monograph on 140 different-varieties of ashes (Part-1)

by John Hall

In the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle there are a
great many references to tobacco in all its various forms. Only
four of the sixty cases fail to mention tobacco at all: “The Beryl
Coronet”, “The Dancing Men”, “The Lion’s Mane” and “The Sussex
Vampire”; and even then the Strand illustrations to “The Sussex
Vampire”, by Howard Elcock, show both Holmes and Watson with a
pipe apiece, indicating that by that time their smoking habits
needed no specific mention in the text, but were taken for granted.

The monograph: tobacco as evidence

Holmes says in The Sign of the Four that he had produced a
monograph, in which he noted the characteristics of the ash from
no less than a hundred and forty varieties:
‘I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon
technical subjects. Here, for example, is one “Upon the
Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos”. In it I
enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe
tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the
ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal
trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue.
If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder had been
done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously
narrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much
difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white
fluff of bird’s-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato.’
Madeleine B. Stern [1] has suggested that Holmes may have
consulted various works when compiling his monograph, such as
Redi’s “Esperienze intorno a Diverse Cose Naturali”, of 1686, and
Philone “de Conversationibus’ Venus Rebutee”, of 1722. Perhaps
Stern’s most convincing suggestion is that Holmes consulted
Friedrich Tiedemann’s “Geschichte des Tabaks”, published in 1854,
which was probably the most recent work on the topic, and seems to
have been very close in content to Holmes’ own monograph.
Holmes does not actually make any use of his expert knowledge
in The Sign of the Four itself, but in “The Boscombe Valley
Mystery” – where the monograph is mentioned again, though not
named in full – he does identify the ash from a cigar, along with
the butt of the cigar itself, and he identifies cigar butts in some
detail in “The Resident Patient”.
It was cigar ash which proved that Sir Charles Baskerville
stood at the gate of the yew alley in The Hound of the Baskervilles, though in that case it was Dr James Mortimer, not
Holmes, who observed and deduced. Later in the same case, though,
Holmes does deduce Watson’s presence in a stone hut on the moors
from a carelessly dropped cigarette end.
Cigarette ends also helped in identifying the lodger in “The
Red Circle” as being a woman, while in “The Golden Pince-Nez”,
Holmes smoked an inordinate number of cigarettes so that
footprints in the resultant residue of ash might reveal a secret
door.
In “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, Holmes deduced that an
envelope had been gummed by someone who chewed tobacco rather than
smoking it.
There are a few instances of deductions which are not an
integral part of a case as such, but just Holmes being Holmes,
unable to resist the temptation to draw inferences from apparent
trivia, such as that cigarette end outside the stone hut in The Hound of the Baskervilles, or the instance in “The Crooked Man”
where Holmes identifies ash as being from Watson’s Arcadia mixture.
And, although Holmes says in “The Yellow Face” that ‘nothing has
more individuality’ than a pipe, except perhaps watches and
bootlaces, the only case in which a pipe is the object of his
close scrutiny is “The Yellow Face” itself, where the inferences
are not strictly relevant to the case.
The total figure (140) for the ‘forms of cigar, cigarette, and
pipe tobacco’ is an interesting one. It is on the high side if
the individual cultivars or varieties, Burley, Perique and
Virginia are meant, but a bit low to cover all the various a
blends and mixtures, which are discussed later. Perhaps Holmes,
having noted ‘US the main single types, then studied the effects
of mixing those types on the es resultant ash. If the detective
were able to identify the main components of a [14], particular
tobacco, it would then be possible to narrow it down to two or
three ve popular blends, which would help considerably, even if
the exact mixture could not be identified by name.

Holmes, the smoker

Holmes was an inveterate smoker and he obviously enjoyed the
activity. And he was, for part of his life at any event, a slave
to the weed, as demonstrated by the eagerness with which he lit up
after three days of abstinence in “The Dying Detective”.
But was there nothing more to it than that? Happily for our
own sanity, we he need not concern ourselves with the murkier
psychological aspects such as whether or not Holmes was breast
fed. Being born in 1854, it is almost certain that he was – and
all the better for it too. Nevertheless there are some aspects as
of psychological interest connected with his smoking habits.
Holmes said in The Hound of the Baskervilles that ‘a
concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought’, and on
other occasions, as in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, he produced
that same ‘dense tobacco haze’ during his all night
contemplations.
The sedative properties of tobacco may perhaps have helped
relax the detective’s mind so that he was able to concentrate more
effectively on the problem before him, and in that sense he may
have been using tobacco as a mere drug, pure and simple. It was a
less immediately damaging drug than some he had recourse to. But
then again, there is the definite mystique of the pipe – the
panoply of reamers, tampers, tobacco boxes and the like can
produce a ritual of filling and lighting not unlike the Japanese
tea ceremony, So it may have been that the breaks in concentration
necessary to empty, refill and relight, helped in themselves, by
temporarily diverting Holmes’ mind from the more immediate details
of the case, and allowed him to look at it afresh once the pipe
was going again.
In this respect, it is interesting that many, if not most, of
those dense tobacco hazes were demonstrably pre-Hiatus, such as
that in “The Man with the Twisted Lip” in which Conan Doyle
creates a wonderful atmosphere:
“He took off his coat and waist-coat, put on a large blue
dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows
from his bed, and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With
these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he
perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a
box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the
lamp I saw him sitting there, an old brier pipe between his lips,
his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue
smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light
shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I
dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation
caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the
apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still
curled upwards, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but
nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the
previous night.”
In some of the post-Hiatus cases, such as “The BrucePartington Plans”, Holmes demonstrates a more epicurean attitude
to such things as Signor Goldini’s cigars:
There sat my friend at a little round table near the door of
the garish Italian restaurant. ‘Have you had something to eat?
Then join me in a coffee and curacao. Try one of the proprietor’s
cigars. They are less poisonous than one would expect.’
It may be that Holmes’ wanderings in the East had produced
more internal systems of mind controls, enabling him to
concentrate on the case in hand without needing tobacco in vast
amounts. Equally, of course, the cynic might argue that the
necessity to carry all his possessions on his back between 1891
and 1894 simply proved to Holmes that tobacco was a luxury which
he could, if occasion demanded it, forego.
If it could be proved conclusively that Holmes smoked more
before the Hiatus than after it, that might be used to help
determine the chronology of such disputed cases as The Hound of the Baskervilles, which has one of the most spectacular (and
hence pre-Hiatus?) smoked-filled rooms:
My first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had
broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of
the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however,
my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong,
coarse tobacco, which took me by the throat and set me coughing.
Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressinggown coiled up in an arm-chair with his black clay pipe between
his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him. ‘Caught cold,
Watson?’ said he. ‘No, it’s this poisonous atmosphere. ‘I suppose
it is pretty thick, now that you mention it. ‘Thick! It is
intolerable. ‘
The real problem here, though, is that Holmes and Watson may
well have been so accustomed to smoking that they did not think it
worthy of remark every time they lit up.

