* This essay discusses how the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (1893) provides insights into the shifting class structure of the Victorian era, specifically the decline of the landed elites and the rise of the middle and professional classes. It originally appeared in the following volume: Dan Andriacco (Ed.), The Essential Sherlock Holmes, Volume One (Origins): The Most Important Sherlock Holmes Stories with Scholarly Commentary (Manchester, NH: Belanger Books, 2021). Minor clarifying edits and additions have been made to the text.
This chapter will begin with a confession: I am not drawn to this rather gloomy story. Although it has elements of an early DaVinci Code mystery, the location is dreary, the human relations are fraught, and the outcome is disheartening. For fans of Sherlock Holmes, its saving grace is the discussion of a young Holmes, one of several stories that allow us to watch his earliest attempts at detection. For those interested in British history, the contrasts between the main characters indicate the changing nature of the class structure in the Victorian era.
In addition to Holmes and Dr. Watson, we meet Reginald Musgrave, the lord of Hurlstone manor, and Richard Brunton, his butler. As Mary Alcaro points out in another chapter in this volume, Musgrave is described as unpopular, and rightly so; he is arrogant in addition to being a dandy, incurious about his own family history, and haughty with his servants. I was particularly struck by this cold-hearted statement by Musgrave after his precipitous dismissal of Brunton: “I made no allusion to what had passed and waited with some curiosity to see how he would cover his disgrace.” He is a man “entirely unworthy”[1] of our sympathy. His only positive features are the early recognition of Holmes’s special abilities (“more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of observation and inference”) and his insight into the last part of the ritual (‘And under,’ he cried. ‘You have omitted the ‘and under’). I would not be eager to spend any time with him.
My sympathies are with Brunton, who steals the show. In any rational world, this man of many talents would be leading the Royal Society. Instead, he is professionally suffocated by the British class system and then literally suffocated when he tries to break free.
The story can therefore be read as a smug Victorian morality tale, whereby the servant forgets his place and is punished for getting above himself. However, it also provides a springboard into the changing Victorian social world, which would see the rise of people like Brunton and Holmes and the decline of the Musgraves.
While both Holmes and Musgrave descend from the landed gentry, it is Musgrave who is the grander, richer, and more powerful. They could not know that the 1870s, the setting of the story, were the zenith of the landed elite, and that subsequent economic and political changes would gradually empower the improving working class, the confident middle class, and the pushing capitalist class. As a self-made professional who is “living by my wits,” Holmes represents the winning side of this transformation. He may have felt in awe of Musgrave and Hurlstone manor in the 1870s, but if they met again in the year of Queen Victoria’s funeral (1901), Musgrave would be in awe of Holmes and 221B. The rise of Holmes is the rise of a new Britain.
Early Years on Montague Street
As Holmes relates to Watson, this is one of the earliest mysteries in his career. Not long after leaving university (Oxford or Cambridge?), Holmes is living on Montague Street in London and engaged in an idiosyncratic pursuit of knowledge. His own words are “filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient.” The emphasis upon his leisure time indicates that he has no official degree course, no occupation, and no earned income. How Holmes kept body and soul together is unclear, but I discuss two possibilities in the following pages.
He notes that cases were initially brought to him through “old fellow-students,” and “The third of these cases was that of “The Musgrave Ritual.” “The ‘Gloria Scott’” cannot be among this number, as it took place during his collegiate days.
What were the other two cases during his Montague Street days? Given Watson’s penchant for changing important facts in a story to hide identities or otherwise avoid embarrassment, we might speculate whether he took any early mysteries and rewrote them with a more contemporary setting. Be that as it may, only “The Musgrave Ritual” clearly provides a window into a Sherlock Holmes living across from the British Museum and preparing to become the world’s first consulting detective.
Cambridge or Oxford?
Higher education plays a key role in the story because Holmes and Musgrave meet as students in the same Oxbridge college. They do not appear to be close friends, but Musgrave appreciates the former’s “methods of observation and inference”—and a darn sight faster than Watson did, apparently.
A small literature discusses whether Holmes graced Oxford or Cambridge, and which specific college he attended. The authors include luminaries ranging from Dorothy Sayers to William S. Baring-Gould to Nicholas Utechin. My goal is not to review this literature or assess all the evidence, which is scattered throughout multiple stories in the Canon, but to examine “The Musgrave Ritual” for clues.
