Watson: My Life Read online

  Watson: My Life

  David Ruffle

  This edition published in 2018

  Copyright © 2018 David Ruffle

  The right of David Ruffle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.

  MX Publishing

  335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,

  London, N11 3GX

  www.mxpublishing.com

  Cover layout and construction by

  Brian Belanger

  Also by David Ruffle

  Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Horror

  Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Horror (expanded 2nd Edition)

  Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Legacy

  Holmes and Watson: End Peace

  Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Trials

  The Abyss (A Journey with Jack the Ripper)

  A Twist of Lyme

  Sherlock Holmes: The Lyme Regis Trilogy (Illustrated Omnibus Edition)

  Another Twist of Lyme

  A Further Twist of Lyme

  Holmes and Watson: An American Adventure

  The Gondolier and the Russian Countess

  Holmes and Watson: An Evening in Baker Street

  Sherlock Holmes and the Scarborough Affair (with Gill Stammers)

  For Children

  Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Snowman (illustrated by Rikey Austin)

  As editor and contributor

  Tales from the Stranger’s Room (Vol.1)

  Tales from the Stranger’s Room (Vol. 2)

  Tales from the Stranger’s Room (Vol.3)

  Preface

  Being seen locally as a Sherlock Holmes expert, even though it’s not something I have ever claimed to be, often results in many questions aimed my way on various aspects of Holmes’s life. I seem to be the ‘go to’ man for such enquiries. Where did Holmes retire to? When did he die? Did Holmes and Watson ever fall out? Did Holmes’s hives ever produce honey? You get the idea. On occasion, I am given press cuttings about Holmes or even books which people no longer have a use for, but feel they would best enhance my Sherlock Holmes collection such as it is.

  I was unprepared however for what I received recently over the shop counter; old biscuit tins! Sadly, they were devoid of biscuits or indeed any form of edible treat. The actual content was comprised of several cylinders, neatly labelled with various dates from March 1936 to July the same year. A separate piece of paper inside the last tin I opened bore the legend: Doctor John H Watson with a date of August the 23rd 1936. It was an Alice Sefton who had donated these tins to me and thought, rightly so, that the contents would be of great interest to me. She explained that her grandfather, Alfred Huntley, had, at the beginning of the twentieth century acted as an agent for the Edison Company, particularly involved with the marketing of their dictation machines. Possessed of both a literary bent and an inquisitive nature he began to prepare booklets and pamphlets based on the memoirs of those whom today we would call celebrities. His method was simplicity itself. Each of his chosen subjects would be left a dictation machine and a supply of wax cylinders. They were simply invited to talk about their lives, and once collected by Huntley, he would edit and then publish. He died in October 1936 after a short illness. Alice Sefton thought that due to the absence of any other cylinders in the possession of her family that these recordings were the last to be collected by her grandfather and that he fell ill before he could begin the task of editing Watson’s words. But, are they Watson’s words? It’s impossible to be sure. After I had digitally formatted the tapes which certainly tidied up the sound, relieving it of the crackles and fizzes that disfigured it, I was left with a warm, strong although sometimes hesitant voice which certainly convinced me they were the words of a man in his eighties. I cannot go further than that. Perhaps like Watson, I am too timid in my inferences! Alice Sefton, two weeks later, produced some correspondence between her grandfather and Watson revealing something of Watson’s humility. These I have reproduced here. Other than that, what you will read are Watson’s own words, telling his story through a medium that may well have been foreign to him. Unlike Alfred Huntley I have decided against editing this account and have transcribed Watson’s words exactly as they were when he spoke into Huntley’s dictation machine just over eighty years ago.

  David Ruffle Lyme Regis 2017

  Dear Doctor Watson,

  Please allow me to introduce myself, I am Alfred Huntley. I do not flatter myself that you may have heard of me, but I am tolerably well known in my field. For several years now, I have been publishing small memoirs of those people who are or have been in the public eye. This I do by making recordings of my chosen subjects discoursing on their lives which I collate, edit judiciously if need be and then produce in booklet or pamphlet form depending on their size.

  I was planning to interview your old friend, Sherlock Holmes before his untimely death and you have my condolences, sir. I then thought that you would be an ideal replacement if you like. I don’t mean to imply that you are in any way second-best. Tell me, would it be a project you could see yourself participating in?

  I look forward very much to your reply,

  Yours sincerely,

  Alfred Huntley.

  Dear Mr Huntley,

  I thank you for your recent letter which I have to admit did intrigue, and I thank you very much for your offered condolences. I am none too sure that anyone would care to hear about the story of my life. For most people, I am known as Sherlock Holmes’s friend and biographer and my life outside of that twenty years or so would have nothing to offer by way of comparative excitement. Not that I feel I haven’t lived a full life, but how much of it would be of interest to the general public I cannot tell. However, in spite of my doubts and misgivings I am intrigued enough to be eager to know more.

