Pipe cleaners

The only Christmas presents William Faulkner would accept from his family were pipe cleaners.

Faulkner's stepson, Malcolm Franklin, wrote in his book Bitterweeds: Life with William Faulkner at Rowan Oak that his gifts "consisted of little bundles of pipe cleaners, some in assorted colors, others snow-white. There were all kinds of pipe cleaners in various bundles clinging precariously to the branches of the tree, each with its little tag. There was one package of Dill pipe cleaners, which Faulkner liked particularly... If he received any other gift he would carefully take it to his office and there it would remain unopened." Why the great writer would only accept these presents remains a mystery.

via Huffington Post

Pipe lore: Davy Crockett's bear

David Crockett had a pet bear that would sit over on the other side of the fireplace from him and smoke a pipe just like Crockett until bedtime.  He finally got so civilized that he took whooping cough and died from it.  Crockett never did forgive the preacher for refusing to give that a bear a Christian funeral.

--J. Frank Dobie

excerpt from "Bears Are Intelligent People"

from Old-Time Tales of Texas

Pipe lore: lunting

lunting:  the act of walking and smoking a pipe

via Obsolete Word of the Day

from The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia (1876, John MacTaggart)

Pipe lore: shot with his own pipe

December 30 of 1913

Isaac Bishop of Eagle township in Ohio was loading his clay pipe with tobacco after a very fine meal that his wife had prepared. Now the lights were kind of dim and he was reclining in his chair and he didn't notice that not only did he load tobacco, but he also loaded a 32 caliber cartridge into his pipe. He then brought the match to the pipe and of course the bullet went off and went through his cheek. He ended up with a scar on his left cheek for the rest of his life.

That must have been a fairly capacious pipe. The .32 ACP and .32 S&W are both nearly an inch long, and the old .32 rimfire is over an inch long.  In any case, I think we can safely draw the conclusion from this that one should not store one's ammunition and pipe tobacco together.

Heard on The Useless Information Podcast.

Pipe lore: "a pipe or two"

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.’

—Jerome K. Jerome, from Three Men in a Boat (1889)

Pipe lore: "the chimney of perpetual hospitality"

THE MARRIAGE OF THE ARTS

On Sunday, the 26I of August 1621, a comedy, entitled Technogamia, or the Marriage of the Arts, written by Barton Holiday, M. A., of Christ’s Church, Oxford, was performed by students of the same college, before James I at Woodstock. As a typical specimen of the allegorical piece of the olden time, this drama is not unworthy of notice. The dramatis personæ; consist of Polites, a magistrate; Physica, and her daughter Astronomia; Ethicus, with his wife Economa; Geographicus, a traveller, with his servant Phantastes; Logicus, and his servant Phlegmaticus; Grammaticus, a schoolmaster, and his usher Choler; Poeta, and his servant Melancholia; Medicus, and his servant Sanguis; Historia; Rhetorica; Geometres; Arithmetica; Musica; Causidicus; Magus, and his wife Astrologia; Physiognomus and Cheiromantes, two cheating gipsies. All these are attired in goodly and appropriate fashion. Astronomia, for instance, wearing ‘white gloves and pumps, an azure gown, and a mantle seeded with stars; on her head a tiara, bearing on the front the seven stars, and behind stars promiscuously; on the right side, the sun; on the left, the moon.’ Astronomia is the brilliant heroine of the play--the heaven to which Geographicus aspires to travel, of which Geometres endeavours to take the measure, in which Poeta desires to repose. On the other hand, Arithmetica has a more natural passion for Geometres, and Historia anxiously wishes to be united to Poeta. Grammaticus, in an amorous mood, solicits Rhetorica, whose flowers bloom only for Logicus.