As the evidence in the Canon is not definitive, I will assume that Holmes went to Cambridge because it was the leader in science. By contrast, Oxford was a more appropriate place to study the humanities. To take some literary and historical license, I can imagine Holmes in the company of Isaac Newton (Trinity College, Cambridge) but not Sebastian Flyte (Christ Church, Oxford).
Sayers also concludes that Holmes attended Cambridge despite giving her oft-insufferable hero Lord Peter Wimsey an Oxford education (Balliol College). Incidentally, she also wrote a pastiche in which Lord Peter as a child hires Sherlock Holmes to find his missing kitten (“The Case of the Missing Kitten”), which sounds charming.
As a member of the upper class, although not a titled aristocrat (see discussion below), Reginald Musgrave would have attended one of the ancient foundations. This was likely preceded by a public school education, although as David Turner notes, a popular “alternative was private tuition with a local scholar or at home; as late as 1893 this was still the background of almost one-fifth of Cambridge undergraduates.”[2] The story contains no clues about this, but if Musgrave did attend such a school, it would help to establish his college, as such schools had ties to specific colleges. Eton, for example, sent many students to Magdalen at Oxford and King’s at Cambridge. The Westminster School is connected to Trinity College, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford.
As a fellow student of Musgrave, Holmes might have also attended a prestigious public school, although not necessarily the same one. Alternatively, he could have been privately tutored, as I have difficulty imagining a young Holmes in the cold, bullying, and sports-mad environment of a mid-19th century public school.
As for the college, Musgrave would likely have attended one of the richest, grandest, and oldest colleges that were filled with men of his class. These included Trinity College, St. John’s, Trinity Hall, King’s, Peterhouse, and Gonville and Caius.
Baring-Gould argued that Holmes went to two colleges: Christ Church in Oxford and then Gonville and Caius in Cambridge. The latter has a reputation for medicine, as evidenced by the caduceus on the college’s coat of arms. As Holmes would later conduct experiments at St. Bart’s in London, although he was not a medical student, this connection could make sense. However, Musgrave expresses no interest in medicine, nor has he any need to enter a profession. That would be for less exalted individuals, such as Holmes and Mycroft. In addition, since Musgrave is clearly destined for estate management and Parliament, a college with a medical reputation makes little sense. Neither would Trinity College or Trinity Hall, which have a reputation for science and legal training, respectively.
The remaining possibilities include King’s, St. John’s, and Peterhouse. Because I see Reginald Musgrave as very much the Etonian public school boy, King’s College is a distinct possibility. The progression from Eton to King’s would be natural. Furthermore, King’s began to accept students not from Eton in 1861. If Holmes were educated at home, he could have been admitted to King’s when he began higher education in the early 1870s.
Over time, these institutions would begin to change as the middle and capitalist classes pushed into the public schools and then Oxford and Cambridge. The King’s College that Musgrave and Holmes knew was overwhelmingly populated with Etonians and landed aristocrats. Little did they know they were the last of an era, as the college would soon see growing numbers of the sons of businessmen.
Regardless of where they went to college, the story provides an example of academic knowledge put to good use. Both trigonometry and history play central roles and serve as a rejoinder to the eternal student complaint of “When will I need to know that?” In case you have a friend with a missing butler and lost crown jewels, that’s when!
Social Standing
We see several clues in the story that help to locate Holmes and Musgrave in the Victorian social hierarchy.
First, as Mary Alcaro points out, we see Holmes clearly making excuses for the questionable behavior of a social superior. This indicates that Holmes sees his former college acquaintance as someone not to contradict or criticize. They may have attended the same college, but this does not confer social equality.
On the other hand, the story makes no mention of any title. Musgrave is neither Sir Reginald nor Lord Musgrave, which indicates that he is from the genteel class but not a member of the hereditary aristocracy. He serves in the House of Commons, not the House of Lords. In other canonical stories, such titles are invariably noted. For instance, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the first mention of Charles Baskerville includes his “Sir,” and he is always referred to as “Sir Charles.” Dr. Mortimer notes that his heir is “Sir Henry Baskerville” and the words “Sir Henry” are used 153 times in the story. If Musgrave had any sort of title, the class-conscious Watson would have noted it. Musgrave may be “a man of exceedingly aristocratic type,” but he is not an aristocrat.
