As writ by:
J.B. Priestly
circa 1929.
Extracted from The Balconinny
printed 1931 by Methuen and Co, London
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The best thing that has happened here these last few days has been the arrival,
through the post, of two pound tins of tobacco.
Not that these were a gift;
no such luck comes my way.
I often receive copies of new books from publishers,
yet nobody ever sends me a review tin of new tobacco.
Why is that?
I am far more interested in new brands of smoking mixtures than I am
in new samples of poetry or fiction mixtures.
Why is it that people are so lavish with books, of which there are
far, far too many in the world, and so mean about other things?
Why cannot we have a weekly paper that reviews everything and
not merely books ~ After all, who really cares about books?
Let us have a paper that notices all the new things-
wine, tobacco, hats, chairs, typewriters, gramophones, pianolas, and so on and so forth.
Some of the things, of course, would not be really new;
the wine, for example, would be old, but fresh samples would be sent in from time to time
in order that the fortunate reviewer (for we will still call him that and not "taster") might call
attention once more to its virtues.
On such a paper I would readily engage to do the pipe-tobacco column,
and do it too in the good old style:
instead of books in gaudy jackets bristling with publishers' lies!
Now the tobacconists from whom I ordered these two pound tins steer
clear of the bounce and brag and downright lying that is all too
common in the literary, theatrical, musical and other worlds of today.
They write me a modest little letter, in which they remark, "It is not
for us to sing the praises of this tobacco, but we think you will find
that it has an unusually fine flavour, and it is absolutely pure";
which is, after all, more than you could say of some of our recent
attempts at literature, which are described as if they were the very
summit of man's achievement on this planet.
But what was I doing to be ordering tobacco in this way?
The fact is, I made a most romantic discovery.
For some time now, believing that a man should have some
object in life, I have been looking for a pure Virginia, a quest that
sounds, I think, sufficiently romantic in itself.
Like many of my idle day-dreaming egotistical tribe, I am a heavy pipe-smoker,
having long found it necessary to stupefy myself with tobacco in order not to feel
too acutely the pangs of injured vanity, the shame of poverty and obscurity,
and the constant prickings of a nonconformist conscience.
However, I will not apologize for my pipe, for man, being terribly
burdened with a consciousness, must dope himself in one way or
another, and if he is not smoking or drinking he is making illicit
love or denouncing something or somebody, delivering a message to all
thinking men, passing unnecessary laws, drugging himself with a sense
of power; so that it seems to me that my way of escaping the tedium of
being conscious or the pain of thought is perhaps the least guilty,
for smoky and blackened though I may be, I am at least amiable,
puffing away.
Now my taste in tobacco inclines towards the Oriental. I delight in
your full mixtures that are dark and heavily fragrant with Latakia and
Perique, mixtures that hold the gorgeous East in fee.
There was a time - you may say it was during my decadent period - when,
determined to live only for the splendid moment, I smoked Latakia alone,
like one of Ouida's heroes. Nor can I actually say that it seemed to do me any
harm - though even tobacconists, who must make a handsome profit out of
the stuff, cautioned me against it and regarded me as a chef might who
was told that I ate nothing but Christmas pudding - but it is supposed
to be bad for the heart and it is certainly rather cloying.
Since then, I have tried innumerable tobaccos, but have usually kept to the
full-flavoured mixtures that have one foot at least in Asia.
Nevertheless I have always felt (prompted perhaps by some Puritan
ancestor) that a man who smoked as much as I do should content himself
with a pure Virginia.
You notice that I do not give the adjective an initial capital:
every sensible pipe-smoker will know why: pure Virginia tells you exactly what
I wanted to find the shape of the thing in my thoughts, and 'Pure Virginia' does not.
For some time, then, this has been my quest, undertaken without any flourish of
trumpets, pursued quietly yet indefatigably.
Unlike so many contemporaries of mine in authorship, bright but disillusioned
fellows, I have had an object in life, and I do not hesitate to say
that it has sustained me through many periods of great trial.
It has also taken me into a great many queer little tobacconists' shops and
filled my pouch and pipe with some very foul-smelling and evil-tasting stuff.
If ever a man deserved the freedom of the city from Richmond, Va.,
merely for smoking his pipe,
then I am that man.
