38 The “King of Bohemia” may be a thin disguise for another historical personage. Suggestions include Archduke Rudolf, only son of Franz Josef, emperor of Austria-Hungary; Prince Alexander of Battenberg, monarch of Bulgaria; Archduke Franz Ferdinand; Kaiser Wilhelm II; the “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck; Milan Obrenovich IV, first King of Serbia; Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Second Prince and first tsar of Bulgaria; Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, son of Queen Victoria, later King Edward VII; “mad” King Ludwig of Bavaria; Oscar Wilde (because of his relationship with Lillie Langtry, often identified with Irene Adler, and the subsequent scandal surrounding Wilde’s homosexuality); the “Count of Luxemburg,” immortalised in the eponymous musical comedy by Franz Lehár; Albert Wilhelm Heinrich von Hohenzollern, King of Prussia; and Count Herbert von Bismarck. Some are plainly impossible, based on the dates in Watson’s account, but the similarities are tantalising.
39 An opportunistic woman, although the implication is a “kept woman” or “mistress.” The nineteenth century termed the class the “grandes horizontales,” or “pretty horsebreakers,” and notables of the nineteenth century included Laura Bell, Cora Pearl, Catherine Walters, Caroline Otero, Sarah Bernhardt, Lillie Langtry, and Lola Montez. Many pursued “careers” on the stage, exploiting their celebrity, and had liaisons with nobility, including (in the case of Langtry) Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.
40 Ruth Berman suggests that this may be Hermann Adler, chief rabbi of the United Congregations of the British Empire from 1891 to 1911. Alternatively, Hartley Nathan and Clifford S. Goldfarb propose that this is Samuel Adler, the German-American Reformist (1809–1891). They contend that he was Irene’s father and that Irene was trained to become the first female rabbi. When she was barred from pursuing this career, she renounced her religion and turned to the stage, building on her oratorical and cantorial training.
41 Probably Cort Siverstein Adeler (1622–1675), a Danish naval commander, whose name, according to Richard Lancelyn Green, appears in contemporary biographical dictionaries above that of Rabbi Nathan Adler.
42 Historical personages nominated as the “real” Irene Adler include the male Viktor Adler; Johanna Loisinger; Pauline Lucca; Jersey-born Lillie Langtry (companion of Prince Albert Edward); Irene Heron Forsyte (of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Chronicles); legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt; Lola Montez; Clara Stephens (“Aunt Clara”); Lillian Nordica (New Jersey-born opera singer); and Mme. Adler-Dévriès. Again, the dates in Watson’s account render some of these impossible.
43 The Teatro alla Scala, the great opera house of Milan. It opened August 3, 1778, with a performance of Salieri’s L’Europa Riconosciuta. It was first remodelled in 1867 and, bombed during World War II, restored in 1946.
44 What parts Irene Adler sang in her heyday is unknown, and contralto parts are limited. Possibilities suggested include Adalgisa of Bellini’s Norma (premiered La Scala, December 26, 1831), Amneris of Verdi’s Aïda (premiered Cairo December 12, 1871), Azucena in Verdi’s Il Trovatore (premiered Rome, January 19, 1853), and Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto (premiered Venice, March 11, 1851).
45 As William S. Baring-Gould points out, Holmes is being smug here: “When one considers that Irene was at the most twenty-nine at this time, and that Holmes himself was a mere thirty-three, this superior attitude begins to look a trifle absurd.”
46 Holmes’s frivolous estimate of the seriousness of the letters and other documents is contrary to his characterisation of the notorious blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton as the “worst man in London.” He says of Milverton, “How could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?”
47 Properly Saxe-Meiningen, then a duchy of south-central Germany, one of the states of the German Empire. George II, duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1826–1914), pursued a career as founder of the influential theatrical group known as the Meiningen Company, which he served as producer, director, financial backer, and costume and scenery designer. The duke may have been the first to recognise the importance of central artistic control of a theatrical company, and under his direction, the company, using historically accurate costumes and settings, influenced a generation of theatrical directors. There is no record of Irene Adler performing with the company, but it is intriguing to imagine that the king and Irene met through the duke.
