Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce Part 14

The tubes or pipe-bowls used with these stems are mostly a combination of two substances--the red clay of Nish and the white earth of Rustchuk; they are graceful in form and sometimes decorated with gilding. It is characteristic of some of the Turks that they estimate the duration of a journey, and with it the distance traveled, by the number of pipes smoked, a particular size of pipe-bowl being understood. Dodwell, in his "Tour through Greece," says that "a Turk is generally very clean in his smoking apparatus, having a small tin dish laid on the carpet of his apartment, on which the bowl of the pipe can rest, to prevent the tobacco from burning or soiling the carpet. The tubes of the kabliouns are often as much as seven or eight feet long. Some of the gardens of Turkey and Greece contain jasmine trees purposely cultivated to produce straight stems for these pipes."

Of those Turkish pipes which are used in Egypt, Mr. Lane, after mentioning the narghile and the chibouque or "shibuk," says:--

"The most common kind used in Egypt is made of wood called garmashak (I believe it is maple). The greater part of the stick, from the mouth-piece to three-fourths of its length, is covered with silk, which is confined at each extremity by gold thread, often intertwined with colored silks, or by a tube of gilt or silver; and at the lower extremity of the covering is a ta.s.sel of silk. The covering was originally designed to be moistened with water in order to cool the pipe, and consequently the smoke by evaporation; but this is only done when the pipe is old or not handsome. These stick pipes are used by many persons, particularly in winter; in summer the smoke is not so cool from them as from the kind before mentioned. The bowl is of baked earth, colored red or brown."

AUSTRIAN AND HUNGARIAN PIPE STEMS.

Before pa.s.sing to the subject of the costly mouth-pieces of Oriental pipes, we must say a few words concerning the extraordinary care bestowed on some kinds of plain wood sticks for stems or tubes.

Cherry-tree stems, under the name of agriots, const.i.tute a specialty of Austrian manufacture. The fragrant cherry (prunus makaleb) is a native of that country; and the young trees are cultivated with special reference to this application. They are all raised from seed.

The seedlings, when two years old, are planted in small pots, one in each; as they grow, every tendency to branching is choked by removing the bud; and as they increase in size from year to year, they are shifted into larger pots or into boxes. Great care is taken to turn them round daily, so that every part shall be equally exposed to sunshine. When the plants have attained a sufficient height they are allowed to form a small bushy head; but the daily care is continued until the stems grow to a proper thickness. They are then taken out of the ground, the roots and branches removed, and the stem bored through after being seasoned for some time. The care shown in rearing insures a perfect straightness of stem, and an equable diameter of about an inch or an inch and a half. The last specimens, when cut from the tree, are as much as eight feet in length, dark purple-brown in color, and highly fragrant. At Pesth are made pipes about eighteen inches in length, of the shoots of the mock orange, remarkable for their quality in absorbing the oil of tobacco, they are flexible without being weak. The French make elegant pipe-bowls of the root of the tree-heath, but their chief attention is directed, as far as concerns wood pipes, to those of brier-root, which are made by them in large quant.i.ties. The bowl and the short stems are carried out of one piece, and the wood is credited with absorbing some of the rank oil of tobacco.

Amber--the only kind of resin that rises to the dignity of a gem--is unfitted for the bowl of a tobacco-pipe, because it cannot well bear the heat; but it is largely used for mouth-pieces, especially by wealthy Oriental smokers. The Turks have a belief that amber wards off infection; an opinion which, whether right or wrong, tells well for the amber workers. There has always been a mystery connected with this remarkable substance. So far back as the Phenicians, amber was picked up on the Baltic sh.o.r.e of what is now called Prussia; and the same region has ever since been the chief store-house for it. Tacitus was not far wrong when he conjectured that amber is a gum or resin exuded from certain trees, although other authorities have preferred a theory that it is a kind of wax or fat which has undergone slow petrifaction.

At any rate, it must at one time have been liquid or semi-liquid; for insects, flies, detached wings and legs, and small fragments of various kinds, are often found imbedded in it--those odds and ends of which Pope said:--

"The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare; The wonder's how the devil they got there!"