Pipes

As noted by Sue Woolcock [2] it is as a pipe-smoker that
Holmes is best known. The phrase ‘a three-pipe problem’ has
become almost proverbial, even among those individuals who could
not hazard a guess as to the origins of the expression. There are
excellent Canonical reasons for this: Holmes is referred to as
smoking a pipe in at least twenty-two cases. One cannot be
absolutely certain as to the exact number because in such cases as
“The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” and “Wisteria Lodge”,
where Holmes is said to be smoking ‘hard’, it seems very likely
that it was a pipe he was smoking but there is no positive proof.
Watson seems to suggest that Holmes had a good many pipes. In
“The Dying Detective”, the doctor notes ‘a litter of pipes’ and
other objects on Holmes’ mantelpiece, while in “The Blue
Carbuncle”, Holmes has a pipe rack placed conveniently to hand as
he examines Mr Henry Baker’s hat, and it is a reasonable
assumption that a man does not buy a pipe rack for only one or two
pipes.
And yet the specific references do not immediately corroborate
our overall first impression of a multitude of pipes. There are
half a dozen references to an old, black or oily clay pipe, a
couple of references to a briar (‘brier’ in some texts) and a
solitary mention in The Copper Beeches of a long cherry-wood,
though Watson does go on to say that Holmes was wont to smoke the
cherrywood, when in ‘a disputatious rather than a meditative
mood,’ and, knowing Holmes, that was probably quite frequently.
It does not follow that the briar mentioned in, say, The Sign of the Four, was the same one as that mentioned in “The Man
with the Twisted Lip”, so in theory Holmes could have possessed
any number of briars. But it may well have been the same one, and
could well have been the ‘unsavoury pipe’ noted in The Valley of
Fear, as it would become more and more unsavoury with continued
use. The briar – or one of them – may even have been an ADP pipe
similar to that used by Straker in “Silver Blaze”.
The ‘old black pipe’ of “The Creeping Man” may well have been
a clay, perhaps even the clay referred to in “A Case of Identity”
as ‘old and oily.’ The clay pipe is of very great antiquity, being
used in Britain, according to G.F. Harris [3] even before the
introduction of tobacco for the smoking of medicinal herbs, itself
a practice even older than the pipe. The Romans and other ancient
peoples were in the habit of throwing the herbs on a fire and
breathing in the resultant fumes. In Holmes’ day the clay was
probably the most frequently used pipe, with the meerschaum next
on the list. The briar was then a comparative newcomer, though
since then it has pretty well ousted the other two types.
The bowl of a clay gets so hot that it cannot be held in the
hand. The pipe needs a special grip with the first three fingers of
the hand, the first and third going under, and the second going
over the stem, as seen in the drawing of Hall Pycroft by Sidney
Paget in the Strand_ version of “The Stockbroker’s Clerk”, and
also in George Hutchinson’s drawing of Watson in the 1891 Ward
Lock edition of “A Study in Scarlet”. (In which Watson’s moustache
is a thing of beauty, if not a joy forever, though this is a
digression.
There is a limit to how ‘old and oily’ a clay can get before
the stem simply jams solid, and for that reason the common
practice was to place the whole pipe in the fire to burn off the
residues. This naturally made the clay more brittle and
consequently prone to breakage, a fact which accounts for the vast
quantities of clay pipestems which turn up in any garden which has
existed for a number of years. This cleaning was done routinely in
inns and pubs which provided pipes (and tobacco – a reflection of
the low cost of smoking at that time) free for the use of patrons,
though in that instance there were also hygienic considerations.
Mr Reuben Hayes, landlord of the Fighting Cock, may have been
better advised to use one of the cleaned pipes from his own bar
rather than the ‘black clay’ which he was smoking when Holmes and
Watson encountered him in the case of “The Priory School”.
Mr Thaddeus Sholto smoked an exotic pipe, a hookah, in The Sign of the Four, but he does not appear to have tempted Holmes
to follow suit. Holmes did play with an opium pipe as part of his
disguise in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, even if he did not
actually smoke it – and speculation as to that is outside the
scope of this paper!
In all the Canonical references to pipes, though, there is
one glaring omission, and that is to the pipe which has perhaps
become most closely associated with Holmes in the public mind, the
bent or calabash. (‘Bent,’ incidentally, is converted by pipe
makers and sellers from an adjective to a noun, to mean ‘a pipe
with a bent stem.’
The cherrywood may well have been slightly curved, as in
Paget’s illustration for “The Copper Beeches” in the Strand, and
the clay may possibly have begun life as a churchwarden and been
broken down to a more manageable length. Even the briar may have
been a bent, though the Strand illustrators all show a straight
stem, and this may result from the fact that Watson does not say
‘a bent pipe,’ or anything similar, anywhere, though he frequently