48 This was a monarch for whom Holmes managed a confidential case mentioned in “The Final Problem” and “The Noble Bachelor.” At this time, Oscar II (1829–1907) was the king of Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway). He presided over the peaceful separation of the Swedish and Norwegian thrones in 1905 and was also a prolific poet, playwright, translator, and amateur musician, winning a prize from the Swedish Academy after submitting his 1858 poetry collection, Memorials of the Swedish Fleet, anonymously.
49 The Langham opened June 12, 1863. Now the Langham Hotel Hilton and restored in 1991, it was built in a florid style and, according to William H. Gill, it “was by far the most magnificent hotel in the world. It covered an acre of ground [and] contained over 600 rooms. Its huge dining room was packed with 2,000 diners on the day of its opening . . . Small wonder that it attracted the flashy King of Bohemia!”
50 The current equivalent of over £65,000 in purchasing power.
51 Upper Baker Street extended almost into St. John’s Wood, a fashionable area the residents of which included author George Eliot, educator and writer Thomas Huxley, popular author George du Maurier, and sociologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer.
52 “Cabinet” was a commercial term that referred to a photograph 3-7/8” x 5-1/2” in size.
53 The two crimes of which Watson’s records had been published were those reported in A Study in Scarlet (1887) and The Sign of Four (1890). It will be evident later that Watson had actually recorded (in the sense of note-taking) numerous cases by this time. See Chronological Table. This is perhaps the first instance of Watsonian self-advertising. In the Strand Magazine text, the word “elsewhere” is replaced by “already.”
54 Small, marked by fine detail and workmanship.
55 A patent lock with tumblers. Named after its inventor, Charles Chubb, it was advertised in 1887 to be pick-proof.
56 Short streets or alleys behind London’s main thoroughfares. Originally intended for the stabling of horses, the mews now house mostly garages.
57 A drink, half ale and half porter or other bitter beer.
58 A strong smoking tobacco, usually of inferior grade, cut into fine shreds. Joseph Fune, writing in 1839, advised, “Persons of a nervous temperament, who take little exercise, ought to particularly avoid smoking this kind of tobacco, as its frequent use is apt to induce paralytic afflictions.” Shag tobacco was an “institution” in Holmes’s life (“The Creeping Man”).
59 In England, barristers are the class of lawyers who are permitted to appear in the superior courts. Every barrister must be a member of one of the four ancient societies called Inns of Court: Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner and Middle Temples, and Gray’s Inn.
60 These two-wheeled cabs, which were named after their inventor, Joseph Aloysius Hansom (1802–1882), were ubiquitous in London in the 1880s and 1890s. The interior seated two passengers; the driver sat on the outside.
61 A fictional name for a firm of jewellers, of which several were situated in Regent St.
62 The identity of the true “St. Monica’s” (a fictional name) has been hotly debated. St. Agnes’ Church, Cricklewood, just off the Edgware Road at the southern end, is suggested, as well as St. Anthony’s, at the far end of the Edgware Road. St. Saviour’s, at the Junction of Clifton Gardens and Warrington Crescent, is also a possibility, while Patrick J. Campbell contends that the Marylebone Presbyterian Chapel, near Baker Street, is a more likely candidate.
63 Note that Godfrey Norton pays half a guinea for this drive, while Irene Adler tenders half a sovereign. From
this it has been suggested that Irene valued her prospective bridegroom less, by sixpence, than he did her, for a half-guinea is worth half a shilling (6d.) more than a half-sovereign. But consider that Norton was offering a half-guinea for a speedy trip involving two stops.
64 A four-wheeled carriage, with a top in two parts, so that it may be closed, half-open, or entirely open.
65 Although scholars argue over the full purport of the English law of marriage at the time, the short of the matter is that after 1886, there appears to have been no legal barrier to a marriage shortly after noon. Surely Norton, as a lawyer, knew this. Why, then, this rushing around to get married before twelve noon? In the words of J. F. Christ, “the ‘informality about their license’ seems to have been in someone’s imagination.”
There are also questions about Holmes’s report of the witnessing of the marriage. The law of the time required at least two witnesses. Witnesses were not required to make responses; rather, they sign the register. Holmes did not report a second witness, although Irene Adler’s coachman was apparently available.
None of these defects would affect the legality of the wedding in the eyes of the Church of England, which required only that the couple intended to be wed. However, these disparities have led some to call Holmes’s whole account of the marriage “phony.”