Whether new stores of amber are now being formed, or whether, like coal, it was the result of causes not now in operation, is an unsolved problem. The specimens obtained differ considerably; some are pale as primrose, some deep orange or almost brown; some nearly as transparent as crystal, some nearly opaque. Large pieces, uniform in color and translucency, fetch high prices; and there are fashions in this matter for which it is not easy to account,--seeing that the Turks and other Orientals buy up, at prices which Europeans are unwilling to give, all the specimens presenting a straw-yellow color and a sort of cloudy translucency. The Russians, on the contrary, prefer orange-yellow transparent specimens. The amber is seldom obtained by actual mining.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Searching for amber.]

It is usually found on sea-coasts, after storms, in rounded nodules; or, if scarce on sh.o.r.e, it is sought for by men clad in leather garments, who wade up to their necks in the sea, and sc.r.a.pe the sea-bottom with hooped nets attached to the end of long poles; or (rather dangerous work) men go out in boats, and examine the faces of precipitous cliffs, picking off, by means of iron hooks, the lumps of amber which they may see here and there. Sometimes a piece weighing nearly a pound is found, and a weight of even ten pounds is recorded.

As small pieces can easily be joined by smoothing the surfaces, moistening them with linseed oil, and pressing them together over a charcoal fire, and as gum copal is sometimes very like amber, there is much sophistication indulged in, which none but an expert can guard against. In fashioning the nodules of amber, whether genuine or fict.i.tious, into pipe mouth-pieces, they are split on a leaden plate in a turning lathe, smoothed into shape by whet-stones, rubbed with chalk and water, and polished with a piece of flannel. It is an especially difficult kind of work; for unless the amber is allowed frequent intervals for cooling, it becomes electrically excited by the friction and shivers into fragments; the men, too, are put into nervous tremors if kept too long at work at one time. Amber is one of the most electrically excitable of all known substances; in fact, the name electricity itself was derived from _electron_, the Greek name for amber. Hookahs, chibouques, narghiles, meerschaums, all are largely adorned with amber mouth-pieces. The mouth-piece often consists of two or three pieces of amber, interjoined with ornaments of gold and gems; it is in such case the most costly part of the pipe.

At one of the greater industrial exhibitions four Turkish amames, or amber mouth-pieces, were shown, ill.u.s.trating clearly enough the value attached to choice specimens; two of them were worth 350 each, two 200 each, diamond studded. The Turkish and Persian pipes have often a small wooden tube inside the amber mouth-piece. They require frequent cleaning with a long wire and a bit of tow, and in some large towns there are professional pipe-cleaners.

The natives of British Guiana have a curious kind of pipe, made of the rind of the fruit of the areca-palm, coiled up into a kind of cheroot, with an internal hollow to hold the tobacco. The poorer Hindoos make a simple pipe of two pieces of bamboo,--one cut close to a knot for the bowl, and a more slender piece for the tube. A lower cla.s.s of natives in India make two holes of unequal length, with a piece of stick, in a clay soil; the holes are unequally inclined so as to meet at the bottom; the tobacco is placed in the shorter hole, and the smoker, applying his mouth to the longer, inhales the fumes in this primitive fashion. The pipes used for opium-smoking in various parts of the East have small bowls; the drug is too costly to be used otherwise than in small portions at a time, and too powerful to need more than a few whiffs to produce the opium-smoker's dreary delirium.

The Tunisians use reeds for pipes. Stone pipes are found among the natives of Vancouver; while Strong Bow, the North American Indian chief, has his long wooden pipe of peace, decked out with ta.s.sels and fringes, but with an ominous-looking sharp steel cutting instrument near the end most remote from the bowl.

Chinese, j.a.panese, Philippine Islanders, Madagascans, Central Africans, Algerine Arabs, Mexicans, Paraguayans, Siamese, Tahitians, South American Indians, Mongols, Malays, Tartars, Turcomans, as well as the nations of Europe and the chief nations of Southern Asia, all have their smoking-pipes, plain or ornate, as the case may be, and made of wood, reeds, bamboo, bone, ivory, stone, earthenware, gla.s.s, porcelain, amber, agate, jade, precious metals and common metals, according to the civilization of the country and the pecuniary means of the smoker.

