The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual
| "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Short story by Arthur Conan Doyle | |||
 Reginald Musgrave, 1893 illustration by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine. | |||
| Country | United Kingdom | ||
| Language | English | ||
| Genre(s) | Detective fiction short stories | ||
| Publication | |||
| Published in | Strand Magazine | ||
| Publication date | May 1893 | ||
| Chronology | |||
| Series | The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes | ||
| |||
"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.
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
[edit]In a frame story, Holmes goes through some of his old records, and recounts one of his earliest cases to Watson.
Holmes is visited by Reginald Musgrave, a former acquaintance from university. He has experienced 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.'
One night, Musgrave unable to sleep, heard a noise about 2:00 a.m. He caught his longtime butler, Brunton, secretly studying the ritual and other private papers. Angered by this inappropriate behavior, Musgrave ordered Brunton to immediatly leave the premises. Brunton begged for a little time to appear that he left of his own accord to 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 saw him leave. When questioned, a maid, Rachel Howells, became hysterical and was confined to a sickbed, still raving. A hired nurse watched over her, but Rachel escaped during the night. Following Rachel's trail, Musgrave and the police discovered a satchel she threw into the manor lake that contained nothing but twisted metal and a few mud-covered coloured stones.
Like Brunton, Holmes realized that the seemingly meaningless ritual was likely instructions to a valuable object's hiding place. Ascertaining the height of the biggest oak tree on the property, and the location of a former giant elm tree, Holmes did some mathematical calculations and picked up Brunton's trail, which led into an abandoned wing of the house. The cellar under this wing was being used for storing lumber; Holmes found all the wood had 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 raised the heavy stone to reveal a deep hole in the floor. Below is Brunton's asphyxiated body lying across a dilapidated ancient wooden chest. A few coins from the time of King Charles I were scattered about the hole.
After the body was removed, Holmes noticed several wood billets were likely used as levers or props to raise the stone. Holmes deduced that Brunton, unable to lift the heavy stone by himself, recruited Rachel, whom he earlier had spurned for another woman, to help lift the stone, using the wood pieces. After Brunton climbed in and handed the satchel up to Rachel, the slab fell shut, possibly by accident, with Rachel fleeing out of guilt. Alternatively, a vengeful Rachel may have pushed the wood away to deliberately kill Brunton; either theory would explain the facts.
Holmes cleaned and examined the satchel's contents, revealing that the metal pieces are gold and the stones are gems. The fragments were the remains of St. Edward's medieval crown, which had belonged to Charles I ("He who is gone") and was being kept for his son and heir, Charles II ("He who will come"). Reginald confirmed that his ancestor, Sir Ralph Musgrave, was a high-ranking Cavalier; Sir Ralph was likely given the crown, and thus hid it beneath the stone and created the ritual as a clue to its location. Somehow, the ritual's meaning was never passed down before Sir Ralph died; for the next 200 years, the poem was merely considered a quaint custom.
After much legal and governmental interactions, the Musgraves were allowed to keep the fragments on display, even though the ritual made it clear that they were only to keep the relic ″in trust″. Rachel was never found, and Musgrave feared she may have committed suicide, though Holmes believed it more likely that she fled the country.
Publication history
[edit]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
[edit]Film and television
[edit]
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,[11] 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 1954 television series, Sherlock Holmes, there titled "The Case of the Greystone Inscription".[12]
The story was adapted for the 1965 BBC series Sherlock Holmes with Peter Cushing. The episode is now lost.[13]
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.[14]
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
[edit]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.[15]
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.[16]
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.[17]
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.[18]
"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.[19]
"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.[20]
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.[21]
Stage
[edit]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
[edit]- Notes
- ^ a b Smith (2014), p. 86.
- ^ Temple, Emily (22 May 2018). "The 12 Best Sherlock Holmes Stories, According to Arthur Conan Doyle". Literary Hub. Retrieved 6 January 2019.
- ^ Madsen, Diane Gilbert (20 September 2016). "What's Your Favorite Sherlock Holmes Story? - Strand Magazine". Strand Mag. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
- ^ This couplet was not in the Strand Magazine text, and first appeared in book publication; see Publication history.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ a b Cawthorne (2011), p. 82.
- ^ "Harper's Weekly. v.37 Jan.-June 1893". HathiTrust Digital Library. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
- ^ Cawthorne (2011), p. 75.
- ^ Eyles, Alan (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration. Harper & Row. p. 130. ISBN 0-06-015620-1.
- ^ Eyles, Alan (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration. Harper & Row. p. 131. ISBN 0-06-015620-1.
- ^ Barnes, Alan (2011). Sherlock Holmes on Screen. Titan Books. p. 219. ISBN 9780857687760.
- ^ Haydock, Ron (1978). Deerstalker! Holmes and Watson on Screen. Scarecrow Press. p. 186. ISBN 9780810810617.
- ^ Stuart Douglas - www.thiswaydown.org. "Missing Episodes". Btinternet.com. Archived from the original on 21 July 2012. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
- ^ Barnes, Alan (2011). Sherlock Holmes on Screen. Titan Books. p. 225. ISBN 9780857687760.
- ^ Dickerson (2019), p. 26.
- ^ Dickerson (2019), p. 130.
- ^ De Waal, Ronald Burt (1974). The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes. Bramhall House. p. 389. ISBN 0-517-217597.
- ^ Eyles, Allen (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration. Harper & Row. p. 140. ISBN 9780060156206.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Bert Coules. "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes". The BBC complete audio Sherlock Holmes. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
- ^ 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.
External links
[edit]
The full text of The Musgrave Ritual at Wikisource
Media related to The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual at Wikimedia Commons- The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, including The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual at Standard Ebooks
The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual public domain audiobook at LibriVox- Davies, Ross E. (15 February 2017). "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual (map)". SSRN 2918527.
