The Mother of All Holmeses

By Brad Keefauver

“My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”

—Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”

In seeking to validate a truth, the first test any of us applies, either consciously or unconsciously, is whether or not that truth is proven by the details of our own past experience. As Sherlock Holmes seemed certain that details of the parents could be had by looking at their children, we can be equally certain that the details of his parents’ character can be found by looking at their children, Mycroft and Sherlock. This is not to say Mama Holmes was a cherrywood-pipe-smoking, hair-trigger-shooting, obese government official, or any other combination of the more superficial Holmes traits. No, for discovering what kind of mother Mama Holmes was, we need to look at what kind of mother her son Sherlock was.

And what a mother he was!

“Now, off you go, and come back with a better report next time.” Mother Sherlock instructs his brood of little detectives in A Study in Scarlet. He waves his hand and they scamper off in search of their prey. “There's more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force . . . They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organization,” he then proudly tells Watson.

Sherlock Holmes was never the sort of fellow who had problems dealing with children. Whether it was bargaining in shillings with six-year-old Jack Smith in The Sign of the Four or shaking hands with Baby Ferguson in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire,” Holmes is open and friendly in his dealings with the young. He’s stern with the boys of Baker Street when they tramp into 221B en masse, but not so stern that they don’t swarm up again the next time he has a case. They like him, and he likes them as well.

One might argue that Sherlock Holmes was good at dealing with all sorts of people, so children should be no exception. It must be remembered, however, that our dealings with our fellow men and women are usually the result of childhood social situations, as well as what we learn from observing our parents. For the deep-thinking loner that we always think of him as, Sherlock Holmes is an amazingly social creature. He even seems to prefer having a roommate, as well as a few other people like Billy the page running around the house — almost like it’s what he’s been used to from childhood. And it probably was.

Seeing Sherlock Holmes line up the urchins of Baker Street for their daily marching orders, we are most certainly seeing a reflection of scenes from much earlier in Sherlock’s life, on such occasions as when Mama Holmes would line up her brood to check for clean hands before mealtime. Past observers have always chalked up Sherlock’s distrust of women to some infidelity on his mother’s part, but I would propose that it was just one more natural offshoot of his growing up in a large family. Boys trust their mothers . . . so who do they usually learn a distrust of women from? Why their sisters, of course. Sisters are the most devious creatures a lad will ever encounter in his childhood, especially if he’s got a number of them! It gives a young man all the more reason to bond with a brother seven years older, and play observation games under his tutelage. But Mycroft wasn’t the only brother in Sherlock’s life, either. As I’ve explained in depth elsewhere (The Armchair Baskerville Tour), James Mortimer, the deep-thinking Dartmoor doctor, was plainly another Holmes brother. And how do you think young Billy came to live at 221 Baker Street and serve as Holmes’s page? Just one more member of that massive Holmes brood, coming to the big city from Sussex.

With James, Mycroft, Sherlock, young William, Violet (you do remember his sister Violet, don’t you?), and the other Holmes sisters underfoot, could Mama Holmes have had any time left for the adulterous liaisons she’s often accused of? Would she have had the energy left to pack a suitcase and abandon her clan, even if she had the potential? Of course not. The horror stories that some use to attempt to explain Sherlock’s passion for detection would have yielded a disfunctional mess of a man . . . never two (or more!) such gloriously successful offspring as came from Mama Holmes’s brood.

Intelligient, generous, productive, yet able to enjoy life’s pleasures . . . by looking at the children, we can see that Mama Holmes possessed some fine traits. She made the Holmes home a secure and happy place, from which her children could spring to achieve great things. And of all the people who played a part in the life of Sherlock Holmes, Mama Holmes would undoubtedly be the most fascinating and enjoyable person a time-travelling Sherlockian could ever hope to meet. Can you imagine the tales she’d have to tell? And the charm with which she’d tell them?

She was, after all, the mother of all Holmeses.

And that makes her quite a woman.