“True enough,” said Dr Watson. “But all that aside, you are the most rational of men, and surely you cannot believe in ghosts and hobgoblins.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Watson, than are dreamt of in my philosophy. There is only one matter I am certain of.”
“And what is that, Holmes?”
“One day, truly, I must travel to Tibet.”
I rose from my chair so as to excuse myself, saying, “I am meeting my fiancé soon, Mr Holmes, so I will take my leave. Perhaps, as you muse upon the events I have recounted, you will come to some other explanation that escapes me, and if so I hope you will share it with me. Until that time, I extend to you the same invitation I did to poor Mr Thurn, who I fear may not only have died from the strain of battling his final monster, but may even have hoped to do so, to atone for the sins he felt he had committed.”
“You are offering me your stepfather’s books, then?” enquired Holmes. “It is kind of you, and, as you mentioned there were some of an esoteric nature, I wonder if they might shed further light on these mysterious events, but I suggest that despite your reluctance to retain any of your stepfather’s belongings you keep them and read them yourself, Miss Stoner. You have a sharp and inquisitive mind, and perhaps it is you who will one day better explain to me what transpired at Stoke Moran. And, might I say, I hope your next home proves less haunted.”
I reached my hand to the sitting room door. “I repeat that my only hope is to soon put Stoke Moran behind me once and for all. A good day to you, gentlemen.”
A FAMILY RESEMBLANCE
Simon Bucher-Jones
Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older, and perhaps smarter, brother was introduced to the canon in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter” (The Strand, 1893, thereafter, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes). It has long been a regret of mine that no meeting between Mycroft and Professor Moriarty had come to light, and, while this story only supplies this at, as it were, one remove, I trust that this meeting of brothers throws light on the characters and on their respective siblings.
Being an account extracted from the Papers of Mycroft Holmes, released under the sixty-year rule and subject to such elisions as have been deemed necessary for National Security. Mycroft appears to have had a near-perfect memory, but he augmented – and perhaps to a degree even produced – this effect, in practice, by writing memoranda of his day’s activity each night including a verbatim account of his conversations.
There have been some interesting, though somewhat juvenile to my way of thinking, monographs out of Vienna in the last year[1] – which speak to the central problem of humanity – that is, why it is so difficult for a rational man to deal with those who merely regard themselves as rational.
Take my brother for example. There will be, I am sure, as our knowledge of the mind and body develop beyond that of Aristotle and the Edinburgh school of dissection-inclined materialists, a specific diagnosis that defines a man who oscillates between frantic activity and reptilian inaction. If the late Robert Louis Stevenson[2] had been more astute, he might have determined that the divide in man was not good and evil, but energy and lethargy, or extroversion and introspection. An introspective evil is more akin to an introspective good than it is unlike it, and an active force in the world, whether for good or evil, must move in similar ways albeit to different aims.
A rational being, as Hume might define one,[3] determines the modes in which his brain best functions and, having so determined, constructs a mechanism to permit the world to encroach upon that functioning as little as possible, as is commensurate with making a rational supportive contribution to the maintaining of that mechanism. We pay a debt to society, in so much and so far as society is necessary for us, either as a value in itself, or as a means to permit our protection from mere anarchy or worse. Where the mechanism forms a join with the irrational world it may become partly irrational, but that contact should be limited so as to prevent such contamination.
An irrational being, however effective it may be in one or more of its modes, risks everything in tearing itself apart when those modes do not suffice and, by working first in high gear and then in low, is always vulnerable to the specks of grit the world may throw into the delicate cogs of the vulnerable mind. Now I amend my path to minimise such dust, and by preserving the mechanism – under glass as it were – ensure its maximal utility. I wake, dress, attend my office, perform such tasks as are necessary, lunch at my club – whose silence suits the rumination over the morning’s data with a view to the creation of the afternoon’s synthesis. The daily task successfully dispatched I spend the evenings in equally splendid isolation. After a quiet sojourn once more at the Diogenes, I return to my lodgings – a grace and favour apartment in Admiralty Arch, courtesy of the Foreign Office – perfectly positioned to minimise unnecessary perambulations. I wash, I sleep – rarely dreaming (so far as I can determine) – and I repeat. All is as it should be. A working mind in a working body.
My brother, as you will perhaps have heard, gads about. He wastes time. He has created a useful tool in the Baker Street Irregulars, and yet he cannot bring himself to rely upon them consistently, but must always be running about in this disguise or that. Such tactics are effective no doubt among the unobserving criminal classes, or the Scotland Yarders, and no doubt there is a minor satisfaction in the perpetual surprise of his Boswell, but there came a time when he ran afoul of one of the bigger fish, who was less taken in by the ribbons of weed wrapped around the caddisfly larva and saw it for the plump dragonfly morsel it was in potential. That bigger fish was your brother – oh please don’t bother to deny it. I know you have protested the professor’s innocence in the newspapers, but between these four walls we both have good reason to look with some alarm at our families’ wilder members, have we not?
My brother too is also unafraid to break the law, for a supposedly good cause – a short-sighted moral position which has required me to intervene on his behalf with the authorities more often than I suppose he supposes. Yours did so for reasons of his own, about which I will not speculate.
That my brother does much that is good is undeniable. That he does the most good he could do is hardly likely. If he were to train his mind to wider questions – to address through support of social legislation by the government of the day towards the underlying causes of crime, to watch as I watch for the broader threat, and the less obvious larceny – he would be, in time perhaps, as indispensable as myself. Still, they tell me I shouldn’t expect old heads on young shoulders.
What has he been up to lately, you ask? Well, certainly – it is the hour when visitors are permitted to discourse here in the Stranger’s Room, and I can perceive you will need time to consider my last chess move. I have no objection to making my observations on my brother more specific.
If you were to believe that the accounts of the ingenious Watson[4] represent the norm or status quo of my brother’s activities, rather than a subset selected by their suitability for publication, you might conclude that the cases that come to my brother’s attention invariably begin with an impassioned plea from a caller at their Baker Street rooms. Perhaps a masked member of the nobility, or a governess singularly attractive for her class. However, Watson has not given publicity to the fact that Sherlock, like a little dog eager for scraps, has taken to calling monthly on the detectives of the Yard in a carefully timed “wander” through their offices that takes in each in turn without permitting the others to observe his interest. Thus he gains an early insight into cases yet to be from his minute observations of their environs and his picking up of casual gossip, to which the common constable is not immune. It is generally at around three-forty or so on the third Wednesday of the month that he calls upon Inspector Lestrade.
1
This appears to refer to the three papers published in the first half of 1896 by Sigmund Freud.
2
The papers of the late Mycroft Holmes from which this account is derived do not date events. They were originally filed in an order that would have made their timing self evident to their maker. Sadly this arrangement was lost in the Blitz, when some of the papers were destroyed and all were scattered. Robert Louis Stevenson died on 3rd December 1894; this, and the earlier reference to Freud suggests that this account dates from 1897 at the earliest.
3
Mycroft is perhaps here referring to the definition of rational as opposed to superstitious in Hume’s
4
There is some possibility that this is not a compliment; Mycroft’s papers almost never use the term “ingenious” except in the sense it is used in Ambrose Bierce’s story “The Ingenious Patriot” (1899) where it signifies a technically adept individual with no grasp of the long-term consequences of his actions. This does not, however, in itself date the action to after 1899, as this usage of the word – which is essentially sarcastic – did not originate with Bierce.