The family originally had a baronetcy, as the story of “Sir Ralph Musgrave” indicates. However, supporting the losing side of the Glorious Revolution is one of those misjudgments that can have long-term consequences, including the loss of a title.
This suggests that Musgrave and Holmes are both from the upper class, but perhaps in different parts of the middle upper range. The Musgraves appear to have an older lineage, grander house, more servants, and greater political power than does the Holmes family. He is “a scion of one of the very oldest families in the kingdom” and Hurlstone “is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the county” and dates to well before 1607. Musgrave assumes that Holmes may have “seen pictures and read descriptions of the famous old building,” something very few of us will ever be able to say about our humble abodes. I would therefore place him in the higher range of the middle part of the upper class.
The background of Holmes is more difficult to determine. The Canon reveals little about Sherlock’s ancestry, beyond the “country squires” and the relation with the artist Vernet. The latter claim has always struck me as Holmes stretching for cultural cachet, but it may nevertheless be true. I would place Holmes in the lower range of the middle part of the upper class, given that his family occupies a status slightly below that of the Musgraves. Despite this minor difference, they were both from that class which was confident in its superior position, dominant in their local areas, and able to access the important institutions in society. The rest of society might be forgiven for seeing this as a mere social distinction within the top 1 percent of Victorian society.
Holmes would not be in the lowest range of the upper class, the increasingly powerful but nouveau industrial and merchant classes that had wealth but not “breeding.” They would eventually push their way into the elite institutions of society—the prestigious colleges, regiments, and clubs—but would nevertheless, in that very English way, count less than a man with an ancient title but no ready cash.
He was also not a member of the upper middle class, which consisted of the professionals (civil servants, lawyers, professors, clergy, and doctors) who ran the nation and the empire. They were increasingly respectable, but not part of the traditional elite, although many younger sons of the elite would seek a profession out of necessity. Holmes and Mycroft would eventually become part of this class, leaving behind their country squire background as they created “careers”—such an un-genteel word—in London.
As the 19th century progressed, the Musgrave and Holmes families would both face economic and social challenges. Perhaps most importantly, aristocrats and country squires would see their fortunes decline. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the growing agricultural competition from the Americas and Australia would reduce prices and the value of land, the mainstay of the genteel classes. The Musgrave and the Holmes families undoubtedly relied on agriculture, and they would find their incomes under increasing pressure. The imposition of income taxes and death duties would further reduce their bank balances by the 20th century. At the same time, with the industrial revolution in full swing and tariffs reduced, a new capitalist class of wealthy industrialists and merchants would challenge the social, cultural, and economic dominance of the traditional elites.
As David Cannadine relates, a Musgrave class that was “undeniably in charge and on top in the 1870s”[3] found itself on an inexorable decline starting in the 1880s. Everywhere the upper class in Britain and Europe looked, it saw change: peasant revolts, urban strikes, an “increasingly prosperous and assertive middle class,” and the newly rich who “craved both the political power and the social recognition to which they believe their fortunes entitled them.”[4] Peerages were given to capitalist upstarts, and the Directory of Directors and Who’s Who competed with Burkes Peerage as registers of the elite.
In the past, “land had not only meant wealth, it had also meant power.” While families like the Musgraves and Holdernesses appeared rich and secure, their reliance on agriculture meant that difficult days were on the horizon. During the “troublesome decade, it was people, rather than property, who wrested the political initiative”[5] As Lord Salisbury wrote, “things that have been secure for centuries are secure no longer.”[6]
A 19th century country squire would also find his workforce scattering, attracted by better-paying jobs in the industrial midlands. This disruption of long-established living patterns and social relations undercut a variety of English institutions, such as the gentry and the Church of England. Both prospered under the prior settled order but were increasingly unmoored in these more fluid times.
Estate servants, such as the characters Rachel Howells and Janet Tregellis, were fast becoming anachronisms; many would abandon gloomy, backwater estates for the fast-growing cities and factory work. Rachel’s disappearance, as I will discuss, may have involved a Manchester factory job and not a flight from the scene of a crime.
