Of Parietal Bones, Pate De Foie Gras Pie, And Catkins On The Hazels

An amusing thing happened to me at the beginning of March this year.  The judging committee of my little "Title the Column Contest" voted two out of three in favor of the title you see above, as submitted by Hugh Harrington, the notorious compiler of Harrington's Canonical Index. Little did the judges know that I had been contemplating that very subject, and was considering doing a column on it anyway.

Don't believe me?

As February gives way to March, the mind inevitably wanders toward thoughts of Spring. And what more Canonical part of spring could a true Sherlockian think of than the catkins, those droopy yellow things that appear on a hazel nut tree even before the leaves return.

"It is very pleasant to see the first green shoots upon the hedges and the catkins on the hazels once again," Sherlock Holmes remarked in "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge." Those who think Holmes's digression on the rose in "Naval Treaty" was unusual don't give much thought to his pleasure in the catkins.

Sherlock Holmes was a man of many pleasures, as many students of the Canon tend to forget. Simple ones, like the appreciation of nature, and more traditional ones, like a good meal.

"'They have laid the supper, then,' he said, rubbing his hands." Note the detective's reaction to the prospect of pate de foie gras (which, apparently served in a crust, was wrongly called "pie" by Watson) in "Noble Bachelor." Even though he may have neglected a dinner or two when hot on a case, Sherlock Holmes had as fine an appreciation of food as any man.

Throughout the accounts Watson has given us, one can find instance after instance of Sherlock Holmes simply enjoying life. Nature, food, music, even—though we hate to admit or condone them—smoking, drinking, and recreational drugs. Holmes had all the qualities of a hedonist, except for one noticeable exception: sex. The man indulged in everything else under the sun. Why the absence of this single source of pleasure?

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr. Mortimer comments upon the detective's  "supra-orbital development, " which simply means that he had a lot of head above the eye line. Mortimer also admired Holmes's parietal fissure, the place on the upper back part of the skull where the two halves of the skull's major bones join. That area contains those parts of the brain that take in and analyze sensory input, and we know for a fact that that part of Sherlock Holmes's brain was well developed. Sensory input was the biggest part of Holmes's detective work, which was also his greatest pleasure of all.

So with all this sensual/pleasure facility apparent in the life of Sherlock Holmes, why was sex absent? Or was it just absent in the part of his life that we are privy to? Perhaps Holmes just wasn't indulging in this particular pleasure during his time with the doctor. It could well have been like cocaine, something he indulged in for a period of time then left behind.

"I never mixed much with the men of my year," Holmes said of his college days in "The Gloria Scott."  He speaks of moping about his rooms,  and being "friendless," and we generally assume it was a lonely period indeed for our Sherlock. But the way he emphasizes that one line, "I never mixed much with the men ..." leads one to think he may have been mixing with someone else.

And while colleges of those days were not the co-ed mixing places of the modern day, college was still a time when a young man left home behind and began to indulge in his own pursuits. It could have been the time when Holmes pursued the opposite sex with all the vigor of every other thing he went after.

If you'll check a good dictionary, you'll find that "parietal" also means "existing within college walls." I didn't know Hugh Harrington was fluent in the vernacular of Wayne and Garth, but the pun in his title seems to indicate otherwise. Congratulations, Hugh, that book will be heading your way just as soon as I get it.