It was not long before I made the discovery that there are clays and clays. Those given away or sold for a halfpenny by innkeepers between the North and South Downs were usually thin and straight, sometimes embellished with a design in relief, particularly with a horned head and the initial letters of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. Many and many a one of these mere smoking utensils was broken very soon in my teeth or in my pocket, or discarded because I did not like the feel or look of it, or simply because it was an unnecessary addition to my supply. For a time I could and did smoke almost anything, fortified possibly by a feeling (though I cannot recall it) that the custom was worth persisting in. At any rate it was persisted in.
If I pursued singularity I was not blindfold. Not many weeks were occupied in learning that thin clays were useless, or were not for me. They began by burning my tongue, and they were very soon bitten through. On the other hand, thickness alone was not sufficient. For example, Irish pipes up to a third of an inch thick were as rapidly bitten through as the harder thin clays. It was necessary to fit them with mouth-pieces connected by a tin band, and since these would corrode, I refused them. Even a clay that was hard as well as thick was not therefore faultless. I kept one for several years, at intervals trying to make terms with it on account of its good shape—the bowl set at more than a right angle to the stem, and adorned with a conventional ribbed leaf underneath—but always in vain; the clay, being hard after the manner of flint, gritted on the teeth and was no sweeter at the tenth than at the first pipe.
Wherever I went I bought a clay pipe or two. The majority were indifferent. Only after a time was the goodness of the good ones manifest, and by then I might be a hundred miles away from the shop, if I had not forgotten where it came from. These I did everything to preserve. Some of them went through the purification of fire a score of times before they came to an end by falling or, which was rare, by being worn too short. They had the great virtue of being hard, without being stony. They resembled bone in their close grain, sometimes being as smooth as if glazed. But I had little to do with the glazed “colouring” clays. They stank, and I was not ambitious except of achieving a cool, everlasting, and perfectly shaped pipe.
How to use the fire on a foul pipe was learnt by very slow degrees. Many a good pipe cracked or flaked in the flames. They had, I was at last to discover, been too suddenly submitted to great heat. If it was done gradually, the fiercest heat could be and should be imposed on them: they lay pinkish white in the heart of the fire until they possessed more than their original purity. A few of the best would emerge with almost an old ivory hue all over. Some I remember breaking when they had come safely out and were nearly cool, by tapping them to shake out the fur. Most of them were toughened as well as sweetened in the process.
How very rare were those good pipes! Probably I did not find more than one in twelve months, though I bought scores. I was continually trying Irish clays in a stupid hope that they would not be bitten through. The best pipe in the majority of shops was merely one that was not bad. It did not burn much; it was not bitten through until it was just reaching its ripeness.
Perhaps I should have remembered more varieties of goodness and badness had I not twelve months ago met a perfect clay pipe. It is so hard that I have only once bitten one through, yet it is soft to the teeth and tongue. Nor is it very thick; the bowl in particular I should have been inclined at first sight to condemn as too thin. It is smooth, in fact polished. Its shape is graceful; the stem slightly curved, slightly flattened, but thickening and developing roundness where it becomes rather than joins the bowl, into which it flows so as to form something like a calabash. There are other shapes of this excellent material.
This perfect clay pipe came from a shop at Oxford. A month later I bought some of the same kind, but an inferior shape, at Melksham. Everywhere else I have looked in vain for them. I have never seen any one else smoking them who had not got them from me.
Tastes differ, but in this matter I cannot believe that any one capable of distinguishing one clay from another would deny this one’s excellence.
The Other Man cared nothing for the matter. He awoke from the stupor to which he had been reduced by listening, and asked,—
“Did you see that weather-vane at Albury in the shape of a pheasant? or the fox-shaped one by the ford at Butts Green? or the pub with the red shield and the three tuns and three pairs of wheatsheaves for a sign?”