less skillful” August Derleth is a deliberate objective of this edition. And in any event, the editor continued, the evolution of Derleth as pasticheur would be wiped out by the presentation of the tales in chronological sequence, since he did not intend to indicate the original periodical appearances of the individual stories.

This was appalling enough, but the next made it seem benign by comparison. There was an even more egregious kind of molestation to which the text of the Pontine Canon was being subjected. Certain “factual errors” were being “corrected” where it could be accomplished by changing a few words. Gone, in other words, will be as many as possible of the inaccuracies, inconsistencies, anachronisms, and the like that have been the making and joy of Sherlockian and Pontine scholarship. If this is known as editing at Mycroft & Moran, it is called other names elsewhere. And the very example given, moreover, destroyed any hope that Mycroft & Moran at least had the competence to limit their “corrections” to real errors only. In “The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians,” Mr. Turner pointed out, there is mention of an inscribed copy of Edwin Drood — manifestly impossible, he intoned, for a posthumously published work. Therefore he would delete this title and substitute Martin Chuzzlewit in what he called the Omnibus “recension.” A minor inconsistency, he said; but one that would be corrected by the sharp eye and deft hand of Mycroft & Moran.

Unfortunately for Mr. Turner, this particular example of his is not an inconsistency at all. Had it occurred to him to examine the original text of this story in its 1968 chapbook first edition, he would have discovered that initially there was no mention of Edwin Drood at all: “They were inscribed copies,” the reference goes, “of David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, and The Pickwick Papers.” It is in the rather later Chronicles edition of the story that Edwin Drood first appears: “They were inscribed copies of David Copperfield, Edwin Drood, and The Pickwick Papers.” In other words, it was August Derleth himself who deliberately made this alteration in the text of the story. But Mr. Turner intends to change it (and not even back to the original version, at that), on the grounds of its literary impossibility.

Not surprisingly by now, he is wrong again. An inscribed Edwin Drood is not at all impossible. Dickens’ last novel was originally published in parts. Twelve monthly parts had been planned, of which six had been written at the time of Dickens’ death in June 1870. The first three had already been published, reportedly fifty thousand copies in the case of the first part, and the other three were published after his death. Frequently these six parts were gathered later and issued in volume form, and it is not very difficult to imagine one of these volumes with a first part that Dickens had inscribed before his death. An inscribed Edwin Drood, in short. Were there ever to be an annotated Solar Pons, there would be a note explaining all this and identifying just what this “inscribed copy” was. But unless Mr. Turner gives up literature soon and moves on to smashing statuary or slashing paintings, there will never be such a note. And probably no annotated edition. Ever.

Did August Derleth ask for all this to be done to his writings? Of course not. Then why is it happening? A misguided attempt to enshrine him as the “master pasticheur,” it seems. It isn’t likely to succeed, and it may do serious harm to the excellent reputation his name has now. But the real losers will be the readers, especially the Pontine following of over thirty years that made it possible for an obscure and long-dead little group of stories in long-lost pulp magazines to be resurrected and expanded into what the Pontine Canon is today. The Solar Pons stories have always thrived upon an unusually close relationship with their readers, but that is now in jeopardy. Did Dr. Parker live much of his early life in the United States? Who will know or care when an Americanism like “stoop” — made famous in Pontine scholarship by Michael Harrison’s introduction to The Casebook — has been replaced by the British “porch”? What did England’s best Dickens collection contain? Not an inscribed Edwin Drood, or even 1968’s inscribed Little Dorrit, but Mr. James Turner’s Martin Chuzzlewit .

. . . The giant has passed on, and his work has fallen into the hands of vandals.

One suspects that Mr. Turner has been unfortunate enough to read Jacques Barzun’s fatuous essay on parodies and pastiches in Beyond Baker Street, and asinine enough to believe it. It’s a pity that he hasn’t taken a moment to imagine whether anyone would be grateful today had the same outrages been inflicted upon the Garden City Complete Sherlock Holmes by its editor in 1930. It isn’t likely, to put it mildly. It is worth imagining, in fact, whether The Baker Street Irregulars would even exist today. Perhaps not; we have thrived upon a joyous scholarship that may rapidly disappear in the case of Solar Pons. When The Solar Pons Omnibus is published, it will mark the decline of August Derleth and the rise of the epigones. Derleth’s text will be eviscerated in order to satisfy Mr. Turner’s literary pretensions, and the true Solar Pons will exist only in increasingly scarce original editions and in perishable Pinnacle Books paperbacks. It is certainly cause for mourning, reminding us of how right William Gillette was to take nothing for granted and to safeguard his remarkable Castle from molestation after his death:

I would consider it more than unfortunate for me should I find myself doomed after death . . . to discover the walls and towers and fireplaces of my home . . . in the possession of some blithering saphead who had no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.

1 Mr. Hubin wishes me to state that this was an oversight on his part, and that in his opinion the Pontine Canon properly contains seventy tales.

_________________________

Ebenezer Snawley would like to thank The Missing Tenants, The Broken Chessman, and The Black Cardinal for their assistance in the preparation of this article.

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