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

"The French clay pipes have quite a special character; they are well made, and great ingenuity is shown in the preparation of the moulds in which they are pressed; but being mostly intended for a cla.s.s of purchasers who prefer grotesque ideas to refined taste, the bowls are often ornamented with queer shaped heads, having bead-like eyes; sometimes imaginary beings, sometimes caricature portraits of eminent persons. Where more than the head is represented, license is given to a certain grossness of idea; but this is not a general characteristic. The clay of which these French pipes are made is admitted to be superior to that of England, due to the careful mixture of different kinds, and to skilful manipulation.

"We need not say much about Dutch pipes as distinct articles of manufacture, because the process adopted in their production are pretty much like those in use elsewhere. The Dutch are famous clay-pipe smokers, not countenancing the cigar so much as their neighbors the Belgians, nor the meerschaum so largely as their German neighbors on the Rhine frontier. A notable bit of sharp practice is on record in connexion with the pipe-smokers of Holland--a dodge only to be justified on the equivocal maxim that all is fair in trade provided it just keeps within the margin we need not speak. A pipe manufactory was established in Flanders about the middle of the last century.

"The Dutch makers, alarmed at the compet.i.tion which this threatened, cunningly devised a stratagem for nipping it in the bud. They freighted a large worn-out ship with an enormous quant.i.ty of pipes of their own make, sent it to Ostend, and wrecked it there. By the munic.i.p.al laws of that city the wreck became public property; the pipes were sold at prices so ridiculously low that the town was glutted with the commodity; the new Flemish factory was thereby paralyzed, ruined, and closed."

The Turks (especially those of the lower orders) use a kind of clay pipe made of red earth decorated with gilding. The stem of the pipe is made from a branch of jasmine, cherry tree or maple and is sufficiently long to rest on the floor when used by the smoker. A writer in the _Tobacco Plant_ says of Old English Clay pipes:

"Of all the various branches of the subject of tobacco, that of the history of pipes is one of the most interesting, and one that deserves every attention that can possibly be given. Whether considered ethnographically, historically, geographically, or archaeologically, pipes present food for speculation and research of at least equal importance to any other set of objects that can be brought forward. Some branches of the subject have already been treated in these columns, and others, in what is intended shall follow, will hereafter be discussed. The present article will be devoted to 'Fairy Pipes' and the history of the earliest pipes of this country. Smoking is an old and venerable inst.i.tution in this kingdom of ours, and dates far back beyond the introduction of tobacco to our sh.o.r.es. Long before Sir Walter Raleigh was thought of, there is reason to believe herbs and leaves of one kind or other--coltsfoot, yarrow, mouse-lax, sword-gra.s.s, dandelion, and other plants, and even dried cow-dung--were smoked for one ailment or other, and in some instances for relaxation and pleasure, and thus, no doubt, became habitually used. These are still, in some of our rural districts, smoked by people as cures for various ailments, and are considered not only highly efficacious but very pleasant. I have known these or other herbs smoked through a stick from which the pith had been removed, the bowl being formed of a lump of clay moulded by the fingers at the time, and baked in the household fire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Clay and reed pipes.]

"The small branches of the elder tree, or sometimes the stem of the briar and bramble, are what I have seen used, but even the stem of the hemlock and keckse are sometimes brought into requisition for the purpose.

"I believe that long before the time Dr. Wilson states on the authority of Sharpe, that it was common within memory, for the old wives of Annandale to smoke a dried white moss gathered on the neighboring moors, which they declared to be much sweeter than tobacco, and to have been in use long before the American weed was heard of; before Sir Walter Raleigh wooed and won Elizabeth Throgmorton, or Sir Richard Granville voyaged to Virginia with Masters Ralph Layne, Thomas Candish, John Arundell, Master Stukely, Bremize, Vincent, Heryot, and John Clarke; before Sir Francis Drake made his first voyage, or the Spanish Armada was dreamed of; before Sir John Hawkins, Captain Price, Coft, Keat or others for whom the honor of the introduction of tobacco has been claimed, drew breath--smoking was to some extent indulged in by our forefathers and (still medicinally, of course) in this country. In mediaeval times, when the Ceramic art was but little practiced, and when all the domestic vessels that were produced were of the rudest and coa.r.s.est character both in material, form, and decoration, it is not to be expected that pipes for the smoking of herbs would be manufactured as a matter of sale, and those of the people who wished for such an indulgence would naturally be thrown on their own primitive resources such as I have described, for instruments for the purpose.

