Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce Part 13

"Sometimes an eunuch stands guard at a little distance off, and if a stranger of the male s.e.x approaches, gives a signal; the pipe is held aside, while the mouth is kept covered by the veil, until the unexpected Acteon has pa.s.sed by. But where the pipe plays the most important part is in the bath. It is well known that the Turkish ladies are accustomed to frequent the hommams a.s.siduously, and to remain there for hours together. They enter the bath about eight o'clock in the morning; take their midday meal there, and return home between three and four in the afternoon.

During these hours of leisure, the most agreeable in a Mohammedan woman's life, the pipe is their constant resource. In the middle of the warmest room is a round terrace-like elevation, called Gobek-tosh.

"Here are cl.u.s.tered old and young, the snow white daughters of Circa.s.sia and the coal-black beauties of Soudan, and beguile the hours with never ending gossip, while around them rise the dense fumes of their pipes. Now one of the elders of the party tells a story, now a learned lady holds a discourse on religion, or extols the beauty and virtue of 'Aisha Fatima.'"

The Fairy, or Dane's pipe is the most ancient form of the tobacco pipe used in Great Britain and of about the same size as the "Elfin pipes"

of the Scottish peasantry. A great variety of pipes both in form and size have been found in the British Islands some of which are of ancient origin bearing dates prior to the Seventeenth Century. Some of these ancient pipes are formed of very fine clay and although they held but a small quant.i.ty of tobacco were doubtless considered to be fine specimens in their time.

The manufacture of pipes commenced soon after the custom of using tobacco had become fashionable and soon after the Virginians commenced its cultivation. Fairholt says:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old English pipes.]

"The early period at which tobacco pipes were first manufactured, is established by the fact that the incorporation of the craft of tobacco-pipe makers took place on the 5th of October, 1619. Their privileges extending through the cities of London and Westminster, the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales. They have a Master, four Wardens, and about twenty-four a.s.sistants. They were first incorporated by King James in his seventeenth year, confirmed again by King Charles I., and lastly on the twenty-ninth of April in the fifteenth year of King Charles II., in all the privileges of their aforesaid charters.

"The London Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers was incorporated in the reign of Charles II (1663); it had no hall and no livery but was governed by a Master two wardens, and eighteen a.s.sistants. The first pipes used in the British Islands were made of silver while 'ordinary ones' were made of a walnut sh.e.l.l and a straw. Afterwards appeared the more common clay pipes in various forms and which are in use at the present time."

During the reign of Anne and George I. the pipes a.s.sumed a different form and greater length so long were the stems of some of them that they were called yards of clay. The French pipe is one of the finest manufactured and is made of a fine red clay especially those made by Fiolet of St. Omer, one of the best designers of pipes. Many of these like German pipes are made of porcelain, adorned with portraits and landscapes. Others are made of rare kinds of wood turned in the lathe or artistically carved, and lined with clay to resist the action of fire.

The French also make pipes of agate, amber, crystal, carnelian and ivory, as well as the various kinds of pure or mixed metals. Many of the French and German pipes while they are beautiful in design and made of the most costly materials are often exceedingly grotesque, representing often the most ludicrous scenes and all possible att.i.tudes. Many of them have been termed as satirical pipes taking off some public character _a la_ Nast.

Fairholt says of satirical pipes:

"England has occasioned the production of one satirical pipe for sale among ourselves. The late Duke of Wellington toward the close of his life, took a strong dislike to the use of tobacco in the army, and made some ineffectual attempts to suppress it. Benda, a wholesale pipe importer in the city employed Dumeril, of St. Omer, to commemorate the event, and the result was a pipe head, in which a subaltern, pipe in hand, quietly 'takes a sight' at the great commander who is caricatured after a fashion that must have made the work a real pleasure to a Frenchman."

Many of the French pipes are exceedingly quaint representing all manner of comical scenes. One is formed like a steam-engine the smoke pa.s.sing through the funnel.

Another is fashioned after a potato or a turnip while others often represent some military subjects. In England and Ireland also pipes of a whimsical form are common.

[Ill.u.s.tration: French pipes.]

CHAPTER VII.

PIPES AND SMOKERS. (Continued.)

In Russia and Denmark as also in Norway and Sweden the pipes are more simple and are princ.i.p.ally formed of wood sometimes tipped with copper but usually of inferior material and work when compared with French and German pipes. The German pipes considered as works of art are doubtless the finest made. Many are made of meerschaum (sea foam).

