“It has a girth of twenty-three feet” — illustration to Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” by Sidney Paget

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It has a girth of twenty-three feet

Sidney Paget

1891

Photographic reproduction of watercolor

Illustration for Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual,” p. 254.

Formatting and text by George P. Landow

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Internet Archive and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage illustrated

It was perfectly obvious to me, on reading the ritual, that the measurements must refer to some spot to which the rest of the document alluded, and that if we could find that spot, we should be in a fair way towards finding what the secret was which the old Musgraves had thought it necessary to embalm in so curious a fashion. There were two guides given us to start with, an oak and an elm. As to the oak there could be no question at all. Right in front of the house, upon the left-hand side of the drive, there stood a patriarch among oaks, one of the most magnificent trees that I have ever seen.

"That was there when your ritual was drawn up," said I, as we drove past it.

"It was there at the Norman Conquest in all probability," he answered. "It has a girth of twenty-three feet."

Bibliography

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. “Reproduced from the original publication in The Strand Magazine with the classic illustrations by Sidney Paget.” Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, [after 1954]. Internet Archive version of a copy donated by Friends of the San Francisco Library. Web.

Last modified 3 December 2013