BOOKFELLOWS AND TOBACCO

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue II, 13 January 1900, Page 59

BOOKFELLOWS AND TOBACCO

You can’t dogmatise on a subject so variously and supremely important as Tobacco. Here, also, one man’s food may prove to be another man's poison. Ami you must not attempt to frame arbitrary rules for Poets. Indeed, 1 doubt whether poets can be seriously considered as smokers; 1 have always felt that pipe of Tennyson's was more or less of an affectation, a mere effort at harmony with the hair ami cloak and general Tennysonian manner. And as for your bush-|x>et —I can only imagine him, in this great connection, as sitting ha-lf-disconsol-ately on a stockyard fence (1 suppose the thing has a fence), frittering furtively with a damp cigarette, what time he gently woos to counsel a cynical wisp of moon. Bush-poets, if they would attain to perfection—the sounding note, the virile ring—should come into the city, and live our hard, free, athletic life for a. year or two. No decent- poet can afford to coddle himself.

But for mere ordinary persons, like myself. Here is the One Mixture—discovered, too, by myself, aftei many desolate years of harrowing experiment- : Eight ounces of “ medium " Capstan (this is the backbone of the Mixture, so to speak, and if you go beyond “ medium,” you ruin the whole thing, infallibly); 2oz. of Pioneer (this lends a -saving fragrance to the after taste); loz. of Latakia (adds delicacy to the conception, subtiltv. distinction); and loz. of first-qual-ity. first-strength Negrohe-id (adds grip and actuality); rub all well together, and keep close in iii cool jar for a fortnight before sampling. This is the only mixture worth considering, and the bookfellow who does not yield to it all his fealty, once tried, ought to give up his fellowship and take to cricket, or some other form of crime. For this is not a mixture, in the ordinary sense; it’s an institution.

But pipe-smOKing is an ordinary, respectable. work-a-day business, when all is said. I affirm that the pipe only opens up a minor form of tobacco enjoyment. This is heresy, of course; but I don’t care. One's pi|>e is one's companion; one's solace when all things else turn dog on one. and one is naturally very fond of one’s pipe; but, admitting all that, it is surely ridiculous to talk of one’s pipe in purple periods, attributing to its influence more than lies within its scope and function. The pipe, in short, soothes, cheers, steadies, and companions one; but it does not inspire. When Barrie wrote “ My Lady Nicotine.” it was the genius of Tobacco he worshipped, and only the pipe incidentally, because the pipe was his familiar at that time; the Presbyterian conscience, which is a- thing very great and terrible, has still a sub-current of idea that cigars are ungodly; and Barrie is far too sensible a man to smoke cigarettes. The kingdom of the Cigarette is. indeed, of all things, most inexplicable to the serious smoker. The provoking thing has no substance, and only the thinnest of savours; it prolvably injures one’s health, and (which is a greatly more serious matter) it certainly makes the deuce of a mess with one’s fingers. One ean imagine a modern woman finding a certain charm in a cigarette; because one knows that every woman who smokes, whatever her grade, flies consciously in the face of her conventions. But the cigarette has no such element of allurement for man. Nowadays all -men smoke; it is becoming disreputable not to smoke. But the cigarette is a- foolish thing, as I was saying. Mind von, Ido not deny that it has occasionally its uses, accidentally even its charms. It can never generate the filmiest shred of emotion: but now and then it may chance to spice an emotion very prettily. Thus there are two things, amongst others, that add appreciably to the delight of a hot bath (start at USdeg.. and warm up by delicate gradations till your blood thickens): these two being a Turkish cigarette and a novel of Marcel Prevost. 'Mein. : There is a good deal to be staid for the hot bath as a form of pure enjoyment, in face of the fact that we moderns have taken to cold showers, ami other l>arbarous indulgences. No ! to get tobacco in its l>est form

to know the full sweetness turn! the full stimulus of it—you must still turn to t-he cigar. Other forms are tobaccoish: the cigar is tobacco. The stronger the cigar the lictter : the ripe maduro, compact of old-world fragrance and the sun. rich with the separated essence of the finest flavours

of Gargantuan sins, but bright as the eyes of Hebe, crisp and tonic as the morning sunlight of a winter’s day. Myself, I like the Indian weeds, with their penetrating perfume and their curious nitric snap; and the cheap but savorous Burma cheroot ... do you remember how daintily the nutbrown damsels of Rangoon roll the moist pungent leaf on the naked plumpnesses of their thighs, lured daily for that purpose? Or there is the twisted cigar of Manila, the glorv of the Philippines. Sent out. in twists of three, each cigar is made like a corkscrew in shajse; and as for the quality of the inspiration (if you get them strong enough) these uglv customers run at the rate of an epic to the inch. And there is the little Cocanadas cheroot, much favoured in Bengal, pregnant, of odorous suggestions of celestial song, of unexplaited situations in pure comedy. Mimi you. you must keep vour nerves well strung and your senses quick, if you would rise on wings of pink-shot azure to the full joys of a cigar. lon can’t even enjoy my mixture. if you are cursed with’ Philistine prejudices and a cheap pipe. (My own pipe has passed through many fires and become spiritualised. When I smoke it, it sings a courtly message to the stars; and my present chief of a delicate man. says things that almost hurt me.) If von have the nerves of a mud-turtle and the perceptions of an ass, such delicate things are wasted on you: and if you must smoke nt all,' von had better look for a shop where thev will sell yon colonial Derby at threepence the ounce.—Frank Morton, in the “ Bulletin.”