  How do we proceed?

  Yours,

  John H. Watson

  Dear Doctor Watson,

  Thank for your speedy reply. I propose to call upon you on a day you deem convenient and bring with me the simple apparatus which I am sure you will find easy to operate. Once having shown you how the system works I will leave everything with you. There will be no necessity to contact me again, bar there being a problem with the equipment, until you feel you have said all you need to say. Once you reach that point all you need to do is write me a letter to that effect and I will call and collect your full cylinders.

  Yours etc,

  Alfred Huntley

  Dear Mr Huntley,

  That all seems most satisfactory. Would you care to call at ten o’ clock on the morning Wednesday 7th March? My housekeeper, Mrs Brownlow, makes a perfect cup of tea and sublime shortbread biscuits.

  Yours,

  John H. Watson

  Cylinder 1

  Ahem, I scarcely know where to start. Mr Huntley has given me a set of guidelines on how to set about it, but I am stil
l beset by doubts. Where do I begin? At the very beginning? My life with Holmes? I have made some notes, let me see, where are they? Hm... er... my decision is made, I will travel back in time as it were long, long before my association with Sherlock Holmes. I... I was born in Hexham in Northumberland in the autumn of 1854. My father, Henry was a glover by profession and very well respected in the area. I suppose he did moderately well for I cannot recall having to go without anything. There was stiff competition in Hexham, it was a town widely known for its glove-making industry, although less so by the time of my birth.[1] The skills he used were the same skills that proved his downfall for his sight suffered from all the intricate close-up work he had to do. All the gloves, known as ‘Hexham Tans’ were made by hand. One of the earliest memories I have is of seeing my father at work in his small, aroma-filled workshop. His gnarled yet delicate hands making a simple, running stitch with a glover’s needle which had a sharpened, triangular point designed to penetrate the thin sheepskin. The gloves were destined to be mostly imported to the North of Europe, America and eventually Australia. I remember packing a pair when I sailed to Ballarat, but I get ahead of myself.

  Where was I? Oh, yes. As my father’s sight declined so did the gloving trade due in no small measure to the lifting of the prohibition on the importing of French gloves. The glovers of Hexham could not compete with these cheap, machine-made gloves, and by the time of my third birthday, there was only one glover left. My father had no choice but to leave off his trade in the summer of 1857, his sight damaged to the point of almost total blindness. The Watson family, which comprised my father, my mother, Mary and my elder brother, also a Henry, felt the loss of my father’s trade keenly for not only did we lose our breadwinner but also our accommodation, for we lived on the premises that my father worked from, a modest yet spacious enough building on Tyne Green Road. The four of us found ourselves living with my mother’s parents in Corbridge. Another modest building, but with absolutely no space to spare. I remember dark corners where spiders spun webs with impunity, the shuffling footsteps of my father as he negotiated his new surroundings and his new circumstances, the smells originating from the kitchen where my grandmother seemed to be permanently cooking. There was an endless supply of bread and cakes; she was at her happiest rooted in domesticity.

  It was left to my mother to go out and earn a wage although she had no skills as such to fall back on in the wide world. Once she had finished her schooling she was expected to go into service or become part of the weaving industry that was so prominent in Corbridge. Instead, she had met my father at a church picnic which had taken place near the Roman remains to the east of the town. Until such time as they were married she scarcely left the house, the house that now we lived in. In very cramped conditions. It’s odd how in the re-telling of the early part of my life how some details have remained etched in my brain and others less so. I can now barely recall even how my father and mother looked. I picture him as a large man whose presence filled the house, yet who appeared so small when hunched over his work-desk for long, long hours. I have no photographs to aid my memory save for one of my brother, and I do not know which one of us took after my father in looks.

  My mother was always being called ‘bonny lass’ by my grandmother, but whether that was an indication of her prettiness or just a form of nickname I do not know. My grandmother remains only as a disembodied voice. As for my grandfather, nothing remains at all. As far as I can recall, I had no contact of any kind with him although we shared the same house. Er... I have lost track again. Where the deuce was I? Hmm, work... mother... yes. My mother earned her wages by cleaning at various homes in the town, something I suspect she hated, but no doubt would have seen it as her duty to enable her to provide for her family. In the early years of my childhood she became less of a presence, certainly less detectable in my memory. I catch fleeting glimpses of her in the recesses of my mind; hurrying, always hurrying.

