LEFT INSIDE: Ancient Sherlockiana & German Post Card

These bits of ephemera are rather remarkable for both being well over 100 years old. Both post card and newspaper story were Left Inside my extremely scarce copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Harper & Brothers, 1894. Revised 2nd edition).  I have to brag a little about this book because my partner Joe found it at a book sale in Libertyville, Illinois many moons ago. I paid one buck for the book! I was astounded that no one had snagged it prior to us showing up. Vaguely I recall it was the last day of the sale. The book is in beautiful condition for a 19th century book with the only problems being a minor stain on the spine of the book, an offset stain on the prelims from the acidic newsprint reacting to the paper in the book, and some discoloration to the illustrated front board (photo at left). Definitely one of the treasures in the Norris Collection of Detective Fiction Rarities. Probably will never sell it until I contact an auction house about five years into the future, a plan I have been devising for a while now.

Onto the items. First is a German postcard.

 Translation of the caption on the front is "Official Post Card from the International Exhibition of Culinary Arts for the Hotel and Hospitality Trades/combined with a wine market in Frankfurt-Main." The caption is followed by the dates of the exhibition: "Sept. 30 through Oct 11, 1905." Unusual that even in the early 20th century German typesetters were still using the odd F-like letter to indicate the letter S, but in a word that ends in S the typesetter would use an actual S character. I thought that F-like letter was out of use by 1905. American typesetters used that F shape  for an S in 18th century typesetting in the USA, but it fell out of favor by the middle of the 19th century.

The postcard was mailed from the exhibition which had its own post office as can be seen on the postmark on the stamp.  Another postmark obliterates a portion of the lightly penciled message and is dated Oct 8, 1905, the date It was received by the post office in Barmen, a town in Wuppertal about 140 miles northwest of Frankfurt. I can make out the message as With hearty greetings ("aus [?] grüsst herzlich.") but I have no idea what the signature says.  The card is addressed to a man named Paul Kraft (maybe Kraus?) who lived in Barmen. But I can't read the street or whatever is on the last line of the address area that ends with the number 18. Also, it looks as if the writer wrote 19 first then corrected it to 18. 

The second bit of ephemera is a short story written by Frank Marshall White which first appeared in Life, Oct 18, 1894. Later it was picked up by syndicated news services and appeared in The Brooklyn Eagle in Oct 24, 1894. The reverse side of the first half of the story luckily shows a portion of the left hand side of the front page. Based on what I found from online resources, the newspaper is definitely an issue of The Brooklyn Eagle in the year 1894 (vol. 54).  Whether it is the actual October issue I didn't bother to further research. Both the layout of the front page of a November 1894 issue and the fonts of their masthead match exactly. This story was one of the earliest Sherlock Holmes parodies, probably also one of the shortest. You can find the full text of "The Recrudescence of Sherlock Holmes" online at the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia.  My newspaper copy has a portion of some lines missing due to a fold that eventually broke in half. The poorly trimmed edge of the second half cuts off the final two sentences: "This contemptible trick I can never forgive. Sherlock Holmes is again dead to me. — Life."