ANTIDOTE TO SORROW - 2/?
November 10th, 1893
I have before me a copy of The Times:
SIR--
The libels against my brother’s name, repeated most recently during the trial of Alec Wragg, rest solely on claims made by the late Mr Sherlock Holmes - claims which were never tested in any court of law nor substantiated by any scrap of evidence. Professor James Moriarty was a gentleman, a scholar, a mathematician of genius and a kindly and inspiring teacher, fondly recalled by students and staff of Durham University alike. He had, however, the misfortune to offend a man whose sickness of mind and body had perverted his judgement whilst leaving, alas, an implacable and relentless strength of will untouched.
It must long have been self-evident to all but the most credulous that the Sherlock Holmes of popular press is more a figure of fiction than of fact, a convenient narrative device for adapting the most interesting elements of the work of several actual persons into a clear and entertaining story. The Strand’s purpose, after all, is to amuse rather than to instruct. I will not dispute that the authentic man, if not as preternaturally talented as the hero of Dr Watson’s cunning tales, was nevertheless endowed with unusual gifts and made useful contributions to the public weal in the field of criminal investigation. Even a first class mind, however, may be ruined by vice and dissipation, and even Dr Watson’s hagiographic chronicles acknowledge the drug mania that dogged Mr Holmes’ steps. The deplorable effects of prolonged cocaine and morphia abuse upon the rational faculties are now well-substantiated: Dr F. Detlefsen of Chicago has documented cases in which continuous abuse produces a deterioration of both intellect and character, culminating at length in delusions and hallucinatory paranoia, especially when other unnatural excesses and their attendant dangers are co-involved, as is, regrettably, often the case - for of course, the victims of this modern curse are not men of otherwise sound or stable temperament.
It is my certain knowledge that the severity of this morbid affliction worsened greatly during Mr Holmes’ final years and the erratic and even criminal behaviour hinted at in the popular accounts of his activities became the rule rather than the exception. In the year before his death my poor brother frequently expressed to me his utter bewilderment at Mr Holmes’ persecution of him, and lamented his helplessness to end it. As far as my family have been able to establish, the two men met in early 1888 in Durham, through a mutual acquaintance, and fell into some trivial quarrel about the provenance of a painting. Thereafter Mr Holmes illegally entered my brother’s rooms on at least two occasions, and began to make fevered accusations to his colleagues at Scotland Yard. Though the police seem at the time to have considered the matter something of a joke, it appears the very lack of any evidence of wrongdoing only served to convince Mr Holmes he was dealing with a monster of stealth and cunning.
All attempts to reason with Mr Holmes proved futile and at last my brother, who was not a young man and exhausted by this campaign of harassment, decided to repair to the continent in hopes a lengthy sojourn there might restore his nerves, and, perhaps induce Mr Holmes to forget him. Holmes, however, pursued him even there
I am too angry to transcribe any more.
“Some trivial quarrel” - God! I could forgive a grieving brother much; I would not begrudge him any affectionate illusion he might honestly cherish, but not this - not vicious, deliberate lies. As if my friend had not paid dearly enough already -
But ranting here will do no good.
I must do it, then. I had half-believed it need never come to that. But if this wretch thinks I shall sit still and watch him butcher Holmes’ memory -
There are still so many cases left. I have always known it was morbid to write of him as if he were still here - it was merely a mistake, to begin with, but after that first tired slip of the pen I couldn’t give it up: I feel, for the length of writing each tale - not quite as if he were here with me, of course, but at least as if he were closer. The illusion and the comfort of it grow a little less potent each time without my ever becoming less greedy for it. Still, I could have gone on almost forever, I suppose, and never have reached the end. But if I am to write of his death now-
How am I to do it? I must do justice to what he achieved, at such cost, but how can I even begin to think of the last weeks of his life as another adventure?
I have had no inclination to write of the present. The funeral went as well as could be expected. It was kind of Lestrade to attend - I had of course barely seen him since Switzerland. But I find I cannot recall much of what we said to each other, or indeed much of what I said to anyone.
Between then and now nothing worth recording has happened.