says ‘old’, or ‘black’, or the like.
But these days the bent is everywhere, on book covers and
society logos. Over the past few decades it has altered
insensibly to the calabash, as seen on the signboard of the
Sherlock Holmes pub in Northumberland Avenue,’ or on the cover of
the Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes.
The bent pipe is as much a part of the popular image of
Holmes as is the deerstalker, though the texts of “The Boscombe
Valley Mystery” and “Silver Blaze” (the Strand illustrations to
which feature the deerstalker) are not specific as to that either.
As noted, the Strand illustrators show a pipe with a
straight stem. Paget tended to draw the shape called ‘Dublin’
which has a straight stem and a bowl which widens slightly towards
the top. This shape is close to the Victorian form of the clay,
and the pipe shown by Paget may in fact be intended as a clay
rather than a briar.
Frank Wiles shows a ‘billiard’, ie straight stem and more or
less cylindrical bowl in his illustration to The Valley of Fear,
and this pipe has a thickish stem with a silver band, so is either
a briar or a meerschaum. The front cover of the January 1927
issue of the Strand, illustrating “The Retired Colourman”, shows
this pipe again, and it is clearly a briar.
The bent seems to have originated with the 1899 stage
production of Sherlock Holmes_ with William Gillette in the title
role. Gillette’s publicity photographs show him in a splendidly
embroidered dressing gown, smoking a bent briar. Gillette adopted
the bent shape because he found difficulty delivering his lines
with a straight-stemmed pipe. In contrast to the Strand
illustrators, the illustrators of Collier’s seem to have favoured
the bent, as seen very well on the front cover of the August 1908
issue in which Frederick Dorr Steele illustrates “Wisteria Lodge”.
Perhaps it may be that Gillette’s being American was an influence
here, though that must remain pure speculation.
One interesting fact is that the Danish actor Alwin Neuss
smoked a bent meerschaum in Den Stjaalne Million-Obligation
released by Nordisk Films in 1908. It would be odd if Holmes had
not possessed a meerschaum, as they were then so popular, but
there is no mention in the Canon of his owning one, and it may be
that the Neuss film is one origin of the later emphasis on the
calabash, which has a removable meerschaum bowl.
Other big-screen actors such as Eille Norwood in The Sign of Four, in 1923, and Clive Brook in “Sherlock Holmes”, in 1932,
used the bent briar, perhaps following where Gillette had led, and
Basil Rathbone – arguably the most influential portrayer of Holmes
on the cinema screen – did the same in his dozen films for
Universal, effectively guaranteeing that the bent would be
permanently identified with Holmes in the public mind.
The calabash, a section cut from the narrow end of a gourd
with the same name, with a wide, flat, removable meerschaum bowl,
can be seen – very briefly – making an appearance in the 1965 film,
A Study in Terror, and again in Wilder’s 1970 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, although it is difficult to be certain that
there are no earlier occurrences.
What is almost certain is that Holmes is very unlikely to
have been much of an enthusiast for the calabash, even if he did
own one. The gourd acts as an expansion chamber, not only cooling
the smoke – acceptable enough – but also removing some of the tars
and nicotine from it, and that is not likely to find much favour
with a man who habitually smokes the strongest tobacco he can buy.
If Holmes did own a calabash, it was probably a gift from a
grateful client, and is unlikely to have seen much use.
In “The Yellow Face”, Holmes is somewhat dismissive of the
stem of Mr Grant Munro’s pipe – ‘a good long stem of what the
tobacconists call amber. I wonder how many real amber mouthpieces
there are in London? Some people think that a fly in it is a sign.
Why, it is quite a branch of trade, the putting of sham flies into
the sham amber’. (For some curious reason the last sentence is
omitted from the Penguin text, which is a pity, as it tends to
demonstrate that Holmes was not entirely devoid of a sense of
humour, albeit a trifle academic in nature.) It seems likely that
Holmes possessed at least one pipe with an amber mouthpiece, for
in “The Priory School” he indicated points of interest on a map
‘with the reeking amber of his pipe’, but it may have been one of
those early plastics, rather than the real thing. One trusts that
it contained a sham fly, for the sake of completeness.
Those who are intrigued by the more esoteric by-ways of
Sherlockian scholarship may care to ponder what, if anything, the
initials ‘ADP’ which appeared on Straker’s pipe in “Silver Blaze”,
may have stood for. This has proved a tough nut to crack. The
obvious candidates are ‘something, something Peterson’ or ‘Alfred
Dunhill Pipe’, but they have been tried and found wanting. In
view of the very large number of pipe makers and sellers, in the
provinces as well as London in the Victorian period, ‘ADP’ may
well represent an actual maker or vendor, but the identity of the
firm or individual concerned remains a mystery, and a modest
Sherlockian fame awaits any scholar who can crack the acronym.

