Pipes 



153 



Every precaution was taken by smokers to ensure the 

 perfect colouring of their meerschaums. The bowl 

 was covered with a little coat of wash-leather, or 

 swathed in flannel to prevent it being scratched or 

 heated by the hand — fatal to perfect colouring — and 

 the cleaning was entrusted to competent hands only. 



In 1 8 19 Sir Walter Scott wrote to his eldest son: 

 ' As you hussars smoke, I will give you one of my 

 pipes, but you must let me know how I can send it 

 safely. It is very handsome, though not my best. 

 I will keep my meerschaum until I make my conti- 

 nental journey, and then you shall have that also.' 



The bowls of the original meerschaums were large, 

 and the long stem consisted of a cherry-wood stick 

 terminating towards the mouthpiece in a flexible tube 

 like that of a hookah. Nothing can exceed the sweet- 

 ness of an old meerschaum, originally good and well 

 cared for, while its rich brown tints, indicative of its 

 blood, delights the artistic eye as much as its smoke, 

 enriched by the very essence of tobacco, pleases the 

 palate and charms the soul. 



Both meerschaum and clay pipes are now rarely 

 seen, having succumbed before the cheapness and 

 excellence of wooden ones. These are the pro- 

 ductions of the last thirty years. Fairholt, writing 

 in 1859, said: 



' Wooden pipes have been introduced into England, 

 and pipes made of briar root are now common in our 

 shops, but expensive, the bowls costing about three 

 shillings each.' A 'Veteran of Smokedom ' in 1865 

 declared : ' Of wooden pipes little need be said. They 

 were much in vogue a few years back, but the " taste " 



