There is precious little record of Holmes's early life. It is unusual that someone so famous could keep the details of his life so secret that it becomes necessary to think that it was deliberate. Holmes had little interest in the trivia of personal biography, so it is unlikely that he would have bothered to have disguised the trail. But others may certainly have done so in order to protect him, and thoughts turn immediately to his elder brother Mycroft Holmes who had considerable influence in government circles and could have easily pressed the right buttons in order to close whatever shutters were necessary.
We must therefore rely on what Watson himself tells us. In 'His Last Bow', which takes place in August 1914, Watson refers to Holmes as 'a tall, gaunt man of sixty'. It is the only occasion where he mentions his age. We must be careful as he was describing Holmes in disguise as the Irish-American spy Altamont. Had Holmes aged himself or made himself look younger? We don't know. And did Watson mean precisely sixty, or was he in his sixtieth year- in other words fifty-nine? If we accept it at face value, and since no other clue is given as to Holmes's birthday, then we must conclude that Holmes was born in either 1853 or 1854, or at the latest in 1855. I prefer the earlier date because in 'The Boscombe Valley Mystery' Holmes refers to himself as middle-aged which suggests forty-something. That story took place in 1889 or 1890 which would make Holmes's year of birth earlier than 1850, but middle-aged is an indeterminate phrase and we can assume that a birth year somewhere in the early 1850s is as close as we'll get. We may take some clue from the year in which Holmes retired, which was at the end of 1903. Did he do this on his fiftieth birthday? It would be an appropriate landmark.
Holmes came from a line of country squires but somewhere in his veins was the blood of the French artist Claude Vernet, from whose family Holmes also claimed descent. We do not know where Holmes was born, but his general dislike of the countryside suggests that he was raised somewhere remote, and as we shall see he certainly spent some of his youth in Ireland. This coupled with his reticence to discuss his childhood suggests that it might not have been happy, and we can imagine an almost reclusive child already intent upon his studies in logical deduction. Holmes was almost certainly educated at a private school before progressing to university.
It is at university that his abilities as a solver of puzzles came to the fore. Two of the recorded cases throw some light on Holmes's University days. 'The Gloria Scott', Holmes tells us, was the first case in which he was engaged. He refers to the case again in 'The Musgrave Ritual' saying that the Gloria Scott case 'first turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has become my life's work.' It is thus of some importance to date this investigation, but it is here that we first encounter Watson's masking of facts. We could put a rough dating on it on the assumption that Holmes went to university when he was about eighteen or nineteen, which would place it in the period 1868 to 1872, and he talks about it occurring after two years at university, or between 1870 and 1874. In 'The Veiled Lodger' Watson tells us Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years. Since he retired in 1903, counting back would bring us to 1880, but we must also deduct the years of the Great Hiatus between 'The Final Problem' in April 1891 and Holmes's return in 'The Empty House' in early 1894, a gap of three years. So he established himself as a consulting detective in 1877. We know from 'The Musgrave Ritual' that Holmes set up his practice soon after university, so we can imagine he finished his university years around 1876.A span of university education from 1872 to 1876 therefore sounds realistic in the chronology and would place the Gloria Scott case in about 1874.
However, in the course of 'The Gloria Scott' Holmes refers to events aboard the ship having taken place thirty years earlier in 1855, which would place the story in 1885. This has to be wrong, because Holmes and Watson met in 1881 by which time Holmes had been in practice for four years. Clearly there is some deliberate shifting of dates in this story, perhaps through Holmes's faulty record keeping (always possible, as he was not a great record-keeper of things he regarded as unimportant), or Watson's erroneous transcription of the
case or, we should not forget, through Watson trying to hide the time of Holmes's university years.
In fact my own research has revealed two episodes that happened to Holmes while at university that have previously gone unrecorded. They reveal that Holmes's years at university were not without incident and it is not surprising that it has been difficult to tie him down, since he spent time at two universities. I am grateful to Peter Tremayne and Derek Wilson for their help in bringing the record of the episodes into their final form from scraps of evidence left by Watson. I have deliberately set the stories in reverse order of internal events because of the relative discovery of the episodes by Watson. The first happened during the period of Holmes's apparent death, whilst Watson learned of the second after Holmes's return. Here then, for the first time ever, are the earliest records of Sherlock Holmes.
The Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity – Derek Wilson
The death of my dear friend, Sherlock Holmes, affected me more than a little and had I not had the demands of a growing medical practice and the care of a loving wife the loss which I, and indeed the nation, had suffered must have seriously undermined my constitution. For a long time I could scarcely bear it when my affairs took me to places where some of Holmes's greatest triumphs had been enacted or where together we had faced dangerous villains or petty scoundrels. As for Baker Street, I avoided it completely; always ordering cab drivers to proceed by some roundabout route when conveying me through that part of London.
Yet time, as has often been observed, is a healer. I shared that experience common to all bereaved people: the transformation of memories from dreams almost too painful to be endured into visitations of consolation. Increasingly I found myself turning over the leaves of my journals and the printed accounts of Sherlock Holmes's cases which I had been privileged to record. Much of the material I had garnered about my friend consisted of tantalizing scraps – hints about his earlier life and oblique references to cases of which I knew nothing. As the months passed more and more of my leisure time was spent in trying to arrange my memorabilia in some logical order so that I might obtain a grasp of the sweep of Holmes's life. I lost no opportunity of asking others who had known my friend for any details that might have eluded me and it was in this way that what I call the Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity came to my attention.
In the spring of 1893, my wife and I were invited to Oxford to spend a few days with the Hungerfords. Adrian Hungerford was a fellow of Grenville college and he and Augusta were distant relatives of Mary's. Despite Mary's insistence that I should enjoy meeting her cousins it was with no very great enthusiasm that I accompanied her from Paddington station on the short journey to England's most ancient centre of learning. As usual my beloved helpmeet was right. The Hungerfords were an intelligent and relaxed couple of middle years who gave us a welcome as warm as it was genuine.
It was on the second evening of our stay that Adrian Hungerford invited me to dine with him at his college. I enjoyed an excellent meal on the high table in Grenville's ancient hall over which I was able, with some effort, to hold up my end of an erudite conversation with the master and the dean. After dinner I retired with the dozen or so fellows to the senior combination room where, over the ritual of claret, port and cigars, discussion, somewhat to my relief, ran into less scholarly channels.
'Am I not right in thinking, Dr Watson, that you were at some time associated with that detective fellow… what was his name… Hutchings?' The speaker was a shrivelled little man enveloped in a rather gangrenous master's gown who had been earlier introduced to me as Blessingham.