But there is, of course, plenty of respectable Virginia tobacco in the world,
and I tried a number of brands that were fit to be smoked but that always
stopped short of perfection, being too mild and monotonous, too heavy
and parching, or, like the Clown's ginger, hot in the mouth.
Once or twice, even after a week's industrious smoking, I imagined that I had
found what I wanted at last, that I need go no farther, yet always my
fancy went straying on, discovering that here was not perfection; and
I would go back to my mixtures, never keeping to the same one long, or
I would make further experiments with Virginia.
Such was the position when we motored back from the north the other week.
I was still hopeful but a little subdued, beginning to trifle
with disillusion or to turn Platonic and console myself with the
thought of ideal Plugs and Navy Cuts.
Now comes the stroke of fate or chance that is to be found in all
good romantic narratives. We broke our journey down the Great North
Road at Doncaster, and there I discovered that I had no tobacco at all.
I did not regard this as a real opportunity for research but simply as the
domestic crisis so familiar to all smokers, and I hurried across to the nearest
tobacconist's as any common puffer of pipes, your nearest ounce-packet man,
might have done.
The shop was rather small and in no way to be distinguished from the ordinary.
It happened, however, that the assistant was engaged when I entered and that gave me an opportunity,
all too rare in these shops, to look round, or 'browse', as they say in the book-shops.
There was time for the mere hasty desire for fuel to be shredded away and clarified,
for the instincts of the connoisseur, the collector, the explorer, to assert themselves.
I cast about for a Virginia that held out the slightest promise, and when the
assistant, who was a middle-aged man and not the all too frequent
contemptuous female, came to attend to me, I asked him a few
questions.
The result was that I departed, sceptically, I must confess,
carrying a quarter-pound tin of tobacco that he strongly
recommended, a fine-cut rather dark Virginia.
This tobacco is all that he said it was, very cool, sweet but not cloying
(and therefore unlike those American plugs that seem to glisten with sugar
and are like toffee), fairly lasting in spite of its being fine-cut; so good indeed
that, as you know, I have just ordered two pounds of it and am puffing
away at them this very moment.
I believe that I have found the tobacco I have long been looking for,
but that does not mean that I shall necessarily stick to it.
I have been told over and over again that it is better to keep to one brand
of tobacco, and I am always meeting men who have "never smoked
anything else for thirty years, y'know" and never fail to admire their
constancy, while admitting that I am the very Casanova of pipe-smokers.
There is, however, something to be said for this chopping and changing.
If you are for ever smoking something new,
trying another brand or returning to it to see how it stands in
comparison with the last you had, you contrive to raise what is
generally a mere habit into a conscious pleasure.
Most smokers - and this is certainly true of cigarette smokers - have what
might be called a negative attitude and not a positive one towards the practice,
by which I mean that they smoke only in order to free themselves from the
restlessness and dissatisfaction they feel when not smoking.
Now I do not say that I, who am equally a creature of the habit, would not feel
such restlessness and dissatisfaction if I were deprived of my tobacco,
but I do say that when I am smoking I am not merely, as it were,
brought up to zero from a point below it.
I am tasting and enjoying the tobacco all the time, fully conscious of its defects
and excellences; and this is because I am for ever making experiments.
And is it not strange that so little has been written about tobacco and
the adventures of the smoker?
I never come across anything on the subject except those general eulogies
of the weed quoted so often by tobacconists, and purely technical treatises
that mean nothing to people outside the trade.
It is just as if all statements about books could be divided into observations
such as that by Carlyle comparing a library to a university, and remarks about
printing, proof-reading and binding.
Why does not some enthusiastic but critical smoker artfully
describe his traffic with the pipe, his nights of Latakia, Perique,
Virginia?
When so much is ending in it,
why cannot we have a volume or
two on smoke?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
photograph circa 1930
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Note:
this transcription was provided by MarkH circa 2001
via:
it is much appreciated!
This essay is a very fine and enjoyable read with too many lines for me to highlight,
but the name and description of Dreadnought Plug summoned much joy!
::
J.B. Priestly
circa 1929.
Extracted from The Balconinny
printed 1931 by Methuen and Co, London
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The best thing that has happened here these last few days has been the arrival,
through the post, of two pound tins of tobacco.
Not that these were a gift;
no such luck comes my way.
