Rereading The Beatrice Letters (rereading backwards)

[El Juanico Diez]

So... I'll reread TBL soon. I think I will read in reverse order according to Mister M's advice, but at the same time I will read in what I believe is reverse chronological order. 

I'll start with the letter to the editor.

Anyone who wishes can follow me, and comment on my comments or on their own rereading.

[El Juanico Diez]

Rereading TBL

Messages to the editor

The last message to the editor is found at the back of the book. We have important information here, and a simple detail that answers a question that many people have already asked themselves.

First, TBL is not entirely written in code. Secondly, Lemony did not meet with his editor personally. The content is letters from and to Beatrice, and a letter to answer something to Beatrice.

But I think the important detail here is: "May Counter Clues". So that's an incentive for theorists like me. Afterwards we found Lemony Snicket's message this file is only for those deeply interested in the Baudelair case. Again, this is an encouragement for theorists like me.

In place of the date, we find two handwritten letters. Canonically even people without a background in graphology can analyze the handwriting of asoue characters. This was performed on TWW with the narrator's approval. Thus, only significant differences in the way letters are written in a letter should be taken into account to establish the true author or a forgery. Now pay attention to the two letters "BB" written in place of the date. I always thought Lemony wrote this. But the letter B in "Baudelaire" is completely different from these "BB".

On the other hand, the handwriting of this "BB" is almost identical to the letters "B" used by Beatrice Jr in her handwriting, as easily found in the work.

On the other hand, the handwriting of this "BB" is almost identical to the letters "B" used by Beatrice Jr in her handwriting, as easily found in the work. (See BB to LS #2, #3, #4, #5).

I'm not saying that this detail was the author's intention. I have already overcome this phase of seeking the author's intention. What I'm saying is that there is canonical evidence that Beatrice Jr actually met Lemony Snicket in person, as she wrote these "BB" in the letter Lemony sent to his editor.

This is evidence that part of the information that Lemony has access to in TE may have been sourced by Beatrice Jr.

[Hermes]

I think that that should be 'may contain clues'. I agree that this is an encouragement to theorists, but do bear in mind that as this was published before The End, some things may have counted as clues that would not be so now, the facts they are clues to having been made clear.

I'm not sure how much trust we can place in handwriting, given that in TUA Lemony, Sir, Gustave Sebald and the villainous annotator all seem to have the same handwiting, but I totally agree that the initials 'BB' show that young B had met Lemony, and was presumably with him when he sent this to his editor.

[El Juanico Diez]

I don't really like Dante's argument about the clues that TBL is referring to are the clues to what would be revealed in TE.

TBL expands the ASOUE universe while communicating with the 13 main books and LSTUA.

Whenever I start thinking about TBL I feel overwhelmed with emotion, and all I can think about is how there is nothing that can produce literary emotions in me as strong as this book. I feel like everything written in asoue is a prelude to this masterpiece.

The art of the book is sensational, the disposable letters are sensational. When people use tbl only as a prelude to TE, they minimize the work's potential.

Daniel Handler's true intentions in producing TBL no longer matter! What we have here surpasses any intention. When you get carried away by words, and really immerse yourself in the world of Snicket and imagine yourself as someone who has actually acquired a collection of personal letters that reveal secrets you've learned to care about through biographical accounts published by a researcher, you realize the great beauty that exists in TBL.

In the ASOUE universe, TBL was neither written nor published to supplement TE.But Lemony decided to publish for those deeply interested in the Baudelaire case. Or rather, he decided to let his editor decide whether to publish or not.

And in Lemony's universe, "may contain Clues" can only mean "may contain information about the Baudelaire case, but if there is they are not so evident that Lemony is not sure of their relevance or what these Clues from fact could mean".

[El Juanico Diez]

The letter to the editor: this letter explains very important things for us to understand the chronology and nature of TBL, as well as Lemony's motivations to only compile the documents that make up the archive we call TBL.

At first we notice that Lemony has broken into a warehouse that works similarly to the THH library. Thanks to Lemony's search, we realized some facts about the poem My Silence Knot:
1 - The poem was recited on stage.
2 - The poem was written by Beatrice Sr.