This material is found in various parts of Asia Minor. When first obtained it is capable of forming a lather like soap, and is used by the Tartars for washing purposes. The Turks use it for pipes which are made in the same way that pottery is and afterwards soaked in wax and is then ready for smoking. It heats slowly and is capable of greater absorption than any other material used in pipe making. To properly color a meerschaum is now considered as one of the fine arts and when completed is considered quite a triumph. When the pipe takes on a rich deep brown tint it is considered a valuable pipe and is watched and guarded as a most valuable treasure.

M. Ziegler thus describes the source whence the considerable annual supply of meerschaum for meerschaum pipes is derived:

"Large quant.i.ties of this mineral so highly esteemed by smokers, comes from Hrubschitz and Oslawan in Austrian Moravia where it is found embedded between thick strata of serpentine rock. It is also found in Spain at Esconshe, Vallecas and Toledo; the best however comes from Asia Minor.

The chief places are the celebrated meerschaum mines from six to eight miles southeast of Eskis chehr, on the river Pursak chief tributary to the river Sagarius. They were known to Xenophon, and are now worked princ.i.p.ally by Armenian Christians, who sink narrow pits, to the beds of this mineral, and work the sides out until water or imminent danger drives them away to try another place. Some meerschaum comes from Brussa, and in 1869 over 3,000 boxes of raw material were imported from Asia Minor at Trieste, with 345,000 florins. The pipe manufacture and carving is princ.i.p.ally carried on in Vienna and in Rhula, Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The commercial value of meerschaum carving at these places may be estimated at $2,000,000 annually. However very large quant.i.ties of them are not made from genuine but artificial material. The waste from these carvings is ground to a very fine powder, and then boiled with linseed oil and alum. When this mixture has sufficient cohesion, it is cast in molds and carefully dried and carved, as if these blocks of mineral had been natural. It is said that about one-half of all pipes now sold are made from artificial meerschaum. Meerschaum is one of the lightest of minerals and it is said that in Italy bricks have been made of it so light that they would float on the top of the water. Some pipes (doubtless owing to the quality of meerschaum) take on more color in a given time than others this is owing in a great measure however to the thickness of the bowl."

Pipe-colorers, who go around coloring pipes or meerschaums, pride themselves on the rapidity with which they are enabled to color a pipe. The following, on "Pipe Colorers," is from "The Tobacco Plant":

"There are men who pride themselves upon the skill with which they are able to color the pipes they smoke. Some of these are amateurs, who smoke Tobacco only with the view of gratifying that taste for color which is satisfied when a bowl of clay or meerschaum is sufficiently yellowed, browned, or blacked. There are men who care nothing for Tobacco of itself, and would be much more easily and rationally pleased were they to set their pipes upon an easel and paint them with oils and camel's-hair. Others of the cla.s.s are professional colorers, who hire themselves to pipe-sellers or connoisseurs by the week, or day, or hour, to smoke so many ounces or pounds of strong Tobacco through such and such pipes in such and such a time, with the view of causing such and such stains of Tobacco-juice to make themselves visible on the bowls or stems of those specified pipes. These are mostly old, well-seasoned smokers, to whose existence the weed has become essential; who smoke their own old pipes, which lack artistic coloring, in the intervals when they lay aside the pipes they are employed to color. Another and much smaller section of the cla.s.s are those who smoke for smoking's sake, and yet are weak enough to nurse some special pipes for show. To such it is a joy to say, when friends are gathered at the festive board 'Look! is not that well colored? I colored it myself.'

In such an age as this, when the learned cannot tell us which of our various branches of knowledge and inquiry are sciences and which are not, it may not seem a great anomaly that this pipe-coloring should, by some, be called 'an art.'

Nor is it, when we think that there is such an 'art' as blacking shoes; and when we must perforce admit that he who, barber fashion, cuts our hair--and he who, cook-wise, broils the kidney for our mid-day dinner--is an artist. We have not come as yet to give this t.i.tle to the weaver who watches the loom that weaves our stockings, or to the hammer-man who beats the red-hot horse-shoe on the anvil in a smithy; but even there we designate 'artisans,' and 'artists' may come next. So, hey! for the art of coloring pipes!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pipe colorer.]

"It may not be denied that there is beauty in a well-colored meerschaum; but in the admission lies the contradiction of Keats' well-known line--

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

For, your meerschaum is a fragile thing, and eminently frangible. This present writer once did see four beauties break within a single moon. And when they break, what previous joy of coloring can over-top the sorrow of their dire destruction? It is a singular difficulty in the way of those who most desire to beautify utility or utilize the beautiful, or show that beauty is most lovely when made practical, that these artistic colorers of pipes are always those who make least use of Tobacco, save for the immediate purpose of obtaining the clay in which it is smoked. Ask such an artist why he smokes, and he will scarcely tell you.

