"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him
mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
predominates the whole of her sex."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia
Irene Adler was the well-known
prima donna and
adventuress who was
Sherlock Holmes' opponent in
A Scandal in Bohemia. She was born in
New Jersey in
1858 and eventually became a famous
contralto,
singing at
La Scala and The Imperial Opera in
Warsaw. There she
met Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstien, Grand Duke of
Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of
Bohemia, whom she had an
affair with. When the King was getting married several years later
he hired Holmes to recover an
incriminating photograph of him and
Irene together.
Irene had by then retired from singing and has moved to London (her address is
Briony Lodge, Serpentive Avenue, St. John's Wood). She lived a
reclusive life but went for a two-hour drive in the parks of London
each day. She had a gentleman caller, one lawyer named Godfrey
Norton. The two finally got married the 21 March 1888 in the
Church of St. Monica, accidentally ending up with Holmes in disguise
as wedding witness. They left the country the next day in order to
foil Holmes' plans and their further adventures are unknown.
King Wilhelm had this to say about her:
"You do not know her, but she has a soul of steel. She has the face of
the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of
men."
There is a legend among
sherlockians that Holmes and
Adler met years later and had a
love affair.
William
S. Baring-Gould, in his book
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street also
puts forth the idea that their son is none other that
Nero Wolfe,
the great
detective of
New York.
Irene is also the heroine of the novels Good Night, Mr. Holmes,
Good Morning, Irene and Irene at Large by Carole
Nelson Douglas.
As a side note, the antagonist from The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte is also a woman named Irene Adler, but not the same one.