PIPES AND HUMANITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20869, 11 May 1931, Page 6

PIPES AND HUMANITY.

A UNIVERSAL COMPANION.

SOLACE IN ADVERSITY. HISTORY AND LITERATURE. "A cigarette is a fleeting joy, but a good pipe is a joy for ever," runs a Victorian aphorism. "For ever," of course is an exaggeration. Man is mortal, and even the best pipe canuq| withstand indefinitely the assaults of burning tobacco at one end and its owner's tcclh at tho other. Still the saying is really true; to millions of men a pipe, its predecessors and successors, mean, if not tumultuous joy, something which wears much better —contentment and solace throughout life.

To explain why a well-charged pipe brings so much satisfaction is not easy. A grcaC deal can be put down to the Weed itself. There must bo £>omo magic in a plant which, in the 350 years or more sinc3 America gave it to mankindf has endeared itself to men of every raro, from the Burman, with his "great big white cheroot," to the Japanese smoking "tabako" in a metal pipe over a charcoal brazier, to the Britisher with his cut plug and well-worn briar. In tobacco tastes differ, but the charm remains. Infantile Instinct. There are some who, going back beyond the sixteenth century, declare that drawing smoke through a pipe-stem is reversion to the instinctive habit of suction which is part of our human inheritance in earliest infancy. Others less sympathetic wiil have it that smoking satisfies merely because it is "doing something," like twirling the thumbs or playing the devil's tattoo on a table edge. No seasoned pipesmoker will subscribe to cither theory. He gets his enjoyment; the how and why do not matter. The pipe has a peculiarly close association with the British race. It, and tobacco, are commonly said to have been brought to England by Sir Walter Raleigh, but prior credit seems to rest with Ralph Lane, first Governor of Virginia-, who in 1581 introduced Raleigh to an Indian pipe and showed him how to use it. A wooden pipe of weird design, looking more like a tree-branch than anything else, is still preserved somewhere in the United States as Raleigh's favourite smoking-apparatus. An American tobacco manufacturer featured a picture of it in an advertisement a year or two ago, referring to it in irreverent slang as "this old he-one " On the Scaffold. Whether Raleigh was a pioneer or not, he undoubtedly was an enthusiastic smoker. It is a quite reasonable conjecture that tobacco helped to solace his last imprisonment, and we have it from a contemporary that " he tooke a pipe of tobacco a little before he went to the scaffolde." In this he was not unique; a pipe has. eased the last hours of many luckless men. Of the condemned murderer in Wilde's " Ballad of Reading Gaol," we read:

And every day lie smoked hin pipe And drank his quart of beer. Hin soul wag resolute, and lield No hiding-placo for fear. He often said that he was glad The hangman' 3 hands were near.

It is worth noting that good-conduct prisoners in New Zealand gaols arc allowed an ounce of pipe tobacco a week, to the great benefit ot peace, order and good government within tho walls. Yet there are some who have a different craving and get into trouble over smuggled cigarettes! On other and less depressing occasions a pipe is a good companion. Christopher Morley, in one of his delightful " lyrics for households of two or more," makes a husband chide his wife, who objects to his " favourite with— For this dear pipa You feign to scorn I smoked the night The boy was born. Nothing in Shakespeare. A new-mado Auckland father was heard to complain not long ago that on a similar occasion hiij two best consolations were denied him. The event occurred in ' the small hours, so he could not dig his garden. He had a virulent cold in tho head, so he coulc! not smoke. Reading was impossible to one in his state of mind, and his only recourse was to sitting on a different chair every five minutes, to / help pass the time. But to return to the 17th century. No reference to tobacco cam be found anywhere in Shakespeare, although this is perhaps not surprising, when one considers the epochs represented in his plays. One small clue, laid down by his friend Ben Jonson, suggests that Shakespeare held opinions on the subject, but does not tell what they were. " Tobacco, I do assert," Jonson is reported to have said to Raleigh at the Mermaid, " I do assert, without fear of contradiction from the Avon Skylight, is. the most soothing, . sovereign and precious weed that ever our dear old mother earth tendered to the use of man ! Let him who would contradict that most mild but sincere and enthusiastic assertion look to his undertaker. Sir Walter, your health!" Sam Slick's Tribute. Milton was a smoker in his later years, in spite of his blindness. It is related that when composing "Paradise Lost" ho / invariably wound up a full day by indulging in a pipe of tobacco. He says nothing about it. in his verses to Cyriak Skinner, commemorating their happy afternoons of converse over a bottle of wine, but perhaps at that timo he had not acquired the habit. In the eighteenth century, when Johnsonian churchwarden clays were universal, there is a whole literature in poetical praise of tobacco, and, to a less extent, of the pipe—less because it is harder to apostrophise a human contrivance than a plant provided by bountiful nature. Most of the versifiers find it hard to fit in any reference to the pipe except by an evasion: ,

Little tube oT mighty power. Chnrmer of an idle hour. In conclusion, it is fitting to quof« a eulogy from Sam Slick, the American sago of flic revolutionary period: " The fact is, squire, the moment .1 man takes a pipe ho becomes a philosopher. It's the jioor man's best friend; it calms the mind, soothes the temper, and ni:ikes a m;in patient under chiTi* cullies. It, has rnado moro good men, good husbands, kind masters, indulgent fathers, than any other blessed thing on this universal earth."