His best reason certainly will be, that others smoke, and, as a custom, it becomes him. And when you find an ardent smoker--one who smokes because he likes Tobacco for itself, or finds it useful--who spends his time in tinting pipes, you will have found a _rara avis_, or a monstrosity. Apart from taste, there are some practical objections to this custom of coloring pipes. Smoking, to be worthy, should be free and unrestrained; while he who colors his pipe is tied by system and confined to rule.

"A pipe to be enjoyable, should be its master's slave; but he who keeps a 'well-colored' pipe is slave thereto. He cannot smoke it as, or when, or where he will. He must not smoke it in a draught, or near a fire; he must not lay it down, or finger it; he must not puff too fast, nor yet too slow. In short, he is the creature of this 'Joss'--this home-made deity--to which he bows down and worships. The pipe-colorers are the Sabbatarians of smoking. Whereas, the pipe was made for man, they treat man as made for the pipe.

And thus, as in all cases where the cart is expected to draw the horse, the economy of nature is reversed, and mischief is evolved."

[Ill.u.s.tration: German porcelain pipes.]

Dibdin, in his "Tour in France and Germany," says of Vienna, that it is a city of smokers,--"a good Austrian thinks he can never pay too much for a good pipe." Many of the Germans use a kind of pipe carved from the root of the dwarf oak; wooden pipes of a similar kind are made of brier root, and are very common, as are also those made from maple and sweet-brier. One of the favorite pipes used by Germans is the porcelain pipe, which consists of a double bowl--the upper one containing the tobacco, which fits into another portion of the pipe, allowing the oil to drain into the lower bowl, which may be removed and the pipe cleaned. The bowls are sometimes painted beautifully, representing a variety of subjects, and in no way inferior to the painted porcelain for the table.

The Dutch are famous smokers and are constantly "pulling at the pipe."

They use those with long, straight stems, and both their clay and porcelain pipes are of the finest form and finish. Irving, in "The History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty," has given a good description of the smoking powers of the Dutch. Speaking of his grandfather's love for the weed, he says:

"My great-grandfather, by the mother's side, Hermanns Van Clattercop, when employed to build the large stone church at Rotterdam, which stands about three hundred yards to your left, after your turn from the Boomkeys; and which is so conveniently constructed that all the zealous Christians of Rotterdam prefer sleeping through a sermon there to any other church in the city. My great-grandfather, I say, when employed to build that famous church, did, in the first place, send to Delft for a box of long pipes; then, having purchased a new spitting-box and a hundred weight of the best Virginia, he sat himself down and did nothing for the s.p.a.ce of three months but smoke most laboriously.

"Then did he spend full three months more in trudging on foot, and voyaging in the Trekschuit, from Rotterdam to Amsterdam--to Delft--to Haerlem--to Leyden--to the Hague--knocking his head and breaking his pipe against every church in his road. Then did he advance gradually nearer and nearer to Rotterdam, until he came in full sight of the identical spot whereon the church was to be built. Then did he spend three months longer in walking round it and round it, contemplating it, first from one point of view, and then from another,--now would he be paddled by it on the ca.n.a.l--now would he peep at it through a telescope from the other side of the Meuse, and now would he take a bird's-eye glance at it from the top of one of those gigantic windmills which protect the gates of the city.

"The good folks of the place were on the tip-toe of expectation and impatience. Notwithstanding all the turmoil of my great-grandfather, not a symptom of the church was yet to be seen; they even began to fear it would never be brought into the world, but that its great projector would lie down and die in labor of the mighty plan he had conceived. At length, having occupied twelve good months in puffing and paddling, and talking and walking,--having traveled over all Holland, and even taken a peep into France and Germany,--having smoked five hundred and ninety-nine pipes and three hundred weight of the best Virginia tobacco,--my great-grandfather gathered together all that knowing and industrious cla.s.s of citizens who prefer attending to anybody's business sooner than their own, and having pulled off his coat and five pair of breeches he advanced st.u.r.dily up and laid the corner-stone of the church, in the presence of the whole mult.i.tude,--just at the commencement of the thirteenth month."