  I have no yardstick to measure my childhood in terms of happiness. We survived, we ate tolerably well. I do remember in very fine detail coming across some children’s books stashed in the outhouse and being fascinated by them; these were adventures and tales of lands I would possibly never see and children such as myself doing things I might never do. When I first came across them I had not yet learned to read beyond some very basic words. Henry my brother refused all my entreaties that he should read them to me, ‘books are for girls’ he said. That is something that has always stayed with me. It was only when I went to the only available school in Corbridge and learned my ABC that I could fully appreciate my literary treasures; richly illustrated histories of the Kings and Queens of England, the battles, the squabbles and fights for succession. There must have been a certain amount of judicious editing for I cannot recall too many details on the various grisly ends that some came to. It was enough for a child to know that Edward II had been murdered at Berkeley Castle without being informed of the horrific manner of his murder.

  Books were my boon companions not that they were in any way easy to obtain. The school had a very small collection and being the new boy, I was often last in line when it came to the doling out of those eagerly anticipated volumes. Ha-ha, I remember now that the queue was made up almost entirely of girls apart from a certain John Henry Watson. The other boys in the school sided with my brother and his declared views on the soppy reading of books. ‘Books are for girls’ he told me often. All the same, I often saw a look of jealousy on their faces when I had a book under my arm after eventually gaining a place at the head of the queue. Did I imagine myself as any of the people I read about? Certainly, not the kings, maybe with the honourable exception of Richard the Lionheart[2] and even then, only because of his connection, however fleeting, with Robin Hood. Oh, he was my hero all right. I made myself a flimsy bow and arrow which looked the part, but when it came to firing arrows was redundant. Still, my imagination accounted for the loosening of the arrows, often into imagined distant targets, but more often Norman soldiers in the command of the Sheriff of Nottingham. I read and re-read the tales of Robin and his merry men although having said that I did have my reservations about Maid Marian; as a mere girl, she had no place with the outlaws of Sherwood Forest. I was prepared to overlook her presence as long as she didn’t slow down the action too much and Normans, tax collectors and King John’s lackeys bit the dust.

  You may be wondering what part my brother played in these early days of play and learning. Mostly, none. We did not play together, he had his own friends being three years older. I would say that we fought, but to call it fighting would not do our actual relationship any kind of service. He was a bully who would seek to humiliate me as often as he could although even that he would tire of and turn to the strategy of just simply ignoring me. Sadly, this kind of behaviour carried on into his adult years, sad to say we never forged a bond that other siblings have. Er... I will return to this later if this is to be a Cromwellian[3] ‘warts and all’ story.

  When I was just eight years old my mother fell gravely ill. A silence hung over the house, a deathly silence. Any semblance of a normal life was in abatement. She lingered for a week or two before finally succumbing, worn out from the battle. The cause of death was deemed to be English cholera and a further twenty were carried off locally over the next few weeks. Given the conditions we lived in, with mould an ever present in the house and walls that seemed to be permanently bedecked with moisture, it was a miracle that none of us also contracted the disease although the family next door was to lose both their children. And... there we were... both my brother and I, motherless. She-she was just thirty-two years old. My father could not work and in spite of my grandmother taking over some of my mother’s cleaning duties, times became harder, food on the table scarcer. The solution was the obvious one; Henry would have to cease his schooling and obtain work. There was a textile mill on the southern edge of the town that provided many Corbridge families with their income, wretched work
though it may have been.

  Once again, my memory is lacking because I cannot recall how Henry felt about this change in his circumstances. He may have felt aggrieved. He may have thought it to be his familial duty, but knowing my brother as I did, I cannot believe that was the case unless I am impugning him and his memory. And that is quite a possibility. The few shillings a week he would have earned for his long eleven or twelve hours a day must have helped our day-to-day existence. I have a vivid remembrance from that time, wondering whether it would be my fate also to be plunged into the world of child labour. The world of childish literature had fired my imagination and my mind was set on adventure and travelling to far-flung exotic locations.

  Amusing to think of it when I sit here as an old man, older indeed than any of my family managed. Well, life surprised me often and the mere fact that I am sitting here speaking into this machine proves that it can still surprise me. Within two years my brother and I were destined to lose our grandparents and our father. My father never recovered from losing his Mary and you could say, were you of a romantic bent, that he hastened his own death to be with her. As for my grandparents, they simply came to the end of their tether, not by any means uncommon in those days. With the death of my father perhaps they felt their duty was done or perhaps I am guilty of an old man’s romancing the past.

  My brother had attached himself to the family of one of the mill supervisors through a fondness for that man’s daughter. He was taken in by them; as far as I am aware he made no such appeal for a home for his younger brother. My education was at a critical juncture; I was well thought of at school and was spoken of in glowing terms by all the teachers. My grades were uniformly excellent across the board, due I think in no small part, to my incessant reading. My thirst for knowledge was an all-abiding thing for me, my motivation. My immediate concern was where I would be living. In a close-knit working community, there was never a lack of solidarity, everyone looked out for everyone else.