These conflicting attachments cause great confusion in the commonwealth of learning; each of the enamoured personages endeavouring to obtain the object of his or her affections. Polites assists Geographicus; Magus employs his occult art in favour of Geometres; while the Nine Muses, as in duty bound, assist Poeta. Polites can with difficulty keep the peace. The gipsies, Physiognomus and Cheiromantes, pick Poeta’s pocket, but find nothing therein but a copy of Anacreon and a manuscript translation of Horace. Physiognomus is appropriately branded on the face, that all men may know him to be a rogue; and Cheiromantes receives the same punishment on the hand; and the two, with Magus and Astrologia, who had attempted to strangle Astronomia, are justly banished the commonwealth of the Sciences. Then Geographicus, discharging his servant Phantastes, marries Astronomia; Grammaticus espouses Rhetorica; Melancholia obtains the hand of Musica, and takes Phantastes into his service; Logicus, old and heartless, being left without a mate, becomes an assistant to Polites; and thus peace and harmony is restored among the Sciences. There is considerable ingenuity displayed in the invention of this plot, the dialogue is witty, and the professors of the sciences represented are humorously satirised.

One would have supposed, that the pedantic spirit of James would have been delighted with this production, but such was not the case. Anthony h Wood tells us that the king ‘offered several times to withdraw, but being persuaded by some of those that were near him to have patience till it were ended, lest the young men should be discouraged, [he] adventured it, though much against his will.’ And the Cambridge students, pleased that the Oxford drama did not interest the king, produced the following epigram:

‘At Christ-church marriage, played before the king, Lest these learned mates should want an offering, The king, himself, did offer--What, I pray? He offered twice or thrice to go away.’

It is not difficult to perceive what it was that displeased the king. Phlegmaticus was dressed ‘in a pale russet suit, on the hack whereof was represented one filling a pipe of tobacco, his hat beset round about with tobacco-pipes, with a can of drink hanging at his girdle.’ He entered, exclaiming: ‘Fore Jove, most meteorological tobacco! Pure Indian! not a jot sophisticated; a tobacco-pipe is the chimney of perpetual hospitality. Fore Jove, most metropolitan tobacco.’ And then, rather unphlegmatically, he broke out into the following song:

Tobacco’s a Musician,
And in a pipe delighteth;
It descends in a close,
Through the organs of the nose,
With a relish that inviteth.
This makes me sing, So ho, so ho, boys,
Ho, boys, sound I loudly;
Earth ne’er did breed
Such a jovial weed,
Whereof to boast so proudly.

Tobacco is a Lawyer,
His pipes do love long cases;
When our brains it enters,
Our feet do make indentures;
While we seal with stamping paces,
This makes me sing, &c.

Tobacco’s a Physician,
Good both for sound and sickly;
‘Tis a hot perfume,
That expels cold rheum,
And makes it flow down quickly.
This makes me sing, &c.

Tobacco is a Traveller,
Come from the Indies hither;
It passed sea and land,
Ere it came to my hand,
And ‘scaped the wind and weather,
This makes me sing, &c.

Tobacco is a Critic,
That still old paper turneth,
Whose labour and care,
Is as smoke in the air,
That ascends from a rag when it burneth.
This makes me sing, &c.

Tobacco’s an Ignis-fatuus,
A fat and fiery vapour,
That leads men about,
Till the fire be out,
Consuming like a taper.
This makes me sing, &c.

Tobacco is a Whiffler,
And cries huff snuff with fury,
His pipe’s his club and link,
He’s the wiser that does drink;
Thus armed I fear not a fury.
This makes me sing, So ho, so ho, boys,
Ho, boys, sound I loudly;
Earth ne’er did breed
Such a jovial weed,
Whereof to boast so proudly.

The royal author of the Counterblast to Tobacco must have felt himself insulted by such a song. Ben Jenson was wiser, when, in his Gipsies’ Meta-morphosis, he abused ‘the devil’s own weed,’ in language totally unpresentable at the present day; and the delighted monarch ordered the filthy, slangy, low play, to be performed three several times in his kingly presence.

From Chamber's Book of Days.  Thanks to Brer via email.

Pipe quote: C.S. Lewis

“I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”

--C.S. Lewis

Pipe quote: William Makepeace Thackeray

“The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.”

