The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

"The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The story was originally published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in May 1893, and in Harper's Weekly in the United States on 13 May 1893.[1] It was collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

"The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual"
Short story by Arthur Conan Doyle
Reginald Musgrave, 1893 illustration by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Detective fiction short stories
Publication
Published inStrand Magazine
Publication dateMay 1893
Chronology
SeriesThe Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
 
The Adventure of the Gloria Scott		  
The Adventure of the Reigate Squire

Unlike the majority of Holmes stories, the main narrator is not Doctor Watson, but Sherlock Holmes himself. With Watson providing an introduction, the story within a story is a classic example of a frame tale. It is one of the earliest recorded cases investigated by Holmes, and establishes his problem solving skills.

"The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" shares elements with two Edgar Allan Poe tales: "The Gold-Bug" and "The Cask of Amontillado".

In 1927, Conan Doyle ranked the story at 11th place on his top 12 Holmes stories list.[2] The story did better in a 1999 chart produced by The Baker Street Journal, ranking 6th out of 10. [3]

Plot

In a frame story, Holmes goes through some of his old records, and recounts to Watson the events of one of his earliest cases.

Holmes is visited by Reginald Musgrave, a former acquaintance from university, who has had some strange events at Hurlstone, his ancient family manor house. Musgraves have dwelt at Hurlstone since before the English Civil War; since that time period, it is a tradition that each eldest son of the house memorize and recite a strange poem upon coming of age:

'Whose was it?'
'His who is gone.'
'Who shall have it?'
'He who will come.'
('What was the month?'
'The sixth from the first.')[4]
'Where was the sun?'
'Over the oak.'
'Where was the shadow?'
'Under the elm.'
'How was it stepped?'
'North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.'
'What shall we give for it?'
'All that is ours.'
'Why should we give it?'
'For the sake of the trust.'

Brunton studying the ritual, 1893 illustration by W. H. Hyde in Harper's Weekly

One night, Musgrave was unable to sleep, heard a noise about 2 in the morning, and caught his longtime butler, Brunton, studying the ritual and other private papers in secret. Disgusted by this breach of confidence, Musgrave ordered Brunton to leave the house at once. Brunton begged for a little time so he could leave as if of his own accord, and avoid public disgrace. Musgrave begrudgingly granted him a week, but a few days later, Brunton disappeared, leaving behind all his belongings. His bed had not been slept in, and no one had seen him leave. When questioned, one of the maids, Rachel Howells, burst out in a fit of hysterical laughter and weeping. She was confined to a sickbed still raving, and a nurse was hired to watch over her, but Rachel managed to escape in the dead of night. Trying to follow Rachel's trail, Musgrave and the police discovered a satchel she had thrown into the manor lake, containing nothing but twisted metal and a few dirt-covered coloured stones.

The State Crown of Henry VII of England included in a portrait of Charles I of England by Daniel Mytens prior to its destruction in 1649.

Like Brunton, Holmes realizes that the seemingly meaningless ritual is likely instructions to find a hiding place for something valuable. Ascertaining the height of the biggest oak tree on the property, and the location of a former giant elm tree, Holmes does some mathematical calculations and is able to pick up Brunton's trail, which leads into an abandoned wing of the house. The cellar under this wing is now used for storing lumber, but Holmes finds all the wood has been pushed to one side, revealing a metal ring in one of the floor stones with Brunton's muffler tied to it. With the help of Musgrave and a policeman, Holmes raises the heavy stone to reveal a hole in the floor, and finds the asphixiated body of Brunton lying across the rotted remains of an ancient wooden chest. A few very dirty ancient coins from the time of King Charles I are scattered about the hole.

After the body is removed, Holmes notices several billets of wood show signs of having been used as levers or props for the stone. Holmes deduces that Brunton, unable to lift the stone himself even with the aid of the muffler, tried to win back Rachel, whom he earlier had spurned for another woman, so she could help him lift the stone with the aid of these pieces of wood. After Brunton had handed the satchel up to Rachel, the slab had fallen shut, possibly by mere accident, with Rachel fleeing out of guilt. Alternatively, Rachel herself might have pushed the wood away to deliberately kill him; either theory would explain the facts.

