This revelation will probably come as no surprise to those discerning readers who have followed Holmes’s adventures. There have been clues enough of Holmes’s origins. Holmes’s greatest adversary, James Moriarty, was of a similar background. Most people will know that the Moriarty family are from Kerry, the very name being an Anglicization of the Irish name O Muircheartaigh, meaning, interestingly enough, “expert navigator.” Moriarty once held a chair of mathematics in Queen’s University in Belfast. It was in Ireland that the enmity between Holmes and Moriarty first started. But that is a story which does not concern us.
If there were not clues enough, there was also Holmes’s fascination with the Celtic languages, of which he was something of an expert. In my narrative “The Devil’s Foot,” I mentioned Holmes’s study on Chaldean Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language. I did not mention that this work won high praise from such experts as the British Museum’s Henry Jenner, the greatest living expert on the Cornish language. Holmes was able to demonstrate the close connection between the Cornish verb and the Irish verb systems.
The Holmes family were well known in Galway. Indeed, it was Holmes’s uncle, Robert Holmes, the famous Galway barrister and Queen’s Counsel, whom the Irish have to thank for the organization of the Irish National School system for the poorer classes, for he was a member of the Duke of Leinster’s seven-man education commission in the 1830s and 1840s, responsible for many innovative ideas. These few brief words will demonstrate, therefore, the significance of this aide-memoire, which Holmes passed to me in the spring of 1894.
My initial encounter with my second most dangerous adversary happened when I was lunching with my brother, Mycroft, in the Kildare Street Club, in Dublin, during September of 1873. I was barely twenty years old at the time, and thoughts of a possible career as a consulting detective had not yet formulated in my mind. In fact, my mind was fully occupied by the fact that I would momentarily be embarking for England, where I had won a demyship at one of the Oxford Colleges with the grand sum of 95 pounds per annum.
I had won the scholarship having spent my time at Trinity College, Dublin, in the study of chemistry and botany. My knowledge of chemistry owed much to a great Trinity scholar, Maxwell Simpson, whose lectures at the Park Street Medical School advanced my knowledge of organic chemistry considerably. Simpson was the first man to synthesize succinic acid, a dibasic acid obtained by the dry distillation of amber. It was thanks to this great countryman of mine that I had produced a dissertation thought laudable enough to win me the scholarship to Oxford.
Indeed, I was not the only Trinity man to be awarded a demyship to Oxford that year. My friend, Wilde, a brilliant Classicist, a field for which I had no aptitude at all, was also to pursue his education there. Wilde continually berated me for my fascination with sensational literature and one day promised that he would write a horror story about a portrait that would chill even me.
My brother, Mycroft, who, like most of the Holmes family of Galway, was also a product of Trinity, had invited me to lunch at the Kildare Street Club. Mycroft, being seven years older than I, had already established his career in the Civil Service and was working in the fiscal department of the Chief Secretary for Ireland in Dublin Castle. He could, therefore, afford the 10 pounds per annum, which gave him access to the opulence of the red brick Gothicstyle headquarters of the Kildare Street Club.
The club was the center of masculine Ascendancy life in Ireland. Perhaps I should explain that these were the Anglo-Irish elite, descendants of those families that England had dispatched to Ireland to rule the unruly natives. The club was exclusive to members of the most important families in Ireland. No “Home Rulers,” Catholics nor Dissenters were allowed in membership. The rule against Catholics was, however, “bent” in the case of the O’Conor Don, a direct descendant of the last High King of Ireland, and a few religious recalcitrants, such as the earls of Westmeath, Granard, and Kenmare, whose loyalty to England had been proved to be impeccable. No army officer below the rank of major, nor below a naval lieutenant-commander was allowed within its portals. And the only people allowed free use of its facilities were visiting members of the Royal Family, their equerries and the viceroy himself.
My brother, Mycroft, basked and prospered in this colonial splendor, but I confess, it was not to my taste. I had been accepted within this elite sanctuary as guest of Mycroft only, who was known as a confidant of the Chief Secretary and therefore regarded as having the ear of the viceroy himself. I had been persuaded to go only because Mycroft wished to celebrate my demyship and see me off to Oxford in fraternal fashion. I did not want to disappoint him.
The dining room of the club was truly luxuriant. The club had the reputation of providing the best table in Dublin.
A solemn-faced waiter, more like an undertaker, led us through the splendidly furnished dining room to a table in a bay window overlooking St. Stephen’s Green, for the club stood on the corner of Kildare Street and the green itself.
“An aperitif, gentlemen?” intoned the waiter in a sepulchral voice.
Mycroft took the opportunity to inform me that the cellar was of excellent quality, particularly the stock of champagne. I replied that I believed that I would commence with a glass of sherry and chose a Palo Cortaldo while Mycroft, extravagantly, insisted on a half bottle of Diamant Bleu.
He also insisted on a dozen oysters, which I observed cost an entire shilling a dozen, and were apparently sent daily from the club’s own oyster bed near Galway. I settled for pate de foie gras and we both agreed to indulge in a steak with a bottle of Bordeaux, a rich red St. Estephe from the Chateau MacCarthy.
In truth, Mycroft was more of a gourmand than a gourmet. He was physically lazy and already there was a corpulent aspect to his large frame. But he also had the Holmes’s brow, the alert, steel-gray, deepset eyes, and firmness of lips. He had an astute mind and was a formidable chess player.
After we had made our choice, we settled down, and I was able to observe our fellow diners.
Among those who caught my immediate eye was a dark-haired man who, doubtless, had been handsome in his youth. He was now in his mid-thirties, and his features were fleshy and gave him an air of dissoluteness and degeneracy. He carried himself with the air of a military man, even as he slouched at his table imbibing his wine, a little too freely, I fear. His discerning brow was offset by the sensual jaw. I was aware of cruel blue eyes; drooping, cynical lids; and an aggressive manner even while seated in repose. He was immaculately dressed in a smart dark coat and cravat with a diamond pin that announced expensive tastes.
His companion appeared less governed by the grape than he, preferring coffee to round off his luncheon. This second man was tall and thin, his forehead domed out in a white curve, and his two eyes deeply sunken in his head. I would have placed him about the same age as his associate. He was cleanshaven, pale, and ascetic looking. A greater contrast between two men, I could not imagine.
The scholarly man was talking earnestly, and his military companion nodded from time to time, as if displeased at being disturbed in his contemplation of his wineglass. The other man, I saw, had rounded shoulders, and his face protruded forward. I observed that his head oscillated from side to side in a curious reptilian fashion.