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charleygirlTitle: Jottings from a Doctor's Journal 35/?
Author: charleygirl
Rating: G
Words: 1678
Characters involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Cressida Cunningham
Genre: Friendship, family
Disclaimer: These characters, while out of copyright, were created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and do not belong to me. Cousin Cressida however, does.
Summary: A collection of scenes and fragments that are too long to be drabbles and too undisciplined to be 221Bs.
Author's Note:Reading about Thomas Lawrence's portraits of children put this idea into my head.
THE FATHER OF THE MAN
Sherlock Holmes’s cousin Cressida was a formidable woman.
In character she appeared most of all to have succeeded the family matriarch, the late Great Aunt Sophronia, to whom it appeared all had been forced – however reluctantly - to bend their will. Though he had never said so, I gathered that both Holmes and his brother Mycroft had been drawn to London as much to escape their relatives as to advance their respective careers, and in this they had done spectacularly well, avoiding contact with their family for more than two decades.
Recently, however, there had been a sea change in this attitude, marked by Cressida’s desire for Holmes’s assistance in a case and the enthusiasm of her children in continuing the connection once they discovered their ‘Cousin Sherlock’ to be the celebrated consulting detective. Age had certainly begun to mellow my friend, and I could not help but wonder whether he was in some measure grateful to have family around him once more. An independent soul, he had been quite happy to pass through life alone, with no emotional ties, for some years but I flatter myself that my own influence may have had its effect upon him, even though I know that he will never admit as much.
And so it was that in the opening years of the twentieth century we found ourselves irregularly invited to the house in Harrow which was home to Cressida and her husband Colonel Cunningham. I always enjoyed my visits, despite the ubiquitous bickering between the cousins (Holmes and Cressida were of too similar a temperament to rub along amicably for long, and neither one of them could be said to suffer fools gladly), for I always discovered something new about my old friend and companion. Holmes has never been forthcoming about his formative years, waiting a decade before he mentioned to me the existence of his brother, but within the environment of Cressida’s home he could not hope to remain reticent upon the subject.
I presently stood in the entrance hall of that fascinating house, gazing upwards at a painting I could not recall having seen before. Colonel Cunningham I knew had next to no interest in art unless it was a depiction of some great military victory or a portrait of a favourite pet, and I had noticed in Cressida a ruthless aversion to sentiment and artificial beauty which rivalled that of Holmes himself - if a picture had no aesthetic merit or purpose beyond filling an empty space on a wall it would receive very short shrift. She kept portraits of family members, including the much-mentioned Aunt Sophronia herself, who glared balefully at visitors, gimlet-eyed and swathed in widow’s weeds, but there was no room in her home for so-called ‘fancy pictures’ which is why I was so surprised to see that the new addition to the staircase wall was a glossy, sugary depiction of two children in a sylvan glade.
It was a skilful rendering, in the style of more than forty years before, reminiscent of the society portraits by Winterhalter and his ilk. The youngsters were ruddy-cheeked and healthy, their hair glossy and their eyes shining; the elder, a slightly heavy, round-faced boy whose sleek black locks were neatly parted and his sailor suit immaculate, sat beneath a spreading oak tree, an open book upon his knee while his sister, all frothy muslin and pale golden curls, flung chubby arms about the neck of an enormous Newfoundland dog. They looked happy, and quite contented, if a little distant – each was absorbed in their own pursuits, almost ignoring the other within the confines of the gilded frame. I supposed, after ruminating upon this irregularity for a few moments, that such detachment was probably not unusual within the Holmes family. There was no doubt that the portrait originated there, for I could not mistake the sharpness visible even in the childish features and the penetrating gaze which met my own from the painted surface could only belong to Cressida herself. It would appear that her piercing eyes had not gained their ice-blue shade until later in life for the shading in the picture made them seem almost grey. I wondered about the identity of her studious companion.
So wrapped up was I in my contemplation that I did not hear footsteps upon the parquet floor until they were right behind me.
“Watson, what the devil have you been doing?” Holmes demanded, not bothering to conceal his annoyance at being left to make small talk with his cousin. I had, after all, excused myself merely for five minutes.
I apologised, adding, “I could not help taking a look at this painting – I presume Mrs Cunningham has recently acquired it.”
