Dr. Thorneycroft Huxtable

from "The Adventure of the Priory School" The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Italicized portions are the lyrics of "The Street Where You Live" from "My Fair Lady" (Alan Jay Lerner - 1956), altered by this author to fit this vignette.


I have often walked through Toronto's core;
But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.
All at once am I
Sev'ral stories high,
Knowing I'm in the Room where Holmes lives.

Indeed he was. Five stories high to be exact.[Dictionary editors: isn't it supposed to be 'storeys'?

What a thrill stirs me from my toes to crown!
I can feel my ganglions vibrating up and down.
Does enchantment pour out of ev'ry door?
No, it's just from the Room where Holmes lives.

And oh, the towering feeling
Just to know somehow Holmes is near!
The overpowering feeing
That any second he may suddenly appear!

Was this the man Doctor Watson described as 'so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity'? He was indeed large and globular - and he certainly appeared to be floating in the air. Yet balloons cannot sing. They can squeal, whoosh and make impolite sounds when the air is released. But not sing.

Amazing the effect the ACD Room has on some people.

I held out my hand. "Doctor Thorneycroft Huxtable, I presume. Of The Priory School?"

The stout man leaped from the fireplace mantel to the floor.

"A thousand pardons! I fear my exhilaration has overborne my gravitas." He pulled his handkerchief from his vest pocket, mopped his brow, bowed and engulfed my hand in his broad and sweaty palms. "I am indeed Doctor Huxtable, and you must be the sub-librarian."

"Clerical assistant," I replied. "'You delve. We shelve.' A pleasure, Doctor Huxtable."

He released my hand and beamed around the Room. "I have heard much about this shrine to the remarkable Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his illustrious friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Actually seeing it makes my heart effervesce."

I smiled broadly, as much in appreciation as in amusement, surreptitiously wiping my hand on my skirt. "We're always glad to meet an enthusiast. Please let me take you about."

We strolled around the room, while I pointed out some of our treasures. Dr. Huxtable was delighted to see a Sherlock Holmes story in Latin ("Ritualia Musgraviensia", translated by Paul Church and Dale K. Fewell) though he tutted over its near pristine condition.

"Classical studies have been shockingly neglected," he sighed. "I wish the corners of these pages were dog-eared."

"There are quite a number of 'dog ears' within the canon," I joked.

"Indeed there are! The famous Baskerville hound. Toby. Professor Presbury's Roy – ."

"The Dog Who Did Nothing in the Night-time -- ."

"Indeed, that was a curious incident. Another involved the Shoscombe spaniel who discovered the impostor in the carriage and not his mistress."

"She was not even a woman."

"Quite so. Then there was Lady Brackenstall's little dog that was killed by her drunken husband."

"Mrs. Hudson's little terrier, that died from swallowing the pill Holmes gave him."

"Watson's bull pup."

"Some people say that was just a slang expression for having a foul temper."

"A pup can hardly be a fowl." Doctor Huxtable's eyes twinkled. "And I doubt very much that Doctor Watson had a bestial temper."

"True," I agreed heartily. "Any author who would take such abuse about his stories --."

"Treatises, my dear sub-librarian! Essae Practicae upon the detection of crime."

"So Mr. Holmes wished they were, yet he disparaged them as mere pot boilers."

The rotund professor smiled and wagged a finger. "Mr. Holmes was not a school teacher. He did not appreciate, as Doctor Watson did and I do, that hard lessons, like bitter pills, are more readily ingested in a coating of syrup."

"Or, to quote Miss Poppins, 'A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.'"

Dr. Huxtable bobbed and beamed even more brightly. "Just so. Just so. But Mr. Holmes was a Spartan in his habits, and Spartans do not understand or sympathize with the dislikes of weaker mortals."

"Mr. Holmes did take a large fee from the Duke of Holdernesse for finding his son, Lord Saltire. Six thousand pounds was a lot for a man of Spartan habits."

"Indeed. Indeed. Yet Mr. Holmes earned every penny."

Dr. Huxtable shook his head and heaved a sigh, which did sound just like air escaping from a balloon. "The best of men will stoop to folly; but I shall tell you in confidence that I was disappointed in the Duke. To have allowed his illegitimate son ... well, we must neither question nor criticize the ways of our betters."

I confess I was disappointed in Dr. Huxtable. The best of men, I suppose, can still be a snob. To have the heir of an illustrious politician in his school was a great advertisement, but that the man still called the Duke his 'better', after what happened to his young student! There are times when I am prouder of the American portion of the Canadian character than the British slice. A North American would not brush off a homicide or the parent's neglect of his child, even if the parent was an important man and the kidnapper was his elder son. At least I hope we wouldn't.

The schoolmaster eased his way around the central table: browsing the bookshelves, exclaiming over a favourite, tutting over a tome he had disapproved, thoroughly enjoying his perusal of our collection.

"How is Lord Saltire," I asked.

Doctor Huxtable's eyes did not leave the shelves. "Very well. Very well, now that his mother, the Duchess, has returned from France."

"And Mr. James Wilder?" I pressed.

Doctor Huxtable looked ill at ease. "There was some talk – the chatter that goes on in country districts should not be trusted – that, instead of emigrating to Australia, he has organized a band of rogues in America, and that they are going about committing felonies and calling themselves 'The Wilder Bunch'. "

I said nothing, but thought of those horseshoes mentioned in Dr. Watson's account of the adventure of the Priory School that were shaped to resemble the cloven hooves of a cow. Mr. James Wilder had more in common with the marauding barons of Holdernesse than merely his ducal father's blue blood.

"I shudder to think what he would have done to young Lord Saltire. And the scandal that would have ensued. It would have ruined my school. Ruined my blameless reputation. I cannot thank Mr. Holmes enough for finding and rescuing Saltire and restoring the good name of The Priory School. "


"People stop and stare. They don't bother me,
For there's nowhere else on earth that I would rather be.
Let the time go by; I won't care if I
Can be here in the Room where Holmes lives."