I often receive copies of new books from publishers,
yet nobody ever sends me a review tin of new tobacco.
Why is that?
I am far more interested in new brands of smoking mixtures than I am
in new samples of poetry or fiction mixtures.
Why is it that people are so lavish with books, of which there are
far, far too many in the world, and so mean about other things?
Why cannot we have a weekly paper that reviews everything and
not merely books ~ After all, who really cares about books?
Let us have a paper that notices all the new things-
wine, tobacco, hats, chairs, typewriters, gramophones, pianolas, and so on and so forth.
Some of the things, of course, would not be really new;
the wine, for example, would be old, but fresh samples would be sent in from time to time
in order that the fortunate reviewer (for we will still call him that and not "taster") might call
attention once more to its virtues.
On such a paper I would readily engage to do the pipe-tobacco column,
and do it too in the good old style:
'Among the younger Virginias, Smith's Light is rapidly,' etc.;
'Brown's is quickly proving itself a mixture to be reckoned with';
'Once you have taken up Dreadnought Plug, you cannot put it down - or keep it down.'
What a change it would be to have my table filled with strange bright tins of tobacco'Brown's is quickly proving itself a mixture to be reckoned with';
'Once you have taken up Dreadnought Plug, you cannot put it down - or keep it down.'
instead of books in gaudy jackets bristling with publishers' lies!
Now the tobacconists from whom I ordered these two pound tins steer
clear of the bounce and brag and downright lying that is all too
common in the literary, theatrical, musical and other worlds of today.
They write me a modest little letter, in which they remark, "It is not
for us to sing the praises of this tobacco, but we think you will find
that it has an unusually fine flavour, and it is absolutely pure";
which is, after all, more than you could say of some of our recent
attempts at literature, which are described as if they were the very
summit of man's achievement on this planet.
But what was I doing to be ordering tobacco in this way?
The fact is, I made a most romantic discovery.
For some time now, believing that a man should have some
object in life, I have been looking for a pure Virginia, a quest that
sounds, I think, sufficiently romantic in itself.
Like many of my idle day-dreaming egotistical tribe, I am a heavy pipe-smoker,
having long found it necessary to stupefy myself with tobacco in order not to feel
too acutely the pangs of injured vanity, the shame of poverty and obscurity,
and the constant prickings of a nonconformist conscience.
However, I will not apologize for my pipe, for man, being terribly
burdened with a consciousness, must dope himself in one way or
another, and if he is not smoking or drinking he is making illicit
love or denouncing something or somebody, delivering a message to all
thinking men, passing unnecessary laws, drugging himself with a sense
of power; so that it seems to me that my way of escaping the tedium of
being conscious or the pain of thought is perhaps the least guilty,
for smoky and blackened though I may be, I am at least amiable,
puffing away.
Now my taste in tobacco inclines towards the Oriental. I delight in
your full mixtures that are dark and heavily fragrant with Latakia and
Perique, mixtures that hold the gorgeous East in fee.
There was a time - you may say it was during my decadent period - when,
determined to live only for the splendid moment, I smoked Latakia alone,
like one of Ouida's heroes. Nor can I actually say that it seemed to do me any
harm - though even tobacconists, who must make a handsome profit out of
the stuff, cautioned me against it and regarded me as a chef might who
was told that I ate nothing but Christmas pudding - but it is supposed
to be bad for the heart and it is certainly rather cloying.
Since then, I have tried innumerable tobaccos, but have usually kept to the
full-flavoured mixtures that have one foot at least in Asia.
Nevertheless I have always felt (prompted perhaps by some Puritan
ancestor) that a man who smoked as much as I do should content himself
with a pure Virginia.
You notice that I do not give the adjective an initial capital:
every sensible pipe-smoker will know why: pure Virginia tells you exactly what
I wanted to find the shape of the thing in my thoughts, and 'Pure Virginia' does not.
For some time, then, this has been my quest, undertaken without any flourish of
trumpets, pursued quietly yet indefatigably.
Unlike so many contemporaries of mine in authorship, bright but disillusioned
fellows, I have had an object in life, and I do not hesitate to say
that it has sustained me through many periods of great trial.
It has also taken me into a great many queer little tobacconists' shops and
filled my pouch and pipe with some very foul-smelling and evil-tasting stuff.