Tobacco

A pipe is not much use without tobacco, and we may reasonably
assume that Holmes had produced the ash from those 140 varieties
by smoking his way through the entire list. It is a dismal
thought that if he bought one ounce each of the 140, the process
would, based on the prices quoted in “The Yellow Face”, have cost
him somewhat less than L3. (US $5 or Y750.)
Sherlock Holmes does seem to have settled on the cheapest and
strongest tobacco he could find, for everyday smoking at least. And
Watson, in the early stages of their acquaintance, did the same,
for in A Study in Scarlet Holmes asks if Watson has any
objections to strong tobacco, and Watson replies that he always
smokes ‘ship’s’ himself. ‘Ship’s’ is corded plug, formed by
placing the leaves of an inexpensive tobacco – in Watson’s day,
quite probably the inferior “Nicotiana rustica”, rather than the
now universal “N. tabacum” – on top of one another in a long row,
then rolling them up and compressing them, originally with a thin
cord, though machinery was used on a commercial scale later. When
the resulting roll was a very thin one, the tobacco was called
‘pig-tail,’ and this form was widely smoked, or, in the days of
wooden hulls, when burning tobacco would have been a fire hazard,
chewed, by sailors.
‘Ship’s’ can still be found at specialist tobacconists, but
is not recommended for those of a weak constitution. The mere act
of lighting the pipe produces a concentrated blast of tar and
nicotine at the back of the throat, which makes breathing
extremely difficult. There is no taste as such, only a harsh,
rasping sensation, and the fumes and smell are ‘acrid’, just as
Watson describes them in The Hound of the Baskervilles. A
marvellous line by the underrated Nigel Bruce, in one of his films
with Rathbone, sums it up very well: ‘Fresh in here. Smells like a
pub after closing time.’
If Holmes’ before breakfast pipe consisted, as Watson says in
“The Engineer’s Thumb”, of plugs and dottles from yesterday’s
smokes, and if he had been smoking ‘ship’s’ yesterday, then it is
not surprising that he sometimes left his breakfast – and other
meals – untouched.
Holmes remained faithful to his early love, the strongest
possible tobacco, frequently asking Watson to arrange for vast
quantities of ‘shag’ to be sent round. ‘Shag’ is a generic term
for any rough-cut tobacco, but Holmes usually insists on the
strongest available.
Watson’s own contribution to the tobacconists’ profits is
sometimes overshadowed by that of Holmes, yet Watson did his
share. Holmes seldom takes out his pouch or cigarette case
without throwing it over to Watson, who never actually refuses.
However, Watson’s tastes in pipe tobacco did move upmarket,
as time passed, for in “The Crooked Man” Holmes notes that Watson
was ‘still smoking that Arcadia mixture of your bachelor days’.
It seems highly likely that Watson switched from ‘ship’s’ to
‘Arcadia mixture’ soon after meeting Mary Morstan in The Sign of the Four (around 1887 – authorities differ) because a refined lady
would not take kindly to the rank stench of corded plug,
particularly when smoked by the man she intended to marry.
There were a great many other mixtures available to the
smoker. Mr Grant Munro in “The Yellow Face” smokes Grosvenor
mixture, and Holmes remarks upon its very high price – 8d an
ounce. (3p, 5US cents, Y8 – no further comment is needed.) The
tobacconists in London’s clubland would make up an exclusive blend
for anyone not happy with an off the peg mixture (Dunhill’s will
still do so) so Holmes’ monograph, as already suggested, may not
have been entirely comprehensive in this area.
There are a few other tobaccos mentioned. In The Sign of the Four, Holmes remarks that his monograph includes the ash of
‘bird’s eye’, but he is not recorded as smoking it. However, an
illustration in the Sketch_ of 18 September 1901, shows Gillette
as Holmes ‘surrounded by his bird’s eye clouds’, in which are
pictured various characters, including Holmes’ sweetheart (not
Agatha, this one!) which is perhaps the first recorded instance of
a serious distortion of the Canon by adaptors and dramatists,
though it is hard to be sure. ‘Bird’s eye’ is a tobacco in which
the mid-rib is fermented along with the lamina – in many tobaccos,
the mid-rib, which is slightly woody, is removed before
fermentation – and the name comes from the pattern of circular
dots, the cross-sections of the mid-ribs, seen in the finished
product.
Straker in “Silver Blaze” had ‘long-cut Cavendish’ in his
pouch – ‘Cavendish’ is any sort of strong cake tobacco – while in
The Sign of the Four Thaddeus Sholto preferred the ‘balsamic
odour of the Eastern tobacco.’ It seems odd that Holmes should not
beg a fill of this exotic mixture, if only to add its ash to his
collection. Perhaps he did, though, and Watson simply failed to
notice, being preoccupied with Mary Morstan? This may also account
for Watson’s own failure to ask for a pipeful of a tobacco which
would have recalled his own time in India.
In “The Cardboard Box”, the eponymous container used to send
the ears to Sarah Cushing had contained half a pound of
‘honeydew’. Honey, like rum or whisky, can be added to tobacco
after curing, partly to give it flavour and partly to prevent its
drying out, although Holmes’ tobacco was probably not left around
long enough for it to dry out, anyway. The honey in a commercial
‘honeydew’ is, however, more likely to be molasses or treacle
rather than the real thing.

Cigars

Cigars are mentioned in some seventeen cases, though it is
not always Holmes who smokes them, for he does tend to offer a
cigar to someone else: to Colonel Ross in “Silver Blaze”, Lestrade
in “The Six Napoleons”, Hopkins in “The Golden Pince-Nez”, Croker
(or Crocker – texts vary) in “The Abbey Grange”, von Bork in “His
Last Bow”. The reason for this behaviour is probably that it
would be considered an act of impoliteness, if not actual
aggression, to offer anyone a fill of strong ship’s tobacco.
A cigar is traditionally regarded as the end to a good meal,
and Holmes suggested that Watson smoke one in Goldini’s Italian
restaurant in The Bruce-Partington Plans, even though Watson had
had nothing more than a coffee and curacao. Holmes does seem to
have been rather more discriminating about his cigars than he was
about his pipe tobacco, for he remarks that those at Goldini’s are
‘less poisonous than one might expect’. Poisonous or otherwise,
it is doubtful whether Watson was able to enjoy that particular
cigar to the full, as he was concerned about the burglary he was
to comnit later that evening.
There are several references to Indian cigars, the ‘lunkah’
and ‘Trichinopoly’ being noted in Holmes’ monograph. For some
reason, perhaps because they lend a raffish air to a man, Indian
cigars are, Canonically at least, an almost certain guarantee of a
bad character. Indian cigars are smoked by Turner in “The Boscombe
Valley Mystery”, by Grimesby Roylott in “The Speckled Band”, and
by the two murderers in “The Resident Patient”, though in the last
case the victim had had sufficient good taste to prefer Havanas.
We know from “The Dying Detective” that Holmes and Watson
occasionally enjoyed ‘something nutritious at Simpson’s’, so they
must have been aware of Simpson’s Cigar Divan, on the second floor
of the famous restaurant at 101 – 103 the Strand, even if they did
not patronise it. Admission to the Divan was restricted to
gentlemen – ladies had their own room elsewhere on the premises.
For the price of one shilling, gentlemen not only gained admission
to the premises and were provided with a cup of coffee and a
cigar, but also had unlimited access to a wide variety of English
and foreign newspapers into the bargain. The Divan was also the
haunt of chess players.
The cigar provided at Simpson’s must have been in the middle
of the range, or slightly below, for Baedeker [4] said that the
best Havanas cost 6d, while 3d was the least which would produce a
tolerable ‘weed’. (Baedeker’s quotes, not mine.) Even allowing for
inflation, it is not surprising that there were more cigar smokers
in Holmes’ day than there are now.

Cigarettes

Pipes and cigars do require a certain amount of time to be
devoted to them if they are to give of their best, which is why
the cigarette is the preferred smoke for the man or woman on the
move. A song popular in the music halls at the turn of the century
[5] alludes to Holmes’ smoking cigarettes, and this is confirmed by
some half dozen Canonical references.
When Holmes was expecting his Royal visitor in “A Scandal in
Bohemia”, he had no time to bother with filling and lighting a
pipe, so he celebrated a brilliant deduction about that visitor by
sending up ‘a great blue triumphant cloud from his cigarette’.
And it was a cigarette that he most desired after he had gone
three days without food, drink or tobacco in “The Dying
Detective.”
Holmes’ consumption of cigarettes seems to have been as great
as his consumption of pipe tobacco. In “The Boscombe Valley
Mystery” he refers to ‘a caseful of cigarettes here which need
smoking’, and, as noted earlier, he turned this great consumption
of cigarettes to good use in “The Golden Pince-Nez”, though it
seems quite likely that he would have smoked just as many of
Professor Coram’s cigarettes had he not wanted to produce a carpet
of ash in connection with his investigation.
Watson, too, fell in with the new fashion in smoking, and
bought his cigarettes from Bradley,’s in Oxford Street, a fact
which revealed his presence to Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles. In Watson’s case, one might again suspect the
civilising influence of Mary, who may even have helped herself to
one of Watson’s cigarettes in the privacy of her own drawing room.
Holmes and Watson both appear to have bought their cigarettes
ready made, even if they did not import them in bulk from Lonides
of Alexandria, as did Professor Coram in “The Golden Pince-Nez”.
In The Hound of the Baskervilles, though, Dr Mortimer preferred
to roll his own.

Chewing tobacco

Neither Holmes nor Watson seems to have chewed tobacco, a
practice largely confined to that section of the working class for
whom smoking presented obvious dangers, such as miners and
sailors. It is possible that Holmes may have experimented with
the habit, or made use of it when he was disguised as a dockyard
worker, in The Sign of the Four, for instance, but that must
remain speculation.
There is only one Canonical reference to the habit, in “The
Man with the Twisted Lip”, where Holmes observes that an envelope
has been sealed by someone who had been chewing tobacco, and this
is in keeping with the ‘docklands’ flavour of the case, for it was
by the river that Neville St Clair ‘disappeared’.

Snuff

Taking snuff, like the chewing of tobacco, was popular with
miners and sailors for safety reasons, and snuff was also used by
some members of the aristocracy, a hangover from the previous
century, though its popularity had declined somewhat since the
days of the Regency bucks.
Jabez Wilson in “The Red-Headed League” was an example of a
working class snuff taker. He had begun life as a ship’s
carpenter, a profession where smoking was an obvious hazard.
Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, was an example of a snuff taker
from the other end of society to Mr Wilson. Mycroft seems to have
taken snuff regularly, for he used a large handkerchief to brush
away the wandering grains in “The Greek Interpreter”. A large
handkerchief is essential to the regular user of snuff, for the
well-known ‘pinch’ is in fact two pinches in quick succession.
The first produces a reaction, a sneeze, but it also desensitises
the nose so that the second pinch, and subsequent ones if not too
long delayed, can be savoured to the full without the snuff being
violently ejected. The fact that Mycroft did not sneeze proves
that the pinch of snuff he had just taken in “The Greek
Interpreter” was not the first of the day.
Neither Sherlock Holmes nor Watson seem to have taken snuff
regularly. One instance is noted, in “A Case of Identity”, of
Holmes offering Watson a pinch, but that seems to have been
because he wished to show off the old gold snuff box, with a great
amethyst in its lid, which the grateful King of Bohemia had given
him for his assistance in “A Scandal in Bohemia”.

Matches

It was quite common to light a pipe at a candle or gas-jet,
as Mr Grant Munro was in the habit of doing in “The Yellow Face”.
Many tobacconists kept a small gas burner lit throughout the day,
at which any passersby (not necessarily paying customers) could
light pipes or cigars. A tobacconist in Covent Garden still
continues this delightful custom. Holmes himself used a glowing
cinder to light his cherrywood in “The Copper Beeches”.
However, matches were common, and they had improved since the
introduction of the phosphorus match, which presented a danger to
both those who made it, mostly women, and those who used it. On of
Straker’s vestas was a clue in “Silver Blaze” – Vesta was the
Roman goddess of the hearth, the domestic fire, centre of the home
in ancient times.
Watson certainly carried matches, as is clear from “The
Norwood Builder”, and it would be odd if Holmes neglected this
obvious precaution against being able to find a handy candle or
gas-jet ready lit. However, Holmes did cadge a light from Watson
quite frequently, as in “The Norwood Builder”, or “The Red Circle”
– ‘Thank you, Watson – the matches!’ (Not, you will note, ‘the
needle!’ as in one regrettable adaptation [6]) It seems odd that
such a heavy smoker should need to borrow a match, but then
perhaps Holmes took a full box out each morning, and used them all
by noon, necessitating the request?

Transport and Storage

Both Holmes and Watson possessed at least one tobacco pouch,
as shown by references in “The Dying Detective” and “The Crooked
Man”. It is possible that they may have made been of sealskin, as
was the one owned by Patrick Cairns (“Black Peter”) – who also
smoked strong ship’s tobacco.
Holmes had a cigar case, the filling of which was an essential
preliminary to the investigation of “The Cardboard Box”, and he
had a cigarette case, as noted earlier, in “The Boscombe Valley
Mystery”. This was almost certainly the ‘silver cigarette-case
which he used to carry’, and which he used to weight down the note
he left for Watson at the end of “The Final Problem”. One
wonders, in passing, just how he managed without tobacco during
his nocturnal ramble over the Swiss Alps. Perhaps he had his
cigars, though?
Holmes’ possession of a gold and amethyst snuff box, a gift
from the King of Bohemia, has already been noted. This snuff box
seems to have been more for show than anything else, though that
owned by Mycroft, made of the humbler tortoiseshell, probably saw
regular use. It is interesting to note the way Holmes ignored the
King’s outstretched hand at the end of A Scandal in Bohemia, a
rather childish thing to do. The King seems to have had far
better manners, for he gave Holmes the very valuable snuff box as
a token of his thanks, when Holmes had seemed willing to settle
for the photograph of Irene Adler. (And the balance of the Ll,000
expenses, of course.
Holmes’ habit of keeping his cigars in the coal scuttle and
his pipe tobacco in a Persian slipper has attracted a certain
amount of comment, which is probably what was intended.
Christopher Morley [7] has said that these storage places do not
appeal to him much as they are ‘conscious eccentricities’, but it
may be worth asking whether they were Holmes’ conscious
eccentricities, or Watson’s. Vincent Starrett [8] notes a little
known poem by Robert Browning, A Likeness, which mentions ‘a satin
shoe used for a cigar-case’. Could this, asks Starrett, have been
Holmes’ inspiration? Possibly. Yet it is Watson whom we must
regard as the man of letters, as Holmes says in Wisteria Lodge.
As Dorothy L. Sayers [9] has shown, Watson appears to have greatly
exaggerated his experience of women, and it is perhaps not
completely out of the question that he also made much of that
‘natural Bohemianism of disposition’ of which he seems so proud in
“The Musgrave Ritual”. In fact it is difficult to imagine anyone
less Bohemian than Watson. Holmes affirmed our conception of a
Watson as a thoroughly decent and law-abiding citizen in “The
Abbey Grange” when he said there was no man ‘more eminently fitted
to represent’ a British jury. In “His Last Bow”, Holmes regarded
his friend as ‘the one fixed point in a changing age’. Watson may
just possibly have felt that he needed to add one or two exotic
touches to his accounts, though few of his friends would think the
same, for the plain statement of the cases, and Watson’s own
honourable part in them, should surely suffice.

Accessories

Those matches which Watson lent to Holmes in “The Norwood
Builder” may well have been carried in one of the little silver or
gold boxes which could be hung on a watch chain to prevent loss,
though there is no evidence that this was the case with Watson.
Neither Holmes nor Watson seems to have used a cigar or
cigarette holder, though John Turner used a cigar holder in “The
Boscombe Valley Mystery”, as did one of the murderers in “The
Resident Patient”.
A penknife would be useful to both Holmes and Watson, if only
to cut the ends of their cigars, as did both Turner and one of the
villains in “The Resident Patient”. Interestingly, both these
murderers had permitted their penknives to become blunt, perhaps
as a consequence of their general moral laxity. One can guarantee
that the penknife which Holmes carried, and which he used to
divide the poison pills in A Study in Scarlet, would be razor
sharp, just as one can (almost) guarantee that Watson would not
wish to bite the end off his. Particularly one of ‘these multiplex
knives’ noted in “The Abbey Grange”, with a corkscrew and other
implements, would be very useful to Watson in the event of
unexpected calls on his medical skills – or perhaps just to open
the odd bottle of Beaune.

Can smoking damage your health?

When tobacco was first introduced into Britain it was
recommended by such authorities as Gerard [10] as a medicine,
particularly for ailments of the chest, incredible as that now
seems to us. Holmes offers Croker a cigar to steady his nerves in
“The Abbey Grange”, and recommends the sedative effects of tobacco
to John Hector MacFarlane in “The Norwood Builder”, despite the
fact that he had diagnosed MacFarlane as asthmatic at first sight.
(Though it is worth remembering that the smoking of herbs such as
coltsfoot and “Datura stramonium” was recommended for chest
complaints until very recently.
If tobacco is indeed a sedative, then, in view of the
quantities which Holmes smoked, it is not surprising that in “The
Mazarin Stone” he stayed in bed until seven o’clock in the
evening.
The effect of smoking on the appetite has been noted in
passing, and it seems that Holmes was aware of it, for he says of
smoking in “The Golden Pince-Nez” that ‘it kills the appetite’.
In fairness, it does not really seem to have killed Holmes’
appetite, though, as Trevor Hall notes in “Sherlock Holmes:
Ascetic or Gourmet?” [11]
In another essay, “The Late Mr Sherlock Holmes”, [12] Trevor
Hall suggests that Holmes may have suffered from a far more
dangerous condition than loss of appetite as a result of excessive
smoking. Hall says in fact that Holmes may have begun to go blind
as a result of tobacco amblyopia.
In support of this suggestion, Hall points out that Holmes
was very, proud of his keen eyesight in early cases such as A Study in Scarlet, in which he was able to spot a tattoo on the
back of the hand of a man on the other side of the street, while
in later cases he was obliged to get Watson to read aloud to him
such things as telegrams or newspaper reports, since he could not
read them himself. Now, we are all occasionally obliged to be
selective when we quote our authorities, it is part of the game,
but it really is a bit naughty of Trevor Hall not to mention that
in A Study in Scarlet, immediately after the deduction involving
the tattoo seen from across the street, Holmes asks Watson to read
aloud the message brought by the tattooed man.
It is not absolutely clear whether Holmes asked Watson to
read items aloud in order to ensure that he himself had missed
nothing of importance on first reading them, rather as some people
read draft letters aloud to spot inconsistencies or bad grammar,
or whether Watson simply invented the instances of reading aloud,
a common enough literary device to present the reader with a
sizeable slab of information in a palatable form. In either event,
Holmes indubitably asked Watson to read aloud to him throughout
his career, from the very first case, so that it is scarcely
indicative of progressive deterioration of his sight.
Furthermore, there is no indication of approaching blindness,
or even of the natural deterioration caused by age, in later cases
such as “The Lion’s Mane”, dated by Holmes in 1907 but, for
example, by Henry T. Folsom [13] as even later, or “His Last Bow”,
which is very definitely in 1914. And in this investigation,
Holmes’ activities in America and Britain from 1912 onwards are
not such as to indicate any loss of any of his powers from
whatever cause.
However, it may be that the ‘absolute breakdown’ which Holmes
came close to suffering in “The Devil’s Foot” in 1897 was caused,
in part at least, by excessive indulgence in tobacco, though
Watson gallantly cites overwork as the main cause, and David
Stuart Davies [l4] has suggested that it was induced by hard
drugs. Holmes seems to have behaved in a very human and
believable fashion, taking the advice of Dr Moore Agar, who was
almost a stranger, although he had until then ignored the advice
of his old friend Watson, familiarity with whom had bred, if not
exactly contempt, then perhaps a sort of casual indifference to
his medical opinions.
Certainly Holmes did not use hard drugs in any of the later
cases, and he seems to have cut down on his smoking as well, for
there is no mention of pipes, tobacco, or any sort of smoking in
“The Lion’s Mane”, and in “His Last Bow” Holmes did not smoke at
all unless he lit a cigar for himself at the same time as he
offered one to von Bork, and in view of what he had just
accomplished, it might reasonably be thought that he had earned
one.

Tobacconists

The nearest tobacconist to 221B seems to have been Bradley’s,
in Oxford Street, mentioned twice in The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was clearly a large establishment, for the firm
produced its own cigarettes, as bought by Watson. One possible
candidate for Bradley’s is Benson’s at 296 Oxford Street, noted in
the 1883 edition of Baedeker [15] as a purveyor of cigars.
Another tobacconist named is Mortimer’s, in Saxe-Coburg
Square. There was, and is, no such square, so we must do a little
detective work. Holmes and Watson took the Underground to
Aldersgate station, now called Barbican, and then had a short walk
to the Square. An obvious candidate is Charterhouse Square, but
that does not really tie in with Watson’s description, besides
being sufficiently well known not to need a pseudonym. Nor does
the Smithfield Meat Market, which then stood in Charterhouse
Street, seem to qualify as one of the ‘fine shops and stately
business premises’.
A better candidate might be Falcon Square, which will be
sought in vain on a modern map, but which then stood about where
the Museum of London stands today. One side of Falcon Square gave
on to a maze of narrow streets, now the Barbican complex, while
the other faced Aldersgate Street, which probably agrees better
with Watson’s account. There was a large Post Office opposite the
square, and that may possibly have been the model for the City and
Suburban Bank, though it is hard to be sure. The directions to
the Strand, ‘third right, fourth left’, agree quite well, ignoring
minor side roads, and for good measure there was even a vegetarian
restaurant nearby, The Apple Tree, though it was in the wrong
direction, in London Wall.
It is not clear who Mortimer may have been, though the name
is far from uncommon in the Canon. Holmes’ muttered, ‘Mortimer’s,
the tobacconists’, sounds rather as if the name or the shop were
familiar to him, but he may simply have been reading the legend
over the shop window, and Mortimer may well have been in a fairly
small way of business.
One tobacconist who was certainly in a large way of business
was John Vincent Harding, ‘the well-known tobacco millionaire’,
who was subjected to a ‘peculiar persecution’ in April 1895.
Watson, in his usual irritating way, fails to tell us exactly what
was so peculiar about the persecution, but presumably it was more
than simply criticism from the anti-smoking lobby. One wonders if
Holmes took his fee from Mr Harding in cash, or in large
quantities of strong shag tobacco.

A final query

At meetings of Sherlockian societies, convened with the
express purpose of celebrating the life and works of the world’s
most renowned smoker (with the possible exception of Sir Walter
Raleigh) why are the chairman’s first words invariably a ban on
smoking?
References
[1] Stern, Madeline B., Sherlock Holmes: Rare-book Collector,
New York: Pualette Greene, 1981 (and earlier editions).
[2] Woolcock, Sue, “A Man of Many Pipes”, The Sherlock Holmes
Gazette, 5, 1992.
[3] Harris, G.F., “Medieval Tobacco Pipes”, Papers on Antiquity,
1882 (unpublished manuscript, copies in Wiltshire Record Office and
Salisbury and South Wiltshire Library; original in a private
collection).
[4] Baedeker, Karl, ed., London and its Environs, 4th edition,
Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1883.
[5] ‘A song popular … at the turn of the century…’ This is one
of those embarrassing things which persist in happening. I am not
familiar with this song personally, so the assertion is based on a
reference the location of which I am unable to recall, and which a
most diligent search has failed to reveal. Readers may perhaps
wish to do their own detective work here!
[6] The Hound of the Baskervilles, Twentieth Century Fox, 1939.
[7] Morley, Christopher, “In Memoriam Sherlock Holmes”,
Introduction, Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes, Penguin, 1981.
[8] Starrett, Vincent, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, New
York: Pinnacle, 1975.
[9] Sayers, Dorothy L., “Dr Watson, Widower”, in Unpopular Opinions, London: Gollancz, 1946.
[10] Gerard, J., Herball, 1597 (and many subsequent editions).
[11] Hall, Trevor H., “Sherlock Holmes: Ascetic or Gourmet?” The Late Mr Sherlock Holmes, London: Gerald Duckworth, 1971.
[12] Hall, Trevor H., The Late Mr Sherlock Holmes, ibid.
[13] Folsom, Henry T., Through the Years at Baker Street, 3rd
edition, privately printed, 1991.
[14] Davies, David Stuart, “The Great Breakdown”, The New Baker Street Pillar Box, No. 14, April 1993, Portsmouth: Sherlock
Publications.
[15] Baedeker, op cit.
Other books consulted
The illustrations to the Strand and other magazines have been
reproduced in many different publications. One cheap version is
the Chancellor Press Complete Novels, and Complete Short Stories,
reprinted recently in 1993, though the quality of the
reproductions is variable, and the text contains many errors.
Two books very useful for their illustrations are:
Eyles, Allen, Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration, London:
John Murray, 1986 (is still available, though becoming scarce).
Hall, Charles, The Sherlock Holmes Collection, Edinburgh:
Charles Hall Productions, 1987.
The Musgrave Monographs
The Musgrave Monographs are published annually by The Northern
Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society. The Society is open for all
those with a love of the character Sherlock Holmes. The Society
has an international membership, holds a series of meetings
through the year, and produces two chunky magazines in the Spring
and Autumn, (The Ritual), along with an annual journal, (The
Musgrave Papers) containing lengthy articles on Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle’s magical Baker Street world.
If you are not already a member of this celebrated Sherlockian
society, membership details may be obtained from our membership
secretary:
Mr John Addy 23 East Street Lightcliffe Halifax West Yorkshire HX3
8TU
Scanned and corrected by Steve Masticola, 1 August 1996, using
Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 4p scanner, Visioneer PaperPort OCR, and
Emacs

19. 29 editor. Italics are represented in double quotes, boldface
type is represented by underscores. All typos probably mine. -S.

John Hall is a member of the Consultancy of The Northern
Musgraves. He is a full time writer and the author of I Remember The Date Very Well, a Sherlockian chronology, published by Ian
Henry books.

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