“Unlikely. She is not known as a connoisseur of art. Unless a canvas is of a horse or one of her brats she will – Good God.” To my surprise he sounded quite shocked – I turned to see him staring at the portrait in something akin to horror. His mouth opened and closed twice before he said, “Where in the world did she get that?”
“You have seen it before?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I was promised it had been burnt.” Holmes gave a shudder of revulsion. “A sickly, saccharine abomination.”
“Oh, come on, old man, it’s not that bad,” I said, feeling myself obliged to step in to defend the artist. “A touch sentimental, perhaps, but attractive. Especially the little girl.”
My friend made a peculiar strangled noise. He opened his mouth again but before he could speak his cousin’s voice rang out from the drawing room doorway.
“Indeed, Doctor Watson. Everyone always maintained that Sherlock was a particularly pretty child.” She glided across the hall to join us and threw him an amused glance. “I cannot think what went wrong.”
I could not help it: I gaped. As Holmes, quite clearly furious, directed a glare at Cressida which would have felled a woman of less confidence at twenty paces, I turned my attention back to the canvas. Of course, upon closer examination I could discern the watery grey gaze and fleshy countenance to come of Mycroft Holmes in the features of the boy reclining beneath the tree. My eyes were drawn, however, to the child embracing the dog – he could not have been more than two or three, still in petticoats as was usual at the time, but the longer I regarded the cherubic painted face the more I found to my amazement that I recognised my friend in the set of the mouth and chin, the shape of the eyes and the uncanny directness of their stare beneath the halo of spun gold which would soon begin to darken.
“My goodness,” was all I could find to say.
“Quite,” agreed Holmes pithily. He turned to his cousin, who was smiling as much as she ever did. “Where did you get it? Mycroft told me it had been destroyed!”
“Aunt Sophronia, of course,” Cressida replied. “You know she would never have allowed anyone to rid her of something potentially embarrassing or incriminating. Wolfram told me she hung it in the dining room, just in case you ever decided to accept one of her invitations.”
“I feel obliged to refer you to the old adage of Hell freezing over. Did she give it to you?”
“It came to me with all her other effects after she died. The house was finally cleared last month and the contents – such as there were – sent to auction. I decided to keep this, both from some misplaced concern about its impact upon your career and also an overwhelming desire to see your face when you beheld it after all this time. I am glad I did, for your expression was a picture in itself.”
Holmes’s smile was thin. “Thank you, cousin. Your delicacy is appreciated.”
“It is an impressive painting,” I offered, rather lamely.
Cressida regarded the portrait, arms folded, with a critical eye and a disapproving frown. “Rather overblown, in my view, but then that’s what was fashionable. Highly sentimental and somewhat cloying in the manner of that dreadful Millais advertisement of the child blowing bubbles.”
“Very true,” said Holmes, coming to stand next to her. Presented with their profiles, it was quite clear how I had come to mistake him for his cousin – though Cressida’s features were softened by femininity and other familial inheritance, they were very alike. “However, one can forgive a mother for a certain amount of sentimentality regarding her own children.”
I blinked in surprise. “Holmes, do you mean that your mother - ”
“Aunt Lucille was a talented artist,” Cressida said. “I still have the portrait she painted of my first pony. Mirabelle, her name was.”
Holmes snorted. “Art in the blood, Watson,” he told me. “My mother inherited her artistic temperament from her Vernet relatives. Unfortunately she was never able to make as much use of her abilities as she would have liked.”
There was a sudden silence between us following this pronouncement, during which I caught him gazing at the picture with quite a different expression upon his face. Instead of the loathing I had seen upon his first glimpse of the work, there was something that could almost be considered tenderness, but it was gone so swiftly I could not be sure. It would seem that Cressida had seen it too, for she asked, quite gently,
“Do you still wish me to burn it, Sherlock?”
He cleared his throat, straightened, and then shook his head. “Such a reaction may be a little precipitate,” he said, and then added as we made our way back to the comfort of the drawing room, “But for goodness’s sake hide it in a dark room somewhere. I have my reputation to maintain, after all.”
Cressida laughed, a noise disturbingly like the braying of a donkey, and I could not help but smile myself, grateful for the fact that in her presence I learned more about Sherlock Holmes than twenty years of friendship could ever teach me.
