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.
There is yet another mineral production, the use of which Turkish
smokers, at any rate, know how to appreciate. This is amber. The Turk
will expend an almost fabulous sum in an amber mouth-piece for his
_narghileh_. Four valuable articles of this description were exhibited
in the Turkish department of the Exhibition of 1851, which were
worth together £1000, two of them being valued at £305 each. There is
a current belief in Turkey that amber is incapable of transmitting
infection; and as it is considered a great mark of politeness to offer
the pipe to a stranger, this presumed property of amber accounts in
some measure for the estimation in which it is held.
The knowledge of amber extends backwards to a remote antiquity, as the
Phœnicians of old fetched it from Prussia. Since that period it has
been obtained there uninterruptedly, without any diminution in the
quantity annually collected. The greatest amount of amber is found
on the coast of Prussia proper, between Konigsberg and Dantzic. From
the amber-beds on the coast of Dirschkeim, extending under the sea, a
storm threw up, on the 1st of January, 1848, no less than 800 pounds.
The amber fishery of Prussia formerly produced to the king about
25,000 crowns per month. After a storm, the amber coasts are crowded
with gatherers, large masses of amber being occasionally cast up by
the waves. In digging for a well in the coal-mines near Prague, the
workmen lately discovered, between the bed of gritstone which forms the
roof of that mine and the first layer of coals, a bed of yellow amber,
apparently of great extent. Pieces weighing from two to three pounds
have been extracted. There are two kinds—the terrestrial, which is dug
in mines, and the marine, which is cast ashore during autumnal storms.
Opinions vary as to the origin of amber. Tacitus and others have
considered it a fossil resin exhaled by certain coniferous trees,
traces of which are frequently observed among the amber, whilst other
theorists contend that it is a species of wax or fat, having undergone
a slow process of putrefaction; this latter view being based upon the
fact that chemists are able to convert fatty or cerous substances into
succinic acid by artificial oxidation. One thing is, however, certain,
that amber, at some period of its history, must have existed in a state
of fluidity, since numerous insects, especially of the spider kind,
are found imbedded in it; and a specimen has been shown enclosing the
leg of a toad. Toads are in the habit of living for centuries, we
are informed, cooped up in stone and rock; but we are not aware that
hitherto any of these extraordinary reptiles have been found buried
alive in a mass of amber. Masses of amber have been found weighing from
4 lbs. to 6 lbs.—more than large enough to contain a toad or two of
ordinary dimensions.
For a knowledge of the pipes of modern Egypt, we must resort for
information to Mr. Lane, from whom we gather the following notes.
The pipe (which is called by many names, as “shibuk,” “ood,” &c.) is
generally between four and five feet long. Some pipes are shorter, and
some of greater length. The most common kind used in Egypt is made of
a kind of wood called “garmashak.” The greater part of the stick is
covered with silk, which is confined at each extremity by gold thread,
often intertwined with coloured silks, or by a tube of gilt silver;
and at the lower extremity of the covering is a tassel 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. Cherrystick pipes,
which are never covered, are used by some persons, particularly in the
winter. In summer, the smoke is not so cool from the cherrystick pipe
as from the kind before mentioned. The bowl is of baked earth, coloured
red or brown. The mouth-piece is composed of two or more pieces of
opaque, light-coloured amber, interjoined by ornaments of enamelled
gold, agate, jasper, carnelion, or some other precious substance. This
is the most costly part of the pipe. Those in ordinary use by persons
of the middle classes cost from £1 to £3 sterling. A wooden tube passes
through it; this is often changed, as it becomes foul from the oil of
the tobacco. The pipe also requires to be cleaned very often, which
is done with tow, by means of a long wire. Many poor men in Cairo
gain a livelihood by cleaning pipes. Some of the Egyptians use the
Persian pipe, in which the smoke passes through water. The pipe of this
kind most commonly used by persons of the higher classes is called
“nargeeleh,” because the vessel that contains the water is the shell
of a cocoa-nut, of which “nargeeleh” is an Arabic name. Another kind
which has a glass vase, is called “sheesheh,” from the Persian word
signifying “glass.” Each has a very long, flexible tube.