"A portion of a very rude pipe-head, formed of common red clay--a lump of clay moulded by hand, and ornamented with small circles pressed into it as from the end of a stick--has come under my notice, as have also others of an equally primitive character, found in different parts of this kingdom. These I have no hesitation in ascribing to a pre-Raleigh period. It is not to these, however, but to the small pipes formerly used in this kingdom for smoking tobacco, and tobacco alone, that I wish to draw attention.

Most people, especially in the Midland and Northern counties of England, as well as in Scotland and Ireland, will have heard the name of Fairy Pipes applied to the small, old-fashioned, and sometimes oddly-shaped tobacco pipes which are not infrequently turned up in digging and plowing and other operations. To these and the general forms of old English pipes, I purpose confining myself in the present article. Many years ago I collected together a large number of these 'Fairy Pipes' from all parts of the kingdom. Since then, my own researches have, with the aid of inquiries carried on for me, enabled me to bring forward many interesting points, so as to verify dates of manufacture and more fully to carry out their cla.s.sification. Like their Irish brethren and sisters, English people were formerly apt to ascribe everything unusually small to the fairies, and anything out of the common way to the people of very remote ages.

"Thus, these small pipes are commonly in England called 'fairy pipes,' or 'Carl's pipes,' or 'old man's pipes;' in Ireland, where they are likewise known as 'fairy pipes,'

they are also called 'Dane's pipes;' and in Scotland, where their common name is 'elf pipes,' or 'elfin pipes,' they are, in like manner, known as 'Celtic pipes.' They are also sometimes named 'Mab pipes,' or 'Queen's pipes,' from the same fairy majesty, Queen Mab. Thus, while in each country they are ascribed to the elfin race--the 'small people' of Cornish folk-lore--their secondary names attach to them a popular belief in their extreme antiquity. Anything apparently old is at once, by the Irish, set down to the 'Danes;' by the Scots to the 'Celts;' and by people in the rural districts of our own country to the 'carls,' or 'old men'--carl being indicative of extreme antiquity. In Ireland, the pipes are believed to have belonged to the _cluricaunes_--a kind of wild, ungovernable, mischievous fairy-demon--who were held in awe by the 'pisantry;' and whenever found, these pipes were, with much superst.i.tious feeling, immediately broken up, so as to destroy and break up the spell their finding might have cast around the finder. But it was not only among the peasantry that this belief in the extreme antiquity of tobacco pipes existed.

"Serious essays were written to prove their pre-historic origin, and to claim for them a history that in our day reads as arrant nonsense. In 1784, a short pipe was a.s.serted to have been found between the jaws of the skull of an ancient Milesian exhumed at Bannockstown, county Kildare.

Upon this discovery, an elaborate and learned paper was written in the 'Anthologia Hibernica,' setting forth this pipe as a proof of the use of tobacco in Ireland long before that country was invaded by the Danes. This pipe has been proved by comparison to be probably quite late in the reign of Elizabeth. They also have a more modern pipe, the stem of which describes one or more circles, while another is tied in a knot, yet allows a free pa.s.sage of air. At another time, in opening an Anglo-Saxon grave mound, some of the men employed came across a fairy pipe which evidently had rolled down from among the surface-soil, and, being turned out in juxtaposition with undoubted Anglo-Saxon remains, was immediately set down by the learned director of the proceedings as a relic of that period. At another time I had brought to me, as a great curiosity, two 'Roman pipes,' as I was informed--the finders jumping to the conclusion that because they had dug them up at little Chester (the Roman station Derventio), they must be Roman pipes! I believe they expected to receive a large sum from these relics: how grievously they were disappointed I need not tell. Instances of this kind are far from rare.

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

"I remember a man once bringing me some fragments of Roman pottery and other things of the same period, which he had turned up in the course of excavations, and among them was a Tobacco stopper formed of a Sacheverell medal! and a George II. half-penny, all of which he was ready to swear he had found "all of a heap together," inside a hypocaust tile, which, on examination, certainly had remained _in situ_ from Romano-British times! The cupidity of a man had evidently led him to collect together these odds and ends, and try to turn them to profitable account. Some twenty years ago, a large number of "elfin pipes" were dug up at Bomington, near Edinburgh, along with a quant.i.ty of placks or bodles of James VI., which thus gave trustworthy evidence of their true date. Others were found in the ancient cemetery at North Berwick, adjoining to which is a small Romanesque building of the Twelfth Century, close upon the sh.o.r.e.