Author: charleygirl
Rating: G
Words: 1678
Characters involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Cressida Cunningham
Genre: Friendship, family
Disclaimer: These characters, while out of copyright, were created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and do not belong to me. Cousin Cressida however, does.
Summary: A collection of scenes and fragments that are too long to be drabbles and too undisciplined to be 221Bs.
Author's Note:Reading about Thomas Lawrence's portraits of children put this idea into my head.
THE FATHER OF THE MAN
Sherlock Holmes’s cousin Cressida was a formidable woman.
In character she appeared most of all to have succeeded the family matriarch, the late Great Aunt Sophronia, to whom it appeared all had been forced – however reluctantly - to bend their will. Though he had never said so, I gathered that both Holmes and his brother Mycroft had been drawn to London as much to escape their relatives as to advance their respective careers, and in this they had done spectacularly well, avoiding contact with their family for more than two decades.
Recently, however, there had been a sea change in this attitude, marked by Cressida’s desire for Holmes’s assistance in a case and the enthusiasm of her children in continuing the connection once they discovered their ‘Cousin Sherlock’ to be the celebrated consulting detective. Age had certainly begun to mellow my friend, and I could not help but wonder whether he was in some measure grateful to have family around him once more. An independent soul, he had been quite happy to pass through life alone, with no emotional ties, for some years but I flatter myself that my own influence may have had its effect upon him, even though I know that he will never admit as much.
And so it was that in the opening years of the twentieth century we found ourselves irregularly invited to the house in Harrow which was home to Cressida and her husband Colonel Cunningham. I always enjoyed my visits, despite the ubiquitous bickering between the cousins (Holmes and Cressida were of too similar a temperament to rub along amicably for long, and neither one of them could be said to suffer fools gladly), for I always discovered something new about my old friend and companion. Holmes has never been forthcoming about his formative years, waiting a decade before he mentioned to me the existence of his brother, but within the environment of Cressida’s home he could not hope to remain reticent upon the subject.
I presently stood in the entrance hall of that fascinating house, gazing upwards at a painting I could not recall having seen before. Colonel Cunningham I knew had next to no interest in art unless it was a depiction of some great military victory or a portrait of a favourite pet, and I had noticed in Cressida a ruthless aversion to sentiment and artificial beauty which rivalled that of Holmes himself - if a picture had no aesthetic merit or purpose beyond filling an empty space on a wall it would receive very short shrift. She kept portraits of family members, including the much-mentioned Aunt Sophronia herself, who glared balefully at visitors, gimlet-eyed and swathed in widow’s weeds, but there was no room in her home for so-called ‘fancy pictures’ which is why I was so surprised to see that the new addition to the staircase wall was a glossy, sugary depiction of two children in a sylvan glade.
It was a skilful rendering, in the style of more than forty years before, reminiscent of the society portraits by Winterhalter and his ilk. The youngsters were ruddy-cheeked and healthy, their hair glossy and their eyes shining; the elder, a slightly heavy, round-faced boy whose sleek black locks were neatly parted and his sailor suit immaculate, sat beneath a spreading oak tree, an open book upon his knee while his sister, all frothy muslin and pale golden curls, flung chubby arms about the neck of an enormous Newfoundland dog. They looked happy, and quite contented, if a little distant – each was absorbed in their own pursuits, almost ignoring the other within the confines of the gilded frame. I supposed, after ruminating upon this irregularity for a few moments, that such detachment was probably not unusual within the Holmes family. There was no doubt that the portrait originated there, for I could not mistake the sharpness visible even in the childish features and the penetrating gaze which met my own from the painted surface could only belong to Cressida herself. It would appear that her piercing eyes had not gained their ice-blue shade until later in life for the shading in the picture made them seem almost grey. I wondered about the identity of her studious companion.
So wrapped up was I in my contemplation that I did not hear footsteps upon the parquet floor until they were right behind me.
“Watson, what the devil have you been doing?” Holmes demanded, not bothering to conceal his annoyance at being left to make small talk with his cousin. I had, after all, excused myself merely for five minutes.
I apologised, adding, “I could not help taking a look at this painting – I presume Mrs Cunningham has recently acquired it.”
