# In Defense of Irene Adler **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [April 10, 2025, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849 "2025-04-10T02:52:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/41 "2025-04-11T15:01:02Z")
> [@De\_La\_Rue](#): > > Again, no. Moran says he can pick off Holmes with his air-rifle, but I believe Moriarty tells him not to. Holmes survives because there’s a later mention of him when the New Traveller’s Almanac in vol. 2. says Mina Murray visited “an elderly bee-keeper who resided near the seaside cove of Fulworth” in 1904. The implication from my copy is that Moran shot him. There’s no panel or dialogue where Moriarty tells him not to. The dialogue in the rest of Volume 1 gives the distinct impression that Holmes is dead. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/42 "2025-04-11T15:01:08Z")
> [@solost](#): > > But the Doyle Watson was a medical doctor, and the in-story writer of the Holmes adventures, so he was not lacking in the intellectual department, just a ‘normie’ who lacked Holmes’ savant-like abilities Exactly right; Watson was supposed to be a person who any contemporary would recognize as highly intelligent- so since Holmes is smarter than him, Holmes must be freaking _amazing_ ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/43 "2025-04-11T15:03:50Z")
No problem. It was a curious coincidence that when they made _Sherlock_, they could still have Watson be a veteran of a war in Afghanistan, even 130 years later. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/44 "2025-04-11T15:12:26Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > It was a curious coincidence that when they made _Sherlock_, they could still have Watson be a veteran of a war in Afghanistan, even 130 years later. Both a curious coincidence, and a sad reminder of the way history repeats itself. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/45 "2025-04-11T16:41:27Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Oh, thanks for the clarification! Another impetus for me to re-read the collected stories of Sherlock Holmes. This is never a waste of time. I have enjoyed Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, and highly recommend it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/46 "2025-04-11T20:08:06Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > The implication from my copy is that Moran shot him. Not exactly. Moriarty tells Moran not to shoot, but to use boulders. And later, when he’s about to shoot Quartermain, he says “My late **adversary** spoke of you occasionally…”. But we never see him die on-page. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/47 "2025-04-11T21:02:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > [snip] > > > [@solost](#): > > > > But the Doyle Watson was a medical doctor, > > In fact, in the original stories, when a question of medicine comes up (which it does, from time to time), Holmes defers to Watson’s expertise. Can you (or anyone) think of an example? I know on **Elementary** Sherlock does occasionally rely on Joan or outside experts. Thanks, Brian ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/48 "2025-04-11T23:38:06Z")
Two that come to mind were “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”, where one of the key clues was a sort of surgical scalpel, and “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, which starts with the eponymous engineer seeking out Watson for medical treatment. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/49 "2025-04-11T23:43:26Z")
On a related subject, as I recall, canonically, while Holmes was believed dead, Watson successfully did detective work on his own Correction: I’ve exaggerated: Watson writes: > It can be imagined that my close intimacy with Sherlock Holmes had interested me deeply in crime, and that after his disappearance I never failed to read with care the various problems which came before the public. And I even attempted, more than once, for my own private satisfaction, to employ his methods in their solution, though with _indifferent_ success. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/50 "2025-04-11T23:51:17Z")
Holmes says this of Watson’s medical skills in “The Dying Detective” > “Three days of absolute fast does not improve one’s beauty, Watson. For the rest, there is nothing which a sponge may not cure. With vaseline upon one’s forehead, belladonna in one’s eyes, rouge over the cheek-bones, and crusts of beeswax round one’s lips, a very satisfying effect can be produced. Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph. A little occasional talk about half-crowns, oysters, or any other extraneous subject produces a pleasing effect of delirium.” > “But why would you not let me near you, since there was in truth no infection?” > > "Can you ask, my dear Watson? Do you imagine that I have no respect for your medical talents? Could I fancy that your astute judgment would pass a dying man who, however weak, had no rise of pulse or temperature? At four yards, I could deceive you. ---
