Apologies for the delay. I have recently had both the good and ill fortune to have several projects going simultaneously in several different areas. I will try to update as quickly as possible, but given my current time restraints that may not be as frequent as hoped.

I did not have what one might call a happy childhood, Watson. That display of familial affection you saw in the parlor is a regular day in the Holmes house. As long as I can remember there have been people arguing. You did not receive the pleasure of seeing mother and father in disagreement, for obvious reasons, but I can assure you that the same spirit with which my father condemns my brother and I was used against her on a regular basis. Mother was ill, you see. I believe the diagnosis, if you were to see her now, would be that she had folie circulaire*. She was in the habit of sleeping for much of the day and seemed perpetually tired when she was awake. Father called it laziness, but I observed where he simply saw. I observed the way she worked at getting things done when she was in this state. She would try very hard at a specific task, say knitting a scarf, and then suddenly everything would just drop, as if energy were something that she couldn't hold on to for any length of time. A perfect picture of entropy. And then there were times when she would be energetic and passionate for hours or days upon end. She would play the violin and cook elaborate meals; the house would be as neat as a pin. One morning we found her singing a very imaginative improvised song concerning Socrates and his cave whilst she scrubbed the inside of the oven. Father was none too pleased and immediately escorted her upstairs. Then there were other times when she was seemingly normal, though these were relatively few and far between.

We never knew which mother we would have on any particular day, until I started boarding school. We rarely saw the mother that sang after I left. In fact, we rarely saw her at all. More often than not she was unable, or rather unwilling, to get out of bed. Mycroft, about thirteen at this point, ended up taking charge of the household and making sure his younger brother did not go to seed, so to speak. He was the first to suggest that I study chemistry.

Mycroft was the one who found her, so I'm told. She had hung herself in her bedroom using a scarf she had been knitting for father. I was at school at the time. I remember being called to the headmaster's office and being told in no uncertain terms to pack my things and get on the next available train. To think, Watson, I thought I was being expelled! It wasn't until my science professor, who was the unlucky soul chosen to take me to the train station, expressed his condolences that I learned the truth of the situation.

The funeral was conducted in the church you see there. It was a small, very private affair. I remember wondering why the bruises on her neck had been covered up by a high collared dress. Mother had never worn such a thing in life. I had not yet learned that people who have committed suicide are not allowed to be buried in what is seen as consecrated ground. Thus, my mother was given an official religious ceremony as a victim of consumption—a feat which could only have been achieved by the combination of my father's guile and the stupidity of the vicar.

After the funeral I was kept at home. The headmaster assumed that I would need time to grieve and told my father in a telegram that he did not expect me back until January.

However, I was never to return there. A month after my mother died I was sent to live with my grandmother in France—a misguided attempt on my father's behalf to remove me from the site of her death. My mémé was a twisted old widow with now only Mycroft and myself as kin. She spoke very little English, and used it only sparingly out of spite for her only daughter who had run away to "ce pays affreux". I only spoke smatterings of French at the time, mostly household phrases and songs, and was thus completely out of my depth.

The situation worsened when I was sent to school in Paris. It is an unfortunate truth, Watson, that when two nations dislike one another they scarcely ever attempt to speak the same language. It was thus that I found myself, at the age of eight, enrolled in a school with only one professor who spoke English. Now, I do not count myself a dull man by any means, but that first week of school was enough to persuade me that I desperately needed to study French. I used those skills of observation and deduction, which you have been so good as to put down, to learn key phrases and words. Indeed, as the years pass, I become more and more convinced it was in France that I began to exercise my mental powers for the first time. Within a month, I was speaking passably. Within two, I was able to express my views on chemistry. By the time half a year had passed, I was fluent. I spent the next two years in France, splitting my time between the schoolwork I was given and studying the works of Lavoisier and Rouelle.

When I turned twelve, my father deemed it necessary that I should return to England. During those four years, I had come to enjoy life in Paris; and mémé, against all odds, had come to enjoy having me there. She even had me sit for her, for she had picked up some of her brother's art, so that she might have a portrait of me before I left. It was sent to me when she died, or rather to father for I had never given her our address at Baker Street. I believe he has it hanging on a wall somewhere in the house, though I haven't the faintest idea where that might be.

I remember not wanting to leave. I had built something of a life out of my situation and was hesitant to leave it. The bustling city, furthermore, offered more to the blossoming reasoner than the supposed calm of the country. While it is easier to decipher the motives of cattle, such a project does not do much to strengthen the mind. Human subjects are much more to the logician's advantage, and Paris was full of them. However, to mention the quality of subjects to my father was out of the question. Instead, the standard childish prattle about friends and other social niceties were taken up in my defense, but to no avail. I was to return to Oxford.

*Folie circulaire was a term coined in 1854 by Jean-Pierre Falret to describe what is now known as bipolar disorder.

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