If ever a man deserved the freedom of the city from Richmond, Va.,
merely for smoking his pipe,
then I am that man.
But there is, of course, plenty of respectable Virginia tobacco in the world,
and I tried a number of brands that were fit to be smoked but that always
stopped short of perfection, being too mild and monotonous, too heavy
and parching, or, like the Clown's ginger, hot in the mouth.
Once or twice, even after a week's industrious smoking, I imagined that I had
found what I wanted at last, that I need go no farther, yet always my
fancy went straying on, discovering that here was not perfection; and
I would go back to my mixtures, never keeping to the same one long, or
I would make further experiments with Virginia.
Such was the position when we motored back from the north the other week.
I was still hopeful but a little subdued, beginning to trifle
with disillusion or to turn Platonic and console myself with the
thought of ideal Plugs and Navy Cuts.
Now comes the stroke of fate or chance that is to be found in all
good romantic narratives. We broke our journey down the Great North
Road at Doncaster, and there I discovered that I had no tobacco at all.
I did not regard this as a real opportunity for research but simply as the
domestic crisis so familiar to all smokers, and I hurried across to the nearest
tobacconist's as any common puffer of pipes, your nearest ounce-packet man,
might have done.
The shop was rather small and in no way to be distinguished from the ordinary.
It happened, however, that the assistant was engaged when I entered and that gave me an opportunity,
all too rare in these shops, to look round, or 'browse', as they say in the book-shops.
There was time for the mere hasty desire for fuel to be shredded away and clarified,
for the instincts of the connoisseur, the collector, the explorer, to assert themselves.
I cast about for a Virginia that held out the slightest promise, and when the
assistant, who was a middle-aged man and not the all too frequent
contemptuous female, came to attend to me, I asked him a few
questions.
The result was that I departed, sceptically, I must confess,
carrying a quarter-pound tin of tobacco that he strongly
recommended, a fine-cut rather dark Virginia.
This tobacco is all that he said it was, very cool, sweet but not cloying
(and therefore unlike those American plugs that seem to glisten with sugar
and are like toffee), fairly lasting in spite of its being fine-cut; so good indeed
that, as you know, I have just ordered two pounds of it and am puffing
away at them this very moment.
I believe that I have found the tobacco I have long been looking for,
but that does not mean that I shall necessarily stick to it.
I have been told over and over again that it is better to keep to one brand
of tobacco, and I am always meeting men who have "never smoked
anything else for thirty years, y'know" and never fail to admire their
constancy, while admitting that I am the very Casanova of pipe-smokers.
There is, however, something to be said for this chopping and changing.
If you are for ever smoking something new,
trying another brand or returning to it to see how it stands in
comparison with the last you had, you contrive to raise what is
generally a mere habit into a conscious pleasure.
Most smokers - and this is certainly true of cigarette smokers - have what
might be called a negative attitude and not a positive one towards the practice,
by which I mean that they smoke only in order to free themselves from the
restlessness and dissatisfaction they feel when not smoking.
Now I do not say that I, who am equally a creature of the habit, would not feel
such restlessness and dissatisfaction if I were deprived of my tobacco,
but I do say that when I am smoking I am not merely, as it were,
brought up to zero from a point below it.
I am tasting and enjoying the tobacco all the time, fully conscious of its defects
and excellences; and this is because I am for ever making experiments.
And is it not strange that so little has been written about tobacco and
the adventures of the smoker?
I never come across anything on the subject except those general eulogies
of the weed quoted so often by tobacconists, and purely technical treatises
that mean nothing to people outside the trade.
It is just as if all statements about books could be divided into observations
such as that by Carlyle comparing a library to a university, and remarks about
printing, proof-reading and binding.
Why does not some enthusiastic but critical smoker artfully
describe his traffic with the pipe, his nights of Latakia, Perique,
Virginia?
When so much is ending in it,
why cannot we have a volume or
two on smoke?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
photograph circa 1930
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Note:
this transcription was provided by MarkH circa 2001
via:
Thank you for taking the time Mark,https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.smokers.pipes/IyFXaXTI3ek/vv9H5NvRb_cJ
it is much appreciated!
This essay is a very fine and enjoyable read with too many lines for me to highlight,
but the name and description of Dreadnought Plug summoned much joy!
::