After that we have a key revelation to understand some details about TE: Lemony claims that because she loved Beatrice so much, it never occurred to her that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire.

That phrase always baffled me. What's it got to be that Lemony loves Beatrice Sr very much with the fact that it hadn't occurred to him that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire? The only answer I can think of is that Lemony received a letter from Beatrice Jr, and immediately thought it was one of two possibilities: Beatrice Sr had survived or that letter was an imposter, the second possibility being the most likely.
In any case, this is also evidence that Lemony did not know the name of the baby who was born on the island, even after he published some of ASOUE's books. Evidently, the Baudelaires did not record some important names, such as the name of their adopted daughter, and they probably did not enter Kit's name in the island book either, presumably to protect the child.

(to be continued)

[El Juanico Diez]

Now, let's talk about the most important subject of TBL, which can be mainly deduced from this letter To My Kind Editor.



Lemony claims in the letter to the editor that he couldn't admit the possibility that there was another Beatrice Baudelaire, because he simply loved Beatrice Sr. And as I've said, the only scenario where this seems to make sense is a scenario where he gets a letter from Beatrice Jr and he is confused by the signature. However, how could this be reconciled with the sentence in which Lemony says:

"Because I loved her so much, for instance, it never occurred to me that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire. It was quite some time BEFORE I received the FRIST of Beatrice Baudelaire's letters that I realized that all of Beatrice Baudelaire's letters could be found not just in ther first Beatrice Baudelaire but in the second Beatrice Baudelaire and that perhaps if I gathered the remaining letters of the first Beatrice Baudelaire with the first letters of the remainning Beatrice Baudelaire, the the Beatrice letters could explain the Beatrice letters and even the letters of Beatrice, no matter which letters they are, and no matter what ORDER the letters are in. I IMMEDIATELY began work on the file. 

Note that Lemony claims that he realized something important about the Beatrice Jr and Beatrice Sr letters before he received the first letter from Beatrice Jr. Soon, he started working on the file, before he received the first letter from Beatrice Jr. After all, he realized that the explanation of Beatrice's letters would be in the other Beatrice's letters a long time BEFORE he received the first letter from Beatrice Jr.

This means that Lemony RECEIVED the first letter WRITTEN by Beatrice Jr, only AFTER he knows of her existence and he has received OTHER letters from Beatrice Jr. In other words, the first letter written by Beatrice Jr to Lemony was not received by Lemony before he started the file we now call The Beatrice Letters.

And that explains everything. The fact that Lemony did not receive the first letter written by Beatrice to him, but that he received letters written after that, was what made Lemony feel so confused.
It's from that time when he got confused, that he refers to writing a little earlier:
"Because I loved her so much, for instance, it never occurred to me that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire."

Beatrice Jr's first letter was certainly much clearer about who she really was. In fact, it's quite likely that the sequence of letters we have access to is the sequence in which Lemony received the letters, not the sequence in which the letters were written. Since the first letter written by Beatrice Jr, which Lemony received long after he started putting together the file, most likely isn't even inside the file that was sent to the editor. That's because Lemony included in the file only the first letters he RECEIVED from Beatrice Jr.

Now let's go to one more important detail: Lemony knows that the confusion he felt upon receiving Beatrice Jr's letters exists because they were received out of order. He mentions this by writing "no matter what ORDER the letters are in." Or detail, is that Lemony realizes that Beatrice Jr's letters need to be explained. This is because these letters contain some kind of mystery to him. I can cite as a mystery the fact that Beatrice Jr uses phrases that Beatrice Sr would use. Also, Beatrice Jr seems to know details about Lemony. How could she know that kind of information? Lemony apparently figured out how: Lemony said Beatrice (Sr) letters could explain Beatrice (Jr) letters. In other words, at some point, Beatrice Jr had access to Beatrice Sr's letters, and this gave her information that she could use in some of the letters to Lemony.


