ARTIFACTS OF THE WORLD’S FIRST CONSULTING DETECTIVE are familiar—the oversize meerschaum pipe with its crooked stem, the deerstalker cap, the magnifying glass. Curiously, though, one of these items is relatively rare to the Holmes Canon, one is seen only in appropriate settings, and one is utterly non-Canonical.
My principal source for this is The Original Illustrated ‘Strand’ Sherlock Holmes.
The Original Illustrated ‘Strand ‘ Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Facsimile Edition, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mallard Press, 1990.
From its cover blurb: “Not only is every Sherlock Holmes adventure here, in chronological order, including those first two stories where Holmes and Watson first meet, but the Strand stories are reproduced at the same size direct from the pages of an original set of the Strand Magazine (including original Edwardian adverts here and there!).”
What better source to seek out meerschaum pipes, deerstalker caps, magnifying glasses, and other Sherlockian stuff.
The Meerschaum Pipe. Let’s first dispense with this non-Canonical bit. As described here at SimanaitisSays, Holmes’ pipes “were invariably straight stemmed. It was Sherlockian actor William Gillette who popularized the meerschaum, the shape of which left his visage free for emoting.”
Image from “Holmes on Stage” via Wikipedia.
Straight Stems Only. In researching the 1126 pages of The Original Illustrated ‘Strand,’ I found straight-stemmed pipes in abundance, but nary a crooked-stem meerschaum.
Per Sidney Paget in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.” This and following images from The Original Illustrated ‘Strand’ Sherlock Holmes.
Frank Wiles also shows Holmes’ pipe with a decidedly straight stem.
This Frank Wiles’s illustration is from The Valley of Fear, one of the Canon’s four stories (and hence its title in italics, not quotes as with the adventures).
An Occasional Cigar. In “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual,” we learn that Holmes keeps his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper and his cigars in the coal-scuttle.
In “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez,” Sidney Paget shows Holmes enjoying what looks like a cheroot.
A Deerstalker for Trippin’. Holmes’ sartorial choices reflected his Victorian/Edwardian venues. The deerstalker is often seen in his country adventures.
Above, Holmes and Watson in travel mode. Below, he performs a close-up examination. Both illustrations are by Sidney Paget from “The Boscombe Valley Mystery.”
And in Switzerland at Meiringen’s Reichenbach Falls, Holmes appears to be losing what looks like his deerstalker—if not his life…—in a struggle with Moriarty.
A (misleadingly captioned) illustration by Sidney Paget for “The Adventure of the Final Problem.”
Tomorrow in Part 2, we’ll examine other Sherlockian head wear, a rare magnifying glass—and his ever-present dressing-gown, which may be variously blue, purple, or mouse-coloured. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025