THE GREEK INTERPRETERS

On Wednesday, June 30th, seventeen members of the Greek Interpreters met at Park Lake Grill restaurant in East Lansing for our summer meeting. The gathering began on a somber note, as "we stood together on the terrace" to honor and remember Bradshaw (Stan Hollander), who left us this past spring. The meeting resumed with the customary Canonical Toasts to Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft Holmes, the Second Mrs. Watson and The Woman. The story selected for study was "The Adventure of the Second Stain". A quiz on the selected story was provided by The Chemist (Bill Reusch). This quiz and some earlier quizzes may be viewed on this web site.
Following the quiz, discussion of the "Second Stain" ranged over many topics. These included the apparent cluelessness of both Holmes and Lady Hilda in situations where intelligent common sense would have dictated a course of action in another direction. It was noted that this was one of Conan Doyles' favorite stories, but is not now generally regarded as one of his best.
The Foulest Antecedent encouraged members to select Investiture Titles for identification. The meeting concluded, as usual, by reading Vincent Starrett's "221B" poem, and the singing of The Anthem.

221B

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game's afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears--
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

-- Vincent Starrett

The Greek Interpreters join with other Conan Doyle admirers in mourning the mysterious death of Richard Lancelyn Green, a leading Conan Doyle scholar and private collector. On March 27 Mr. Lancelyn Green, 50, a former chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and the author of several books on Conan Doyle, was found garroted to death. Mr. Green had been concerned about an upcoming auction of a large private collection of Conan Doyle materials, including his unpublished first novel, a rich cache of family letters and handwritten literary notebooks full of research and musings about works in progress.
The auction on May 19th was a great disappointment to scholars who had hoped the papers would be donated to a public institution. As a result of a family court battle that broke out after the death in 1970 of the author's son Adrian, the collection was locked up in a lawyer's office for about 25 years until heirs of the author's daughter-in-law, Anna Conan Doyle, decided upon the Christie's auction.