Holmes cleans the satchel's contents and examines them, revealing that the metal parts are gold and the stones are gems. The fragments are what is left of the medieval crown of St. Edward, which had belonged to Charles I ("He who is gone") and was being kept for his son, Charles II ("He who will come"). Reginald confirms that one of his ancestors, Sir Ralph Musgrave, was a high-ranking Cavalier; it is likely Sir Ralph was given the crown, and thus hid it beneath the stone and created the ritual. Somehow, the meaning of the ritual was not passed down before Sir Ralph died; for the next 200 years, the poem was simply considered a quaint custom.

After a lot of legal and governmental bother, the Musgraves are allowed to keep the fragments on display, even though the ritual makes it clear that they were only to keep the relic ″in trust″. Rachel is never found, and Musgrave fears she may have committed suicide, but Holmes believes it is far more likely that she simply fled the country.

Publication history

The story was originally published in the Strand Magazine in May 1893, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. It was later collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The Strand's text of the ritual did not specify the month in which the shadow of the elm should be measured (the shadow would be longer in winter and point in different directions throughout the year), but a couplet was added for the Memoirs identifying the month as the "sixth from the first".[5]

"The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" was also published in the US in Harper's Weekly on 13 May 1893, and in the US edition of The Strand Magazine in June 1893.[1] The story was published with six illustrations by Sidney Paget in the Strand,[6] and with two illustrations by W. H. Hyde in Harper's Weekly.[7] It was included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes,[6] which was published in December 1893 in the UK and February 1894 in the US.[8]

Adaptations

Film and television
Baddesley Clinton

The story was adapted for the 1912 French-British Éclair film series as a silent short film.[9]

It was also adapted as a short film as part of the Stoll film series. The film was released in 1922.[10]

The 1943 film Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, part of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce series of films, loosely adapted the story, though the ritual was completely re-written to represent a chess game played on the floor of the Musgrave mansion. Also the treasure is a land grant that was given to the Musgraves by Henry VIII instead of the lost crown of Charles I.

The story was adapted for the 1965 BBC series Sherlock Holmes with Peter Cushing. The episode is now lost.[11]

The story was adapted for an episode of Sherlock Holmes, the Granada Television series starring Jeremy Brett. The episode deviated from the original by including Watson in the adventure; the story nods to the framing device of the original by having Holmes, not looking forward to the trip, remark that he intends to organise some of his old cases before he met Watson in order to keep himself occupied. In addition, the story features an actual oak tree, which Holmes describes as "a patriarch among oaks, one of the most magnificent trees that I have ever seen." In the Granada film version, however, Holmes utilizes a weathervane in the shape of an oak perched on top of the Musgrave mansion to solve the mysterious ritual. At the very end of the teleplay, Rachel's body is shown to have been found after having floated up from the mere. Further, the 12th line of the ritual is adapted to suit the scenery and the 5th and 6th lines are omitted. It was filmed in the 400-year-old Baddesley Clinton Manor House near Birmingham, UK. This house was the Musgrave home in the TV episode. In the original story, this was one of Holmes early cases just after he had graduated from college; in the adaptation, the time sequence is moved to when Holmes had partnered with Watson to solve mysteries.

An episode of the animated television series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century was based on the story. The episode, titled "The Musgrave Ritual", first aired in 1999.[12]

Episodes 9 and 10 of the 2013 Russian TV series Sherlock Holmes are based on the story, although the storyline is quite different including some action scenes and Brunton being in fact a revenging member of a family of Musgraves' rivals.

The Musgrave Ritual is adapted as part of the storyline of the final episode of the fourth season of Sherlock, "The Final Problem"; as children, the Holmes family lived in an old house called Musgrave, but after Sherlock and Mycroft's sister Eurus was involved in the disappearance of Sherlock's dog/best friend (Sherlock had for years believed it was a dog as he buried the memory due to the scale of the mental trauma), all Eurus would provide as a clue was a strange song. Years later, with John Watson's life at stake as he is trapped in the same location where Eurus left her first victim, Sherlock deduces that the song relates to the unusual dates on various fake gravestones around the house, the resulting 'code' leading him to Eurus' old room to make an emotional appeal to his sister to spare John.