December 8th 1893
Oh, Mary - I have barely been into our room in all these weeks. It took me all this time to find your letter -
My dear,
Well, this is a nuisance, isn’t it?
I have a message for you: it is important and I shan’t get another chance. So I say to you most sincerely, one last time:
John, the carpet is not an ashtray.
My love I will make you smile at least once as you read this or I shall die trying, which would ruin the intended effect, so you will oblige, won’t you?
When you find this you will be sorting through my things, which will be a miserable job, I know. Kate will help if you ask. You will be sensible and let people help you? And you won’t have any silly worries about remarrying, when the time is right. I know very well you’ll remember me with love, you need not be alone or unhappy to do that. I hate to think of you so.
You’ve taken such splendid care of me, my dearest. No one could possibly have done better. It is thanks to you that there have been so many wonderful times, even during this long illness. If I could live to be a hundred I should never forget how we fussed and panicked and then collapsed together into laughter when we found we had boarded the wrong train for Shoreham-by-Sea and were whistling through woods full of bluebells without our luggage or any notion of where we were going. I didn’t really believe even then that I was getting better, though I promise I tried to - but I was with you and it didn’t seem to matter.
You have worked so hard for me, and it has taken you away from your friends and your practice and everything else that you care for. And I know you are very tired now. Please, John, be a tenth as good to yourself as you have been to me. If you can do that, I will have nothing to fear.
Oh my dearest I do wish so very much I could stay.
God bless you my own darling. Keep writing your adventures. Be as sure as I am you will have more of them.
With all my love,
Your Mary.
My sweet brave girl, bless you too for that. Can you forgive me that for those first weeks I was so relieved, for both our sakes, that it was over, that I barely even missed you? But reading that in your dear voice as it was before - and I am so sorry -
And I can’t do as you ask. I managed scarcely two paragraphs last night, reached the word Meiringen, and was suddenly as weary as if I’d done a full day’s march - I don’t believe I could have written another letter for any prize less than all of it undone, to have him still here and you well again.
It must be written. But no more afterwards. It feels like slowly killing something.
December 17th, 1893
The Final Problem is completed, and dispatched. I wish I had not been so wretchedly slow about it, but I simply could not do it any faster. Aside from the difficulty of the task itself, I have had a good many patients to attend to: poor Anstruthers is laid up with influenza, and it is certainly my turn to cover for him.
I have sent a telegram to Lestrade to let him know what I have done, for I am sure he too must have been incensed by that pack of lies in the Times.
So that is over.
December 20th 1893
It occurred to me, belatedly, that I could not wholly ignore Christmas - I must at the least provide presents for the servants. Mary always took care of it while she was well, and even last year, when she could not go out herself, she asked Kate Whitney make the purchases along with her own shopping.
I found my own reaction to this repellent. For heaven’s sake, missing her because she is not here to do the shopping!
Well, a person’s absence does leap out from the most commonplace things, I am already familiar enough with that, but one cannot truly prepare for it. This time it left my brain creaking along slowly and stupidly, and I sat in my study trying to collect myself and puzzling over the question of presents for Alice and Mrs Glenny as if it were higher calculus.
Aside from a Christmas bonus, I thought laboriously, the standard thing is a bolt of good cloth to make a dress. (What kind? Some sort of twill?) But they should each have something extra, I decided - they both deserve it after their patience and loyalty during the past year. I could not think what that something should be, and I did think briefly of consulting Kate Whitney, but to be incapable of handling such a simple problem alone seemed pitiful, so I went into town trusting to the displays in the shops for inspiration.
Since I was last there Harrods has sprouted innumerable new rooms and departments, like mushrooms on a tree trunk. I had not stopped to think how crowded the place would be, though of course so close to Christmas it was inevitable. The crowd was turbid yet oddly passive. Or perhaps it was only I who felt so. But to me it seemed to have currents within it that had nothing to do with human agency, tides upon which each customer, whatever his errand, must be content to drift. I had passed the same counters of hats, silverware, perfumes, and eddied around the small throng gawping at the Horse Action Saddle Chair twice before I at last succeeded in steering myself into Haberdashery.
