Thoughts and Notions: Smokers from the Past

I am preparing to start a new project for PSI, which aims to see how to set pipe smoking, pipe tobacco and cigars, apart from the cigarette industry.

We have no connection to what the cigarette companies and manufacturers do, as I have pointed out in a previous blog post.

But, until I can get all the research done on that project, I thought it might be fun to take a look at what some famous smokers of the past had to say about pipes and cigars.

That project will be an ongoing work, so it will take a while. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this as much as I have in putting it togethger.

Let’s start with Mark Twain.

“As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.”

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

“As regards smoking, my testimony is of the opposite character. I am forty-six years old, and I have smoked immoderately during thirty-eight years, with the exception of a few intervals, which I will speak of presently. During the first seven years of my life I had no health—I may almost say that I lived on allopathic medicine, but since that period I have hardly known what sickness is.  My health has been excellent, and remains so. As I have already said, I began to smoke immoderately when I was eight years old; that is, I began with one hundred cigars a month, and by the time I was twenty I had increased my allowance to two hundred a month. Before I was thirty, I had increased it to three hundred a month. I think I do not smoke more than that now; I am quite sure I never smoke less.”

“I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. I have no other restriction as regards smoking.”

“There’s nothing quite like tobacco: it’s the passion of decent folk, and whoever lives without tobacco doesn’t deserve to live.” –Moliere

“My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.” –Sir Winston Churchill

“Tobacco, divine, rare superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all panaceas, potable gold and philosopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases.”–Robert Burton, 8 February 1577 – 25 January 1640, English scholar at Oxford University and author of Anatomy of Melancholy

“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.”–Rudyard Kipling, The Betrothed

Coffee and tobacco are complete repose.– Turkish Proverb
“Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe
When tipp’d with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;…
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties – give me a cigar!”–George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Island
“We know (smoking tobacco) is not good for kids, but a lot of other things aren’t good. Drinking’s not good. Some would say milk’s not good.–Bob Dole, for U.S. Senator and presidential candidate.

“I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs,” said Albert Einstein in 1950 at age 71, when he became a lifetime member of the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club.

A very sad day today, July 18, 2009. News came this morning that Walter Cronkite, 92, has died. He was the one man America trusted. He was also a pipe smoker.

Here is a little background on the famous CBS news anchor, excepted from The New York Times:

Walter Cronkite, who pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was called the most trusted man in America, died Friday at his home in New York. He was 92.

From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people’s lives.

He became something of a national institution, with an unflappable delivery, a distinctively avuncular voice and a daily benediction: “And that’s the way it is.” He was Uncle Walter to many: respected, liked and listened to. With his trimmed mustache and calm manner, he even bore a resemblance to another trusted American fixture, another Walter — Walt Disney.

“I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor — not a commentator or analyst,” he said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor in 1973. “I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.”

But when he did pronounce judgment, the impact was large.

In 1968, he visited Vietnam and returned to do a rare special program on the war. He called the conflict a stalemate and advocated a negotiated peace. President Lyndon B. Johnson watched the broadcast, Mr. Cronkite wrote in his 1996 memoir, “A Reporter’s Life,” quoting a description of the scene by Bill Moyers, then a Johnson aide.

“The president flipped off the set,” Mr. Moyers recalled, “and said, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.’ ”

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born on Nov. 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Mo., the son of Walter Leland Cronkite Sr., a dentist, and the former Helen Lena Fritsche. His ancestors had settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York. As a boy, Walter peddled magazines door to door and hawked newspapers. As a teenager, after the family had moved to Houston, he got a job with The Houston Post as a copy boy and cub reporter. At the same time, he had a paper route delivering The Post to his neighbors.

I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death…I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper–Thomas Henry Huxley

“The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected…” -William Makepeace Thackeray, from The Social Pipe