Sherlock Holmes The Smoker.

Sherlock Holmes The Smoker.

“The room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it…the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips.“

So writes Doctor Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles. When I read that passage I can imagine the disapproving Doctor flinging open all the windows, to dispel the foul stench of tobacco!

The long-suffering Watson also writes in The Musgrave Ritual (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes) about Holmes’ smoking kit: “…when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jackknife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs.“ 

The aforementioned black clay pipe is also mentioned by Doctor Watson The Red-Headed League (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes): “…he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird.“ The Red-Headed League also contains one of the most famous quotes in the Sherlock Holmes Canon, when Holmes says to Doctor Watson; “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.“ 

The black clay was not the only pipe that Sherlock Holmes used. In The Sign of the Four we hear of Holmes “filling up his old briar-root pipe.“ While in The Copper Beeches (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), Doctor Watson tells of Holmes lighting “…the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood.“ 

Sherlock Holmes’ favoured tobacco was common black shag. This was a ‘strong tobacco of fair to poor quality,‘ according to one source. 

Doctor Watson refers again to the smoking habits of his friend in The Engineer’s Thumb (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). Holmes is smoking his before-breakfast pipe: “…which was composed of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the mantelpiece.“

In The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes mentions his monograph titled ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos.‘ In this Holmes enumerates on “…a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette, and pipe tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash.“

As Holmes explains to Watson; “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.“

The Trichinopoly referred to is a cigar in the form of a cheroot. It was exported from India. Bird’s-eye tobacco, on the other hand, was a widely available pipe tobacco. It was a blend that contained dark tobacco leaves. 

In the first Sherlock Holmes tale, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes describes a possible culprit of a crime: “He was more than six feet high, was in the prime of life, had small feet for his height, wore coarse, square-toed boots, and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar.“ 

Cigarettes were also popular during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Indeed, cigarettes and cigarette ends provide vital clues in The Adventure of The Red Circle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Adventure of The Golden Pince-nez. 

In the latter story, Professor Coram offers a cigarette to Sherlock Holmes; “I can recommend them, for I have them especially prepared by Ionides, of Alexandria.“ Doctor Watson observes that Holmes, “…was smoking with extraordinary rapidity. It was evident that he shared our host’s liking for the fresh Alexandrian cigarettes.“

However, our image of Sherlock Holmes is not that of a cigarette smoker. We tend to see him as a pipe man, with his brows furrowed as he considers the next ‘three pipe problem.‘ This representation has lasted for more than a hundred years. And it may well endure for as long as the Sherlock Holmes stories are read.

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