I purchased fifteen yards of black merino serge, which the assistant assured me would be resilient, smart and comfortable. By the time this was accomplished I had been in the shop twice as long as I had intended and I felt as if I had been roaming its halls for far longer than that. The vast chambers, glittering with mirrors and crystals as they were, began to seem airless; I pulled at my collar and, as I consigned myself once again to the circling flow of shoppers, I thought, absurdly, of lost souls whirled on eternal storms about the abyss in Dante. Nevertheless I began my search for something extra, a word that, as I passed a table laden with hot-house roses, stung.
A sweet soprano voice, cloaked in a fine haze of soft crackles, yet still pure and clear, floated over our heads. Something in German.
I turned, and found myself washed up out of the flow near a display of gramophones. The woman’s disembodied voice sang on out of a horn of black enamel, a disc revolving below.
A canny clerk spotted me hovering and abandoned a presumably unpromising customer to spring across to me. “Are you fond of music, sir?” he asked brightly.
I said I was - and that, to all intents and purposes, was that. My dazed wanderings about the store appeared to have reduced me to a docile ghost of myself, too insubstantial to stand up to a torrent of patter about the reasonable price, the miracle of summoning the great musical talents of the age into one’s home, and the many professional uses the recording attachment might have in the study of a medical man. I could not come up with an adequate reason for not purchasing a gramophone. Nor could I help thinking of the silence in the empty rooms at home.
Once I had agreed to buy the machine, the clerk wasted no time in pushing me towards the shelf of records. “More coming out all the time!” he assured me. He pressed a collection of sentimental ballads from the music hall upon me, which I accepted more for curiosity’s sake than for any particular fondness for the songs. I asked for the song that was playing and found it was Schubert’s ‘Complaint of Ceres’.
What else? I stepped a little closer to the shelf and began examining the covers almost furtively, as if I were afraid of anyone seeing what I was looking for, though I did not admit to myself yet that I was looking for anything.
Don’t do this, I told myself, when I found it, running my fingertip very gently over the paper covering the disc that impossibly contained Mendelssohn’s violin concerto in E minor. For God’s sake, not a day has passed since I finished the last story and resolved I would cease trying to summon him back to me.
But then I thought that I had loved such music before I ever met him and was I to give up all right to listen to it ever again?
In any case I bought it. Of course I did.
I arranged hastily for the gramophone to be delivered, took the records away with the parcel of cloth, and hurried back into the crowd. I bought a lace shawl for Mrs Glenny, and for Alice a pair of kid gloves and a little Oriental trinket box.
Whenever I thought of the gramophone, between purchasing it and its arrival this morning, it was with mild horror at my own extravagance. I should not be buying myself expensive toys. My practice is recovering from my neglect of it faster than I had expected, but I cannot be sure if it will last once the influenza season passes, and I have just informed the editor of the Strand that there will be no more stories. But now I regret only that I did not buy it before. I should have done- I should have bought a machine for Mary. It would have been a kind of company for her when I had to leave her alone.
When did she last hear music?
Well, I can answer that, I wrote it down, of course. Not since the 23rd of May last year, at the Portman Rooms. The programme was mostly Brahms. We had just returned from Brighton; we still hoped she might be recovering, then. Or at least, I did.
She should have heard that Schubert song. And they had pieces by Grieg and Tchaikovsky too. She could at least have had the music she loved while she was trapped in that bed - why did I only think of buying it now, for myself?
But you would not want this, would you, Mary? Well, I shall try to stop. The thing is bought, and it is just as astonishing as the clerk said to be able to conjure an invisible orchestra into one’s living room.
I have put off playing the Mendelssohn until now, but having written of buying it . . .
Remarkable.
But it does not sound the same. It is not only the soft hiss and crackle or the odd, cramped distance in the recording - nor even that it is a full orchestra sharing the piece rather than one musician pouring himself into it. It is the playing itself. He would take the tempo a little slower, so that first soaring melody ached and lingered, but then the spiralling descent that follows was somehow fiercer, more violent. I am surprised at how different the same notes can sound when played by different people. I am surprised to find how well I can remember.