66 Probably Hyde Park, “one of the most frequented and lively scenes in London,” according to Baedeker. Dickens’s Dictionary of London calls it “the great fashionable promenade of London.” Rotten Row is a road set aside for equestrians, extending originally from Hyde Park Corner to Queen’s Gate. There is also a carriage drive alongside, passing the site of the original Great Exhibition of 1851. “For two or three hours every afternoon in the season, except Sunday, the particular section of the drive which happens that year to be ‘the fashion’ is densely thronged with carriages moving round and round at little more than a walking pace, and every now and then coming to a dead-lock.” Only the road from Queen’s Gate to Victoria Gate was open to cabs; the remainder of the park to private carriages only.
The first Hyde Park was enclosed by Henry VIII, and the French ambassador hunted there in 1550. In the time of Charles I, the park was opened to the public, but Cromwell sold it, and the new owners charged a toll of a shilling for coaches and sixpence for horse. When the Commonwealth was overthrown, the park was reacquired by the nation. In the late nineteenth century, the park was much used for radical meetings, and on Sundays numerous open-air congregations near the Marble Arch held “revival” meetings.
Adler could also refer to the smaller Regent’s Park, on the Outer Circle, close by St. John’s Wood. While not as popular as Hyde Park, the grounds served as the site for the world’s first glass-constructed aquarium, introduced to the public in 1853. Designed by city planner and architect John Nash in the early part of the nineteenth century, Regent’s Park also housed the Royal Botanical Society and the Royal Zoological Society (now known as the London Zoo).
67 Who is this? The landlady is identified in the opening chapter of The Sign of Four as Mrs. Hudson (curiously, she is unnamed in A Study in Scarlet). In every other Canonical tale, when identified, the name of the landlady is Mrs. Hudson. William S. Baring-Gould remarks, “Is this simple absent-mindedness or forgetfulness on the part of Holmes (thinking, perhaps, of the principal in another case he was following at the time [“The Boscombe Valley Mystery”]) or Watson (thinking, perhaps, of a patient waiting in his consulting room)?” Perhaps Watson was writing up his notes of “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” proposes D. Martin Dakin.
There are even more explanations offered: Mrs. Turner was only substituting for Mrs. Hudson, suggests Page Heldenbrand. Could she have been the Martha Turner who became the second victim of Jack the Ripper on the night of August 7, 1888? Russell McLauchlin ingeniously proposes that Mrs. Turner was the mistress of one of Holmes’s “five small refuges” mentioned in “Black Peter” and that Holmes and Watson actually lived in Mrs. Hudson’s house in Gloucester Place.
All this may be a tempest in a teapot: Notwithstanding her unusual name (maids were usually known by their first name only, and “Mrs.” was usually the cook or housekeeper), Mrs. Turner may simply have been a maid. Possibly Irene Adler disguised herself as this maid to investigate Holmes.
Richard Lancelyn Green notes that in the manuscript of “The Empty House,” there is a similar reference to “Mrs. Turner,” which has been corrected to “Mrs. Hudson.” This repeated reference would seem to support the more romantic suggestion of Manly Wade Wellman that “Turner” was an alias used by Holmes and Mrs. Hudson while on a tryst at a fashionable hotel or country inn.
68 A smoke-generating device used by plumbers to test for leaky pipes.
69 That is, a percussion cap.
70 To impersonate a minister of the Church of England was a legal offense. Yet to masquerade as a free-church clergyman was not (then) illegal.
71 Actor and manager of the Court Theatre, later the St. James Theatre, and finally the Garrick Theatre, Hare (1844–1921) was knighted in 1907 for his work on and off the stage. Best known as a comic actor, he raised the rôle of the actor-manager to the highest level, nurturing actors and playwrights alike. He was an early supporter of the work of Arthur Wing Pinero and commissioned the dramatisation of Oliver Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield (“discovering” leading lady Ellen Terry, who starred in the production). Although Hare retired from the stage in 1912 after more than forty years on the stage, he went on to appear in three silent films.
72 Two regiments of Life Guards and one of Royal Horse Guards formed together the Household Brigade of the British Army, the body-guard of the sovereign, furnishing the escorts on all state occasions. They were recruited regimentally and took none but picked men, of “good character,” and over 5 feet 10 inches in height.