He also alludes to Hudson whom he says was:

"A seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused him to find great favor in their High Mightinesses, the lords and states general, and also of the honorable West India Company. He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth, and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe. * * * As chief mate and favorite companion, the commander chose Master Robert Juet, of Limehouse, in England. By some his name has been spelled Chewit, ascribed to the circ.u.mstance of his having been the first man that ever chewed tobacco. *

* * * Under every misfortune he comforted himself with a quid of tobacco, and the truly philosophical maxim, 'that it will be all the same a hundred years hence!'"

Further on he alludes to the attempt to subjugate New Amsterdam to the British crown and the effect produced by the burghers lighting their pipes.

"When"

he says "Captain Argol's vessel hove in sight, the worthy burghers were seized with such a panic, that they fell to smoking their pipes with astonishing vehemence, insomuch that they quickly raised a cloud, which, combining with the surrounding woods and marshes, completely enveloped and concealed their beloved village; and overhung the fair regions of Pavonia:--so that the terrible Captain Argol pa.s.sed on, totally unsuspicious that a st.u.r.dy little Dutch settlement lay snugly couched in the mud, under cover of all this pestilent vapor."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Persian water pipe.]

The Persians[52] are said to be the first to invent the mode of drawing tobacco smoke through water thereby cooling it before inhaling it. Fairholt says "it is to smoking what ice is to Champagne." The _London Review_ gives the following description of pipes and smoking apparatus:

[Footnote 52: Sandys, writing in 1610 narrates a Persian legend to the effect that Shiraz tobacco was given by a holy man to a virtuous youth, disconsolate at the loss of his loving wife. "Go to thy wife's tomb," said the anchorite, "and there thou wilt find a weed. Pluck it, place it in a reed, and inhale the smoke, as you put fire to it. This will be to you wife, mother, father and brother," continued the holy man, in Homeric strain, "and above all, will be a wise counsellor, and teach thy soul wisdom and thy spirit joy."]

"The hookah of India is the most splendid and glittering of all pipes; it is a large affair, on account of the arrangements for causing the smoke to pa.s.s through water before it reaches the lips of the smoker, as a means of rendering it cooler and of extracting from it much of its rank and disagreeable flavor.

"On the top of an air-tight vessel, half filled with water, is a bowl containing tobacco; a small tube descends from the bowl into the water, and a flexible pipe, one end of which is between the lips of the smoker, is inserted at the other end into the vessel, above the level of the water. Such being the adjustment, the philosophy of the inhalation may be easily understood. The smoker sucks the air out of the vessel, and makes a partial vacuum; the external air, pressing on the burning tobacco, drives the smoke through the small tube into the water beneath; purified from some of its rank qualities, the smoke bubbles up into the vacant part of the vessel above the water, and pa.s.ses through the flexible pipe to the smoker's mouth. Sometimes the affair is made still more luxurious by subst.i.tuting rose-water for water _pur et simple_. The tube is so long and flexible that the smoker may sit (or squat) at a small or great distance from the vessel containing the water. In the courts of princes and wealthy natives the vessels and tubes are lavishly adorned with precious metals. One mode of showing hospitality in the East is to place a hookah in the center of the apartment, range the guests around, and let all have a whiff of the pipe in turn; but in more luxurious establishments a separate hookah is placed before each guest. Some of the Egyptians use a form of hookah called the narghile or nargeeleh--so named because the water is contained in the sh.e.l.l of a cocoanut of which the Arabic name is nargeeleh. Another kind, having a gla.s.s vessel, is called the sh.e.s.h.ee--having, like the other, a very long tube. Only the choicest tobacco is used with the hookah and nargeeleh; it is grown in Persia.

"Before it is used, the tobacco is washed several times, and put damp into the pipe-bowl, two or three pieces of live charcoal are put on the top. The moisture gives mildness to the tobacco, but renders inhalation so difficult that weak lungs are unfitted to bear it. The dry tobacco preferred by the Persians does not involve so much difficulty in 'blowing a cloud.'"

TURKISH CHIBOUQUES AND WOOD PIPES.

"The stiff-stemmed Turkish pipes, quite different from the flexible tube of the hookah and narghile, are of two kinds, the kablioun or long pipe, and the chibouque or short pipe.

Some of the stems of the kablioun, made of cherry tree, jasmine, wild plum, and ebony, are five feet in length, and are bored with a kind of gimlet. The workman, placing the gimlet above the long, slender branchlet of wood, bores half the length, and then reverses the position to operate upon the other half. The wild cherry tree wood, which is the most frequently employed, is seldom free from defects in the bark, and some skill is exercised in so repairing these defective places that the mending shall be invisible."