Yes! St. John (Percy, we mean—not “the Divine”), there must be “magic in the cigar.” Then, to the sailor, on the wide and tossing ocean, what consolation is there, save in his old pipe? While smoking his inch and a half of clay, black and polished, his Susan or his Mary becomes manifest before him, he sees her, holds converse with her spirit—in the red glare from the ebony bowl, as he walks the deck at night, or squats on the windlass, are reflected the bright sparkling eyes of his sweetheart. The Irish fruit-woman, the Jarvie without a fare, the policeman on a quiet beat, the soldier at his ease, all bow to the mystic power of tobacco[9]—all acknowledge the infatuations of Cloudland.
[CHAPTER V.]
PIPEOLOGY.
“It was his constant companion and solace. Was he gay, he smoked—was he sad, he smoked—his pipe was never out of his mouth—it was a part of his physiognomy; without it his best friends would not know him. Take away his pipe—you might as well take away his nose.”——Knickerbocker’s New York.
Semele, in a death by fire, became a martyr to love. Thus Virginia suffers herself to be burnt for the good of the world. From the ashes of the old Phœnix the young Phœnix was born. From the smoke of the Havana spring new visions, and eloquent delights. As the altars of the gods received honour from men, and the censers from whence ascended the burning incense were sacred to the deities, wherefore should not the pipe receive honour, as well as the man who uses it, or the odorous weed consumed within it. An enthusiast writes of it thus—“Philosophers have drawn their best similes from their pipes. How could they have done so, had their pipes first been drawn from them? We see the smoke go upwards—we think of life; we see the smoke-wreath fade away—we remember the morning cloud. Our pipe breaks—we mourn the fragility of earthly pleasures. We smoke it to an end, and tapping out the ashes, remember that ‘Dust we are, and unto dust we shall return.’ If we are in love, we garnish a whole sonnet with images drawn from smoking, and first fill our pipe, and then tune it. That spark kindles like her eye, is ruddy as her lip; this slender clay, as white as her hand, and slim as her waist; till her raven hair grows grey as these ashes, I will love her. This perfume is not sweeter than her breath, though sweeter than all else. The odour ascends me into the brain, fills it full of all fiery delectable shapes, which delivered over to the tongue, which is the birth become delectable wit.”
The instruments by which the “universal weed” is consumed, are almost as variable in form and material as the nations indulging in their use. The pipe of Holland is of porcelain, and that of our own island of unglazed clay. These latter are made in large quantities, both at home and abroad.[10] One factory at St. Omer employs 450 work-people, and produces annually 100,000 gross, or nearly fifteen millions of pipes; and another factory at the same place employs 850 work-people, and produces 200,000 gross, or nearly thirty millions of pipes, consuming nearly eight thousand tons of clay in their manufacture. The quantity of pipes used annually in London is estimated at 364,000 gross, or 52,416,000 pipes; it requires 300 men, each man making 20 gross four dozen per week, for one year, to make them; the cost of which is £40,950. The average length of these pipes is twelve and a half inches; and if laid down in a horizontal position, end to end together, they would reach to the extent of 10,340 miles, 1,600 yards; if they were piled one above another perpendicularly, they would reach 135,138 times as high as St. Pauls; they would weigh 1,137 tons, 10 cwts., and it would require 104 tons, 9 cwts., 32 lbs. of tobacco to fill them. In 1857 we imported clay pipes to the value of £7,614, which cannot be short of 121,000 gross, or seventeen and a half millions. But even with us, pipes were not always of clay. The earliest pipes used in Britain are stated to have been made from a walnut-shell and a straw. Dr. Royle describes a very primitive kind of clay pipe used by some of the natives of India—it is presumed only in cases of necessity. “The amateur makes two holes, one longer than the other, with a piece of stick in a clay soil, inclining the stick so that they may meet; into the shorter hole he places the tobacco, and applies his mouth to the other, and thus, as he lies upon the ground, luxuriates in the fumes of the narcotic herb.”
Turkish pipe-bowls, or Lules, are composed of the red clay of Nish, mixed with the white earth of the Roustchouck. They are very graceful in form, and are in some cases ornamented with gilding. The “regular Turk” prefers a fresh bowl daily; therefore the plain ones are resorted to on the score of economy. In Turkey and some other parts of the Orient, it is not unusual to compute distances, or rather the duration of a journey, by the numbers of pipes which might be smoked in the time necessary to accomplish it.
The pipe of the German is, almost universally, the Meerschaum, that pipe of fame so coveted by the Northern smoker. These articles are composed of a kind of magnesian earth, known to the Tartars of the Crimea as keff-til. Pallas erroneously supposed that this kind of earth was so denominated from Caffa, and therefore the name signified “Caffa earth.” From “Meninski’s Oriental Dictionary” it would appear to be a derivation of two Turkish words which signify “foam” or “froth” of the “earth.” The French name, écume de mer, or “scum of the sea,” and the Germans’ “sea foam,” have doubtless an intimate relationship with this same “keff til” of the Crimean Tartars.
Meerschaum earth is met with in various localities in Spain, Greece, Crimea, and Moravia. The greatest quantity is derived from Asia Minor, it being dug principally in the peninsula of Natolia, near the town of Coniah. Before the capture of the Crimea, this earth is stated to have formed a considerable article of commerce with Constantinople, where it was used in the public baths to cleanse the hair of women. The first rude shape was formerly given to the pipe-bowls on the spot where the mineral was dug, by pressure in a mould; and these rude bowls were more elegantly carved and finished at Pesth and Vienna. At the present time, the greater part of the meerschaum is exported in the shape of irregular blocks; these undergo a careful manipulation, after having been soaked in a preparation of wax and oil. After being finished, and sold at the German fairs, some of them have acquired such an exquisite tint through smoking, in the estimation of connoisseurs, that they have realized from £40 to £50.
Attempts have not been wanting to imitate this material, hitherto not very successfully. The large quantity of parings that are left in trimming up the bowls, has been rendered available for the manufacture of what are called “massa bowls,” but they do not enjoy the reputation of the genuine meerschaum bowls.