If Holmes and Mycroft moved to London in the 1870s to make their way, perhaps the family fortunes were never very strong. That the older brother joined the Civil Service suggests that the family estate was not worth managing, or had been sold. Mycroft seems like the last person on earth to implement modern agricultural techniques, buy farm equipment, and collect rent from tenants. While Holmes is more the man of practical action, I cannot imagine him living on a small estate in rural Sussex and trying to squeeze money out of the land.
For Mycroft, new opportunities became available in 1870, when patronage in the Civil Service was abolished in favor of competitive examinations. Can there be any doubt that a man with “the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living” (“The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans”) would have scored high?
Holmes was too much an individual to work in a bureaucracy, but he caught the business spirit of the era, even referring to “This agency” and “our profession” in reference to his work. We also see other instances of Holmes approving of the capitalist spirit, as when he discusses in The Valley of Fear how much Moriarty pays Colonel Moran: “Six thousand a year. That’s paying for brains, you see—the American business principle.”
Money
How did Holmes survive during his early days on Montague Street? As noted above, he was not working or studying for a medical degree. When he finally becomes a household name, he does not appear to particularly profit from his work. As he says in “The Problem of Thor Bridge”: “My professional charges are upon a fixed scale … I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether.”
As many of his clients are far from rich, these fixed charges must be relatively low. While he occasionally receives a windfall from a King of Bohemia or a Duke of Holdernesse, this would not keep him in deerstalkers for his entire career.
My guess is that Holmes and Mycroft were initially supported by their “country squire” family. Another possibility is that the estate was sold, the money invested, and the brothers lived off the income. This sale might have happened sooner rather than later if the parents passed away relatively early, but it probably occurred at some point because neither brother was interested in agricultural management.
This also helps to explain why Holmes did not buy 221B Baker Street. He was primarily living off family investments and not allowed to touch the capital. While his income increased over time, it was not enough for him to invest in London property, even if his total payments over many years were more than the value (“I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms during the years that I was with him,” Watson says in “The Dying Detective.”)
Politics
Reginald Musgrave is the local Member of Parliament (“I am member for my district as well”) but it is unclear whether he de facto inherited the position. He told Holmes “You probably heard of my poor father’s death … he was carried off about two years ago. Since then I have of course had the Hurlstone estate to manage, and as I am member for my district as well, my life has been a busy one.”
This implies, but does not clearly state, that his father was the prior MP for the area, and that Reginald took over the position after he died. Alternatively, with his father busy managing the estate, perhaps Reginald became the MP soon after he left Cambridge, possibly succeeding his father.
Regardless, it is entirely plausible that the father or son of the local dominant family was the local MP. Such men had considerable economic and political influence, although this would soon change after Musgrave and Holmes reached adulthood.
If you think American congressional districts are gerrymandered today, you ought to see parliamentary constituencies in the early 1800s. “Rotten boroughs” and “pocket boroughs” had a very small number of eligible voters (some well under a hundred) that a powerful local squire could control. Such men were used to exercising power over many institutions, not solely the political. Even in religion, a landowner might have the “living” of a church in his “gift” and could appoint any Church of England clergy he wanted.
By contrast, large and growing cities like Manchester and Birmingham sent no MPs at all to Parliament. Oxford and Cambridge universities, by contrast, each received two MPs.
Taken together, it could not be said that Parliament represented the people of the United Kingdom in their full class and regional complexity. When Reginald Musgrave was a member, it better resembled the traditional aristocratic body of the early 1800s than the more diverse place it would become by the end of the century.
A series of reform acts in the 19th century (1832, 1867, and 1884) would gradually expand the electorate, eliminate the dramatically malapportioned constituencies, and expand the territory that could elect members of Parliament. The introduction of the secret ballot (Ballot Act of 1872) meant that individuals no longer took a risk by voting against the wishes of local grandees.[7]
Nevertheless, at the time of “The Musgrave Ritual,” the aristocracy and gentry still dominated national politics because of remaining limitations on the number and types of voters, not to mention through bribery. It was common for candidates to “treat” the voters, which meant providing food and drink, until this was banned by the Corrupt Practices Act (1883). Furthermore, when the third Reform Act (1884) significantly expanded the electorate, such practices became impractical, and the parties instead turned to campaign organization to bring voters to the polls.
