The Deerstalker Lady

 In 2026, the age of everything everwhere all of the time via the internet, it is truly hard to wrap one's head around the Sherlockian experience of forty years ago in 1886. The level of hunger for things related to Sherlock Holmes, the barren Holmes and Watson landscape we spent our days in, the simple fact that if ANY book that starred Sherlock Holmes crossed your path you bought it . . . it was a very different time.

On the wall behind my computer screen is a little picture that always reminds me of those days, as it's not something that would probably seem a must-have to a 2026 Sherlockian.

It's simply a lady in hunting garb, with a rifle and a deerstalker cap.

In the 1980s, if a character was wearing a deerstalker, be it Snoopy, Garfield, a Cabbage Patch kid, etc., etc., etc., they were plainly imagining they were Sherlock Holmes and collectors grabbed up whatever form they appeared in. This deerstalker lady, however, was definitely not playing Sherlock Holmes carrying a rifle -- a form of weaponry Holmes never picks up in the original Canon. She's plainly just a woman going hunting.

But in the 1980s, a time when the Baker Street Irregulars did not invite women to their annual New York dinner, this image of a woman in a deerstalker felt like it held an added statement, and when I encountered it in the framing store where I had taken a particular item to get framed, it seemed a must-buy.

Will this simple print have any meaning down the line, when my Sherlockian collection eventually gets dispersed to the winds when I am gone? That will be for whoever's hands it falls into to decide -- we each give these objects meaning as we go through our lives. But for now, the deerstalker lady remains on my wall, reminding me of a time long ago when things were very different.

So, you go, deerstalker lady. Hope you bagged whatever you were hunting for.