The first of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, and one of the best loved, “A Scandal in Bohemia” is best known as the one that introduces us to Irene Adler, “the woman,” and specifically the woman who bests Holmes. Despite only appearing in this story, Adler has gone on to become a kind of feminist icon with a long deuterocanonical afterlife. This is understandable, as she not only gets a jump on Holmes but clearly has fun doing so, even taunting him twice. But if you’d been keeping up with the stories as they were published might you suspect that Holmes wasn’t always as sharp as he makes himself (or Watson makes him) out to be? It was pretty bad how the person disguised as a little old lady fools him completely in A Study in Scarlet. And Ms. Adler is a professional performer.

I’ve had occasion to mention Doyle’s debt to the Dupin stories of Poe a couple of times already, and the link is here again, as Holmes’s mission is very similar to that of Dupin in “The Purloined Letter.” Instead of a letter there is a “cabinet” (roughly 4”x6”) photograph of Adler with the King of Bohemia, the publication of which could cause a scandal. The king has tried to retrieve the letter, ransacking Adler’s home on a couple of occasions, and hasn’t been able to find it. But Holmes has his own method of getting her to give up the secret of its location.

In cutting things down from novel-length to short story Doyle had to tighten everything up, which works wonderfully well. Gone are the lengthy, and tedious, explainers. But the new economy can be felt down to the level of individual sentences. Here’s Holmes, for example, saying good-bye to the king, and then to Watson some time later, all collapsed into one line of dialogue:

“Then, good-night, your Majesty, and I trust that we shall have some good news for you. And good-night, Watson,” he added, as the wheels of the royal brougham rolled down the street.

How much time has passed between the two good-nights? Enough for the king to descend the stairs from Holmes’s apartment, get into his brougham, and drive away.

A similar collapsing of time occurs when Holmes gets back to his apartment, where Watson has been waiting for him. He’s hungry when he gets in, and orders up some cold beef and a glass of beer from the landlady, but Watson wants to hear what he’s been up to. Holmes responds:

“When Mrs. Turner has brought in the tray I will make it clear to you. Now,” he said as he turned hungrily on the simple fare that our landlady had provided, “I must discuss it while I eat, for I have not much time.”

Between the first sentence he utters and the “Now” several minutes at least much have passed, but they’re completely elided.

“A Scandal in Bohemia” was first published in 1891 and I wonder how many literary authors were experimenting this boldly with the presentation of time in their writing. This introduces a deeper question about how avant the avant-garde ever were, and whether more commercial forms of art and literature weren’t already leaving them a bit behind the times (to borrow the title of an excellent book on the subject by Eric Hobsbawm) even before the arrival of what’s known as modernism. If Doyle was borrowing from others he was also blazing new ground.

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