Was Reginald Musgrave a member of the Conservative or Liberal party, the two main contestants of the day? The story indicates that Hurlstone is in West Sussex, which is in the Southeast of England and a Tory stronghold. After the 1874 Parliamentary elections, in which Musgrave must have stood, it was entirely represented by Conservatives. The Liberal Party had some very limited representation in the county’s territory in the prior and subsequent elections, but this area was clearly strongly Tory.
At the time of this chapter’s publication, little had changed. The region was so conservative that it was entirely represented by Tory members of Parliament, and of the 70 county councilors elected in May of 2021, the strong majority (48) were Conservatives.[8]
The True Ending: Shades of the Priory School?
What was the “legal bother” mentioned at the end? We may think this involved haggling by lawyers over possession of the jewels, but maybe it was a police investigation of Brunton’s death. The local constabulary may not have been satisfied by the convenient claim that a person who could not be found committed the crime. Watson, in his usual way, may not have given us the whole truth and possibly sought to protect Reginald Musgrave’s reputation.
In my proposed alternative ending to the story, Brunton appeals to Musgrave, explains his interpretation of the ritual, and together they discover the basement and explore the chamber. Possibly by accident, the flagstone fell back and trapped Brunton, and Musgrave fled and let him die rather than seek help. He may not have wanted to admit his involvement, even if he would have received every benefit of the doubt from the local police. Perhaps he also worried that his parliamentary enemies would make hay over the incident. The Liberal Party candidate in the next election might have suggested that a man who kills his butler, even accidentally, should not be trusted by the voters.
Rachel Howells, who left Hurlstone because of her poor treatment by Brunton, makes a convenient scapegoat. The Jeremy Brett television series episode goes further, implying that she not only committed the crime but then drowned herself out of guilt. The story “doth protest too much, methinks” her guilt by twice claiming she had “an excitable Welsh temperament” and “was of Welsh blood, fiery and passionate.” I think she shook the dust from her shoes and started working in a Midlands factory. If she later heard about the strange happenings at Hurlstone, she likely stayed quiet rather than bringing herself to the attention of the police. Musgrave was re-elected to Parliament, perhaps using the historic crown jewels to increase his local appeal—a growing necessity now that elections were slipping away from the control of local elites like himself.
Holmes may have pocketed a check, just as he did from Lord Holdernesse, to guarantee his silence. I see Reginald Musgrave as a younger version of the Iceberg Duke[9] and he could certainly afford a payoff. If so, maybe this was how Holmes funded the rest of his early career, before his name was “known far and wide” and he became “generally recognized both by the public and by the official force as being a final court of appeal in doubtful cases.”
Conclusion
If Holmes and Musgrave met again thirty years later, their positions would have been reversed. While Musgrave was busy trying to stave off the decline of his inherited land, Holmes used his natural talents to become a household name. While Musgrave would have retained a fading aura of gentility, Holmes (and Mycroft) had moved into the middle class, which was a decline in status.
However, it is Holmes who is rewarded by Queen Victoria, sought by the Pope, and assists royal families. And it is Mycroft who occasionally “is the British government” and “remains the most indispensable man in the country.”[10] Both are therefore closer to the role of Sir Ralph Musgrave, “the right-hand man of Charles the Second in his wanderings,” than is his own descendent, Reginald Musgrave. Holmes also earned the knighthood (which he even refused) that the Musgraves lost.
In short, the Musgrave and Holmes families originated from a similar social milieu but ended up representing two Victorian social transformations: the decline of the landed elites and the rise of the talented middle class.
NOTES
[1] In “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” (1892), John Straker is described by Holmes to Colonel Ross as “a man who was entirely unworthy of your confidence.”
[2] Turner, David, The Old Boys: The Decline and Rise of the Public School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 93.
[3] Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 25.
[4] Cannadine, 26.
[5] Cannadine, 27.
[6] Cannadine, 31.
[7] For discussion of expanding political and economic freedoms in the 19th century, see: Harvie, Christopher, “Roads to Freedom,” The Oxford History of Britain, ed. Kenneth O. Morgan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Norton, Philip, The British Polity (New York: Routledge, 5th edition, 2010); Thomson, David, England in the Nineteenth Century: 1815-1914 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1950).
[8] Followed by the Liberal Democrats (10), Labor (9), Green (1), and two others.
[9] Leal, David. “Reconsidering Canonical Characters,” Baker Street Journal, 69:4 (Winter 2019): 18-28.
[10] See “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans.”
