St Nicotine of the Peace Pipe

If the so-called ‘Smoking Concerts’ of to-day were carried out in strict accordance with the founder’s instructions, each being supplied with the legitimate materials, the public would then get the amusement implied in the designation, ‘Smoking Concert.’

Before taking leave of the amiable Dean, it is but just to his memory to say a word on his higher claims to admiration. It is recorded of him that he distinguished himself in every branch of divine and human learning; that he promoted religion and virtue with application and zeal during his tenure of office at the noble college of Christchurch, much of whose present lustre and beauty it owes to his efforts. His biographer ranks him among the greatest masters in the composition of church music; his anthems number about twenty. Yet, being a man of genial humour, he found diversion for his leisure moments in the production of pieces of a lighter description, as, ‘Hark! the bonny Christchurch Bells,’ which at one time had a great vogue.

CHAPTER X.
THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY AND SMOKING PIPES.

The various kinds of tobacco and the sources of supply are exceedingly numerous. Every country, indeed, has attempted to cultivate the plant and reap a share of the rich harvest it yields to the planter and to the government. Special qualities, as of wine, belong to particular localities, outside of which they cannot, by any skill or coaxing, be raised. A puzzling example of nature’s fickle moods in the production of the plant was found a few years ago in Sumatra, where on one side of a field a leaf was yielded rich in all the qualities delicate smokers desire, and on the other side, but a few yards off, a very inferior plant grew. So far as an experienced cultivator could see the conditions were alike: seed, soil, and culture and aspect were the same. And as is the case with wines, the crops vary in richness and delicacy of flavour with the seasons of their growth, so that in some years the yield is of much greater value than in other years, though tobacco of the ‘Comet year’ has not yet been proclaimed in commerce. The natural properties of certain classes of tobacco render them especially suited for cigar-making; others are best fitted for smoking in pipes, and there are numerous qualities which are valuable for snuff-making. National tastes and habits again frequently determine the destination of the weed. Thus, heavy, full-flavoured cigars and strong pipe-tobacco are in favour in North America, while in Europe, lighter, and more brisk-burning are sought after. By far the most valuable tobaccos in the world are grown in Cuba, and the richest of all is found in the gardens of Vuelta Abajo in the north-west district; after which come the products of Partidas and Vuelta Arriba. A large portion of the tobacco is made into cigars in the island, but considerable quantities are exported to Europe for mixing with commoner kinds to give Havana flavour to home-made cigars. Cuba, though no longer the emporium of the tobacco world, still ranks first among the favoured places of the earth for the finest growths of the plant. In culture and make-up, in classification and nomenclature of the different kinds of tobacco, the Queen of the Antilles is, as she has always been, a model to the tobacco-producing world. Foremost among her thousand factories stands the Royal and Imperial of La Hondradez. It occupies a whole square, and is looked upon as one of the sights of Havana. Before the McKinley tariff cast gloom over the Home industry, this factory, alone, produced nearly two millions of cigarettes daily; and the total number of cigars exported in 1889 was about two hundred and fifty millions. Under the McKinley tariff the exportation of cigars declined rapidly to about one half this number, with the consequent loss of employment for factory operatives. On the other hand, however, the exports of unmanufactured leaf rose in like proportion. The highest class of Cuban cigars called ‘Vegueras,’ are prepared from the finest growths of the plant raised in Vuelta Abajo. Here, the plant growing in its native soil attains its richest perfection. The soil is a light sandy loam, very rich in potash and lime, and as the heat and humidity are great it is an ideal site for the tobacco plant. In the preparation this valuable leaf is never damped with water, as is done with the inferior kinds, but when it is just half dry it is rolled, and thus the full, natural and most delicately flavoured qualities are retained. Next come the ‘Regalias’ which are treated in a similar way; but genuine Havanas are seldom to be had in Europe. The area in which these plants are grown is so small that it is physically impossible all the cigars sold under these names can be real Havana ‘legitimas’; and the price they command places them beyond the reach of ordinary smokers. So it happens that the cigars made in Europe from any Cuban tobacco are usually classed as ‘Havanas.’