With this clear, we can understand some other details through this letter to the editor. Lemony spent a lot of time collecting information to use in this file. He claims that he finally found the poem My Silence Knot after a long time. He claims he found the poem he had once examined in a glass case. This means that Lemony was writing to the editor quite a while after the main events described through Beatrice Jr's letters to Lemony. Beatrice Jr claimed that she saw Lemony looking at the poem My Silence Knot in a glass case. So there's a lag of quite some time, maybe a few years, between Beatrice Jr's attempts to talk to Lemony and sending this letter to the editor along with the TBL file. And only after did Lemony send TE's original. In other words, TE was written many, many years after the main events described in ASOUE.

I really like the following sentence: "The secrets contained here are like all secrets -- dangerous to those who discover them and harmless to those who fail to notice them." Lemony seems to have realized the existence of this secret and that's why he was so sad. Everything leads me to believe that the secret is somehow related to the poem My Silence Knot. I think there is some message Lemony failed to understand, written in this poem, that he could only understand the moment he rejoined it to finish the file. Will I be able to understand correctly this time what this message is? I hope so.

[El Juanico Diez]

I would really appreciate a review of this text from Hermes , as this was a matter left hanging between me and Dante, before his death. And I would also like to know Christmas Chief 's honest opinion. I really don't think this theory is absurd or weird. I find the theory coherent, and relatively simple. I think even a child could conceive of this, and it wasn't conceived before only because the book was published before TE, and because people in general want answers to other questions when making their theories. I'm really looking for validation or rejection here on this theory. I find it very important to the Asoue community, along with the great hiatus theory. If I could make just these two contributions to the asoue community, with validation from other theorists I respect, I would be very happy.

[Hermes]

I'll be back soon.

[El Juanico Diez]

Rereading BB to LS #6

Something important about this card is the address. Beatrice Jr actually took up residence in the apartment just above Lemony's apartment. In addition she took up the profession of baticeer. If she spent time and money creating a cover card, it's very likely that she was actually working on it, even if on a cover mission. Both the card art and the phrase "Baticeer Extraordinaire" just make me come to the conclusion that Beatrice Jr was doing circus performances or something, actually using her skills involving bat training. Something akin to training lions to perform in a circus, but probably much less dangerous if the bats in question are properly vaccinated. So, it makes no sense to believe that Beatrice Jr just assumed the title of Baticeer without practicing that profession.

That said, let's move on to the message itself:

Beatrice wrote: "I am sorry I embarrassed you in front of tour friends. I only wanted to talk to you."

This phrase is exactly the same phrase Lemony used at the beginning of the LS to BB #1 card. We can give several reasons outside the universe to explain this, but we still need a reason within the universe of Lemony Snicket to explain why Beatrice Jr chose to use the same phraseology that Lemony used many years before. I think the simplest answer is that Beatrice Jr read the letter Lemony had sent to Beatrice. Finally we have Beatrice Jr's signature, just like B. This is strong evidence that Beatrice Jr actually got into VFD.

[TheAsh]

Jul 22, 2021 19:37:17 GMT -5 El Juanico Diez said:

I don't really like Dante's argument about the clues that TBL is referring to are the clues to what would be revealed in TE.

TBL expands the ASOUE universe while communicating with the 13 main books and LSTUA.

Whenever I start thinking about TBL I feel overwhelmed with emotion, and all I can think about is how there is nothing that can produce literary emotions in me as strong as this book. I feel like everything written in asoue is a prelude to this masterpiece.

The art of the book is sensational, the disposable letters are sensational. When people use tbl only as a prelude to TE, they minimize the work's potential.

Daniel Handler's true intentions in producing TBL no longer matter! What we have here surpasses any intention. When you get carried away by words, and really immerse yourself in the world of Snicket and imagine yourself as someone who has actually acquired a collection of personal letters that reveal secrets you've learned to care about through biographical accounts published by a researcher, you realize the great beauty that exists in TBL.

In the ASOUE universe, TBL was neither written nor published to supplement TE.But Lemony decided to publish for those deeply interested in the Baudelaire case. Or rather, he decided to let his editor decide whether to publish or not.