Within the last half-century, the sea has made very great inroads upon this ancient burial-place, carrying off a considerable ruin, and exposing the skeletons, and bringing to light many interesting relics at almost every spring-tide. Among these, many pipes have been washed down.

A similar circ.u.mstance has occurred on the seash.o.r.e at Hoy Lake, Cheshire, where several "fairy pipes" have been found.

"Notices of several discoveries occur. Dr. Wilson says, in the statistical accounts of Scotland, many of which are suggestive of a pre-Raleigh period. Thus, 'in an ancient British encampment in the parish of Kirk Michael, Dumfriesshire, on the farm of Gilrig, a number of pipes of burnt clay were dug up, with heads smaller than the modern tobacco-pipes, swelled at the middle and straighter at the top. Again, in the vicinity of a group of standing stones at Cairney Mount, in the parish of Carluke Lanarkshire, a celt or stone hatchet, elfin bolts (flint and bone arrow-heads), elfin pipes, numerous coins of the Edwards and of later date, and other things are all stated to have been found.'

An example is also recorded of the discovery of a tobacco-pipe in sinking a pit for coal, at Misk, in Ayrshire, after digging through many feet of sand. All these notes are pregnant with significant warnings of the necessity for cautious discrimination in determining the antiquity of such buried relics."

In Turkey the jasmine is cultivated for the purpose of pipe smoking.

Barillet describes the growing of the common jasmine near Constantinople. He says:

"The object sought is a long straight stem, free from leaves and side branches. For this purpose the plants are grown quickly in a rich soil, and drawn up by being grown in a sheltered situation, to which the sun has little access at the sides, but only at the top. Pinching is resorted to, and during the second year's growth one end of a thread is attached to the top of the jasmine stem. This thread pa.s.ses over a pulley attached to the post to which this jasmine is trained, and from it is suspended a weight, the effect of which is to keep the stem always in a vertical direction.

When the jasmine stem is about two centimeters (say three quarters of an inch) in diameter a cloth is wrapped around it to prevent access of dust and of the sun's rays. Twice or thrice in the year the stem is washed with citron-water, which is said to give the clear color so much esteemed. When the stem has acquired a length of some fifteen feet, it is cut down and perforated by the workmen, and fitted with a terra-cotta bow and an amber mouth-piece."

Blackburn, in his work ent.i.tled "Artists and Arabs," gives the following picture of life and manners in Algiers:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Female smoking in Algiers.]

"There is one difficulty here, however, for the artist--that of finding satisfactory models. You can get one at last, and here is her portrait. Her costume, when she throws off her haik (and with it a tradition of the Mohammedan faith, that forbids her to show her face to an unbeliever), is a rich, loose, crimson jacket embroidered with gold, a thin white bodice, loose silk trousers reaching to the knee and fastened round the waist by a magnificent sash of various colors, red morocco slippers, a profusion of rings on her little fingers, and bracelets and anklets of gold filagree work. Through her waving black hair are twined strings of coins and the folds of a silk handkerchief, the hair falling at the back in plaits below the waist. She is not beautiful, she is scarcely interesting in expression, and she is decidedly unsteady. She seems to have no more power of keeping herself in one position or of remaining in one part of the room, or even of being quiet, than a humming-top. The whole thing is an unutterable bore to her, for she does not even reap the reward--her father, or husband, or other male attendant always taking the money. She is pet.i.te, const.i.tutionally phlegmatic, and as fat as her parents can manage to make her; she has small hands and feet, large rolling eyes--the latter made to appear artificially large by the application of henna or antimony black; her att.i.tudes are not ungraceful, but there is a want of character about her, and an utter abandonment to the situation, peculiar to all her race. In short, her movements are more suggestive of a little caged animal that had better be petted and caressed, or kept at a safe distance, according to her humor. She does one thing--she smokes incessantly, and makes cigarettes with a skill and rapidity which are wonderful.

