Sherlock Holmes Undressed

I caught up with Henry Zecher at his recent book signing at the East Haddam Historical Society Museum and began asking some Sherlockian questions as to how his book came about.

It all started with pipe smoke…

Fourteen years ago, Henry Zecher would never have imagined he would be scheduling book signings for his extensive biography, William Gillette, America’s Sherlock Holmes, the only full biography written about the actor and playwright William Gillette, who created the public image of the detective Sherlock Holmes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Zecher, as a new graduate from the University of Maryland with journalism degree in hand, found himself a job as a sports writer for the Delaware State News in Dover, Delaware.

But then, realizing a sports writer isn’t usually a lasting profession, Zecher turned his life in the direction of the Federal Government as a Human Resource Specialist, working for the architect of the Capitol in Washington D.C.

It’s the obvious next step after sports journalism.

This is where you’ll first start to smell the pipe smoke.

In his spare time of the late 1990s, Zecher began writing small stories for an informational periodical, The Pipe Smokers’s Ephemeris, that had everything to do with pipe smoking, including such subjects as William Gillette (who, donning his deerstalker cap, smoked a pipe as you may know).

 In 1996, Zecher sent the Ephemeris a three part series, “Sherlock Holmes and the 21^st Century,” an overview of the Holmes phenomenon in relation to the oncoming technological age.

“[The] readers enjoyed it, and for years I received requests for copies,” said Zecher.

In the process of writing another series on Gillette, but this time with seven parts, Zecher amassed hundreds of photographs and discovered that he thoroughly enjoyed learning and writing about Gillette, “It is a far more fascinating topic than I have ever done and I enjoyed every step of the way.”

He took his show on the road, complete with picture slide show and informational discussion on Gillette, which premiered at the 1998 Sherlock Holmes/William Gillette Festival in Tryon, North Carolina (yes, there is such a thing).

The festival founder, Jerry Soderquist, advertised Zecher as having authored a book on Gillette and when Zecher reminded Soderquist that he had indeed not written a book, Soderquist stated, “Well, you better write one.”

The rest is the history spelled out onto the 733 pages of research, stories and photographs of Zecher’s extensive biography that reveals the man behind the iconic East Haddam landmark.

Zecher found it fascinating that Gillette was the first American actor to be successful in England at a time when the English did not think much of our style.

Gillette was also one in the first troop of actors who abandoned the melodramatic exaggerative style of the day for a much more natural style.

When I asked Zecher how Gillette came to choose East Haddam as his retirement home, Zecher explained it was an accident.

“He was actually headed to retire in Greenport on the northeastern neck of Long Island.”

But in 1913, while Gillette was cruising the Connecticut River in his boat, Aunt Polly, he saw the hills known as the Seven Sisters, docked near the Hadlyme Ferry, climbed to the top, surveyed the valley and river and knew he found his place.

The colorful history from Zecher’s William Gillette, America’s Sherlock Holmes combined with a trip to Gillette Caste State Park, will make you want to check Amazon.com for your very own deerstalker cap. 

But I don’t suggest the pipe, it could be hazardous to your health…