“But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying
documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases,
and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster
energy to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in
these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he
performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were
followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with
his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table.
Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of
the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account
to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.”– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual