In recording from time to time some of the curious experiencesand interesting recollections which I associate with my longand intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I havecontinually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversionto publicity. To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applausewas always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the endof a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure tosome orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to thegeneral chorus of misplaced congratulation. It was indeed thisattitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not any lack ofinteresting material which has caused me of late years to lay veryfew of my records before the public. My participation in some ifhis adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion andreticence upon me.
It was, then, with considerable surprise that I received atelegram from Homes last Tuesday—he has never been known towrite where a telegram would serve—in the following terms:
Why not tell them of the Cornish horror—strangest case I havehandled.
I have no idea what backward sweep of memory had broughtthe matter fresh to his mind, or what freak had caused him todesire that I should recount it; but I hasten, before anothercancelling telegram may arrive, to hunt out the notes which giveme the exact details of the case and to lay the narrative before myreaders.
It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes’s ironconstitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face ofconstant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps,by occasional indiscretions of his own. In March of that year Dr.
Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction toHolmes I may some day recount, gave positive injunctions that thefamous private agent lay aside all his cases and surrender himselfto complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute breakdown.
The state of his health was not a matter in which he himself tookthe faintest interest, for his mental detachment was absolute,but he was induced at last, on the threat of being permanentlydisqualified from work, to give himself a complete change ofscene and air. Thus it was that in the early spring of that year we1200 The Complete Sherlock Holmes found ourselves together in a small cottage near Poldhu Bay, at thefurther extremity of the Cornish peninsula.
It was a singular spot, and one peculiarly well suited to thegrim humour of my patient. From the windows of our littlewhitewashed house, which stood high upon a grassy headland,we looked down upon the whole sinister semicircle of MountsBay, that old death trap of sailing vessels, with its fringe ofblack cliffs and surge-swept reefs on which innumerable seamenhave met their end. With a northerly breeze it lies placid andsheltered, inviting the storm-tossed craft to tack into it for rest andprotection.
Then come the sudden swirl round of the wind, the blisteringgale from the south-west, the dragging anchor, the lee shore, andthe last battle in the creaming breakers. The wise mariner standsfar out from that evil place.
On the land side our surroundings were as sombre as on the sea.
It was a country of rolling moors, lonely and dun-colored, withan occasional church tower to mark the site of some old-worldvillage. In every direction upon these moors there were traces ofsome vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as itssole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds whichcontained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworkswhich hinted at prehistoric strife. The glamour and mystery of theplace, with its sinister atmosphere of forgotten nations, appealedto the imagination of my friend, and he spent much of his time inlong walks and solitary meditations upon the moor. The ancientCornish language had also arrested his attention, and he had, Iremember, conceived the idea that it was akin to the Chaldean,and had been largely derived from the Phoenician traders in tin.
He had received a consignment of books upon philology andwas settling down to develop this thesis when suddenly, to mysorrow and to his unfeigned delight, we found ourselves, even inthat land of dreams, plunged into a problem at our very doorswhich was more intense, more engrossing, and infinitely moremysterious than any of those which had driven us from London.
Our simple life and peaceful, healthy routine were violentlyinterrupted, and we were precipitated into the midst of a series ofevents which caused the utmost excitement not only in Cornwallbut throughout the whole west of England. Many of my readersmay retain some recollection of what was called at the time “TheCornish Horror,” though a most imperfect account of the matterreached the London press. Now, after thirteen years, I will givethe true details of this inconceivable affair to the public.
I have said that scattered towers marked the villages whichdotted this part of Cornwall. The nearest of these was the hamletThe Adventure of Wisteria Lodge 1201of Tredannick Wollas, where the cottages of a couple of hundredinhabitants clustered round an ancient, moss-grown church.
