It's time for another Interesting Interview! And this week's participant is one of the newest members of The Baker Street Irregulars, Jonathan Tiemann! As he is a financial manager, it's fitting that his investiture is "The Bank of England." He's also a historian who knows quite a bit about the Californian Gold Rush, so I'm glad they focused on the financial aspect, or else he could've been named "Working A Claim," "Making His Pile," or some other quote from NOBL.
As a Sherlockian who has lived in different regions of the U.S., Jonathan has a unique position to be able to automatically connect with many folks from different regions. A pleasant and intelligent guy, I think you'll find this week's interview a delightful one to read. So let's get to know Jonathan Tiemann!
How do you define the word “Sherlockian”?
Sherlockians start with the Canonical stories, and move out from there. Reading and re-reading them, Sherlockians delight in noticing new details, or making connections, especially with other aspects of Victorian and Edwardian life, and sharing those observations with similarly-obsessed people. That’s the essence of “the game” – seeking new insights and taking pleasure in sharing them.
How did you become a Sherlockian?
I sort of backed into it. My first exposure to Holmes was reading The Hound of the Baskervilles in English class in seventh grade. We also read Treasure Island, and those along with a fair amount of Dickens, Melville, and Mark Twain in high school pretty well hooked me on the literature of the second half of the nineteenth century. I’ve always also enjoyed detective fiction, but I didn’t really go back and read the Canon until after I had completely devoured the Nero Wolfe stories and everything by Dashiell Hammett. The Holmes stories, of course, proved to be the ideal point of intersection between those two literary tastes, and I eventually discovered the world of enthusiasts dedicated to enhancing one another’s enjoyment of all things Sherlockian.
What is your profession and does that affect how you enjoy being a Sherlockian?
My main field of study was finance, and I’ve had my own independent investment management firm for the past twenty years. So, I’m naturally most attuned to the stories that have a financial element – counterfeiting, securities theft, fraud, that sort of thing. Quite a number of the stories mention in passing some financial element that you might “see, but not observe” unless you’re on the lookout for it. There’s also a surprising amount of financial crime in the Canon, and the other sorts of crimes in many Canonical stories have financial motivations. Since Arthur Conan Doyle was a physician, the amount of financial matter in the Holmes stories seemed surprising to me at first, but as I’ve learned more about Victorian England, I’ve realized that he presented financial matters in ways his audience would have found familiar.
What is your favorite canonical story?
That changes from time to time, but right now it’s “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk.” Here a young man lands a prime clerkship at one of the most prestigious firms in The City – The City (of London) is to the British financial markets as Wall Street is to the American – yet he still falls prey to an offer from another quarter that is too good to be true, but too good to refuse. His error opens the way for an attempt at a large theft of securities. The City connection alone is enough to draw me to this particular story. I also like it because while big securities heists were actually rare, they are easy to imagine, and the other main elements of the story, including the scheme appealing to the everyday cupidity of a normal person and even the fraudulent, pop-up office in an out-of-the-way place, resembled features of real swindles in Victorian England.
Who is a specific Sherlockian that you think others would find interesting?
The Sherlockian I would most like to have had the chance to meet would have been Rex Stout, the creator of Nero Wolfe, but I’m afraid it’s a half-century too late for that. But to answer the question you actually asked, I have to nominate Nicholas Meyer. Nick is a film director and screenwriter (his credits include three of the original-cast Star Trek films), and an author. His first Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Seven Per-Cent Solution, came out about the time I started college, and I recall it as having been enormously popular among my friends. His most recent, The Return of the Pharaoh, came out last year. Nick is always careful to respect the conventions and timelines of the Canon, so his stories extend the Holmes narrative in ways that modern-setting dramatizations do not. Nick also uses his extensive knowledge of literature and music to enliven his creative work – who else could manage to insert a Holmes reference into a Star Trek script?
I also have to mention Candace Lewis. Because her expertise, primarily in art, is so much different from mine, I always learn a great deal from even the briefest interaction with her. For that reason, talking with her stands out in my mind as an example of the pleasures of trading ideas and observations with other Sherlockians.