Her age is thirteen, and she has been married six months; her ideas appear to be limited to three or four, and her pleasures, poor creature, are equally circ.u.mscribed. She had scarcely ever left her father's house, and had never spoken to a man until her marriage. There seems to be in the Moorish nature a wonderful sense of harmony and contrasts of color. Two Orientals will hardly walk down a street side by side unless the colors of their costumes harmonize. You find a negress selling oranges or citrons; an Arab boy with red fez and white turban, carrying purple fruit in a basket of leaves--always the right juxtaposition of colors. The sky furnishes them a superb background of deep blue, and the repose of these solemn Orientals, who sit here like bronze statues, save that they smoke incessantly, inspires you with a curious respect. They are men who believe in fate--what need that they should make haste?"

In Africa the pipes are made of clay and horn, and are mostly rude affairs, but well suited to their ideas of implements used for holding tobacco. King gives the following description of smoking among them:--

"A party of headmen and older warriors, seated cross-legged in their tents, ceremoniously smoked the daghapipe, a kind of hookah, made of bullock's horn, its downward point filled with water, and a reed stem let into the side, surmounted by a rough bowl of stone, which is filled with the dagha, a species of hemp, very nearly, if not the same, as the Indian bang. Each individual receives it in turn, opens his jaws to their full extent, and placing his lips to the wide mouth of the horn, takes a few pulls and pa.s.ses it on. Retaining the last draught of smoke in his mouth, which he fills with a decoction of bark and water from a calabash, he squirts it on the ground by his side through a long ornamented tube in his left hand, performing thereon, by the aid of a reserved portion of the liquid, a sort of boatswain's whistle, complacently regarding the soap-like bubbles, the joint production of himself and neighbor. It appeared to be a sign of special friendliness and kindly feeling to squirt into the same hole."

[Ill.u.s.tration: African pipe.]

We give an engraving of a kind of pipe used by the natives of interior Africa. It is made of clay, and holds but a small portion of the weed.

The natives are great smokers and indulge in it almost constantly, but their love for it can hardly exceed that of the more hardy Laplanders, who are described as "pa.s.sionately fond of the plant." Nothing is so indispensable as tobacco to their existence. A Laplander who cannot get Tobacco sucks chips of a barrel or pieces of anything else which has contained it. Tobacco gives the Laplanders a pleasure which often rises to ecstacy. They both chew and smoke, and they are certainly the dirtiest chewers in the world. When they chew they spit in their hands, then raise them to their nose that they may inhale from the saliva the irritating principles of the plant. Thus they satisfy two senses at the same time. They regularly smoke after their meals. If their supply of Tobacco falls short, they sit down in a circle and pa.s.s the pipe round, so that every one in his turn may have a whiff.[53]

[Footnote 53: Reynard, in his "Travels In Lapland," says of the use of tobacco: "We interrogated our Laplander upon many subjects. We asked him what he had given his wife at their marriage. He told us that she had been very expensive to him during his courtship, having cost him two pounds weight of tobacco and four or five pints of brandy."]

"A Painter's Camp in the Highlands" defends the custom of smoking in the following well chosen words:

"People who don't smoke--especially ladies--are exceedingly unfair and unjust to those who do. The reader has, I daresay, amongst his acquaintances ladies who, on hearing any habitual cigar-smoker spoken of, are always ready to exclaim against the enormity of such an expensive and useless indulgence; and the cost of Tobacco-smoking is generally cited by its enemies as one of the strongest reasons for its general discontinuance. One would imagine, to hear these people talk, that smoking was the only selfish indulgence in the world. When people argue in this strain, I immediately a.s.sume the offensive. I roll back the tide of war right into the enemy's intrenched camp of comfortable customs; I attack the expensive and unnecessary indulgences of ladies and gentlemen who do not smoke. I take cigar-smoking as an expense of, say, half-a-crown a-day, and pipe-smoking at threepence.

"I then compare the cost of these indulgences with the cost of other indulgences not a whit more necessary, which no one ever questions a man's right to if he can pay for them.

There is luxurious eating, for instance. A woman who has got the habit of delicate eating will easily consume dainties to the amount of half-a-crown a-day, which cannot possibly do her any good beyond the mere gratification of the palate.