Sherlock Holmes’s Eyebrows
Nobody asked for this and I admittedly don’t know what this post is, other than a few passages I found when, um, brows-ing the ACD canon for some descriptions of those hairy tufts on Holmes’s face. (I have my reasons.) I don’t know exactly how many times the word “brows” appeared but it was a lot.
Here are my 3 faves. ACD’s descriptions are so gorgeous I shared the full paragraphs of each and bolded the eyebrow parts to match the boldness of Holmes’s eyebrows against the rest of his face.
Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent as this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker Street would have failed to recognise him. His face flushed and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines, while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. His face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a quick, impatient snarl in reply.
-The Boscombe Valley Mystery
He had spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy eyebrows bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless and unhappy, staring into the fire. A long silence was broken by a sudden exclamation from Holmes, who dashed at a cupboard, from which he emerged with a second yellow-covered volume in his hand.
-The Valley of Fear
My friend was standing with an expression of strained intensity upon his face, staring at the railway metals where they curved out of the tunnel. Aldgate is a junction, and there was a network of points. On these his eager, questioning eyes were fixed, and I saw on his keen, alert face that tightening of the lips, that quiver of the nostrils, and concentration of the heavy, tufted brows which I knew so well.
-The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
My takeaway from this search: Holmes’s eyebrows are black and bushy and drawn down over his eyes (!) when deep in thought. And that all the top gifs in a Jeremy Brett gif search will be eyebrow gifs.