73 A penny.
74 A long, loose overcoat of Irish origin.
75 Holmes’s debt to the French private detective M. Dupin, whose work is reported by Edgar Allan Poe in “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “Mystery of Marie Roget,” and “The Purloined Letter,” is evident throughout the Canon. Here, Holmes may have copied a similar device used by Dupin in “The Purloined Letter.” “There was always just a touch of professional jealousy in Holmes’s character,” writes Vincent Starrett, “—entirely natural, no doubt—that even Watson could not gloss away.” But Morris Rosenblum suggests Holmes may have had an older source for the idea: Pausanias told of Phryne, the most beautiful of all Athenian “adventuresses,” using the same trick in 150 A.D.
76 How did Holmes so quickly engage his accomplices? William S. Baring-Gould believes that he may have recruited his troupe from persons known to him from his early days as an actor; Harald Curjel suggests a “grown-up wing” of the Baker Street Irregulars, with Wiggins, the head of the Irregulars (according to A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four), acting as booking-agent and Mr. Wilson, manager of the District Messenger Office in Regent St., where young Cartwright worked (The Hound of the Baskervilles), running this “theatrical agency.”
77 A small town in the county of Durham, known for its school of art. It may be that a forged painting was involved in the “Substitution Scandal.” Holmes demonstrates his interest in contemporary art in The Hound of the Baskervilles, in which he waxes eloquent on the “modern Belgian masters.”
78 Arnsberg Castle is located in north-central Germany, but there is no known connection to Holmes.
79 The Strand Magazine text adds the phrase “in the morning.”
80 This may well also be Irene Adler in disguise, notes Dean Dickensheet.
81 Does this imply that Irene knew of Holmes’s early career on the stage?
82 This suggests to Guy Warrack, in Sherlock Holmes and Music, that Irene Adler may have sung male-impersonation or “trouser” contralto rôles in her operatic career, such as Gluck’s Orfeo in Orfeo ed Euridice (premiered Vienna, October 5, 1762), Arsace in Rossini’s Semiramide (premiered Venice, Febr
uary 3, 1823), Maffo Orsini in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia (premiered Milan, December 26, 1833), and the page Urbain in Meyerbeer’s Les Hugenots (premiered Paris, February 29, 1836). Holmes may have actually seen Irene Adler perform this rôle in 1886 (see The Hound of the Baskervilles). Most commentators, however, date the events of The Hound of the Baskervilles well after the date of “A Scandal in Bohemia” (see Chronological Table). Other possible rôles are Siébel in Gounod’s Faust (premiered Paris, March 19, 1859), Stéphano in his Romeo et Juliette (premiered Paris, April 27, 1867), and Pieretto in Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix (premiered Vienna, May 19, 1842).
83 Indeed, it is hard to see from the case why Watson characterises Irene Adler as of “dubious and questionable memory.” D. Martin Dakin points out that although her opera career was short, it was respectable, and although Adler spitefully intended to ruin the king’s marriage, she did nothing illegal. James Edward Holroyd, in Baker Street By-Ways, comments, “One may fairly claim that the only dubious and questionable aspect of the adventure was the conduct of the three men principally concerned!”
84 In “A Case of Identity,” Holmes remarked that he had accepted a snuff-box of old gold with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid as a “little souvenir” of the king (“A Case of Identity”). It seems rather inconsistent with the disdain expressed here that Holmes should later accept a rich gift from him.
85 “Those who are sentimentally inclined seize on the fact that Holmes asked the King of Bohemia for the photograph as evidence of [Holmes’s] attachment [to Irene],” writes Dr. Richard Asher. “Is it not patently obvious that Holmes, having been deceived by her skill in disguising herself, may have simply wanted the photograph to add to his records, to make sure that he would recognize her if she ever crossed his path again?”
86 There is no evidence that Holmes and Irene Adler Norton ever met again. William S. Baring-Gould, in his Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, speculates that Holmes and Irene had an affair in Montenegro, resulting in a son, detective Nero Wolfe (whose exploits were subsequently published by Rex Stout). Kenneth Lanza, in “Scandal in Bensonhurst,” makes the whimsical suggestion that Irene had three sons: William Kramden (baptized Wilhelm von Kramm), the issue of the king of Bohemia; Edward Norton, the son of Godfrey Norton; and Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes’s son. Lanza goes on to speculate that the two eldest sons, “Willie” and Edward, each produced one son—Ralph Kramden and Edward Norton, Junior, half-cousins and stars of the television series The Honeymooners.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books) Page 11
