In my time, like so many others, I have faced losses. As a young man, I lost my father to the evils of drink, and subsequently my mother as well, when her heart was broken because of him. My brother fell to the same demons, but fortunately I avoided that trap. I believed that my own destiny was to serve as a physician in the British Army, only to be grievously and surprisingly wounded and sent home, told that what I had to offer was no longer required.
Later, I carried the burden of the supposed loss of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, when he was believed to have been killed by the villainous Professor Moriarty back in ‘91. That, along with the death a couple of years later of my beloved wife, Mary, nearly broke me. Like the despair that I felt following my battle wounds in 1880, I think that I might well have eased slowly toward an early grave during that period, having lost both my wife and closest friend, if not for the reappearance of Holmes in 1894, whereupon subsequent involvement with his work saved me, as it had done before in 1881.
Many people are aware of how I first met Mary, occurring as it did during one of Holmes’s investigations that I later worked up into a published form, and how she and I later married. A year after that story had appeared publicly, I continued those tentative efforts as a writer by preparing a quantity of Holmes’s other adventures for the public, publishing them in a newly-formed and popular periodical. Soon I was faced with a vexatious dilemma, as I realized that quite a few of those events that I had shared with Holmes had taken place before my time with Mary, during my first marriage.
Many people are not aware of that first marriage. I was initially hesitant to write up those many cases that occurred then, referring as they occasionally do to my earlier wife, Constance. I did not want to bring any pain to Mary by reliving earlier days too often. However, it was through the urging of my literary agent, Conan Doyle (now Sir Arthur), that I was – shamefully, I see in hindsight – encouraged to gloss over the very fact of Constance’s existence. Doyle rationalized at the time that the narratives could be written in such a way that the casual reader would not realize that the marriage that I referred to in some of those earlier tales was not to Mary, and I went along with his plan.
Only now, many years later, do I realize that – while I did save Mary some initial melancholy because of reminders about my earlier wedded condition – I also did a grave disservice to Constance, whom I had also loved and lost far too quickly.
Recently, Holmes tried his hand at writing and publishing his own account of one of his past adventures, taking place not long after the turn of the century and carried out without my participation. He admitted how difficult he found writing it, after years of criticizing my own efforts. In that particular narrative, which took place back in ’03 and concerned the circumstances relating to an unfortunate veteran of the Second Boer War, Holmes happened to mention that, at the time of that case, I had deserted him for a wife, referring to it as “the only selfish action which I can recall in our association.” It is true that Holmes and my third wife did not mix well, at least at first, but there should be no implication or understanding that they were enemies. Yet, it was upon reading this comment of my friend’s that my mind was set on a reminiscent path, leading from my third wife, back to the other two.
Holmes and Mary were always friends, although he was admittedly at a loss when she and I married in 1889. It was during this time that certain bad habits threatened to overtake him, and my departure from Baker Street only seemed to exacerbate the stress that he faced. But Mary always thought of him as the brother that she never had, and I know that he felt the same affection as toward a sister for her. Through both our efforts, Mary and I were able to wean him of his addiction, if only for a time, although it was only several years later that he was able to finish the effort completely on his own.
With Constance, my first wife, Holmes had a somewhat different relationship. I had met her during a period when I was not living in Baker Street, so he only became aware of her rather after the fact. Circumstances sadly kept them from having much regular contact with one another during my marriage, but my friend was always supportive throughout those trying months as her condition worsened, and even though he did not know her as he would come to know Mary, he never failed me, proving yet again that he was more of a brother to me than that of my own blood.
As I recently brooded upon those long-ago days, I was reminded by the current events of one of Holmes’s long-ago investigations that took place at approximately the same time that my marriage to Constance came to a close. Those were dark days for me, but as usual, the distraction of participating in Holmes’s adventures served as the cure for my inner illness.
As I grow older, and attempt to put my papers in some semblance of order, I know that I must not leave this tale untold. Even now, certain aspects and identities must be disguised. And forgive me, reader, if I find that Holmes’s monumental efforts cannot be untwisted from the personal concerns that were taking place at the same time in my own life. I would have told this, one of Holmes’s most important investigations, without involving my own pain if I could have found a way. And yet, perhaps telling it all as it happened will help to paint a truer picture than if I selectively and subjectively withdrew a thread here and there from the greater tapestry.
As always, I hope that this, like all of my efforts, serves in some additional way to illuminate my friend, Sherlock Holmes.
Dr. John H. Watson
4 June, 1927
“[L]ife is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outrè results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”
– Sherlock Holmes (18 October, 1887)