The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes Read Free Page A

and we soon all learned not only the art of conversational repartee, but the nuances of an intellectual society.
    Memory calls up one of my early fascinations with the long dinners. The table, with the six members of our family and numerous guests, was laid with the full array of Victorian-era tableware, china and crystal. From my seat near the end of the table, the flawless order and alignment of the silver and various plates and glasses the full length of the table captured my mind and my growing affinity for precision. I learned to not only memorize the original positions of all the objects on the table, but to memorize the changes to the implements and dishes made by each person during the course of the dinners. Even now, these many years later, I can recall the exact progression of a salt cellar’s migrations during a celebratory birthday dinner for my mother.
    In addition to Nanny Dobney, our family was well cared for by a housekeeper, a maid, a cook and a butler. The cook and butler were married—a Scots couple from Inverness, Hume and Mrs Hume. The housekeeper was a highly-efficient woman from Kinlet, Shropshire, Mrs Hodgson, whose proclivities included an intense dislike for tobacco smoke and an eternally gray outlook focused on temperance and moderation in all things. She was a counter-balance to the Humes who were both jolly Scots Pagans who celebrated life and a liberal sampling of the Tantalus and gasogene. The loyal household was brilliantly managed by Mother who maintained equilibrium and equanimity among all.
    At age ten I was given a pony that I never liked. It was given to a neighbor a year later. Horses remained thereafter, for me, an essential attachment to a Hansom cab. I did, however, benefit from the close study of the imprints of horse hooves and shoes and, some years later, wrote a detailed monograph on the determination of breed and age from hoof prints and the classifications of the distinctive hammer and punch marks of county farriers.
    My youth was solitary. Mycroft took the part of my childhood friend; in reality he was more like my mentor given the twelve years difference in our ages. From age six when I began my schooling to age nineteen when I left for university, my associations were almost entirely those of Nanny Dobney, my family and the family friends and retainers. The child-like innocence so valued by others never found its way to my early years; I was born middle-aged and remained there, a fixed point in unchanged time.
    The Holmes squires had a long history of educational progressivism. My great-grandfather established a school for Maiden Wood in 1770 complete with a qualified headmaster and a carefully chosen staff of instructors. Over its now one-hundred fifty-nine years of service, Thanet School has not only educated the Holmes offspring but—due to my ancestors’ successive liberality and vision—those of the tenants and villagers of Maiden Wood, as well as numerous progeny of the landed gentry in the near environs of Kent who were accommodated as tuition-paying day-scholars. Over the years, many of the school’s sixth form graduates went up to Oxford, Cambridge or other desirable universities of the realm.
    Unlike my father and brothers, as well as prior Holmes males, all of whom graduated Cambridge, I was admitted to Exeter College, Oxford where I took an undistinguished Ordinary in natural sciences. While my siblings achieved Upper Firsts and Masters Degrees, my largely self-directed studies were outside the academic tolerance of even the progressive leanings of Exonian dons. Fortunately, I competed well at fencing and was tolerated primarily for my ability to excel at foils against Exeter’s sister college, Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I went up to Oxford in October of 1871, and came down in May of 1874. Aside from a skill for fencing, I acquired a working knowledge of organic chemistry, but little else. And, again, unlike my father and siblings, I made no important