**Author:** ![De\_La\_Rue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@De\_La\_Rue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/De_La_Rue)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/51 "2025-04-11T23:58:07Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > The dialogue in the rest of Volume 1 gives the distinct impression that Holmes is dead. The dialogue in the rest of Volume 1 gives the distinct impression that Holmes is dead because it’s set during the time Holmes has faked his death, and everyone except Mycroft thinks he’s dead. Moore isn’t diverting from Holmesian canon here but sticking to it (thus the beekeeper mention I referred to above later on, when Mina goes to see Holmes retired in Sussex in 1904). _LOEG_ vol. 1 #5 (which starts with the Reichenbach scene) was the first issue of the series I ever had, and I re-read it multiple times before getting the trade paperback. I never got this “implication” that you did, but felt that Moore was being faithful to “The Final Problem” (well, aside from having Moriarty survive). > [@MrDibble](#): > > Moriarty tells Moran not to shoot, but to use boulders. Oh good, thanks for saving me the process of looking this up. As I recall, Moriarty goes over the edge of the falls, then we see Holmes start climbing the cliff, then we go back to Moriarty lying broken and injured at the bottom of the falls, where he tells Moran not to use the air-gun (and, as you say, use boulders). We know Moran is unsuccessful at killing Holmes because of the beekeeper reference. Although, that being said, off the top of my head the beekeeper bit is the only mention of Holmes in the series post-Reichenbach (we see more of Mycroft). > [@solost](#): > > so he was not lacking in the intellectual department, just a ‘normie’ who lacked Holmes’ savant-like abilities. While I’m here, I might as well mention that my summation of Watson comes from the part in “A Scandal in Bohemia” when Holmes asks Watson how many steps there are to the rooms at 221B, and Watson says he doesn’t know (it’s 17). Watson is a competent and knowledgeable doctor, a stand-in for the reader, but he’s not the kind of guy to count the steps. Holmes is. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/52 "2025-04-12T00:05:49Z")
> [@De\_La\_Rue](#): > > Watson is a competent and knowledgeable doctor, a stand-in for the reader, but he’s not the kind of guy to count the steps. Holmes is. Holmes may be the kind of guy who can’t help but count the stairs - he’s making a virtue of necessity by finding himself a career with that kind of attention to detail _occassionally_ is useful 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/53 "2025-04-12T00:08:18Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > …Irene Adler was simply a beautiful opera singer who had a relationship with a royal and held onto a photo as a precaution. Once she was safe, she caused no one any trouble, in spite of the fact that her ex-lover sent several agents to break into her home to steal from her. I’ve read _A Scandal In Bohemia_ by Conan Doyle multiple times, and have a distinctly different recollection of Irene Adler. Holmes was hired by the King of Bohemia because of the supposedly scandalous nature of the autographed photo showing him and Adler together, with the implication that she was threatening to use it, either to embarrass him and wreck his upcoming marriage because he’d dumped her, or for blackmail purposes.\* There was no need for her to keep the photo “as a precaution”. If she’d just sent the photo back, there would have been no cause for the King’s agents to break into her home to try to recover it, and no need to hire Holmes to get it back. She does occupy a unique role in the Holmes canon for having seen through his trickery and impressed him with her intelligence. She’s much more impressive than some hapless women featured in Holmes stories, like Lady Hilda Hope in _The Adventure of the Second Stain_. \*having taken up with another man who she marries, she has no further motive for harassing the King. She holds on to the photo in the end, so that if he’s still pissed he won’t go after her in any way. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/54 "2025-04-12T00:37:16Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Yes, in terms of knowledge of the world, he was Holmes’ superior in many areas. I remember one story in which Watson said he was astonished to find out that Holmes was not aware that the Earth revolved around the Sun; since it was information that was useless to Holmes’ particular obsessions. That was in the first story, “A Study In Scarlet”. Doyle simply discarded all that nonsense later and fanwankers have deduced that Holmes was merely pulling Watson’s leg.