A kind of pipe commonly called “gozeh,” which is similar to the
nargeeleh, excepting that it has a short cane tube, instead of the
snake, and no stand. This is used by men of the lowest class for
smoking both the “tumbak” or Persian tobacco, and the narcotic hemp.
The Zoolus of Southern Africa have a kind of pipe or smoking horn
called “Egoodu,” which is constructed on a similar principle to the
Persian pipe. The herb is placed at the end of a reed introduced into
the side of an oxhorn, which is filled with water, and the mouth
applied to the upper or wide part of the horn, the smoke passing down
the reed and through the water.
The Delagoans of Eastern Africa smoke the “hubble-bubble,” a similar
instrument, having the upper part of the horn closed, excepting a
small orifice in the centre of the covering through which the smoke is
inhaled.
The Kaffirs form pipe bowls from a black, and also from a green stone;
they are in shape similar to the Dutch pipes, and without ornament. The
negroes of Western Africa have pipes of a reddish earth, some of them
of very uncouth and singular forms, others close imitations of European
pipe bowls. One kind of pipe consists of two bowls placed side by side
upon a single stem. Old Indian pipes have been found in America, also
fashioned out of green stone.
The natives of the South-West coast of Africa, near Elizabeth’s Bay,
use pipes in the shape of a cigar tube formed of a mottled green or
white mineral of the magnesian family, externally carved or roughly
ornamented.
Sailors, when on a voyage, are often in difficulties for the want
of pipes. Under such circumstances, numerous contrivances have at
different times been resorted to to remedy the defect; such as pipes
cast out of old lead, or cut out of wood. The sailors belonging to
H.M.S. _Samarang_ having lost their pipes in the Sarawak river, set to,
and in a very little while, manufactured excellent pipes from different
sized internodes of the bamboos that grew around them. In India, simple
pipes are used composed of two pieces of bamboo, one for the bowl cut
close to a knot, and a smaller one for the tube.
The aborigines of British Guiana use a pipe, or rather a tube, called a
“Winna.” It resembles a cheroot in outward appearance, but is hollow,
so as to contain the tobacco. It is said to be made from the rind of
the fruit of the manicot palm, growing on the river Berbice. Forasmuch
as it pleaseth us to borrow fashions from nations barbarous as well as
civilized, a form of tube much resembling the “Winna,” has been made
and sold in the tobacconist shops of the metropolis of old England.
Among the Bashee group, and particularly on the island of Ibayat,
the natives form very elegant and commodious pipes from different
species of shells, the columella and septa of the convolutions being
broken down, and a short ebony stem inserted into a hole at the apex
of the spire. These are more generally formed of the shells known as
the Bishop’s mitre (_Mitra episcopalis_) and the Pope’s mitre (_Mitra
papalis_). Species of _Terebra_ and _Turbo_ are also converted into
pipes.
In China, where M. Rondot calculates that there are not less than 100
millions, and Abbé Huc 300 millions of smokers, pipes are made in
immense numbers. Of these there are three kinds, the water pipe, the
straight pipe, and the opium pipe. Chinese pipes, and indeed those of
all the Indo-Chinese races, including the Tartars, Chinese, Koreans,
and Japanese, are provided with a small metallic bowl, and usually a
long bamboo stem; for with persons who are in the habit of smoking,
at short intervals, all day long, a large bowl would be inadmissible.
By inhaling but a pinch of tobacco on one occasion, they extend the
influence of a larger pipe over a greater space of time. In such cases
they suffer no inconvenience from the nature of the material of which
the bowl is composed. Nations that smoke larger pipes adopt some other
substance, as metal would become too hot; hence we have pipes of
“Samian ware” in Turkey, “Meerschaum” in Germany, and “Clay” in England
and other places. My “Uncle Toby” would have burnt his fingers with a
Chinese pipe of nickel silver many a time and often; and it would have
required a large amount of logic to have induced Doctor Riccabocca to
have exchanged his companion (his pipe, not his umbrella) for a bowl of
Japanese manufacture.
Isaac Browne thought, a century ago, that there was something in a
pipe worth writing about, or he had never given us the following
“ODE TO A TOBACCO PIPE.
