The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF

fifty years, except during the hiatus when it was managed by Mycroft.
    A few others are or were long-time, trusted acquaintances over the years. Bruno Schiava, the Neapolitan chef at Simpson’s has been a valued fixture at twice-weekly dinners for many years. Samuel Cundey of Henry Poole & Co was my tailor when I came to London and Poole continues to make my clothes today. Mr Cundey took over the business from Henry Poole who had dressed my father for many years. Mycroft and Wittrell were also life-long customers of Mr Cundey and Poole & Co and visited their premises at 15 Savile Row twice a year. Like all Holmes males, they were buried wearing bespoke Poole. I distinctly remember Cundey’s admonishment to a rag-tag young man fresh from university, intent upon making a name for himself in mid-nineteenth century London: ‘Dress well, Mr Holmes, and the rest will take care of itself.’
    Writing of our family tradition of wearing Poole to the grave, I should like to recount here another Holmes family tradition, one that may seem quite bizarre, but which, I can assure, has great, practical antecedents. The minor squires of Maiden Wood, going back to feudal times, many generations before my father and grandfathers, have followed an ancient Celtic tradition of burial in unmarked, unknown graves. As the relict, I will be the last to be buried in this traditional way. When a Holmes dies, he or she is conveyed to a woodland burial ground known only to the family and laid in a linear line from east to west in rows ranked by the century. There are no monuments or markings of any kind, only gentle mounds of thick, lush, greenwood moss among the ancient oaks. Only our memory remains for those who will live but briefly beyond our own years. When we are gone, it is as if we never existed.

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    Watson and I were much the same age. He was born 25 February 1852, less than a month after I was born. Over the years we spent together, on occasion—often after several glasses of port and the intimacy of a warm fire on a winter’s evening—Watson would recount aspects of his life which gave one a more fully-furnished understanding of this most solitary man.
    John Henry Watson was born in Cirencester, Gloucester to Henry and Martha Watson. Henry was Sexton of Church of St John the Baptist, a medieval church dating from 1115. He was christened John for the church and Henry for his father. He styled his name John H. Watson throughout his life.
    Henry Watson began service to the church as an Acolyte, rising to Verger after ten years. He was entrusted with the duties of Sexton, a particularly responsible position given the age of the works. After thirty years of service, his name was effaced from the church records for reasons unknown, but apparently due an unfortunate occurrence owing to a debilitating weakness for drink. He died alone, a broken man no longer in control of his mind or his life.
    Martha was an embroiderer of church vestments, having talent with both the needle and elegant design. Her work was in demand for many years until her sight diminished to the point of near-blindness in her later years. She died several years before Henry.
    Watson’s elder brother, four years older, was Christened Henry John Watson, also named after his father and the church. He read canon law and became a clerk to the doctors of the ecclesiastical courts of the Anglican Communion where he concentrated on probate cases involving the church and inheritance. He inherited his father’s failing with drink and died equally unhappy.
    Watson alone was destined to achieve a measure of success and happiness. After significant hardships due to his chronic lack of money, Watson took his degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of London in 1878. He was a staff surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, but had little in the way of lucrative work and, given the attraction of subsistence and excitement went out to Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, in 1879