The Life of Sherlock Holmes--Part I Quiz

Answer: "My ancestors were country squires... ."

Holmes drops this tidbit and some other interesting family history in "The Greek Interpreter". The others are figments of my imagination, but I completely believe that Great-Grandpa was a player.

Answer: Holmes did not study medicine.

Although Holmes apparently used the laboratories and took some classes at a teaching hospital (most likely St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College), he did not study medicine. Stamford infers, and Holmes confirms, that Holmes is not studying medicine in "A Study in Scarlet". Stamford, who introduced Watson to Holmes, was Watson's dresser at Bart's, and Charing Cross Hospital is mentioned notably in "The Hound of the Baskervilles".

Answer: The French artist Vernet

Holmes reveals this branch of his family tree in "The Greek Interpreter". Interestingly, Holmes seems to feel that his facility for observation and deduction is an expression of an artistic heritage, attributable to his grandmother's brother being an artist: "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms." The very real French artist Emile Jean Horace Vernet (1789-1863) was of the right era to be Holmes's great-uncle.

Answer: In Montague Street, just around the corner from the British Museum

Holmes mentions his post-university residence in "The Musgrave Ritual", a case brought to him by a former fellow student. Holmes did not move to 221B Baker Street until after his first meeting with Watson in "A Study in Scarlet". The reference to Great Orme Street appears in "The Red Circle". I can't recall a reference to Madame Toussaud's wax works in Holmes, but am well-prepared to be corrected: it was established in Baker Street in 1835; surely Holmes would have studied the criminal figures in it!

Answer: Agatha, a young person from Hampstead

Agatha was housemaid to the title character in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton". Holmes is remorseless about romancing Milverton's maid to get information about the blackmailer's Hampstead household but, he says, "I rejoice to say I have a hated rival, who will certainly cut me out the instant that my back is turned." Although "Irene" was THE woman, they were never engaged. Enola Holmes (neither a fiancé nor a country neighbor) is a marvelous literary creation of Nancy Springer's and does not appear in the Conan Doyle stories, while Holmes's unnamed "old housekeeper" in Suffolk definitely is not an object of his amour.

Answer: Trevor's dog bit Holmes so badly that Holmes was laid up for over a week

Trevor's bull terrier "froze onto" Holmes's ankle one morning as Holmes went down to chapel, and Trevor came to visit Holmes during the ten days that the latter was "laid by the heels." Holmes says that, other than fencing and boxing, he didn't go in for sport at university.

There is no indication that he ever fenced or engaged in single-stick combat with Trevor. Trevor later brought Holmes his first case while the young men were still at university. Both case and friendship are described in "The Gloria Scott".

Answer: Barker, the man with sunglasses and a Masonic tie-pin

The shadowy Mr. Barker appears in "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman". Holmes appears to be speaking hyperbolically: Barker is a "rival" private detective (although presumably not a consulting detective), but Holmes appears to look upon him as a colleague and to some extent a friend. Moriarty and Lestrade need no introduction, and the intriguing Hon. Mr. John Clay appears in "The Red-Headed League". Holmes says of Clay, "I have one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John Clay." A smorgasboard for thought for pastiche writers!

Answer: In London, to change his personality

In "The Adventure of Black Peter", Watson notes that Holmes frequently uses disguises, and that he has at least five small refuges in different parts of London in which he is "able to change his personality." This wonderfully quirky phrase seems so much more evocative and precise a description for Holmes's vaunted acting gifts than being merely "able to change into a disguise." Conan Doyle doesn't elaborate on these refuges, but in her Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes stories, Laurie R. King describes a number of them in rich detail.

Answer: 60

"His Last Bow" is set in August 1914, on the eve of World War I. In it Holmes is described as "a tall, gaunt man of sixty." This leads most "Sherlockians" (or "Holmesians," in the UK) confidently to place Holmes's birth year as 1854. However, at the time he is being described--not by Watson but by an omniscient third person narrator--Holmes is in disguise as the purported Irish-American spy, Altamont. So just possibly it was only his incognito that was sixty?

Answer: The Queen's, with bullets

In the opening pages of "The Musgrave Ritual", Watson gives vent to some of his peeves about Holmes's shortcomings as a housekeeper and roommate. Being something of a stodgy conventionalist about such things, Watson notes his opinion that target practice is an outdoor activity, but that "Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an armchair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V.R. done in bullet pocks... . " ("V.R." stands for "Victoria Regina.")