By the time of “The Musgrave Ritual” I thought the Holmes stories were in a definite skid. All the more credit to Doyle then for arresting that and coming up with this little gem.
It’s not a typical Holmes story in that it’s almost entirely narrated by Holmes himself, by way of explaining items that turn up when Watson encourages him to clean their apartment. While being fastidious in most things, Holmes is also a bit of a slob you see. Anyway, this structure is the same as was used in “The Stockbroker’s Clerk,” but the results are far more satisfying. This is one of the three or four classic cases in the canon and one that’s always been a personal favourite.
The actual puzzle-solving is nothing special, but it’s well packaged, down to the little catechism that even impressed T. S. Eliot. That blending of popular and high culture was important to what’s come to be called High Modernism. And it cuts both ways. The modern isn’t (always) being diminished in comparison with the classics, and I think Eliot respected the pulp royalism here as a bit of found poetry.
I also liked Holmes’s respect for the treasure-hunting butler Brunton. Faced with the difficult problem of calculating the right spot to dig with a missing variable (the elm tree that had been removed), he is resolved “that if Brunton could do it, I could also.” This isn’t a put-down. Later he will explain how his “methods in such cases” is to put himself in the criminal’s position, after first having gauged their intelligence. And then he, remarkably, states that this didn’t require “any allowance for personal equation, as the astronomers have dubbed it,” since Brunton is a man of “quite first rate” intelligence. In other words, he saw Brunton as an equal. That’s high praise indeed coming from Sherlock.
Alex Good 
This story gets satirized in the Warlock Holmes books.
How much Holmes stuff do you still have to work through?
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I might pick up the Warlock Holmes books at some point. But I have a shelf full of pastiches to work through first.
I think I’m maybe halfway through the official Holmes canon (the stuff written by Doyle). Haven’t scratched the surface of the stories written by other authors. I don’t think I’ll ever finish all of them.
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Given what you’ve written about Holmes so far, I’m kind of surprised you want to read the pastiches. What is drawing you on?
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Doyle’s stories are hit and miss, but usually interesting. Some of the pastiches are actually better, but they have ups and downs too.
I’m a completist! My course is set.
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Onward, sailor! The Horizon beckons…
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Originally published in the Strand, of course, where it’s interesting that Doyle mentions “astronomers” and then forgot to specify the month for his shadow! Probably got a lot of mail about that and fixed it for book publication.
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It’s interesting. There was actually a note in the annotated edition I was reading where they go into the fact that even when he went back and specified the date as the sixth from the first that still left matters unclear because it’s unclear what the first month was at the time.
Sherlockians have lots of fun with questions like these. I guess there are worse ways to keep busy. In fact, I’m sure there are.
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