Sherlock Holmes and the pipe:
smoke and religion in Baker Street and between the Sioux

by Alessandro Corsellini
World Champion of Slow Pipe Smoking, pipe builder.

In 1995 I was invited to the presentation of a little book ,"Uno studio in Holmes", outcome of the finding of an old trunk in which there were some receipts of pipes bought in my Grandfather's shop from Sherlock Holmes in the last years of 800.

Now I am almost obliged to speak about Sherlock Holmes as pipe-smoker and, moreover, what smoking is for him.

Before I discuss these argumenys, I would like to expose some considerations I draw from the lecture of Holmes's stories. First, the music : Holmes quotes Darwin's ideas on this art : "...he claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at...there are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood" (STUD) . Holmes plays and listens to the music in his moments of highest concentration, when he has to resolve a paticularly difficult case : music becames so a sort of "passport" to approach something of extrasensorial, a way to rise from the ground and arrive at a perfect rationality, an help for the evolution of his thoughts.

The same we can say about pipe. I quote:

-Sherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his finger tips still pressed together, his legs strtched out in front of him and his gaze directed upwards to the ceiling. Then he took down from the rack the old and oily clay pipe , which was to him as a counsellor, and, having it, he leaned back in his chair , with the thick blue cloud-wreaths spinning up from him, and a look of infinite languor in his face. (IDEN)

- It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes - (REDH)

Or, we can remember the case in which Holmes needed a pound of the strongest shag tobacco to resolve the problem and stated alone all the day smoking, and Watson founded him in a sort of trance, in a room that "was so filled with the smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it "and my first impression as I opened the door was that a fire has broken out". (HOUN)

Not going too far, I think I can assert that smoking pipe, as music, helped Sherlock Holmes to contact reality outside the merely earthly sphere

Now I think I can insert some considerations about the origin and practice of pipe between primitive cultures , that are still presents in some countries.

We have to jump back in the time for many and many thousands of years, when the man mastered the fire, and so he became aware of the smoke derived from it. In that time he was prisoner of common phenomena, as the rain, the wind ,the sunray, and terrorized by some of these, as thunders, thunderbolts,, eclipses , all coming from the high . He could'nt explain himself all these manifestations, and so he ascriped it to the will of one or more Beings that dominated his sphere. Since all the objects he knew , when flied in air falled on the ground, while on the contrary the smoke rose to the sky until to vanish, maybe he believed that the only way to communicate with these Power of "The High" was really the smoke. He made at the beginning a little brazier of earth in which he put some leaves : using a cane he inspired the smoke, only to facilitate the combustion (this practice is still in use between some tribes) . Successively he worked the stone with his early tools, and he built a " portable" brazier that he could use when he wanted. And so the pipe was born. In it man burned some kind of aromatic herbs, different in the nature according to the sense he wanted to give to this operation, or the Divinity he wanted to address.

This ritual use is common between peoples of different continents, without any possibility of contact . We can find it between Thracians, Babylonians, Egyptians, the indios of America.

A particular attention must be pointed on the rites of the pipe, still today in use between Sioux Oglala,

related in the book "Black Moose speaks" . Black Moose, the last great "Medicine Man" of this people tells us that "many winters ago" they had a revelation. One day a white-dressed woman with a package on her shoulders appaered to two hunters, announcing her next becoming in their camp . A little time after, she arrived in the Teepee they prepared and handed over to the Chief the package, in which there was the " Holy Pipe " : the Indians would have to use it in the "seven rites" incised on a circular stone. The pipe was made in kaolinite, and symbolized the earth : on the bowl there was engraved a bison, representing the world of the quadrupeds : the cane was related to vegetable world , the twelve hanging feathers of eagle concerned all the winged beings. Indians should take great care of thiat Pipe, for it was the only way to communicate with the Great Spirit.. It is too long here speak about the seven rites and their execution : they are concerned to the most disparate aspects of the life, as the rite for the conservation of the soul of the deads, or the purification, or the dance of the sun, and so on . The Holy Pipe is still handed on from a generation to another of Medicine Men and can't be handed to other persons. Personally I tried many times to have one of them, but I couldn't..

For all these peoples smoking the pipe didn't and doesn't have the sense that has for us, i.e. the pleasure . However, if we put our mind to how the pipe-smoker takes care of his pipe, he chooses one between many in order to obtain the result he wants in this moment, we could think that all this refers to remote customs remained latent in us (may be a little forced, but could be possible) .

I succeeded to have a funeral pipe : it is comes from Centro Africa, stone-made, it represents an Hereafter Divinity , and it is smoked only once by the Shaman during the funeral rites.

There are lots of testimonies about religious use of pipe in the centuries.

Only after the discovery of America and the introduction of tobacco in Europe we can have the association between pipe and pleasure of smoking.

I think the way Holmes uses his pipe is between the two concepts : the pleasure and the way of concentration to approach a superior, ecstatic sphere. Maybe for this Holmes never speaks about his pipes as particular pieces : moreover he doesn't possess precious pipes, but common, clay pipes. Once he speaks about a brier pipe, never he uses the famous Calabash. Just this position toward the pipe, i.e. the "not looking" for the precious and particular , confirms to me the great sense that this precious object had to him , and that we roughly draw near the usage in the milleniums humanity made.