What subset of Sherlockiana really interests you?
I suffer from a fascination with the literary tradition of which Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes are part. Edgar Allan Poe and Bret Harte were important antecedents (though Sherlock tweaks Poe a bit in A Study in Scarlet), and of course Conan Doyle has countless literary descendants, from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, to Dashiell Hammett and Rex Stout, and more. All of these authors wrote for a popular audience, and yet they elevated their stories far enough above the general run of popular culture that we still read, study, and enjoy them.
How do you feel that West Coast Sherlockiana is different from those in the Midwest or East Coast?
I suppose I should have a view on this question, since I grew up in the Midwest, spent about 15 years on the east coast, and have lived for decades in California. So if you’ll permit me to talk out of my hat a bit, I’ll give it a try. I’d say that here on the West Coast, we’re perhaps a bit more likely to regard screen adaptations, especially of Canonical stories, as legitimate Sherlockiana, and we may also lay special emphasis on Conan Doyle’s skill as a storyteller. East coast Sherlockians may take a somewhat more academic approach to Holmes scholarship, and Midwesterners may be more likely to focus a bit more closely on the original text. But there are objections to those views, too. After all, most of the best screen adaptations are British, rather than Californian, productions – re-reading the Canon, I hear Holmes speaking in Jeremy Brett’s voice. And one of the best resources for academic study of Sherlockiana is the Sherlock Holmes collection at the University of Minnesota.
As an amateur historian, how does that influence how you enjoy the Canon?
My chosen topic is economic and financial history. I started by studying banking and finance in Gold Rush California, but soon fell prey to the historian’s most nettlesome question: “Interesting, but I wonder – what happened before this?” The result is that I’ve learned enough about the economic history of the eastern half of the North Pacific Basin to become a tiresome dinner companion. While the Holmes stories take place at least a quarter century after the end of the period I’ve studied most deeply, their economic and technological backdrop feels familiar. The 1850s saw rapid development of steamships, railroads, and telegraphs; by the 1890s they were commonplace. A growing middle class in both Britain and America had disposable income both to buy the Strand magazine and to experience first-hand the temptations and perils of the types of speculations that sometimes figure as plot points in Holmes stories. And, of course, the frequency with which the stories concern fortunes made in India, South Africa, South America, Australia, or even California would have seemed entirely reasonable to English readers at the height of the British Empire.
What book would you recommend to other Sherlockians?
For something a little out of the ordinary, I’d suggest Brian McCuskey, How Sherlock Pulled the Trick: Spiritualism and the Pseudoscientific Method (State College: Penn State University Press) 2021. Some Sherlockians might object to it, as McCuskey’s two-fold thesis both takes on Arthur Conan Doyle’s belief in Victorian spiritualism and argues that Holmes’s reasoning in the stories is not always so watertight as it may seem. He particularly examines Holmes’s apothegm about exhausting possibilities until only one remains. But it’s a fresh look at well-trod ground, and a sufficiently open-minded reader should at least find it thought-provoking.
Where do you see Sherlockiana in 5 or 10 years from now?
Advancing, I hope. But seriously, we mostly need to keep introducing young people to the pleasures of all things Sherlockian – maybe starting with a movie, or a TV adaptation, but then without wasting too much time moving them on to the Canonical stories themselves, so that Arthur Conan Doyle can do the rest. One event that will fall within the time span in your question is the centennial of Conan Doyle’s passing. Sherlockian societies around the world will surely mark the occasion with events, exhibitions, and conferences of various types, as well we should.
Perhaps a theme for such an event, and perhaps the animating question for Sherlockians in this upcoming period, should be, to whom does Sherlock Holmes belong – not as a matter of intellectual property, but as part of our shared cultural legacy? If Holmes by then belongs to all of us, then how shall we best balance the merits of preserving the original Holmes, as though in amber, with the benefits of cultivating an evergreen Holmes, adapted to the current age? Whatever the answer (and answers will vary and inevitably clash), I do hope we remember to keep listening to the voice from 1895 that still has so much to say to us in 2022, and will still in 2030 and beyond.
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