“Little tube of mighty power,
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire,
Lip of wax, and eye of fire;
And thy snowy taper waist,
With thy finger gently braced;
And thy pretty swelling crest,
With thy little stopper prest;
And the sweetest bliss of blisses
Breathing from thy balmy kisses.
Happy thrice, and thrice again,
Happiest he of happy men;
Who, when again the night returns,
When again the taper burns,
When again the cricket’s gay
(Little cricket full of play),
Can afford his tube to feed
With the fragrant Indian weed;
Pleasure for a nose divine,
Incense of the god of wine.
Happy thrice, and thrice again,
Happiest he of happy men.”
In Virginia’s native country, the pipe sticks closer to a man than his
boots. An American is no more furnished without his pipe or cigar, than
a house is furnished without a looking glass. To the native Indian,
it supplies an important place; it becomes his treaty of peace—his
challenge of war. It is the instrument of a solemn ratification, and
the subject of more than one semi-sacred legend, which has woven about
the heart of the Red-man.
“At the Red-pipe Stone Quarry,” say they, “happened the mysterious
birth of the red-pipe, which has blown its fumes of peace or war to the
remotest corners of the Continent, which has visited every warrior,
and passed through its reddened stem, the irrevocable oath of war and
desolation. And here, also, the peace breathing calumet was born, and
fringed with the eagle’s quills, which has shed its thrilling fumes
over the land, and soothed the fury of the relentless savage. The
Great Spirit, at an ancient period, here called together the Indian
warriors, and standing on the precipice of the red-pipe stone rock,
broke from its wall a piece, and made a huge pipe, by turning it in his
hand, which he smoked over them, and to the north, the south, the east,
and the west; and told them that this stone was red—that it was their
flesh—that they must use it for their pipes of peace, that it belonged
to them all, and that the war club, and the scalping knife must not
be raised on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe, his head went
into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the rock, for several
miles, was melted and glazed. Two great ovens were opened beneath, and
two women, guardian spirits of the place, entered them in a blaze of
fire, and they are heard there yet, answering to the invocations of the
priests or medicine men, who consult them when they are visitors to
this sacred place.”[11]
“From the red stone of the quarry
With his hand he broke a fragment,
Moulded it into a pipe head,
Shaped and fashioned it with figures.
From the margin of the river
Took a long reed for a pipe stem,
With its dark green leaves upon it;
Filled the pipe with bark of willow;
With the bark of the red willow;
Breathed upon the neighbouring forest,
Made its great boughs chafe together,
Till in flame they burst, and kindled;
And erect upon the mountains,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
Smoked the calumet, the Peace Pipe,
As a signal to the nations,” &c.
The tribes of the Missouri make their pipes of a kind of stone called
Catlinite, from the red pipe stone quarries upon the head waters of
that river, the colour of which is brick red. These stones, when first
taken out of the quarry are soft, and easily worked with a knife, but
on exposure to the air become hard and take a good polish. The pipes of
the Rocky Mountain Indians are some of them wrought with much labour
and ingenuity of an argillaceous stone of a very fine texture, found at
the north of Queen Charlotte’s Island. This stone is of a blue black
colour, and in character similar to the red earth of the Missouri
quarry.
The Calumet or “pipe of peace” of the Sioux Indians is thus described
by Irving. “The bowl was of a species of red stone resembling porphyry,
the stem was six feet in length, decorated with tufts of horse hair
dyed red. The pipe bearer stepped within the circle, lighted the pipe,
held it towards the sun, then towards the different points of the
compass, after which he handed it to the principal chief. The latter
smoked a few whiffs, then, holding the head of the pipe in his hand,
offered the other end to their visitor, and to each one successively in
the circle. When all had smoked, it was considered that an assurance
of good faith and amity had been interchanged.” The use of the Uspogan
or Calumet among the Eythinyuwak, appears not to have been an original
practice of the Tinne, but was introduced with tobacco by Europeans;
while among the Chippeways, the plant has been grown from the most
ancient times.
Among the most uncultivated and uncivilized of nations, the pipe is
an object upon which is exercised all their ingenuity, and in the
decoration of which is concentrated all their taste. One might almost
classify the races of the world by means of a good collection of
their pipes, and not stray very far from the order resulting from more
scientific processes.