And in Lemony's universe, "may contain Clues" can only mean "may contain information about the Baudelaire case, but if there is they are not so evident that Lemony is not sure of their relevance or what these Clues from fact could mean".

I couldn't agree more!

[El Juanico Diez]

Rereading BB to LS#5. This letter relates very well to the BB to LS#6 card as it has an artwork almost identical to the one used on Beatrice's card. This once again reinforces the idea that Beatrice Jr does indeed have an artistic career now, albeit a disguise. After that, we have the date stamp. Midway thought The Days of Awe is the fifth day after the Jewish New Year. We would need to know the year the letter was written to make an exact match to the Gregorian calendar, but I believe this is probably late September or early October (TheAsh, can you help me with that?). If my calculations are correct, at first glance, this letter appears to have been written about 4 months after BB to LS #4. However, we have to consider additional information that we now have via ATWQ, information that matches perfectly with something written in this letter: Beatrice Jr's hands-on training. While Beatrice Jr was writing letter #4, she was still in the middle of her theoretical training in VFD. She needed to finish theoretical training, go to practical training and only then have started an artistic career and then she tried again to contact Lemony. This may have taken at least a year.


As much as you'd like to deny it, as much as it doesn't seem to make sense as far as the intentions of the real author and Lemony Snicket are concerned, Beatrice Jr claims to have had recent contact with the Baudelaire siblings. You may think she is mistaken either by her memories or by her encountering imposters. You can find a lot of things, but nothing changes the fact that Beatrice Jr has clearly hinted that she believes she was with the three Baudelaires shortly before she wrote this letter. She wrote: "Without Violet, Klaus, an Sunny I would never have continued my studies with these last few volunteers, and become the "baticeer" I am today. will not rest until FIND THEM AGAIN".


In other words, unless Beatrice Jr is delusional, she has met some people she actually believed to be the three Baudelaires. Let's accept this as a fact, which does not guarantee that the real Baudelaires actually survived. But accepting that Beatrice Jr has met someone helps us put together a better timeline and understand Beatrice Letters better, which is my goal here. That said, let's move on to understanding the second paragraph of the letter. "Violet told me once tha I saved her life." Rather than believing in a residual childhood memory, it's easier to believe that a person Beatrice Jr believed to be Violet, told her this sometime after Beatrice Jr first tried to contact Lemony. In the same way we can understand the statements: "Klaus claimed that wothout me he would have died in despair not long after the destruction of the Hotel Denoument. Even Synny said that he would not have survived without me." Hence we have reports of the coexistence between Beatrice Jr and those she believes are the Baudelaires. She wrote: "Without Violet's emergency repairwork, I never would have found my way to the city to search for you." Another important detail is what Beatrice wrote about the school: "Without the stories all three siblings told me of their troubles - wich in some cases differ widly from your own accounts - I would never have found the secretarial school, where I worte my previous letter to you. It was not a secretarial school, of course..." I guess I don't need to point out that that secretarial school was actually a VFD school. And needless to say, this school was in the City, near the Cafe where Lemony and Beatrice Sr had dated in the past. So Beatrice Jr is saying that with the stories told by the people she believes are the Baudelaires, she has managed to find the VFD school. However, we know that until they went to the Island, the three Baudelaires had not been to any VFD school. This brings us to the following conclusion: Beatrice Jr separated from the three Baudelaires when she was a very young child. Then she spent years away from them, and tried to find them. Then, at some point, she's reunited with people she believes are the Baudelaires, and then they've told Beatrice Jr stories about secretarial school. Beatrice Jr believed that at this time when the Baudelaires were separated from her, they entered VFD, and after leaving, they were able to tell her the stories about that school. Therefore, after she separated again from those people she believed to be the Baudelaires, she was able to enter the VFD school, using the information provided by those people. And then, she decided to look for them again.

[You Look Lost]

I have to disagree with that. 'Find them again' doesn't mean that she has found them once before, simply that she has been separated from them. I believe the stories that she has been told would include the details in the Baudelaire parents ASOUE book, which would cover how those stories led Beatrice to the secretarial school.