\* > [@Maus\_Magill](#): > > I have enjoyed Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, and highly recommend it. Klinger’s is New because there was an earlier one by Willim S. Baring-Gould that I much preferred. A higher-up at _Time_ magazine, Baring-Gould had a side-career as an absolutely bonkers Holmes fanatic. He was the one who popularized the spoofing theory (based on vowels) that N **e** r **o** W **o** lf **e** was the son of Sh **e** rl **o** ck H **o** lm **e** s and Adler. Moreover, B-G was among a half-dozen fanatics who tried to give an exact date to each story even though that miserable hack Doyle not only didn’t care about continuity but didn’t care enough to make his story endings compatible with story beginnings. (“The Red-Headed League” is particularly impossible.) So each story is annotated with arguments that examined every word to bring the story into his chronology, which was utterly at odds with every other chronology. Oh yeah. Watson had five wives. He could prove it. Wonderful reading, and old sober-sides Klinger doesn’t compare.\*\* \* The first sentence of John Dickson Carr’s Dr. Fell series has him described as a lexicographer. Virtually every “biography” of Fell will tell you that was his job. Neither the word or the job is ever mentioned again over forty years. He is always a history professor. \*\* Baring-Gould wrote book-length “biographies” of both Holmes and Wolfe to further proselytize his theories. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/55 "2025-04-12T16:56:17Z")
I can’t decide which is better. The Hound as an eldritch horror stalking Holmes, or Holmes becoming obsessed with capturing the Hound after it escapes (Ala Moby Dick) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/56 "2025-04-12T17:12:51Z")
Honestly, if Holmes has an illegitimate child, it’s not with Alder, who never paid him any more heed than was needed to outwit him. It’s probably with some scullery maid or the like. Not that he would have any actual interest in any woman other than The Woman, but he has been known to play the part of the seducer, in order to get something he wants, and it’s entirely plausible to me that, one time, the act went on for just a bit longer. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/57 "2025-04-12T18:03:16Z")
When I’m binging Sherlock Holmes stories, the thought that intrudes itself on me most strongly is that the word “ejaculated” was used very differently back in Doyle’s day. I think that it was in _The Speckled Band_ that Watson ejaculated from an upper window. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/58 "2025-04-12T18:18:39Z")
IIRC, Holmes ran into Adler and fathered Wolfe during his three-year disappearance after Reichenbach. That three-year hole is large enough for almost anything to be stuffed into it. Many of the patisches are set there to take advantage. And as an adventuress, Adler could turn up anywhere. > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > completely ignoring that the average prostitute is some - often underage - drug addict, being strung out by a boyfriend. What audience that is attracted by Holmes - a forerunner of the superhero - would want to have him interact with a teen-age druggie? Real world courtesans, or adventuresses, abounded in the 19th century. They were among the most glamorous, stylish, witty, well-read, and famous women of their times. Surely no less would be a proper partner for Holmes. The Prince of Wales contemporaneously and notoriously consorted with a bevy of courtesans. Doyle’s readers would make the connection instantly. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/59 "2025-04-12T18:30:03Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The Prince of Wales Which Prince of Wales? See how many there have been below. There were three just in the nineteenth century and hence at the same time as Sherlock Holmes: > **[Prince of Wales | List of princes of Wales (English or British heirs apparent)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Wales#List_of_princes_of_Wales_(English_or_British_heirs_apparent))** > > The current sovereign Charles III was the longest serving Prince of Wales for 64 years and 44 days between 1958 and 2022, and the oldest person to hold the position. He was also heir apparent for longer than any other in British history. Upon the death of his mother on 8 September 2022, Charles became king and the title merged with the Crown. The following day, King Charles III bestowed the title upon his elder son, Prince William, Duke of Cornwall and Cambridge. Prince William is ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849/60 "2025-04-12T18:57:18Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > IIRC, Holmes ran into Adler and fathered Wolfe during his three-year disappearance after Reichenbach. That three-year hole is large enough for almost anything to be stuffed into it. I mean, it’s really easy to fit an illegitimate child into the father’s schedule. That’s not the issue. The issue is that Adler never showed any romantic interest in Holmes, nor even any reason to fake such an interest. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-irene-adler/1016849.md?page=4)