A Scandal in Bohemia

[Inspector Baynes]

On 1/27/2022 at 9:07 AM, Carol the Dabbler said:

It seems clear enough that Watson believed her to be dead

The use of 'late' in either adjective or adverb form always refers to it's target, which clarifies which of its common definitions is to be applied.
"She was late" is very different than "The late she".   Or to clarify in this particular case, "Irene Adler was late" is very different from "The late Irene Adler."
Another example:   "Late of the British Army"  is very different from "the late British Army". 
When the adjective "late" is directly applied to a person as its target, the meaning is always 'deceased'.
I do not think Doyle would have missed the proper application of the word with its corresponding meaning.
 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Thank you, Inspector Baynes -- and welcome to Sherlock Forum!  

26 minutes ago, Inspector Baynes said:

I do not think Doyle would have missed the proper application of the word with its corresponding meaning.

I don't think so either.  And since he was writing as Watson, then Watson either believes that she's dead (though he may have been misinformed) or wants us to believe she is.  As has already been hinted, Irene may have wanted to be "dead" so that the King would stop looking for her, and either may have planted a false obituary in a newspaper or else may have somehow let Watson know that she wanted to be thought dead, knowing that he could readily disseminate that false information.

But of course, being a man of honor, he will never tell, so we will never know.

 

[Inspector Baynes]

14 minutes ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

But of course, being a man of honor, he will never tell, so we will never know.

Indeed.
In the realms within which I dabble here in my later years, I've constructed a place called "The Great Halls of Speculation".  All things without clear answer are logged into the Halls, catalogued with the caretaker, and shelved.  They are of course periodically checked out, laid before the general public, hashed over again, and (almost inevitably) returned to the Halls as yet unresolved.

"the fun is in the hunt."

[Hikari]

4 hours ago, Inspector Baynes said:

Indeed.
In the realms within which I dabble here in my later years, I've constructed a place called "The Great Halls of Speculation".  All things without clear answer are logged into the Halls, catalogued with the caretaker, and shelved.  They are of course periodically checked out, laid before the general public, hashed over again, and (almost inevitably) returned to the Halls as yet unresolved.

"the fun is in the hunt."

Welcome to the forum, Inspector Baynes.  I direct your attention to another blog which might be of interest to you:  http://17stepprogram.blogspot.com/

A Seventeen Step Program (referring to of course the 17 steps up to 221B) is the brainchild of American author and Sherlock expert extraordinaire David Marcum.  Mr. Marcum is by day a civil engineer, and in his other time runs the Diogenes Club West (membership: one) and works as an editor and creator of Holmesian Pastiche.  He says his life's work is compiling the 'Great Holmesian Tapestry' with the threads being all the other adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson which Dr. Conan Doyle neglected to give us.  

In regards to "the late Irene Adler of dubious and questionable memory" . .  The Woman has indeed passed on by the time Dr. Watson puts pen to paper for this story.  The story is the first case in the Casebook after ASIS, but the order the stories appeared was not necessarily the chronological order of the cases, since Watson would sometimes wait many years before publishing a case.  If memory serves, Scandal is pretty early on in the partnership, but Watson published his case notes years later, by which time Ms. Adler had died.  His description of the Woman has always been quizzical to me and does not reflect generously on him.  Because the story following this harsh assessment of her character in fact displays a resourceful woman of integrity and honor, not a 'dubious and questionable'  person.  It could be that Dr. Watson means that it's his own memory that is 'questionable'.  To me it sounds as though Watson is a bit jealous perhaps, all these years on, of the Woman . . the only person who represented a rival to himself for the attentions of Sherlock Holmes, and maybe he's feeling insecure (dubious) when he remembers Irene because her intellect and gifts ran circles around his own.  Irene was not a conventional Victorian housewife like his own Mary, so the Victorian attitudes toward 'theatre' people are seeping out there, perhaps.  Irene is an 'adventuress' which could mean a woman of loose morals who collects boyfriends for cash; in Irene's case, she gets labeled an adventuress because she's an accomplished professional woman living independently of any man.  As a top-grade operatic diva, she's not in the 'vaudeville actress with low morals' category, which readers who press on with the story discover.  The 21st century version of Irene in the BBC version is definitely a a woman of 'dubious and questionable' character and occupation.  A professional bondage dominatrix is what it takes to be labeled 'an adventuress' these days but that's basically what the Victorians thought of women who travelled around without husbands and made their own money---they must be prostitutes after 'nice' women's husbands.

The most likely explanation is that when Conan Doyle started his story, he perhaps intended to make Adler a 'bad' girl and as her character developed, she morphed into something else--a worthy sparring partner for Sherlock Holmes, but not an evil one like Moriarty.  Arthur never cared much for editing, which is why so many contradictions exist, to be pored over by Sherlockians ad nauseum for the next 100+ years  . . (how many war wounds does Dr. Watson have, and where are they?  How many wives?  The attitude toward Irene Adler changes as the story moves on so it's just another anomaly to the list.

[Inspector Baynes]

Thank you for the welcome, and your perspective regarding Irene, related circumstances, and potential deductions/conclusions.  I'll review them thoroughly.

I'll also give a glance at the 17step... target of interest you've been so kind as to provide. I look forward to it.  

[Carol the Dabbler]

On 10/23/2014 at 12:14 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

In the original story, Irene is still alive at the end of the narrative -- but Watson is apparently telling the story well after the fact, and refers to her at the end of the first paragraph as "the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory."  So although she doesn't die in the story, she has died by the time the story is told.  Considering Watson's low opinion of her, he may have intentionally waited to tell the story, in order not to reflect badly on Irene during her lifetime.

At least that's what I had always assumed.

On 10/23/2014 at 3:36 PM, T.o.b.y said:

I always thought the "late" referred to the fact that after her encounter with Mr Holmes, Irene Adler's name changed to Irene Norton because she got married.

... and I assumed that Tobe was mistaken.

But a Wikipedia member has this to say [here]:

In the opening paragraph of the short story, Watson calls her "the late Irene Adler", suggesting she is deceased. It has been speculated, however, that the word "late" might actually mean "former" and is a reference to her changing her last name after marrying Godfrey Norton. Doyle employs this same usage of the word "late" in "The Adventure of the Priory School" in reference to the Duke's former status as a cabinet minister.

So Tobe may well have been correct.  The Collins online dictionary includes that meaning for both British (and American) English AND (more to the point) Doyle himself used it with that apparent meaning in another story.

I haven't entirely given up on my original theory, though, considering Watson's reference to her "dubious and questionable memory."  But I'm also quite willing to believe what I said in this post:

On 1/27/2022 at 12:07 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

It does seem, however, that news from a distance was a bit iffy in those days, so I'll agree with chongjasmine that Watson may have been misinformed.  It occurs to me, in fact, that he may have been intentionally misinformed by Ms. Adler-Norton herself.

In short -- who knows?