Radio

Edith Meiser adapted the story as an episode of the American radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which aired on 5 January 1931, with Richard Gordon as Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr. Watson.[13]

The story was adapted for the American radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson. The episode aired on 16 July 1943.[14]

A 1962 BBC Light Programme radio adaptation aired as part of the 1952–1969 radio series starring Carleton Hobbs as Holmes and Norman Shelley as Watson.[15]

An adaptation aired on BBC radio in June 1978, starring Barry Foster as Holmes and David Buck as Watson. It was adapted by Michael Bakewell.[16]

"The Musgrave Ritual" was adapted as a 1981 episode of the series CBS Radio Mystery Theater with Gordon Gould as Sherlock Holmes and Court Benson as Dr. Watson.[17]

"The Musgrave Ritual" was dramatised by Peter Mackie for BBC Radio 4 in 1992 as part of the 1989–1998 radio series starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. It featured Robert Daws as Reginald Musgrave and Michael Kilgarriff as Sergeant Harris.[18]

A 2014 episode of The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a series on the American radio show Imagination Theatre, was adapted from the story, with John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes and Lawrence Albert as Watson.[19]

Stage

T. S. Eliot stated that he adapted part of the Ritual in his 1935 verse play Murder in the Cathedral as a deliberate homage.[5]

References
Notes
  1. Smith (2014), p. 86.
  2. Temple, Emily (22 May 2018). "The 12 Best Sherlock Holmes Stories, According to Arthur Conan Doyle". Literary Hub. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
  3. Madsen, Diane Gilbert (20 September 2016). "What's Your Favorite Sherlock Holmes Story? - Strand Magazine". Strand Mag. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
  4. This couplet was not in the Strand Magazine text, and first appeared in book publication; see Publication history.
  5. Christopher Roden (1993). "Explanatory Notes: The Musgrave Ritual". The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. by Arthur Conan Doyle, edited with an introduction by Christopher Roden. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 295–299. ISBN 0-19-212309-2.
  6. Cawthorne (2011), p. 82.
  7. "Harper's Weekly. v.37 Jan.-June 1893". HathiTrust Digital Library. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  8. Cawthorne (2011), p. 75.
  9. Eyles, Alan (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration. Harper & Row. p. 130. ISBN 0-06-015620-1.
  10. Eyles, Alan (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration. Harper & Row. p. 131. ISBN 0-06-015620-1.
  11. Stuart Douglas - www.thiswaydown.org. "Missing Episodes". Btinternet.com. Archived from the original on 21 July 2012. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
  12. Barnes, Alan (2011). Sherlock Holmes on Screen. Titan Books. p. 225. ISBN 9780857687760.
  13. Dickerson (2019), p. 26.
  14. Dickerson (2019), p. 130.
  15. De Waal, Ronald Burt (1974). The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes. Bramhall House. p. 389. ISBN 0-517-217597.
  16. Eyles, Allen (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration. Harper & Row. p. 140. ISBN 9780060156206.
  17. Payton, Gordon; Grams, Martin Jr. (2015) [1999]. The CBS Radio Mystery Theater: An Episode Guide and Handbook to Nine Years of Broadcasting, 1974-1982 (Reprinted ed.). McFarland. p. 393. ISBN 9780786492282.
  18. Bert Coules. "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes". The BBC complete audio Sherlock Holmes. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
  19. Wright, Stewart (30 April 2019). "The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Broadcast Log" (PDF). Old-Time Radio. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
Sources
  • Cawthorne, Nigel (2011). A Brief History of Sherlock Holmes. Running Press. ISBN 978-0762444083.
  • Dickerson, Ian (2019). Sherlock Holmes and His Adventures on American Radio. BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1629335087.
  • Smith, Daniel (2014) [2009]. The Sherlock Holmes Companion: An Elementary Guide (Updated ed.). Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1-78131-404-3.
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