PIPES AND HUMANITY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 112, 14 May 1931, Page 11

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 V:ciorian aphorism. “For ever,” of civse is an exaggeration. Man is nioiitl. and even the best pipe cannot withstand indefinitely the assaults of burn’ig tobacco at one end and its owner’s teeth at the other. Still the , saying is really tiue; to millions of men a pipe, its predecessors and successors, meat’, if not tumultuous joy, something which wears much better—contcnment and solace throughout life. To plain why a well-crarged pipe blings «o much satisfaction is not easy A great de ti can be put down to the Weed itself. There must be some magic in a plant which, in the 350 years or more since America gave it to mankind, has endeared itself to men of every race, 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 wellworn briar. In tobacco tastes differ, but i the charm remains. Infantile Instinct. There arc some who, going back beyond tho sixteenth century, declare that drawing smoke through a pipestem is reversion to the instinctive habit of suction which is part of our human inheritance in earliest, infancy. Others less sympathetic will 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 pipe smoker will subscribe to either theory. He gets his enjoyment; the how and why do not matter. i 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 heone. ’ ’ On the Scaffold. V hether 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 took a pipe of tobacco a little before ho went to the scaffold.” In this he was not unique; a pipe has eased the last hours of many luckless men. Of the con demned murderer in Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol,’ we read:—And every day he smoked his pipe And drank his quart of beer. His soul was resolute, and held No hiding-place for fear. He often said that he was glad The hangman’s hands were near. It is worth noting that good-conduct prisoners in New Zealand gaols are allowed an ounce of pipe tobacco a week, to the great benefit of peace, order and good government within the walls. Yet there are some who have a different craving and get into trouble over smuggled cigarettes! On othe r and less depressing occasions a pipe is a ; nod 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 8.8.8.,” with— For this dear pipe You feign to scorn I smoked the night The boy was born. Nothing in Shakespeare. A new-made Auckland father was heard to complain not long ago that on ja similar occasion his two best consolations were denied him. The event occurred in the small hours, so he could not dig his garden. He had a virulent in the head, so he could not smoke. Leading was impossible to one in his state of inind, and his only recourse was to sitting on a different chair every live minutes, to help pass the time '' Lut to return to the I7th. ccnturv Ao reference to tobacco can be found anywhere in Shakespeare, although this is perhaps not surprising, when one con siaers 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 Co have said to Raleigh at the Mermaid, “I do assert, without fear of contradiction from the Avon Skylight is the most soothing, sovereign and i reeious weed that ever our dear old mother earth tendered to the use of man Let him who would contradict that most nnlu but sincere and enthusiastic, assertion look to his undertaker. Nir Waiter, .your health!” Sam Slick’s Tribute. i Milton uas a smoker in hi- late,--years, in spite of his blindness. It irclated that when composing “I’aradix l.ost” he invariably wound up n full •lav by indulging in a pip.. ( ,f tobacco. He says nothing about it in his verses, to .< y rink Skinner, commemorating their happy afternoons of converse over a bottle of wine, but perhaps at that tune 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 ext<‘nt, of tin- pipe—less because it is harder to apostrophise a human con-

trivanee than a plant provided by I bountiful nature. Must of the versifiers ■ find it hard to lit, in any rifflrence tu i the pipe, except by an evasion:— Little tube of mighty power. ( harmer of an idle hour. Ju inio.-lii ion, il. is fitting Io quote a eulogy from Sum Slick, tho Aincri i can sage of the revolutionary period:---“'l'he fact is, squire, the moment a man takes a pipe he becomes a philo- . sopher. It’s the poor man's Lest friend; it calms the mind, soothes the] ( temper, and makes a man patient under difficulties. It has made more good I men, good husbands, kind masters, in • liilgent fathers, than any olhe r blessed] thing on this universal earth.”