The subject was quickly changed but at the conclusion of the meal Sherlock Holmes returned to his chambers and immediately wrote a letter announcing his resignation from the college.
The Affray at the Kildare Street Club – Peter Tremayne
My narratives of the adventures of Mr Sherlock Holmes, the well-known consulting detective, have always attempted a modicum of discreetness. There is so much of both a personal and professional nature that Holmes confided in me which I have not passed on to posterity – much, I confess, at Holmes's personal request. Indeed, among Holmes's personal papers I had noticed several aide memoirs which would have expanded my sketches of his cases several times over. It is not often appreciated that while I indulged in my literary diversions, Holmes himself was possessed of a writing talent as demonstrated by over a score of works ranging from his Practical Handbook of Bee Culture to The Book of Life: the science of observation and deduction. But Holmes, to my knowledge, had made it a rule never to write about any of his specific cases.
It was therefore with some surprise that, one day during the spring of 1894, after the adventure I narrated as "The Empty House", I received from Holmes a small sheaf of handwritten papers with the exhortation that I read them in order that I might understand more fully Holmes's involvement with the man responsible for the death of the son of Lord Maynooth. Holmes, of course, did not want these details to be revealed to the public. I did acquire permission from him at a later date to the effect that they could be published after his death. In the meantime I have appended this brief foreword to be placed with the papers and handed both to my bankers and executors with the instruction that they may only be released one hundred years from this date.
It may, then, also be revealed a matter that I have always been sensitive about, in view of the prejudices of our age.
Sherlock Holmes was one of the Holmes family of Galway, Ireland, and, like his brother Mycroft, was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where his closest companion had been the poet Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, who even now, as I write, languishes in Reading Gaol. This is the principal reason why I have been reticent about acknowledging Holmes's background for it would serve no useful purpose if one fell foul of the bigotry and intolerance that arises out of such a revelation. Many good men and true, but with such backgrounds, have found themselves being shunned by their professions or found their businesses have been destroyed overnight.
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's 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 the September of 1873.1 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 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 ofTrinity, 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 per annum which gave him access to the opulence of the red brick Gothic style headquarters of the Kildare Street Club.
The Club was the centre of masculine Ascendancy life in Ireland. Perhaps I should explain that these were the Anglo-Irish elite, descendants of those families which England had
despatched 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 splendour but, I confess, it was not to my taste. I had only been accepted within this élite sanctuary as guest of Mycroft, who was known as a confident of the Chief Secretary and therefore regarded as having the ear of the Viceroy himself. I had only been persuaded to go 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 apéritif, gentlemen?" intoned the waiter in a sepulchral voice.