The Strange Life and Death of Jack Tracy By Phil Dematteis

Tracy as a young man, obviously dressed in Victorian garb

You may be familiar with Jack Tracy’s book, the Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana. If you’re not, you should be, because it’s one of the most extraordinary works of Sherlockian scholarship ever published.             I had owned and used and admired Tracy’s encyclopedia for a long time, but I didn’t know anything about him and had no curiosity about his life until Bob Robinson made a comment about him some years ago; I think it was probably around the time of Tracy’s death in 1996. I assume that Bob got his information from Baker Street Irregulars circles.  What he said was so shocking that I could hardly believe it; but he didn’t elaborate on it, and I got the impression that he didn’t particularly want to talk about it, so I didn’t press the issue. But what he had said was so strange that it kept gnawing at me, and so I recently decided to look into it. Bob, unfortunately, was no longer available, so I was on my own. By this time, however, the Internet and Google were in full flower, so I figured that I wouldn’t have much trouble in finding out whether what Bob had said was true and in getting more details.             Well, was I ever wrong about that! Tracy is mentioned on various Web sites, but almost always in connection with the Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana. There is virtually no information about his personal life. It’s almost as though there is a conspiracy of silence surrounding him. With the assistance of a friend who works at the research desk at the library I discovered a few articles about him on the Web site of the Herald-Times in Bloomington, Indiana, where Tracy had lived and where his publishing company, Gaslight Publications, was located. All I could see, however, were the headlines and lead sentences of those articles; to access the complete stories I was obliged to fork over $8.95 for a one-month online subscription. It was worth it, though, because I finally found the confirmation of what Bob had told me lo, those many years ago.

            Now, I had originally intended to get up during the “Unavoidable Scionic Business” segment of the meeting and just give you the facts from those newspaper articles, which would have taken only a few minutes. But that was when I thought we would have another speaker to give the Featured Presentation of the Evening. When it was determined that I was to be the speaker, I realized that I had to beef this thing up enough to make it worth your price of admission.

            So I kept digging and was able to ferret out a few more odds and ends. But I was still left with a brief and sketchy account of Tracy’s life that left a lot of questions unanswered. I had even gotten so desperate as to incorporate a condensed version of a talk I had given here eight years ago, about the strange end of the great Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle scholar Richard Lancelyn Green, who was found garroted to death in his bed after he became paranoid about the auctioning off by Doyle’s heirs of some papers that he thought he needed to write the definitive biography of Doyle. I was putting what I thought would be the finishing touches on my presentation, such as it was, this past weekend, when I received an email from the eminent Sherlockian Peter E. Blau in Maryland that had been forwarded to me by Cap’n Billy. Mr. Blau had received the announcement of the meeting and asked for a copy of my talk, because, as he said, “I’m sure there are some colorful stories about Jack Tracy.” I wrote back and said that he no doubt knew more of those colorful stories than I did and asked if he could relate some of them to me or point me to a source where I could find them. I had seen a reference to “On the Shoulders of Giants: Jack Tracy and The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana,” by Christopher and Barbara Roden, which was The Baker Street Journal 2001 Christmas Annual. I had tried to find a copy on The Baker Street Journal Web site and eBay, but they had all been sold out. I mentioned this fact in my email to Mr. Blau, and he graciously sent me a copy! This sixty-three-page work is largely based on Tracy’s papers, which were sold at auction after his death, and it filled in most of the holes in my research and provided me with a wealth of additional information. So, even though it meant that I had a lot more work to do, I am grateful to Mr. Blau for his help. He really saved my bacon!  The title of the Rodens’ piece is taken from an entry in Tracy’s notebook for May 7, 1973: “A quote from Sir Isaac Newton, which pretty well sums up my feelings about me and Sherlockiana: ‘If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.’”