Of the many different methods of harvesting and preparing the leaves of the plant for commerce, one of the best is said to be that recently adopted in Florida. The latest results would seem to justify the sanguine hopes of the planters that by-and-by they will produce a tobacco in all essential particulars equal to Havanas. They trust mainly to a new method of reaping. Instead of waiting, as in the old way, until the whole field is ripe, they keep a close watch on the crop, and as each leaf becomes ripe, which a skilled eye readily detects, it is taken from the stalk and placed with other fully ripened ones in a broad-bottomed basket, or tray, and carried to the curing-house. Here the leaves are sorted and sized, strung and hung up in rows and tiers, and when all the field has been gathered leaf by leaf, and the other operations completed, the steaming apparatus is brought into action—hot-water pipes leading to evaporating pans—and the proper degree of heat secured to produce the desired fermentation. By dint of care in the regulation of the heating apparatus, so as to secure the proper temperature in the curing rooms, and in the collection of the leaves undergoing the process of curing at the proper moment, the delicate aroma considered to be peculiar to the best Cuban growths is secured in greater perfection than could be attained under the old method of leaving the gathering until the whole field had ripened. It is reported from the district that the longer time expended in the somewhat tedious operation of collecting each leaf separately as it becomes ripe, is more than compensated by the lessened labour of indoor work. Then there is the superior texture, colour, weight and richness over those which the old plan yielded. There still remains, however, for consideration, the all-important factors of soil and climate, and whatever else in nature may go towards determining the ultimate fate of the plant. It is thought that all the favouring conditions are in Florida harmonized more perfectly than in any other part of the United States.

Housing and curing operations completed, the leaves being quite dry and crisp, they are loosely tied in bundles (a leaf being used for the purpose) of about a dozen, called ‘hands,’ and lightly packed together for the Home market. The tobacco intended for exportation receives much more care in the packing. Each bundle is placed carefully in a hogshead or other large receptacle in such a manner as not to injure the leaf in any way. In some cases the midrib—the fibre which runs through the leaf—is removed before exportation, an operation which has given rise in commerce to the designation ‘stripes,’ a term by which large quantities of tobacco is known in the market. When a hogshead is about one quarter filled a powerful lever-press is employed to compress and consolidate the tobacco. This pressing is repeated at each successive stage of the packing till the whole is a dense and compact mass, weighing from a thousand to twelve hundred pounds. On arrival at the London Docks, where immense bonded warehouses extend as far as the eye can reach, unshipment takes place among some hundreds of other similar imports. Here it remains until the duty demanded by the Custom House officer is paid. The period of bondage may last three years, a small rent being charged for the accommodation. Before releasing it from bond the consignee will unpack the tobacco for the purpose of ascertaining whether it is perfectly sound, or has sustained damage in course of transit; for it happens sometimes that the material is found to be hardly worth the duty imposed. In this case the consignee is not compelled to release it; it is left with the Crown officials to make such use of it as they may deem fit. How they dispose of such tobacco is remarked upon in the chapter headed, ‘The Use and Abuse of Tobacco.’

In looking over the various sorts of tobacco presented by the tobacconists to the consumer we need not touch upon the delicate ground of ‘vested interests.’ It will suffice our present purpose if we notice merely that from the same hogshead a selection and classification is made of the leaves according to the shade of colour, and that the lightest coloured (the mild) ones are reserved for less liquoring and pressure than is given to the darker coloured leaves. ‘Returns,’ for example, is the product of the lightest leaves and less pressure. A large quantity of water used in the process of liquoring has the effect of darkening the colour and giving strength to the flavour of the tobacco. By extreme watering and pressure is produced the kind so dear to the sailor called ‘pigtail,’ as well as the less pungent ‘sag,’ of which there are two sorts, fine and common, the difference consisting of the fineness or coarseness of the shreds into which the leaf is cut. These and many other odd circumstances in the manufacture give the different degrees of strength and flavour sought for by the varying tastes of smokers.