In the East, there is existing an almost incessant habit of smoking;
and the pipe is the prelude of all official acts, of all conversations,
and of all social relations. The Oriental seizes his pipe in the
morning, and scarcely relinquishes it till he goes to bed. Here there
is generally a special functionary—the pipe-bearer—as an appendage
to all officials. When the Sultan goes abroad, his pipe-bearer is
with him. In families of respectability, the care of the pipes is the
exclusive attribute of one or more servants, who occupy the highest
grade of the domestic establishment; and thus dignity is given to the
pipe, even in a country where less dignity is allowed to the fairer
portion of the community than in more highly cultivated countries.
In the Museum of the Botanic Gardens at Kew, are pipes and stems carved
out of boxwood, as used in Sweden; also pipe-bowls of pine and other
woods made by the native Indians near Sitka in North-West America, and
brought home from a late expedition. The latter are rude, but quite
equal in elegance to many which adorn the windows of fancy tobacconists
and cigar divans in this metropolis of the civilized world.
From a schism in tobacco-pipes, Knickerbocker dates the rise of parties
in the Niew Nederlandts. “The rich and self-important burghers, who
had made their fortunes, and could afford to be lazy, adhered to
the ancient fashion, and formed a kind of aristocracy, known as the
_Long-pipes_; while the lower order, adopting the reform of William
Kieft, as more convenient in their handicraft employments, were branded
with the plebeian name of _Short-pipes_.” Who may be considered as
the founder of the English Short-pipe school, is more difficult to
determine; it is nevertheless, of late years, a very popular one, and
considerably outnumbers the aristocracy of Long-pipes. The variety of
these instruments is almost infinite. There are all kinds of short
clays, cutties, St. Omer, Gambier, meerschaum washed, coloured clay,
and fancy clay of all shapes, grotesque, uncouth, stupid, and in some
instances graceful. Pipes also of wood, of black ebony, green ebony,
brier-root—whatever that may be—cherry-root, tulip-wood, rosewood, &c.
Glass pipes, with reservoirs and without, smokers’ friends, and, if we
may judge from their size, tobacconists’ friends; meerschaum bowls,
massa bowls, porcelain bowls, clay bowls, of uncouth and monstrous
heads, with eyes of glass and enamelled teeth, together with short
stems and mounts for broken clays. Add to these, one knows not how
many kinds of tobacco-pots, from a smiling damsel in all the glories
of crinoline, to the dissevered head of Poor Dog Tray. The windows
of retail tobacconists now-a-days more resemble a toy-shop, or a
fancy stall from an arcade or bazaar, than the sober-looking windows
of a retailer half a century ago. Mr. Frank Fowler informs us that
the same tastes have migrated to Australia. “The cutty is of all
shapes, sizes, and shades. Some are negro heads, set with rows of very
white teeth; some are mermaids, showing their more presentable halves
up the front of the bowls, and stowing away their weedy extremities
under the stems. Some are Turkish caps, some are Russian skulls,
some are houris, some are Empresses of the French, some are Margaret
Catchpoles, some are as small as my lady’s thimble, others as large as
an old Chelsea tea-cup. Everybody has one, from the little pinafore
schoolboy, who has renounced his hardbake for his Hardham’s, to the old
veteran who came out with the second batch of convicts, and remembers
George Barrington’s prologue. Clergymen get up their sermons over the
pipe; members of parliament walk the verandah of the Sydney House of
Legislature, with the black bowl gleaming between their teeth. One of
the metropolitan representatives was seriously ill just before I left,
from having smoked forty pipes of Latakia at one sitting. A cutty
bowl, like a Creole’s eye, is most prized when blackest. Some smokers
wrap the bowls reverently in leather during the process of colouring;
others buy them ready stained, and get (I suppose) the reputation of
accomplished whiffers at once. Every young swell glories in his cabinet
of dirty clay pipes. A friend of mine used to call a box of the little
black things his ‘_Stowe_ collection.’ Tobacco, I should add here, is
seldom sold in a cut form; each man carries a cake about with him, like
a card-case; each boy has his stick of Cavendish, like so much candy.
The cigars usually smoked are Manillas, which are as cheap and good
as can be met with in any part of the world. Lola Montez, during her
Australian tour, spoke well of them. What stronger puff could they have
than hers?”