The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes by Sherlock Holmes, Don Libey Page A
Authors: Sherlock Holmes, Don Libey
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the waters below, Moriarty took with him my cerebral power, my passion, my genius. Who was the winner?
And so, I was forced to become even more rigidly disciplined to my passion if it was to survive. When I later returned to London, my apprenticeship through Moriarty over, I began the reconstruction of my genius with an increasing scientific and nationalist service preference. The discipline excluded more of what others considered ‘normal’ interests. I still enjoyed music, a good dinner, the occasional ramble, even the theatre now and then, but the potential distractions to a life of pure reasoning and deduction were kept at bay.
Even if I had chosen to include women in my life, I would have been a poor stick of a companion. My social skills are virtually non-existent; I have no desire to associate in society; I am essentially humourless; and I am quite unable to compromise, even to preserve harmony. The woman who would have had me would have had to have been equally as hopeless as I in prospects.
There it is. One can only conclude that I was a creation of myself, and it was only as myself that I could have existed.
10
Whilst privy to so much of my life, Watson was, during our entire association, unaware of my other passion and shadow career. Even Mycroft had no knowledge of my diversionary endeavours in the years from 1900 to 1920.
Stimulation is central to my intellect. Without stimulation I am a machine without power; my mind races, producing no worthy utility. Only stimulation creates the necessary electrical reactions required of my particular and singular genius.
My stimulants are of a variety that circle the corresponding centres of the brain. Tobacco enhances my concentration; music enables my capacity for synthesis; sitting on a pillow for hours in za Zen concentrates and empties my mind in order to fix upon the one inevitable truth of each case. Each stimulant involves my sensory apparatus, thus freeing my brain to work and process data at exceptional speed and insight.
Under Watson’s admonishment, in 1899, I stopped the intermittent use of tropane alkaloid as a stimulant to heighten my sensorial perceptions. The replacement I chose was extreme olfactory stimulation taken to its highest level. With an intensity of study and mastery surprising even to me, I immersed myself into the art and science of perfumery. I became a ‘nose,’ one of the rare ‘acutes’ with the capacity to follow their circuitous olfactory pathways into the deep, hidden byways of the brain where, propelled by aroma alone and using the olfactory nerve access to the core brain, other universes are revealed and a epiphanic, pure form of truth and crystalline elucidation occurs. Simply stated: to discern is to know.
The fall and winter of 1899 found me often in Jermyn Street, Mayfair, at the perfumery of William Penhaligon, holder of the Royal Warrant for perfume and soaps to Queen Victoria and one of London’s distinguished masters of perfumery. In the great laboratory, with its banks of rare botanical elements, essences, solutions, tinctures and distillates, I would spend up to sixteen hours a day developing my abilities to structure aromas. The workbench, known as “The Organ,” was a large curved rack with ten levels that surrounded the perfumer, like a massive church organ with its banks of stops. Each level held one-hundred small glass bottles with stoppers, one-thousand botanicals and chemical formulations in varying dilutions gathered from all over the world. The Organ was the heart and soul of the perfumer’s art and, like its musical namesake, it was where the perfumes were composed and performed. Even the language of perfumery uses musical terms, such as ‘notes’ and ‘harmonies’ and ‘themes.’
With some modesty, I must admit to a natural ability for perfumery. Where most ‘noses’ require ten, twenty or more years to reach mastery, William Penhaligon himself admitted I had absorbed all he could teach me
And so, I was forced to become even more rigidly disciplined to my passion if it was to survive. When I later returned to London, my apprenticeship through Moriarty over, I began the reconstruction of my genius with an increasing scientific and nationalist service preference. The discipline excluded more of what others considered ‘normal’ interests. I still enjoyed music, a good dinner, the occasional ramble, even the theatre now and then, but the potential distractions to a life of pure reasoning and deduction were kept at bay.
Even if I had chosen to include women in my life, I would have been a poor stick of a companion. My social skills are virtually non-existent; I have no desire to associate in society; I am essentially humourless; and I am quite unable to compromise, even to preserve harmony. The woman who would have had me would have had to have been equally as hopeless as I in prospects.
There it is. One can only conclude that I was a creation of myself, and it was only as myself that I could have existed.
10
Whilst privy to so much of my life, Watson was, during our entire association, unaware of my other passion and shadow career. Even Mycroft had no knowledge of my diversionary endeavours in the years from 1900 to 1920.
Stimulation is central to my intellect. Without stimulation I am a machine without power; my mind races, producing no worthy utility. Only stimulation creates the necessary electrical reactions required of my particular and singular genius.
My stimulants are of a variety that circle the corresponding centres of the brain. Tobacco enhances my concentration; music enables my capacity for synthesis; sitting on a pillow for hours in za Zen concentrates and empties my mind in order to fix upon the one inevitable truth of each case. Each stimulant involves my sensory apparatus, thus freeing my brain to work and process data at exceptional speed and insight.
Under Watson’s admonishment, in 1899, I stopped the intermittent use of tropane alkaloid as a stimulant to heighten my sensorial perceptions. The replacement I chose was extreme olfactory stimulation taken to its highest level. With an intensity of study and mastery surprising even to me, I immersed myself into the art and science of perfumery. I became a ‘nose,’ one of the rare ‘acutes’ with the capacity to follow their circuitous olfactory pathways into the deep, hidden byways of the brain where, propelled by aroma alone and using the olfactory nerve access to the core brain, other universes are revealed and a epiphanic, pure form of truth and crystalline elucidation occurs. Simply stated: to discern is to know.
The fall and winter of 1899 found me often in Jermyn Street, Mayfair, at the perfumery of William Penhaligon, holder of the Royal Warrant for perfume and soaps to Queen Victoria and one of London’s distinguished masters of perfumery. In the great laboratory, with its banks of rare botanical elements, essences, solutions, tinctures and distillates, I would spend up to sixteen hours a day developing my abilities to structure aromas. The workbench, known as “The Organ,” was a large curved rack with ten levels that surrounded the perfumer, like a massive church organ with its banks of stops. Each level held one-hundred small glass bottles with stoppers, one-thousand botanicals and chemical formulations in varying dilutions gathered from all over the world. The Organ was the heart and soul of the perfumer’s art and, like its musical namesake, it was where the perfumes were composed and performed. Even the language of perfumery uses musical terms, such as ‘notes’ and ‘harmonies’ and ‘themes.’
With some modesty, I must admit to a natural ability for perfumery. Where most ‘noses’ require ten, twenty or more years to reach mastery, William Penhaligon himself admitted I had absorbed all he could teach me
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