Essay - "A New Tobacco" - ( a great little read! )

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May 31, 2012
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As writ by:

J.B. Priestly

circa 1929.
Extracted from The Balconinny

printed 1931 by Methuen and Co, London
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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

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?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
988286


photograph circa 1930

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Note:

this transcription was provided by MarkH circa 2001

via:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.smokers.pipes/IyFXaXTI3ek/vv9H5NvRb_cJ
Thank you for taking the time Mark,

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!
:puffy:

 
May 31, 2012
4,295
34
Errata:
Surname misspelled,

should be Priestley.
1929 date incorrect,

first appearance of this essay was via

Saturday Review, 144 (13 August 1927), pp.216–17
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_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Addendum:

:​
Morleysson said:
"The late British author, J.B. Priestley, for whom I have a great reverence and respect as a writer and pipesmoker,

offered this musing in one of his essays:
"Opening a new tin of tobacco is one of the lasting small pleasures of life".​
Is it true, and, if so why do you think it is true?
For me, even when I am opening yet another tin of a favorite blend, I am filled with anticipation. A new tin, filled with the scents from fresh tobaccos, is like a fresh notebook, waiting to record great, and the trivial, moments while smoking. There is potential in that tin or tub for each and every smoke to be a reminder of something special, something unique. Or a room of fragrant lumber to be transformed into something very utilitarian, or sawdust. While we expect some consistency, there isn't a 'cookie cutter', sameness in each tin. Tobacco is a product taken from life, and living products are subject to variations through the year and by locations. Some years richer than others; some more or less fragrant and flavorful than another year or location. And, it is the same, year after year, tin or tub after tin or tub. Opening a new tin is a moment filled with auspicious beginnings, a moment to which we cling until the last shred of tobacco is smoked.
How might you envision this ritual of opening a new tin or tub?"
:puffy:

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,570
27,079
Carmel Valley, CA
Brilliant! Thank you so much for posting that. It especially rings bells for me as I have been a long time English or Balkan smoker, and am trying to get into VaPers and straight Virginias.

 

deathmetal

Lifer
Jul 21, 2015
7,714
32
Lovely to read something that well-written in contrast to contemporary functionalist prose. Also would love to experience this Dreadnought Plug someday. The name alone raises eyebrows in an excited way...

 
Mar 1, 2014
3,646
4,916
I'm actually surprised at how much language from 87 years ago is consistent with what I've seen on these forums.

But then again, for all I know one of the people posting here could be the author.

 

pappymac

Lifer
Feb 26, 2015
3,273
4,269
I'm actually surprised at how much language from 87 years ago is consistent with what I've seen on these forums.

But then again, for all I know one of the people posting here could be the author.
It's an indication of how thoughtful and literate pipe smokers are compared to others.

 
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