In the opinion of experienced smokers a new cigar is never good; like wine, the weed requires age to bring it to perfection—the highly prized excellences, a mild, cool aromatic smoke. Curiously enough, the marks of a mite on the outer leaf are the true signs of matured years, when the cigar is fitted to regale the jaded senses and dispose the most obdurate of men to relax into sociality. But these seductive touches by an invisible hand are well known to the manufacturer, and are sometimes artificially produced by means of acid. Fancy or experience has suggested different kinds of cigars for different seasons of the year, or climates. The Havana is thought by connoisseurs to be the most agreeable for summer or hot countries, and for winter or cold climates a principe is preferred; while the thoughtful and imaginative are assured that there is no leaf like the Manila. And as regards the Manila there is something to warrant the suggestion. The tobacco of Luzon when mixed with that of the Gapanian plantation is considered to make the very perfection of all cheroots. Its excellences consist in a delicate flavour combined with a slightly soporific quality: properties which render it so pleasantly alluring to the imaginative, and which to some smokers suggest the use of opium in its preparation; this, however, is not so; to the climate and soil alone are due the grateful pleasures of this most solacing smoke. There are three different and distinct growths of the tobacco-plant in the Philippines. A strong, aromatic tobacco is grown in great abundance in the province of Cagayan in the island of Luzon, and the district of Gapan in Pampanga produces a leaf of a very mild and agreeable flavour, while from Bisayas a tobacco much inferior to either is raised. In the manufacture of the poorer kind it is a common practise to use a leaf of the best as an envelope wrapped round, in order to impart to it a better appearance. From the first planting of tobacco in the Philippines until July, 1881, the entire industry had been in the hands of the Spanish Government, who visited illicit production with severe pains and penalties. Yet, notwithstanding the vigilance of the mounted police who scoured the country districts to strike terror into the lawless, the natives living far up the mountain glens of Ylocos and Pangasinan, though leading the roving life of huntsmen, contrived to cultivate patches of the tobacco-plant, for which they always found a ready sale to the traders who at the proper season visited the neighbourhood.

Since the monopoly was abolished, private enterprise, stirred by the wholesome stimulus of competition, has developed and improved the tobacco industry very considerably, with the help of large numbers of diligent hard-toiling Chinamen. This important branch of commerce in Manila provides employment for twenty thousand women and sixteen thousand men. The men are employed almost wholly in making cigarillos for Home consumption; while to the women is allotted the more important task of cheroot-making for exportation. Here the great factories are situated, each of which affords accommodation for about a thousand work-people. The men and women work in separate factories; those for the women are divided into long rooms along the whole length of which are ranged low tables. At each table a dozen young women are seated, presided over by an old woman whose duty is to try and maintain order among the girls and see that there is no waste of material, for to each table a certain quantity of tobacco is weighed out. If the proportionate number of cigars is not produced, woe betide the hapless one: on pay day deductions for waste come into the reckoning.

But however interesting the workers and their work may be, the visitor seldom cares to prolong his stay where a thousand voices are in full chatter and stone hammers are incessantly beating, on wooden tables, leaves of the plant in readiness for the lissom fingers of the girls who roll them up into cheroot form. These women of weeds earn good wages—from eight to ten dollars a month—which amply suffices to get them all the comforts they need and leave a fair margin for dress, of which they are as proud, if not as prodigal, as the gayest of their European sisters. A novel use for cigars was found in the Philippines some years ago. Copper money being very scarce, quite inadequate to the daily requirements, cigars were passed from one person to another in lieu of coin, to the small satisfaction of the one in whose hands they had from friction become unsaleable.