--William Makepeace Thackeray

Pipe lore: No Smoking

[Albert Lewis, C. S. Lewis' father] was a master of the anecdote, a fund of improbable stories, many of which for him epitomized the tragicomedy of what it meant to be Irish. One of the more bizarre 'wheezes' (as he habitually termed these stories and observations) concerned an occasion when he was travelling in an old-fashioned train of the kind which had no corridor, so that the passengers were imprisoned in their compartments for as long as the train was moving. He was not alone in the compartment. He found himself opposite one other character, a respectable-looking farmer in a tweed suit whose agitated manner was to be explained by the demands of nature. When the train had rattled on for a further few miles, and showed no signs of stopping at a station where a lavatory might be available, the gentleman pulled down his trousers, squatted on the floor of the railway carriage and defecated. When this operation was complete, and the gentleman, fully clothed, was once more seated opposite Albert Lewis, the smell in the compartment was so powerful as to be almost nauseating. To vary, if not to drown the odour, Albert Lewis got a pipe from his pocket and began to light it. But at that point the stranger opposite, who had not spoken one word the entire journey, leaned forward and censoriously tapped a sign on the window which read NO SMOKING. For C. S. Lewis, this 'wheeze' of his father's always enshrined in some insane way a truth about Northern Ireland and what it was like to live there.

--A.N. Wilson

from C.S. Lewis: A Biography

Pipe lore: Slow talker Eero Saarinen

Eero Saarinen was a Finnish architect who lived from 1910-61.

Saarinen, an exceptionally slow talker, was being interviewed for a television program. The allotted time was rapidly running out, and the anxious interviewer ventured to ask Saarinen if he could speak just a little faster. "No, sir," replied the architect, casually lighting up his pipe. "But," he continued, more slowly than ever, "I could say less."

Compare to Philip Marlowe in thoughtful when you are not thinking.

Pipe lore: Israel Putnam and the powder keg duel

Israel Putnam was an American army general during the U.S. Revolution, and previously served at a lower rank during the French and Indian Wars.

During the French and Indian War Putnam was challenged to a duel by a British major whom he had insulted. Realizing that he would stand little chance in a duel with pistols, Putnam invited the major to his tent and suggested an alternative trial of honor. The two men were sitting on small powder kegs, into each of which Putnam had inserted a slow-burning fuse. The first to squirm or move from his seat would be the loser. As the fuses burned, the major showed increasing signs of anxiety, while Putnam continued to smoke his pipe with a casual air. Seeing the spectators gradually disappear from the tent to escape the impending explosion, the major finally leaped from his keg, acknowledging Putnam as the victor. Only then did Putnam reveal that the kegs contained onions, not gunpowder.

Cigar lore: Count Gottlieb von Haeseler in good company

This isn't actually a pipe story, but cigar. Still, I liked it and I'll include it. Von Haeseler was a German general who lived from 1836-1919.

Count Haeseler was sitting in a railway waiting room, enjoying a cigar. The room's other occupant, a young lieutenant, was not quite so comfortable. "You shouldn't be smoking that cabbage-leaf of yours in good company," he said, offering Haeseler one of his own cigars. The count accepted it, slipped it into his pocket, and continued to smoke his own. "Sir, why are you not smoking my cigar?" demanded the lieutenant angrily. "I think I'll wait, as you suggest, until I'm in good company," Haeseler replied.

Pipe lore: Leonhard Euler's last words

Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician who lived from 1707-83.

After having amused himself one afternoon calculating the laws of ascent of balloons--on his slate, as usual--Euler dined with Lexell (a mathematical colleague) and his family. "Herschel's Planet" (Uranus) was a recent discovery. Euler outlined the calculation of its orbit. A little later he asked that his grandson be brought in. While playing with the child and drinking tea he suffered a stroke. The pipe dropped from his hand, and with the words, "I die," Euler ceased to live and calculate.

The Anspessade

click to enlarge

I don't remember exactly the book I scanned this from; I think it was a book on French history titled something like The World of Louis XIV. This graphic, listed as "ranks and uniforms of Louis XIV's army," is notable to us because of the picture on the third row center. The anspessade apparently has a pipe as part of his uniform.

Pipe lore: Emerson and Carlyle

I have been re-reading a collection of anecdotes recently and have come across a couple of pipe-related anecdotes. I will be filing these under the category of "pipe lore."

At one point in his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson traveled to Europe to meet his poetic idols: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle.

Among the sages who Emerson sought out on his visit to Europe was the notoriously reticent and difficult Thomas Carlyle. He called on Carlyle one evening and was given a pipe, while the host took one himself. They sat together smoking in perfect silence until bedtime, and on parting shook hands most cordially, congratulating each other on the fruitful time they had enjoyed together.