[El Juanico Diez]

Aug 31, 2021 1:34:16 GMT -5 You Look Lost said:

I have to disagree with that. 'Find them again' doesn't mean that she has found them once before, simply that she has been separated from them. I believe the stories that she has been told would include the details in the Baudelaire parents ASOUE book, which would cover how those stories led Beatrice to the secretarial school.

That makes sense. So let's go back to the blackboard.

[El Juanico Diez]

Aug 31, 2021 6:04:34 GMT -5 El Juanico Diez said:

Aug 31, 2021 1:34:16 GMT -5 You Look Lost said:

I have to disagree with that. 'Find them again' doesn't mean that she has found them once before, simply that she has been separated from them. I believe the stories that she has been told would include the details in the Baudelaire parents ASOUE book, which would cover how those stories led Beatrice to the secretarial school.

That makes sense. So let's go back to the blackboard.

But wait! I came back from the blackboard! And what about the word "NOW"? Using the word "now" in that context suggests that she was recently separated from the people she believes to be the Baudelaires, doesn't it?

And trying to unravel the meaning of the word find... If she said "meet them again", I could say it makes feeling a single separation. But "find them again", ... "find" in this context means "to come upon by searching or effort". The first time she needed to search for them was the first time she found them. The second time she was searching for them, it would (perhaps) result the second time she would find them.

If you have a pen, and you lose a pen only once, and then you search hard for it, when you find it what do you say? "I found my pen again"? No... I mean, you can say that, but it would be wrong. You should have just said "I found my pen".

Another example. Imagine that the first lost clownfish movie was called "Find Nemo Again". You would soon imagine that Nemo is a fish that keeps getting lost. On the other hand, because the movie is called "Find Nemo", you understand that Nemo was lost only once. If by chance, the sequel to the movie were "Find Nemo Again", you would imagine, "Oh, that Nemo is lost again".

 I mean... I'm not an English expert... maybe I'm wrong. But still, the "now" is a strong argument.

[El Juanico Diez]

Still talking about the BB to LS#5 letter.
In this letter, Beatrice Jr demonstrates specific knowledge about Lemony Snicket. She claims in the first paragraph that she knows Lemony has a bad sense of direction.
I've already discussed this with Dante once, and he didn't agree with me, but he also wasn't able to come up with any counterarguments strong enough to convince me I was wrong: I believe Beatrice Jr's specific knowledge of Lemony is from the fact that she found the letters Lemony sent to Beatrice Sr.

The map found in LS to BB#1 can be interpreted in two ways. Beatrice is specific that Lemony may not know where East is. This is the cardinal point that is depicted on the map drawn by Lemony. Unlike us, Beatrice Jr went to that VFD school, and she knew exactly how the streets, walls and gates were laid out in the place and in the neighborhood. Lemony asked to meet Beatrice Sr outside the east gate. He probably meant "outside the north gate" or something, which made Beatrice deduce that Lemony was confused about where east was.


We also have an important chronological event here: Beatrice claims that she became a Baticeer only after going to VFD school. Dante believed that Beatrice Jr had become a Baticeer only in name, however, the evidence in this letter points in the other direction. Beatrice Jr demonstrates knowledge of bat behavior after a long evening of hunting.

And finally, Beatrice Jr's goal here, in trying to talk to her uncle, is to get Lemony to untie "My Silence Knot." I would really like to understand what Beatrice Jr meant by that. That sentence doesn't seem to make sense. I stress that in this context Beatrice Jr seems to have used this phraseology only to draw Lemony's attention to the fact that she knew about the poem or play My Silence Knot. After all, Lemony had written about it in the letters he had sent Beatrice Sr. But I think it's significant that Beatrice Jr doesn't ask for specific information about the Baudelaires. (After all, she thinks she already found them, and that it's up to her to find them again). The expression "Untie My Silence Knot" seems to me to mean "explain to me the mysteries surrounding my own life" and not "tell me where my adoptive parents are."