It is noteworthy that even tobacco-leaves, the avowed destroyers of insect life, should themselves be the prey of some form of the ubiquitous microbe. Besides the mite just mentioned that speckles the outer leaf of old cigars, a more ravenous one has been discovered working its will on Indian cigar-leaf. In a recent issue of Indian Museum Notes, Mr. Cote gives an interesting account of the works and ways of an insect that drills tiny round holes in tobacco-leaves, so small indeed that they had escaped observation until the havoc wrought awakened alarm. The pest tunnels its way through the leaf, irrespective of strength or flavour, even the Trichinopoli is not beyond its taste. And it multiplies so rapidly that much valuable leaf is soon rendered worthless for smoking. Its method of working has suggested the name of weevil. The Indian tobacco industry, therefore, has now to reckon with a new and unscrupulous competitor in the form of the ‘cigar weevil.’ It would be a boon to long-suffering humanity and a triumph for the bacteriologist if he could manage to set one tribe against another of these evil-doers, to their mutual destruction. If they are like living things in the natural world they will have their foes and their struggles for existence. The old lady’s belief that microbes have pink eyes and ravenous teeth may not be perfectly accurate, yet judging from their insidious attacks on unsuspecting mortals we are warranted in assuming that they have other very effective means of combat. The spectacle of internecine warfare going on in their little world, as revealed under the microscope, would afford from its novelty an exhibition worth going miles to see.

The tobacco-plant is not now cultivated in England. James the First thought it shameful that so pernicious a plant should be permitted to take root in our rich and fruitful soil, and caused an edict to be issued prohibiting its cultivation within the British Islands. The King’s apologists find reason for the prohibition in his Majesty’s concern for the interests of the young colony of tobacco planters settled in Virginia. Be this as it may, Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) on economic grounds condemns the enactment, saying, ‘Home cultivation of tobacco has on this account most absurdly been prohibited through the greater part of Europe which necessarily gives a monopoly to the countries where its cultivation is allowed.’

To the impoverished treasury of Charles the Second its importation was made to yield revenue at a rate equivalent to about thirty shillings a pound weight of our present money, and through the agency of his ministers enacted in ‘Laws and Regulations concerning Tobacco’ (15 Car. II. c. 7. 12. Par. II. c. 34.) that, ‘Tobacco is not to be planted in England on a forfeiture of 40s. for every rood of ground thus planted.’ This restriction however was ‘not to extend to the planting of tobacco in Physic Gardens, in quantities not exceeding half a pole, and also, on forfeiture of £10 for every rood of ground.’ These prohibitory measures remained in force until April 1886, when English farming being in in extremis the Government granted permission to grow the plant in the United Kingdom, under certain precautions and restrictions for the purpose of safe-guarding the revenue. Several land-owners in Kent, Norfolk and Essex, tried their prentice hand in the new husbandry, notably, Messrs. James Carter & Company of Bromley, whose first crop seemed to give fair promise of future success. Their sanguine expectations however were short-lived. What with hampering restrictions on the one hand and our fickle climate on the other, it soon became too apparent that English agriculturists must not look to the Indian weed for the much needed succour. The crops raised proved to be unmarketable. The cultivation of the tobacco-plant in these islands is no longer authorized.

The Home manufacture of cigars from foreign leaf however increased by leaps and bounds, and now affords remunerative employment for many thousands of work-people in London alone. There are also large tobacco factories in the chief seats of industry and commerce throughout the kingdom. This is due in great measure to the heavy tax levied upon foreign made cigars imported into this country, namely, six shillings on every pound weight—i.e., double the sum charged on tobacco in the leaf. This great difference would seem to afford the unscrupulous an incentive to fabricate spurious high-priced cigars under foreign names. Looked at in this light it may be a question worth the consideration of the Board of Customs whether or not it would be well to lessen the difference between the two rates of duty—to raise the one and lower the other—with advantage to both the consumer and the revenue.

