The Musgrave Ritual - re-read

[mightymads]

My somewhat belated notes for MUSG. It's a special story in many ways. It's one of examples of Holmes's narrative style: concise, spare, exact, without romantic and poetic elements which characterise Watson's tales. It is also another story of his early days which he basically told Watson to avoid cleaning :D

There's so much we learn about the Baker Street rooms and Holmes's habits from the opening paragraphs: Holmes's antics and Watson's lax attitude towards housekeeping. Watson calls it 'being Bohemian'. I wonder what a mess the place turns into when Mrs. Hudson has a holiday. What about their house in Sussex?? I've always imagined it as nice and cosy but perhaps some adjustments are in order.

Tobacco in the Persian slipper and papers transfixed by a jack-knife are such iconic features of Holmesiana. Jeremy Brett noted that a Persian slipper is not the best place to keep tobacco because it becomes dry--but what if Holmes smoked so much that there was no time for it to dry? Or, perhaps Holmes kept a tobacco pouch in the slipper?

This is a canon story where Holmes looks at Watson 'with mischievous eyes'. Seriously. How can one ever deny shippers their pleasure after such canonic descriptions?

One of the untold stories Watson mentions here is 'the singular affair of the aluminium crutch'. I found an interesting bit about it in Observance of Trifles:

Of particular interest might be the aluminium crutch. In those days, they hadn't yet developed a cheap and efficient process of extracting aluminium from ore, and as a result, the metal was prohibitively expensive--more so than even gold or platinum, at times. So to make something like a crutch from aluminium would be unusual and extravagant beyond belief. So why do it? Perhaps to make a lightweight crutch that could conceal something within...perhaps a weapon...?

I didn't know that titbit about aluminium before. Sounds very intriguing indeed!

Holmes mentions that he had built a considerable but mostly non-profit practice by the time he met Watson. Meaning that the police consulted him whenever they wished and allowed Holmes to visit crimes scenes for practice, probably. He also says that his methods were much discussed by his fellow students. Was it due to his involvement in the Gloria Scott case? It's rather suggestive that there was a scandal after all, with Victor fleeing and Holmes becoming somewhat notorious.

However, Holmes states in GLOR that he was in the university for only two years. But here he says 'during my last years at the University there was a good deal of talk there about myself and my methods'. Was it YEAR instead of YEARS? Or was it after Holmes left the university himself? Many possibilities for headcanons.

Montague Street. Holmes's famous abode before Baker Street. As it often happened, ACD wove some of his real life into the Holmes universe. Having left Southsea, young and recently married Conan Doyle went to study ophthalmology in Vienna and later moved to London in hopes of building a practice in the capital. His first address in London was in Montague Place:

Conan Doyle was in London before the end of March. He took lodgings in Montague Place, around the corner from the British Museum—and had Sherlock Holmes say in the story ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ several years later, ‘When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient.’ (Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters)

 

What 'large issues' proved to be at stake in the Musgrave case? Did the finding of the Charles I crown become a sensation which contributed to Holmes's reputation as a private investigator? He does mention that there was some sort of litigation and a big sum of money involved for Musgrave to be able to keep the crown at his estate.

The way Reginald Musgrave is described, he is quite a queer-coded character: 'a young man of fashion', 'a bit of a dandy', 'languid and yet courtly manners'. Perhaps Holmes recognised him as a fellow queer man? Yet it doesn't seem that they were close: 'Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of observation and inference.'

So Musgrave was interested in Holmes's methods and even admired him, but Holmes did not become friends with him. Well, Musgrave didn't have Watson's charm. Actually, he seems somewhat like Holmes: reclusive, aristocratic, and unsociable. And yet, some years after the university, they 'shake hands coardially'. I'm quite sure they saw each other as birds of a feather. I think Granada stresses this point especially by setting this story in later years instead of Holmes's youth and having a middle-aged Musgrave explicitly state that he is unmarried.

Another point that I noticed is the description of Brunton. It has mutually exclusive statements. At first he is characterised as 'a man of great energy', but by the end of the paragraph 'he was comfortable, and lacked energy to make any change'. Perhaps it depended whether or not he had energy? Quite energetic to become the head of the household staff, but not interested in a career of a scholar?

 

This story has this running gag of 'excitable Celts': Welsh, Irish, doesn't matter. It seems like Doyle did indeed believe in this stereotype as he said of himself:

'I am half Irish, you know,’ he once told one of London’s press lords, after losing his temper over a newspaper story, ‘and my British half has the devil of a job to hold the hotheaded rascal in.’ (Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters)

 

Despite Musgrave's aloofness, he is a considerate master: he tells Rachel to go to bed and not to work when he sees that she looks unwell. I suspect that not all employers were so attentive to their domestic help. 

I also find interesting this idea: 'A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.' Quite femenist, considering that it comes from Doyle, isn't it?

And finally another thing I borrow from Observance of Trifles:

'And Brunton could hardly try to sell it [the crown] to a collector or a museum (or to the royal family) without revealing its provenance, which of course would reveal that he had stolen the booty. At best, that would likely mean he wouldn't get any money; at worst it would mean jail time.

Perhaps he planned to hide it, and then reveal to Musgrave what the ritual meant, and sell it back to him...I'm starting to think that maybe Brunton wasn't so smart, after all (Of course, if he were smart, he wouldn't have been caught going through family documents in the library like that...)'