“Unlikely. She is not known as a connoisseur of art. Unless a canvas is of a horse or one of her brats she will – Good God.” To my surprise he sounded quite shocked – I turned to see him staring at the portrait in something akin to horror. His mouth opened and closed twice before he said, “Where in the world did she get that?”
“You have seen it before?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I was promised it had been burnt.” Holmes gave a shudder of revulsion. “A sickly, saccharine abomination.”
“Oh, come on, old man, it’s not that bad,” I said, feeling myself obliged to step in to defend the artist. “A touch sentimental, perhaps, but attractive. Especially the little girl.”
My friend made a peculiar strangled noise. He opened his mouth again but before he could speak his cousin’s voice rang out from the drawing room doorway.
“Indeed, Doctor Watson. Everyone always maintained that Sherlock was a particularly pretty child.” She glided across the hall to join us and threw him an amused glance. “I cannot think what went wrong.”
I could not help it: I gaped. As Holmes, quite clearly furious, directed a glare at Cressida which would have felled a woman of less confidence at twenty paces, I turned my attention back to the canvas. Of course, upon closer examination I could discern the watery grey gaze and fleshy countenance to come of Mycroft Holmes in the features of the boy reclining beneath the tree. My eyes were drawn, however, to the child embracing the dog – he could not have been more than two or three, still in petticoats as was usual at the time, but the longer I regarded the cherubic painted face the more I found to my amazement that I recognised my friend in the set of the mouth and chin, the shape of the eyes and the uncanny directness of their stare beneath the halo of spun gold which would soon begin to darken.
“My goodness,” was all I could find to say.
“Quite,” agreed Holmes pithily. He turned to his cousin, who was smiling as much as she ever did. “Where did you get it? Mycroft told me it had been destroyed!”
“Aunt Sophronia, of course,” Cressida replied. “You know she would never have allowed anyone to rid her of something potentially embarrassing or incriminating. Wolfram told me she hung it in the dining room, just in case you ever decided to accept one of her invitations.”
“I feel obliged to refer you to the old adage of Hell freezing over. Did she give it to you?”
“It came to me with all her other effects after she died. The house was finally cleared last month and the contents – such as there were – sent to auction. I decided to keep this, both from some misplaced concern about its impact upon your career and also an overwhelming desire to see your face when you beheld it after all this time. I am glad I did, for your expression was a picture in itself.”
Holmes’s smile was thin. “Thank you, cousin. Your delicacy is appreciated.”
“It is an impressive painting,” I offered, rather lamely.
Cressida regarded the portrait, arms folded, with a critical eye and a disapproving frown. “Rather overblown, in my view, but then that’s what was fashionable. Highly sentimental and somewhat cloying in the manner of that dreadful Millais advertisement of the child blowing bubbles.”
“Very true,” said Holmes, coming to stand next to her. Presented with their profiles, it was quite clear how I had come to mistake him for his cousin – though Cressida’s features were softened by femininity and other familial inheritance, they were very alike. “However, one can forgive a mother for a certain amount of sentimentality regarding her own children.”
I blinked in surprise. “Holmes, do you mean that your mother - ”
“Aunt Lucille was a talented artist,” Cressida said. “I still have the portrait she painted of my first pony. Mirabelle, her name was.”
Holmes snorted. “Art in the blood, Watson,” he told me. “My mother inherited her artistic temperament from her Vernet relatives. Unfortunately she was never able to make as much use of her abilities as she would have liked.”
There was a sudden silence between us following this pronouncement, during which I caught him gazing at the picture with quite a different expression upon his face. Instead of the loathing I had seen upon his first glimpse of the work, there was something that could almost be considered tenderness, but it was gone so swiftly I could not be sure. It would seem that Cressida had seen it too, for she asked, quite gently,
“Do you still wish me to burn it, Sherlock?”
He cleared his throat, straightened, and then shook his head. “Such a reaction may be a little precipitate,” he said, and then added as we made our way back to the comfort of the drawing room, “But for goodness’s sake hide it in a dark room somewhere. I have my reputation to maintain, after all.”
Cressida laughed, a noise disturbingly like the braying of a donkey, and I could not help but smile myself, grateful for the fact that in her presence I learned more about Sherlock Holmes than twenty years of friendship could ever teach me.