Our gossip about the Indian weed may now be brought to a close with a few words about its co-partner, the pipe. For even tobacco-pipes, like all other products of men’s ingenuity, awaken interest all the more engrossing when little else remains to tell the story of those who made them and used them. They carry the imagination back to those shadowy palaces of the Incas and Aztecs, where equally shadowy potentates smoked out of pipes made of precious metals, or of highly polished and richly-gilt wood. Pipes indeed, present features highly interesting to a much larger class than to professed ethnologists. The wide region over which they are found, buried in mounds and tumuli extending from the north-west coast of America to the plains of Patagonia, tell us how universal was the habit of smoking on that vast continent; while similarity of structure suggests a common origin. Curious specimens have been found in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, and in the great Mississippi valley, varying from the simplest forms made out of baked clay with a plain cylinder or urn, to others of a class, very uniform in type, cut out of porphyry in a single piece. These latter have a slightly convey base measuring about four inches in length, and one inch broad, with the bowl on the centre. A fine hole pierces the pipe from end to end of the base to the bottom of the bowl, the opposite end being obviously designed for the smoker to hold in the hand. Others are remarkable for a fine display of artistic skill in the carving of birds, mammals, reptiles and human heads, often fanciful and grotesque, but always vigorously expressed. In Mexico elaborately moulded and ornamented pipes have been found, along with others of a type almost identical with our common clay pipe. And in British Columbia pipes are occasionally met with in the possession of the native Indians, moulded and carved by themselves in almost every variety of fantastic form, and with tracery that would do no discredit to modern art. These are for the most part made of blue slate-clay, and have intricate pierced work carried through the tube. In old Indian grave-mounds Messrs. Squier & Davis, in the course of their explorations in 1846-7, found pipes cut into the form of human heads, the features on which were singularly truthful and expressive; and what was still more remarkable was their strikingly Mongolian type, a circumstance which lends support to the hypothesis that in the remote past the American continent was peopled from the eastern part of Asia. Some of the pipes found in these mounds represented animals peculiar to the lower latitudes. On one pipe the otter is shown in the attitude of holding a fish in its mouth: on another the heron has seized a fish; the hawk is grasping a small bird, and with its beak is in the act of tearing it to pieces. Almost every bird and animal common to the country is found boldly carved on the pipes of the aborigines of America.

The material for pipes mostly sought after by the natives is the beautiful and easily wrought red sandstone of the Coteau des Prairies. The calumet, which plays an important part in their civil and religious observances, is made from this source, chiefly on account of the legend respecting its origin and the origin of smoking, mentioned in the first chapter. One can hardly help seeing in the handiwork shown in the make of these curious smoking instruments points of contact with the social condition and intelligence of the makers. From the short nostril tube of the Caribs to the feathered peace-pipe of the continental tribes is an advancement in the social scale, such as we see in the difference between the hole in the ground for a bowl made by natives of central India, who use a leaf for a tube, and the richly adorned chibouk of the Turk. This view affords us a glimpse of primitive man struggling to adapt his surroundings to his needs, according to the degree of intelligence to which he has attained.

The ordinary pipe so extensively used in England is made from white clay, found chiefly at Purbeck, in Dorsetshire, and Newton Abbot, in Devonshire. But, in recent years, the heath briar-root of France for pipes has come largely into use. Perhaps no material for pipe bowls stands in higher favour than meerschaum—a fine, white clay consisting chiefly of magnesia, silica and water. The best kinds are found in pits in the Crimea and along the peninsula of Heracleati in Asia Minor. It is soft and porous: the finest specimens are almost transparent. When first taken out of the pits it makes lather like soap-suds. The workmen employed in digging it up say that if left for long lying about it forms itself into froth. Thus the foam of the sea of past ages, driven by the winds into sheltered cavities and hollow places of the earth, comes at last to render service to St Nicotine; and in our meditative moods is brought vividly before the mind the fabled birth of the goddess of love, laughter and beauty. According to the old Greek myth it was just off the coast of Paphos (Cyprus) that Aphrodite arose from amid sea-foam that covered the mutilated body of old, sleepy, Uranus, who in a drowsy moment had rolled down the cliff into the sea. Springing thus into being she was seen by the three daughters of Zeus (the seasons) who carried her to Olympus, and all the gods admired her for her beauty. There are connoisseurs who fancy that the meerschaum pipes coming from this region impart to the tobacco a peculiarly delicate flavour. Constantinople is the great mart for the sale of meerschaum, as Vienna is for its manufacture into pipes. The material is so extremely difficult to manipulate that the uncertainty attending its successful manufacture gives a high value to the better kinds. The meerschaum is soaked in water for twenty-four hours and then turned in a lathe. In this process the clay often proves to be too porous, and is on this account rejected: this will happen as many as seven times out of ten.