In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant.” They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience now he has made himself an essential. We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. “He has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. In that story, we learn the truth about Mycroft-that occasionally he is the British Government! Like Sherlock, Mycroft has created a completely unique career for himself, credited with being “the most indispensable man in the country.” Physically, Mycroft resembles his younger brother, but is “a much larger and stouter man.” When we meet him again in November 1895, in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” a more fulsome description is given: “Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-grey, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.” Working in Whitehall, Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall across the street from the Diogenes Club, “the queerest club in London,” which he helped found-all within a very tight radius, with Mycroft seldom seen outside his fixed orbit. “Art in the blood,” says Sherlock says, “is liable to the strangest forms”: and it certainly took a unique form in Mycroft, described as having an extraordinary faculty for figures and auditing the books in some government departments. (Tradition also suggests there may have been a third brother, the oldest-Sherrinford -who inherited the family estate in Yorkshire and lives the quiet life of a country squire it’s difficult to imagine either Mycroft or Sherlock being fulfilled in such a prosaic existence.) We also know that their maternal grandmother was the sister of the celebrated French artist Vernet. Watson that not only does he have a brother, but one whose facility for deductive reasoning is superior to his own! We finally meet Mycroft at the Diogenes Club, and I must confess feeling that he may well be the most intriguing character in the entire Canon.Ĭanonically speaking, we know little about Mycroft. Holmes in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter,” where Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. One of Arthur Conan Doyle’s more enigmatic characters is Mycroft Holmes, the older and smarter brother of the famous detective. Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-grey, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |