An Irishman’s Diary on pipe smoking

Pipe smokers in Ireland are an endangered species, like the Kerry spotted slug or the natterjack toad. Unlike these rare creatures, they have no society to defend them, no group working to maintain their continuing presence here.

I suppose it’s as it should be. The widespread acceptance of the health hazards of tobacco is putting paid to the habit of pressing shredded tobacco into a bowl attached to a hollow stem, lighting it up and sucking on it to produce clouds of smoke.

The change in public attitude means that the diminishing numbers of pipe smokers have to shuffle away to a secluded spot, some lonesome place to indulge this almost illicit habit.

Yet, for all that, the smell and ritual associated with pipe smoking still linger somewhere in the back of the mind of former smokers. I’m one of those. Recently I saw a man strolling along the esplanade in Bray, pipe in mouth. I followed behind him for a few steps, just to get the distinctive smell of pipe tobacco.

Yesteryear

Once upon a time there were many distinguished exemplars who gave pipe smoking a prestige and stature.

In this country, Sean Lemass, one of the creators of modern Ireland, was often pictured with pipe clenched in strong, prominent teeth. It gave him an air of decisiveness and sound judgment.

Jack Lynch’s quiet-spoken demeanour, genial but with quiet authority, was enhanced by him holding his long, straight pipe in his hand. Here was a man who knew what he was about.

The pipe was also seen as an aid to thoughtfulness, even genius, when Albert Einstein was frequently pictured pipe in mouth, a jotter before him and a poised pen as he grappled with the mysteries of quantum physics.

In fiction, when Sherlock Holmes sat down in his comfortable study to use his analytical powers to identify villains, his mental acuity seemed sharpened when he lit up his big curved pipe.

In the hands as well as the mouth of the former British prime minister Harold Wilson, the pipe was seen as an aid to handling difficult questions in TV interviews. He paused to light his pipe while considering an answer. Then the aggressive questioner found himself blinking and peering through a screen of smoke.

Another British advocate of the pipe was the philosopher Bertrand Russell. He declared that he smoked his pipe all the time, except when he was eating.

He claimed that the habit had once saved his life – he was made to sit at the back of an aircraft that subsequently crashed in a fjord in Norway, sliding down into the water where those sitting in the front seats were drowned.

Pipe smoking got a great boost during the long career of Bing Crosby. Here was this crooning international mega-star, easy-going and amiable often pictured pipe in mouth or to hand. That type of straight long-stemmed pipe became very popular in the US and elsewhere.

Blacksmith

I first became fascinated with the pipe watching my grandfather who was the village blacksmith in Omeath. He smoked Mick McQuaid plug, a dark, heavy tobacco. With the small blade of his penknife he would shave slices from it. He cradled them in the calloused palm of one hand and pressed the knuckles of the other hand into them until they were broken up.

It was a performance that somehow reflected his skill as a blacksmith and the strength of his hands and arms. When I began smoking the pipe I felt it was partially to the memory of a man I admired.

However, like many pipe smokers, I took to inhaling at least some of the smoke and sometimes a lung-full. Eventually it began to catch up with me in the form of an early-morning cough. The warning signs were there.

Cough

And, long before the smoking ban, I began to notice how some people in my vicinity recoiled from the smoke I was producing. One afternoon at a hurling match on the open terrace in Limerick, I was puffing away when a fellow behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Would you ever quench that yoke?”

That helped me make up my mind to give it up.

I certainly don’t regret it. But I still have a lingering affection for the pipe.

And when, on increasingly rare occasions, I come across a man smoking one, I give him a friendly nod, like a secret sign between members of a disappearing tribe.